#its so inconsequential and hilarious. glad pretty is doing well

[sparring-spirals]

Laudna and Imogen and Fearne constantly going back to see Pretty, their barely-ex who they broke up with VERY amicably, because they like him and also that specific tavern, and its fine, but also Silently Suffering Thru It is. So fucking good. Enhanced by the fact that THEY KEEP INFLICTING IT ON THEMSELVES, its completely fine and the regret is all just like. Social Regret. harmless and hilarious and long lasting. impeccable.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

iZombie 5x05 "Death Moves Pretty Fast" Review

This week’s iZombie proved that the show is capable of juggling its varying tone as well as make some significant plot advancements, making it one of the strongest episodes of the final season so far.

Our victim this week is a wealthy high schooler, Harris, who moonlights as a radio DJ. Having more money than he knows what to do with, he throws an elaborate 80’s themed party at his house. An investment at Bitcoin paid him out so well that he happens to be neighbors with the most untouchable man in New Seattle, Blaine DeBeers. The noise from the party begins to interrupt Blaine’s wooing of Al, and so he threatens Harris. Just a few hours later, the door to Harris’ sauna is screwed shut with him inside, exposing him to severe hyperthermia.

While investigating the crime scene, Clive slips and throws out his back, leaving this case up to Liv and Ravi. “Liv’s an OG Zombie, and I once took a kickboxing class,” Ravi reassures him. Liv turns Harris’ brain into bite size dumplings, and the brain hits just as Ravi is expressing anxiety about Isobel’s obituary. It includes the bit about how Isobel’s brain produced a cure, and Ravi is worried the story is going to go viral. Liv is having none of his moping, and transforms into a goofy Ferris Bueller-ish high schooler.

When Liv and Ravi visit Blaine’s house and question him about Harris’ murder, Al overhears. “They just popped by to see if I committed a murder. We do this every few months,” Blaine shrugs. In order to follow up, Al pays a visit to them in the morgue. Liv rarely has any problems with leaving her leftovers on the counter, but this time, their guest sneaks a bite. Al is still investigating Blaine, and it’s obvious she’s hoping to spark a vision from Harris’ memory to get a scoop on him. She asks Liv and Ravi if Blaine was ever investigated for Mayor Baracus’ murder. When she leaves, Ravi and Liv point fingers at each other, telling each other that they had a hunch Blaine was behind the slaying. Ravi mentions that he’s sick of how Blaine basically has New Seattle in a chokehold. 10,000 zombies all rely on the brains that he smuggles, which gives him a pretty unfair monopoly. It doesn’t help that he’s also a dastardly villain who will never change. Ravi makes a good point that Blaine shouldn’t be above the law, even if he is necessary to the survival of the city.

Their investigation leads them to Harris’ girlfriend, Amy, and Amy’s ex, Jamie. The three were in a complicated zombie-human love triangle, and Harris purchased Amy a zombie cure off the black market so they could be together. When Liv and Ravi go to question the two of them about this, it appears that Jamie lost his memory. It strikes Ravi as odd. “One does not catch dementia. It’s not like a cold. And zombies don’t catch things anyway,” he says.

It turns out that our rebel human groups are getting more and more clever. Dolly Durkins and her crew have robbed graves of Alzheimer patients, and poisoned FG’s brain supply. Even Major is affected. During a meeting with French Inspector Enzo, his vision is blurred and he can barely string two sentences together. Enzo takes advantage of this, and sends water cannons to attack the humans who are barcading the brain supply. It just gives Fillmore Graves even more bad press, and more damage control for Major. Enzo is such a strange character to me. It’s never clear where his motivations lie, or even what’s in it for him. His loyalty to Chase Graves hasn’t gotten him anywhere, and has led him to create some nonsensical allies. When Major gets his senses back, he punishes Enzo for riling up tensions between New Seattle and Fillmore Graves, and sends him to The Box to be frozen. This reveals another problem — the traitor FG zombies who were recruited by Shady Zombie Man were discovered missing, along with 17 other frozen zombies. We still don’t know who he is or what his plan is, but we cut to a shot of a “full Romero zombie.” Is Shady Zombie Man curating an army of them?

The murder plot wraps up with a hilarious scene of Vampire Steve dressed as Harris to draw out the killer. It turns out to be Harris’ best friend, who was tired of being his sidekick. “I was supposed to be visiting colleges when the wall went up, but instead I’m stuck here,” he says. While the murder and the killer might have been inconsequential overall, Harris’ brain does give Liv a pretty crucial vision — Don E in disguise, delivering the black market cure to Harris and Amy. Lucky for Al, she has the same exact vision — and it gives her the link she needs to connect Blaine to Baracus.

