Day Three Hundred and Eleven - Portlandia: Season 1, Episode 1, "The 90's live on... in Portland."

"The dream of the 90's is alive in Portland! The tattoo ink never runs dry!"

It's a lyric to the parody music video that Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein open their ode to pretension, Portlandia, with and it's both biting and oddly nostalgic and empowering. And the feeling carries over into the majority of the sketches that populate this twenty minute show.

From the organic-happy couple who fall under the thrall of a charismatic farmer, to the pair of womyn's shop clerks who run Steve Buscemi through the ringer for using their bathroom, Armisen and Brownstein have put together a genuinely amusing look at the ever so serious culture of former and current hipsters, hippies, and grass-fed weirdos that I definitely identify with more than I should.

It's a sketch show, obviously, but very low key and organic (irony) and is done by people who really seem to know what they're doing. At times it seems a little passive-aggressive, but that's kind of the fun, considering the subject matter, and most of the sketches never seem to overstay they're welcome, aided by the short run time, so you never get bored.

What shocks me is that it's executive produced by Lorne Michaels. Blew my mind, considering the stagnation of SNL for the past few decades.

That's not to say that things can't get a little too awkward, even if that's the point. While I did enjoy Jason Sudeikis' Aleki, the organic, free-range farmer whose CHA score has to be a straight 20, when he comes in to fondle Armisen's character, the fingering shot lingers a little longer than necessary. Still, his open air funeral is pretty funny.

I don't think there was anything really "laugh out loud" about the show, but it was pretty pleasing overall and definitely put a smile on my face that reappears every time I think of a particular sketch. My favorite part was definitely Armisen's overly obsessed Adult Hide and Seek team captain playing off the elderly lady in the library where they're competing. Her natural delivery while she calls him on his bullshit is delicious.

If you're a fan of indie-culture and don't mind poking fun at yourself and the other hipsters out there, Portlandia is your jam, trust me. I look forward to seeing where it goes and it won't take long, considering the first season (there are three on Netflix) is only six episodes long.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Ten - Yamada's First Time (B Gata H Kei): Episode 1, "Love, Japanese Style"

If you were to ask me to watch an animated version of American Pie, I would probably decline. While the premise is cute, the thought of idiot teenagers getting their jones on via awkward gags doesn't really appeal. Additionally, Japanese sex comedies aren't exactly known for their presence of mind when it comes to tact (or being anything other than a thinly veiled smut-fest), as they're generally just loose storylines of horndog guys trying to get with whomever they can. I guess that's why I was surprised when I first checked out Yamada's First Time.

Not only does the series invert the trope of the sex-crazed male horndog, turning that role over to the overly sexed, but criminally naive, Yamada... but the show actually manages to highlight all of the silly, awkward things that teens go through when it comes to discovering their sexuality, while telling an oddly sweet romance at the same time... something that American Pie only does in the last ten minutes of the film.

Of course the main character is Yamada. She's the pinnacle of your typical fashionista model type, at least physically, but suffers from being extremely interested in sex with no actual experience to draw from. This makes her so self-conscious that she actively sabotages the efforts of any guy trying to fulfill her desire for nookie.

That's where the timid Kosuda comes in. After bumping into him at a bookstore and miraculously discovering that they're in the same class, Yamada decides that, since he's a scaredy-cat virgin, he's the perfect person with which to lose her own virginity to as he'd just be happy to be with her and wouldn't notice her own lack of experience. It doesn't help, of course, that she has no idea how to attract/seduce him, so her clumsy attempts more often than not wind up intimidating or scaring him and, at the very end of the episode, frightening even her as she wasn't quite prepared for the, uh, shall we say physical reactions she might have on him.

I decided to watch Yamada's First Time today to wash the taste of last night's Okami-san out of my mouth. While, on the surface, the two use many of the same tools in terms of character archetypes (there's a tsundere female lead with a cowardly male love interest, and several different female characters like the buxom glasses girl and precocious loli), where Okami is just a mishmash of tropes, Yamada's First Time is a surprisingly decent "Step-Up Love Story" that could almost be used in health classes to show what kids discovering their hormones should NOT do in the pursuit of their first relationships... and does so in a way relateable to both adults and teens.

And it's funny.

There, I said it... watching Yamada try and reach her goal of having 100 Sex Friends by the time she graduates high school (spoiler: she never gets past #1, by the way), but always be struck down by her own nerves or hubris, is pretty darn entertaining.

