Skin

I think the show is messing up by so blatantly end gaming Patrick and Richie. It feels like Patrick and Richie have been destined to be together since Looking Toward The Future and it's a detriment to the story telling because it's clear that they are incompatible people. Yes Patrick loves Richie's free spirit, and he seems to exoticize him but I don't see any real love there. It's clear that Patrick doesn't love Richie because he doesn't see Richie as being his ideal man, they are very different socionomically speaking and we can see that Patrick cares soo much about that stuff. Look at the way Patrick and his mother react to Kevin when she thinks that her son is dating him and how Patrick is basically internalizing "I wish" in that scene and then contrast how ashamed Patrick seems to be of Richie when he introduces him to his friend. All in all it just doesn't mesh. It's a sad situation because the actor who plays Kevin is clearly going to have other projects to choose from so he won't be on Looking long. But we see how much Patrick really wants a guy just like Kevin and he is going to get burned for it. Richie feels like a consolation prize at this point. I don't really get why Agustin has to like Richie? Does anyone know why that is happening? It feels like forced story telling to have them be friends. Richie needs to be in Patrick's sphere for this "triangle" to work, but there is no real way to fit him in so they just picked Agustin to work him in there. I think the writers are trying too hard to be pro-Richie this season and to keep him relevant, as Patrick has all but driven passed him for Kevin.

No, I'm glad that the Malcolm Black stuff is over with, it wasn't very promising to begin with. David Clark's re-entrance was botched, the only milage that they could've gotten with that was the Victoria/Amanda mouse game angle, and even then there was a ticking time clock with that - viewers aren't going to stick around in this climate with stupid or infuriating writing just to drag things out, which we touched upon up thread a few weeks back. The problem with this season is there has been so very little that has actually worked in regards to story. The new cop has completely failed by my account to provide fresh story opportunities, and now that David is alive, and he has reunited with Emily her story has pretty much been wrapped up so everything around the show has been decentralized. Killing Daniel has turned Victoria into a martyr which means you lose one of the most interesting and head strong villains of the entire series. There is no further investment in Victoria vs. Emily, which the show heavily built up for nearly 4 seasons. Nolan and his conquests have never been strong enough to withstand heavy focus or plot, so even though Louise is interesting, I don't believe she will hold her luster for very long. Jack loses his relevance with every passing episode, so on and so on for everyone else on the canvas. I still think killing off Daniel was a poor move, some potential could have been mined there. I would say the only characters that have some potential to liven up the season are Margo's current story and Charlotte's possible re-entrance. Otherwise the show feels dead in the water.

I completely forgot that I had seen him before when I watched the Client List last year. That says everything in regards to his on-screen presence, as I binged watched that show and was pretty obsessed with it last summer. I still can't believe Jennifer Love Hewitt torpedoed the show because she needed to be paired with her husband and not Colin. She's been on a lot of steady series to where she could be thought of as being a solid leading actress. Everwood, Brothers & Sisters and now Revenge that's a solid decade plus of being on screen. She reminds me a bit of Katie Holmes for some reason.

Seriously. This show cannot run on the fumes that is Jack/Amanda, outside of Aiden he was the only guy that she sparked with and could develop a captivating pairing with, the new cop isn't helping things either and if this was the trade-off, it is a poor one at best. Apparently the actor wanted out back in season 3 so maybe this was an early dismissal for him. My guess is that they are cleaning house earlier just in case they get canceled after this season.

I finally gave in and binged watched this from the first season till now and what a great little show! That being said they completely buried it underneath a terrible pilot, so no wonder no one is watching it. I'm only watching the show for Kevtrick at this point though even if Ritchie and Patrick are endgame, which I think is more likely now seeing as the actor playing Kevin has his hands in multiple projects. The friendship between the guys is also quite nice, which is such a stark contrast to Girls where you wonder how they are even friends with each other.

I'm not sure if it's supposed to be tongue in cheek or if it's supposed to be taken at face value, but if it's the former I think it's a clear way to get the media off her back, and cash in on a trend that has turned her into a bit of a laughing stock in the media. I think her singles have been so-so, I enjoyed both WANEEGBT and IKYWT more then either of these for the most part, but she seems to be having more success with this album then she has with Red so far. I haven't even heard this record because she won't let it be accessed on Streaming sites.

