Monthly Archives: October 2018

The Horror! Part 3

Movies, Netflix Original

Little Evil– With running so much horror back to back I felt it would be a good to shift into a horror comedy title to cleans the pallet. And Little Evil was a disappointment. A goofy take of Omen and various other That Kid Ain’t Right movies, Little Evil follows new step-dad, Gary, try to bond with his step-son, Lucas. His time dating (and marrying) Samantha was a whirlwind so they haven’t spent too much time together. Lucas is a quiet kid and when the disturbing events around Lucas start stacking up it’s clear there is some deviltry at work. As a horror movie and as a comedy, both halves barely show up. I was surprised at how safe this movie played everything. Anything scary comes down to lighting in the scene, not the action. Lucas does one thing really messed up, but even that was pretty tame all things considered. There’s no real suspense, surprises, and a body count so low it barely registers. it often felt like nothing much was happening. The comedy is a few chuckles here and there and most of that comes from Bridget Everett. If you are a big fan of Adam Scott, this might be worth watching if you want to see him play his role in Parks and Rec again, but in a different setting. I like Evangeline Lilly too but nothing the actors do make me want to recommend this.

The Witch– Here we find the classic tentpoles of horror: isolation, paranoia, and possession. It’s the 1630s and a family recently immigrated from England has made their home at the edge of a forest. The move isn’t going well. The planted crop has mostly failed so any sustenance and income is essentially non-existent. With that stress weighing on the father, the youngest child, Samuel disappears under the watch of the eldest daughter, Thomasin. This puts the mother into hysterics and the rumors of a witch living in the woods start to take over. As the family tries to continue on, signs of evil encrouch futher into the home and everyone starts to turn on Thomasin, thinking the abductions are her fault. They lean on their faith as the decent into madness continues. Of all the movies I’ve watched this season, this is my favorite. I think isolation and paranoia are the most effect avenues to make real horror and The Witch does a lot to keep the questions popping up and the dread moving in. There’s a little bit of gore so the squeemish need not worry. Everything flows through Thomasin (huge props also go to Harvey Scrimshaw who plays Caleb, this kid can act) and I was with her for the whole trip. Religion is a big part of this story as the families faith makes their interactions drastically change as each event unfolds (there’s a whole lotta blame being flung about). I am on the fence about the ending. I can see why it was done but I’m not sure how effective it is. Less is more might have been the way to go.

The Haunting of Hill House

Netflix Original

I watched The Haunting of Hill House as part of my The Horror! Halloween updates, but as this is a show with 10 episodes it’s a much bigger story and commitment compared to a movie. Plus, I liked it a lot so I can write more about it.

The Crains, lead by mom and dad Olivia and Hugh, move their family into Hill House in 1992. Their five children, 2 boys, 3 girls aged 7-13 or so, come along as their parents are on the final leg of their “forever home” mission. Once they fix up and flip Hill House, they’ll have the money to build their dream home. The problem is, Hill House is super haunted.

The story of the Crain family is told in the past and the present. You never get the tale in a linear fashion, it jumps back and forth from 1992 and 2018 as the Crains are drawn back to the house, remembering chunks of the horrors they went through when they moved into the house.

The kids notice something is off about the house almost right away. It’s very simple and subtle stuff like one of the kids mentioning that the house is cold (they move into the house during the early summer months with plans to move out sometime in August). The weirdness grows from there like a red door that no one can open on the top floor and strange noises. Then the ghosts start appearing to the kids and Olivia becomes more and more affected as time goes by.

The whole series is largely devoid of violence and gore. The ghosts are the most gruesome things on display (very corpse-like) along with some disturbing images (like missing eyes) when the main characters have nightmares/hallucinations. The show leans on the creepy and disturbing for its scares. While there quite a few startle scares, violence and gore are never used as a showcase/scare tactic. It’s a decision that often works very well (I think jump scares with orchestra hits are a super cheap tactic but I think what you get here is pretty reserved in this regard). The show is a slow burn so the haunting is very subtle until the end of episode 3. From there, it escalates faster with each episode.  What happened on the last night in Hill House is largely unknown to the kids and that secret is held by Hugh. One that the House forces out of him.

