Craig Reviews Summer 2012 Anime

* MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*


Much like the previous season, I initially found that there was little to tempt me in this new season's bag of tricks. Unlike the Spring season however, I'm still feeling that way after giving everything a try. There's nothing in this season that feels half as exciting as Space Brothers or Polar Bear Cafe (so I'm very glad that both are still airing!) and that's unfortunate. It's a mixed bag certainly, and there are several shows that I am at least mildly interested in after giving them a shot, but this season is lacking any real big hitters so far. Of course, in much the same way as a show can start off strong and ultimately disappoint (*cough*Mouretsu Pirates*cough*), there's always a chance that these series could end up becoming really special, and certainly some of the ideas floating around this season have the potential to do so. It's just unfortunate then that a lot of this season's efforts seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot.

Craig Reviews Spring 2012 TV Finales

*VERY BIG SPOILER WARNING*


It's that time of year again, and the setpieces, surprises and gut-wrenching cliffhangers have all reared their heads once more. Having ended up behind on the TV shows I'd been reviewing after my holiday I had decided to give up on the reviews for the rest of the season, since anything I posted would be weeks out of date anyway. However, with finales popping up everywhere I couldn't resist the opportunity to post some brief thoughts on them, as well as taking a look back at the season as a whole. There will be very big spoilers here I'm afraid, so if you're watching Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, 30 Rock, Smash, GCB, Once Upon A Time or Glee and haven't reached the season finale yet, you should probably slowly back away right about now.

Craig Goes To Japan

Not really a review as such this time around, but I've just returned from a holiday in the Kansai region of Japan (Hence the lack of reviews recently), and I wanted to write a little bit about what I got up to. This was my third trip to the area, but my partner's first holiday anywhere outside of the UK, and it was also the longest I've stayed in the region. Since Golden Week meant that the prices for domestic flights had leapt up we had to pick one location and stick with it for the full nine days, and while Tokyo is certainly an amazing experience, I personally find the Kansai region to be a much more interesting and diverse area. First things first, I have to sing the praises of the Kansai Thru Pass, which makes travelling around the region so incredibly easy. Our plan of action is always to use Osaka as a hub and make a lot of day trips out of the city, and the Thru Pass is absolutely perfect for that. 5000 Yen gets you three days of travel on practically all of Kansai's major private railway lines, including the Osaka subway, as well as a wide array of bus services and even the odd cablecar. 5000 Yen can seem like a lot of money at first, but even just using the subway around Osaka the value of the pass becomes apparent, and once you start making excursions out of the city it becomes a no-brainer. I really cannot recommend it enough if you're travelling to the region. Having one ticket to cover all of your travel needs for 3 days is extremely useful anyway, and removes a lot of stress from the experience. That it's such good value for money is the icing the cake. Now that that's out of the way, I guess I'll start at the start.

Craig Reviews South Park: I Should Have Never Gone Ziplining

*SPOILER WARNING*


This week's episode is a really good example of bad South Park. It takes one joke, squeezes it for every laugh it was worth, then keeps squeezing it anyway until the episode is left flailing around in it's final minutes for anything funny enough to end on. An all-out parody of Discovery Channel-style documentaries, the episode is presented in the format of those shows, complete with a narrator and interview footage, the joke being that instead of anything dramatic happening the boys are having a disastrously boring day. It's interesting at first, but the premise ultimately falls flat. Not even an extremely weird final chapter can save the episode, instead only coming off as desperate.

Craig Reviews Spring 2012 Anime

I came into this season expecting to finally get the chance to start working my way through Gintama, since I couldn't find anything that really appealed to me in the previews I'd seen. Curiosity has ended up getting the better of me though, and I've found myself picking up quite a few of the new series, which is no bad thing. It's looking like there are a lot of potentially great series this season (though why people are still watching Queen's Blade is beyond me, guess that's the power of boobs!), and a select few have really impressed with their opening episodes. Of course, it's difficult to really judge a series based on the first couple of episodes alone, and several of these could go on to disappoint, but I thought I'd put up some impressions based on what I've seen so far, while everything is still fresh.

