Game of Thrones, as always, was excellent. I really wanted to like Veep and Girls, but something was just off on both of them. Although Veep definitely had some great quips. Girls just seemed so forced, like a fake edgy. I’ll try again next week.
Open Thread
by John Cole| 86 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Television
Steve in DC
Dunno why anybody expected anything from Veep.
srv
Mark my words, the SS scandal is going to go to the WH staff level.
Lieberman smells blood somewhere.
velouria
In the Loop is why people expected Veep to be great. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet since my HBO HD is the Pacific feed. Hell, I still have 10 minutes to go until Game of Thrones starts.
JGabriel
__
__
Steve in DC:
Because The Thick of It and In The Loop, both from Armando Iannucci, the guy who created Veep, are pretty great.
.
TooManyJens
Recent Comments are back! Squee!
Steve in DC
The SS scandal is going nowhere. Whore mongering while overseas is one of the perks of government service, this is a temptest in a tea kettle.
Nicole
The only off note for me in GOT (spoiler- spoiler….spoiler……) was Petyr’s declaration of love to Cat when he’s got her husband’s leftovers in a box outside. He’s not that clumsy.
But otherwise, I think they’re doing a great job condensing the book, and I love most everything they’ve added.
Mark S.
God, I just saw the replay of Ron Artest throwing an elbow on Hardin. That was fucking brutal, and Artest should get at least a 10 game suspension, more like 15.
BGinCHI
Veep will be fine. Give it time. Jesus…patience grasshoppers.
srv
@Steve in DC: You’ll soon find out why Obama didn’t need ACORN anymore. He had already corrupted the SS.
Hill Dweller
Both GOT and Mad Men were good.
Roger Sterling on acid was pretty great.
Yutsano
@srv: What the devil are you babbling about?
BGinCHI
@Hill Dweller: At this point Dinklage owns GoT. So great.
I can only assume he and the dragons will rule the Iron Throne.
MikeJ
Thanks for the reminder to torrent veep.
Punchy
Just read that the SCOTUS is going to hear the arguments for AZ’s draconian immigration laws. Several peeps quoted noted what a HUGE fucking break with decades of precedence it would be if they ruled against the O Admin. Same article noted what a political blow it would be for Obama if lost this case. Wagers on the USSC destroying set precedent to unseat a politician? Even odds or better, right?
Jeff
Yeah, give it a break. Series TV always needs a couple episodes to set up the characters, back story, etc. We’ll see. Haven’t seen Girls yet.
Steve in DC
Well, it’s happened again, I put another bluetooth through the washing machine :/ Fucking hell. That makes close to half a dozen bluetooths and a few smart phones, I need to check my pockets.
Bruce S
Veep was the same joke, over and over and over…
middlewest
Man, that’s like 90% of all media right there.
FridayNext
@Hill Dweller:
I found that to be a tedious scene with some brief funny moments. People on various drugs are not as interesting as they think they are to people who aren’t and this scene was a good example.
Damien
I just finished watching the Girls pilot and it genuinely made me ashamed to be in the same generation as these people. They are disgustingly entitled, bratty, awful people and I hate every last person I saw on screen from moment one until it ended.
If Lena Dunham is a voice of my generation, it is the voice of the worst part.
Merp
Veep is going to be a character- and relationship-driven show. Give those two things a little time to be established.
I wasn’t howling with laughter at the premiere either, but it’s got a lot of promise.
mclaren
GIRLS is straightforward:
All guys are creepy, and sex is loathsome.
Given America’s fanatical puritanism and intense hatred and fear of the human body, the series should prove immensely popular.
Firebert
I had a thought. The Romney campaign has and will continue to buy tons of ads on Clear Channel. Bain owns a big chunk of Clear Channel, and Romney makes his money from Bain. Isn’t that, in a sense, money laundering?
Violet
Is this the first show? I watched about ten minutes of it because the TV was on HBO when I turned it on and it was just…dreary. Didn’t hold my interest, that’s for sure.
Mnemosyne
I didn’t hate Veep. I’m willing to give it at least a couple more episodes based just on the cast.
The pilot was a little frantic, but that’s pretty common for a comedy series.
trollhattan
@Steve in DC:
Could they, like, make a Bluetooth-equipped washer that will yell at you, “Halp, halp, we’re drowning in suds here!” so that you might effect a rescue?
I’ve not kilt a BT although the spouse has lost a platoon of the GD things. My specialty is washing remotes. I’ve even successfully revived a couple.
Steve in DC
@trollhattan
It’s actually not needed.
/Steve Puts IT and electrical engineer hat on!
Water doesn’t actually destroy electronics, contrary to popular belief. Deionized water cannot conduct a current even! Hence why PC liquid cooling is so popular among enthusiasts. What kills the fucker is ionized water with a current on.