Al confronts Peyton, asking her to comment on a few “housekeeping” issues. She brings up the events of Meet Cute, cites other crimes, and questions their former sexual relationship. “I can’t believe you fell for his whole thing. You couldn’t see through it?” she says to Peyton. Okay Al, very fair question. One we were all asking ourselves a few seasons ago. It was a dark time. But that’s hardly helpful now! Al’s profile of Blaine is explosive, and comes at bad timing. Peyton was about to take a trip to DC to advocate on New Seattle’s behalf, and a story like this makes things a little difficult to defend. I’m not sure how Blaine is going to salvage his reputation, or if Peyton can spin this in front of the politicians she’s meeting with.

Another story going viral? AP picked up the Freylich Syndrome story. Liv walks in on a tearful Ravi who worries that all the Freylich victims are in danger of being targeted, now that everyone is aware of the gold mine in their brains. We see Blaine get distracted from his own profile to click on a news alert about the story — will he try to shoehorn his way into the team to help Ravi create a legitimate cure?

Final thoughts:

This episode had so many understated one-liners that had me chuckling the whole episode

Having Liv FaceTime Clive in order for her to “break the fourth wall” was such a clever way to directly address the camera without completely throwing out the structure of the show. Also, I loved when Clive was loopy on pain medicine and decided to join in the interrogation.

“Anyway, you complete me. See you later.” I love how close Ravi and Major have grown over these last five seasons.

Without a doubt, Vampire Steve is the MVP of this episode.

“Vive Chase Graves.” “Whatever.” Same, Major.

I love it when Ravi shows his soft side! It’s clear that Isobel’s life and death really had an impact on him, and I’m glad to see the ways they are carrying it over into this season.

Haley’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

iZombie airs Thursdays at 9/8c on the CW.

[ryanonwrasslin-blog]

The Wrestling Optimist - March 9, 2017

For those newbies, this is my first in what I anticipate becoming roughly a weekly edition of my thoughts, from a mostly optimistic viewpoint, on the wonderful world of professional wrestling. I'm working my hardest to stop being such a miserable smark, and this column is my best effort at both keeping myself honest and funneling out the various thoughts I have on wrestling. For the most part, this will be a WWE-themed piece every week, and it's still evolving, but for now I think I've found a solid format. Also, I typically intend for this to be a weekly column, but I was excited to try it out after Fast Lane (and really put my efforts at optimism to their most extreme test), so this particular column will only cover Raw, Smackdown Live, Talking Smack, 205 Live, and NXT.

Theme of the Week: We really are in the fast lane to Mania. The PPV may have left a lot of people a little displeased, but I think Raw and SDL did a nice job this week of building to the Jaws-like creature lurking in our midst, the reportedly 6.5 hour Wrestlemania now less than a month away. On Raw we got Y2J vs. KO, and the Women's Triple Threat officially booked, set up a possible Cruiserweight title match, while also getting Lesnar vs. Goldberg hyped, and Reigns vs. Taker hinted at with the subtlety of one of the Big Dog's Superman Punches. And the inevitable pre-show Tag title match will get clarity next week. That's an awful lot of productivity even for 3 hours.

Smackdown Live, not to be outdone, settled on Wyatt vs. Orton officially, made an intriguing Women's Championship free-for-all, kept the build on for the Mixed Tag, set conspiracy theory AJ Styles loose on Shane O'Mac, and hinted that we're going to get a hardcore type of Intercontinental Title match between Corbin and Ambrose.

The Mania card is now starkly visible, with the unknowns being whatever is happening with the Triple H/ Seth Rollins/ Samoa Joe/ Sami Zayn/ maybe Finn Balor storyline, whether Big Show vs. Shaq happens, how the poor SDL Tag division will be handled, which undercard guys will fill out the AMBAR, and then designating a few of these as pre-show.

For my own druthers, I mostly don't care how the card order stacks up, but I'm going to lose it if the Smackdown women end up on the Pre-Show as I fear they might. My girls Becky and Alexa deserve better than that.

10 Best Moments of the Week

Teasing the Phenomenal Forearm into the RKO Some day they are going to have Orton hit him with the RKO when going for either the forearm or the 450 and it's going to be the coolest thing since the Curb Stomp RKO, and I'm glad they clearly know how cool that is.

Heyman rushing out to address the CM Punk chants and halt whatever ill-fated improv Goldberg was about to attempt I'm not positive that Heyman was rushed out there early to cut off the Punk chants and prevent Goldberg from saying something that would only make the chants worse, but it certainly looked that way and it was another hilarious reminder of how little WWE can trust Goldberg to do pretty much anything.

