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Spring Season: Weeks 43/44
It's Monday. You know what that means.
It's 2021, and my mind is a total blank!
There were holidays. They were fine! Awkward outdoor gift exchange outside in the freezing wind with my grandmother (who has since received her first COVID vaccination, so hopefully one day we can go back to actually... visiting her), dinner at home with my mom and brother, nothing fancy. I got a new TV! It was a lot of work being able to get it set up because it was too big for my TV stand, but a quick trip to one of the apartments owned by my mom's boss got me a nice new replacement (there is... a lot of unexpected turnover here) and I'm very contented~
Resolutions? Just make it to the end of the year again. Shiftwork, man, it's all I've got the space for. THAT SAID, I do just generally want to keep trying to improve myself in various broad ways? I should probably do a separate post for that, make it a whole proper Thing.
New thing for the Movie Spoiler Zone: if it's rewatch of something I've seen since starting these posts, it gets italics. I like a healthy new stuff to rewatch ratio, somewhere in between the way I used to just watch the same twenty movies over and over because those were what I had on DVD and just constantly consuming as much new content as possible, never revisiting or dwelling on anything, you know?
FILMS
12 O'Clock Boys (2013): IT'S NOT A BIKE IF IT HAS FOUR WHEELS. Anyway, this does a good job of finding the beauty in something kinda objectively bad and dangerous? Like, absolutely fuck the police, but there's a reason this shit is illegal?
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958): Boy, there were way more white people in the middle east back then than I thought. ANYWAY, Harryhausen rules so hard, if I were alive in the '50s, I would be every bit as obsessed with these movies as I am with the MCU.
Above Suspicion (1943): I never would have guessed that I've always secretly wanted 'adorable newlyweds excitedly solve an escape room' vibes from my WWII potboilers, but here we are! This was delightful.
Autumn Leaves (1956): Yowza. There's a lot here to like here; a romance where the woman is more than a decade older, it's addressed, and still gets to be adorable; a broadly sympathetic, if crazy melodramatic, view of mental illness; Joan Crawford calls a woman a slut; Uncle Ben fucks. It's a LOT, and while it kind of uncomfortably glosses over his physical abuse of her, and while his issues are put to bed awfully tidily in the end (a little electroshock, some drugs, we good), I really enjoyed it a lot.
Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000): Weird and dark and funny. Banging score. Bit too long. One to avoid if you're a 'does the dog die???' type. He's got a way to go here, but Bong hit the ground running.
Blood Rage (1987): Parts of this were worryingly relatable. Also, 18-YEAR-OLD TED RAIMI.
Buck Privates (1941): Oh boy, what a fun wacky time joining the army in 1941 must have been! I'm so jealous of all these lucky, lucky men!
Caché (2005): I already knew this guy was the dirt worst, and still managed to be surprised by how awful a protagonist he remains. Much more satisfying now that I wasn't expecting the mystery of the tapes to actually be solved in the end. They're coming from Haneke, from outside the narrative of the movie, the source doesn't matter, it's all about what they unearth, you know?
Cat People (1942): THE BUS JUMP SCARE STILL GETS ME EVERY DAMN TIME, WHAT A GOOD FUCKING SCENE.
Contemporary Color (2016): Me at the beginning of this movie: "What the fuck is colour guard?" Me partway through this movie: "Oh, so it's the kids not cool enough to be cheerleaders." Me at the end of this movie: "It is absolutely the kids not cool enough to be cheerleaders and it looks AWESOME and I WISH it had been a thing here because this shit is DELIGHTFUL." Thank you once again to David Byrne, God's perfect weirdo.
The Damned Don't Cry (1950): The store clerk pressuring a woman to buy a bike she clearly can't afford in front of her son was the REAL villain here. Also this is the origin story for the Duke from Midnight Run and you can't tell me otherwise.
Dancing Lady (1933): Too much tinsel, not enough tree. It's very nice tinsel, though, I'll always drop everything for random Astaire. Super weird to see the Three Stooges all credited separately as just parts of the ensemble, here.