So, so long as the bluetooth is off, just dry it off (place in a tuperwear with some rice for a few days, the rice will suck out the moisture), and then charge it up, turn it back on, and you’re good to go.
This isn’t to say you should go pour bathtub water on your TV, that won’t end well. But washing a remote, bluetooth, or even ipod, shouldn’t kill the damn thing. Though in the case of the ipod, it will fry the screen, but that’s for other reasons, not related to current flowing through it.
suzanne
I’m watching “Frozen Planet” right now, and I don’t get why these damn wolves don’t just go to Costco and pick up a damn bag of kibble.
burnspbesq
@Punchy:
“Even odds or better, right?”
I’ll take that bet. This is even an easier call than health care. Immigration is exclusively a matter for the federal government. Always has been. If this isn’t unanimous, every justice who votes for Arizona should be impeached, tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
burnspbesq
Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2012 ACC men’s lacrosse champions, the Duke Blue Devils.
Suck it, Tarholes. Fifteen wins in the last 16 games.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease!!
Warren Terra
I adore Armando Iannucci, and especially The Thick Of It , but – while i haven’t seen it, and won’t until it’s on Netflix – I’ve not had high hopes for Veep. I’ve never cared for Julia Louis Dreyfuss, and there’s just something essential about the powerlessness and inconsequentiality of the office held by the Rebecca Front character that I don’t think the Vice Presidency replicates. Without the idea that it’s a fourth rate politician with a job to do that’s real but not terribly interesting and delusions of grandeur, the formula seems likely to fall apart. Also, I may simply be too invested in the American political outcomes: few people could care whether the intellectually bankrupt pseudo-technocrats that ruled Britain in the early Oughts were New Labour or Chastised Tory – with Blair sucking up to Bush and Brown doing the banksters’ bidding the difference seemed minimal. Joe Biden may be a buffoon, or may not be but be portrayed as one, but his fate, or that of his stand-in, matters in a way that a junior minister from an exhausted New Labour simply didn’t seem to.
S. cerevisiae
Excalibur is on Encore, Haven’t seen that in 30 years.
Narcissus
@Punchy: This is a sucker’s bet. They’ve done it before.
Amir Khalid
I was reading Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy, which I had bought yesterday and had anticipated would take me through Friday over lunch, dinner etc. But I wound up finishing all but the first four chapters in one sitting. The book was pretty good so I’m not regretting that I got it. But now I have to go buy Mockingjay this week. Grumble.
S. cerevisiae
@suzanne: Wolf societies are obviously soshulist and depend on stealing from the Alpha male in order to make all the other lazy ass so called den brothers lookk good. Social Darwinism FTW!
burnspbesq
I just read the privacy policies of Spotify and MOG, and I can’t imagine any set of circumstances under which I would agree to either. Am I missing something, or do I simply have an outmoded, last-millenium idea of what personal information I should have to surrender control over?
The prophet Nostradumbass
The sooner I see Joffrey’s head on a pike, the better. That little shit has the mind of a serial killer.
Suffern ACE
@burnspbesq: Within the next decade, not having signed a sufficient number of permissions to make your life public will force you to live like a survivalist, something like a 31 year old in Logan’s Run. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a Farrah Fawcett or Jenny Angutter to help you through the plot.
Yutsano
@Suffern ACE: Just for the record, I’m a Scorpio 7. Or 8. I forget exactly how the numeration system works. I’m long past time for Carousel anyway.
burnspbesq
@Suffern ACE:
Well that sucks.
Suffern ACE
Since North Korea has responded to its missile setback by announcing it will reduce the south Korean rats to rubble in three and one-half minutes, and they don’t make idle threats like that unless they mean it, I’m thinking about Switzerland. Ive never been to a Swiss boarding school, but I read that the new dear leader attended one. Is “public threat” a compositional form that gets taught to students? It seems like the threats the new leader is issuing could use a bit of tightening and direction.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Damn, did that weird woman give birth to Cthulhu at the end of that Game of Thrones episode?
Jewish Steel
@burnspbesq: you don’t have to surrender any personal info. Just invent a fictional online persona. I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not really a balding, middle aged jew living in the Midwest. I’m really a supermodel! Shhh. Mum’s the word.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Jewish Steel: I had figured you were a member of Judas Priest, actually.
Console
I think Girls is funny as hell. The problem is that I don’t really care about any of the characters. Weeds might be the only show to keep me watching with characters I hate. And even then that’s just because the first 2 seasons are so great, I can’t quit Nancy Botwin. Girls just didn’t give me that feeling.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Nicole: I haven’t seen any of the show, but in the books, Cat is Petyr’s irrational weakness. He is completely, around the bend obsessed with her. It becomes really, really creepy after [cough] and he [blows nose]. If this seems off in the show, it’s because they’ve never conveyed the history between the two characters.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@S. cerevisiae: So how’s it going up in Duluth after the Gophers made it farther in both tournaments than the ‘Dogs?
