September 14, 2015
Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil Rush. I've decided to just make this blog almost entirely about Gravity Falls because I just really enjoy typing detailed descriptions of episodes of that TV show on the Internet. The next blog post will probably not be about it due to how I'll have to write it before the next new episode airs on September 21, so this one will be on the episode that aired on September 7- The Last Mabelcorn.
The episode begins with Bill Cipher coming to Great-Uncle Ford in a nightmare and boasting of his plans to unleash armageddon upon Gravity Falls and later the world. The next morning, Grunkle Stan is doing one of his trademark crimes- what I thought was "pog trafficking" when it was mentioned in the previous episode I learned is actually "pug trafficking"- a pretty obvious pun on drug trafficking, made even more obvious when we find Stan speaking in Spanish to a Hispanic man telling him that he has twenty-four hours to get a bunch of barrels with pug dogs in them across the southern border in a pickup truck. How the show is still rated TV-Y7 is beyond me. Meanwhile, Ford asks Dipper and Mabel if they've ever seen the symbol of Bill Cipher, which they respond to by telling of their encounters with Bill in the episodes "Dreamscapers" and "Sock Opera". Ford knows how to protect the Mystery Shack from Bill's reality-warping abilities and mind manipulation, and one of the ingredients required to make a "demon-shield" is a piece of unicorn hair. Mabel, being the hyper-immature twelve-year-old girl that she is, is more than willing to go into an Enchanted Forest that is conveniently within walking distance, and brings Candy, Grenda, and Wendy along. Candy hopes to lick a unicorn's neck because of a legend that it would taste like her favorite flavor if she did, Grenda somehow believes she'll be able to become one, and Wendy, who doesn't believe in unicorns (considering all of the really bizarre things in the Gravity Falls world, unicorns seem like one of the more realistic things for the characters to come across), just wants to keep the girls safe. After Grenda sings a "troll song" to reveal the cave the unicorns live in, they come across one named Celestebellebethebelle (voiced by Sam Marin, the voice of Benson, Pops, and Muscle Man on Cartoon Network's Regular Show, and doing an exaggerated effeminate voice), a parody of Princess Celestia from the once-famous kids'-cartoon-with-a-surprisingly-large-adult-following My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. She appears to look into Mabel's heart and says that she'll only allow the gang to take a piece of her hair if she's pure-of-heart, and says that Mabel is not. Desperate, Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Wendy do a variety of good deeds around Gravity Falls, such as helping snails on leaves, planting trees (and accidentally trapping people in their homes in the process by planting too close to their front doors), putting a smiley balloon on Stan's face (which we quickly discover is a major choking hazard), and donating more blood than is healthy for one sitting. And yet even after all of that, Celestebellebethebelle tells Mabel that she's still not pure-of-heart, that she shouldn't do good deeds just to get noticed, and that it's not her fault that Mabel's a bad person, which causes Mabel to run off crying and trying to think of the best good deed conceivable. Wendy can tell that something fishy is going on, so while Mabel is wallowing in self-pity and doubt, Wendy, Candy and Grenda raid a gnome tavern in the forest to get help finding a unicorn's weakness. They make a trade with a criminal gnome for knockout magic in exchange for "butterfly dust", but also manage to turn the exchange into a sting operation to get the gnome criminal arrested. What? The writers want to make sure that people know that Candy, Grenda, and Wendy are still the good guys/girls, so they kind of had to make them snitches when putting them in a situation that is essentially a sort-of-kid-friendly depiction of a drug deal (again, why isn't this show at least rated TV-PG?). The girls minus Mabel try to sneak into the unicorn cave at night to knock Celesebellebethebelle out and steal a piece of her hair, but Mabel tries to stop them because of how immoral that kind of thing would be under most circumstances. Celestebellebethebelle wakes up on her own and notices the pair of scissors that Mabel took from Wendy in her hands and believes that Mabel was the one who tries to steal a piece of her hair. Mabel weeps that she just wants to be good like Celestebellebethebelle, which is when two more male unicorns, who seem to be parodies of characters from the old YouTube video Charlie The Unicorn, come out from deeper within the cave and reveal that unicorn horns cannot actually see into your heart and measure how good you are. All they can do is make glitter, point at sunsets, and play rave music. They only pretend to be able to see into human's hearts because they want to be left alone, and boast that they have more hair than they know what to do with and refuse to share it to tick humans off. Furious that the unicorns are clearly much more immoral than Mabel ever could be, the girls get into a brutal (but mostly off-screen) fight with the unicorns.
Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Ford takes Dipper to a secret laboratory beneath the Mystery Shack that not even Stan knows of. Ford tells Dipper that if they can't Bill-proof the shack, they'll have to Bill-proof their minds. Ford's mind is already Bill-proof thanks to a metal plate in his head, so he straps Dipper to a mind-reading contraption. Some of Dipper's thoughts laid out on the monitor are the lyrics to "Disco Girl" by BABBA, a parody of "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, how psyched he is to know the author of the journals, and a few potentially-inappropriate thoughts about Wendy. Ford wants to scan Dipper's mind so he'll know how to protect Dipper in a way that matches his mind perfectly. The process is taking a few hours, and Dipper feels that Ford is not sharing as much about his history with Bill as he ought to, so he attempts to put the mind-reading helmet on Ford. When that happens, the image of Bill appears on the mind-reading screen, some blankets on the wall are pushed away revealing what almost looks like things that would be found in a shrine to Bill, and Ford wakes up, but his glasses are all foggy and he's talking in a very ominous way. Dipper now believes that Ford is a voluntary host of Bill and that they are working together to achieve Bill's ultimate goal. He even thinks that when Ford is about to say "please" but trips over the word, Ford's going to say "pine tree", the name Bill calls Dipper because of his place on the Bill Cipher Wheel. Dipper tries to keep the multiverse bubble from "Bord" (Bill/Ford) and takes the memory-eraser gun in the lab and attempts to erase Bill from his great-uncle's mind, which is essentially killing Bill. After the laser blast from the gun bounces off of Ford's glasses and around the room, Ford unfogs his glasses and reveals that he was never under Bill control or working with him. He finally reveals his history with Bill to Dipper. When Ford was much younger, after first seeing the symbols that represent him in a cave, he took a nap and had a dream in which Bill came to him. At this point, Bill seemed like a benevolent entity to Ford, and was allowed in and out of his mind at will to help Ford with his research. However, after seeing the mental scarring Bill put on Fiddleford McGucket when he first tested the portal, Ford learned of Bill's true nature and knew he had to shut down the portal. It's why he was so mad at Stan for reactivating it and why he dismantled it and confined its energy to a bubble- he couldn't risk anything from Bill's Nightmare Realm making its way into the physical world, even if it meant never coming back to his home dimension. Dipper and Ford think that they have failed to Bill-proof either the shack or their minds, but that's when Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and Wendy return to the shack with a lock of unicorn hair- and covered in some glittery substance implied to be unicorn blood. They were even given treasure just so that they'd leave the unicorns alone. Dipper and Ford once more say that Mabel is the most pure-hearted person they know, but Mabel responds by saying that morality is relative- possibly the most potentially controversial message to ever be put out by a Disney cartoon with a youth audience- allowing Stan to, as if almost on cue, run on-and-off-screen grabbing as much of the treasure as his arms can carry while screaming "MONEY!!!" During the credits, Dipper and Ford make the shield that will keep Bill from getting to anyone inside the Mystery Shack, but because Bill is always watching from his realm, he sees this happen, and declares that if he can't possess or make a deal with anyone inside the Shack, he'll just have to possess or make a deal with someone on the outside. The episode's last image is Bill's eye turning into a slot machine wheel of all of the characters in Gravity Falls besides Dipper, Mabel, Stan, and Ford that he can rope into his game and turn against the Pines family.
Don't let all of the unicorns and glitter fool you, this is probably the darkest Gravity Falls episode to date, in terms of black comedy, adult references, and thematic intensity. From the super-freaky nightmare Ford has with Bill in it at the beginning to the pug trafficking to Mabel donating enough blood to make herself pass out to the mind-reading machine showing Dipper thinking about Wendy in a red bikini to the butterfly dust deal to Dipper being forced into what was essentially a kill-or-be-killed situation and handling a gun (even though it's a nonlethal memory eraser gun and not an extremely dangerous weapon) to Mabel and her friends being drenched in glittery unicorn blood with their usual smiles on their faces, it's surprising how at least Season 2 of the show isn't rated TV-PG-DV. You would think that the "Romance In Settler's Times" statue from Season 2 Episode 7 "Society of the Blind Eye" would've attracted the attention of Disney XD's TV rating board enough to make them bump the rating up, but, as it goes with the title, they turned a blind eye to that. Of course, the most shocking thing about "The Last Mabelcorn" was Mabel saying that morality is relative. While this is a message that I agree with to an extent, putting this message in a show that was at least at one point meant to be watched by kids has the potential to open a Pandora's Box of questions for parents from their kids that probably shouldn't be answered until the kids are at least forty. Mabel was meant to be a role model for girls and a symbol to have fun whenever you can, be yourself, and not be defined by controlling popularity standards, but now she could be a symbol for a new anarchist, Frederich Nietzsche-style anti-morality movement. OK, I know that's a major stretch, but Alex Hirsch and his writing team should probably think about who they're writing Gravity Falls for and what audience they want to speak to. Kids and up? Preteens and up? Teens and up? Adults? They'd be a lot less creatively stifled if Disney XD changed the rating to TV-PG-DV, if it were moved to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, or if Disney XD created its own Adult Swim-like nighttime block, because when the over-the-head jokes are not over the head in the slightest, you should probably think about whether your "kids's show" is really such. This was not a bad episode, in fact, it was one of my favorites of the entire series so far in terms of story, but not exactly my favorite because of how Bill only appeared in Ford's nightmare, in flashbacks, and at the very end, I'm just saying that they should've been a little more careful with the "morality is relative" message. 8/10.
