pipGofern

Mad Max is just cleaning up. This is amazing.

Pffttt...everybody knows there's no serious acting in sci-fi movies.

The thank you scroll idea is a good one. The band playing guys off the stage is giving no fucks tonight.

Cole: "The Roman Empire is on fire!!!!" Crowd: "HHH!! HHH!! One more time! One more time!" I am actually excited about the Mania undercard with Shane-Taker (and the inevitable Austin run-in) and Brock-Ambrose. But there's no Wrestlemania Moment I'm rooting for more than a repeat of the 2014 Rumble with Rock raising Roman's hand after his *cough* crowning win and looking bewildered at the chorus of boos. If Vince wants to send the crowd home happy, he'll turn on Roman immediately and hit him with the People's Elbow.

Calling it now, the Vincent J McMahon Award is Vince giving a trophy to himself only for Titus to interrupt in a "shoot" and break it over his head setting up a match at Mania.

People overburden quarterbacks with the leadership thing anyway in my opinion. 90% of the time your QB is your leader but some guys just either don't have that personality or they're young and it takes awhile for them to grow into it. So I feel like a lot of Cam's criticism comes from the overblown exceptions that comes with playing quarterback. Teams that don't have that real strong QB leader who still win Super Bowls nearly always have veteran personalities to fill that void. Like the Steelers having Bettis and Hines when Ben won his second year or the Ravens having Suggs and Lewis around. Part of me wonders how the Panthers might have fared if guys like Steve Smith and DeAngelo Williams had still been around.

The Packers are the one that stands out to me. Sure they beat the Steelers so they actually have one but if you would've told me five years later they still haven't been back I would've never believed it. I honestly thought they would be in the 10s what the Patriots were in the 00s.

CBS desperately wanted the Elway/Bettis retirement moment but Peyton wasn't having it.

Hawkman and Shayera are hands down two of the worst actors I've ever seen on a prime time network show. I used to watch General Hospital and they'd stand out as shitty actors on that. It's only made worse by the fact they've assembled a really nice cast with guys like Routh, Garber and the Prison Break boys. I suppose he's needed for this year's big season arc but the sooner they move Jay Garrick over from Flash, the better.

I always feel the same way when I see commercials for "Once Upon A Time" and realize we'll probably never get a proper adaption of Bill Willingham's genius Fables because it's already been repackaged and Disneyfied for a major network.

Yeah, I noticed that too. The show was too procedural-y and stiff in S1, almost like L&O with Monsters. S2 is when the humor and quirkiness started coming out more. But S3 is when DD and Anderson really seemed to get a hold of their characters. Syzygy - the one where the teen girls go all Carrie and kill Ryan Reynolds - was non-stop hilarity. Scully's deadpan "I doubt she's even a blonde" is one of my favorite lines in the entire series. She had really underrated comedic timing. What's really odd to notice in retrospect - given Duchovny's supposed battle with sex/porn addiction - is all the hints they dropped about Mulder being a porn aficionado. He makes references to "my tape collection" in several episodes and I think there's a couple instances where they infer he's been calling phone sex hotlines.

Everybody focusing on Will Smith not getting nominated as an indictment of Hollywood's lack of diversity, perhaps that was a smokescreen to distract us from the fact he wasn't nominated at the behest of the powerful cabal known as the National Football League run by a malevolent ginger dictator who's hellbent on keeping the truth about the consequences of playing football from being widely disseminated. Maybe I shouldn't have just watched both episodes of the X-Files reboot back-to-back...

I kinda cracked up when Cole was like "Ambrose remembers what the League did to Roman and this is payback" when they were setting up the table spot. Ambrose keeps getting booked into punishment matches because of Reigns, takes beatdowns because of Reigns, and tries to enact revenge for things done to Reigns...meanwhile Roman can't even friggin' help his buddy win the title at the Rumble because he's too busy crying over being eliminated. Worst. Friend. Ever. Ambrose is totally eating the pinfall in the three way and when he eventually turns on Roman for the obvious post-Mania program, I won't blame him one bit.

Like I said, evidently the alien hitman, Black Oil, alien bees, faceless aliens... All that latter day mythos stuff was evidently explained away by Mulder last night when he said "They [the conspiracy] gave me a bunch of fake alien shit to chase after in order to distract me from the real conspiracy." It's a giant retcon in order to streamline the mythos. Like I said, it seems like Carter is going back to the story he wanted to tell S1-3 but had to keep padding with extra layers in the post movie seasons in order to keep the show going without answering anything.

Was it a ruse? I have to rewatch the ep because they had so many monologues filled with backstory that flew by but I recall Mulder mentioning 2012 as when "it all started" - "all" in this case being the Illuminati putting their end game plan into motion. And that end game was, at least potentially, a fake alien invasion designed to cover up their taking over the world. Like I said, Carter bent over backwards to make sure all the confusing mythos stuff from the original series jibed with this new mythology he was setting forth. This episode would've slid in perfectly after Season 2 or 3 since it drew on many of the ideas they established early - before Carter had to pad things out keep the show going and they veered into nonsensical directions like the Black Oil and so forth (which I take is the stuff Carter is trying to explain away by having Mulder say "it was all lies misdirection to keep me occupied while the real conspiracy was moving forward").

I loved this episode. There was a lot of exposition to fill in new viewers (or people who just forgot the show) and set up the new mythology but I thought it was a pretty much perfect follow up to where they left off. This was the X-Files movie I always wanted but they never gave us. A lot of great callbacks to classic stuff and I'm very interested in the new mythology. Actually, I'd be interested if this was more or less the story Carter wanted to tell originally but had to change to keep the show going when Fox demanded he milk it for all its worth. This kind of reminded me of one of those What If? comics where they have a creator do a story he wanted but got changed (the Hobgoblin reveal, the Clone Saga...)