Oh, and my Frozen Four prediction was dead on. Wisconsin: second best team in the country.
Jewish Steel
The prophet Nostradumbass: Oh, I’m Rob Halford too. Busted!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Shut up.
Suffern ACE
@burnspbesq: Well I didn’t want to give you the impression that cutting yourself off from social media as path to meeting leggy young women in minidresses willing to run around with you in the wilderness. Like everyone else, you’ll have to move to Sheboygan if you want to live that kind of lifestyle.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Just scarfed “The Hunger Games” last week. Good novel.
Good to hear “Catching Fire” keeps one’s attention too.
Elizabelle
The Black Keys on WETA Austin City Limits. Insomniac alert.
Sonic Youth previously.
Yutsano
@Jewish Steel:
:: shock ::
Does the Jewess know?
PZ
Did you see Michael Sean Winters take down of Chunky Bobo’s latest book-
tnr.com/book/review/bad-religion-ross-douthat
Money quote-
“My problem with Douthat’s book is not that his opinions differ from my own. My problem is that he does not seem to have any idea what he is talking about.”
MikeJ
@Elizabelle: HG was a good book. Catching Fire was a good half a book. Or third of a book. The last two shouldn’t have been split. I realise it would have broken the “three sections of nine chapters each ten pages” formula but it would have made more sense.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Oh, please. Just because I said the phrase [air horn in background] doesn’t give anything away.
Elizabelle
@MikeJ:
Marketing, marketing.
Have some guesses on where the plot will go, based on books’ titles.
Have studiously avoided any articles on the current movie or the books. Too many spoilers. (How did you feel when …. thanks, jackwit writer.)
Had another glass of wine during Black Keys.
Can never get tickets to their live shows affordably, so this was as good as it gets.
JGabriel
__
__
burnspbesq:
Yeah, Punchy, I’m with Burns on this one. While I’ve no idea how SCOTUS will rule on health care reform, immigration isn’t just decades of precedent, it’s more than a century’s worth — maybe more than two.
The primary issue is that the federal government is who deals with foreign countries. If states get involved in immigration issues, and fucks up, then the fed has to take the heat for actions at the state level that they have no control over.
Even conservative justices don’t want to give the states the power to fuck over the federal government like that.
.
Joseph Nobles
I have to watch Veep again because I was laughing so hard, I missed half the dialogue.
Definitely a YMMV crowd here for that one, I see.
I don’t remember scepter time in Clash of Kings. Well, I’m in the process of rereading it now. Certainly Joffrey is a loathsome shit, that I do recall. And I was disappointed by Harrenhall in the credits, but the actual shot during the show made up for it.
Origuy
The University of Florida is getting rid of its computer science department, in order to save $1.7 million. At the same time, the athletic department is getting an additional $2 million, bumping it to $99 million. While I know from experience that the computer industry isn’t hiring like it was when i graduated from college, it still hires more people out of college than the NFL.
TheMightyTrowel
@PZ: God I need a cigarette after that!
JGabriel
Origuy:
It’s good to know that our universities are doing so much to train students in the burgeoning and essential field of football mechanics and strategy.
Assuming about 50 players on their team, that’s almost $2 million per player. It is such a relief to see educational institutions willing to spend so much per football student. It almost goes without saying that there is no better way that money could be spent.
.
Jamey
“Girls” is horrible–a less-funny, more self-consciously hip version of “How to Make it in America.”
Keith
You, like, read my mind. Veep was a mile-a-minute of buildup that I couldn’t really keep track of (I changed the channel after the payoff of the first 15 minutes was “hoisted up on his own retard”). Girls looks like the Sex and the City prequel that has been rumored for years, minus the fashion, so I never even bothered to watch a minute of it. Plus the lead needs to learn how to point her entire face at her co-actor rather than face the ground and look up at the actor.
Schlemizel
@JGabriel:
Sadly, big time college football teams can carry at least 100 members on their roster some even more. But that does not refute your point, sports in general and football in particular have warped college budgets and goals while costing ridiculous amounts of money. Despite being labeled as “revenue generating sports” neither basketball nor football make more than they cost to run even at the great football factories like UF
Paul in KY
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): They alluded vaguely to it in Season 1.
sherparick
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I was going to write some comments, but I realized not everyone has seen GOT Series 2, Episode 3 yet. It is very good. Actually, I would say the series is better than books in many ways, and the books are very good, especially in the characterization department. Arrya’s journey has gotten very, very dark.
karen marie
@Elizabelle: I’m going to skip all of it, if that’s the best that can be said.
