Sundays with Seth: Love Is Mean and Sometimes Violent, but It's Eternal
Despite dealing with a cyborg Stan from the future, 'American Dad' gave us the strongest Valentine's outing of the night. The final image, albeit a little morbid, was genuinely sweet and emotionally satisfying for anyone seeing true and lasting love. For all his buffoonery, and there is a lot, Stan always comes through on the side of love in the end. Tonight's battle was with his own selfishness.
Stan proved it by taking himself to the Hershey park, and then eating Francine's promised breakfast-in-bed himself, and even agreeing to be turned into a cyborg in the future by the CIA, rather than spend eternity in a joint coffin with Francine. It took future Stan coming back, after 1000 years alone, and trying to steal Francine away from him, for Stan to realize that he did care about her.
Continue reading Sundays with Seth: Love Is Mean and Sometimes Violent, but It's Eternal
'Archer' - 'Skorpio' Recap
(S01E06) This week's episode involved yet another super-spy mission and drugs and chocolate fountains, but the main focus was really the always-hot drama bubbling under the surface amongst the employees of ISIS.
So, Lana's off to take on another mission, this time with the extra-hairy arms dealer, Skorpio. Malory has also scampered away under some business-y business pretenses but she's really hanging out with her KGB lover, Nikolai, on his Chum Guzzler. That leaves Cyril and the rest of the ISIS crew to hang around in the office and not do work. Of course, office gossip ensues and we're left knowing a little too much about certain characters.
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HBO Gives Us a Tasty Taste of 'The Ricky Gervais Show'
Now HBO is returning that joy to the world with an animated version of his podcast starting Feb. 19. Here's a little joy appetizer, but don't get too full because the main course is right around the corner.
Ricky Gervais animated HBO show from Punchline Magazine on Vimeo.
Review: 'Archer' - 'The Honey Pot'
(S01E05) Y'know the way you've been frantically scribbling in your diary for the past few years about how badly you want to see Thomas Lennon and Ron Perlman voice animated characters together? Yeah. I bet you thought you would keep writing forever. But 'Archer' sensed the secret wish in your tear-stained pages and made it a reality.
This episode wasn't quite as rapid-fire funny as some of the previous ones but it was still fantastic. It's clear that the writers are having a lot of fun with the characters, even the ones that pop up for only one mission.
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Review: Archer - Killing Utne
(S01E04) Ah, yes. Yet another fine episode of Archer. This show has been steadily funny, which is good. I'm still waiting for it to do something outrageous and surprise us with a particularly extra-hilarious or an especially terrible episode, but I don't mind watching something that I can rely on for decent laughs, even if it doesn't leave me rolling on the floor.
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Review: Archer - Diversity Hire
(S01E03) Considering Archer's previous episodes, the title "Diversity Hire" should have allowed you plenty of time to prepare yourself for lots of groan-worthy racial jokes. And yeah, that was definitely what we got. Overall, it was a pretty solid episode; the thirty minutes really went by in a blur because those jokes came rapid-fire.
This week, the ISIS lost yet another non-white agent and needed to make a diversity hire to get some sweet tax action (or not get tax action, I guess). Enter, Conway Stern, a black Jewish agent who is so nice and efficient, it is borderline suspicious.
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Robot Chicken gets recharged for 40 more episodes
The Adult Swim animated sketch show has gotten an order from Cartoon Network for two additional seasons.
Just imagine it. That's 40 brand new episodes of Transformers fighting, Voltron breakdancing, Olson Twins skewering, dragon mutilating, Smurfs smurfing, Barbie fornicating, Trix rabbit drug peddling hilariousness.
Ricky Gervais plays it loose for the Golden Globes and HBO
"I want to host it a little bit more like someone from the Rat Pack would host it," he says. "You know, just off the cuff and just playing the room and having fun with the people and roasting a few of the A-listers and hopefully it'll be fun for the room and the people at home."
"I do want people to have the feeling that anything can happen," he adds. "I want to be reactive so I don't want to just go out there and read an alter cue and do a very staid joke and have that sort of polite sort of titter."
Continue reading Ricky Gervais plays it loose for the Golden Globes and HBO
Jay Leno bashing before Jay Leno bashing became a professional sport
Here's a clip from the short-lived but beloved animated sitcom The Critic featuring a rip on Leno as critic Jay Sherman and his boy make a visit to Hollywood. USELESS TRIVIA ALERT! Leno's voice was provided by one of the show's writers, Judd Apatow, before he found success in mining humor from the folds of Seth Rogen's body fat.
Archer -- An early look
There is only one really bad thing about Archer, and that's the fact it's going to make my Thursday viewing line-up very, very full. Way to not anticipate my needs, FX. Geez.
I just sampled five episodes of FX's new animated offering, including the pilot that quietly aired a few months ago (reviewed by Jonathan Toomey here), and I already love it. There are a lot of appealing things about Archer: It's 60s-style super-spy adventures plus hilarious writing that maintains a great pace for the entire half-hour. Oh, and puns. Lots of puns.
Continue reading Archer -- An early look
An apology to The Simpsons
I'm sure I'm not unusual in that respect. I'm sure there are people who were with The Simpsons from those very first shaky frames, who saw them adopt No. 9 and laughed at Homer botching Christmas songs on the closing credits, and faithfully watched for several years, maybe even a decade before they dropped off.
But one of the best things about the show is, you can always come back. The Simpsons never forget. Yesterday's episode and the 20th Anniversary Special that followed was a nice reminder of that. The episode wasn't the funniest I've seen, but I did realize there has never been an episode of the show that wasn't worth at least a few laughs.
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Video DVD Review: Ben Ten Alien Swarm
Team Venture will get its own line of merchandise
The appropriately named Bif Bang Pow!, a collectibles manufacturer, announced today a deal with Cartoon Network to make a new line of toys based on the Adult Swim animated comedy. Fans can look for a collection of action figures, bobble heads, vehicle models and other goodies.
This is a great sign for a show that deserves a lot more attention than it gets. As well-written as The Simpsons or South Park, Venture Brothers shows off spot-on parody and multi-layered jokes in every episode.
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Kevin Conroy wins the top spot in Wired's Best Batmen list
The magazine's Underwire blog named their picks for the greatest man to ever don the ab-flattering Batman costume and the man who provided the voice for the title character of the awesome 90's animated version won the top spot.
Voice actor Kevin Conroy has not only voiced Batman and Bruce Wayne for Batman: The Animated Series, but also for six animated movies, three other animated series and three video games including the critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum. Anyone who is familiar with the dark, gravely voice that brought more depth and range to the character than anyone other should not be surprised that his performances have topped the list.
I'm sure it's making George Clooney grow greener with envy by the minute.
Sundays with Seth: A horse is a horse, uness it's The Rock
Between The Rock's bizarre guest appearance on Family Guy, and Stan's dirty deed on American Dad, it was a strange week in the twisted mind of Seth MacFarlane. But in a twist M. Night Shyamalan would be proud of, it was Family Guy's Meg Griffin who had the most memorable stand-out moment of the night. Uncomfortable, but memorable.
We also got the first episode of American Dad in the 16:9 widescreen ratio for the first time, and they didn't take advantage of the change to make any modification to the intro sequence at all, or spotlight it in any self-aware way. I still wish last week's epic could have been in widescreen, but with Family Guy now the only holdout on Animation Domination, the whole thing feels a little weird. Shouldn't the marquee show for Seth MacFarlane be in widescreen before its offspring?
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