Robot Chicken - Season 5

I guess this was the year I got tired of Robot Chicken. This season won't finish airing until early next year, but the whole thing is already on DVD, and I rented it on Netflix so I know what's up. And yeah... I was watching it, and waiting for it to make me laugh, and it just didn't really happen. There's a few things about the show that have always been abrasive, and gotten in the way of what works about it. It relies on violence an awful lot, and that seemed particularly true this year, with many sketches lacking any real punchlines at all, resorting to just going through various action/thriller/horror cliches with out of place characters in hopes that the novelty would be enough. But it's not really novel anymore. There have been 100 episodes of this, and I'm not even counting the Star Wars specials. A lot of the other humor is just unusual swearing that never seems particularly memorable, or typical gross-out stuff. In the past the show has been clever when the writers really tried, but I'm not really seeing that effort anymore. And the frat mentality is there more than ever. One thing I did like was the season finale, which actually turned the intro featuring a cyborg chicken and his malevolent creator into a story, but even that couldn't avoid certain issues. Seriously, if I have to hear one more "my one weakness!" joke any time soon, I'm gonna flip out. I don't know if they plan on bringing the show back, but if they do, I don't think I'll be making sure to catch it every time a new episode's on.

Family Guy - Season 9

As I hinted in the last post, I'm not really feeling this show much these days. It's just different in ways I don't like, and I'd say more different from the show when it came back from the dead than it was then in comparison to its original run. You still have most of the same characters and an unending dedication to remembering pop culture no matter how bad or obscure it is, but the style just isn't right. It feels less like a sitcom and more like... I don't even know what, it's just really weird now. They'll do murder mysteries and reenact scenes from movies and stuff like that, and they're ideas that I would have liked to have seen a few years ago, but the pace now is just so slow, and the focus seems to be more on getting all the story beats and camera moves right rather than entertaining the audience. It's like the fun has been sucked out of the process, a lot of the jokes are the same as ever, but the sense of fun is missing. There will be a scene where two characters are just talking in a car for several minutes, and you'll wonder what the hell they're trying to do with it.

They also try to have emotional moments, and they just don't work. This is Family Guy, a show for which nothing is sacred, a show that will casually toss out racial insults in increasingly non-ironic-seeming fashion, a show with a producer who was one of the idiots making insensitive comments about Japan on twitter after the Tsunami, a show that made an episode about abortion and then didn't air it but still sold it on DVD by itself for $15. So I just can't give a shit about the show pretending Brian might let himself die to give Peter his kidneys for half an episode. The show has no soul, and there's no sense trying to give it one now. It's best when it's firing a million jokes a minute and a few of them manage to land, and what they're doing now just isn't very entertaining. I won't pretend there weren't moments or even entire episodes that I didn't enjoy, but the show just isn't worth dedicating time to it on a regular basis anymore. I won't turn it off if it comes on and I'm bored, but I won't make sure to see every episode.

Mass Effect 2

Review at Player Affinity

Television Update 7: Holiday Specials

There seemed to be an unusual amount of special episodes of shows I watch around the Holiday season this year, so I thought I'd go over them. To get here, the episode didn't have to be Christmas themed, but it did have to be separate from the standard season airing schedule for the show.

Doctor Who - "A Christmas Carol"

Hey, an episode of Doctor Who actually aired in America on the same day as in England! It's a Christmas miracle! While Russell T. Davies' Who Christmas specials tended to at least acknowledge the existence of the Holiday, they also tended to be about everything except it. Now that Steven Moffat's in charge of the show, he's put the Christmas back in Christmas Special with one of his better episodes, and definitely the most holiday-themed Who I've seen. The episode is obviously a take on a story that's been retold countless times, but Moffat and the cast make it work surprisingly well. Michael Gambon plays a man in control of a planet's dangerous cloud layer who takes family members for collateral on loans, and is very much a future version of Scrooge. Needing his help to save a ship full of people including Amy and Roy, the Doctor takes the role of the various Christmas ghosts and creatively uses the TARDIS to try to change his mind. The time travel twists on the classic story freshen it up quite a bit, and there's a lot here to justify Moffat's conception of the show as fairy tale more than science fiction. A very fun, very British hour of television.