Forrest Gump (1994): My brother really loves this movie to a weird degree, but that made this a solid enough pick for something to watch with the family on New Year's. It's Forrest Gump, what do you want from me?
Hallelujah the Hills (1963): Not good, but extremely watchable, considering how much I fucking hate his brother's work.
Harriet Craig (1950): Different enough from Craig's Wife that I wasn't constantly comparing the two, which is good because it isn't really a patch on that one (ROSALIND RUSSELL, QUEEN OF MY HEART). Still good, though! Played up some different aspects of the story, Crawford is great as always, just lacked that wrenching bit of soul.
Fotbal infinit (2018): Sometimes the most mundane bullshit gives you the most to sit with and think about. It's Calvinball: The Movie. I will never understand caring this much about any sport, though.
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937): About as tonally janky as you'd expect from something with three directors, but still a fair bit of fun.
Love on the Run (1936): Frothy, wall-to-wall nonsense. Seriously, this movie is just TOTAL nonsense. And yet, Crawford and Gable make it work.
Mannequin (1937): Oh goodie, another movie where Spencer Tracy is a gross, pushy asshole that we're supposed to root for because... reasons. Every man in this is horrible!
Miss Annie Rooney (1942): Awkward teen Temple, huh? I can dig it. Kudos to this movie for taking the old trope of 'poor girl gets embarrassed at a rich party she was super excited for' and finding a brand new way for it to be skin-crawlingly difficult to watch.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): I didn't do a full Decembond this year, mostly because getting to see some of the classics in an actual theater this year MORE than scratched that particular itch, but I still obviously had to hit up my favourite Christmas tradition! Never watch this movie with me, I will just talk about everything I love in it constantly. Alternately: always watch this movie with me.
The Prince of Tides (1991): Predictable, melodramatic schmaltz, beautifully shot and pretty well acted. Babs really should have directed more.
Queen Bee (1955): A throwaway line at the beginning made me spend the rest of the movie imagining Avery's scar got worse the meaner and drunker he got, like Commander Shepard. I think I'm losing my mind!
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017): I have not seen nearly enough of his work, but this was a very nice blend of man, music, and the relationship between the two.
Sleepwalk (1986): Interesting little thriller that wears its mega low budget indie trappings on its sleeve. Hardcore 'ancient Chinese plophecy' written by a white woman grossness abounds, but Tony Todd rules. Completely lost me by the end.
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931): Tedious and horny and annoyingly twee, with an ending that left me completely baffled as to why I was supposed to care about any of it. It's like a weird backwards Grease situation where the cool girlfriend he actually loved gives his sad wife a makeover so he'll actually want to fuck her? Hooray? Blech. IN FAIRNESS, however, I watched this right after finding out about Brodie Lee, so my lousy impressions of it might not be ENTIRELY Maurice Chevalier's fault in this case, but more on that in the television section. The two love interests having 800 times more chemistry with each other than with him definitely is his fault, anyway.
Soul (2020): A really stunning refinement of Inside Out. Beautiful stuff on pretty much all levels. This movie deserved so much better than Disney+.
Strait-Jacket (1964): OH SHIT OH FUCK CRAWFORD'S GOT AN AXE WE'RE ALL FUCKED. This was a... slightly less nuanced take on mental illness than Autumn Leaves, but still sympathetic in its way, also it's nonstop ridiculous grand guignol goodness.
Tchoupitoulas (2012): Took me a little while to get into it, I think I generally need more plot in my endearing boyhood wanderings? But after about half an hour or so, I settled into the vibe and was fully along for the ride. What a night.
Tchoupitoulas (2012): So nice I watched it twice. Hey guys, when Covid is over, let's all go to Mardi Gras.
Trouble in Paradise (1932): Sharp and smart and just goddamn all-around delightful grifter love triangle where the correct couple is endgame, thank god. Sweet and sad and sexy in turns, I really loved this movie a lot!
Videodrome (1983): LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH.
Yentl (1983): Has there ever been a movie where the solution was SO emphatically 'threesome'?? Gonna write the sequel about Avigdor and Hadass following Yentl so they can all live as an adorable poly triad in 1910s New York.