Agreed, although I think Supernatural is mostly just running in place at this point in regards to story telling, they did a beautiful job with their 200th episode. I think this was one of the best and most enjoyable episodes of Supernatural since season 5. It completely hit the mark with what this show is truly about and why fans of this show still tune in. Looked at the ratings and SPN along with Arrow are tied with second place for most viewers in the coveted 18-49 demo for The CW after Flash. This is clearly an important show to the CW. I don't know what they are going to do when it starts to wind down and ends. These shows can only do so much. The Vampire Dairies and Arrow have already started to decline in step with Supernatural and they are much younger shows, The Vampire Dairies has maybe one more season to go after this one, if that. They need to start planning for their next few seasons.

The werewolf one.

I watched last Tuesday's episode live and it was the first time I watched this show live since maybe season 5/6. It was nice, but more or less still more of the same.

Can Emily/Amanda just snap Victoria's neck at this point? She might as well. WTF can everyone just tell Clarke that Emily is Amanda? Noland, Charlotte, Jack, Emily/Amanda herself, etc.

Been getting back into the series after a long hiatus with it. I stopped watching this at the end of season 6 just because I felt that the show did a horrible job in maintaining their talent. It became a joke every time a cast member got fired or left. There was just a massive amount of talent bleed. Looking back it's obvious why Katherine Heigl left, she was in the midst of a burgeoning film career and was one of ten leads on a show, getting paid peanuts. It's obvious she wanted out, and did everything she could to leave the show. That being said the combined loss of Isobel and George from the original team harmed the show greatly, and the show has never really recovered. You could see that the writers tried to stem those losses but they never really healed over. Lexie and Owen were great standouts though. I never liked Callie or Arizona.

She was basically just a second version of Courtney Matthews after awhile. She came on the show as a love interest for Jax and then she transitioned from that to Jason's second Action Girl Girlfriend. She was always Adventure girl, and had that background but she was mired in the Jarson drama for much too long. She was at her best during 2007, when she was a villain actively making life worse for Eliesabitch Webber. She's too boring as a heroine. She would be a lot more interesting in the role Britt has been playing.

I didn't care for the story either, but I was more concerned with how the situation was hand waved for the maternity storyline between Sam and Alexis so many years later. The death of your first born is not something one should ever get over, and the contemptuous relationship and circumstances regarding it should have always been respected from a story stand point. Even if Alexis wasn't directly responsible, Sam should harbor very strong feelings over the situation. She forgave too easily, in my opinion. Even with the sex with Ric withstanding. Now that Sam has her healthy baby it's like no one remembers her first born daughter anymore. But like with so many aspects of Sam's character its lost, forgotten and temporal.

I thought we went threw this with Lady Gaga, the bulk of musical artists fans aren't super fans who will except anything from the artist. It's the every day general public, who makes these stars successful. Country fans and Hip-Hop/Rap fans are typically the demographic that are the most "loyal" to their artists and stars. But even then if their brand loyalty deteriorates they can experience diminished returns with their successive albums. That's why a musical artist can be on top of the world one moment, and the next they are skating near levels of obscurity. I think Taylor has largely peaked, Fearless will remain her biggest album from a worldwide stand point, now its just a point of how long she can mediate the loss of general fan attrition.

Not going to happen without her Country fanbase which she has consistently been isolating with each of her successive album releases. She pretty much told them to completely eff off in a press statement about the album earlier this month. This album is a pure pop album and there will be nothing there for country fans. Way to completely give the middle finger to the fanbase that made her a household name. She's killing her crossover appeal, and her sales will tumble because of it. Shame as she could have been the next Shania Twain in courting both markets.

I think the last full season I watched of this was season 7. I'm glad the show is still running and the CW are still giving Jared and Jensen pay checks though. This show will probably go on for another 2 seasons at least. The CW has nothing else to show at this point, might as well ride this pony into the ground.