The Miz motherfuckin' ETHERS John Cena I have nothing to add to his masterpiece. Go watch the SDL and Talking Smack segments.

FORK YOU! - I loved Baron Corbin pinning Dean Ambrose under a forklift. I'm always in for goofy prop fights, and there's always a place on the card for something like this at Mania. I hope this is how the match goes at Mania, a sometimes goofy, sometimes brutal street fight sort of affair. We know that Ambrose wanted the Mania match with Lesnar to go way too far last year but was rebuffed. Let him try this year with someone young and hungry like the Lone Wolf.

Austin Aries, the hero the Cruiserweight division needs Running Aries as the apparent face against Neville could be a weird fit in the long run, but I was all in for this segment on Raw. Aries is the outsized character the division needs right now to complement all the work Neville is doing and the better ring-work we've started seeing from guys like Tozawa and Swann.

The SAnitY and Dillinger story really comes together I don’t know about everyone else, but seeing Roddy get dragged out beaten half to death by the rest of the group, and seeing Tye and Jose get fired up about it, worked like hell for me. That awkward trio coming together against the heels was lacking something and this helped fill in the storyline, as did EY yelling “YOU DID THIS” at Tye. Good stuff.

As the Smackdown Women's Division Turns Becky gets turned on by a tag partner again (at this point I’m surprised Luke Sanders hasn’t turned on her), and Mickie at last turns on Alexa. Sometimes the easy story is the right one. If Naomi makes it back, she's pretty clearly going to win the title, but if not I really hope they have Becky overcome a whole Rogues gallery of heels to win (throw in Eva Marie and Carmella to really put it over the top). She's been turned on so many times that she needs the perseverance story.

For a night, the Part-Timers were booked well I'm as deeply skeptical as anyone that Raw can get me fully invested in a Lesnar/ Goldberg feud or an Undie/ Strong Roman feud, but credit where it's due, they did an excellent job on Raw this week. Goldberg eating an F5 was long overdue and I honestly wanted to see the whooping get worse.

TJP and Shinsuke dab on each other WWE spent a few headscratching months booking TJP after the Cruiserweight classic, but this was a fun match and felt like the right way to handle him, as a cocky, shitty, sorta heel who also does some seriously cool shit in the ring.

The way AJ Styles says, "Randy Orton burns down a man's house and gets rewarded for it!" I knew AJ was among the best in the ring prior to his WWE run, but his promos have been a wonderful surprise to me. He is a natural on the mic and has a goofy charisma, and for whatever reason I chuckled for a long time after he said this particular line.

Let the Smark Out

For as much as I’m trying to be an optimist, wrestling is not a perfect product. Far from it, really, and when you have problems with something, it’s healthy to let that sort of thing out. So, in the hopes of keeping a 5:1 ratio tilted toward the good side, here are my two complaints of the week:

Are we seriously doing this with Emma again? She was in such a good place as Evil Emma with the half-gloves and the shoulder pads. Given how shallow the Raw Women’s division is, why did they feel the need to screw around with something that was working????

I’ve known for weeks that the Styles/ Shane O’Mac feud was coming, but now that it’s here, it hurts even more. There is obvious proof on the roster in multiple forms that you only get so many Wrestlemania’s out of your top workers (like Balor and Rollins both being potentially on the shelf for this year after not being on last year’s card either). To use up one of those years for Styles, unquestionably the best in-ring performer in the company, and probably the world, is asinine. I know there is no bigger honor in WWE eyes than to fight against a McMahon (and I strongly suspect we’re heading toward either a Bayley or Sasha vs. Stephanie program in the next year), but I have no interest in seeing AJ selling for ol’ Baby Jabs McMahon. 

Let’s Rank Stuff!

One of the best things to do as a wrestling fan is to compare things. Who's on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling? Who was the most over with the crowd? Who's the best in-ring worker? What's the most uncomfortable Attitude Era storyline in retrospect? That's what I'm going to do here every week, pick a topic and rank it as I see it. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts! I'd love to hear them.

This week's ranking: The Status of the Championship Belts

It's been almost 8 months since the Brand Split, which saw WWE add a whopping 4 title belts to their company (and a fifth in the UK Title even more recently) and with Wrestlemania approaching, I thought now would be a fun time to rank those titles in terms of their current level of prestige. Keep in mind the old adage about the wrestler making the belt, not the other way around. So without further ado, in reverse order:

13. UK Championship - Too young to be any higher. If Pete Dunne gets it, though, this thing could rocket up the list. That dude has incredible potential.