SHORTS
Scen nr: 6882 ur mitt liv (2005): I guess he must have used up all the good material on scenes number 1-6881.
Cecile on the Phone (2017): I made it to "it's like love IS suffering, you know?" before I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head and I couldn't see any more of it. :(
Olympe (2017): Where is the line between film and ad? Is there even one at the end of the day? Where do music videos fit in? Regardless, this left next to no impression on me.
One of Those Days (1988): This happened to my buddy Eric
Rome Is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke) (1970): Remember when I watched so many Shirley Clarke shorts that she became my most watched director even though I didn't particularly care about much of her output? Yeah, that's still true, but French TV did not fuck around with its shows about filmmakers, god damn.
The Short and Curlies (1988): This is like the third time I watch this, and I'm still somehow surprised by how ugly David Thewliss is.
TZZD (2017): I was gonna ask questions about what constitutes urban fantasy, if slapping ears and a wig on someone is enough or if the material needs to support it, too, but then it devolved into a whole lot of visual noise and all I'm left with is 'huh'. It was an effective ad for those boots, though.
Untitled (Juice) (2017): Just a couple of people freestyling about juice for some reason. Maybe should have gotten the rights to the phrase Minute Maid before having it factor so heavily into your short, though. An orange juice water park sounds fun in theory, but would surely be EXTREMELY sticky.
TELEVISION
All Elite Wrestling (December 1st - December 30th, 2020): Ooooooof. Okay. So. I finally got caught up! I did it! I watched all of AEW from the inception of the promotion to now! It was an extremely fun and satisfying thing to do over all of these months and I'm going to enjoy both staying caught up and being able to watch other shows again! I also spent a LOT of this week crying, so let's get to it!
HOW IT STARTED
Sooooooo Winter Is Coming fucking ruled. Kenny's gone full heel and I'm so here for it. Curious what this Don Callis thing is gonna mean in the new year. Am I gonna have to start watching Impact now?? That would be so much wrestling! Surely Shawn Spears is gonna pop up over there at some point, right?
Sting is here, which is interesting, but he's a guy I don't have a lot of background for since I was a WWF kid and dipped out before everything got mushed together in the '00s. Tony losing his goddamn mind over his debut was extremely entertaining regardless. Also, he's very old and I'm very curious as to what the hell he's gonna be doing here! Adopting Darby and starting a little sad rafter clown family?? I also love his ridiculous snowy entrance, though it's probably less enjoyable for those in the arena considering they are filming all of these episodes outdoors in winter (it's Jacksonville, so it's certainly not freezing, but still probably too cold to comfortably run around in little booty trunks a lot of the time).
MJF and Wardlow joining the Inner Circle continues to pay dividends for everyone involved, this is the most interesting that group has ever been, and certainly the most interesting MJF has been since burying his unrequited love for Cody way deep down after beating him. That seemingly genuine bonding moment with Santana, very much blurring the kayfabe line, man! What is his game??
Hook looks like a small, angry Victorian child next to the rest of Team Taz and I love it.
Speaking of Victorian things, I am very excited to get to add an episode of Being the Elite into my traditional rotation of 'sitcom adaptations of A Christmas Carol'. I've watched it like three times already, what pure joy. How is every single member of Dark Order such a bad singer???
HOW IT ENDED
Literally right in my last entry here, I just casually mentioned 'once Brodie comes back', I was really just taking it entirely for granted that he'd be back at some point, huh? SO MUCH FOR THAT.
An incomplete list of moments that made me cry during last week's Dynamite:
Wrestling is such an odd duck blend of real life and fiction, and times like this kind of obviously obliterate the line between the two. When somebody dies, there's no writing their character out, there are no banked episodes to let everyone else take time to figure out what they're going to do or how they're going to address it, that person is just gone, and all you have left are their grieving co-workers tasked with just keeping on. It's SO ROUGH, but this was a very good episode, a great tribute to both the man and his legacy within AEW that did a nice job of sprinkling in enough ongoing character arc beats (Anna and Tay's friendship, Hangman and 3/4's weird kinship, MJF all kitted out in PnP gear for his tag with Santana and Ortiz, Britt's 'Big Rig' promo, etc.) that it can't just be glossed over as a wholly non-canon one-off.