I pretty much echo your thought on Ambrose. I was out after he spent 10 minutes beating up a crash test dummy to utter silence. Pillman was Scary Insane goofy while (with apologies to Fowler) Ambrose is more Looney Tunes goofy. Until/Unless they let him be more Pillmanesque, he's closer to comedy midcarder than serious main eventer. Besides, people are really being unfair to Roman. I dunno where this "Ambrose has all the talent/potential, Roman has very little" meme started but it's far too simplistic. A lot of folks disliking him now probably thought he was a cool badass in the Shield. If Roman was booked correctly, he might not be the next Rock/Cena but he'd definitely be a legit main event guy. There is *something* there. Also, I'm not trying to be contrary but I just don't see these riotous reactions for Ambrose everybody keeps referring to. I say again, if I didn't watch every week, the reactions in the opener would've led me to think Owens was the face. Even Cole pointed out the repeated "Fight! Owens! Fight!" chants. I didn't hear any "Wacky Line! Wacky Line!" ones.

"Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" is a good way to describe Russo's booking strategy. No thanks. I'd rather the WWE - or any episodic tv show for that matter - come up with a thought out story and stick to that story through its logical conclusion. Even if that story they're telling may not be the one I'd personally most want to see. If Rollins or Cena were still healthy and they went this direction I might be a bit more upset. As it is, HHH is really the only guy left to fill the role they need - which is give Roman his big signature Mania title win. As for Ambrose, I like him fine but was I the only one who noticed KO got bigger face pops in their opener than he did? Ambrose gets a good reaction but trying to equate it to the Bryan reactions a couple years back is not even close. I'd put the title on Owens way way before I gave it to Ambrose.

I'm far from a HHH fan but I'm actually kinda shocked people are spinning this as an ego stroke or Roman burial. Like it or not, it's the match they've built for months. A regular grudge match makes no sense because the whole issue started over Roman being screwed out of the title. Plus, Roman is their guy - the big title win at Mania has been on the books since the moment Seth cashed in. We can argue their choices but they clearly have a plan and they're sticking to it despite injuries crippling their flexibility.

I always wanted a TNT revival and Edge & Christian as Conan and Andy would be perfect. As for the Rumble, it was enjoyable but so predictable. I didn't read the Raw or Rumble threads so I have no idea what everybody was expecting but the Wyatts-Brock and HHH winning was all telegraphed a mile away. With all the injuries, they really had no alternatives unless somebody like Austin or Rock came out the woodwork. Only thing that surprised me was the massive face pop for HHH. I figured smarks would shit on Roman but never expected them to throw in so hard with Hunter - the IWC's boogeyman for like a decade now,

Well, we - the fans - have some culpability for the story. In the years immediately after the show ended, people turned hard on the whole mythology aspect. So whenever CC or DD were at a con and the inevitable "we want another movie!" thing came up, it was usually correlated with "You know, the mythos was whatever but it was the MOTW eps that we loved!" So that's where Carter's head was at when he did it. Of course, the problem is if you look at all the great classic MOTW eps, pretty much none of them were actually written by Carter. They were all done by Darin Morgan, Vince Gilligan, or Morgan & Wong. I went back and got a copy of the '08 movie since we've been talking about it. I'm about halfway through and your analysis seems spot on. The story they set up with the pedophile priest who may or may not by psychic is actually quite good, unfortunately it's about to go careening off the rails when it gets to that other stuff.

I only saw the 2008 movie once but I remember thinking it was terrible. I actually like MOTW episodes - all my favorite eps are primarily those moreso than the mythology stuff that got convoluted and frankly nonsensical after the first movie - but I wouldn't rank the '08 movie much higher than an average MOTW ep. I started re-watching the series around Christmas. I'm not watching every ep because of time but it really struck me how the show benefited from patience that FOX is notorious for not having (*insert obligatory Firefly bitching*). Outside the Toombs 2 parter, the Starbuck one with an amazing Brad Dourif and Erlenmeyer Flask the first season wasn't too good - too stiff and "procedural with monsters" for my taste. S2 is when things really jumped next level. As an aside, it's crazy to see all the notable guest stars they had in those first few years. Besides Dourif, Seth Green pops up all the way back in Ep2, Donal Logue plays an asshole friend of Scully's from the academy, Felicity Huffman shows up in some terrible "The Thing" ripoff, Terry O'Quinn is a cop and getting killed in one of the opening teasers before the credits even roll is none other than Ryan Reynolds.

I was confused by the expectations he would be, as I didn't know Netflix movies are eligible. . . . I remember many many years ago an actress named Linda Fiorentino had this fantastic performance in an HBO movie and even though they went through the farce of releasing it in like 5 theaters to claim it had "a theatrical run" they disqualified her from Best Actress consideration because the rule was you had to be released in theaters first. I'm not familiar with Beasts of Wild but if it debuted on Netflix ala The Interview, I assumed it wasn't eligible (Unless they have a special rule for streaming services). Actually, I'm more pissed about "Straight Outta Compton" not getting a Best Picture nom. Regardless of whether you thought it was the best movie of the year, I don't know how it doesn't at least get nominated. Maybe all the jokes about the Academy voters being doddering old white guys are accurate after all.

Terrible performance by the Steelers against noodle-armed Peyton Manning. Haley's playcalling was the utter shits. The Patriots are gonna absolutely flatten Denver next week.

And traded with the Cowboys for Devin Street.