The SomethingSomethingCast

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched a handful of newer gameshows. A couple of them are in the style of the studio game shows we know from being sick on a school day, and one reality show.  I didn’t hate any of them, but I most definitely didn’t like them, either. So let’s discuss the problems.

The first batch we’ll call the Modern gameshow. In a studio, with an audience, but each one of them is using the ‘So You Want To Be A Millionaire’ or ‘Deal or No Deal’ approach which is to slow down the content with tremendous amounts of hemming and hawing. The Box features challenges inside of a weird cube. Everything about this show I enjoyed except for the fact that a single question or challenge can last an entire segment between breaks. Cheat involves 4 people cheating on trivia questions, but each set of questions comes with a round of ‘Who was the cheater’ where the host vamps unendingly to stretch out that timeframe.

Why do they do it? Because if everyone is tense, the stakes must be important… but when you compare it to the cornball silliness of Price is Right or the spitfire trivia of Jeopardy, it all looks like the show is playing at 45 rpm.

The reality show was a newer NBC jam, The Traitors though.. this show.. it’s almost there.  The good is that it has over a dozen people in the house, there are Traitors who will ‘Murder’ every night and the object is to figureeout who they are and vote them out.  This should sound familiar to anyone who has played Werewolf or Mafia or Secret Hitler. Along the way there are challenges to increase the winnings and dramatic discussions about people acting weird.  The problem here is, in all of those listed games, there is a mechanism for the “good guys” to solve the mystery. In this show… there weren’t. The Traitors weren’t even incentivized to screw up tasks like The Mole (which is enjoyable as hell). If the traitors say nothing, they’re playing the same game as everyone else. Votes are arbitrary based on people over-reading each other.

These shows are all almost there, and I hope as we continue to move to a streaming, watch at 1.25x, fast forwarding world, we can get back to game shows that feel like there are stakes without big synthesizer breaks and lighting to signal us to be interested because until then… I’m not.

I’m guessing your first thought was, ‘What an odd topic…’ but I am guessing your second thought was, ‘I wonder if (insert candy) is mentioned…’ which is precisely what we want. That’s right, you are stuck in our fantastically Slugworthian trap and now you are obligated to find out if we put your strange childhood candy on the list.

You can’t fight it. You’ve already lost. Now settle in and enjoy THE WHEEL – TOP 5 DISCONTINUED CANDIES

Ok, here we goo! (this relates.. promise)

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Hey Somethings!

So, I get in these weird music.. ruts?  Trenches?  Time Loops?  Not sure what you’d call them, but I inevitably end up stumbling across a song I enjoy that I haven’t heard in *years* and that leads me down this rabbit hole of stumbling across other songs in an amazingly frenetic headlong dash… much like a Tesla at a school crossing.  So without further ado, here’s what’s currently been playing in my ride…

Take On Me – Reel Big Fish

I don’t think I ever fell in ‘love’ with Ska as a musical type, there are just certain songs/bands I enjoy that happen to be Ska bands.  I first discovered my enjoyment of Reel Big Fish on the BASEketball soundtrack and this song immediately grew on me.  Great cover, great song.

Click Click Boom – Saliva

Probably the only song I could ever actually tell you Saliva did (I couldn’t name another Saliva song), this one was part of my karaoke repertoire back in the “Before Times”.  One day, I’ll get back to karaoke… and I’ll probably dust this song off.

Inside Out – Eve 6

Another karaoke staple of mine from days gone by, I forgot how much I love this song until it wormed it’s way into my YouTube “mix” randomly.  There’s just a certain drive in this song that I dig, and it’s one of my favorite songs to sing harmony to.

Butterfly – Crazy Town

I’m sensing a pattern here.. all these songs were released between ’98 and ’01.  Another band that I can only name one song from, this song takes me back to a time when you couldn’t beat The Wiz, Napster was brand new, and “I See Dead People” was blowing people’s minds.

How about you?  What’s been shuffling around on YOUR playlist?  Hit our socials and let us know!

– PCR

First, this review is about the Real American Doll Furby, M3gan. We both watched it and have opinions on it. Was it good? Is she the next Chucky? Does she have feelings? Do we care?