Brodie Lee is a wrestler I had no context for prior to his debut in AEW (I needed Twitter to explain that Lance was pretty much cosplaying as his WWE persona in his match), so when he was revealed as the Exalted One, he got a hearty Star-Lord 'who?' from me (I was expecting Matt Hardy! Everyone was expecting Matt Hardy!), and even from there, it took me a while to warm to yet another big stompy guy getting a string of boring squash matches to establish what a t~h~r~e~a~t he is. Between the Dark Order becoming a group of hilarious weirdos online, though, and the genuinely shocking way he won the TNT belt from Cody, though, I came around towards the end. Not that I knew it was the end, or that that brutal dog collar match would be his last one ever, but here we are. No more of Mr. Brodie Lee. I only knew who he was for a matter of months, but wrestling being what it is, with the sketchy meta lines it draws in the post-kayfabe era, I think it's a little bit impossible not to get attached to these people in a deeper way than with most other performers and celebrities that we don't actually know. I think people who get really into YouTubers might feel the same way? But I'm not sure. Either way, I'm very sad, but it was a very good show nevertheless and I'm glad I got caught up when I did. Stray points:
MJF flipping off an eight-year-old whose father just died has to be the peak, right? There's no way to be a bigger dick than that, he has nowhere to go but down, now, right? Loved his over-the-top sell of the kendo stick bit, as well as the way -1 hid his face when he grabbed his mask off.
Hangman VERY CONSPICUOUSLY holding his vest closed for the entire match intro was such a great lead in to the paper throwing bit. You KNOW he's hiding something under there, and it's just the longest waiting game to get to the reveal.
I kinda hope John Silver keeps wearing his tribute coveralls? They are just the right combination of sweet reminder of Brodie, nice-looking ring gear, and EXTREMELY HILARIOUS, he's like a 'roided up little gremlin mini-me.
I am both very sad and very excited to see what's going to become of the Dark Order after this. No matter what, it'll be bittersweet, but it feels like a real dilemma because like... there is no possible way they can continue as a heel faction after this, is there? They're already mega popular because of BTE, and after that episode, going five matches for five in honour of their fallen leader, nobody is ever going to boo any of these wonderful weirdos ever again. Do they turn face? They're still a spooky pervert cult! Does somebody like Colt or even Hangman step in and try to straighten them out? I just don't know!
Woof. What a week. RIP Jon Huber. Here's to 2021! Somebody tell me not to watch this week's BTE again because I will just cry for fifteen minutes straight!
IMPACT! Wrestling (12.08.2020): I was only gonna watch the relevant Kenny Omega bit from the end, but then I had to assemble my mother's Christmas gift and needed a couple of hours of background noise, so. This was a'ight! I don't know any of these people!
Star Trek: Discovery (3x11/3x12): See recent DISCOurse pos-OH WAIT SCOTT LIVES ON AN ISLAND IN THIS HELL WORLD AND CAN ACTUALLY GO ON TRIPS AND SHIT SO THERE ARE NONE THIS WEEK, NEVER MIND. I can't believe they followed up a Mirror Universe two-parter with a 'busted holodeck shenanigans' episode, I ALREADY LOVE YOU, SHOW, YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP TRYING TO WIN ME OVER. How is Doug Jones weirder looking as a human?? MORAL AMBIGUITIES! DIFFICULT DILEMMAS! WHERE IS THIS SEASON GONNA END???
The next time I update I will probably be 32 I guess!
It's 2021, and my mind is a total blank!
There were holidays. They were fine! Awkward outdoor gift exchange outside in the freezing wind with my grandmother (who has since received her first COVID vaccination, so hopefully one day we can go back to actually... visiting her), dinner at home with my mom and brother, nothing fancy. I got a new TV! It was a lot of work being able to get it set up because it was too big for my TV stand, but a quick trip to one of the apartments owned by my mom's boss got me a nice new replacement (there is... a lot of unexpected turnover here) and I'm very contented~
Resolutions? Just make it to the end of the year again. Shiftwork, man, it's all I've got the space for. THAT SAID, I do just generally want to keep trying to improve myself in various broad ways? I should probably do a separate post for that, make it a whole proper Thing.