Futurama - "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular"


This special is a lot like the Anthology of Interest episodes from the past, showing three silly short films within the Futurama framework, although this time there's nothing to frame the different stories and everyone dies at the end of all three, making them decidedly out of continuity. They're all based on a different holiday and also have sneaky environmental themes attached, providing a Christmas story about seed contamination, a Robanukah story about the depleting Petroleum reserves, and a Kwanzaa story about honey bees disappearing. It's far from one of the best episodes the show has done, with many of the jokes falling flat and yet another Al Gore appearance feeling a bit redundant at this point, but I'll give it a pass because each segment made me laugh out loud at least once. A bit scattershot, but they were probably constrained by the short running time for each bit, needing to hit multiple themes in each one, and finding a way to kill off the cast at the end each time, so the end result is respectable if not outstanding. A decent hold over until the next season starts.

Robot Chicken - "Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III"


There was actually a proper Christmas episode that aired before this, but it appears to be part of the regular fifth season which is starting up soon, while this is definitely a special. While the Family Guy Star Wars tributes have a clear purpose to go on for three episodes, retelling the story of the original trilogy, the Robot Chicken Star Wars episodes have been all over the place with all six movies, making a third seem less necessary. And at an hour long it could have easily dragged. Luckily the writers saved it with a real concept this time, going forward chronologically through the whole series, following Emperor Palpatine's ascent to the throne. It's still just an excuse for a lot of random gags and jokes, but the general progression makes it more interesting than it could have been. Their take on Palpatine is still pretty funny, and a lot of the sketches are among the best and most elaborate they've ever done. It's still definitely just more Robot Chicken in places, but I liked the episode more than I expected.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - "Chrimbus Special"


The Awesome Show's apparent ending earlier this year was a surprise heartbreak, though they've changed that sentiment in the last couple months with a new tour (that I missed getting to go to), a new hour long episode, and an announcement of a coming movie as well as the possibility of more seasons if they feel like it. That's all great news, and the holiday "Chrimbus" episode was hilarious as expected. Chrimbus is a warped version of Christmas much more focused on the receiving aspect of the holiday than the giving side, and it's an opportunity for more awkward audience reactions, mildly disturbing song and dance numbers, and one off sketches. The episode works as an excuse to bring back all of the old favorite guests, from known celebrities like Zach Galifianakis to fan favorite oddities like Ben Hur. There's a couple more ridiculous Cinco products to throw on the gigantic pile, and a multi-part arc with Carol and Mr. Henderson that wasn't exactly necessary but still pretty outstanding. More fun for Tim and Eric fans, and if it had ended up as the last thing they did, it would have been a nice send off.

Mass Effect

I've mentioned before that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the game that got me into western RPGs. So I guess it's not a surprise that I quite enjoyed BioWare's return to the science fiction landscape. Mass Effect takes place within its own original universe, although the influences on both the design and the setting from that game and other classic science fiction are obvious. Without being a real expert on the history of the genre, I'd say the two most obvious influences on Mass Effect's world are Star Wars and Star Trek. You have the former's quasi-mystical powers and diverse alien species (Trek has aliens, but they all look like people with weird foreheads), and the latter's more adult focus on politics and how a gathering of races from across a galaxy would form a society and government together. The final result is a bit darker than both at their more adventurous, but the impact is there. There's literally an encyclopedia in the game's pause menu if you ever want to look up details on the history and specifics of pretty much any piece of back story it cares to bring up, and the amount of thought put into everything is one of the game's biggest assets.

You play as Shepard, a customizable protagonist and eventual commander of the most advanced ship in the alliance fleet. The alliance is sort of like a more militaristic Starfleet, except it only represents human interests in the galaxy. There's no real shared military, although the alliance have a working relationship with the council, a multiracial tribunal that operates out of an ancient space station called the Citadel and has influence over many things. I'm really explaining a lot of background here, aren't I? It's an interesting set up. Anyway at the beginning of the game you are given a mission that will require a ship and an elite team, and you report to both the council and the alliance. It's pretty easy to fill out your party, and from there you generally have a choice of planets with important objectives to complete. There are also dozens of optional worlds you can visit, but I'll get to those later. You fight evil robots, help or ignore troubled people you come across, talk a lot, and try to track down and stop the bad guy.

The game likes to pretend sometimes that it's a primarily a cover-based third person shooter, since those have been popular for a few years and were really blowing up when it came out, but it really isn't. Yes, you can hide behind objects and point a target at enemies and click to fire, but success is less determined by an ability to aim and shoot and more by good management of your allies, use of abilities, and having stats good enough for an invisible random variable to decide that your shots hit more than the other guy's. This didn't bother me as much as other people, I just don't see the point of the charade. Knights of the Old Republic's combat system was plenty of fun, and totally honest. You paused the game to assign actions, and chance and numbers determined whether your light saber swings and blaster shots hurt the enemy. Mass Effect playacting as a shooter just distracts from what could have been a more interesting system. I understand that the sequel actually performs like a true shooter, which is a fine direction to take, as it's at least a more genuine attempt to reach beyond the standard number-crunching RPG player.