The shifts in time worked way better than I thought it would. The strange events that happen early on in 1992 are often re-visited later. For example, what one thinks at one point is simply the ghosts messing about is actually much more than that. The house does things for specific reasons, things are connected way more than you think, and that realization is one of the greatest parts of the show. Episode 5, “The Bent-Neck Lady” is my favorite for this reason. This episode has the most horrific part in the entire season in its final minutes. Brilliantly done, it blew my mind when I saw it. Runner-up goes to the cellar scene in episode 3 that made me say “Oh fuck!” out loud. If that happened to me at that age, there is no way I would have recovered from it.

Along with all of this storytelling praise comes another shovel full when I talk about the cast. The five kids are all amazing actors. This entire project would have been a failure without this quality of a cast. They’re all fantastic and the emotions they get shoved through are immense and show incredible range. I completely believed that these people were actually family members (I got really attached to Nell and Luke, both as kids and adults).

The family is the most important aspect of the show. The introduction is simple and slow at the start but over the 10 episodes, time is given to each character so by the end you really know them. Luke and Nell are very close as they are twins, Theo is the oddball middle child, and Shirly and Steven as the oldest kids, emulating their loving parents, Olivia and Hugh. When the final credits rolled, I appreciated all the effort that was put into fleshing each family member out. No one is two dimensional.

The time inside Hill House traumatized them all and that trauma stayed with them all for 26 years. It’s sculpted who they in present day.  The secrets come out and you get a much deeper understanding of their relationships with each other. Some are walking disasters (Luke) while others are just better at hiding it (Hugh and Shirley). Hill House caused this family a lot of pain and anger and changed the family dynamic. As much as the house is haunted, so is the family that hadn’t set foot on the property in 26 years. It’s the exorcism of those demons that the show revolves around.

Production wise this one is a knockout too. Every episode looks like it cost a million bucks and think this is one of Netflix’s best original programs. Watch it.

The Horror! Part 2

Movies

Cargo– A simple and straight forward story of a family trying to survive a pandemic in Australia. While the cause is never covered, it’s a zombie-like virus that is spread by being bitten. Once contracted, a person has about 48 hours before they transform completely. In just a few hours, the first terrible symptoms start. Andy and Kay are traveling with their infant daughter and after making a misstep, Kay is bitten. From there it is up to Andy to keep his daughter safe. Andy is played by Martin Freeman so he’s the immediate draw. He’s great in this, a father doing everything he can to keep his family safe. This reminds me of The Road as it’s a bleak story in a minimalist environment with few characters. I like this kind of stories, where people are pushed into tough situations and have to make major decisions that can mean life or death. The “what would you do?” angle is a fun thought experiment. This isn’t a scary movie, maybe a bit more if you have children, but it’s a well done if unoriginal survival tale that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome at 100 minutes long.

The Night Comes for Us– This isn’t a horror movie, but the level of gore and violence push it in that direction. If you like the two The Raid movies, you are going to want to watch this right away. Ito is a gangland enforcer, a stone cold killer in a group called the Six Seas. So deep in the Triad world, a person can never get out of such a position by simple means. After a brutal mission overseas, he can’t take carnage anymore and he defects. Once home he’s sucked into an insurrection is his Triad family and all hell breaks loose. He and his remaining friends are constantly being attacked and they must take extreme measures to protect themselves as it’s killed or be killed. The story is kept simple, with a few screens of text at the start to give the background set up, then you meet the main character and it’s off through almost two hours of straight mayhem. Brief pauses in the action set up the next action sequence and it’s some of the wildest and most vicious fight choreography around. This one is solely for action fans, dig in.

The Horror!

Movies

Let us discuss!

