television – Fancy Boys Club

This Is Not My Beautiful House. This Is Not My Beautiful Vibranium Android Husband.

February 22, 2021February 22, 2021by Matt DrufkeLeave a Comment

Let’s skip to the bottom of the page, so I am not accused of burying the lede: WandaVision is the most creative and innovative thing the MCU has given us and is, currently, one of the best programs currently on television. The show, created by Jac Shaeffer, is a baffling and insane combination of humor, nostalgia, a little sci-fi, a pinch of a thriller, and about a thousand other things. Both Elizabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn deserve Emmys for the work that they’re doing and if this is the leadoff hitter for the Marvel/Disney+ television relationship, I look forward to seeing what’s going to come next.

With their two hit shows, this and a little thing you may have heard of called The Mandalorian, Disney+ has shown that they are not just around for nostalgia or so that my wife can put on a childhood favorite to help her fall asleep; they are trying to create content just as good as any of the streaming services or networks. And while The Mandalorian is probably the show I would rather watch, I think WandaVision (at least so far) is probably the better show.

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Pop Culture

Farewell to The Office on Netflix: the Union that Changed The Way We Watch TV

December 28, 2020December 30, 2020by Michael GraceLeave a Comment

When Netflix began, it was a novel concept. You request DVDs, you watch them, you mail them back, and then the next movie in your queue gets mailed to you. Kelly Kapoor actually explains this in an episode of The Office in which the employees of Dunder Mifflin gamble on various prop bets in the office. Netflix gets name-dropped a few times on the show, all during its primarily mail-only era. Once the service moved to streaming, it was super weird. For a time, there was softcore porn and DIY home repair videos. It was a brave, new, strange world. The only way I could watch at that time was through an app on my Nintendo Wii. The pickup of The Office, among many other 2000s sitcoms was, surprisingly, the best thing that the service could have done for itself. In doing so, it changed the trajectory of careers, made the show a second-hand success, and jumpstarted the endless, mindless binge. On January 1st, The Office leaves Netflix for NBC’s own streaming service, ending one of the most important unions in TV history.

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Comedy, Pop Culture, television

So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way: Unearthing The Lost Episodes Of Friends

August 24, 2020by Matt DrufkeLeave a Comment

With HBO Max, your pop culture viewing options are a plentiful harvest. You can catch up on movies you’ve never seen before. You can watch all of The Sopranosand try and figure out what gabagool is. You can start to binge all of the Studio Ghibli movies and then get angry when your wife watches Spirited Away with you and doesn’t “understand what the big deal is.”

Or you can just watch a buttload of Friends.

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Pop Culture

Gleeful Gravitas: Regis Philbin and the Last Great Game Show

July 26, 2020July 26, 2020by Michael GraceLeave a Comment

I don’t know how young the readership is for our site. Sometimes I slip into a realm of understanding that everyone alive has experienced the things that I have, and I could not be further from fact. Around the turn of the century, the late Regis Philbin was the hostof Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, a quiz show that was such a phenomenon that it seemed to permeate everyday life. In the year of our lord 1999, the only thing bigger than Millionaire was the impending apocalypse when the new year arrived. The reason the show was the cultural touchstone that it became was because of the stakes, the production of the show, and most of all, its charismatic host. We lost Regis, a true icon of Millennial adolescence, on Saturday at the age of 88.

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television

Beavis and Butthead Is Back to Save Us All

July 6, 2020by Brandon AndreasenLeave a Comment

Twenty Three years ago, Beavis and Butthead, the show about two teenage slackers putting little attempt into being a part of society outside of their own couch, went off the air. In the ensuing two decades, the characters ostensibly never got smarter, but the country they exist in definitely did. Now, Mike Judge, the man who created the quintessential losers and would go on to create King of the Hill, Idiocracy, and Silicon Valley, is back to put the erstwhile duo into the present day. AND NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON!

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Pop Culture, Uncategorized

The (Cultural) Tribe Has Spoken

December 12, 2019December 12, 2019by Matt DrufkeLeave a Comment

I think most people watch most television (and, by this, I mean entertainment television- basically everything that isn’t the news) for two reasons: to escape the world and to experience the world. Some people are sick and tired of seeing the world devour itself and need a break, so they turn on their small screen in the hopes of being drifted away, if only for a short time, from the problems of the modern world. Others, however, look at television as a reflection of society, and look to it to show us who we are and see what that tells us about ourselves.

In speaking about television as terms of contrast and reflection, Survivor had almost always landed in the former category. However, this season, the show has taken a sharp turn into the latter, and in doing so, has become one of the most interesting shows on television this year.

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