Craig Reviews Smash: Understudy

*SPOILER WARNING*

We’re back to the musical this week, as Bombshell waits for it’s star to arrive. Having randomly re-watched The Producers last week I was quite excited to spot Uma Thurman’s name in the opening credits, but it soon becomes clear that she’s barely going to be in the episode at all, as this week’s episode revolves almost completely around her character not showing up. Am I the only person who thinks it’s slightly weird that Uma Thurman is playing a character rather than herself? They spent all that time name-dropping actual actresses and then they get an actual movie star to play a fictional movie star. Anyway, Uma aside, since she has very little impact on the episode outside of not being in it, Understudy was entertaining enough, though I found that things started to get a little too predictable this week.

Craig Reviews South Park: Butterballs

*SPOILER WARNING*

‘Butterballs’ immediately felt like it had the makings of a great South Park episode. A brief, and one-sided, conversation with Cartman on the subject of girls in music videos provides a giggle, and then we find out that the episode will be taking a look at bullying. Straight away it felt absolutely right for South Park to be tackling this. It’s topical, given the current hype surrounding the movie ‘Bully’, but it’s also an ever-present, pervading issue, one that South Park’s often witty approach could do wonders with. Unfortunately the episode fails on almost every count. It becomes clear halfway through the episode, if not earlier, that ‘Butterballs’ isn’t really sure what it wants it’s message to be, which seems like dangerous ground to be on when dealing with bullying. To make up for the lack of anything real to say on the subject the episode resorts to that time-honoured South Park tradition of repeating the same joke over and over, and while there are a couple of undeniably funny references, this ends up being a really weak episode of South Park.

Craig Reviews Smash: Hell On Earth

*SPOILER WARNING*


Not much happened on Smash this week, as the show seems to be stalling, much like the Marilyn musical, which now has a name at least! There was, however, just enough development to make for an interesting and entertaining episode, with several key characters getting in on the drama. It isn’t entirely without it’s flaws, but overall this was one of the better episodes of Smash so far, perhaps because it stopped and took a breath for a moment. At any rate, it’s definitely an improvement over last week’s disappointing filler.

Craig Reviews South Park: Jewpacabra

*SPOILER WARNING*


I found myself a little hesitant when it came to this week’s episode of South Park, especially coming off the back of two great episodes. After all, while the Cartman-centric episodes are often very good, the character’s anti-Semitism is hardly new territory, and at this point in the series it’s really not enough to carry a whole episode anymore. Fortunately the episode doesn’t fare quite as badly as I’d imagined. It’s not a great episode by any means, and it certainly feels a bit run of the mill after the two previous episodes, but it is undeniably funny, and there’s not a recycled joke in sight.

Craig Reviews Smash: The Coup

*SPOILER WARNING*

I have to admit that when I saw the title for this episode I was very excited by the possibilities, so maybe I was just coming into it with unreasonably high expectations, but unfortunately the episode really didn’t deliver. The events of The Coup aren’t nearly as dramatic as the title would suggest, and with no musical to focus on the show seemed to be floundering this week. It’s all about the personal lives once again, and frankly it’s a little bit boring. I remain intrigued to see where the show is going, but I definitely felt that this episode needed a more solid direction to take. Hopefully this was simply the means to an end that we’re currently unaware of, but right now it just seems like a very unnecessary episode.

Craig Reviews GCB: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing

*SPOILER WARNING*


I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by this episode of GCB, even though it was as entertaining to watch as ever. The plot was the problem this week, as it all but stalled for some reason, and outside of one notable exception everything reverts back to where we started by the end of the episode. The comedy is great as usual, with a lot of big laughs, but it can’t carry the show completely. The episode was very predictable, and on a show all about the supposed secrets of this community predictable is not really where you want to be.

Craig Reviews South Park: Faith Hilling

*SPOILER WARNING*

When I heard earlier in the week that South Park would be dealing with the Republican debates this week the potential for mockery seemed endless, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the oddity that was ‘Faith Hilling’. This episode was beyond weird, and in a way it says a lot about the state of South Park at the moment, especially the final seconds of the episode. That recycled humour that many have criticised the show for recently was extremely prevalent in this episode, in fact in a way it almost seemed like Matt and Trey were revelling in creating an episode that would give those criticising the show, myself included, some more ammo. Yet, somehow, this ended up being one of the funniest episodes in recent memory, even if it is a one-trick pony, because the one trick this pony knows is really hilarious.

