The SomethingSomethingCast

I know it’s supposed to be Hatton’s week but…

….I GOT THINGS TO SAY!

SO… I just finished watching Season 8 of “The Blacklist” on Netflix, and was shocked at the ending.

SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET!
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I HATE that we were led along for 8 years of this show to finally see the payoff of Keen finding out who Reddington is (and who he is to her) and this is what happens.  Sure the ‘plan’ was to kill Reddington (which I never believed was going to happen) but I *didn’t* think we’d end up seeing Keen get killed.  I understand actress Megan Boone was off to do other things… but damn if this doesn’t feel like a punch in the dick.

Having been a fan of LOST, I suppose one should never let their guard down on things like this… but I honestly feel, as much as I love Spader’s portrayal, that the show has probably gone on for too long (and is still going…)

With that in mind… here as some shows that are still trucking along that I feel have overstayed their welcome.

The Walking Dead – I honestly couldn’t care any less about anyone left on this show.  I keep watching because I’m pot committed and want to just finish it out.  I know it only has one season left, but 11 seasons was probably 3 or 4 too many.

The Blacklist – See the above rant.  The last few seasons felt like the show was getting cramps trying to tie itself into knots of double-crossing and betrayal which felt effortless in the first few seasons.  I will say, I will completely miss Amir Arison as Agent Mojtabai…he’s been chewing up every scene he’s been in lately.

Pawn Stars – Ok, look.. it was fun and interesting in the beginning when it was about the ‘stuff’, but now the show is different.  It’s “Kardashians at the pawn shop” kind of vibe now that everyone knows is amazingly fake and staged and should have been left on the shelf years ago.

Great British Bake-Off – Yep, I’ll catch flack for this, but I gave up on this show 3/4 of the way last season.  Too many things are a “thing” now… (the “Hollywood Handshake” being one of my biggest ‘ugh’ things).  Also, my pet peeve on long-running reality shows of this type.  Sure, the first season was “the 12 best amateur bakers in the country”… what’s the tag line now?  “12 of the top 145 best amateur bakers…”.  Sure the specials are kinda quaint, but this show hasn’t been the same since Mary, Sue and Mel left.. and it never will be again.

Hit us up on the Twitter @STSTCast and let us know what shows YOU think have been around too long!

– PCR

♫ Country roads…
Take me home… 
OH MY GOD THERE’S A BEEFCAKE MOTH IN THE ROAD! ♫

That’s right – we are heading back into the Somethingverse and taking another of our countries favorite cryptids to task.  We turn our globe, or at least Google Earth.. who owns a globe these days? Anyway, we are going to West Virginia, mountain mama – and we are talking about The Tick’s best buddy, Mothman!  From his interesting beginnings in the middle of the 1900’s to his home as a tourist attraction – this cryptid is living the good life….. OR IS HE!?

Find out now, as we put on our mystery snorkle and head into… THE SOMETHINGVERSE: MOTHMAN

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Hey Somethings!  PCR here.

This week’s blog, I’m taking a slight detour.

As has been our pattern, we’re taking December off from recording and releasing new episodes due to the holidays.  Now, fear not, we have some things in store… but I wanted to look to the future, and to get our listener’s thoughts on things.

We’re pretty happy with the shows and the formats that we have, we feel it gives us a chance to stretch our legs at times while still giving you all something we’re proud of and we feel is in our wheelhouse.

All that said, are there things you’d like to hear us talk about?  Topics, ideas, show styles…

As much as Hatton and I enjoy listening to the sound of our own voices, we want YOU to enjoy listening to the sound of our voices even more.

Let us know over at somethingsomethingcast@gmail.com, over on Twitter @STSTCast, or join our Facebook at facebook.com/SomethingSomethingCast.

While your at it, heading over to iTunes and leaving us a review would be an amazing thing to do for us!

– PCR

Apparently, a group of people joining into a bunch of kids games for the chance to win a few million bucks is enough to get everyone on Netflix in a tizzy… well, if they can, so can we!