New thing for the Movie Spoiler Zone: if it's rewatch of something I've seen since starting these posts, it gets italics. I like a healthy new stuff to rewatch ratio, somewhere in between the way I used to just watch the same twenty movies over and over because those were what I had on DVD and just constantly consuming as much new content as possible, never revisiting or dwelling on anything, you know?
FILMS
12 O'Clock Boys (2013): IT'S NOT A BIKE IF IT HAS FOUR WHEELS. Anyway, this does a good job of finding the beauty in something kinda objectively bad and dangerous? Like, absolutely fuck the police, but there's a reason this shit is illegal?
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958): Boy, there were way more white people in the middle east back then than I thought. ANYWAY, Harryhausen rules so hard, if I were alive in the '50s, I would be every bit as obsessed with these movies as I am with the MCU.
Above Suspicion (1943): I never would have guessed that I've always secretly wanted 'adorable newlyweds excitedly solve an escape room' vibes from my WWII potboilers, but here we are! This was delightful.
Autumn Leaves (1956): Yowza. There's a lot here to like here; a romance where the woman is more than a decade older, it's addressed, and still gets to be adorable; a broadly sympathetic, if crazy melodramatic, view of mental illness; Joan Crawford calls a woman a slut; Uncle Ben fucks. It's a LOT, and while it kind of uncomfortably glosses over his physical abuse of her, and while his issues are put to bed awfully tidily in the end (a little electroshock, some drugs, we good), I really enjoyed it a lot.
Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000): Weird and dark and funny. Banging score. Bit too long. One to avoid if you're a 'does the dog die???' type. He's got a way to go here, but Bong hit the ground running.
Blood Rage (1987): Parts of this were worryingly relatable. Also, 18-YEAR-OLD TED RAIMI.
Buck Privates (1941): Oh boy, what a fun wacky time joining the army in 1941 must have been! I'm so jealous of all these lucky, lucky men!
Caché (2005): I already knew this guy was the dirt worst, and still managed to be surprised by how awful a protagonist he remains. Much more satisfying now that I wasn't expecting the mystery of the tapes to actually be solved in the end. They're coming from Haneke, from outside the narrative of the movie, the source doesn't matter, it's all about what they unearth, you know?
Cat People (1942): THE BUS JUMP SCARE STILL GETS ME EVERY DAMN TIME, WHAT A GOOD FUCKING SCENE.
Contemporary Color (2016): Me at the beginning of this movie: "What the fuck is colour guard?" Me partway through this movie: "Oh, so it's the kids not cool enough to be cheerleaders." Me at the end of this movie: "It is absolutely the kids not cool enough to be cheerleaders and it looks AWESOME and I WISH it had been a thing here because this shit is DELIGHTFUL." Thank you once again to David Byrne, God's perfect weirdo.
The Damned Don't Cry (1950): The store clerk pressuring a woman to buy a bike she clearly can't afford in front of her son was the REAL villain here. Also this is the origin story for the Duke from Midnight Run and you can't tell me otherwise.
Dancing Lady (1933): Too much tinsel, not enough tree. It's very nice tinsel, though, I'll always drop everything for random Astaire. Super weird to see the Three Stooges all credited separately as just parts of the ensemble, here.
Forrest Gump (1994): My brother really loves this movie to a weird degree, but that made this a solid enough pick for something to watch with the family on New Year's. It's Forrest Gump, what do you want from me?
Hallelujah the Hills (1963): Not good, but extremely watchable, considering how much I fucking hate his brother's work.
Harriet Craig (1950): Different enough from Craig's Wife that I wasn't constantly comparing the two, which is good because it isn't really a patch on that one (ROSALIND RUSSELL, QUEEN OF MY HEART). Still good, though! Played up some different aspects of the story, Crawford is great as always, just lacked that wrenching bit of soul.