12 US Championship - Man what a precipitous fall. A short 18 months ago, Cena had made this thing into probably the second best belt in the company. But more recently it's been seen being dragged around by a disinterested Roman Reigns like he was worried that touching too much of it might infect him with some terrible disease. The good news is that I can see KO winning this at 'Mania and proudly defending it, not because it represents America or anything, but because KO is convinced anything he has is just the best.

11 Smackdown Tag Team Championships - Another letdown since the brand split. Slater/ Rhyno was fun, but American Alpha is surprisingly struggling right now.

10 Raw Tag Team Championships - The shenanigans required to get New Day to the tag title record didn't help anyone, and now I can't help but view The Club as utterly inconsequential. Tag team wrestling on the main roster is in a bad way right now. Thankfully, there's hope on the horizon if WWE is smart enough to realize it.

9 Cruiserweight Championship - Talk about the wrestler making the belt. Putting this thing on Neville was the step that was badly needed to salvage this belt and the entire division.

8 Smackdown Women's Championship - This division has done wonders in terms of drawing out depth and giving its characters chances, but it's in need of some excellent, or rather Bex-cellent, wrestling and something memorable. I think maybe they missed an opportunity not having Becky and Nikki fight for this at some point. Face vs. Face can be tricky, but these two could have done it, it would have given more prestige to the belt and now rumors are Nikki may be on her way out. That’s a seriously missed opportunity if so.

7 WWE Universal Championship - Yikes. I was closer to putting this thing 8th than moving it higher. It's impressively ugly, KO's title run was consistently neutered, and now Dadberg is drenching it in sweat for the next few weeks before Lesnar takes it from him at Mania and promptly disappears for a few months. If we do this ranking again in June, this belt might be 13th.

6 NXT Women's Championship - Asuka is obviously great and the coming feud with Ember should be a lot of fun, as should Nikki Cross' pursuit, but the belt hasn't kept up with some of the others under the WWE umbrella. From where it was during Sasha/ Bayley, things have slipped a bit in part because no one legitimate has come for Asuka. Yet.

5 NXT Tag Team Championships - Several of the best matches of 2016 were contested for this belt, and honestly I feel like it should be higher. I just couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger. That said, there's no shame in being 5th and the sole beacon of light for tag team wrestling in WWE.

4 Raw Women's Championship - I didn't love the hot potato of the belt, same as most people, and I loathe it when WWE starts talking about "making history," but this title is a very important one right now.

3 Intercontinental Championship - This likely would have been number 2 if I'd done this ranking in the fall thanks almost entirely to the Miz. Ambrose has been fine as champ since then thanks to his pedigree as a former WWE Champ, and if they are setting up Baron Corbin to win the title at Mania, that could be a great step toward both making a star and helping keep the belt relevant.

2 NXT Championship - One of the most impressive lineages of any championship belt in wrestling history right now. At times, it probably has surpassed even the WWE Championship itself. I'm curious to see how they handle Bobby Roode's reign after having one indy giant after another hold it for years on end. Obviously Roode is no slouch, but this does feel like an interesting point for the title.

1 WWE Championship - I'm glad they're back to just calling it the WWE Championship. That just sounds so much better than adding any sort of "world" modifier to it. It's the franchise, the belt with all the history behind it, and that WWE itself even clearly tries to pay respect to, and this past year or so has only added to the legacy. Getting AJ Styles' name on the belt was great for everyone, Cena tied the record with it, and now Bray Wyatt, a character that WWE has always viewed as a long-term face of the company, is battling another all-time legend in Randy Orton at Wrestlemania for it. That's great stuff.

Match of the Week

This was supposed to be a column that covered everything after Fast Lane, but I have to give it up one more time for Neville vs. Jack Gallagher. That’s unquestionably the match of the week.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I sketched out a rough idea of the Mania card earlier in the column, but for the next few weeks I’m excited for the build. That’s where these matches are set up for memorable moments and big crowd pops or destined for failure. I covered the Triple H saga in this segment in the Fast Lane column, but I was surprised to see it not get a ton of attention on Raw this week. It’s starting to feel like WWE doesn’t even quite know what to do with it at this point.

If we get through this week’s Raw without some kind of stakes for Mania set for those two and the various other players in their drama, I’m going to start doubting whether the match is actually happening, and if maybe we’ll only get some kind of confrontation only at the show.

The Finisher

Big Show vs. Shaq would be kinda cool if it happens, but if it doesn’t, I hope they do Strowman vs. Show II. Strowman is ready for something more than winning the AMBAR, and Show deserves a reward for getting into such ridiculous shape. Plus, those two had low-key the most surprisingly fun match of 2017 so far, and you could do a lot worse than a ten minute hoss fight at Mania. Make it happen, WWE.