The Void– A cop parked on the side of a street on the look out for speeding cards comes across an injured man who stumbles out of the woods. He takes the man to an understaffed hospital (it’s being shut down soon) and the night takes a turn for the worst when a cult shows up along with some rather hungry creatures. This movie starts pretty strong but doesn’t really go anywhere. The Void is a pretty opaque thing and very little detail about it is given. The movie is pretty scant on any kind of detail as people are forced into a tight space for survival. So at the start, there’s a lot of angry people yelling at each other and for some reason, they don’t want to fill in each other about what they’ve been through or what they know. As a whole, it’s pretty well made. There are some impressive creature effects here and there but the gaps due to a low budget are pretty obvious. There are a few parts in the first half where the editing gets really weird like they had to cut around the fact that they didn’t have footage to show some things. Like the bottom half of a creature doesn’t exist so they had to severely limit shots. A person will move around or get pulled away by a creature in a strange jump cut where a lot of movement is assumed, the gaps so big it can look like things are teleporting around.  While darkness and flashing lights are pretty effective at hiding flaws, it’s mostly the weird editing moves that make this production look rather cheap. It’s not what I’d call scary either. I got a certain Hellraiser vibe from The Void but it never reaches that kind of intensity or sense of dread. I’m having a hard time nailing down what’s missing but I guess the ending was so unsatisfying that it makes me hesitate to recommend this.

I Am Not A Serial Killer- I mentioned this movie two months ago and it left such a positive impression on me that it’s made me want to discuss it. John is a troubled kid. He sees a doctor about his disturbing thoughts, most of them homicidal. He’s constantly worried that he’s going to eventually hurt someone, act upon his terrible thoughts that his doctor and mother help him keep in check. Then a strange murder happens in town and John becomes obsessed with it. He’s naturally drawn to the macbre, so with someone killing and taking body parts, he can’t help himself from investigating. This movie is a fun and well-made whodunnit and monster movie that thrives on its aesthetics and great cast (Christopher Loyd still rules). It’s got some great moments of mounting dread and suspense with quick pops of gore and violence to bring the message home. I found it tastefully done and was interested from start to finish. I like the end so I’m going to give this one a recommendation.

It’s A Busy October

Games, Movies, TV

We’re heading through the last half of October already. New seasons of TV are well underway, The MLB World Series kicks off tomorrow, the NBA season has started, and the NHL is chugging along with the Rangers struggling to compete (I’d write more on this but it’s too depressing).

South Park, It’s Always Sunny, and Mayans M.C. have all been very good so far. Mayans, the spin-off of Sons of Anarchy is a welcome addition to my Always Watch list.

I’ve been bouncing around Netflix watching too many things at once. I’m almost done with the always jolly Great British Baking Show and for the first time in ages, two animes! A new batch of Seven Deadly Sins just went up and I just found Dragon Pilot which I’ve found to be pretty endearing.

On the movie front, I’m going to watch as much horror as I can fit in as Halloween is getting ever closer. I’ll probably do quick hits on my selected titles so those will likely be the next things you read here for the rest of the month.

On the game front. Forza Horizon 4 is brilliant, as expected. The monster of the year comes out of Friday: Red Dead Redemption 2. Seven years in the making and 5 or 6 years since Grand Theft Auto 5 was released, I’m ready to bathe in Rockstar juices.  The hype is real and all 107GB of the game is already on my Xbox waiting for the switch to flip.

Shameless S9E07

TV

Down Like The Titanic

Fiona is sitting in a ditch and it’s Deb who finds her and gives her a hand to help get her out.

It’s been a while since Fiona has been truly down and out (the drug incident with Liam being the big one a few years ago). Career and personal life both imploded at the same time so it’s not surprising we find her laying on the floor of her bedroom in a what can only be described as a hot mess. But it’s Deb who puts the effort into finding her MIA sister and immediately gets to work on putting the Gallagher keystone back together. With a rather large mound of problems to tackle, Deb figures she can help with the car first. Upon seeing the wrecked RAV4 Deb is shocked to find out what happened and hooks Fiona up with her first connect: her co-worker welder who’s got the hook up at a junkyard. Striping the car for parts will net Fiona a quick $600 in cash and pulling some insurance fraud will get Fiona clear of the lease. That still leaves her doomed on her property investment. Max, her investment partner shows up at the apartment open house looking for her $25k. Unable to lie anymore, she admits she’s broke. In a rather hair-raising discussion (I don’t really trust Max, the opportunities for Max to take advantage of her countless) they come to the verbal agreement that Max will get the apartment building for the exact amount of money she owes the bank. The upside: this means she’s going to get out from under the wreckage without being crushed to death. The downside: she’s left with nothing and still owes him the 25k (with interest) he’s going to cover for her to get out of their property deal. The other upside for Fiona is her revenge on Ford that Deb sets up for her. The solider of the season award goes to Deb.