Fotbal infinit (2018): Sometimes the most mundane bullshit gives you the most to sit with and think about. It's Calvinball: The Movie. I will never understand caring this much about any sport, though.
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937): About as tonally janky as you'd expect from something with three directors, but still a fair bit of fun.
Love on the Run (1936): Frothy, wall-to-wall nonsense. Seriously, this movie is just TOTAL nonsense. And yet, Crawford and Gable make it work.
Mannequin (1937): Oh goodie, another movie where Spencer Tracy is a gross, pushy asshole that we're supposed to root for because... reasons. Every man in this is horrible!
Miss Annie Rooney (1942): Awkward teen Temple, huh? I can dig it. Kudos to this movie for taking the old trope of 'poor girl gets embarrassed at a rich party she was super excited for' and finding a brand new way for it to be skin-crawlingly difficult to watch.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): I didn't do a full Decembond this year, mostly because getting to see some of the classics in an actual theater this year MORE than scratched that particular itch, but I still obviously had to hit up my favourite Christmas tradition! Never watch this movie with me, I will just talk about everything I love in it constantly. Alternately: always watch this movie with me.
The Prince of Tides (1991): Predictable, melodramatic schmaltz, beautifully shot and pretty well acted. Babs really should have directed more.
Queen Bee (1955): A throwaway line at the beginning made me spend the rest of the movie imagining Avery's scar got worse the meaner and drunker he got, like Commander Shepard. I think I'm losing my mind!
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017): I have not seen nearly enough of his work, but this was a very nice blend of man, music, and the relationship between the two.
Sleepwalk (1986): Interesting little thriller that wears its mega low budget indie trappings on its sleeve. Hardcore 'ancient Chinese plophecy' written by a white woman grossness abounds, but Tony Todd rules. Completely lost me by the end.
The Smiling Lieutenant (1931): Tedious and horny and annoyingly twee, with an ending that left me completely baffled as to why I was supposed to care about any of it. It's like a weird backwards Grease situation where the cool girlfriend he actually loved gives his sad wife a makeover so he'll actually want to fuck her? Hooray? Blech. IN FAIRNESS, however, I watched this right after finding out about Brodie Lee, so my lousy impressions of it might not be ENTIRELY Maurice Chevalier's fault in this case, but more on that in the television section. The two love interests having 800 times more chemistry with each other than with him definitely is his fault, anyway.
Soul (2020): A really stunning refinement of Inside Out. Beautiful stuff on pretty much all levels. This movie deserved so much better than Disney+.
Strait-Jacket (1964): OH SHIT OH FUCK CRAWFORD'S GOT AN AXE WE'RE ALL FUCKED. This was a... slightly less nuanced take on mental illness than Autumn Leaves, but still sympathetic in its way, also it's nonstop ridiculous grand guignol goodness.
Tchoupitoulas (2012): Took me a little while to get into it, I think I generally need more plot in my endearing boyhood wanderings? But after about half an hour or so, I settled into the vibe and was fully along for the ride. What a night.
Tchoupitoulas (2012): So nice I watched it twice. Hey guys, when Covid is over, let's all go to Mardi Gras.
Trouble in Paradise (1932): Sharp and smart and just goddamn all-around delightful grifter love triangle where the correct couple is endgame, thank god. Sweet and sad and sexy in turns, I really loved this movie a lot!
Videodrome (1983): LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH.
Yentl (1983): Has there ever been a movie where the solution was SO emphatically 'threesome'?? Gonna write the sequel about Avigdor and Hadass following Yentl so they can all live as an adorable poly triad in 1910s New York.
SHORTS
Scen nr: 6882 ur mitt liv (2005): I guess he must have used up all the good material on scenes number 1-6881.
Cecile on the Phone (2017): I made it to "it's like love IS suffering, you know?" before I rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my head and I couldn't see any more of it. :(
Olympe (2017): Where is the line between film and ad? Is there even one at the end of the day? Where do music videos fit in? Regardless, this left next to no impression on me.