The Somethings are taking this week to review the biggest release in Netflix history, the top Halloween costumes, and an interestnig story about what someone will do to survive when faced with an entire army of cephalopods. Fine, that’s not what happens, but for a show named Squid Game, you would think there would be more squid…. but no… yet again, I’m the bad guy.

Either way – let’s get to our Something In Review: Squid Game

Ok, here we go!

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Hey Somethings, I actually had to go back and look through some of my old blog posts to see if I’ve talked about this, and I was surprised to find out that I hadn’t! If the ending of a horror movie ends with the director saying things like, ‘Well, what do YOU think it means?’ like they are your therapist, you may have just watched an arthouse horror movie.

“But Hatton,” you ask, “what IS an elevated/arthouse horror movie?”

Well, it’s a movie that is trying to hide a deeper message beneath its horror. This isn’t new, as films like Jacob’s Ladder (1990), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and even Godzilla (1954) were talking about one thing under the guise of scares. Nowadays though, it is a twofold defense mechanism for:

* Movies that have a deeper message
* Movies that want you to think they have a deeper message
* People who don’t want to admit they like horror movies

Movies like Get Out, with its obvious racial overtones use the vehicle of horror to really turn a topic on its head and make you uncomfortable in your own world. Mother is a story of Christian mythology. Babadook is about abuse. These movies tell an engrossing tale of scares while also at the end give you something to think about. Bad arthouse horror, on the other hand, gives you attempts at symbolism that are never explained and plotholes that you hope are intentional until you get to the credits and you end up confused. The truth is, a good percentage of horror movies out there have some other meaning, intentional or not, and brushing aside any movie because its message isn’t deeply imbedded enough is, at the very least, insulting to the people involved. To sit and look at a movie like Hereditary (2018) or Neon Demon (2016) and comment about how the deeper message is beneath the surface and the horror is what you feel and.. well, I could go on, is to ignore that horror has been telling interesting stories about the human condition since the first vampires were born of fears of porphyria and rabies.

In the future, at the end of a movie, you sit there scratching your head while your one friend who only vapes artisanal clove oil and refers to your fruit salad as a ‘reconstructed charcuterie’ tells you how deep the film you just watched is. It’s ok to hate the movie.. it’s ok to think it was stupid.. it’s ok to want a clear answer to your narrative tales.. and it’s ok to kick that dude out, because seriously, you don’t need that kind of negativity.

Back in the day, those 30 second Tiktok clips used to come in longer formats – 3 – 5 minutes at a clip… we called them songs.  A musician would then take 10 or so of them and make an entire album of them!  Crazy times.

To add to that, those albums used to have art and liner notes and production information and lyrics… and this was literally every song ever.  You can still see the remnants of these forgotten artifacts when you load one of those tracks on iTunes and see the square of prety colors.  Imagine that, on a shelf.. like you are some sort of art collector!  Amazing, really.

Well, the Somethings remember that time well and we settle in to talk about not the music – not the artist – but our favorite album covers.

Ready? Ok, here we go!

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Hey Somethings… PCR here.

I know a while ago I gave you my thoughts on AHS : Double Feature and.. at the time, it was rather rosy and hopeful…

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

I have no idea who pitched Season 10, or who OK’d it, but whoever pitched it needs a raise, and whoever OK’d it needs to be fired.  If you can pitch something that turned out like Season 10 did, and can get people to buy into it.. you need to be doing/selling/pitching bigger things than a season of a TV series that.. at this point.. may have gone on too long.

Don’t get me wrong, Red Tide had a lot that I liked (as noted in my previous blog) but they way it was ended was waaaaayy too rushed.  A majority of AHS seasons have been 10 or more episodes, and I think Red Tide could have been a much better story had they given it a full 10.  I know that cancels the whole ‘Double Feature’ vibe they were going for…but when it was done as shitty as this was, things need to be rethought.

That being said, I was really digging the thought and concept of Death Valley…until I found out it was only 4 episodes.