Craig Reviews The River

*SPOILER WARNING*


I came into this series with high hopes that this could end up being a really interesting TV event. I’ve only seen the first Paranormal Activity film, and I enjoyed it greatly, and I seem to be one of the few people out there who isn’t completely sick of the whole found footage gimmick yet, so I was looking forward to seeing what Oren Peli could bring to a horror miniseries. Unfortunately the show does virtually nothing new or exciting; instead it’s an almost-exact carbon copy of Paranormal Activity in every way, except set in a jungle. It’s consistently ridiculous, and often derivative, filled with horror tropes that are already over-used, making for a series that feels stale at best, and is laughable at it’s worst.

Craig Reviews Smash: The Workshop

*SPOILER WARNING*


A lot of things finally came to a head in this week’s episode of Smash, making for one of the most interesting episodes so far. This was the first time that the ‘Let’s make a musical!’ half of the show really felt properly combined with the personal drama half, and by the end of the episode pretty much everyone had something to be frowning about. Indeed, we even have doubts for the first time over whether Marilyn: The Musical will even get made, but it turns out that this show gets really interesting when everything goes wrong.

Craig Reviews GCB: Love Is Patient

*SPOILER WARNING*


This episode felt a lot more focused than the first two episodes of the series, which I think the show really needed after two episodes that, while very much enjoyable, were quite tightly packed in terms of plot. This is a much more relaxed episode, in that there's not a a whole lot of plot going on, but that's not to say it was boring. There was a lot more humour in this episode, making for the funniest episode so far, and getting to know a bit more about the not-so-private lives of Carlene, Sharon and Cricket remains as enjoyable as it was for the first two episodes. The episode did admittedly leave me craving more story development once it had finished, but I guess we've always got next week for that.

Craig Reviews The Hunger Games

*SPOILER WARNING*

To say that I was looking forward to seeing The Hunger Games would be a dramatic understatement. I started reading the books last year, after my Twitter feed suddenly lit up with talk of the film on the day that the first pictures of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss were released, and I found myself hooked immediately. As the film drew closer I did however find myself slightly worried that it couldn’t live up to the hype. After all, it was the relentless tension that kept me glued to the book, and now that I knew the story, would the film be able to recreate that rush that I got at the end of every chapter? Fortunately, the answer is no. Yes, you read that right. The film is not as intense as the book in a lot of ways, but it has a gripping presence that is all it’s own. In condensing the source material the film manages to be both enjoyable for fans of the book, who will no doubt be flocking to cinemas, as well a great film in it’s own right, one that will hopefully introduce a lot more people to Katniss Everdeen.

Craig Reviews South Park: Cash For Gold

*SPOILER WARNING*

I’m happy to report that this week we finally got a great episode of South Park again! It’s been a while, and after last week’s episode I was not holding out much hope, but this was a clever, relevant and even at times poignant episode. There was barely any toilet humour in sight this week, and no recycled jokes, instead we get a ton of really smart humour as the boys tackled the recent emergence of Cash For Gold stores, in an episode that felt really driven and focused for the first time in a long time. I’m not about to start praising a glorious return to the old ways for South Park, after all even last season had it’s flashes of inspiration, but if this is any indication of things to come then I’m very excited indeed.

Craig Reviews Resident Evil: Revelations

I've had this game since it launched back in January, and initially enjoyed it greatly. My last experience with the Resident Evil franchise was Resident Evil 4, which remains one of my favourite games, and towards the start at least this game bears a lot of resemblance to it's excellent predecessor. Halfway through however, the tense atmosphere dissipates and leaves an action-heavy, and somewhat tiring, point-and-shoot game in it’s place. At this point I stalled for a long time, but with Kid Icarus: Uprising just days away I decided it was finally time to finish the campaign mode at least once. I’m glad I did as the last few chapters did a lot to make up for the slightly unfocused middle section, with some great action setpieces that really make the game stand out from anything else available on 3DS at the moment.

Craig Reviews Smash: Chemistry

*SPOILER WARNING*


Well, this was a fairly strange episode, in that it somehow managed to make me hate practically every single character, and yet I came out on the other side liking the series even more. This is another less Marilyn-centric episode, along the lines of episode 3 which I really did not enjoy. Fortunately this episode fares a lot better because, for the most part, all of the drama and silly decisions this week are a bit more believable. That’s not to say it’s perfect, as Julia and Michael’s whole thing remains a thorn in my side, but for the most part it’s an improvement.