It's also a commendable series because, while it is a bit ecchi (I mean, c'mon, it deals with high schoolers trying to hook up), it's never about titillation. Unlike most ecchi titles, which are usually just generic stories with tits and ass meant to boost ratings (see my reviews of High School of the Dead), Yamada's First Time is an exercise in discussing, but never really showing. Any nudity is avoided by camera angles or sight gags and everything else sex related is pantomimed or symbolic.

It's not porn... it's... well... a health class filmreel for the modern era... that just happens to have a cute and funny storyline. To be honest, it's really rather amazing how the author of the manga that this series is based on has managed to present such a compelling argument for monogamy in the guise of a woman trying to become a sex-fiend.

I wouldn't recommend this anime for anyone who hasn't reached puberty, but it's pretty safe (and informative) for teens and funny for adults.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Nine - Okami-san and Her Seven Companions, "Trope, tropes, tropes."

It's a sad fact that the grand majority of anime out there aren't going to make any waves in terms of quality or storyline or style.

Like American television, there are plenty of shows that are made year after year purely to see if they'll stick. Sure, the market strategy for anime is year round and all about saturation, trying to find that magic title that will outsell all the rest, and not limited to regular fall and spring sweeps scheduling, but even as I type this I realize that this paradigm is changing thanks to Netflix.

Set in a stereotypical Japanese high school, with its typical assortment of quirky characters that follow established character tropes, Okami-san follows the antics of a school club of do-gooders who handle requests from the student body and fulfill them in unusual ways. It's cast is populated by every moe fetish under the sun, from the serious megane (glasses) girl to the buxom and ditsy maid to the precocious loli, every recurring character has its own archetype to inhabit simply for its own sake.

Okami-san, herself is your basic tomboy heroine who solves problems with her fists and has the typically Japanese complex over her lack of a chest. She is being love-love-stalked by the boy in class whom everyone's eyes pass over, which allows him to disappear into the background, a handy trait for a stalker. Confronting her with his feelings, stalker-boy only manages to piss Okami off and the majority of the first episode revolves around the club trying to get this stalker, Ryoshi, to get a backbone and show her his skills.

If you couldn't tell from my opening line, I'm not a fan of Okami-san. It's an exercise in stereotyping of generic, soulless character tropes whose only purpose seems to be to exemplify said tropes. The only saving grace of the series is the fourth-wall breaking narrator, whom the characters seem to be able to hear occasionally, who lampshades the grand majority of the weaknesses of the characters individually and the series overall.

The jokes are obscure enough that you'd need to be well versed in anime history and jargon, but the series is too vapid and superficial to be worth a true fan's time. I'd almost consider it a parody, thanks to its self-awareness, but the lack of quality in other departments, namely art and key animation, makes the title feel like its a filler series meant to be made quick and sloppy while the studio works on something else for another season. It's all very slapdash and weak.

There are definitely better titles to be had on Netflix, but the problem is we're just not getting a lot of good stuff on the Instant Stream. Maybe its because the animation studios made better deals with Crunchyroll or they just don't like the market, but I can list of dozens of titles from recent years that would do well on Netflix that just aren't coming. Sure, there are one or two decent ones, but the grand majority that I've seen lately are crap.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Eight - Fringe: Pilot, "X-Files with no limits other than the imagination."

After a month of Lynch's crazy prime-time soap opera, it was nice to get back to quality television that had weird for a reason instead of just being for weird's sake.

Definitely owing to the ground paved by The X-Files, Fringe started its journey through the realms of pseudo-science and alternate realities in 2008, combining the tremendously vulnerable (and occasionally menacing) acting of John Noble with relative newcomer Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson, who was probably previously best known for his work as Pacey on Dawson's Creek.

Set in the present (and occasional in the future and past), Fringe tells stories very reminiscent of Mulder and Scully's encounters with the strange and unexplainable, but throws off all pretense of mundane explanations and active government coverups. Instead, week to week, Fringe fights monsters, sociopaths, and doppelgangers all augmented with superscience that seems impossible (and probably is), but works in the context of, you guessed it, "Fringe Science" where just about anything can happen, provided Walter Bishop (John Noble) can handwave it away with some experiment he and William Bell (Leonard Nimoy) did in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

This pilot episode jumps you right into the thick of things (minus Nimoy, who doesn't show until the first season finale) with a plane full of people literally melting in their seats thanks to some unknown biohazard. Among many other investigators is Agent Olivia Dunham, who trips onto a connection between the biohazard and similar experiments done by Bishop long ago, before he was locked up in an insane asylum. In order to get access to him, Agent Dunham has to enlist Bishop's genius, but rebellious, son... Peter (Jackson). Together they managed to glean enough clues from experimental dream work to track down the bioterrorist and save the day.