So what happens next? The next episode is called "Roadside Attraction". This time around, Stan is going to take Dipper, Mabel, Candy, Grenda, and possibly some others on a road trip to sabotage the business of all of the other tourist traps in the county, because as many businessmen believe, true success only comes from the failure of all possible competition. The ads for this episode make it look like a much lighter episode than the past episode, but the character that's being introduced may change that perception. Comedienne Chelsea Peretti, a frequent high-ranker on lists of funniest Twitter accounts, is supposed to guest-star as a new character named Darlene, who was mentioned by Alex Hirsch in an interview to preview the second half of Season 2 as one of the scariest characters ever conceived by the Gravity Falls writing team. To me, she sounds like either the owner of a rival tourist trap, a potential love interest for Stan, or both of these things rather than a super-scary woman. Perhaps she'll be all three of these things. We'll see when it airs on Monday, September 21 at 8:30 P. M. (cue end of Gravity Falls theme song). But first off, who will Bill make a deal with and/or possess? It would probably be one of the more important characters. Some dialogue and codes from the episode imply that it might be Soos because of the code at the end of this episode that, when decoded, says "The simple man with many fears will often listen to what he hears." However, Bill has implied that Soos may not really be as "simple" as he lets on, and may only be pretending to be dumb to mess with everyone and, in a way, have control over them. It could be Wendy because of her importance and how many believe that the ice bag on the Bill Cipher Wheel is meant to represent her because she's as cool as ice and is given ice to heal her eye in Season 1 Episode 9 "The Time Traveler's Pig", though she's probably safe because of how often she is in the Mystery Shack. Candy and Grenda's frequent appearances may make them suspect to Bill-harassment, but they don't seem important enough for any serious arcs of the show, so I won't count them too high. Old Man McGucket seems like a likely candidate because of his history with Bill, and it will be interesting if he remembers Bill or not considering how he erased his memory of Bill because of the trauma of seeing the Nightmare Realm and Bill's desires ("When Gravity Falls and Earth become sky, fear the beast with just one eye"). Gideon seems very likely because of how at the end of Season 2 Episode 14 "The Stanchurian Candidate", he tried to summon Bill in his prison cell. Many believe that Pacifica Northwest, the spoiled-mean-girl-turned-half-decent-girl-and-potential-love-interest-for-Dipper, will be possessed in order to emotionally wreck those who want to see Dipper and Pacifica get together, which does seem like something Alex Hirsch would do. Robbie may be a candidate because of his increasing importance and character development, though he may not as well because it's unclear what his relationship with the other main characters is at this point, considering how he's moved on from his hopeless crush on Wendy and most likely has ended his rivalry with Dipper for that very reason. Perhaps Bud Gleeful, though Gideon would probably keep that from happening. Maybe Agent Powers and/or Trigger (Powers is voiced by comedy actor Nick Offerman), two government agents that have tried to arrest Stan for allegedly building a doomsday device that was the portal in Season 2 Episode 11 "Not What He Seems" but had their memories of that erased in the following episode "A Tale of Two Stans" because they have unlikely dealt with anything like Bill in their careers before, so they could be caught off-guard into making a deal. Anything's possible in Gravity Falls. Let's hope that the rest of the season stays as good as it has been. Thank you for reading, and see you next time.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Another post on Gravity Falls- What I have learned about it and what has happened since I last wrote about it here.
September 1, 2015
Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil Rush again. I took the summer off from blogging for Communications Media Technology, but now it's back and will be published on an almost-weekly basis. As you could tell from one of my previous posts, Disney XD's Gravity Falls has become something of an obsession for me. Even while liking cartoons genuinely intended for older audiences rather than kids, their parents, and animation-loving young adults, sometimes you get bored with the same old things and want something new (or, in my case with South Park, decided that the environment of the fandom was becoming too contentious and that it was losing its identity in order to keep it in line with the ideology of the rest of the majority of Comedy Central's programming), and that new thing was initially Star vs. The Forces of Evil, but then became Gravity Falls due to its deeper story, actually pretty surprising edgier jokes (especially in Season 2 Episode 7, "Society of the Blind Eye"), and heavy use of meta-humor that is much more modern than most other "adult" cartoons. Maybe I'll grow bored with the show, but hype is still up for it, so that does not seem likely for a little while.
I would like to make a few corrections from my previous posts about the show. The show premiered on Disney Channel on June 15, 2012, and the first season ended in July 2013. The show was formally moved to Disney XD because of Disney realizing that cartoons worked better on that channel so that older fans don't have to endure ads for their sitcoms intended for mostly pre-teen girls (yet still have to endure ads for live-action action shows produced on a sitcom budget intended for nine-year-old boys, and even worse than ads, cross-promotions between the animated and live-action shows on the channel). For the year between that, multiple micro-series of three-minutes shorts aired- Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained, Mabel's Guide to Life, and Gravity Falls Public Access TV. Season 2 premiered on Disney XD on August 1, 2014, and episodes have aired a few weeks apart to build up anticipation, and therefore viewership, and so that Alex Hirsch can let fans make theories about what will happen in coming episodes and the backstories of various characters. Also, "Not What He Seems" was not Part 1 of a two-part Season 2 finale, but rather the mid-season finale of Season 2, with the episode afterwards, "A Tale of Two Stans," serving as the Season 2 mid-season premiere. This episode was half an hour long without commercials, requiring subsequent airings to be forty minutes with commercials.
It's still a little weird how we're seeing the events of the show take place all in the summer of 2012 yet be shown over the course of 4+ years, but the bold mystery of the story kind of requires dragging the story out. Alex Hirsch said that he is unsure whether or not the show will last for two seasons, three seasons, two seasons and a movie, or three seasons and a movie, but he knows that he intends on telling a story with a legitimate end.
The past three episodes of the show were some of the best ones yet. "A Tale of Two Stans" aired on July 13, 2015 and was one of the biggest bombshells of the series. Grunkle Stan's twin brother, the real Stanford Pines (voiced by famous actor J. K. Simmons), came out of the destructive portal and the brother's pasts were revealed. In the 1960s, Stanley and Stanford Pines were twin brothers and best friends, looking for mysteries in their beachside town and always looking out for each other. However, when Stanford had the chance to earn a scholarship to a prestigious university, Stanley was afraid of losing his best and only true friend, so he "accidentally" sabotaged Stanford's project. Upon learning about what Stanley did, his and Stanford's parents abandoned him, and with few options, Stanley became a conman, selling scam products under multiple aliases, getting arrested for every crime that it would be OK to mention and play for sort-of-dark humor on a show with a high TV-Y7 rating, and becoming forbidden from entering thirty states and a few countries. Meanwhile, Stanford was studying bizarre occurrences in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, and wrote the journals that were key McGuffins throughout the series, drawing outlines of his trademark six-fingered hands on them to signify them as his work. In the year 1982, he created a portal to the multiverse and tested it out with his college friend, Fiddleford McGucket (who would later become the town's crazy hillbilly, Old Man McGucket), but one brief look in the portal scarred Fiddleford for life, and he tried to wipe his memory of it all. As shown in "Society of the Blind Eye," he began to use the memory-wiper gun on himself so many times that it damaged his mind almost entirely beyond repair and turned him into the crazy hillbilly seen on the show. Realizing what horrors he had potentially unleashed on the world, Stanford sent an anonymous message to Stanley to come take the journals and hide them where they can never be found. Offended that his twin brother would call him for the first time in years only to tell him to run away from him, Stanley attempted to burn the journals, which led to a brief argument and physical altercation about who ruined whose life more of the two twin brothers, ending in the portal accidentally being activated and Stanford getting sucked in. Wracked with guilt and shame over getting in a fight with his brother that got him sent to who-knows-where, Stanley needed a way to make money to keep the portal going, so he took the name of his brother, Stanford Pines, and turned his brother's lab into a tourist trap/museum-of-the-macabre/gift shop known as the Mystery Shack, entertaining some and disgusting the rest with his cheap monster models and overpriced merchandise. Every night for thirty years until the events of the "Not What He Seems", Stan checked the portal's progress to see if he was any closer to getting his brother back. Stanford, who chose to go by Great-Uncle Ford to avoid confusion between the two Stans, had not forgiven Stan for getting him sent into the portal, let alone taking his house and turning it into a tourist trap and using his name to cover his hide, and demanded that he close the Mystery Shack and give him his house and name back at the end of the summer. In response, Stan told Ford to stay away from Dipper and Mabel, saying that they were the only family that he still had as far as he was concerned. Mabel expressed concern that she and Dipper might turn out like Stan and Ford, but Dipper advised her not to worry about it. While I do think that this episode tossed the dramatic weight of "Not What He Seems" aside so that the show could go on as humorously as before but with Ford living with them now, it was still good to learn about Stan's past and part of why he appears to have such gray morals, and it makes sense that things don't immediately get better between Stan and Ford, when most kids' cartoons would just have things like that improve with no payoff.