With Ian out of the Gallagher nest, Carl is excited to get his own room, with a door that locks, for the first time in his 17 years of life. Kelly shows up with a stack of West Point admission material and forces him to put his nose to the grindstone to make sure he gets in. Now, any fan of the show can tell you that Carl and school never went together well. He bombs everything (some of the greatest Carl lines came out of this), even with Liam’s help, so Kelly pivots to plan B: use your sob story to get in. With Carl’s past, he racks up the pity points as she asks him questions. Not only was this whole section funny, but Carl also finds out he is Kelly’s boyfriend and their reactions to the public admission is adorable.

While Fiona is in the dumps, Lip has a great day! He runs into that trainwreck of a bridesmaid he hooked up with earlier this season and they hit it off! A night of vigorous nude gymnastics leaves Lip so happy he literally skips down the street.

Frank has wormed his way close to Ingrid again and he parties down with her like it’s 1999 at her place. Medical marijuana, staircase tabogganing, shaving, and more! Frank is head over heels for her and they continue their freak fest at her office. Ingrid’s ex-husband Randy warns Frank that he doesn’t know what he’s getting to and with Ingrid off her meds, it’s only a matter of hours until she completely loses it. He’s been her guardian for 19 years, picking her up and putting her back together everytime it happens. Frank, with his decades of experience in debauchery, waves the warning off. He’s confident he can handle Ingrid until the time comes where Ingrid forces Frank to eat food with broken glass in it at knifepoint. That’s a bit much for Frank and he sprints to The Alibi until things “settle down.” That settling down happens and it’s all thanks to Ingrid’s ex. True to his word, he swept in to pick up the pieces. Frank, being the selfish douche he is, sees Randy as a problem and an opportunity. He begins his manipulation to keep himself close to Ingrid.

After cleaning up all their adult toys, V comes to realize that they have a mountain of baby stuff that’s taking up room in their small home. With the twins now 4 years old, and them done having kids, she bags it all up for a friend. When Kev sees it all in the living room he gets upset on two fronts: first, you’re just getting rid of all this sentimental stuff and second: we’re done having kids? The subject has come up over the years and the discussion of having more kids was always kicked down the road by V. That, according to V was code for “We’re not having any more kids.” We rarely see Kev and V fight and this is the biggest domestic issue they’ve had in a while, Most of their problems have been from external forces but this one is deep and personal. I thought this was a great subject to bring up for the couple and Kev’s response to this coming to light was a good example of his tender heart. I’m actually disappointed that they resolved the problem so fast. There’s a lot to the issue and it felt rushed how it all shook out in two or three scenes. V doesn’t want to physically have any more kids (a great reason) and she throws out adoption to appease Kev pretty quickly. They didn’t even go into the obvious from Kev’s perspective: yes it’ll be a financial hardship but the way V first shot him down made it sound like she didn’t want to have more kids with him. It sounded like a major wrinkle in their relationship and by knocking the issue off the table so fast I feel like we missed out on something much more interesting for Kev and V, the long-running co-stars who always seem to be stuck on the fringe of every story. I love these two and would like to see them get more meaningful screen time.

What really bothers me is this episode was the mid-season finale. So what does that mean? The show is off until January 20th! Three months! Shameless has never broken up a season and I hate this whole concept. The show is on a roll and now it all comes to a screeching halt! Boo Showtime! I say boo to you!

Shameless S9E06

TV

Face It, You’re Gorgeous!

By going for the plea deal, Ian gets sentenced to 2 years in prison. It’s not long before he has to report to the prison and Ian wants to have a relaxing last day at home before he has to live most of his days watching his back. Everyone has something to do so his family is in and out as Ian kicks it around the house.