So while I lived with the combat, what I really liked was simply learning about the different cities and outposts I was exploring, and developing my relationship with the various people in my crew. RPGs always seem to do better at creating a camaraderie amongst an interesting cast of characters than other games, if only because they actually take time to do so. And I liked my crew a lot. I talked to them after every job to see what they thought, and I did all the side quests that tied directly to their characters, not for the rewards, but because I wanted to help them out. They're a diverse group, and while the dialogue was often a bit straightforward, I still felt some level of connection to them that I just don't usually. I found myself choosing who to take on expeditions based on who it made sense to bring, not who would statistically help me in combat the most, and some of the things that happen to some of them later in the story actually made me feel a bit of emotion. It lent weight to the morality system, which is mildly interesting because it determines more what kind of leader you are rather than whether you're good or evil, but otherwise is still pretty standard.

I guess I should mention the game's biggest weaknesses, the silly mini-game that seems to determine a little too much of what happens, and the Mako, a vehicle which popped up way too much based on how much of a headache it was. Frequently when activating objects in the game, you have to solve a little game where you guide an arrow into the center of a circle while objects rotate around it nearby that you have to avoid. Fail to do so, and you either have to try again or pay a material cost to bypass it. It made some sense when trying to break electronic locks, but the game uses it for much more than that, including recovering objects from wreckage and even surveying rocks for minerals. It's a huge pain in the ass and never really makes sense in context. And man, the Mako. It's an armored jeep type thing that goes over a lot of terrain, but it's a gigantic annoyance whenever you have to use it, which is often on required story missions, and always when exploring optional planets for useful objects. It controls like crap, it's not as useful as it feels like it should be in combat, and none of the places you use it in are designed well enough to get past this. It's just a struggle every time you're behind the wheel. It would have been a bigger issue if it was at its worst when it's actually necessary, but thankfully that's not the case.

Beyond those small issues, I had a lot of fun in the twenty hours the game took me. The story was pretty good, conveyed by some decent writing and well acted by the cast, including a smattering of recognizable celebrity voices that fit their parts appropriately. The game's presentation helps immensely, although I was unable to get the full effect of the motion capture thanks to the constantly poor frame rate on my machine. I'll admit it's an old system, but it probably shouldn't have run a three year old game this choppily. BioWare's games have always had odd technical issues on the PC, and I have to imagine it's partly the game's fault as well as my computer's, because I began Dead Space recently, which came out a year later, and it can at least do static conversations smoothly. It was rare for the issues to actually impact gameplay negatively, but it was an unfortunate distraction a lot of the time. It sounded pretty good though, with the previously mentioned voice acting and strong score helping to sell the universe. Whatever problems I had, I wanted to play the sequel as soon as I finished, which is not something I've been able to say much recently. I guess the question is whether I'll play it on PC, or if the way they handle the PS3 version makes it seem worth the switch.

Family Guy - Season 8

So Family Guy trundles on through middle age, now having aired double the number of episodes made before the cancellation since they came back. They're doing pretty much everything they can to stave off stagnation, getting increasingly dark and esoteric, seeming to go anywhere to avoid the accusation that they're running out of ideas. And I have to say, it's mostly working for me. I thought this was the best season in a few years as the focus has shifted away from the more spiteful and uncreative pop culture jokes and more towards pure weirdness. They've gone places I'd not have expected, even for a routinely controversial show like this, but haven't quite gone too far yet.

There were a number of notable episodes, including a couple that were double length. The 150th trapped Brian and Stewie in a bank vault, and mostly focused on their unique love/hate relationship. I didn't like all of it, but it was an interesting experiment. The musical stuff was mostly just filling time though, as there was only a single piece I hadn't seen before. They finally aired the sequel to their Star Wars episode from a couple years ago, this time based on The Empire Strikes Back, which was already put out on DVD last fall. While I often don't like it as much when the show just recreates a famous scene wholesale because there's not actually a lot of creative energy behind it, for some reason these remakes of the movies work for me. It's half nostalgia for when Star Wars was fun, and half enjoyment of all the ways they poke fun at the sillier or illogical moments in the series. The yearly road show episode was really good too, this time traveling through a bunch of parallel universes with increasingly wacky differences. I wonder how untouchable this show is at this point. In ten years are we going to be looking at season 18 of Family guy alongside season 31 of The Simpsons? I guess we'll find out in time.