The thing about Brian that is particularly interesting is that his best friends are all in love with him. Lindsey chooses Brian to be the father of her child, they previously dated in college and they would also play fake hetero-sexual partners concerning Gus. Justin was in love with Brian from the moment they had their one night stand and Micheal was forever waiting in the wings for Brian to de-friend zone him. Brian is an interesting character study just because of the way he breaks down his relationships and how he compartmentalizes his love for people. He denies Micheal the sexual gratification he continuously gives Justin, he denies Justin the intimacy that he so desperate needs by giving it to Micheal and he denies both Micheal and Justin the respect and equality he gives to Lindsey on a regular basis. He purposely defeats and sabotages all of his relationships because of a catastrophic up-bringing he witnessed with his mother and father. Brian will never be satisfied, because he never gives himself fully to anyone. He will never have a full relationship because he never gives everything to one person. He is virtually in a polygamous relationship threw out the entire show, and because of it all of his relationships are in lock-step. Ultimately Brian ends up alone at the end of the series because of it. Micheal, Justin and Lindsey all move on and he is still at Babylon. Loved Ben, even threw that steroid mess they put him threw. No wonder Micheal completely forgot about Brian as soon as he showed up. Hated the Hunter storyline, though, every bit of it. I don't think it was that he was bored with his life so much as this was just circular writing. You can tell toward the end of the show (s5 in particular) that they were just recycling storylines. S3 and S4 show Brian maturing into a person who is more or less concerned with his community and accepting responsibility for them and looking out for all of the gay people in Pittsburgh, which was a nice progression from where he was initially in seasons 1 and 2. But in season 5 he is virtually reset. Ultimately I think the shows creators didn't know how to progress the character while still being true to who he was, the endless eternal stud who wanted to screw everything with no attachments. That doesn't mesh well with the hero they were trying to make him into after his fight with cancer and taking down a political opponent who wanted to make gays second class citizens. Not because there can't be both, but after all Brian went threw it seemed shallow that his number one obsession was if he was still hot or not. The Brian and Justin relationship was also an issue, because they had to stunt Justin's growth continuously. There was nothing wrong with his character arc at the end of season 2 and beginning of season 3. It was completely right for Justin to want more out of a relationship than an open one. That's the one thing I liked about the Ethan arc, that Justin finally realized he wanted a monogamous relationship that meant he was with one person. It's clear Justin wanted that intimacy and security, and it was ok for that to not be with Brian. But they changed that, and made him go back to Brian and say "I am the guy he [!@#$%^&*] more than once." Like that was some kind of prize. The STD scare in season 5 only brought the point home further. Justin's character after season 3 virtually went no where. He had no further growth.

This is probably the part most people identify as being "Girls-esque." The day in the life of unlikable and ultimately bitchy characters who have no direction in life. I think that comparison is apt for that particular reason it fits and has the same general tone and ideology of messy people that this sub-generation seems to crave. Entertainment comes from people engaging in unbelievably stupid, infuriating and self-destructive behavior. Which is something I can't really get behind of, but in this post-reality television world I can see the appeal of. In a way I understand the concept that a character doesn't have to be likable (it certainly helps, by the gods yes it does - at least for me), but ultimately if the character pops it's a salvageable situation, hence the success of Girls and to an extent Weeds and Shameless' titular character successes. Nancy, Fiona in addition to Hannah aren't the easiest characters to root for but ultimately they "pop." I think it's a bit odd that viewers are so in to this particular version of leading anti-hero(ine) television these days, but I guess it's the effect cable has as being a radical alternative to the heroes on basic television (i.e. Dexter, Breaking Bad, True Blood, Mad Men, etc.) there seems to be this adverse reaction to perfect leading protagonist achingly trying their hardest to do the right thing. Instead of wanting to struggle with a moral horizon, it seems like there is some kind of underlying schadenfreude that comes from watching these characters perpetually screw everything up.

This isn't worse than Britney and ...Baby One More Time, but it's one of her weakest efforts because it's uneven. Femme Fatale is one of her most dance heavy albums. Pretty much the entire album is dance. It's full of house, dubstep, euro-dance, trance, hi-nrg, and bass drops. Circus, Britney and Oops!... are probably Britney's pure pop albums. But I would say all of her albums post In The Zone heavily incorporate music from the dance genre. Femme Fatale is a better album than Circus is, from the production alone. I would consider Femme Fatale her second best album in terms of production and sound (after Blackout). It's a very cohesive dance record which is a good thing, but I don't understand why people want more of the same thing. If you want to listen to a hardcore dance record she has supplied fans with three of them Blackout, Femme Fatale and In The Zone. I think it's beyond past her time to move on from that and mine new territory, which is what I liked about Britney Jean. I just wish there was an entire album with slower moments like Alien, Chillin With You, Don't Cry and Perfume because that's clearly where Britney's head space is as a 30 year old woman. I like that we get an album where we have moments where she really speaks sincerely about her life. She should move to progressing her sound forward instead of trying to recreate the same dizzying and spacey dance music which doesn't even relate to her right now. I don't want to hear about her partying, boozing and drinking Ke$ha and Rihanna under the table because it's beyond apparent she doesn't even live like that anymore and it's not connecting. This is why I am fine with the personal moments, but don't really care for the uptempos even though they are still enjoyable. The album is a good listen, but the collaborations with Will.i.am, David Guetta and T.I. are gratuitous and are solely recorded for token radio moments and satisfy the fans who loved her previous dance efforts. It's mollifying, but not the purpose of the album (at all).