Craig Reviews GCB: Hell Hath No Fury

*SPOILER WARNING*


GCB’s second episode manages to keep all of the bitchy charm that made the opening episode so enjoyable, and also developed a few more tantalising story-lines along the way. Perhaps not as many as I'd have liked, and a couple of elements fell a bit flat this week, but the show remains engaging and fun regardless. Kristin Chenoweth steals every scene she’s in yet again as the delightfully vicious Carlene Cockburn, but the rest of the cast are more than able to keep up, and it was nice to see a few characters get a little more fleshed out this week. This series had a lot going for it after it’s first episode, the comedy was spot on, the cast were all great, and the plot was intriguing, if not gripping. Thankfully ‘Hell Hath No Fury’ proved that the season-opener was anything but a fluke.

Craig Reviews South Park: Reverse Cowgirl

*SPOILER WARNING*

This was not the episode that South Park needed to return with; in fact it only served as a reminder of everything that’s been wrong with the series recently. Season 15 was generally weak, it had moments of genius, but overall the show was bogged down in mediocre, single-joke episodes that quickly outstayed their welcome. There was a faint glimmer of hope at the mid-season point, with a conversation between Randy and Sharon in ‘You’re Getting Old’ that was so clearly an admission from Matt Stone and Trey Parker that the show was no longer something they loved doing. Yet, here we are starting the next season, with no end in sight and nothing has changed. It’s such a shame to have to see a show that I once loved end up this way, continuing to air for no other reason than simply because it can. South Park has admittedly always had a ‘see what we can throw together in a week’ kind of approach, and it kept the show fresh for so long, but it’s now painfully apparent that the show is out of ideas.

Craig Reviews Bodacious Space Pirates: Episodes 1-10

It seemed, at first, that the Winter 2012 anime season held very little of interest for me. There’s the very cute fluff that is ‘Poyopoyo’, and the continuation of one of my favourite series, ‘Natsume Yuujinchou Shi’, but outside of those two series I could find very little that appealed to me. With some hesitation I decided to give the first episode of ‘Bodacious Space Pirates’ a try. My expectations were low, mostly due to the truly awful English name, but I was surprised to find that the show is actually pretty sophisticated. Yes, it’s high school girls in space, but there’s a lot more substance here than you’d expect, and plenty of style too.

Craig Reviews The Walking Dead: Better Angels

*SPOILER WARNING*

Wow. This show has needed this episode for a while now, and it was just about worth the wait. In my personal opinion the second season of this series has so far not lived up to the thrilling first season. Perhaps it’s just that the first season was a lot shorter than the second, but ever since our group of survivors found the farm it feels like we’ve just been stalling. There’s a lot of talking, a lot of standing around, and precious little zombie slaughtering. The hunt for Sophia was so drawn out that we all knew what had to be coming long before it did, making the first half of the season more than a little bit dull. I had hoped that the mid-season finale would prove to be the catalyst that got things moving again, but four episodes in and the series was in much the same position that it has been since this season began. Last week’s ‘Judge, Jury, Executioner’ was a low-point right up until it’s brutal ending. I won’t say I’m glad that Dale died, I felt he was a great character who had an important voice within in the show, but I am certainly glad that something finally happened to give this show the kick-start it’s been needing so desperately.

Craig Reviews Smash: Episode 5 - Let's Be Bad

*SPOILER WARNING*

This was an interesting episode. It managed to keep the momentum of last week’s great Marilyn-centric episode, while at the same time doing quite a lot of work towards making episode three’s less than stellar plot twists feel a bit more integrated into the story. It wasn’t necessarily a successful pursuit all of the time, but for better or worse those twists are here to stay now. The episode gets most of it’s plot points rolling in one scene within the first few minutes. One of this show’s great virtues when it comes to plot is that everyone’s always in a rush, there’s not much dithering going on here!  In one fell swoop we get to see that Eileen has some worries about material for the show, specifically that there’s not enough of it, we find out that Tom is having second thoughts about his date, because he’s a lawyer who says ‘wow’ a lot, and worryingly we discover that Julia’s husband is conveniently out of town and Michael wants to talk. Strictly about the musical of course, but we all know where that’s going. Most interestingly the scene seems to set up a switching of allegiances of sorts in Derek, from Ivy to Karen, which continues throughout the episode and provides the most interesting thread of the week in an episode that’s positively fit to burst.