Carl spends most of the day with Ian and Kelly comes over to teach Carl some advanced self-defense moves. Watching the two throw each other around, Ian asks for some tips and Kelly happily obliges.

Frank is the first to leave the house off to meet his latest muse, Ingrid, at the psychiatric center. Her mandatory 72 hour detainment is up and Frank wants to whisk her away from there so they can start their new life together. Frank brings Liam as support and to check out his “new mom.” The whirlwind first meeting of Ingrid left an impression on Frank, he sees her as his new Monica. Frank doesn’t get what he wants as Ingrid is now no longer in a manic state and her ex-husband came to take care of her.

Lip is out for the day too, taking over babysitting duty for the actress Jen Wagner (Courtney Cox!). She’s got a presentation tomorrow for her biggest sponsorship and if she shows up drunk, she’s in trouble. Lip is really good at his job as he chases her around town and thwarts her attempts at getting a drink. They end up hanging out at the Gallagher household for Ian’s final dinner at home: White Castle. Deb has a very small role this week, more or less getting advice from Jen.

Fiona is handling business all day and right from the start it goes south and spirals out of control. She’s at the start of her investment career, meaning she has very little capital to work with. The 100k she put into the empty lot to turn into a senior living facility has hit a wall of red tape. At her first meeting with her fellow partners, she’s asked for another 25k to keep the process moving. Fiona was expecting a quick turn around on her investment and now she’s looking at years of delay and with no way to get her money. She runs around looking for more money and ends up scrounging through the safe at the restaurant. She’s overleveraged on everything and her stake in the property is at risk  Ford pushed her to get their own place together, a 3k a month rental, so her entire financial world has come to a screeching halt. When she tells Ford they need to back out of the agreement, he takes it as she doesn’t want to live with him and storms off. Later that night, she kisses a co-worker, comes home to an empty apartment and tracks Ford’s phone to find him at…his wife’s home. Cur Fiona’s mind imploding. She races away, crashing her car and stumbling off into the night.

Kev and V are confronted with a rather shocking show and tell. Sister Frances stops by to show them the dildo that Amy brought to school to share with the other kids how her parents show love. Kev and V are brought in to talk with Father D’Amico and it turns out he’s more of a freak than they are. Still, they are moved (shamed) to get rid of all their toys.

This brings us to the next morning where the family is together with Ian ready for Fiona to drive him to the prison. She’s MIA and Kev drives him instead. Once there, the only ones who came to see him off are his family who gives him a tearful goodbye. Like they say, when you go to the hospital or prison, you’ll find out who your real friends are.

This is the last we are going to be seeing Ian for a while. Locked up and fearing the worst for his well being, we’re given a final bit of fan service to see Ian off. Mickey, after snitching on a cartel in Mexico, is locked up in the same prison.

In the original UK version of Shameless, almost everytime an actor left the show, the character just disappeared with a nonsense reason at the start of the season. Cameron Monaghan is the first Gallagher to leave the show and it’s great to see that he wasn’t killed off or simply disappears. We know where he is and he’s not alone. But with reuniting Ian with Mickey, arguably Shameless fans most beloved couple, it shows everyone a plot that they’d want to follow. Knowing we aren’t going to see that is a bit of a rip-off.

So now this raises a big question, where is the show going from here? Emmy Rossum is leaving in a few episodes too and Fiona is the biggest character next to Frank. How much time is left for Shameless?

The cast is still robust enough to keep going. Ian’s plots got thinner and thinner since Mickey skipped town so him being gone isn’t the biggest loss. It’s also set up that his absence is temporary. He can come back in a few seasons with all sorts of new angles to explore after prison and it could be possible to get Mickey out at the same time. But will the show stay in production long enough for that to happen? Fiona has been the rock that the family has leaned on from the start. With the kids now all adults (almost) her role as matriarch has diminished. In the past few years, they are rarely all together and they can go a long time without seeing each other (especially Fiona as she had sworn of bailing out everyone every time they screw up some time ago). So her moving on (I’ve been thinking she’s going to find huge success in real estate and move away to a better part of town, now I’m not so sure) makes sense. She’s not as needed as she once was and with her gone could mean bigger and more important stories for the other Gallaghers. Kev and V might get more integration.

