Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

There were more pilots today but the only one that mattered. The Muppets are back.

I was afraid that it won't live up to the hype. They did the whole media frenzy about the break up for weeks. The whole tabloid treatment. The story was all over the ABC's late night yesterday too. It was almost like real reality TV stars but that kind of a bad thing so I was afraid this reality TV angle would make the whole thing unbreakable. But it worked. It was funny. It was entertaining. And underneath that more adult, tabloid version it was still the same Muppet show we all love. The late night talk show format lets it be more grown-up and keep the guest star format Muppets always did (they even had a band at the end). I loved it all. Even the things I though will be cringe worthy - like Fozzie dating Riki Lindhome but it actually turned out pretty sweet. And that Piggy was being made into an awful cliché with bitchy and self-absorbed turned up to 11 but the did let her be vulnerable too. And they did let Kermit to be awful too (poor Tom Bergeron). And Elizabeth Banks was great with Skitter. And as always Waldorf and Statler were in top form as always. This is the one I will certainly keep watching so ABC - after the return of Agents of SHIELD my Tuesdays are pretty much yours.

I also watched the 2 hour premiere of Scream Queens and it was a very Ryan Murphy thing - over the top, campy and borderline offensive in it's stereotypes but also making fun of itself and playing with the horror genre tropes. It was fun because of that but 2 hours was just too much at once. It felt like I binged on sweets until they made me nauseous (it was certainly more of Chanel and Chad breaking up than I could take). Everything is in candy colours and straight out of one of those Housewives shows. And it's full of young and very pretty people (even if some are made Hollywood ugly) and a lot of pop-stars (dying ridiculously). The only counterpoint is Jamie Curtis' dean in dark fitted suits and snarky, reasonable attitude (but she turns out to be evil too). Most of the plot turns you see coming from a mile away so there are no surprises and the violence is an even more candy-coloured gore than on the last American Horror Story season. In a way it is like if someone took the Finn part of Freak Show and added even more vapid, self-centred assholes and visually pretty killings. If this is Scream Nick Jonas and the boyfriend are the killer duo.

I never liked the Limitless idea (the movie had that horrible 10% thing) but the reviews were positive so I decided to see for myself. It was actually pretty entertaining. It didn't have any glaring problems with internal logic like the shows yesterday and it didn't treat the viewers as completely stupid - repeating everything ad nauseum to make sure we got it (also yesterday). The main character we pretty likeable. I also liked that he did realise he was a looser and that he didn't really did anything that deserved this sudden super intelligence. One of the things about one guy getting extra-boost like that is the unfairness of why not make everybody smarter. If Bradley Cooper's character knows how to make it safe why people around him - like that nurse for example - why wouldn't she take the shot and then NZT (even if Cooper's character gets mad she can just figure out long term solution for herself while on NZT and spread it around). But even though the senator is an asshole and keeps it to himself and the guy he wants to manipulate in certain position (our main protagonist) the FBI want to reverse engineer it. The plot arc - for good or bad, I bet. The bonding about father issues was a little cheesy but generally the chemistry between Brian (NZT addict) and Rebecca (the FBI agent) is pretty good. It's also nice to see Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio again. And Ron Rifkin is not evil.