Then came "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", which initially aired August 3, 2015. In this episode, Dipper gets the newest version of the titular parody of "Dungeons and Dragons" in the mail, but Mabel and Stan don't want to play a game that involves extensive math and long-winded fantasy terminology, and Soos prefers FCLORPing (Foam, Cardboard, and Long Object Role-Playing), a parody of LARPing (Live-Action Role-Playing). Ford, however, is more on the same page with Dipper about tabletop RPGs, and is more than willing to play with him. Dipper and Ford's love of D&D&MoreD creates a conflict of interest with Mabel and Stan's love of the cartoon "Duck-Tective", which leads to one of the funniest meta-references ever done on the show.
Stan- Can't you play your nerd-game in another room?
Ford- Hey, at least I'm not keyed up to watch a kids' show!
Stan- Duck-Tective is not just a kids' show, Ford! It's full of mystery and a lot of things go over kids' heads!
Grenda (Mabel's best friend)- I don't get a lot of it, but I like seeing animals doing human things!
When another physical altercation breaks out between Stan and Ford (they really have too many of these), Ford's Infinity-Sided Die, an artifact he found during his travels in the multiverse that allows for fantastical occurrences whenever rolled, gets knocked onto the game board and brings the game's wizard, Probabilitor (guest-voiced by comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic) to life. Probabilitor captures Dipper and Ford, takes them into the Gravity Falls Woods, ties them to a tree, and prepares to eat their brains to gain their knowledge, forcing Mabel, Stan, and Grenda to go on an "epic wizard quest" to save their fantasy-loving family members. Mabel and Stan must play a real version of D&D&MoreD, in which Ford and Dipper are shrunk, dressed in fantasy clothes, and used as game pieces, to defeat Probabilitor. Dipper tells Mabel and Stan of the imagination and risk involved in the game to motivate them, and they create creatures such as a Centaur-taur, a centaur with another centaur body in place of a head, to fight things such as Probabilitor's Ogre-Nado, made to be a parody of Sharknado. Probabilitor summons an Impossi-beast, which can only be defeated by rolling a perfect 38 on the game's 38-sided die. Stan manages to do so by sticking a wad of gum to the die before rolling it, defeating Probabilitor and sending him back into the box art. Stan apologizes to Dipper for belittling him about his geeky hobbies (but not Ford, even though Ford probably needs it more), and Dipper says that with everything that has happened, he really would rather not play anything like the game for a while, prompting everyone to go back and watch Duck-Tective. The twist at the end of the Duck-Tective episode about who shot him at the end of the last episode is his twin brother. Ironic, huh? Everyone is underwhelmed by the twist, and Soos even says that he knew about this a year ago, referencing that the Stan's-twin-brother theory was first thought of over a year before "Not What He Seems" even aired. In essence, Soos has become a personification of the Gravity Falls fandom, and Duck-Tective is the in-universe equivalent of the show. Ford shares with Dipper that he dismantled the portal and contained its multiverse energy to a bubble, and makes him promise to not tell anyone, not even Stan or Mabel, out of fear that they may try to mess with it. With the exception of the announcement of the multiverse bubble, this episode is not too important in the overall scope of the show, though it has plenty of funny jokes and references and was one of the more accurate depictions of a Dungeons and Dragons-type game in media.
Lastly is "The Stanchurian Candidate", which initially aired on August 24, 2015. It begins with various things showing Stan feeling down-on-his-luck with bad luck constantly getting in his way, getting insulted by Wendy's teenager friends Robbie (a recurring character voiced by comedy actor
T. J. Miller, who dresses in a sort-of-emo-sort-of-goth style and was a rival with Dipper for Wendy's affections until Season 2 Episode 8, The Love God), Tambry (Wendy's best friend since childhood and Robbie's girlfriend since The Love God), Lee, and Nate for being old and thinking he pays for everything with "pennies and war bonds", and Dipper, Mabel, and Soos thinking that Ford is cooler than him for doing things such as making lightbulbs that last a thousand years and make your skin softer when touched. When Stan tries to forget his sorrows by watching TV, the news comes on and announces that Mayor Befufflefumpter, the 102-year-old mayor of Gravity Falls, had passed away the previous night, and due to the extremely lax nature of politics in this universe (for humorous sake, satirical purposes, simplicity for kids' understanding, and a need to avoid being blatantly ideological in order to invite as many audiences as possible even though most people working on the show are generally socio-politically progressive), the position of mayor is open to anyone interested. Bud Gleeful, Gideon Gleeful's dad and the town's used car salesman, is the first to throw his hat in the ring (literally, as you signify that you're running by throwing your hat into a hula hoop in the middle of town hall), and after hearing Dipper and Mabel say that if Ford came to the town hall meeting he would run and win because of his intelligence and likability, Stan dares to compete against Bud and convinces some of the other townspeople to do so as well. Knowing that Stan will say and do plenty of dumb things on the campaign trail, and desperate to keep Bud out of power out of a fear that he'll somehow get Gideon released, Dipper and Mabel try to mold him into the perfect candidate. They try writing a speech for him to read, but he refuses to say anything that isn't his words, which makes his first radio interview go totally wrong and recommend very bad ideas to solve educational issues such as get kids to learn survival tactics by stranding them on an island and teaching kids swears. Desperate to keep Stan's image alive, Dipper goes to Ford for help, who gives him a mind-control tie he invented years ago and claims to have used to help Ronald Reagan's campaign managers with the 1980 presidential election. Dipper and Mabel get Stan to wear the tie and control him into becoming the perfect candidate, gaining support from almost everyone in town and costing Bud approval ratings. Gideon, whom Bud communicates with over a video screen from prison, is making Bud run to bust him out of prison and help him accelerate his plans of getting revenge on the Pines family, forcing Mabel to be his girlfriend, and ruling over the town. Bud asks Gideon to just be patient and wait until he can find a way to regain approval ratings, but patience is not in Gideon's vocabulary, and he uses a spell on a page he took from one of Ford's journals back when he had one in Season 1 before we knew the identity of The Author (which is just the phrase "spooky evil spells" said backwards) to take control of his father's mind. Stan is confident of his victory now in spite of not even truly knowing why he's leading the polls, and Dipper and Mabel try to convince him to wear his "lucky tie" for the next debate, but Stan is so confident he doesn't feel the need to wear a "lucky tie." When Dipper gets mad while trying to convince Stan to wear the tie, he lets slip that it's a mind-control tie, and upon that revelation, Stan fires Dipper and Mabel as his campaign managers and announces his intentions to win on his own. Dipper and Mabel then try to turn Soos into their perfect candidate, but that doesn't turn out so well. The final speech involves an old Gravity Falls tradition of throwing birdseed at the best candidate and releasing a bald eagle to bestow a "birdly kiss" upon the candidate with the most birdseed, declaring them the winner (as Dipper says when this is first described at the beginning of the episode, "I could not make this up if I wanted to", but Alex Hirsch and the writing team clearly can, so...). Mabel and Dipper argue over how Soos should act while in control of Soos, so that ruins Soos's chances, Stan recommends even more bad ideas like waging war against neighboring cities to stimulate the economy, and Bud, now being controlled by Gideon, does a song-and-dance routine to win over the audience. In between segments of the debate, Gideon discovers Dipper and Mabel's plan and ties them to chairs in the monument being built in honor of Befufflefumpter in the side of a cliff full of explosives set to blow. Learning of the danger the kids are in, Stan throws the debate to save them, and the heroic actions he performs make the townspeople like him enough to shower him with the most birdseed and gets the eagle to kiss Stan, declaring him the winner... until the Gravity Falls Parliament disqualifies him after performing a criminal background check and learning of Stan's laundry list of crimes, including but not limited to first-degree "llamacide", a crime he invented called "burgle-bezzlement", and unlicensed possession of pogs. "At least they didn't say any of the bad ones", says Stan after turning off the TV while his crimes are being listed. The winner of mayor is the only candidate who actually bothered to fill out the paperwork, Tyler Cutebiker, a man who is known for his catchphrase, which is different variations of the saying "Git'em, giiiiiiit'em!" With nothing better to do, Dipper, Mabel, and Stan go off to vandalize Tyler's newly-christened City Hall. Meanwhile, Gideon, in his cell at night, says to himself that this "motivational" cat poster is the only thing keeping him going... except it's not the cat poster, but rather a Bill Cipher Wheel he drew that he hides under it. The Bill Cipher Wheel is a variation of an alchemy circle, with Bill Cipher drawn in the center and various symbols representing the main characters surrounding him (another major mystery of the show is which characters represent each symbol, which has been revealed for some but not all of the symbols). Gideon draws an eye in the center to finish the wheel off, announcing that he's finally ready to make another deal with him (besides the one he made in Part 1 of the Season 1 finale, "Dreamscapers") as the wheel begins to glow. This episode is one of my favorites because of the soft political satire and other modern pop culture references such as Stan being turned into various Internet memes in response to his gaffes on the radio such as "One Does Not Simply Teach Kids Swears", a parody of the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme, the return of Gideon, and the last-second twist that no one saw coming and is meant to set up the next episode.