Sly
Veep just feels like (a) it will be boring and (b) is missing a laugh track.
Girls seems like it was written by someone who learned everything she felt she needed to know about adulthood from Sex in the City, which is something too frighteningly awful for me to even try to comprehend.
Game of Thrones has consistently delivered good stuff so far this season.
Joel
I don’t much like the Red Priestess angle they’re going with here. It seems a little bit of a bridge too far for me. The second season as a whole has been sort of a letdown.
I’m also going to take a stand for Veep. It was alright, although I don’t know if “In The Loop” works as a TV series.
superking
I think a lot of people are suffering from over-hype with Girls. It’s any Seth Rogen/Jason Seigel comedy where the lead is a woman instead of a man. And it’s combined with Apatow’s aesthetic from Freaks & Geeks. Since Apatow produces it, this isn’t surprising. In any case, it’s just people who don’t really understand their life doing stupid shit, and that’s usually funny. The scene where she was interviewing for a job was hilarious.
Foxhunter
@Joel: Stick with it on the Red Priestess. The ‘birth’ of the Shadow Assassin will make sense in time.
I was wondering how they were going to introduce the sorcery aspect of this storyline. Creepy to say the least.
Warmongerer
@Joseph Nobles:
The lack of animation is to convey how dead it is.
Mnemosyne
@Nicole:
Actually, that didn’t bother me, because he’s exactly manipulative enough to play it that way knowing that she’ll feel a little guilty for treating him so badly when he was there to bring Ned’s bones to her … which will give him more of an in the next time around. He’s just that meticulous.
Also, too, while I don’t mind a good, nasty show, last night was a little too much of a torture fest for me and I ended up having some very unpleasant dreams. Though my Littlefinger-related thought was, “Wow, he’s gonna be pissed that Joffrey ruined two perfectly good whores.” Though he’ll probably blame Tyrion for being stupid enough to think Joffrey would be interested in mere sex.
Poiks
Veep uses that horrible, intentionally-shaky faux-handheld-camera filing style thats become typical in the industry since Arrested Development. It’s annoying, distracting, and like the onset of vertigo.
kindness
That thing she gave birth to was a ‘Shadow Assasin’? Jesus….see what happens when you don’t read the book first.
mellowjohn
@Elizabelle: but by the end of “mockingjay,” i wanted them all dead!
burnspbesq
@Schlemizel:
That may be true in some cases, but not all. Duke men’s basketball funds the entire athletic program with millions left over.
Gravenstone
@Suffern ACE:
As I’m sitting not 3 miles from Sheboygan as I type this, I’d love to know where this fabulous lifestyle you’re suggesting truly lies.
Electricgrendel
The tagline for Game of Thrones should be: “For the night is dark and full of titties. …and baby murder. Titties and baby murder: GAME OF THRONES!”
I really like the books, but this True Blood-ification of the series is just losing me.
Groucho48
GoT was very good. The coming attractions were even more enticing.
Veep was moderately interesting. Too frenetic for me but some funny lines and possibly interesting characters.
Started watching the first episode of Girls and felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a soap opera with the typical soap opera problems of flat production values and flat acting, combined with slow pacing. Couldn’t watch more than 10 minutes of it.
Be great if Veep could transfer 25% of its energy to Girls.
Eric S.
@Joseph Nobles: “I don’t remember scepter time in Clash of Kings”
It wasn’t in there. As I told a couple co-workers in non-spoilerish fashion, this episode could have had a subtitle, “Joffrey Really Is The Demented Shit You Think He Is.”
I’ve been pretty happy with the adaptation of the books. The source material is so deep that they have to shorten it to fit TV. Every added scene I can think of has served as a short hand to move the plot along in “TV time.” For better or worse, depending on your point of view, many of those scenes have included naked women.
vitaminC
Maybe Girls and Veep should include some gratuitous rape scenes like Thrones? Then maybe TV with women protagonists won’t seem so “off”?
pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/girls-and-the-politics-of-the-remote-control
Mnemosyne
@vitaminC:
Okay, I followed your link to try and figure out what Amanda’s beef was with “Game of Thrones” vs. “Girls” and realized she didn’t even mention GoT. So I’m not really getting what your comparison point is between the two.
But, then, I liked both “Veep” and “Girls” while also liking “Game of Thrones,” so I guess I’m confused about what the big dichotomy is that you’re setting up here where, if you like GoT, you must by definition hate “Veep” and “Girls.”
ETA: If you think the rape scenes in GoT are gratuitous, what did you think of the scene with Hannah and her creepy semi-boyfriend, who tries to have anal sex with her until she talks him out of it?