One of Those Days (1988): This happened to my buddy Eric
Rome Is Burning (Portrait of Shirley Clarke) (1970): Remember when I watched so many Shirley Clarke shorts that she became my most watched director even though I didn't particularly care about much of her output? Yeah, that's still true, but French TV did not fuck around with its shows about filmmakers, god damn.
The Short and Curlies (1988): This is like the third time I watch this, and I'm still somehow surprised by how ugly David Thewliss is.
TZZD (2017): I was gonna ask questions about what constitutes urban fantasy, if slapping ears and a wig on someone is enough or if the material needs to support it, too, but then it devolved into a whole lot of visual noise and all I'm left with is 'huh'. It was an effective ad for those boots, though.
Untitled (Juice) (2017): Just a couple of people freestyling about juice for some reason. Maybe should have gotten the rights to the phrase Minute Maid before having it factor so heavily into your short, though. An orange juice water park sounds fun in theory, but would surely be EXTREMELY sticky.
TELEVISION
All Elite Wrestling (December 1st - December 30th, 2020): Ooooooof. Okay. So. I finally got caught up! I did it! I watched all of AEW from the inception of the promotion to now! It was an extremely fun and satisfying thing to do over all of these months and I'm going to enjoy both staying caught up and being able to watch other shows again! I also spent a LOT of this week crying, so let's get to it!
HOW IT STARTED
Sooooooo Winter Is Coming fucking ruled. Kenny's gone full heel and I'm so here for it. Curious what this Don Callis thing is gonna mean in the new year. Am I gonna have to start watching Impact now?? That would be so much wrestling! Surely Shawn Spears is gonna pop up over there at some point, right?
Sting is here, which is interesting, but he's a guy I don't have a lot of background for since I was a WWF kid and dipped out before everything got mushed together in the '00s. Tony losing his goddamn mind over his debut was extremely entertaining regardless. Also, he's very old and I'm very curious as to what the hell he's gonna be doing here! Adopting Darby and starting a little sad rafter clown family?? I also love his ridiculous snowy entrance, though it's probably less enjoyable for those in the arena considering they are filming all of these episodes outdoors in winter (it's Jacksonville, so it's certainly not freezing, but still probably too cold to comfortably run around in little booty trunks a lot of the time).
MJF and Wardlow joining the Inner Circle continues to pay dividends for everyone involved, this is the most interesting that group has ever been, and certainly the most interesting MJF has been since burying his unrequited love for Cody way deep down after beating him. That seemingly genuine bonding moment with Santana, very much blurring the kayfabe line, man! What is his game??
Hook looks like a small, angry Victorian child next to the rest of Team Taz and I love it.
Speaking of Victorian things, I am very excited to get to add an episode of Being the Elite into my traditional rotation of 'sitcom adaptations of A Christmas Carol'. I've watched it like three times already, what pure joy. How is every single member of Dark Order such a bad singer???
HOW IT ENDED
Literally right in my last entry here, I just casually mentioned 'once Brodie comes back', I was really just taking it entirely for granted that he'd be back at some point, huh? SO MUCH FOR THAT.
An incomplete list of moments that made me cry during last week's Dynamite:
- Spotting Miro openly sobbing in the back row during the opening ten bells.
- John Silver exiting the tunnel several seconds after all the others, having clearly been crying backstage.
- Colt Cabana, visibly emotional, finally throwing up the Dark Order salute (whenever he's come out with the others, he's just smiled and waved like a dork before).
- Realizing that 5 was on the babyface side of the peanut gallery with -1.
- Silver hitting that insane destroyer and then just burying his face against the mat after getting the pin in until he could compose himself again.
- Erick Rowan hugging it out with Silver and holding up his sign (I didn't even know who this guy was before the announcers explained because I'm still new here, but it truly did not matter).
- Anna crying in the MIDDLE of her match and still pulling it off.
- Bryce's obvious difficulties in keeping it together throughout the main event, refs are people tooooooooo~
- The whole ending with the boots and the belt and the montage, OBVIOUSLY. Just fuck me up.
