Life is unfair isn’t it? You have to deal with all these painful realities, and it often feels like you really can’t control anything. Not only that, but you’re faced with constant reminders about how unfair things are from just living in real life, and from the stories that movies, TV shows, and video games tell us. Over a decade ago, we had Buffy the Vampire Slayer telling us that being an adult meant making difficult choices and realizing things are beyond your control, now we have Life is Strange to teach that lesson to a new generation while fully utilizing its medium of story telling (vidya gamez) to impart it. I loved Life is Strange, it’s the rare video game that completely immersed itself in its story-telling, and I appreciate the hell out of the fact that it was ruthlessly uncompromising in its message. I’m going to get into massive spoilers from here, so be warned.

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Life is Strange Review and Ending Analysis – Personal Growth Through Trial and Error

To Kill or Not to Kill? – When Should A Show Kill Off Its Cast?

Death is meaningless. People can try to draw meaning from the end of a person’s life by doing something worthwhile afterwards, but the death itself means nothing. It is the ending of one’s life, either from what society would consider natural causes, or a random catastrophe that can come in the form of disease, nature, or a gun wielding maniac. Death is everywhere, and it’s always just something that happens to people, but when it is written about, suddenly things are very different. In real life, if it happens from something like cancer, it’s just a random stupid tragedy the universe doled out for no reason on someone that didn’t need to go, but when you write about death, it always has meaning, because whether you meant to or not, you wanted to convey something through your writing. You may have been trying to demonstrate that death itself has no meaning by writing a meaningless death, or maybe you just wanted to say something about the character that died in general, either way, death always means something when it’s written about. It’s almost a strategic tool writers have, because it can be used in a variety of ways, but I fear people may be missing that fact when they talk about it in Television.

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Cary Agos: The Important Client – The Good Wife Fanfiction

Cary Agos feels as though something is amiss. It’s not the usual weight he feels working at Lockhart, Agos, and Lee, but something feels different. Perhaps it’s not weight he feels, but more the opposite. He feels a certain lightness in his comings and goings. Seeing as he was just recently made partner, that lightness would be interpreted by some as a good thing. It wasn’t. Cary doesn’t feel grounded anymore, he feels like a man that is fading away, and it terrifies him.

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Theories On What Caused The Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies Feud

What happened?

Two of the main actors on The Good Wife were in a feud. There is no disputing that, whether you want to dodge the issue and be super condescending about it like the show’s creators (Robert and Michelle King) have, or straight up lie about it (and get subsequently exposed) like the show’s lead actress has, you have to accept the fact that something went down between Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies. The characters they played haven’t shared a scene with one another in over two seasons, and when Panjabi left the show, her last scene with Margulies (which is absolutely pivotal to her character arc) was done with green-screen trickery. I’ve covered it before, and I’ll say it again, the Kings have allowed their show to be dictated by a dispute between their actors, which is pretty pathetic on their part, but also leaves one to wonder what kind of catastrophic event caused such a mess in the first place. Just for fun, here are some of my speculations.

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Top Ten Best Veep Moments

Continuing the discussion of Veep from my last post, I started thinking about this show’s best moments. Even though one of the show’s selling points is its satire, it is most certainly isn’t its strength. While it can be amusing at times, it’s rarely ever nuanced or insightful, however, the show’s greatest strength is in its cast of characters. While its ensemble can feel overstuffed, the show’s core cast (and even some of its reoccurring players) are why this has become the hit it is on HBO. There are moments from the show when a character, even one that should be a minor player, surprises you in a way that makes you laugh or, surprisingly enough, feel. Here is a list of moments in Veep that I found to have been the most hilarious, heartfelt, or both.

VEEP SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

Continue reading “Top Ten Best Veep Moments”