Piper Perabo as Annie in Covert Affairs
Tag Archives: TV
Caffeinated Links: Dohring and Bell on Their Chemistry, Mourning Allison Argent, Rectify
What makes Logan and Veronica fall in LoVe? Jason Dohring and Kristen Bell’s chemistry has never been in question, but the way she helped him get to a right answer about their onscreen relationship really shows just how in sync they are.
“I think it’s interesting that, despite all his privilege and all that, I think that a lot of people hurt him in his life, and she understood that part of him, when she saw me and what I was going through, and I could see that she had a bad relationship with her mother,” Dohring said of why the couple works. “I just look at her and I just feel it, man. I try to make it this deep, philosophical thing, and she just smiles at me and it’s game over.” Kristen jumped in: “You’re on to something, though. There’s something, an intangible, that we’re lucky enough to have when we work together. But it’s also like wounded birds recognize other wounded birds.” “It could have been said like that,” Dohring joked. RT
I wrote a reaction post on Buzzfeed about the death of one of the most badass female heroines to ever grace the small screen – the warm, wonderful, werewolf-slayig Allison Argent. Her death broke my heart and the heart of all Teen Wolf fans everywhere. Stages of Allison Argent Grief
Pajiba’s Dustin Rowles has a great post urging us all to watch Rectify now that it’s out on Netflix. I’m convinced (also, it features Scotty from Suits!) RT
In that vein, Flavorwire has a list of 40 Amazon-exclusive series you should watch. “But the TV selection on Amazon Instant Video is also just superior — exclusive NBCUniversal deals and vintage Nickelodeon favorites and one-season wonders galore! These 40 shows available on Amazon, but not on Netflix or Hulu, may just convince you to switch over.” RT
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Caffeinated Links: Cristin Milioti on HIMYM’s Finale, Guide to Listening to Music at Work, more
The Onion is often funny but occasionally, release something with such biting on-the-nose satire that you don’t know whether to laugh or nod your head. Man Who Treats Women With Respect Asked What His Secret Is – RT
Cristin Milioti weighed in on How I Met Your Mother rumors about the mother being dead for the entire show’s duration. Her comments significantly downplay that possibility but don’t dismiss it entirely. “And while she calls the Dead Mother idea “insane,” “crazy” and even “so crazy,” it’s worth noting that she never quite refutes/debunks it. In a word, she sums up the March 31 series finale as “beautiful.” RT
Fantastic piece from David Carr at the NYT about the new cultural role of television. “On the sidelines of the children’s soccer game, or at dinner with friends, you can set your watch on how long it takes before everyone finds a show in common. In the short span of five years, table talk has shifted, at least among the people I socialize with, from books and movies to television. The idiot box gained heft and intellectual credibility to the point where you seem dumb if you are not watching it…
Television’s golden age is also a gilded cage, an always-on ecosystem of immense riches that leaves me feeling less like the master of my own universe, and more as if I am surrounded.” RT
The complete guide to listening to music at work, via Quartz. Fascinatingly, it does count as multi-tasking, and your brain prefers instrumental or classical when you’re working. “It has never been easier to tune in to your own customized soundtrack—or more necessary to tune out your open-office coworkers, cubicle mates, and fellow coffee-shop denizens. But not all music is created equal, especially when there’s work to be done. How should you choose the best office soundtrack for a given task? Which songs will help you get energized, focused, or creative—or even just through a very long day?” RT
The Guardian has had the best online coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. “So when flight MH370 disappeared from plane tracking websites, it could mean the signals from the plane’s transponder were stopped deliberately (by pilots or others), or there was a complete electrical failure, or the plane disintegrated” from this article, and see the complete coverage here
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All the Videos You Need Today: Joel McHale, Lea Michele, Annie Trailer, Transformers Age of Extinction Trailer
Joel McHale parodies True Detective on his show The Soup and it’s pure and fantastic (and you don’t have to have seen True Detective to get the parody)
This looks oddly, bizarrely…perfect
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Caffeinated Links: Books and You, Everything You Need to Know about Guardians of the Galaxy
Gorgeous, gorgeous piece from ThoughtCatalog on the love of reading. “When others are drawn to selfishness and cruelty, and everything seems bathed in shades of vapid grays, I hope you grab for a book. Find the color, find the light, and remember what it means to be right, what it means to be real, what it means to be you.” RT
io9 has absolutely everything you need to know about the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer (and by extension, film). RT
Hitfix’s Alan Sepinwall reviews NBC’s ‘About A Boy’ and calls it a watered-down take on on the Hornby book and film RT
And NPR’s Linda Holmes turns in her usual nuanced, thoughtful review and comes to the same conclusion as Sepinwall. “The least helpful thing you can do with an adaptation of a book (or film) made by intelligent, capable people is to sniff, “Not as good as the original.” After all, when a property is as adored as About A Boy, it can take a while for anything else to feel quite as good, and presumptive skepticism is a regrettably simple opening gambit. But what’s problematic in this adaptation is not that the TV show has not brought along the quality of the book and film, but that it has not brought along the qualities of the book and film.” RT
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Veronica/Logan Episode Guide to Veronica Mars
Once upon a time, a petite, snarky loner who moonlights as a private detective meets a fast-talking, troubled bad boy who stopped believing anyone could love him a long time ago. The rest, as they say, is history…or more specifically, sparked one of the longest-running and most dedicated fanbases in television history, heavily contributing to a feature film produced on donated money alone.
