Robin Hood on BBC season 2 finale (spoiler heavy)

N and I watched the last episode of season 2 of the BBC Robin Hood last night.

And both of us are left going “huh?”

In one episode they have done away with both strong female characters, and while I think what happened with Jaq and Will made perfect sense, what they did to Marian was just, well, again I say…Huh?

Guy of Gisbourn’s character has annoyed me for a while now.  He’s one of the type of bad guy I really dislike, a bad guy with no real reason or motive for being bad.  When Marian gave him a choice in this episode, to kill the sheriff & take his rewards from the king, and from her, who he has supposedly been pining for all this time, and for him to decide not to do so but then declare that he will take her by force…it’s all just badness for the sake of being bad.  I didn’t see any motivation for him to choose the sheriff, who ridicules and mocks and mistreats him at every turn, who he can’t trust or turn his back on, over Marian offering to marry him willingly.  The Guy who stayed behind with Marian when Nottingham was about to be razed just a couple of episodes back would have taken Marian’s offer in a heartbeat.  His character just doesn’t make any sense.

It seems to me that the writers got this idea in their heads to have them marrying while she is dying, but didn’t really think past it for next season.  What is Robin going to do without his Marian?  Go all dark and broody ala bad Willow from Buffy?  Become a playboy with a different girl in every village?  Neither situation works for the character.  And as I said earlier, that’s two great, strong female characters gone in one episode.  Where are they going with this?

Whatcha Doin’?

If you can, go turn on the Disney Channel and catch the Phineas and Ferb marathon.  I was totally prepared to HATE this show.  More obnoxious kids doing obnoxious things.  They’ve been advertising it on Disney for months, and the boys (especially R) were begging to watch it when it started at the beginning of this month.

So, at the beginning of the month we sat down to watch it, and lo and behold, it is good.  Funny, cute and quirky.   We’ve caught a bunch of episodes through the month and they’re airing a marathon of them today.

My favorite is definitely Perry the Platypus.  Sometimes a mild-mannered pet platypus, other times a secret agent working to stop the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz.  Whose goal is to spread his eeevvviiiilll throughout the tri-state area.  And the little girl next door, Isabella.  “Whatcha doin’?  She and her trusty troop of Fireside Girls are always ready to help Phineas and Ferb out with their plan for the day.

And Ferb?  Ferb is the Silent Bob of Disney.  Seriously!!

Yeah, a bunch of bits are ripped off from other shows “Hey Ferb, I know what we’re going to do today!” — Pinky and the Brain, anyone?  And I’m sure it’s been done in other stuff too.  But this show is good stuff.

Mourning the loss of Tube Time, aka Curse You Comcast!

A few months ago, I discovered the channel “Tube Time” on Comcast On-Demand.  Chock full of wonderful old sitcoms like Who’s the Boss, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and The Facts of Life.  By the time I got all caught up on The Facts of Life, they had added a new show to the lineup.  The Monkees.  One of my all-time favorite shows.  I used to watch it all the time when I was younger, and it hadn’t lost any of it’s goofy fun-ness.

 Then, a few weeks ago, I sat down, remote and snack in hand to catch up on the week’s new episode.  Clicked through, and waited for the show to start.  It didn’t start.  Instead, I got a lovely error message, telling me a subscription was required to view this show.

That day, a little disappointed, I thought nothing of it.  I’d gotten error messages before, and they usually cleared themselves up.  The next time I had the chance to sit down with it again, a week or so later, the message was still there.  I still couldn’t get to my show!!  “Self,” I thought, “you need to remember to get in touch with Comcast and get this fixed.”  It being the midst of the holiday season, that chance wouldn’t come for a while.  One night I finally sat down to call Comcast, only to be told by a machine that there were too many people ahead of me in the queue and I should call back at another time.  Click.  Yes, I had just been rejected by a machine.  Argh!

Not to be deterred, I logged onto Comcast’s website and found the option to chat with an analyst.  They gave me a chat room window with a little countdown of how many people were ahead of me in line.  Starting at 283.  Keeping myself busy with other online pursuits, the wait was relatively easy and before too terribly long, I was online with a Comcast analyst.  “there is an outage in your area” she typed to me, but if you’ll leave your box on for an hour, I will try to send a signal through”.  Not a problem.

A couple of days later, I once again had the time to snuggle down with some old friends, and again clicked through to Tube Time and The Monkees, only to be greeted with the same error message.  Shoulders slumped, I bypassed the phone call altogether and headed straight for the chat room.  Only 82 people in the queue this time.