Second, this episode takes a dark turn, much like the previously mentioned ‘Malibu Knife Wielding Barbie’ that is M3gan. So, where yes, you may have strong opinions about this movie for some reason, so do the Somethings… and they have strong opinions about your strong opinions.

So lets settle in to Something In Review: M3gan

Ok, Google, Here we go…

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I recently recognized that I am falling behind on Marvel movies. When we look at the journey to the fight with Thanos, I was there. New movie – new me watching it. I was so invested in the joining of the Avengers and the big story to get there.

THen what happened.

They beat Thanos and nowwww… ok, look, I was similarly invested in Wandavision and I think it may be one of the best things DizMar ever did in terms of scope, visual style, and just plain weirdness. I was even invested in Falcon and Winter Soldier, albeit I had no problem waiting until the whole thing had been posted online to give it a glance.

But what of your Thors and AntMans and even your Wakanda Forevers?

I’ll get to them.

I know the great bubble we lived in messed up the release schedule and it is only now that we’re seeing the Marvel U try and get back to its big chapter 2, but … where’s the hype? Where’s the ‘oooooooooooooh’ moments that make us need to see the next installment? It feels like DizMarvel has lost them. The MCU feels lived in and you can show up in your pj’s if you want, but there is no urge to go running to the movies like I did for Captain America.

Then again, it may just be me burned out on comic movies until the X-Men comes… because the few glimpses that they are on their way as made my head pop up like an excited puppy.

It has to be hard to make a sequel to a movie. Aside from trying to recapture the magic of the first one, you have to get this legion of performers to come back and find a perfect time where they aren’t working on other things… or, you know, you could just ditch em.

Actors are replaced in movies for a myriad of reasons, some tragic, some hysterical – so settle in as we discuss some of our favorite and least favorite replacements in film.  We’re not going alone though – we are thrilled to have Cthulu’s Prodigy from Blacker Than Black Times Infinity to talk the movie talk with us. Make sure to give them a listen and tell em the Somethings sent ya.

Ok, here we .. ok, well not ‘we’ since we had to replace both hosts .. go!

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Look.. let’s face it.. Hatton and I feed off each other’s creativity.  Hatton makes a blog last week referencing LOST.. and it sits in my brain until I have to let it out.  I’d make some pithy joke about it being like entering The Numbers into Desmond’s computer, but.. I liked Desmond, and this post is about the other side of things.

19 years later, these are my Top 5 Unanswered Mysteries from LOST

5 – What the hell was the Cork in the Pond in the Cave?

Out of all the things I WASN’T expecting to see in the ‘Heart of the Island’.. was a kiddie-sized wading pool carved out of rock with a big cork stopper in it.

I mean… what?

Was this an analogy for the writers being so pent up with unanswered BS from previous seasons is was akin to a stopper in the pool of their creative brain?  I mean, that would have been a better explanation than whatever they had for.. whatever that was.

4 – Annie

No, not the redheaded, pupil-less orphan, I’m talking about the only friend a young Ben Linus had while growing up in the Dharma Initiative.  Did you forget about her?  So did the show.  Lindelhoff and Cuse went so far on the DVD commentary for “The Man Behind the Curtain” to say that she was going to be a ‘huge part of upcoming storylines’…. SO big apparently, she was mentioned in one episode ever and then promptly never heard from again.

3 – Horace’s Cabin

I was convinced we were going to get some kind of answers about the island once the survivors found this… the circle of ash around it.. the person in the chair.. but, much like a lot of the rest of the show, it got ‘weird’ without ever being really explained.  Some of the biggest ‘huh?’s.. why could it move around the island?  What was the circle of ash keeping in (or out)? Who broke the circle?  Why… 19 years later do I care?

2 – Libby

I thought Libby overall as a character was great, and I enjoyed that she was a love interest for Hurley.  Hurley did keep mentioning that he felt like he knew her from somewhere, and it turns out they were both in Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute at the same time.  Why did they not remember each other?  Was it the same reason Ben Kenobi didn’t recognize R2?