It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

Shameless S9E05

TV

Black-Haired Ginger

So far this is the best episode of the season. A lot of plots make a turn and a few Gallaghers get into trouble. Classic Shameless dark humor that’s been missing this year makes a triumphant return.

Without Xan, Lip has started to drift. Lip isn’t good at taking care of himself, he needs to watch/take care of someone else to keep himself busy and to keep his addictions from taking over. So his life now is basically to go to work and then come home. When he gets a rare moment to be with himself, a sort of vacation really, he doesn’t take long for him to start climbing the walls. So he turns to exercise first and when he’s tempted with alcohol, he buys every brand of cigarette to give him something to do since alcohol is his poison but nicotine is more like a safer hobby to him. While looking for something to do, Lip stumbles across two new interests. First is a new business: a sober coach. A client would hire him to keep them sober because something very important is coming up (think athlete and court-ordered drug tests). This is a perfect fit for him as he already has plenty of experience with this. The second is motorcycle street racing. It’s dangerous and more importantly a ton of fun. I think we can all expect that this massive adrenaline dump will become an addiction.

Deb looks for more advice on the path to understanding who she is. The falling out with Alex has crushed her and she doesn’t know what to do. So she turns to the only lesbians she knows, the couple that live in Fiona’s apartment building. They manage to help her out, in essence giving her the basic philosophy of “you like what you like.” Hopefully, she drops every gay stereotype she picked up in order to “fit in” now. She also drops Alex once she realizes that her issue with Alex isn’t one of sexuality per say, it’s that they are a terrible couple. Deb wisely moves on, where she ends up is anyones guess but it looks like she’s on the path to finding who she is.

Carl is pushing on to get to West Point. He meets a well connected wild girl at a West Point mixer and it starts out well until it swerves into disaster. When she looks into Carl a bit more she sees that he isn’t a scumbag (I mean, he is a Gallagher so there is a lot there) and they move past their awkward first meeting.

In other wild girl news, Liam gets sucked into a crazy vortex with the school bully that forced him to get a body guard. She catches him alone in the hallway and pulls him into a closet. Something happens in there, Liam thinks they had sex, but he’s not sure (he’s like, 10 years old). So when he gets home, he tells Lip who’s shocked and then later on she shows up at the house with a ton of crap in tow. When he asks what she’s doing there she dumps even more crap on him: I’m moving in with you because you’re the father of my kid. Since Liam isn’t sure what she did to him earlier that day, he has no clue about what’s going on now. When Deb and Carl come home they pow wow with Liam about what this monsterous girl is doing there. Luckly Deb has motherhood experience and knows this is a shame (Carl thinks she’s full of it too, but confers with Deb about now being able to know you’re pregnant the day you have sex). The siblings team up to get the trouble maker out of the house. Liam is far and away my favorite character this year. The stuff the writers have been throwing at him since last season has been some of the best and Christian Isaiah is a great young actor.

It’s been a few years since Frank’s liver had enough of the abuse and packed up shop. I’ve been wondering for a while about when his health was going to take another dive and it happened this week. When you’re urine resembles maple syrup, you got a problem. So he winds up in the hospital and gets the great news that his anti-rejection meds have stopped working. After 5 years, he now needs to switch meds but the name brand stuff costs a fortune since he doesn’t have insurance. He can swing the generic but the side effects are a gauntlet of horros. In typical Frank mentality, he doesn’t think much of the potential misery (to be fair he doesn’t have a choice) but one does catch his ear: erectile dysfunction. On the way home with Kev and V, they pass by a longerie shop and he freaks out when he finds that he gets no reaction to the models in the window display. This starts his panic spiral that his life is truely over. If there is one thing Frank holds dear on this mortal coil, it’s his libido. And in typical Frank fashion, when he gets slighted in anyway he defaults his rage to The Man. The government, the healthcare industry, big pharma, it’s all rigged to screw over the comman man (and again, to be fair, he brings up some good points). Upon leaving the hospital for the second time after trying to shock his member back into working order, a sour and now cinged Frank is trolling for painkillers (one of the funniest scenes in the series happens here) when he stumbles upon a like minded damsel in distress. She steamrolls him and Frank is awakened! I hope that guest star shows up again, it would be amazing.