It is safe to say that I really love Fringe. I mean, really love it. It's smart, excellently produced by JJ Abrams and company, and the casting is divine, particular when it comes to John Noble's ability to ramble and the personal chemistry between Torv and Jackson. It also has just the right balance of the everyday and the fantastic, combining in such a way as to be utterly believable, no matter how ridiculous the solutions and cures can be. The writers and technical consultants take just enough care to make the technobabble honest and difficult to discount if you're not an expert in any of the fields required to call them on their bullshit (which I am definitely not).

Since the entire series is now available on Netflix, I can definitely recommend a binge watch to anyone who hasn't already seen the greatness that is Fringe... or, even if you have, now is a great time to revisit the series from start to finish... starting with this episode here! Enjoy it! If you don't I'll have lost faith in your humanity. :)

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Seven - Return To Me, "also known as 'Romance for 40-Somethings'"

In every era of filmmaking there are attempts to drag the romantic date movie out of the exclusive realm of twenty to thirtysomethings and tap into the love lines of the older set. Around the same time that this came out there was also You've Got Mail, another almost saccharine sweet 'will they/won't they, in spite of the elephant in the room.'

The first fifteen minutes or so of the film introduce us to David Duchovny's Bob who is a successful architect and happily married to a zoologist who, after we're shown their perfect little life, dies as a result of a car accident. We also meet Minnie Driver's Grace who has a congenital heart issue that requires a transplant. Lo and Behold, she receives Bob's dead wife's heart, unbeknownst to both of them.

I mean, they both know someone go the transplant... but they don't know who got/gave it due to the anonymity of the organ bank. That doesn't stop Grace from sending a letter of thanks (even though she's very hesitant), though, which the organ bank passes on to Bob.

Skip to a horrible set-up by Bob's generic African-American best friend (another trope of these kinds of movies), played by David Allen Grier, which coincidentally takes Bob to the same restaurant that Grace's family owns and she works at. They have a moment or two and the rest, as they say, is history, as the remainder of the film is the two of them falling in love until that fateful moment when Grace finds the letter and has to confess that she was the one who got the heart.

Let me tell you, this film is designed to make women swoon and tear up. Whether it's how generically perfect the male lead is or how cutely insecure the female lead remains for the majority of the film, not to mention the "happy family" contrast that best friends Bonnie Hunt and James Belushi hold up, there are far, far too many moments of "Awwwwww...." Though that's not necessarily a bad thing, it just make for an okay movie and not a great one.

The main conflict is about as weak as they come as, despite the lingering love for his lost wife, Bob and Grace should have been more than able to work out this extremely unlikely little wrinkle without her having to move to Rome to supposedly give Bob his space. Blech. Still, it is unbearably sweet.

I think what really did it for me where the supporting characters, particularly Carroll O'Connor and (still kicking) Robert Loggia as Grace's Grandfather and Granduncle  respectively. They and their group of friends (which includes Eddie Jones from Lois & Clark and Dune fame), are a terrific bunch of Greatest Generation Irish and Italian stereotypes, infatuated with bowling and The Rat Pack. The innocent meddling they do is so much more cute and entertaining than Grier's attempts, though I had to cringe when they finally met Grier's Charlie for the first time and can only talk about how they like Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bills Cosby, and... well, you see where this is going.

Overall, Return to Me is your typical Chick Flick that is pretty safe as the closest they ever get to sex is innuendo and a little necking (since Grace is severely self-conscious about her scar). It's not the greatest, but is definitely a professional achievement that co-star, writer, and director Bonnie Hunt can be proud of, I think. Kudos to you, Bonnie.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Six - Russell Peters: Notorious, "How many people? 140,000?"

I don't know, that theater looks pretty big. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say 15,000, at least. Either way, 15 or 140, that's really packing them in, don't you think?

To be honest, I had never heard of Russell Peters before watching this "exclusive to Netflix" special. Seriously, never. Apparently, though, he is one of the most bankable standup stars of the current generation, having made an estimated 15 million dollars a year recently. If I could make that kind of money doing an hour long set a night while traveling the world, I wouldn't be sitting here typing out a Netflix blog, let me tell you.

Wow, am I jealous?

And it's not that I don't think he doesn't earn his money. His set is pretty sweet, even if I was never ROFLing. He did manage to get a few good laughs from me at various points, but nothing really wowed me like Eddie Izzard did in Dress to Kill.