1 – Walt being ‘Special’

The BIGGEST “wtf” letdown of the show in my opinion.  They tease up Walt being special, even show us him (apparently?) telekenisis-ing birds into a glass door… he ‘seems’ to be able to make things he thinks about happen, but we’re never given proof that it’s not more than coincidence.. I mean.. he MUST be right?  Why else would Hurley and Ben convince him to go back to the island to ‘help Michael’ even though Michael is dead?  According to Lindelhoff, Walt is special “because he is”.  Thanks Damon…

What about you?  What are some of YOUR biggest unsolved issues with LOST?  Let us know at all the usual places!

– PCR

A love so strong, the show is mentioned amongst some of the greatest romantic television shows of all time. It also held the record for having one of the most comically long onscreen makeouts ever.

Does it hold the test of time? It’s a mystery that is probably left to be solved by a babyfaced Bruce Willis and a career relaunched Cybil Shephard in the romcom-meta of Moonlighting.

Ahead of its time or just a relic of its era.  You will only know on The End – Moonlighting!

Ok, here we go, Mr. Falcon!

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Look, it’s a well established fact that the Somethingcast has a loved/hate relationship with Lost. It’s the sort of sad kind of relationship you read about in the first half of tawdry romances when things are so beautiful… the fair buxom maiden meets the constantly oily broad shouldered man and they make sweet love on an island where a plane crashed in one of the greatest television openers of all time. Then the pair reveal their history piece by piece, the mysteries getting ever thicker. The questions ever deeper…

…and then it’s revealed that the hunky man actually was the same bloated corpse of a guess you had in the first season and he wastes three seasons of his life plodding over garbage like how he got his tattoo.

Yes, I know this metaphor fell apart two paragraphs ago. Yes, I am also aware we are the buxom maiden in this.

The point is – Lost invited a lot of copycats. Shows that were built around a solitary mystery or weird happening that we have revealed excessively small detail at a time.  And yet.. for some reason.. I watch them thinking that they will be different and the reveals will justify the incomprehensible journey.  The fact is, once a show like that goes longer than a season, if the mysteries were amazing in the first half, the only way to keep your attention once you have the answer is to create mysteriouser mysteries. And yet… I watch.

Here’s a few shows I’ve given at least one season and the show I’m currently engaged with and looking forward to the moment it lets me down.

Persons Unknown – 2010 – Starring Alan ‘Cameron, Ferris Bueller’s Friend’ Ruck and a young Chadwick Boseman, a handful of people wake up in a weird hotel filled with puzzles only to escape and find out they are in an almost empty 1950s town except for all the weird people with weird puzzles run by a weird corporation called ‘The Program’. It ends with them “escaping” … but they only wake up in a weird hotel.  Weird. Not really.

I-Land – 2019 – A shockingly recent entry into the ‘We Learned Nothing From Lost’ novel of failed television shows, a bunch of people wake up on an island with amnesia and are assholes to each other until they find out that they’re in virtual reality prison for some reason. You’ll ask ‘..but why..’ a lot, but since it had a 3% Rotten Tomatoes rating, you’ll never find out the answer.

The Wilds – 2020 – Even more recently, a bunch of women get stranded on an island due to a plane crash and say ‘fuck’ a lot. Oh, and also there’s a secret experiment by a mysterious overseer and we learn all about how they’re interconnected through flashbacks. Were they even trying!?

And now, The Manifest – 2018 – The elevator pitch here is ‘Ok, what if we have a Lost show, but the plane doesn’t crash’. Instead, the passengers jump five years ahead in time and have to deal with the world as a mysterious magical, mystical, scientific, religious, historical voice (no, seriously, all of those) tells them to do things to fix the world. There are also flashbacks and logic jumps so mind boggling, I don’t know how I’m in the middle of Season 3 and the last part of the show got picked up by Netflix.

Maybe one day I’ll talk about the ones that don’t suck. Sound off on your favorites and thanks for enjoying my pain.

Yeah, sure – when you think of romance movies you think of star-crossed lovers or unlikely opposites attracting or doors that can clearly fit two people bobbing in the Arctic… but do you ever think about what would happen if you pit a series of romance films against another series?  Like who would win in a fight? When Harry Met Sally or anything with Matthew McConnaughey leaning against something? What if Matthew had a knife?

Alright alright alright, that’s a tangent for another day – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t what today’s episode is about. The Wheel gives us our hardest draft yet – and one of our favorite folks as judge, the Squeeequeen herself, Alexis Torres!

Two romance enter – One romance leave!

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