Welcome back again, everyone, for the second part of our season’s opening. And I think I can safely say that “Parasomnia” was a huge improvement from “Creatures of the Night”. Not only do we meet a new character and get to see Mason some more, this episode managed to be significantly creepy without even a mention of Eichen House. In fact, Arkham 2.0 wasn’t in this episode at all, and that is an improvement in and of itself.
Spoilers up ahead.
Season 4 finale! We got a super-sized episode (a whole extra 10 minutes) packed full of action, emotion, and surprisingly few major character deaths. Without further ado, on to the super-sized review, with some super-sized spoilers. Continue reading
Welcome back to another Moonday, everyone! This week, our characters must face off against another assassin, but they’ve yet to defeat their strongest foe thus far: the SATs. I guess it would be that time for them. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts.
Spoilers ahead.
Huzzah, another episode of Teen Wolf’s awesome fourth season! After last week’s episode, I was all jazzed up for this week. This season as a whole has a feel that is a great mix of familiar and fresh, mixing the style and atmosphere of the first season with new characters and dilemmas. Unfortunately, while I wouldn’t call this episode slow-paced or actionless, I don’t think it had quite the energy of the other episodes this season, as pretty much nothing new was introduced—the plotlines were all extensions and elaborations on what had been set up in the previous episode. Without further ado, let’s dive into the latest adventures of this wacky crew.
Spoilers below the jump. Continue reading
I love queer characters. I want them in all my shows. I want all the characters in all my shows to be queer. Maybe that’s asking too much, so I’m offering an alternative to geek media writers: give me at least a few queer characters in your shows, and for the love of God/Goddess/Gods, write their stories well.
When I started watching Orphan Black just about a month ago, I already knew that one of the clones, Cosima, was going to be queer, and I was excited to watch her story unfold. Unfortunately, there was nary even a hint of what could have been a very interesting nature vs. nurture discussion. Just as upsetting, I was treated to this outstanding line from Delphine, her new paramour: “I’ve never done this before.” Cringe/eyeroll/facepalm/etc. “I’ve never done this before” is not good queer narrative writing; it’s a line from the beginning of a porno. Let’s examine why it’s problematic for that to be the only queer narrative seen on TV.
“I’ve never done this before” *bow chicka wow wow*
Possession is one of the most terrifying staples in the horror genre’s arsenal. Its terror stems from two main sources: firstly, the fear of lack of control over one’s own body, and secondly, the shock of seeing someone you know and love doing bad things. But aside from the visceral discomfort viewers feel from seeing a possessed person, how is possession used in the overall narratives of a work? In other words, what is the point of possession? I think it largely depends on who or what is doing the possessing, and the character development impact that the possession has for the character being possessed.
Season 3B: I did lose my mind, thanks a lot, Jeff Davis. I also lost my faith in humanity, my hope for this show, and also my dignity.
I’ll examine two notable examples from recent television. For those of us who are somehow still Teen Wolf fans, the latest season, which wrapped up this past week, featured an extensive possession story arc. This season, everyone’s favorite Loyal Best Friend, Stiles, came to the forefront (look at many promotional image for 3B, like the one above; Stiles was literally in the forefront, featured as more central than the Teen Wolf himself, Scott). Stiles was possessed by a malevolent Japanese fox spirit, called a nogitsune. Fox possession may sound strange to Western audiences, but in Japanese mythology, it’s totally a thing. On the other hand, most American media will feature the more familiar demonic possession, exemplified for the purposes of this post by the case of Sister Mary Eunice in 2012’s American Horror Story: Asylum.
Well, after the atrocity that was last week’s episode, it would have been really hard for this one to not be an improvement. Hit the jump to find out my thoughts.
“Due to the mature theme of this episode, viewer discretion is advised.” Oh shit. First time, to my knowledge, that Teen Wolf has begun with a viewer advisory. This does not bode well, my friends. This does not bode well at all.
As the majority of last night’s episode takes place in a psychiatric facility, I wanted to pass this warning along, straight from the official Teen Wolf Tumblr:
We would like to take this time to warn everyone that tonight’s episode will feature some potentially triggering content such as suicide, abuse, self-medication and mental health; just to name a few. We strongly advise that anyone who may find any of this content triggering or harmful avoid the “Echo House” tag on Tumblr.
Spoilers after the jump.
Coming out of last week’s Teen Wolf, I don’t think any of us were expecting a happy time this go-round. Well, we were right; this episode was so full of pain and fear and chaos that, well, it would probably make a chaos demon very happy. Stop the feels train, please. I want to get off.
Spoilers after the jump.
Welcome back, everyone, for another review of Teen Wolf. “Silverfinger” is the fifth episode so far in Season 3B, and it was every single kind of awesome. Spoilers after the jump.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 