Wrestling is such an odd duck blend of real life and fiction, and times like this kind of obviously obliterate the line between the two. When somebody dies, there's no writing their character out, there are no banked episodes to let everyone else take time to figure out what they're going to do or how they're going to address it, that person is just gone, and all you have left are their grieving co-workers tasked with just keeping on. It's SO ROUGH, but this was a very good episode, a great tribute to both the man and his legacy within AEW that did a nice job of sprinkling in enough ongoing character arc beats (Anna and Tay's friendship, Hangman and 3/4's weird kinship, MJF all kitted out in PnP gear for his tag with Santana and Ortiz, Britt's 'Big Rig' promo, etc.) that it can't just be glossed over as a wholly non-canon one-off.
Brodie Lee is a wrestler I had no context for prior to his debut in AEW (I needed Twitter to explain that Lance was pretty much cosplaying as his WWE persona in his match), so when he was revealed as the Exalted One, he got a hearty Star-Lord 'who?' from me (I was expecting Matt Hardy! Everyone was expecting Matt Hardy!), and even from there, it took me a while to warm to yet another big stompy guy getting a string of boring squash matches to establish what a t~h~r~e~a~t he is. Between the Dark Order becoming a group of hilarious weirdos online, though, and the genuinely shocking way he won the TNT belt from Cody, though, I came around towards the end. Not that I knew it was the end, or that that brutal dog collar match would be his last one ever, but here we are. No more of Mr. Brodie Lee. I only knew who he was for a matter of months, but wrestling being what it is, with the sketchy meta lines it draws in the post-kayfabe era, I think it's a little bit impossible not to get attached to these people in a deeper way than with most other performers and celebrities that we don't actually know. I think people who get really into YouTubers might feel the same way? But I'm not sure. Either way, I'm very sad, but it was a very good show nevertheless and I'm glad I got caught up when I did. Stray points:
MJF flipping off an eight-year-old whose father just died has to be the peak, right? There's no way to be a bigger dick than that, he has nowhere to go but down, now, right? Loved his over-the-top sell of the kendo stick bit, as well as the way -1 hid his face when he grabbed his mask off.
Hangman VERY CONSPICUOUSLY holding his vest closed for the entire match intro was such a great lead in to the paper throwing bit. You KNOW he's hiding something under there, and it's just the longest waiting game to get to the reveal.
I kinda hope John Silver keeps wearing his tribute coveralls? They are just the right combination of sweet reminder of Brodie, nice-looking ring gear, and EXTREMELY HILARIOUS, he's like a 'roided up little gremlin mini-me.
I am both very sad and very excited to see what's going to become of the Dark Order after this. No matter what, it'll be bittersweet, but it feels like a real dilemma because like... there is no possible way they can continue as a heel faction after this, is there? They're already mega popular because of BTE, and after that episode, going five matches for five in honour of their fallen leader, nobody is ever going to boo any of these wonderful weirdos ever again. Do they turn face? They're still a spooky pervert cult! Does somebody like Colt or even Hangman step in and try to straighten them out? I just don't know!
Woof. What a week. RIP Jon Huber. Here's to 2021! Somebody tell me not to watch this week's BTE again because I will just cry for fifteen minutes straight!
IMPACT! Wrestling (12.08.2020): I was only gonna watch the relevant Kenny Omega bit from the end, but then I had to assemble my mother's Christmas gift and needed a couple of hours of background noise, so. This was a'ight! I don't know any of these people!
Star Trek: Discovery (3x11/3x12): See recent DISCOurse pos-OH WAIT SCOTT LIVES ON AN ISLAND IN THIS HELL WORLD AND CAN ACTUALLY GO ON TRIPS AND SHIT SO THERE ARE NONE THIS WEEK, NEVER MIND. I can't believe they followed up a Mirror Universe two-parter with a 'busted holodeck shenanigans' episode, I ALREADY LOVE YOU, SHOW, YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP TRYING TO WIN ME OVER. How is Doug Jones weirder looking as a human?? MORAL AMBIGUITIES! DIFFICULT DILEMMAS! WHERE IS THIS SEASON GONNA END???
The next time I update I will probably be 32 I guess!
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See also: The Road to El Dorado.
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