Also, I blogged about American Dad! a while ago because Sons of Tucson took over its time slot, but that show was quickly canceled and Dad was brought back for five more episodes to finish season 5 with 18. I wouldn't have bothered to mention this if they weren't really good, especially "Bully for Steve", which is one of the best in the series. I won't forget Stelio Kontos for a long time.

Titan Maximum - Season 1

Sharing a lot of writers and voice actors with Robot Chicken, Maximum is those guys' attempt at a show with actual characters and continuity. It pokes fun at various old cartoons and anime, specifically things like Voltron where a team of soldiers pilots vehicles that can combine into a giant robot. Like Chicken, it's pretty easy to watch and often funny, though less intelligent seeming than a lot of other stuff on Adult Swim, which is hard considering its reputation as a channel for stoners. The team's boss is actually called Admiral Bitchface, haha! The leader likes punching things in the face, and the slutty girl likes kicking them in the groin! There's a goddamn monkey! Seth Green plays the series' main villain, who's mostly just a smarmy ass, and the rest of the cast is filled out by some other minor celebrities. I like that there's actually a plot, and it does a good job of parodying its own genre. I'm sure they're gonna keep it going, and the season ends with a cliffhanger that suggests as much. I really don't care about what happens, but it's a good enough way to waste 11 minutes at a time.

Robot Chicken - Season 4

It's hard to differentiate seasons of Robot Chicken mentally because each episode is such a grab-bag of random jokes and references. I enjoy watching the show, but its various bits rarely stick out significantly. I wouldn't even be sure they've actually shown all twenty episodes (besides this year's biannual Christmas special) if the Internet didn't tell me so. Just skimming a list of sketches from this season, here are the ones that jump out at me. The premiere where the show gets canceled and the two creators go to various famous producers for help was funny, though while Seth Green has direct connections to both Joss Whedon and Seth MacFarlane, I couldn't find any such link between either of them and Ron Moore. An episode of Hannah Montana that turns into Weekend at Bernie's was pretty good. Billy Dee Williams getting fed up with people trash-talking Lando was good. Uh... you know, man. It's a show where action figures and clay sculptures make fun of old cartoons and assault each other violently. You know if you like it.

Family Guy - Season 7

Family Guy's seventh season was pretty wildly inconsistent, with some pretty terrific episodes but also some awful ones. "I Dream of Jesus" is probably the worst offender. I can understand appreciating the Andy Kaufman-esque nature of the "Surfin' Bird" stuff, but just because it's intentionally unfunny and irritating doesn't make it... not unfunny and irritating. But even ignoring that, the complete whiff on actually doing anything interesting with Jesus Christ as a character is inexcusable. I mean... this is Family Guy! Go wild! But they didn't. After it got better for a while, it stumbled again with stilted, untimely jabs at FOX News and O.J. Simpson, a completely terrible homosexuality episode (How can a show with such an extremely liberal agenda be this unfunny and crude with the subject?), and consecutive episodes featuring Brian flaunting his bleeding heart that pushed the message way too hard without an ounce of subtlety or, again, telling good jokes.

There were some really good episodes though, that make me continue to want to see what else they can do. It's getting to the point where the show is only funny if it's either just ignoring pop culture or diving head first into witty homages that last for the entire running time. When they just try to make a quick gag, they're getting increasingly blunt and decreasingly creative, but stuff like "Road to Germany"'s nod to every adventure movie ever and the pretty solid send up of Stephen King's work in "Three Kings" is entertaining and still true to the show. Also, I was amazed to see them actually let Bonnie have the baby. So many times the show just makes you wonder what the hell's going on in the world, like how she was apparently pregnant for years while her other son died in Iraq in a complete throwaway line (hilarious), and how Peter's gotten out of serious jail time repeatedly for no justifiable reason. They're really pushing the "It's just a cartoon!" button a lot these days, and it's something I've come to accept.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 3

The third season is an important one, as it's end marks the split where some of the cast continues on in Sunnydale, and some move to Los Angeles for the Angel spin-off. It's pivotal for most of the characters too, as it's the last year of high school before everyone can move on, and they have to make decisions about their future. Buffy's desires are at odds with her destiny and blah blah blah she keeps fighting monsters. Willow is transforming from genius bookworm into genius bookworm that can do some magic, Xander's still occassionally funny but irritating whenever stuff's actually happening, and Giles cements himself as possibly my favorite character, although I suspect his role will be diminishing soon if not immediately.

