Where a Whedon Limit is Sacrilege

in which i attempt to articulate my feelings about this show without favoring the letters o, m, and g, and the !

I am a hardcore gleek.
I don’t even know how this happened.

When the pilot previewed last.. whenever it was, I didn’t even watch it because I was still in that phase of my life where I wasn’t really watching TV in real time and I didn’t bother with the difficulty of streaming videos (Granny was already having issues then, the old gal) (Granny is my computer, FYI). Note that this was not me trying to resist the show. I had absolutely no reservations against it. It just takes me a while to start watching a show. And the ones that I do decide to watch over the others, well there are a few questions that I unconsciously ask myself before making a gut decision:
a) Is it a Joss Whedon show? Are there Whedonverse alumni in/involved in it? If yes, I will be counting down the days til the show premieres. (Which is kind of a lie because I only started watching Castle after I saw Nathan Fillion at the Apple Store recently, and I missed the premiere of V, which apparently happened at some point this week? but if the answer to these questions is yes, I will be more inclined to catch the show.)
b) Is there something inherently geeky about it? i.e. is it sci-fi? is there science involved? If yes, I will probably watch it.
c) Are there hot men on it? If yes, I will watch it.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

top 5 reasons why i lust after cory monteith aka finn on “Glee” (and why it’s ok)

5. his oeuvre consists of appearances in a variety of shows across different genres such as:
- comedy: the assistants (which i never watched but was mildly intrigued by)
- sci-fi teen drama (?): kyle xy (another show i have never watched and don’t really know anything about other than the fact that this kyle person has no belly button and could be from space so i am assuming it’s something of a sci-fi nature)
- sci-fi/horror: final destination 3, smallville, other random titles that sound like thrillers
which illustrates how versatile he is to have been cast in so many different things and from the 2 episodes of Glee that I have seen, I can confidently say that he is talented so it’s ok to throb for him. totally justified.

4. he was also in an early episode of Supernatural (Wendigo) though you probably wouldn’t know it because his role was very minor and brief and you probably didn’t even see his face before he was hauled away by the Wendigo but STILL! automatic love.

3. he can sing! SO. TALENTED.

2. he smirks really well. and who doesn’t love a guy who gives really good smirk?

and finally, the #1 reason why i lust after corey monteith:
he’s HOT.

and the #1 reason why that’s ok is that despite the baby face and the fact that he plays a confused and sexually frustrated boy in high school, IRL he was born in 1982, according to imdb, which makes him older than i am so unlike some of the young men who have played teenaged boys in recent years (not naming names so as not to further incriminate myself) who are actually teenaged boys, cory is a MAN.

Favorite Episodes of Television: The Wire

I am going to do something different for this so-called list. Mainly because it is kicking my ass nine kinds of ways to shit. At some point I will present my 10 in full. But until I can actually come up with the full list (I only have 8 episodes, which is ridiculous because I know for a fact that I love more than 8 episodes of television to death) you’ll be seeing the ones that I loooove and swoon and thud and analyze with a fiery passion presented with an agonizingly detailed blurb, undoubtedly ripe with SPOILERS.

So without further ado:

“Final Grades”, The Wire.
Picking one solitary episode out of The Wire is even harder because the show is so brutally good especially the 4th season when it’s all about the kids, and kids are my weakness. But Final Grades wins out because I feel like this, aside from being one of the greatest season finales of all time (future list!), is where SHIT GOES DOWN. SPOILERS. Like, major spoilers. I don’t even want you to read this if you’ve never seen an episode of The Wire (why the hell have you not seen a episode of The Wire??). STAY AWAY.

STAY.

AWAY.

So, first of all, Bodie dies. BODIE. FRIGGING. DIES. Second most shocking death of the series. Oh man donotevengetmestarted about the other death. Ahh omg just thinking about this episode breaks my heart all over again. I can’t handle it!

You see that Namond is given a new life when he moves in with Bunny and his wife. Which is great. So Namond is the CHOSEN ONE. Ha, no, that’s a bad way of putting it. But he’s one of the lucky ones. When they were all negotiating this, his own dad (Wee-Bay, one of my favorite characters) said he was too soft for the streets, as if it was a flaw of some sort. I mean, in their world, it is a flaw. If you’re soft, you’re never going to survive on the corner. And what does it mean to survive? To thrive? Working your way up the ranks to become a soldier? To become the next Stringer Bell? Can the transition to lowly foot soldier to bigtime narcotics criminal really be working your way up? Well, ok, fine, I guess. I don’t know. Whatever. And where else can you go if not the corner? If you’re not hard enough for it, you just end up dying there. Or you become Bubbles. Or Dukie. Waahhh DUKIE.

Dukie is only just beginning to head down a path of pain and disaster. Though if you look at the tragic trajectory of his life, one could make the very valid argument that he was on this path from the very beginning - which is a question that you just cannot stop yourself from asking time and time again throughout this series. From the moment he got evicted from his shitty home, from the moment that you saw all four of them crowding around the ice cream truck and Namond made fun of Dukie for being poor and/or dirty and Michael (or Randy?) very brotherly, lovingly (I’d like to say) bought Dukie an ice cream, and you saw him shyly and gratefully smile his thanks, you knew that the writers were setting you up for some hardcore pain. But then Dukie gets to live with Michael later and ends up in Prez’s class and he learns how to use the computer and he’s LEARNING and Prez buys him clothes and lets him shower in the locker room and now he’s clean and his clothes don’t have holes in them and he’s smiling all the goddamned time and he does SO well in school, he gets promoted to the 9th grade, you know you are going to CRY.

Because getting promoted to the next grade means leaving the school and he’s scared and terrified because he doesn’t have the safety net, nay, the LIFELINE that was Prez and his kindness so instead of going to school, he officially becomes a CORNER BOY and omg it doesn’t even end there.

Because, would it have been easier and nicer and just feel really good if Prez could have done more (I mean, I know he’s already done more than most teachers ever would or could or should - bah don’t send me hate mail) and just been there for Dukie all the time? Yes. It would have been beautiful and amazing if Prez could have saved Dukie. But he didn’t. Because he couldn’t. Maybe Dukie really could not have been saved. Maybe, no matter how many clean shirts Prez could have bought him, no matter how late he could have let him stay in school to use the computer, maybe Dukie was just one of those unfortunate kids who were doomed. So yeah, it would have been really nice if the Wire gave us a freebie with Dukie to remind us that hey, this is just a TV show after all, why not give you a happy ending of some sort? This isn’t supposed to be any sort of social commentary on the very real reality of life on the streets for kids, so here! Dukie gets saved!

But no, the Wire just would not make it so easy for us and therein lies the reason why every single person in the world should have watched and loved this show. Having said that, I will admit sometimes I really fucking HATE The Wire because these kids, especially Dukie, are so real to me - if you haven’t gathered - and their lives are so messed up beyond repair and it kills me because this part is not fictional at all and I just.. die. It hurts.

It huuurts.

God I fucking hate this show..