Logan and Veronica were one of my original television ships and, recently revisiting them in light of the upcoming film, I fell in mad, intense love all over again. Some things it turns out you don’t grow out of, and even now, years later, I am still taken aback by the sheer perfect setup of this relationship and the off-the-charts chemistry between Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring.
All of which is to say – what are you waiting for to watch this show for the first time, or delve back in for the second? There is wit, sparks, banter, much delicious rescuing of-and-comforting the other in the face of violence and tragedy, and all-around near-perfection.
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Caffeinated Links: Best TV Episodes of 2013, Guide to Terminator Time Travel
The Atlantic posts its list of The Best Television Episodes of 2013, and it is chockfull of brilliant pop culture analysis. “To kill the very people avenging the similarly ignoble, unforeseen, and earned-by-impracticality death of the figure who had initially seemed like the hero of the show? To do it with a raft of perfectly anguished performances—a hopeless scream, a resigned goodbye to a parent, a callous kiss-off to a sacrificed hostage? That’s a landmark feat of storytelling, an example of how to illuminate the human condition by shocking the conscience.” RT
Almost as if in companion, the AV Club picks the worst films of 2015. On the chopping block: A Good Day to Die Hard, Man of Steel, The Big Wedding, and more. I couldn’t agree more about Gangster Squad, though I did think they missed the point of Austenland a little. RT
The Latino Review has an extensive guide to the convoluted world of Terminator time travel RT
And, The New York Times takes a Literary Look Back at 2013. “The best literary news of 2013 is that, as Evan Hughes reported in The New Republic, books have not succumbed to the downward-spiraling revenue trend: Sales of books in all formats actually grew by almost $2 billion in the last five years, and e-books have turned out to complement printed books without replacing them. It’s easy to see why writers should be happy — they can continue to get paid for their work — but this is equally good news for readers, who still need publishers to find, foster and distribute good writing.” RT
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This Week in TV Trailers: The Mindy Project, Almost Human, Once Upon a Time
The Mindy Project Promo Office Holiday Party from “Christmas Party Sex Trap”
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Hello Gorgeous: Stana Katic
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What I’m Into: Korean Dramas, Hardboiled Detective Fiction, and Cherry Chocolate
1. Heirs. I haven’t watched a Korean drama in a straight two years, but when I heard that my favorites Lee Min Ho, of the charisma and the bushels of talent, and Park Shin Hye, of the adorableness and expressive face, were being paired together, I knew I had to get on that. Heirs has made me fall madly for it; the romance is wistful and delicate and achingly addicting – it’s the small moments that get me, like him watching her sleep, or the two sitting on opposite sides of a winecellar wall, both lost in thought, the wall a visual symbol of how two people can be physically close yet find each other so hard to reach. You can watch all aired episodes so far on Dramafever.
2. The Thin Man. I picked up a vintage copy of Dashiell Hammett’s famous hardboiler (yes I just coined this, why should “potboiler” exist and not “hardboiler”?) at a book sale this weekend, and a fourth of the way in am highly enjoying it. Nick and Nora Charles are a wealthy socialite couple in New York for Christmas. Nick, a former ace detective, left that life behind when he married Nora and devoted himself to running the various businesses she was left heir to by her family. The couple are blithely in love and live in a breezy flurry of cocktail parties and social events, but are left ever so slightly bored by it. So when a murder turns up practically on their doorstep Nora pushes Nick to get involved, and in between throwing back a drink every other page, he manages to do some able detecting. Some people find this book hilarious, but I find it more endearing than anything. Also, best opening line of all time surely – “I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from a table where she had been sitting with three other people, and came over to me.”
3. Seattle Chocolates. This stuff is delicious, y’all, particularly the Rainier cherry – I generally don’t like either cherries or pecans but somehow the blend in this chocolate bar is just perfect, rich and fruity and chocolatey and wildly addicting.
Coffee and Irony 