A combination of low-key racial humor and life observations, Peters' set covers the world and lightly touches on the class divide, immigration, and the never-ending problems in the Middle East. To be honest, I've never seen a comic do a whole bit on getting a handjob from a Thai masseuse... with his MOTHER in the stands, no less... and still manage to keep the audience from turning. He's just that personable.

It is safe to say that a lot of his set keys on racial stereotypes, but they never really seem to offend. He just rolls into them and lets the audience do the catching up, but never quite calls them on it save for one or two moments. I think it helps that he's as self-deprecating to himself to the same level or worse than the situation he is describing. There's a bit in the set where he's trying to find a particular color of paint at a Big Box home improvement store and is stymied by the language barrier, but it's more his fault that the Hispanic immigrant's so the jokes are less aimed outward than inward... and it works.

It doesn't work spectacularly... but it manages to pull off without leaving any bitterness. There's innocence and the every day in these bits and the do manage to please. They just don't astound.

I can say that I really liked his audience interactions, he showed off a couple of improv'd one-liners that definitely helped win over the audience (and me). 

Still, as comedy specials go, Peters had me right up until the credits rolled and the camera started following him back stage. I thought that meant he was doing an encore, but no such luck. It was a solid set, I was just disappointed the after-footage went nowhere.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Three Hundred and Five - MLP:FiM: Season 3, Episode 7, "Highwaaay to the Danger Zone!"

Halloween's over, Mons(sters) are asleep... time to post Ponies!

Yes, friends, now that our Couchbound Spooktacular of a whole month of Twin Peaks (plus weekend horror flicks) has finished, two things are self-evident. First, I can watch whatever I want (WOOHOO)! Second, it's been a decent while since I've watching any My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and I think it's about time that I changed that.

Today's episode is a cute little Rainbow Dash centered episode that's a sendup to Top Gun.

It seems, after years of pining for the Wonderbolts and trying to show off at every event she could, from the Best Young Flyer Competition to the Grand Galloping Gala, she's finally of either the age or skill level (or both) to join the Wonderbolt Academy.

Of course, that doesn't mean things will go smoothly for our spunky overachiever. While she's there, she ends up playing second fiddle to another egocentric pegasus named Lightning Dust and, though Rainbow Dash is eager to excel and push her limits, Lightning Dust's antics begin to cause RD, the other cadets, and even the Mane 6 harm.

While not the most humorous of episodes, the lesson is fairly poignant and it's nice to have RD making the connections for herself without having to have it spelled out for her by Twilight and the rest of the Mane 6. In fact, it should be noted that RD has to actively push against the example given to her by her commanding officer, Spitfire, to do the right thing. Sure, it takes being knocked around a bit and a possible gruesome end for her best friends (who come to Wonderbolt Academy to hand deliver a care package), but it's still Rainbow Dash comprehending the moral herself and standing up for her principles, even if it might cost her the thing she wants most in life, being a Wonderbolt.

There a few decent moments of comedy, though, mostly centered around Pinkie Pie and her obsession with getting a letter from RD (who is obviously too busy to write). I love how insanely codependent she is, in a non-Fatal Attraction sort of way. It really is the cutest bit watching Pinkie constantly open and close her mailbox, hoping a letter will miraculously appear via quantum tunneling or some such.

I also want to make special note of a few of the other cadets and background ponies. Not only is there another appearance of the roided out pegasus, Snowflake, with his trademarked "YEAH," but there are also two cameo ponies in the form of Manerick (Maverick from Top Gun) and Whiplash who is a Tom Skerritt pony (also a Top Gun reference), if I don't miss my guess. While not as cute as the Big Lebowski ponies during the bowling bit during that Cutie Mark Crusaders episode, it's still a nice nod to the adult audience of the show.

The ending is a little weird in that Wonderbolt Captain Spitfire does a stereotypical "you've got what it takes" speech and rewards RD for doing the right thing as a leader, stripping Lightning Dust of her rank as Leadpony but not resolving things with Lightning Dust in the standard "everyone learns a lesson, even the villains" way. Instead, LD is just led off in shame and there's no hint as to whether she's been demoted or completely kicked out of the program. A bit ambiguous and that annoys me.

Still, while not the best episode, by far, it's still a decent watch in its own right... especially for Pinkie's antics and a strong show of character by Rainbow Dash.

Man, I'm glad to be done with Twin Peaks. It's been so long since I had a real, honest choice of what I wanted to watch for the blog. Sure, it's probably telling that I instantly went for Ponies as a balm for my soul, but I don't care! I mean, c'mon... PONIES!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~