So where does the show go from here? As of this writing, the next episode is set to air on Labor Day, September 7, 2015 and is called "The Last Mabelcorn." The two plots, according to most early synopses, are that Mabel learns that unicorns are real in the GF universe and sets out with Wendy and her two best friends Candy and Grenda to save them from extinction, while Dipper learns of Ford's history with Bill Cipher and a potential weakness as he returns to the physical world to prepare to bring the apocalypse to Gravity Falls. Other possibilities for this episode are Bill possessing Gideon, an epic battle between Ford and Bill, and Mabel losing trust in Dipper and Ford after learning of the secrets they're keeping from her and Stan. Many things are supposed to happen as Season 2, and possibly the series, ends this year. Alex Hirsch said in a tweet that someone will die this season. Was Mayor Befufflefumpter the death he was speaking of, or will a death with more emotional weight occur later in the season? And who would it be? Also, Hirsch announced at San Diego Comic-Con International 2015 at the Gravity Falls panel that contrary to popular belief, Bill Cipher will not be the main antagonist of the season, even though he will still be a major one. Many people believe that Ford will end up being the main antagonist because of his attitudes about various things and continued refusal to forgive Stan for what happened between them in 1982, and that spite could turn him into a threat to the Pines family. Dipper and Mabel, similar to Stan and Ford, may also have a falling out that the usual Disney-style end-of-episode apology won't be able to fix until possibly the series finale. As Dipper and Ford as well as Mabel and Stan become closer, Dipper and Mabel will drift farther apart. Nothing is certain in Gravity Falls, everything is open to interpretation and questioning, and no matter what happens this season, Fallers will get hit in the feels (look that up if you don't know what it means). Thank you for reading, and watch Gravity Falls Monday nights at 8:30 PM on Disney XD, as well as on Xfinity On Demand, the Watch Disney XD app available on the iTunes app store, Google Play Store, and Apple TV, and individual episodes are available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play.
Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil Rush again. I took the summer off from blogging for Communications Media Technology, but now it's back and will be published on an almost-weekly basis. As you could tell from one of my previous posts, Disney XD's Gravity Falls has become something of an obsession for me. Even while liking cartoons genuinely intended for older audiences rather than kids, their parents, and animation-loving young adults, sometimes you get bored with the same old things and want something new (or, in my case with South Park, decided that the environment of the fandom was becoming too contentious and that it was losing its identity in order to keep it in line with the ideology of the rest of the majority of Comedy Central's programming), and that new thing was initially Star vs. The Forces of Evil, but then became Gravity Falls due to its deeper story, actually pretty surprising edgier jokes (especially in Season 2 Episode 7, "Society of the Blind Eye"), and heavy use of meta-humor that is much more modern than most other "adult" cartoons. Maybe I'll grow bored with the show, but hype is still up for it, so that does not seem likely for a little while.
I would like to make a few corrections from my previous posts about the show. The show premiered on Disney Channel on June 15, 2012, and the first season ended in July 2013. The show was formally moved to Disney XD because of Disney realizing that cartoons worked better on that channel so that older fans don't have to endure ads for their sitcoms intended for mostly pre-teen girls (yet still have to endure ads for live-action action shows produced on a sitcom budget intended for nine-year-old boys, and even worse than ads, cross-promotions between the animated and live-action shows on the channel). For the year between that, multiple micro-series of three-minutes shorts aired- Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained, Mabel's Guide to Life, and Gravity Falls Public Access TV. Season 2 premiered on Disney XD on August 1, 2014, and episodes have aired a few weeks apart to build up anticipation, and therefore viewership, and so that Alex Hirsch can let fans make theories about what will happen in coming episodes and the backstories of various characters. Also, "Not What He Seems" was not Part 1 of a two-part Season 2 finale, but rather the mid-season finale of Season 2, with the episode afterwards, "A Tale of Two Stans," serving as the Season 2 mid-season premiere. This episode was half an hour long without commercials, requiring subsequent airings to be forty minutes with commercials.
It's still a little weird how we're seeing the events of the show take place all in the summer of 2012 yet be shown over the course of 4+ years, but the bold mystery of the story kind of requires dragging the story out. Alex Hirsch said that he is unsure whether or not the show will last for two seasons, three seasons, two seasons and a movie, or three seasons and a movie, but he knows that he intends on telling a story with a legitimate end.
The past three episodes of the show were some of the best ones yet. "A Tale of Two Stans" aired on July 13, 2015 and was one of the biggest bombshells of the series. Grunkle Stan's twin brother, the real Stanford Pines (voiced by famous actor J. K. Simmons), came out of the destructive portal and the brother's pasts were revealed. In the 1960s, Stanley and Stanford Pines were twin brothers and best friends, looking for mysteries in their beachside town and always looking out for each other. However, when Stanford had the chance to earn a scholarship to a prestigious university, Stanley was afraid of losing his best and only true friend, so he "accidentally" sabotaged Stanford's project. Upon learning about what Stanley did, his and Stanford's parents abandoned him, and with few options, Stanley became a conman, selling scam products under multiple aliases, getting arrested for every crime that it would be OK to mention and play for sort-of-dark humor on a show with a high TV-Y7 rating, and becoming forbidden from entering thirty states and a few countries. Meanwhile, Stanford was studying bizarre occurrences in the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, and wrote the journals that were key McGuffins throughout the series, drawing outlines of his trademark six-fingered hands on them to signify them as his work. In the year 1982, he created a portal to the multiverse and tested it out with his college friend, Fiddleford McGucket (who would later become the town's crazy hillbilly, Old Man McGucket), but one brief look in the portal scarred Fiddleford for life, and he tried to wipe his memory of it all. As shown in "Society of the Blind Eye," he began to use the memory-wiper gun on himself so many times that it damaged his mind almost entirely beyond repair and turned him into the crazy hillbilly seen on the show. Realizing what horrors he had potentially unleashed on the world, Stanford sent an anonymous message to Stanley to come take the journals and hide them where they can never be found. Offended that his twin brother would call him for the first time in years only to tell him to run away from him, Stanley attempted to burn the journals, which led to a brief argument and physical altercation about who ruined whose life more of the two twin brothers, ending in the portal accidentally being activated and Stanford getting sucked in. Wracked with guilt and shame over getting in a fight with his brother that got him sent to who-knows-where, Stanley needed a way to make money to keep the portal going, so he took the name of his brother, Stanford Pines, and turned his brother's lab into a tourist trap/museum-of-the-macabre/gift shop known as the Mystery Shack, entertaining some and disgusting the rest with his cheap monster models and overpriced merchandise. Every night for thirty years until the events of the "Not What He Seems", Stan checked the portal's progress to see if he was any closer to getting his brother back. Stanford, who chose to go by Great-Uncle Ford to avoid confusion between the two Stans, had not forgiven Stan for getting him sent into the portal, let alone taking his house and turning it into a tourist trap and using his name to cover his hide, and demanded that he close the Mystery Shack and give him his house and name back at the end of the summer. In response, Stan told Ford to stay away from Dipper and Mabel, saying that they were the only family that he still had as far as he was concerned. Mabel expressed concern that she and Dipper might turn out like Stan and Ford, but Dipper advised her not to worry about it. While I do think that this episode tossed the dramatic weight of "Not What He Seems" aside so that the show could go on as humorously as before but with Ford living with them now, it was still good to learn about Stan's past and part of why he appears to have such gray morals, and it makes sense that things don't immediately get better between Stan and Ford, when most kids' cartoons would just have things like that improve with no payoff.
