Dilbert

Series: Dilbert
Seasons: 2
Episodes: 30
Network History: Aired on UPN, Jan 1999-July 2000
Availability: Streaming on Netflix and Youtube
Time it took to watch: One Weekend

Who here doesn't love the comic strip Dilbert?

If you're not in the know, Dilbert is a long-running comic strip that satirizes the office workplace in a grounded, yet slightly bizarre manner.

images via: apple.com

If you're a fan of the strip, were you ever aware that the strip spawned an animated, award-winning TV show? I didn't either, but hey that's the magic of Netflix. It helps you discover shows that you've never even knew existed and you just have to watch it.

Like the strip, the show revolves around frustrated engineer Dilbert and all the crazy shenanigans that occur in the work place.

For example, the first season sees everyone working on a new exercise machine that inadvertently creates a black hole that destroys life on Earth, so yeah, the TV show feels a lot like the comic strip.

If you love the comic strip, then this is incredible news. The show is just as hilarious as the source material and the talented voice cast (which includes Spongebob Squarepants' Tom Keeny and comedian Kathy Griffin) do a great job of bringing the characters to life.

For reference, check out Chris Elliot as Dogbert in the episode when the company go to the fictional, third world country of Elbonia.

I must praise this show for successfully bringing to life the same bizarre environment that exists on paper.

Of course there are a few changes the show makes to make the transition from strip to series easier.

For example, much of the series focuses on Dilbert's "knack", a medical condition that makes him a tech savant that's essentially gone from the current strip but serves as a major plot point in the show.

Either way, that doesn't change the fact that this is a hilarious series that should definitely be checked out if you're a fan of the strip or just randomly browsing Netflix.

If you haven't even heard of the strips, do yourself a favor and read the comics on their website here , or go to Barnes & Nobles and find a Dilbert collection of comics and watch the show.

image via : high-five.net

So, have you ever watched this show? Comment below with your thoughts!

Top of the Lake

Series: Top of the Lake
Seasons: 1 
Episodes: 7, Sundance Channel, 2013
Availability: Streaming on Netflix
Time it took to finish it :1 sitting

For my next blog post, I decided to change it up.

Instead of focusing on a show that was cancelled, I decided to focus on a series that is still ongoing, but I've been hearing about it all year so I decided to give it a try.

This is Top of the Lake, a New Zealand crime drama starring Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss.

The miniseries, set in Laketop, New Zealand, starts with 12-year-old Tui Mitcham walking towards the middle of a lake, presumably to commit suicide. She's then stopped by the headmistress of her school who, after taking her to the nurse's office, discovers that she's pregnant.

image via: thejournalist.ie

Det. Robin Griffin, an Australian detective whose in New Zealand to visit her cancer-stricken mother, is called unto the case. She specializes in sex crimes involving minors and believes that Tui was a victim of rape. However, shortly after starting an investigation, Tui then mysteriously vanishes, setting off a massive manhunt for the girl led by Griffin as she starts to uncover what everyone is hiding in this small town.

Ultimately, Top of the Lake is a wonderfully engrossing show with spectacular characters and incredible acting from the entire cast that makes the show so addicting to watch, even if the last few episodes get a bit ludicrous in the end.

The cast also includes Academy Award winner holly Hunter as GJ, a spiritual guru who runs a camp for grieving women while Peter Mullan plays Tui's father. He's a powerful figure in the town's criminal underworld and even the police are often intimidated by him.

Also, the series has gotten several acclaim from everyone for its feminist themes and several points it has brought up regarding rape culture.

Griffin is a detective trying to navigate in a world that's usually dominated by chauvinistic males. We see that this small town is one that believes in violent masculinity and exercise their machoness by seemingly indulging in rape.

Grifin, (*spoiler alert*) a victim of gang rape at the age of 15, personifies how rape victims have a lack of choice after a rape, and how hard it is for a rape victim to fully recover from such an attack.

This is way brutal than anything on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. 

image via: theguardian.com

My only real complain is how many of these themes hit you over the head with them instead of bringing them up in a subtle manner, which is how I prefer my themes to be presented to me. However, since this is a subject matter that is rarely seen, I'll let it pass.

Also, this is a really minor complaint, but when this show aired internationally it ran for six episodes. For its U.S. release though, it ran for seven episodes, so the episodes were cut at really bad times in order to stretch out the series. You'll see what I mean when you watch it.

Again, that's a really minor complaint though, but it is a bit jarring. Thankfully, the show has great visuals. Top of the Lake is worth watching for the scenery alone. As I write this, I saw that the show won a well-deserved Emmy for its cinematography. We saw New Zealand in the Lord of the Rings movies, but here, the New Zealand draws just as many awe-inspiring visuals on a fraction of the budget.

See you next week!

Freaks and Geeks

Show: Freaks and Geeks, NBC (1999-2000)
Streaming on: Netflix
Episodes: 18 
Time it took to binge: 1 weekend

Welcome to another installment of me getting graded to watch a TV show.

This next show is the cult classic Freaks and Geeks, created by Judd Apatow and Paul Feig, who would later make some of the biggest comedy films in the last decade.

The show revolves around high school siblings Lindsay and Sam Weir and their group of friends that constitute the namesake of this 1980's set series.

image via: themarysue.com

Lindsay (played by Linda Cardellini, best known for portraying a hot Velma in the live action Scooby-Doo movies) starts hanging out with the cool, but underachieving students (played by James Franco, Jason Segel and Seth Rogen in their breakout roles.) Sam, a freshman in high school, is a geek who is trying to survive his freshman year of his school with his band of equally dorky friends.