I enjoyed the album for what it was, but what's surprising is that the uptempos are the major let downs on the album. The album seems uneven mostly because it sounds like they wanted to make a personal effort but then realized half way threw that they needed something to play in the clubs and on the radio. I wish they would have just gone with the initial premise and made the personal album they advertised it as. In terms of quality it reminds me of Britney (her other self-titled album). It hints at personal territory but falls a bit short and regresses towards tried and true methods. Alien, Chillin With You and Perfume are all great though, you can kind of see the world threw her point of view with those songs.

Her music has consistently underwhelmed me since Born This Way and I feel no different with this last outing. Outside of the two officially released singles and some sparse potential in songs like Gypsy and Dope I don't see anything of worth in her album. It's sad because The Fame (Monster) had a chance to grow into something great, but instead she has remained consistently dull in the harsh light of day.

Interesting that you said this considering it's only in hindsight that Madonna's debut album is considered so highly. Originally it was Cyndi Lauper who ended up getting most of the critical and commercial recognition and had the bigger debut and initial impact. LAV was the album that really turned things in her favor and started capitalizing her as a star and cultivating her initial power as a celebrity. I think that album is much bigger and more significant than her debut for that reason alone. I've always found Like A Prayer to be overrated as an album. Ray Of Light as the epiphany album always held more weight with me as a listener. True Blue was also an easier listen and is defined as Madonna's most successful album commercially speaking apart from her first greatest hits record. I didn't think Erotica was considered to be that great an album with fans. Erotica and Bedtime Stories often feel like the forgotten albums in Madonna's catalog, the step children of her music career.

Another song from her album leaked today called Passenger (I won't bother linking it because it will be taken down within hours if not minutes of posting), and it may be one of the best vocal performances she has ever recorded in her 16 year career. I'm incredibly excited for this album, more so than any of her other releases and I have been a fan for about a decade now. I always found her material to be superior to most pop artists, but this time around it feels different. It really feels like she has taken her music to the next level in terms of quality.

Well everyone considers anything with a big beat to be dance music. My point is to say that dance music does have it's differences. Work Bitch is different from a lot of the other dance music that been released as of late. A lot of music that is popular now is just experimentations of house music, which is more mellow and soft sounding which is what artists like Rihanna, Zedd, Avicci, Lady Gaga, and Madonna have experimented with recently. I really don't think you can confuse those songs with this, this sounds much harder and grittier than those pieces and the production on this track takes a lot of notes from rave music, clash and glitch. It's definitely not what BEP and Gaga have been releasing. I would definitely say Britney is popularizing a trend that was underground, which is what she has often done in her previous music. Is she creating this sound? No. But she is definitely a step ahead of the curve and her competition in this regard. She is one of the first to really step out and go this route musically, as no other pop star can really say they've done this style of music before. As to Britney not being new anymore I feel like we keep reiterating the same point over and over, we know Britney isn't the it girl of the moment and she hasn't been in awhile. That happens to all artists who endure. No one stays on top forever. That kind of success is not sustainable.

  I already expressed all the ways this is different (Also will.i.am didn't produce this. Otto Knows did) this doesn't sound like The Black Eyed Pea's music. As I said this utilizes a lot of dance style production called glitch, electronic house music and rave music, which is not something any one else in pop music is doing right now. This is very different for the US and none of the recent pop artists have experimented with this particular dance style. This is more inline with Swedish House Mafia and Girls Aloud's musical outputs then anything on Top 40 now. In that way it is avant garde and atypical of what is popular now. Britney's always done that though, she did the same with dubstep a few years back with Hold It Against Me. No one was utilizing that particular genre in pop music either until she highlighted it in her single. Rihanna's commercial viability has hit a snag and it's been that way since Talk That Talk (2011). Gaga's career has been on borrowed time since 2010. Katy and Miley are really the only current pop stars who are "in season" and that's because they are still relatively new. But again comparing Britney to these stars makes no sense because she is not in their group. These women are not her contemporaries, and she out paces them all in terms of overall impact. Her career pre-dates them by a good decade so the similarities are meaningless. In many ways it's inappropriate to compare them, because it's apples and oranges. The only reason people really compare Britney to the newer pop females is because none of her musical contemporaries are still around or relevant to compare her to, so she gets added in to the newer "it girls."