Veep Delivers Best Episode Yet – Slices and Dices Vapid Tech Industry

I’ve just heard that Veep’s ratings are down slightly, even after Julia Louis Dreyfus did what most women have to do who are looking for a leg up in the entertainment industry: showed some skin. Veep had a stumble or two heading into this season – it didn’t feel quite as funny. Mad Men, for its part, also seemed to stumble. But, like Veep, it hit its natural stride last night. Veep had the Veep visiting a tech giant Clovis, something akin to Facebook, with nothing short of the future of America resting in its incapable hands. The best line probably came from Amy who said “I’m a grownup. I stopped wanting to play with toys when I was a kid.”

It didn’t sneer at the millennials because this isn’t a crew that can sneer at anyone. They are always the butt of the joke. But it did give this silly generation and all of its tech fascination an appropriate bitch-slapping. The “Smarch” is the new social network watch they were just about to release at Clovis. You speak into it and it shows you web pages or you connect it to another person and then you’re socially connected. Of course none of it works properly.
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Mad Men Recap: “Field Trip” (spoilers)

The seeds of Don Draper’s disconnection from the course of the rest of the world were planted way back in the first season in his Greenwich Village trysts with bohemian Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt). He liked some of her modern girl ways, but she revealed him (through our modern lens) to be a square operating at a completely different rhythm to the coming generation. Still, Don always had a coolness or an in-charge quality – a little like Sean Connery’s James Bond making fun of The Beatles in Goldfinger. Even as the world was changing right under his feet, it was still Don Draper’s world. Until last night. Don’s incredibly awkward return to Sterling Cooper & Partners is the first time he has truly seemed like a fossil from an entirely different epoch. Here he was an outsider on what used to be his own turf. The king had been dethroned, kicked out of his office and consigned to the bullpen while those who used to be in awe of him scrambled around trying to figure out how to get rid of him. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

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Netflix Sets August 1 Date for Final Season of The Killing

The Wrap reports that The Killing will air its final season on August 1. They will air all six episodes. This is the final season.

The Killing is one of the better mysteries on television. It was always depressing to me that it couldn’t find an audience. The lead Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) is a complicated, damaged woman struggling to free herself of her past as she puts everything on the line to catch a killer. Dark, moody, involving, The Killing is mesmerizing. The show digs deep into the characters – so much so that it’s much more like a British production, or Danish in this case, wherein story and character matter more than the kinds of things American television offers on their detective shows – primarily sexual deviancy and/or redemption. The Killing has always been more difficult and complicated than that. Too bad we can’t have nice things.

The Death of Net Neutrality, Death of Internet Freedom

While you were all busy thinking about something else the FCC made the tragic (even if inevitable) decision to allow ISP providers, or content providers, who pay more to give speedier access to customers. That is really how they are describing it to people. So you might think, hey great! I can pay for faster download speeds for my streaming content. Here in America what we really want is to be plugged into our various pleasure devices as the world literally collapses around us. But that is who we have become. That is what we are. So no one is going to protest this if they actually want this change to take effect. But those of us who have become comfortable with the freedom of choice – the freedom of speech – the equal access for all just lost big. Really big. What’s depressing about this? How few people give a shit. The only way to stop this if people get mad. Really mad. Like protesting with signs and pitchforks mad. Is that going to happen? I doubt it. Maybe Anonymous or 4Chan can do some serious damage to block this or protest this. But other than that, Americans don’t give a damn.

From Mother Jones:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on “commercially reasonable” terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

…The FCC’s proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won’t satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can’t—or that ISPs just aren’t interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won’t be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that’s about all that’s left of net neutrality. Once you’ve approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you’re speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

This is simply not right. The blocking of sites they say won’t be allowed? That’s coming next. This is a slippery slope and once the freedom is controlled by money the freedom ends.

Sign a petition if you can. Have a fit publicly. DO SOMETHING.

Here are a few things you can do:

Write to the FCC and tell them you simply do not accept any action that hinders, controls or limits the freedom available on the internet:

Go here

This site has a lot of useful action you can take as a citizen to prevent this from happening.

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Fargo Recap – Episode 2: The Rooster Prince (Spoilers)

I’ve been trying to write all morning about the second episode of FX’s Fargo which aired last night, but it’s like pulling teeth.

I went into the first episode with a deep skepticism based on my unconditional love of Joel and Ethan Coen’s film. After a shaky start, I thought the whole thing went pretty well and, on balance, showed enough promise to look forward to future episodes. At the very least, the developments in the episode seemed to suggest showrunner Noah Hawley intended to pay homage to the Coens while definitively striking out in his own direction.

Last night’s episode definitely left the movie further behind, but rather than head anywhere interesting, it just kind of seemed to wander around in the snow.

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Sopranos, Deadwood, other HBO Faves to stream on Amazon Prime

Good news for people who don’t subscribe to HBO, but bad news for Netflix.

Beginning May 21, Amazon Prime will start streaming a pant load of HBO shows, movies and specials. Every episode of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Six Feet Under, Eastbound & Down, Enlightened, Flight of the Concords and Oz; selected seasons of current shows Boardwalk Empire, Treme and True Blood; HBO minis Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, The Pacific and Parade’s End; many HBO movies and documentaries including Game Change; and a bunch of HBO comedy specials from the likes of Louis CK and others.

While early seasons of Girls, The Newsroom and Veep will eventually also land on Amazon Prime, there are no current plans for HBO’s uber-popular Game of Thrones.

HBO shows have long been available to stream on Amazon and elsewhere, but they always cost at least a dollar more per episode than anyone else’s shows. This is the first time these shows will be available to stream at will for Amazon Prime subscribers.

(via Press Release)

Past Meets Future: Colbert on Letterman

I’m still a little ambivalent about Stephen Colbert taking over for David Letterman on Late Night… er I mean The Late Show. On one hand, he’s a great choice and a supremely talented comedian with a decent knack for interviewing guests. On the other hand, as the host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, he’s the strongest voice of satire on the air we have. Colbert has already said he plans to do The Late Show as himself rather than the character he plays on The Report. The question is whether the same sharp satire will make the transition.

I hope it does.

Bates Motel: Enter the Taxidermy

Season 2, Episode 8: Meltdown

I’ve had long-standing issues with the A&E series Bates Motel. The central characters Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) are fascinating, fully realized variations on the originals introduced to wide audiences in Alfred Hitchcock’s original 1960 Psycho. Sticking to the central locale of the Bates house and vacant motel is the key to the series success. The claustrophobia of Farmiga and Highmore bouncing off each other like seasoned theater pros is exhilarating.

But the Bates Motel creators have surrounded Norma/Norman with one of the blandest casts on television. They are interferingly boring, diverting our attention from the core story without adding to the mythology in any productive way.

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The Pointless Outrage at Game of Thrones Rape Scene

I’ve just about had it with the internet. I used to think, wow it’s so great that there are so many young strong voices protesting things that matter. I used to think that the youth’s collective outrage over things like sexual assault and racism was a good thing. But what it has turned into, what it is in danger of becoming is about as helpful to the collective well being of people overall that driving a hybrid SUV does for the economy. You see, this outrage at Stephen Colbert, for instance, or the worst of these – Lena Dunham – or now, Game of Thrones reminds me of the tragedy that online discourse has become. You see, none of it means anything. None of it changes anything. None of it helps anyone anywhere. These are examples of people who really have too much time on their hands because no one has yet tuned them into the real problems — the devastating station of many real life issues here on the planet earth. Every time one of these controversies, so-called, bubbles up I want to put my head through a plate glass window.
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