Craig Reviews GCB: Episode 1 - Pilot

*SPOILER WARNING*

I love Kristin Chenoweth. She's the reason I finally gave in and watched The West Wing. She led me to the brilliant Pushing Daisies. Now she has brought me to GCB, a new comedy drama focusing on the somewhat salacious lives of a tight-knit and very, very Christian community. The first I heard of Good Christian Bitches, to use it's much better full title, was when a picture appeared in my Facebook feed with a string of comments saying how offensive this show was. This was before the episode had even aired, and the strong reaction immediately caught my interest. It seems people were offended by the mere prospect of Christians being shown in a bad light on American TV. I don't know what everyone was worried about because, to be quite frank, this show has the most likeable cast of Christian characters I've come across, and it's a really entertaining pilot to boot!

Craig Reviews Smash: Episode 4 - The Cost Of Art

*SPOILER WARNING*

This episode needed to do a lot to correct last week’s inexplicable missteps, but thankfully it managed it, delivering on almost every front and making for the most enjoyable episode since the pilot. We’re thrown straight back into Marilyn: The Musical as we join Karen on her first day on the workshop as part of the ensemble, and Eileen is facing some financial issues thanks to her husband. Bet she wishes she’d stopped after the first Manhattan to the face now! Meanwhile Ivy is enjoying her star status a little too much as she lords it over Karen. For someone who spent 10 years in the ensemble she comes off as extremely ungracious in this episode, in fact one might even go so far as to say she’s suddenly become a full-on mega-bitch. But it’s not just Ivy who has it in for Karen this week, as she is shunned by practically everyone in the workshop and is repeatedly pushed out of performances altogether. It’s an easy storyline but it’s relatable, we’ve all been an outsider before, and while the episode plays out the way these stories always do, it does so with a lot more style than most others.

Craig Reviews Smash: Episode 3 - Enter Mr. DiMaggio

*SPOILER WARNING*


I do not like this episode. There, I said it. It’s a poor episode that squanders the excellent work laid down in the first two episodes. It’s an episode that feels contrived and forced far too often, which is very disappointing after two episodes that worked so hard to avoid such pitfalls. We open on Derek and Ivy doing the nasty again, followed swiftly by a scene in which Ivy wrestles with her conscience over whether or not she got the part because she’s sleeping with Derek. One can’t help but wonder why it is she didn’t seem to mind too much when she was writhing around on top of him moments ago. Then we get the awkward Brit-off between Derek and Dev, which I’m sure was supposed to be funny. It then becomes apparent that this episode will revolve around the casting of Joe DiMaggio, in particular Michael Swift, a character who we just don’t care about, and in trying to make us care about this the episode makes an awful lot of missteps.

Craig Reviews Smash: Episode 2 - The Callback

*SPOILER WARNING*


Another slightly unnecessary musical opening aside, though 'Call Me' is an improvement on 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow at least, this episode is very much focussed on the rivalry between Karen and Ivy. We even get 'Let Me Be Your Star' again early on, just to really bring that home. Not that I'm complaining, that song is still utterly brilliant, and it’s given a new context within the musical itself that keeps it interesting. Things take a turn for the bitchy all round early on in the episode as a friend of Ivy’s starts spying on Karen, and Julia gets her claws into Ellis, who really is very annoying. Saying ‘I think Marilyn would make a good musical’ isn’t really the same thing as creating the musical, so the sub-plot that seems to be going on with Ellis right now seems a bit superfluous, drama for the sake of adding drama perhaps.

Craig Reviews Smash: Episode 1 - Pilot

*SPOILER WARNING*

I’d like to kick things off on here with one of my new favourite shows, Smash. My love for musical theatre is not exactly a secret, but I was still a little apprehensive about the show.  A lot of what I was hearing was along the lines of “this would never exist without Glee.”, and being a very disillusioned Glee fan I took that to be a bad thing. I eventually came around and gave the first episode a go, and I’m so glad I did. Glee on its best day does not have a patch on this show so far, and they’re so completely different (except for all the singing) that I can’t help but wonder where all those comparisons were coming from to begin with. This a show that I’ll be reviewing each episode, as it’s really piqued my interest, but to do that I’ve got some catching up to do. So, where better to start than the start!