Could you describe the ruckus, sir?

I finally went to go see Captain America: The Winter Soldier yesterday, after delaying for no good reason except for a lot of bargaining with myself about things I was supposed to accomplish. Bookending the trip to the movies, I also caught up on, like, eight episodes of Agents of SHIELD. This was just in time, it appears, for next week's finale, so yay?

By some miracle, I was unspoiled for both, so: thank you, fandom!

Remains to be seen whether I will be Reading All the post-movie Things. I've got a couple of rec lists bookmarked, but I think MCU, like Teen Wolf, is just too big for me to bother trying to keep up with.

I have roughly the same problems with, or rather, the same lack of interest in, Agent Ward as I do with all of the dudes who are not played by James Spader on The Blacklist. (I have finally learned the last name, at least, of both Agent White Dudes. So that's progress.) It's not complicated. I just don't care. The connection here is simple. I have already heard these dudes' stories about a hundred times. The fact that they're presented with absolutely no nuance is not helping.

( brief nattering about Agents of SHIELD, and more specifically, Coulson. Spoilers Ahoy. )

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I'm super excited that Hannibal will be back, and I hope that the people creating it continue to be excited about it, and continue to be awesome. I can't remember the last TV show that I watched as it aired, and part of that joy is catching up on the tweets from Bryan Fuller and Aaron Abrams at the commercial breaks.

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Other than that, mostly watching a lot of playoff hockey. I know there was a point when I was watching Blackhawk games and caring who won, but I'm over it, even though I think I can still name most of the roster. (Nothing against y'all Chicago fen, go cheer your hearts out, but now that they've won the cup again, something in me just can't get excited about the possibility of a repeat.)

I'm now pulling for a Penguins/Kings Stanley Cup Final, no matter how improbable, with a Penguins/Canadiens ECF. I wouldn't be mad at the Habs making it to the final. Anything else, though (Ducks? Wild? Bruins?) I couldn't be less excited about. Rangers would be cool, but I just can't believe that's ever going to happen.

It looks like Jeremy Renner is going to play Hawkeye in Joss's Avengers movie. I have absolutely no opinion about this, except for the fact that I was totally uninterested in his character arc, or in shipping him with anyone, in The Unusuals. I think he's a good actor (obv., given The Hurt Locker) but my interest in his Hawkeye is going to have everything to with what he's given, and not so much with what he makes of it. So, sort of the same way I feel about Chris Evans.

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I started watching Lie to Me because it's steaming on Netflix, and I'm enjoying it so far. I am curious to see what happens with the radical honesty guy as the season continues, because I am shallow and he is entertaining and good-looking.

I've been enjoying the cast and the stories in general, but after watching three episodes back-to-back, the playback/zoom-in/comparison of peoples' microexpressions are beginning to grate. Also on the verge of beginning to grate, the 15-year-old daughter, but I feel bad for not liking her.

( which begs the question when was the last time I enjoyed watching a teenage character on TV. When I was a teenager? )

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Okay, so this French McDonald's commercial that's been making the rounds of the internet. There's a whole word of debate/wank/trolling about whether or not they'd ever show something like that in the US, and I've got to say that I hope the answer is no. I don't mean that I don't want to see the part where a gay kid and his dad eat lunch. I just really hate this commercial. Maybe it's just me, but I find it really, really... French. And by French, I mean, you know, French in that sort of cliched sense, the one where the entire country is sort of artsy and vaguely depressing, like Russia, except more disdainful of Americans. Because the McDonald's commercials in the US? All end with the big happy family/group of friends bonding over fries or whatever, as opposed to on a sort of disquieting note where father and son will either have a heartfelt discussion and then they'll buy an apple pie to celebrate, or it will all go horribly, horribly wrong. In public.

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I'm finally watching Oz, or I will be, tonight. I sort of feel like I was too young to watch it when it was on originally, but that's not true, because I was in college. Er, actually, maybe me in college was to young to watch that. We'll see.

Random SYTYCD question: Did they suddenly switch back to the super-old-school opening credits? I don't think I've seen Allan's little hop hop thing in it since season 2. (Also, I am a horrible, heartless person, but if anyone else's eyes welled up with tears during the auditions this week, I was going to pitch something at the TV.)

Is anyone watching Community? As I think I've said a hundred times, I don't watch comedies, in general. I need the continuous thread of dramas to guilt me into continuing to watch, otherwise I get distracted by other shiny things. The only reason I started watching The Office was because I got sucked into the Jim/Pam drama.

Community seems snappy and random with a thread of plot very much like my impression of 30 Rock, which I also don't watch often enough. I love Joel McHale, though, and John Oliver, and the pilot has all sorts of Breakfast Club references, which makes it the best thing ever. Community also has a lot of words. A lot of a lot of words. I remember what happened in the episode, but I don't remember a single line of dialogue, or most of their names.

And in conclusion (not really): The first two episodes of what is apparently now titled the Super Hero Squad Show, if Yahoo!TV is to be believed premieres tomorrow morning on Cartoon Network.

Super Hero Squad Show : "And Lo? A Pilot Shall Come!"
Marvel superheroes band together to protect Super Hero City from a variety of villains in the premiere episode of this animated action series.

Super Hero Squad Show : "To Err Is Superhuman!"
Wolverine reluctantly trains Reptil, the Squad's new teen hero. But their first mission goes awry due to Reptil's hotshot behavior.

Steve Rogers and Tony Stark: a sort of fairy tale

( Read more... )

So Momentary Paws (or, DO NOT WANT) by velithya showed up at epic_recs right after I finally watched Iron Man (which was great! and possibly not just because I love Robert Downey Jr.!) so, despite my complete unfamiliarity with the Avengers in particular or Marvel in general, I read it, and it was, as promised, very cute, despite the fact that I had no context for it. I think my next step from there was reading the Captain America/Iron Man ship manifesto or flipping through the marvel recs at crack_van but either way, I found myself totally immersed in Steve/Tony fandom for nearly a week.

One of the first things I read was the Resurrection-verse stories and they were... impressive? I really ought to re-read them someday, since I spent a lot of time trying to keep the characters straight. It's a "big" story, but it's set at a "big" time in the canon, so its ambition is understandable, if daunting to a new reader.

All things being equal, I think I liked their King of Infinite Space much better. It's got a much tighter focus on the Steve/Tony relationship for one, but it was also one of the last pieces I read, so its possible that my increased familiarity with the other characters made it an easier read as well.

I spent a little time skimming back through cap_ironman and found crimsonquills's stuff which really needs to be a whole separate rec post (and I swear I recognize her name from somewhere, but can't figure out what I might have read or seen before). To make a long story short, she's responsible for my current detour into NCIS.

Playing the Odds by Katherine - NCIS, Gibbs/DiNozzo, NC-17 (eventually)

Long, and multiple POV characters. Tony has not had a great year, and when an old friend renews a job offer, he thinks it might be time to move on from NCIS in general, and Gibbs's team in particular. For my personal preferences, it's just skirting the line of, "okay, I get it, they're unhappy," and there's a decent amount of exposition of canon events, but not so much that I started skimming through sections. It's also got a great catalyst OFC.

On a sort of side note, I read a long Gibbs/DiNozzo story that was entirely from McGee's PoV (Ten Years On) and while it served the plot pretty well, I had a really hard time getting invested in the story. That's not at all the case with Playing the Odds.