The story this time is about the town's mayor, who has been hinted in the past as being more aware of the town's supernatural troubles than he led on, but to this point has been unseen. He's fairly friendly and non-serious for a major villain, and although that isn't exactly a unique idea, it's executed well enough. There's also Faith, a new slayer in town who appeared after the death of the other slayer at the end of the second season, who was summoned because of a glitch in the logic at the end of the first season. She has some problems. Besides the main story, there are a few other pretty entertaining tangents like an alternate universe where the sidekicks are bad guys. There's also an especially good one surprisingly focusing on Xander, where a pretty dramatic event requiring all the other main characters' attentions happens mostly offscreen while he gets into some trouble before anonymously saving the day. I've decided to watch Angel's first season next, so I can alternate between the shows until I finally finish.

Robot Chicken - Season 3

Not many shows have a season DVD come out two days after the finale first airs, but I guess that's what happens when you don't show any episodes for eight months for no apparent reason. If you haven't seen it before, Robot Chicken is the logical extension of Family Guy's plot-irrelevant pop culture cutaways, in that it is nothing but strung together stop-motion vignettes that rely on either parody, violence, or farting to get their laughs. You get the feeling that creator Seth Green was inspired heavily by that other show he works on, and it's reinforced by its stars doing voices for him too. Lots of people do voices for the show, which is surely one of the benefits of being a recognizable actor. This aspect reached its zenith when the finale had a rap song about King Arthur's round table to the tune of "Baby Got Back", and I realized during the credits that it was actually performed by Sir Mix-a-Lot. There will never be a better celebrity appearance on anything else, ever.

Robot Chicken is generally a pretty low-brow show, but it occasionally shows some real wit and is almost always worth a chuckle. It only fails when it's just referencing things for the sake of it, but usually there's at least a bit of creativity behind whatever mash-up of 80's cartoons and art house films they're currently throwing on screen. They also do a fair amount of meta-humor too, which is always cute in small doses. It's one of only two Adult Swim shows animated with stop-motion, and as is usually the case when it's done well, it's enjoyable to look at even if you don't like the comedy. They did win an Emmy for the animation, after all. I think it's a little overrated by a certain crowd, but I do like Robot Chicken quite a bit.

Family Guy - Season 6

The sixth season of the now venerable show was fairly brief, but had some pretty solid episodes. Over a hundred episodes later, they're running out of steam a little bit, but things like the hour long Star Wars parody and two part special where Stewie finally tries to kill Lois were pretty interesting. The Star Wars episode might have stuck a little too closely to the movie at times, but it was fun to watch. There weren't really any outstanding episodes during this run, but none of them were bad either. They still squeeze out laughs wherever they can. They have been adding some continuity, which is nice, like an actual arc to Brian's relationship with Jilian.

To continue being honest about the show, I feel like it's running out of steam and would benefit from ending sometime fairly soon. They have to really stretch to find new things to make fun of, and increasingly just completely misfire. I don't see what humorous about, say, Michael J. Fox having Parkinson's disease. But it looks like the end's not in sight, with plans to make episodes for the Star Wars sequels and creator Seth McFarlane recently signing one of the biggest TV deals in history. It's no big deal if the show goes forever though, because even if I stop watching it regularly I can be pretty sure to get a laugh somewhere any time I watch.

Family Guy - Season 5

Family Guy was off the air for about three years before it was brought back thanks to Adult Swim and DVD sales, and thanks to the time distortion field that occurs when you grow into adulthood, I was surprised to notice that it's now been back for the same amount of time, about three years. In that time, the show has moved away from what made it funny in the first place, and has driven many old fans away, although it's still always good for some silly laughs. The show now repeats old jokes and minor characters more often and breaks away from the story for some fourth wall-breaking meta-humor, which is often handled a little more clumsily than some better shows, and most of the main characters have changed to the point where they only resemble their original selves in passing.

It's a phenomenon you might have noticed before, called Flanderization (after the next door neighbor from The Simpsons), where some quirk of a character becomes more and more emphasized over time to the point where it pretty much takes over their personality. It's most noticeable in Meg, who went from the slightly boring daughter to someone who gets railed on at every single opportunity. They keep driving the peg into the hole to the point where the interactions become kind of stagnant. Although not quite Flanderization, Stewie has completely changed, from an infant obsessed with world domination to a flamboyant fratboy-type character and a vessel for anything the episode's lazy writer wanted to say about the world. The show's still enjoyable, it's just not as good as it was before the layoff.