More than likely, you've probably heard of this show whenever someone talks about shows that were "gone too soon" and "biggest cult classics." I'm glad to say that the show lives up to the hype.

Freaks and Geeks is a show with a lot of heart.  Even though the series is set in the '80s, all the characters are so relatable that it's hard not to root for them when they do things ranging from asking someone out on a date to the homecoming dance to seeing Lindsay host a kegger (that goes disastrously wrong, of course.)

Also, the show's writing was so goddamn fantastic.

Take for example the episode "Kim Kelly is my Friend," an episode that centers around Busy Phillip's character. She's Franco's on-again-of-again girlfriend whose only agenda, it seems, is to make Lindsay's life a living hell.

Kim is one of TV's biggest bitches, but this episode, a dark and scary look into her home life, managed to humanize her and made us feel sorry for her.

Most shows would've left Kim as a one-note villain. This episode managed to add layers of depth to her character.

Fun fact, this episode was deemed so dark that NBC refused to air it and it didn't see the light of day until reruns

Also, Lindsay and Sam's dad is one of the most hilarious TV dads ever, often saying stuff like:

"You know, there was a girl in our school, she had premarital sex. You know what she did on graduation day? Died! Of an overdose. Heroin."

Also, a plot point of the show is everyone wondering why Lindsay, a gifted student who has potential as a mathlete, would suddenly hang out with such underachieving losers like she is now. The answer is a gut punch

It's a shame that the show got cancelled, but luckily those clamoring for more Freaks and Geeks got their wish. Sort of. The following year, FOX aired the college-set comedy Undeclared from Apatow, a spiritual sequel of sorts to Freaks and Geeks. Expect me to cover it eventually.

Tune in next week to see me cover season one of Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated! Or Top of the Lake. I still haven't decided. Let me know which one you prefer me doing.

Twin Peaks

Show: Twin Peaks, ABC (1990-1991)
Streaming on: Netflix
Episodes: 29 
Time it took to binge: 2 weekends

Twin Peaks was a pop culture phenomenon that, in my opinion at least, TV has yet to recapture.

I've heard about the show since I first got into pop culture and everyone always talks about it.

It's always mentioned whenever someone talks about the "greatest shows ever" or "biggest cult hits of all time." Heck, earlier this year, the Writers Guild of America voted it the 35th best written TV show of all time.

image via: rapgenius.com

The show was created by Academy Award Nominated Director/certified weirdo David Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Dr.) and Mark Frost. I got my first taste of the show when I took a film class on David Lynch last spring and was hooked.

The show follows an investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer in the small town of Twin Peaks, Washington.

So, why was Twin Peaks so popular? It's because of how incredibly bizarre it was.

The show had an incredibly campy and melodramatic tone that satirized soap operas while also crossing into  really disturbing supernatural surrealism that Lynch was known for.

Did I mention that a key character of the show was BOB, a dark entity from another place whose main purpose in life is to create chaos?

Or that he's from The Red Room? A place from another dimension where everyone speaks backwards and evil doppelgangers lurk?

Just look at the opening scene from season 2, episode one.

Season 1 ended in a hell of a cliffhanger where Agent Dale Cooper went to answer his door, only to be shot point blank by a mysterious gunman.

For months, America awaited the fate of Agent Cooper, and this is what they were treated to:

Burning through season 1, its not hard to see why people were so in love with this show. Remember how much fun the "Who Sot JR" episode of Dallas was? Imagine that, but stretched into an entire series. 

Mysteries like Twin Peaks are a lot of fun to get into because of how cuckoo season one is. The show features an eccentric supporting cast that ranges from The Log Lady (her log is psychic, she translates what it says,) the scheming duo of Catherine Martell and Ben Horne and dimwitted police deputy Andy.

Oh, even David Duchovny pops up as a cross-dressing DEA agent.

Also, did I mention how hot the women of Twin Peaks are?

image via: heartymagazine.com

Season 1 was such a blast. Then season 2 happened.

Season 2 saw a decline both in viewers, and in quality. It's just not as fun as season 1.

Season 2 feels unfocused and a lot of the episodes feel more like filler, as if no one knows what they're doing anymore. Think season 3 of Lost or season 2 of Revenge messy.

Personally, I think part of the problem was because of how stretched out season 2 was. Season 1 was only 7 episodes, providing viewers with a taut, focused thriller. At 22 episodes, season 2 felt like it was making shit up as it went along to fill in time.  Need I mention that story line involving James and Evelyn? No?

Good.

Apparently, viewers were getting impatient with how little progress was being made into the main mystery, which led to Laura's killer being revealed midway through season 2, which led to an overall disinterest in the show.

Characters like Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne both got some really dull love interests in the second half of the season in order to gain back some viewers. We were also introduced to a former villainous partner of Agent Cooper, but even by soap opera standards he was way too silly to be taken seriously.

Ultimately, this led to the show getting cancelled at the end of its second season  after losing 2/3 of the viewers that made the show a bonafide hit. It's a shame that the show got cancelled.

While I had a lot of problems with season 2 of Twin Peaks, there was still nothing like it. It represented how  unique the show was and I'd love to revisit the world of Twin Peaks again.

Thankfully, David Lynch made Fire Walk With Me, a prequel film detailing the life of Laura Palmer. It's pretty great. It's available to checkout at the UTPA library and I ranked it highly on my list of best films based on TV shows on my other blog.

image via: theweek.com

Thoughts? Comment below and tune in next time as I discuss Freaks & Geeks!