In my opinion, AHS needs to take a long, hard look at itself in the mirror and figure out what worked and what didn’t over the 10 seasons it’s been on.  My biggest fear is that “American Horror StorieS” have given them the idea that they can tell short, non-connected stories that are just as entertaining as their full seasons…and it’s my belief that that kind of thinking is what got us Double Feature.

I can’t even call Double Feature my least favorite season because, to be honest, it didn’t feel like an actual season.

Whatever you call it, and whatever you thought of it…this is one “Double Feature” I wish I had walked out of.

Do you enjoy the Evil Dead series? Or are you a goody two shoes? goody two shoes goody goody two shoes

You don’t like that? ………..screw

Ok, I swear, I’m not just being pithy – it’s just hard to not get an edge of snark in your voice when you are talking about Bruce Campbell in his most famous role of none other than the chainsaw wielding, S-Mart selling, boomstick threatening, words sayin, Ash!

Did his three seasons of horror comedy knock those Deadites down or was that just pillow talk, baby?

Find out on this, the last of our SpoooOooktacular October episodes on, The End: Ash vs. Evil Dead

Ok here we……… groovy!

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Before I get into this week’s topic – let me just say that this post includes some spoilers for Halloween Kills.  If you haven’t seen it and you don’t want to have some of it spoiled for you – I suggest you skip this one.

Are they gone?

Ok, good.  We didn’t want them here anyway.

I didn’t want to review Halloween Kills as much as I wanted to talk about what it did right and wrong. You see, the 2018 relaunch/new timeline/thing was, quite literally, the best Halloween movie I have ever seen.  Of course it is hard to compare it to the 70’s original, but that movie defined the tropes of the ‘unkillable monster kills kids’ genre, but with that said, it did what no other Halloween movie had done other than the original… it engaged me.

Now, I love slasher flicks, obviously – but the reason you just don’t see that many is because the genre is stale with a rare exception (See: Terrifier, The Strangers) and there doesn’t feel like much more you can staple on to the old classics of Jason and Michael. But Halloween turns itself around. It isn’t a movie about a monster hunting a woman – it is about a woman who is prepared to kill the monster. It’s Laurie Strode’s movie. She isn’t the final girl – she is the protagonist.

Halloween Kills, as the middle chapter of the preordained trilogy, had hard shoes to fill.  How do you keep the two away from each other so you can get to the actual really real final showdown, but also continue to try and turn the genre on its head?

You show what the PTSD of this monster caused to the town, the collective character of Haddonfield.  With literal pitchforks in hand, this is a story of a hundred people who think they are just like Laurie Strode. They feel guilt about surviving, fear over Myers’ inevitable return, pain at what they’ve lost… and collectively they try and face Michael — and inevitably, they fail.  It really is a brilliant concept, and I bet a few passes around with great writers could have evolved it into a movie just as strong as 2018’s was, but it can’t help but lean into its tropes, bury itself like a hatchet into the skulls of its viewer, and misses every mark along the way.

Somehow, the first film subverts its tropes and has ascended to easily the greatest slasher film of the last decade – and yet, even with a brilliant take on a sequel, the most recent film can’t help but feel like it has taken a step right back into what made people bored with the slasher genre to begin with.

I hope the final act continues the trend of giving us a different story than the one we expect. We’ve seen slashers die before, hell, we’ve seen Michael Myers die a couple of times.. the key is to make us still surprised by the idea.

Sure, Raimi did shakycam first… but did he give an actor a camera and tell them to just act like a dickweed for a few days and then scare the bajeezus out of him?  No, that is Blair Witch territory – a movie franchise you either love or hate.

Maybe you love it because you fell for the gimmick of a movie that might have been real. Maybe you loathe the handicam films that it spawned. Perhaps, you love the whole mythos of the Burkittsville, MD creepy cryptid and need to know everything…

No matter what your stance is, they did a movie in 2016 that you didn’t see – and we’re going to review it. Is it as original as the first one? Does it answer the questions we threw into the damned river? Does it blow snotbubbles and apologize?  Find out on Something In Review!

Ok, here we go.. standing in the corner…

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