Ian and Fiona’s stories cross this week. Faced with a tons of jail time or less jail time with an insanity plea, Ian isn’t sure what to do. Fiona is totally sure what to do and goes with him to see his lawyer to push for the insanity plea. The woman in charge of the Gay Jesus movement insists that Ian go to trial because the movement is way too important to potentially let the whole thing get undermined by that admission that Ian is bi-polar. Fiona isn’t having any of that and when they leave, Ian tells her to take a hike and leave him alone. Fiona doesn’t know why and Ford, Lip, and Deb tell her to let him go when he disappears after getting advice from Mr. Malkovich about prison time (another One of the Greatest Shameless Scenes). She’s baffled by everyone being so calus about Ian skipping bail but they all say that he’s an adult and he’s making his own decisions. Ford is adamant that Ian isn’t her responsibility any more, her concerns should be focused on her and their relationship. While trying to track down Ian, she misses an event she and Ford have been planning for months and Ford is annoyed. The good news is that Ian comes back to face the music and goes for the plea deal. The whole ordeal turns into a positive moment with Fiona and Ford.

While everyone else is making life altering choices, Kev and V continue down the Vagina Safe initative. Their work at The Alibi has gotten them a lot of positive attention from the local activists and that brings Kev into the trenches with the women who have been deeply traumatised by sexual assault and human trafficing. His efforts with the bar pale in comparison and he wants to retreat to the sidelines so those directly affected can be the ones heard most.

 

The 2018-2019 NHL Season

NY Rangers

The ice is back! And the Rangers are off to a rough start.

There were a lot of changes over the offseason and none of them were small. A new coach is arguably the biggest. A lot of young talent makes up the roster now. A rebuild is what it was called last winter and that’s what we’re watching now.

The sports scuttlebutt going into the season was that the Rangers are being completely written off. With no breakout player and a new coach, there’s no expectation of a good season. I think everywhere I read/watched had the Rangers duking it out with the Islanders for the last place in the Metro division. The Islanders lost major talent at the end of the season so they are more or less considered to be a wounded animal this season.

The Rangers have a lot of talent on the team but there is so much in the air that the safe best is mediocre at best. With a 3-3 preseason, I had my hopes that the team will figure out how to gel as a team under the new leadership.

The start of the regular season is 0-3 so it’s basically like last season is still happening. They have moments of greatness and then there are the stupid plays…a mistake here, a bad move there, a squandered effort to get to the puck turns into a disaster. There are times where it looks like a player has stopped paying attention–like they forgot they are playing. It’s amateurish to say the least.

The team can’t rely on Lundquist to save them anymore. In fact, he can’t be expected to play as much as he has in the past. This is where Georgiev needs to step up and after tonight’s loss to the Hurricanes, he’s got a lot of work to do. They hung in there in the first game with Nashville. They should have skated through Buffalo and struggled to score the entire night. Tonight they lost the lead 4 times. 4!

There’s gotta be something that’s missing. The rookies are putting in a ton of effort, it’s just these collapses that keep showing up. These terrible defensive moves that are mindboggling. And that’s from the vet players too. Tonight Zuc gave a goal up because he wasn’t playing his position. He skating in the wrong direction giving the offensive player a wide open shot as he went right by Zuc.

Serious practice is all I can think of at this point. It’s still early though. It’s still early.

Shameless S9E04

TV

Do Right, Vote White

Quite a bit of heartbreak this week!