Then came "Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons", which initially aired August 3, 2015. In this episode, Dipper gets the newest version of the titular parody of "Dungeons and Dragons" in the mail, but Mabel and Stan don't want to play a game that involves extensive math and long-winded fantasy terminology, and Soos prefers FCLORPing (Foam, Cardboard, and Long Object Role-Playing), a parody of LARPing (Live-Action Role-Playing). Ford, however, is more on the same page with Dipper about tabletop RPGs, and is more than willing to play with him. Dipper and Ford's love of D&D&MoreD creates a conflict of interest with Mabel and Stan's love of the cartoon "Duck-Tective", which leads to one of the funniest meta-references ever done on the show.
Stan- Can't you play your nerd-game in another room?
Ford- Hey, at least I'm not keyed up to watch a kids' show!
Stan- Duck-Tective is not just a kids' show, Ford! It's full of mystery and a lot of things go over kids' heads!
Grenda (Mabel's best friend)- I don't get a lot of it, but I like seeing animals doing human things!
When another physical altercation breaks out between Stan and Ford (they really have too many of these), Ford's Infinity-Sided Die, an artifact he found during his travels in the multiverse that allows for fantastical occurrences whenever rolled, gets knocked onto the game board and brings the game's wizard, Probabilitor (guest-voiced by comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic) to life. Probabilitor captures Dipper and Ford, takes them into the Gravity Falls Woods, ties them to a tree, and prepares to eat their brains to gain their knowledge, forcing Mabel, Stan, and Grenda to go on an "epic wizard quest" to save their fantasy-loving family members. Mabel and Stan must play a real version of D&D&MoreD, in which Ford and Dipper are shrunk, dressed in fantasy clothes, and used as game pieces, to defeat Probabilitor. Dipper tells Mabel and Stan of the imagination and risk involved in the game to motivate them, and they create creatures such as a Centaur-taur, a centaur with another centaur body in place of a head, to fight things such as Probabilitor's Ogre-Nado, made to be a parody of Sharknado. Probabilitor summons an Impossi-beast, which can only be defeated by rolling a perfect 38 on the game's 38-sided die. Stan manages to do so by sticking a wad of gum to the die before rolling it, defeating Probabilitor and sending him back into the box art. Stan apologizes to Dipper for belittling him about his geeky hobbies (but not Ford, even though Ford probably needs it more), and Dipper says that with everything that has happened, he really would rather not play anything like the game for a while, prompting everyone to go back and watch Duck-Tective. The twist at the end of the Duck-Tective episode about who shot him at the end of the last episode is his twin brother. Ironic, huh? Everyone is underwhelmed by the twist, and Soos even says that he knew about this a year ago, referencing that the Stan's-twin-brother theory was first thought of over a year before "Not What He Seems" even aired. In essence, Soos has become a personification of the Gravity Falls fandom, and Duck-Tective is the in-universe equivalent of the show. Ford shares with Dipper that he dismantled the portal and contained its multiverse energy to a bubble, and makes him promise to not tell anyone, not even Stan or Mabel, out of fear that they may try to mess with it. With the exception of the announcement of the multiverse bubble, this episode is not too important in the overall scope of the show, though it has plenty of funny jokes and references and was one of the more accurate depictions of a Dungeons and Dragons-type game in media.
Lastly is "The Stanchurian Candidate", which initially aired on August 24, 2015. It begins with various things showing Stan feeling down-on-his-luck with bad luck constantly getting in his way, getting insulted by Wendy's teenager friends Robbie (a recurring character voiced by comedy actor
T. J. Miller, who dresses in a sort-of-emo-sort-of-goth style and was a rival with Dipper for Wendy's affections until Season 2 Episode 8, The Love God), Tambry (Wendy's best friend since childhood and Robbie's girlfriend since The Love God), Lee, and Nate for being old and thinking he pays for everything with "pennies and war bonds", and Dipper, Mabel, and Soos thinking that Ford is cooler than him for doing things such as making lightbulbs that last a thousand years and make your skin softer when touched. When Stan tries to forget his sorrows by watching TV, the news comes on and announces that Mayor Befufflefumpter, the 102-year-old mayor of Gravity Falls, had passed away the previous night, and due to the extremely lax nature of politics in this universe (for humorous sake, satirical purposes, simplicity for kids' understanding, and a need to avoid being blatantly ideological in order to invite as many audiences as possible even though most people working on the show are generally socio-politically progressive), the position of mayor is open to anyone interested. Bud Gleeful, Gideon Gleeful's dad and the town's used car salesman, is the first to throw his hat in the ring (literally, as you signify that you're running by throwing your hat into a hula hoop in the middle of town hall), and after hearing Dipper and Mabel say that if Ford came to the town hall meeting he would run and win because of his intelligence and likability, Stan dares to compete against Bud and convinces some of the other townspeople to do so as well. Knowing that Stan will say and do plenty of dumb things on the campaign trail, and desperate to keep Bud out of power out of a fear that he'll somehow get Gideon released, Dipper and Mabel try to mold him into the perfect candidate. They try writing a speech for him to read, but he refuses to say anything that isn't his words, which makes his first radio interview go totally wrong and recommend very bad ideas to solve educational issues such as get kids to learn survival tactics by stranding them on an island and teaching kids swears. Desperate to keep Stan's image alive, Dipper goes to Ford for help, who gives him a mind-control tie he invented years ago and claims to have used to help Ronald Reagan's campaign managers with the 1980 presidential election. Dipper and Mabel get Stan to wear the tie and control him into becoming the perfect candidate, gaining support from almost everyone in town and costing Bud approval ratings. Gideon, whom Bud communicates with over a video screen from prison, is making Bud run to bust him out of prison and help him accelerate his plans of getting revenge on the Pines family, forcing Mabel to be his girlfriend, and ruling over the town. Bud asks Gideon to just be patient and wait until he can find a way to regain approval ratings, but patience is not in Gideon's vocabulary, and he uses a spell on a page he took from one of Ford's journals back when he had one in Season 1 before we knew the identity of The Author (which is just the phrase "spooky evil spells" said backwards) to take control of his father's mind. Stan is confident of his victory now in spite of not even truly knowing why he's leading the polls, and Dipper and Mabel try to convince him to wear his "lucky tie" for the next debate, but Stan is so confident he doesn't feel the need to wear a "lucky tie." When Dipper gets mad while trying to convince Stan to wear the tie, he lets slip that it's a mind-control tie, and upon that revelation, Stan fires Dipper and Mabel as his campaign managers and announces his intentions to win on his own. Dipper and Mabel then try to turn Soos into their perfect candidate, but that doesn't turn out so well. The final speech involves an old Gravity Falls tradition of throwing birdseed at the best candidate and releasing a bald eagle to bestow a "birdly kiss" upon the candidate with the most birdseed, declaring them the winner (as Dipper says when this is first described at the beginning of the episode, "I could not make this up if I wanted to", but Alex Hirsch and the writing team clearly can, so...). Mabel and Dipper argue over how Soos should act while in control of Soos, so that ruins Soos's chances, Stan recommends even more bad ideas like waging war against neighboring cities to stimulate the economy, and Bud, now being controlled by Gideon, does a song-and-dance routine to win over the audience. In between segments of the debate, Gideon discovers Dipper and Mabel's plan and ties them to chairs in the monument being built in honor of Befufflefumpter in the side of a cliff full of explosives set to blow. Learning of the danger the kids are in, Stan throws the debate to save them, and the heroic actions he performs make the townspeople like him enough to shower him with the most birdseed and gets the eagle to kiss Stan, declaring him the winner... until the Gravity Falls Parliament disqualifies him after performing a criminal background check and learning of Stan's laundry list of crimes, including but not limited to first-degree "llamacide", a crime he invented called "burgle-bezzlement", and unlicensed possession of pogs. "At least they didn't say any of the bad ones", says Stan after turning off the TV while his crimes are being listed. The winner of mayor is the only candidate who actually bothered to fill out the paperwork, Tyler Cutebiker, a man who is known for his catchphrase, which is different variations of the saying "Git'em, giiiiiiit'em!" With nothing better to do, Dipper, Mabel, and Stan go off to vandalize Tyler's newly-christened City Hall. Meanwhile, Gideon, in his cell at night, says to himself that this "motivational" cat poster is the only thing keeping him going... except it's not the cat poster, but rather a Bill Cipher Wheel he drew that he hides under it. The Bill Cipher Wheel is a variation of an alchemy circle, with Bill Cipher drawn in the center and various symbols representing the main characters surrounding him (another major mystery of the show is which characters represent each symbol, which has been revealed for some but not all of the symbols). Gideon draws an eye in the center to finish the wheel off, announcing that he's finally ready to make another deal with him (besides the one he made in Part 1 of the Season 1 finale, "Dreamscapers") as the wheel begins to glow. This episode is one of my favorites because of the soft political satire and other modern pop culture references such as Stan being turned into various Internet memes in response to his gaffes on the radio such as "One Does Not Simply Teach Kids Swears", a parody of the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme, the return of Gideon, and the last-second twist that no one saw coming and is meant to set up the next episode.
