Tag Archive for 'review'

Offspring Season 1/The Finale

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ALL OF OFFSPRING SEASON 1, POSSIBLE SPOILERS WILL ENSUE

I decided to focus on the Finale, although I’m sort of also reviewing the season as a whole. (I know it’s late but, since when was a review ever on time in the last billion months here? )

The finale was, well, very long. And despite ten saying it was movie length, it was actually 2 separate episodes (The pilot telemovie was actually a full blown… well… telemovie) I mean, not that it makes much difference, other than the fact that a telemovie is potentially far longer than two epsiodes tacked together.

Now I guess, if you really wanted to, you could say it was a fairly ‘dramatic’ finale. However, at risk of sounding a bit sadistic,  I really was expecting a little bit more death. Seriously, this is a drama series, and no-one even died in the big finale, the big ending was “oh Nina is getting put on a bus at the very end of the first season, so she can be conveniently returning to hilarious drama’s at the start of Season 2, at the same time as viewers (a lá Love My Way).

I can’t even remember if her ex-husband is even alive, but I thought there would be some sort of suicide or explosion or something! The drama was mediocre at best, just a bunch of people crying over something that really wasn’t as bad as they were all making out. I could bear it when Billie was upset, but then when every other bloody person in the family was having a cry and threatening to leave the country over something that has very very little to do with them at all. LIKE THEIR BROTHER! Oh no! my sisters both slept with the same dude, I better buy a ticket on a plane to an undisclosed location. No. That is dumb. And when you drag out two episodes of this shit, and I have to sit through both episodes at once, that is not entertainment, that is torture.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but I was really expecting a little bit more from the finale, but it’s only because it is one of the first Australian TV Series I’ve seen that has been actually good, and the finale had so much potential to be so much better. The season had so much that was just perfect, and when they started the season with a bang (pun intended: there were literally explosions) I thought the finale could at least be a bit more exciting than constant tears.

Going back to Nina’s going overseas during the gap between Season 1 and 2, I do not approve of this at all. I mean, there is the slim possibility that this will work, but, I think it’s a big cop-out when you watch a whole season, and things evolve to a certain point, only for the main character to leave between 2 seasons, and when they come back everything has gone backwards so that you feel like the previous season was a complete waste of time – for example: why did we watch a whole season of these characters getting together just so that they can be broken up next season.

In hindsight, I complained in my firstlook into this series, saying that I didn’t see Nina’s fantasies adding to the show. They did, they did that and they did more, they were this excellent addition that just made things more interesting. (The cartoony bits were still a bit lame, but whatever, they weren’t frequent). But I like that the show has this whole “Is this real or is it Nina freaking out” factor to it, kept you guessing. And ads that might usually ruin the plot of the episode sometimes give you this sense of “maybe it’s just a dream” – it’s just great.

Overall, I really enjoyed Offspring, and I really can’t wait for the new season next year. Not much more to say on that.

0 Comments
Tags: , , .
Filed Under: freeview

review: cougar town

By request:

Cougar Town, entirely based on the name of this show i judged it as being a complete piece of crap. Seriously, I was like “omg, I can’t believe there is actually going to be a television show about cougars” and by that i mean, one that isn’t a reality show, because I know that those exist.

It’s all about Jules, played by Courtney Cox, who is recently divorced, and her adventures in single life, and trying to relive her twenties that she lost because she got married and pregnant, with help from her friends, who i can never remember the names of, so i just call them slutty friend and mean friend.

Anyway, once I found out that it starred (and was written by… or produced or something like that, don’t call me on it, cause i’m probably wrong)  Courtney Cox, I was slightly more confident that it would be an alright show, considering her last show, d!rt, was so good. But still, I wasn’t all too keen on the whole Cougar thing.

Anyway, first episode, I was hooked. It’s excellent. I swear, not many people could pull off doing the cougar thing without it being amazingly pathetic and lame, but it’s been done really well in cougar town.

Although, further on in the season it’s sort of got into it’s own little swing of things, and it doesn’t feel so much like the series it originally was, don’t get me wrong, it’s still a whole lot of fun, but, i don’t know how to explain it really, i just feel like it’s going to end up being one of those shows with a tired old format where the same sort of things happen every episode and you always can guess what is going to happen.

The other thing I noticed is that as this season has progressed, Jules has sort of grown out of the whole ‘Cougar’ thing, which, you know, characters need to evolve and all, I can understand that, but I think it happened a little too quickly, I mean considering the show is called cougar town. Come to think of it, the last few episodes I’ve seen haven’t even really been about Jules’ love life at all, just about other random mishaps, but whatever.

Seven, as i have bitched about many times, axed Cougar Town momentarily, then decided to not to, after I had downloaded the rest of the season anyway… legally…. of course…. *cough*

So i liked the show enough to use a considerable amount of data usage downloading the whole season, so I think it can be classed as a good show, I reckon anyway.

coming soon: a desperate housewives review, but i think i’m going to wait for the finale and do a full review of the season

0 Comments
Tags: , , , .
Filed Under: freeview

review: glee

In my experience, people either really love or really hate glee, and personally, I go between really loving it and really hating it several times per episode.

There is so much wrong with the show, it’s like they’re trying ever so hard for it to be ‘inspirational’, and every episode feels like it’s trying to teach you a lesson, and not a good lesson, a really lame done-a-million-times lesson, for example, in the Madonna episode when Finn was all like “I don’t feel anything, because it didn’t mean anything” I had this sudden urge for epic facepalm – and they just made it really lame, like they didn’t make it a subconscious thing, it was like “lets make what were trying to teach you incredibly blaringly obvious”

Or the episode where Black Chick Whose Name I Can’t Remember was a cheerleader and Sue told her she was too fat, and I already knew that the rest of the episode was going to be her dieting too much and she’ll get really sick and then they’ll learn a lesson about how you should be okay with your fat bodies.

I mean, I’m all for trying to teach people lessons, actually, no I’m not, but if you are a tv producer and you really have your heart set on teaching people a lesson, then you could at the very least, make it a little bit less obvious. When I watch tv, I want entertainment, not education. If I was one of those people, I’d be watching Discovery Channel.

But while they’re teaching us stupid lessons, they do actually sing some good songs, well every now and then anyway. I think the quality of the songs has gone down as the series has progressed. I still remember the Pilot of glee (mainly because I watched it about 200 times) and when they sung, especially Don’t Stop Believin, it sort of gave me this really happy feeling, and still does whenever i listen to that song on the album, you can tell they put a lot of effort into that song.

They had the whole voices making up the background music thing going on, and it sounded amazing. But lately all the songs have ended up being just really bad nearly-exact covers of songs.

Still, despite being kind of crap when you listen to the album, and just awful in theory, some of the songs are really fun to watch – like Like A Virgin in the Madonna episode, I watched that heaps of times because I loved it so much.

On the other hand, I’m sick of hearing really dumb songs in the music room that just are awful and serve no purpose to the story.

Not that the story is even that good anymore, to be honest I can’t even remember if it ever was. I’d really hate to imagine how many continuity errors there are, because they just make it up as they go, i swear. Way too often it feels like they changed the storyline specifically so that a certain song would work, just cause they really wanted to sing that particular song.

Despite everything that I hate about Glee, I still love it, and I know i’m going to keep watching it anyway. Because despite seeing everything that is wrong with the show, i’m pathetic and still watch crap shows like this.

0 Comments
Tags: , , .
Filed Under: freeview and other