Election day comes up quick and Mo is down in the polls by a huge margin. Any campaign director found is pretty much gone. Frank has hitched his pocketbook to Mo and barrels ahead while ignoring the mountain of evidence that keeps piling up that Mo is a pedophile. Frank has always been motivated mostly by greed so his actions aren’t too surprising.  Fiona has her business suit on and plans on stumping the neighborhood for the candidate who’s the most pro-business. This rubs Ford the wrong way who does his best to keep his mouth shut and let Fiona make up her own mind. Present day Fiona is a different woman from years ago and she now looks to get the advantages she needs to keep succeeding, even if it’s mostly a 180 from how she was brought up and where she’s from. Butting heads with Ford and the locals makes her second guess her motives and wonders if she’s a traitor. Then she comes head to head with Frank’s intimidation scheme at the voting station at the local elementary school. An all out riot breaks out and a beaten up Frank retreats back home to discover that Mo actually won. Once again back in politics, Mo swears to again, do nothing as a Senator. And get paid for it.

Liam’s school protection is going well. He lets his bodyguard cheat off of him and it’s basically free sailing to the end of the school year. He is so far advanced from his classmates that his test scores quickly grab the attention of the school administration. Next year, Liam is being moved up a few years to 6th grade. He’s not going to be in any classes with his bodyguard so that protection is going to be gone.

Deb is a mess. Ian’s assertation that Deb isn’t gay comes home to roost.  While Deb is having a heart to heart with Alex, she candidly talks in a way that points this truth out to Alex. So faced with falling in love with another straight girl, Alex knows there is no future with Deb and breaks up. This whole relationship rose and fell in about a week, so when Deb moves back in crying of a broken heart, her siblings give her no empathy as they didn’t know she had moved out or who Alex is.  Another relationship turned to dust it’s hard to see where Deb will go from here. Odds are she’ll swear off men and women until she stumbles into someone who gives her enough attention.

Ian is at a crossroads too. Disenfranchised from being Gay Jesus and running for his life from a group of homophobes, he has no direction. Does anything he do have any meaning or impact? If he stays with or drops the Gay Jesus movement, does it matter? Is there a point? His biggest problem is his upcoming court date. His lawyers says if he doesn’t cop to a plea deal, he runs the risk of doing 10-15 years. How much he is willing to fight is the question.

Carl gets called out on stealing the recommendation to West Point and gets challenged to a duel by a very irate preppy. Surprised by such a confrontation (the kid wants to fight to the death), Carl has some thinking to do. Ian questions Carl’s “killer instinct,” after all he’s harboring old dogs in the basement. If he can’t euthanize a dog, what’s he going to West Point for? His future isn’t going to be teaching marching drills but sending out kids who look just like him into war zones. So Ian throws more doubt into Carl’s head so he seeks out another source of advice: a well-known vet who served in Afganistan that lives, gun at the ready, in the neighborhood. Carl gets the inspiration he needs.

Xan’s mother comes back out of nowhere and Lip is pushed up against the wall. He cares for Xan like his own and knows that Xan will probably be ditched in a matter of weeks once more by her mother if he lets her go. He follows the mother around long enough to see that she’s hooking. Brad says he has no choice but to let go of Xan but Lip struggles with the facts. Yes, it’s her mother, yes he has no legal rights in the matter, but he’s afraid of the trauma he’d be sending her into. So Lip sells his project motorcycle for a heavy profit and offers the mother $10k to walk away and sign over her parental rights to him. This was shocked at the offer but from his perspective, it makes sense. The anger from the mom quickly fell to the side when she sees the envelope of cash. He had the official documents with him too. All of it seemed to be swaying her until Xan, who followed Lip out of the house when he suspiciously left at dinner, sees her mother. A tearful reunion, Lip knows he does have no choice. Xan wants nothing more than to be with her mother. I’m sure a lot of Lip’s old hopes with his mother came back to him at this moment. When Lip leaves the money for them and leaves, I like to think that Lip is considering that if she needs to in the future, Xan can find him. He’ll be her backup.

Kev and V’s hard work to de-grossify The Alibi pays off. They get revisited by the author of the newspaper report and the bar is taken off the list and women start coming into the bar. This leads to a knock on effect they never thought of: with their success, they’ve become an authority on how to turn things around. The owner of the bar who is now number 1 on the “rapeist” list asks them for help. A new business is born!