So where does the show go from here? As of this writing, the next episode is set to air on Labor Day, September 7, 2015 and is called "The Last Mabelcorn." The two plots, according to most early synopses, are that Mabel learns that unicorns are real in the GF universe and sets out with Wendy and her two best friends Candy and Grenda to save them from extinction, while Dipper learns of Ford's history with Bill Cipher and a potential weakness as he returns to the physical world to prepare to bring the apocalypse to Gravity Falls. Other possibilities for this episode are Bill possessing Gideon, an epic battle between Ford and Bill, and Mabel losing trust in Dipper and Ford after learning of the secrets they're keeping from her and Stan. Many things are supposed to happen as Season 2, and possibly the series, ends this year. Alex Hirsch said in a tweet that someone will die this season. Was Mayor Befufflefumpter the death he was speaking of, or will a death with more emotional weight occur later in the season? And who would it be? Also, Hirsch announced at San Diego Comic-Con International 2015 at the Gravity Falls panel that contrary to popular belief, Bill Cipher will not be the main antagonist of the season, even though he will still be a major one. Many people believe that Ford will end up being the main antagonist because of his attitudes about various things and continued refusal to forgive Stan for what happened between them in 1982, and that spite could turn him into a threat to the Pines family. Dipper and Mabel, similar to Stan and Ford, may also have a falling out that the usual Disney-style end-of-episode apology won't be able to fix until possibly the series finale. As Dipper and Ford as well as Mabel and Stan become closer, Dipper and Mabel will drift farther apart. Nothing is certain in Gravity Falls, everything is open to interpretation and questioning, and no matter what happens this season, Fallers will get hit in the feels (look that up if you don't know what it means). Thank you for reading, and watch Gravity Falls Monday nights at 8:30 PM on Disney XD, as well as on Xfinity On Demand, the Watch Disney XD app available on the iTunes app store, Google Play Store, and Apple TV, and individual episodes are available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
May 21, 2015
Hello, blogosphere, it's Neil. My experiences at Berks Career and Technology Center were interesting, to say the least. Many things that happened were some of the most stressful things to ever happen to me since my time at Little Keswick School and frequently challenged my ideas of right and wrong against other people's. Many more things that happened, however, expanded my skill set and began to show me some of the valuable skills I will need in my desired industry for work. The first skill I learned was how to make full studio short films. While I will have a lot of work to do before those skills can be perfected, I think that I have a good idea of how to get started on making both short and long films, animated and live-action. The second one was blogging and podcasting. There are many different activities I would like to do over this summer, such as binge-watching television, films, and videos on multiple streaming services, binge-reading various books and comics I'm interested in, binge-playing many video games, creating practice videos for Vimeo, YouTube, and maybe even Facebook, jotting down ideas for my original concepts in personal notebooks, going to the pool with friends, editing many wikis (mainly movie wikis, but I'll edit other kinds of wikis as well when it suits me), participating in discussions on fan forums, writing nonromantic fan fiction for various things I like, and blogging on various wikis, with the wiki blogs being about whatever the blog is about, a personal blog about anything on my mind except movies, and an audio podcast about only movies. There is a strange good feeling about getting your opinion out about whatever you want with the slim chance that some stranger will notice it and think you're cool, so if I can get the time in for all of this, that will be great for me. The third was that you are going to deal with people you can't stand. OK, I somewhat already knew that, but working here really hammered that in for me. There were two students here that said so many obnoxious things that I was positive that their removal from the program would tremendously improve my experience, and it probably would. But, that's not how it works, and the best you can do is pretend that those things don't bother you and work together like you have no problem with them. Berks Career and Technology Center is a fine establishment, and I am excited to learn more in the next two years at this facility. Only one question remains- where do I go from here? That question will be answered next year, when I continue to make the future.
Hello, blogosphere, it's Neil. My experiences at Berks Career and Technology Center were interesting, to say the least. Many things that happened were some of the most stressful things to ever happen to me since my time at Little Keswick School and frequently challenged my ideas of right and wrong against other people's. Many more things that happened, however, expanded my skill set and began to show me some of the valuable skills I will need in my desired industry for work. The first skill I learned was how to make full studio short films. While I will have a lot of work to do before those skills can be perfected, I think that I have a good idea of how to get started on making both short and long films, animated and live-action. The second one was blogging and podcasting. There are many different activities I would like to do over this summer, such as binge-watching television, films, and videos on multiple streaming services, binge-reading various books and comics I'm interested in, binge-playing many video games, creating practice videos for Vimeo, YouTube, and maybe even Facebook, jotting down ideas for my original concepts in personal notebooks, going to the pool with friends, editing many wikis (mainly movie wikis, but I'll edit other kinds of wikis as well when it suits me), participating in discussions on fan forums, writing nonromantic fan fiction for various things I like, and blogging on various wikis, with the wiki blogs being about whatever the blog is about, a personal blog about anything on my mind except movies, and an audio podcast about only movies. There is a strange good feeling about getting your opinion out about whatever you want with the slim chance that some stranger will notice it and think you're cool, so if I can get the time in for all of this, that will be great for me. The third was that you are going to deal with people you can't stand. OK, I somewhat already knew that, but working here really hammered that in for me. There were two students here that said so many obnoxious things that I was positive that their removal from the program would tremendously improve my experience, and it probably would. But, that's not how it works, and the best you can do is pretend that those things don't bother you and work together like you have no problem with them. Berks Career and Technology Center is a fine establishment, and I am excited to learn more in the next two years at this facility. Only one question remains- where do I go from here? That question will be answered next year, when I continue to make the future.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Neil Rush's The Abnormal Film Critic- Episode 1: Avengers: Age of Ultron (a better version of my first podcast uploaded to Podbean)
May 18, 2015
This is a better version of my original review of "Avenger: Age of Ultron." Due to a misunderstanding about how much time I had to make that one, I rushed through it and made something I'm not very proud of. Fortunately, I was given a second chance to make something good, and I certainly hope that it is good enough. This is the style I want to make my podcast about movies in as a pre-career to my desired career, and I hope something like this can happen.
Link to the podcast site
This is a better version of my original review of "Avenger: Age of Ultron." Due to a misunderstanding about how much time I had to make that one, I rushed through it and made something I'm not very proud of. Fortunately, I was given a second chance to make something good, and I certainly hope that it is good enough. This is the style I want to make my podcast about movies in as a pre-career to my desired career, and I hope something like this can happen.
Link to the podcast site
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
May 14, 2015
Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil again. For my next TV review, I will be reviewing a show that I just can't stop thinking about- Disney's Gravity Falls. It first aired on the Disney Channel in August 2012, with reruns airing on sister channel Disney XD frequently. Season 1 ended in August 2013, and Season 2 did not start until August 2014. In November 2014, the show moved exclusively to Disney XD, which I find to be much more fitting. Disney XD tries to be "Disney for boys," (even though I don't believe in gender rules of any kind in any media, if you like something, you like it, whatever) with its large amount of action, sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero shows compared to the normal Disney Channel's large amount of family and teen sitcoms, and airs more animation in general. I feel that Disney XD is the best channel for modern kids' animated programming, far better than Nickelodeon and even Cartoon Network, which has so many critically acclaimed programs currently on the air, like Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Steven Universe (which, while acknowledging its good qualities, I feel is underwritten). I first started to want to watch it more regularly after a peer in drama frequently talked about it with me. He did suffer from much social immaturity, but his tastes seemed otherwise good, so I decided to give him and the show a shot. Created by young animator and voice actor Alex Hirsch and based off of a CalArts graduation project he produced, Gravity Falls follows twelve-year-old Dipper Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter), a character based on himself, and his twin sister Mabel (voiced by famous comedy actress Kristen Schall) a character based on Hirsch's real-life twin sister Ariel. The two of them travel from their hometown of Piedmont, California, to the fictional town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, for the summer. They live with their great-uncle Stan Pines (voiced by Alex Hirsch himself), or as they call him, Grunkle Stan, the owner of a gift shop and skilled conman, and regularly hang out with Soos Ramirez (also voiced by Hirsch), Stan's friendly but fairly unintelligent handyman, and Wendy Corduroy (Linda Cardenelli), a fifteen-year-old levelheaded tomboy that works at the Mystery Shack and Dipper has a crush on. Dipper likes mystery solving and wants to solve as many mysteries behind the bizarre occurrences that go on in Gravity Falls as possible. Mabel is eccentric and girly, and lives for her stuffed animals, her pet pig Waddles, her scratch-and-sniff sweaters, and vampire romances. There are plenty of antagonists that the gang frequently comes into conflict with, such as L'il Gideon Gleeful (voiced by creator and star of old Cartoon Network show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack Thurop Van Orman), a psychotic nine-year-old boy that wants to rule the town, Bill Cipher (also voiced by Hirsch) a transdimensional reality-defying psychic triangle that takes advantage of Dipper and Mabel's fears, and Pacifica Northwest (voiced by Jackie Buscarino), Mabel's vain and pretentious rival. Through all of the bizarre things that happen to them, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy stay together as family does and try to solve the town's mysteries, the biggest one currently being what Stan's past is and what happened to his twin brother. There are certain word and picture codes at the end of each episode that fans have discovered have special meanings, and Hirsch even allegedly designed the theme song to say a special phrase when played backwards. I take things like that with a grain of salt, even when the creator confirms them, because people say that about a lot of songs and just overthink things in general. While I think the mystery angle is fairly clever, I'm more attracted to the show for its humor, much of which is a lot edgier than you'd expect from anything made at Disney Television Animation and even makes me question the show's TV-Y7 rating at times (and I mean that in the best way possible), likable characters, deep storytelling that doesn't sugarcoat many harsh realities of life even for a children's audience, strong relationships between its characters, subtle references to real-life internet memes, and frequent guest stars, such as comedian Patton Oswalt as a golf ball man in "The Golf War," Lonely Island comedy rapper Jorma Taccione as Mabel's sock-puppet fanboy crush Gabe in "Sock Opera," and acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as Waddles when he gains supergenius-level intellect and the ability to speak in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors." The animation is some of the best traditional animation I've seen put to a cartoon produced in the 2010s, rivaling the animation quality of Steven Universe, and only slightly inferior to Star vs. The Forces of Evil. And the most recent episode, "Not What He Seems," may very well be the best thing to have ever aired on Disney XD. Being Part 1 of the two-part Season 2 finale, with Part 2 to air sometime this summer, it creates a rift between Dipper, Mabel, and Stan, with it not being truly certain if Stan can or should be trusted for anything ever again, Mabel losing much of her innocence, Dipper losing faith in his entire family, and the mystery of Stan's past and the identity of his brother to finally be described in detail. I've seen more of Season 2 than Season 1, but I can assume that Season 1 is pretty good, even though Season 2 feels better. In conclusion, Gravity Falls is a rare piece of comedic family animation that I hope future cartoonists take inspiration from. I certainly will, though I find a way to take at least a little inspiration from every animated program I see. Maybe one of the different versions of "Geekz" that I have in mind will take more inspiration from Gravity Falls than the rest, but for now, I'll focus on making "Geekz" the best series it can and let the influence from other sources come naturally rather than trying too hard to make sure it's influenced by something else. Another word for trying to make sure that something is influenced by something else is "plagiarism" (OK, not really, but it can come close). I give Gravity Falls a 9/10. This has been Neil Rush, telling you that you can watch Gravity Falls almost every day on Disney XD, during late-night hours on Disney Channel, Comcast Xfinity On Demand, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, and find it available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play TV.
Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil again. For my next TV review, I will be reviewing a show that I just can't stop thinking about- Disney's Gravity Falls. It first aired on the Disney Channel in August 2012, with reruns airing on sister channel Disney XD frequently. Season 1 ended in August 2013, and Season 2 did not start until August 2014. In November 2014, the show moved exclusively to Disney XD, which I find to be much more fitting. Disney XD tries to be "Disney for boys," (even though I don't believe in gender rules of any kind in any media, if you like something, you like it, whatever) with its large amount of action, sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero shows compared to the normal Disney Channel's large amount of family and teen sitcoms, and airs more animation in general. I feel that Disney XD is the best channel for modern kids' animated programming, far better than Nickelodeon and even Cartoon Network, which has so many critically acclaimed programs currently on the air, like Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Steven Universe (which, while acknowledging its good qualities, I feel is underwritten). I first started to want to watch it more regularly after a peer in drama frequently talked about it with me. He did suffer from much social immaturity, but his tastes seemed otherwise good, so I decided to give him and the show a shot. Created by young animator and voice actor Alex Hirsch and based off of a CalArts graduation project he produced, Gravity Falls follows twelve-year-old Dipper Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter), a character based on himself, and his twin sister Mabel (voiced by famous comedy actress Kristen Schall) a character based on Hirsch's real-life twin sister Ariel. The two of them travel from their hometown of Piedmont, California, to the fictional town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, for the summer. They live with their great-uncle Stan Pines (voiced by Alex Hirsch himself), or as they call him, Grunkle Stan, the owner of a gift shop and skilled conman, and regularly hang out with Soos Ramirez (also voiced by Hirsch), Stan's friendly but fairly unintelligent handyman, and Wendy Corduroy (Linda Cardenelli), a fifteen-year-old levelheaded tomboy that works at the Mystery Shack and Dipper has a crush on. Dipper likes mystery solving and wants to solve as many mysteries behind the bizarre occurrences that go on in Gravity Falls as possible. Mabel is eccentric and girly, and lives for her stuffed animals, her pet pig Waddles, her scratch-and-sniff sweaters, and vampire romances. There are plenty of antagonists that the gang frequently comes into conflict with, such as L'il Gideon Gleeful (voiced by creator and star of old Cartoon Network show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack Thurop Van Orman), a psychotic nine-year-old boy that wants to rule the town, Bill Cipher (also voiced by Hirsch) a transdimensional reality-defying psychic triangle that takes advantage of Dipper and Mabel's fears, and Pacifica Northwest (voiced by Jackie Buscarino), Mabel's vain and pretentious rival. Through all of the bizarre things that happen to them, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy stay together as family does and try to solve the town's mysteries, the biggest one currently being what Stan's past is and what happened to his twin brother. There are certain word and picture codes at the end of each episode that fans have discovered have special meanings, and Hirsch even allegedly designed the theme song to say a special phrase when played backwards. I take things like that with a grain of salt, even when the creator confirms them, because people say that about a lot of songs and just overthink things in general. While I think the mystery angle is fairly clever, I'm more attracted to the show for its humor, much of which is a lot edgier than you'd expect from anything made at Disney Television Animation and even makes me question the show's TV-Y7 rating at times (and I mean that in the best way possible), likable characters, deep storytelling that doesn't sugarcoat many harsh realities of life even for a children's audience, strong relationships between its characters, subtle references to real-life internet memes, and frequent guest stars, such as comedian Patton Oswalt as a golf ball man in "The Golf War," Lonely Island comedy rapper Jorma Taccione as Mabel's sock-puppet fanboy crush Gabe in "Sock Opera," and acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as Waddles when he gains supergenius-level intellect and the ability to speak in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors." The animation is some of the best traditional animation I've seen put to a cartoon produced in the 2010s, rivaling the animation quality of Steven Universe, and only slightly inferior to Star vs. The Forces of Evil. And the most recent episode, "Not What He Seems," may very well be the best thing to have ever aired on Disney XD. Being Part 1 of the two-part Season 2 finale, with Part 2 to air sometime this summer, it creates a rift between Dipper, Mabel, and Stan, with it not being truly certain if Stan can or should be trusted for anything ever again, Mabel losing much of her innocence, Dipper losing faith in his entire family, and the mystery of Stan's past and the identity of his brother to finally be described in detail. I've seen more of Season 2 than Season 1, but I can assume that Season 1 is pretty good, even though Season 2 feels better. In conclusion, Gravity Falls is a rare piece of comedic family animation that I hope future cartoonists take inspiration from. I certainly will, though I find a way to take at least a little inspiration from every animated program I see. Maybe one of the different versions of "Geekz" that I have in mind will take more inspiration from Gravity Falls than the rest, but for now, I'll focus on making "Geekz" the best series it can and let the influence from other sources come naturally rather than trying too hard to make sure it's influenced by something else. Another word for trying to make sure that something is influenced by something else is "plagiarism" (OK, not really, but it can come close). I give Gravity Falls a 9/10. This has been Neil Rush, telling you that you can watch Gravity Falls almost every day on Disney XD, during late-night hours on Disney Channel, Comcast Xfinity On Demand, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, and find it available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play TV.
Friday, May 8, 2015
The Abnormal Film Critic Buster Of Blocks Podcast- Episode 1: The Review of Avengers: Age of Ultron
Link to the PodBean.com page on which the podcast exists
This is the podcast on which I will be both reviewing new and old films and talking about news in the film industry and my takes on them. The normal Blogger blog is where I will be talking about anything else on my mind that's not movie related. Of course, I may need to buy studio sound equipment to use at home to record the podcast, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'll also have blogs on all of the different wikis that I edit that I have accounts on in which I will discuss solely that wiki's topic and my takes on various things within that topic. Hope that you read and listen to everything I have to offer that you can.
This is the podcast on which I will be both reviewing new and old films and talking about news in the film industry and my takes on them. The normal Blogger blog is where I will be talking about anything else on my mind that's not movie related. Of course, I may need to buy studio sound equipment to use at home to record the podcast, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'll also have blogs on all of the different wikis that I edit that I have accounts on in which I will discuss solely that wiki's topic and my takes on various things within that topic. Hope that you read and listen to everything I have to offer that you can.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
May 7, 2015
Hello, blogosphere. This is Neil Cullen Rush, and I am here today to give my first ever official TV show review. The show I chose to review is the new Netflix show, Daredevil. There will be mild spoilers for this review, and while I'll try to keep them few and far between, I would recommend seeing the show before reading this if you can.
Set in the same universe as the Avengers films, but in a "darker corner" far removed from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which there really is no interaction with and very minimal mention of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D., or any normal Marvel thing, it focuses on Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a law school graduate that has just gone into the business of being a defense attorney with his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Every night, he goes out into his neighborhood and fights crime in a black ninja costume that is supposed to be a precursor to the well-known Daredevil costume (at least it's not the yellow costume from the 1960s). He struggles to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. One day, Matt and Foggy come across their first client, a woman named Karen Page (True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll) who has been framed for murdering an associate of crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), known on the streets as the Kingpin. Matt was blinded as a child after getting an odd chemical in his eyes from saving a man from getting run over. He was the child of a single father, Jack, who had a boxing career and was killed after refusing to throw a fight. This, combined with his enhanced hearing allowing him to hear all of the crime going on in his neighborhood and "motivation" from his blind mentor Stick (Scott Glenn), made Matt decide to become a vigilante. Matt's blindness gives him superhuman hearing, smell, taste, and touch, allowing him to do things like detect things with radar, dodge attacks before they're thrown, tell honesty through heartbeat, and a variety of other skills. Matt uses his abilities and fighting skills to go after associates of Kingpin and bring him to justice while struggling to remain "the good guy" in the situation. He tries to keep his other identity secret from everyone else and knows that what he does as a vigilante that does anything he can to criminals to stop them except kill them isn't much better than what the criminals he fights do. Wilson Fisk is an equally complicated individual. Having killed his father in a fit of anger as a child after snapping from both himself and his mother dealing with frequent physical, mental, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse at his hands, he knew he never wanted to be without power ever again. As a result, he managed to build up power in the criminal underworld over the years, gained control of most of the police, and managed to run nearly all of the street-level crime in New York City. Fisk even falls in love with an art gallery owner named Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) and starts an awkward but loving relationship with her, who convinces him to announce himself to the public as a humanitarian that will reform and stop crime in the city, hiding his true criminal nature. This is one of the best things the show does- make its hero struggle to keep from becoming the villain and make its villain the kind of person that, were it not for his brutal methods, violent temper, and unethical dealings, could be seen as the hero. Kingpin is my favorite character in the show, and my favorite villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe besides Loki and Thanos.
The relationships between all of the characters are believable and realistic. Matt and Foggy's friendship is truly heartwarming, which makes it all the more sad when it falls apart after Foggy learns of Matt's double life. This isn't a friend thinking it's really cool that his friend is a superhero; this is more like someone confronting a friend with a harmful addiction. Yes, they reconcile, but things can never be 100% between them ever again. Fisk doesn't have much experience with women, so he constantly stutters when talking with Vanessa, yet she is fascinated by him, pudginess and all, making it all the more bizarre when Kingpin brutalizes his enemies.
The show is definitely better than the 2003 Daredevil film, though I don't think that one is as bad as people say it is. People say that Ben Affleck is why it's bad, though I think that, while Affleck is definitely better at directing films than acting in them, he's not a bad actor as long as he has good material, something Mark Steven Johnson did not provide with his Daredevil film. I do think that the actors did the best with the material they had, and would have definitely enjoyed seeing Jon Faverau as Foggy, Colin Farrell as Bullseye, and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) as Kingpin in a film or TV show written and directed by someone other than Mark Steven Johnson. Affleck was passable as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil, though was still better as Murdock. I never expected Affleck to want to play Batman after comments he made in a 2006 interview saying he never wanted to play a superhero again due to how uncomfortable the costumes are, but here we are. I think he will be a better Bruce Wayne than Batman, but passable as both, as long as Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer, and Zack Snyder give him good material, which I have a lot of reasonable doubt that they won't.
Anyway, back to Daredevil. With strong acting, thorough character development, a darker tone than most other things set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just the right amount of comic relief, and Netflix binge-watching convenience, I found myself enjoying this show much more than many other things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have come before it, like Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor: The Dark World, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, though probably not as much as the first Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, the first Thor, both Captain America films, the first Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you can stomach a hefty amount of blood and more generally disturbing content in superhero stories, and would want to see a darker side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would highly recommend this show. I can't wait for Season 2 in 2016 and the upcoming Netflix series for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist that go along with this show and are supposed to team up in a Netflix miniseries about the Defenders, and feel that Netflix shows are a good alternative to making films for Marvel's darker characters. I score the show a 9.9/10. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again for my next blog post.
Hello, blogosphere. This is Neil Cullen Rush, and I am here today to give my first ever official TV show review. The show I chose to review is the new Netflix show, Daredevil. There will be mild spoilers for this review, and while I'll try to keep them few and far between, I would recommend seeing the show before reading this if you can.
Set in the same universe as the Avengers films, but in a "darker corner" far removed from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which there really is no interaction with and very minimal mention of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D., or any normal Marvel thing, it focuses on Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a law school graduate that has just gone into the business of being a defense attorney with his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Every night, he goes out into his neighborhood and fights crime in a black ninja costume that is supposed to be a precursor to the well-known Daredevil costume (at least it's not the yellow costume from the 1960s). He struggles to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. One day, Matt and Foggy come across their first client, a woman named Karen Page (True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll) who has been framed for murdering an associate of crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), known on the streets as the Kingpin. Matt was blinded as a child after getting an odd chemical in his eyes from saving a man from getting run over. He was the child of a single father, Jack, who had a boxing career and was killed after refusing to throw a fight. This, combined with his enhanced hearing allowing him to hear all of the crime going on in his neighborhood and "motivation" from his blind mentor Stick (Scott Glenn), made Matt decide to become a vigilante. Matt's blindness gives him superhuman hearing, smell, taste, and touch, allowing him to do things like detect things with radar, dodge attacks before they're thrown, tell honesty through heartbeat, and a variety of other skills. Matt uses his abilities and fighting skills to go after associates of Kingpin and bring him to justice while struggling to remain "the good guy" in the situation. He tries to keep his other identity secret from everyone else and knows that what he does as a vigilante that does anything he can to criminals to stop them except kill them isn't much better than what the criminals he fights do. Wilson Fisk is an equally complicated individual. Having killed his father in a fit of anger as a child after snapping from both himself and his mother dealing with frequent physical, mental, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse at his hands, he knew he never wanted to be without power ever again. As a result, he managed to build up power in the criminal underworld over the years, gained control of most of the police, and managed to run nearly all of the street-level crime in New York City. Fisk even falls in love with an art gallery owner named Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) and starts an awkward but loving relationship with her, who convinces him to announce himself to the public as a humanitarian that will reform and stop crime in the city, hiding his true criminal nature. This is one of the best things the show does- make its hero struggle to keep from becoming the villain and make its villain the kind of person that, were it not for his brutal methods, violent temper, and unethical dealings, could be seen as the hero. Kingpin is my favorite character in the show, and my favorite villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe besides Loki and Thanos.
The relationships between all of the characters are believable and realistic. Matt and Foggy's friendship is truly heartwarming, which makes it all the more sad when it falls apart after Foggy learns of Matt's double life. This isn't a friend thinking it's really cool that his friend is a superhero; this is more like someone confronting a friend with a harmful addiction. Yes, they reconcile, but things can never be 100% between them ever again. Fisk doesn't have much experience with women, so he constantly stutters when talking with Vanessa, yet she is fascinated by him, pudginess and all, making it all the more bizarre when Kingpin brutalizes his enemies.
The show is definitely better than the 2003 Daredevil film, though I don't think that one is as bad as people say it is. People say that Ben Affleck is why it's bad, though I think that, while Affleck is definitely better at directing films than acting in them, he's not a bad actor as long as he has good material, something Mark Steven Johnson did not provide with his Daredevil film. I do think that the actors did the best with the material they had, and would have definitely enjoyed seeing Jon Faverau as Foggy, Colin Farrell as Bullseye, and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) as Kingpin in a film or TV show written and directed by someone other than Mark Steven Johnson. Affleck was passable as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil, though was still better as Murdock. I never expected Affleck to want to play Batman after comments he made in a 2006 interview saying he never wanted to play a superhero again due to how uncomfortable the costumes are, but here we are. I think he will be a better Bruce Wayne than Batman, but passable as both, as long as Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer, and Zack Snyder give him good material, which I have a lot of reasonable doubt that they won't.
Anyway, back to Daredevil. With strong acting, thorough character development, a darker tone than most other things set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just the right amount of comic relief, and Netflix binge-watching convenience, I found myself enjoying this show much more than many other things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have come before it, like Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor: The Dark World, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, though probably not as much as the first Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, the first Thor, both Captain America films, the first Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you can stomach a hefty amount of blood and more generally disturbing content in superhero stories, and would want to see a darker side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would highly recommend this show. I can't wait for Season 2 in 2016 and the upcoming Netflix series for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist that go along with this show and are supposed to team up in a Netflix miniseries about the Defenders, and feel that Netflix shows are a good alternative to making films for Marvel's darker characters. I score the show a 9.9/10. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again for my next blog post.
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