This time the rep’s news was more dismal.  Apparently, Tube Time is only available to more advanced packages than our little starter package (Hey, we only got cable about a year ago, before that it was antennas, baby).  “But why,” I wailed (or typed), “was I able to get it until a couple of weeks ago?”  The rep couldn’t really answer that for me, but repeated that the channel was not included with our package and if I went to such and such spot on the website, I could look into upgrading.  “This is BULLSHIT” I thought. “Thanks so much for your time and have a good night,” I typed, ending the chat session.

But I sure miss watching those crazy boys & their antics.  

Small excitements

So yeah, this is a little thing, but a happy one nonetheless. The other day I turned on the TV to see if there was a new episode of The Facts of Life on On-Demand. There was…but even better yet there was a new show! I spent a good portion of the boys’ naptimes this weekend watching episodes of the Monkees. Then I got online and downloaded a few of the songs that aren’t on my sole Monkees CD.

So much for laundry

Some of the best Grey’s lines ever :)

So last night was the premiere of Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy.  This is still one of my favorite shows ever, although I’m concerned about the direction some of the characters are heading (George and Izzie?  Big fat NO!)

Some of my favorite lines:

Dr. Bailey, speaking to a frustrated Callie about the crew not responding to a page: “Huh, when I page them they come running.”

Mark to Derek: I came here to get you back.  (long pause)  Ok now I wish I could take that back”

George: You’re……………kinda awesome.

Lexie: I know.

NOOOOOO! Some things just need to be left alone.

Seriously?  They are now talking about/planning to do a new “Knight Rider” series.  This is one of those things I think needs to be just left ALONE.  They are going to turn KITT into a Transformer?  WTF?!?!

I used to LOVE Knight Rider.  In all its cheesy glory.  To try and remake that is a travesty.  I guess hollywood really is running out of ideas.  First the Bionic Woman, and now this.  Ugh.

Overheard: Diego is not useless after all :)

I know Go Diego Go is geared towards younger kids and that not all kids like it. But both of mine do, and I would so much rather they be watching that then some of the other crap that is on TV. In a perfect world they wouldn’t be watching TV at all, but hey, I gotta clean the house somehow

So N is downstairs drawing with the boys this morning and he draws them a cartoon frog. R says “Hey Daddy is that a red-eyed tree frog? Because those have suction cups on their feet.” So Diego does serve some purpose…even the scary tree frogs!!!

Have I really not posted in that long?

Geez I’m bad at this!

It’s been a busy month. Then again, aren’t they all. Of course I’ve been glued to my TV every Thursday night from 9-10 watching the addictive mess that is Grey’s Anatomy, and also every Monday night for the same hour watching the equally addictive mess that is Heroes. NO MORE SHOWS!!!! Especially not ones that are addictive messes!!

I got my second photography class project turned in, and I think I may have one of the pictures I need for the third project. The third one is going to be tough as it requires me to be outside at certain times on sunny days. We don’t get much in the way of sunny days around here in February. And they especially tend to not fall on weekends.

It snowed the other day, and the boys couldn’t wait to get outside and play in it. It was dark by the time we got out, but we cleared off the cars, shoveled the sidewalks, had a snowball fight, and built a snowman (who was immediately dubbed “Frosty” – those unimaginative children are so not naming any of our future pets…) Then it all changed to freezing rain, and sometime in the night Frosty went down. R was so sad when he looked out the window the next morning.

I’ve gotten the invitations done for K’s third birthday party. (Sorry, L, we are using the Wiggles theme. It’s what he wants!) It will be fun!

BUT…for some reason I have discovered that I am as weirded out by the Wonderpets as L is by the Wiggles. R has discovered the PBS Kids and Nick Jr. websites (meaning I get even LESS computer time at home. I did not think that would be possible…) The boys are also now big fans of Go Diego Go. I bought them a DVD of that one. Not so much for those ickly Wonderpets though. Dunno why but they are freaky! E tells me they are good because they encourage teamwork…but so do lots of other, less freaky shows!

L, before you get any ideas for K’s birthday…remember that I’s birthday is AFTER his. And that revenge is very, very sweet.

Potty training the K has its good days and bad days. Sometimes he is all over it, then suddenly he just doesn’t care. Sunday and yesterday were bad days, but I hear that today is going very well so far. Still keeping fingers crossed there!

There is nothing much else to say, and lunch time is almost over so that’s it for now.

Grey’s Anatomy

They promised big, and big they delivered! HOLY SHIT! We were on the edge of our seats the whole episode.

Didn’t Meredith say recently she wants to learn how to swim? Or am I misremembering something?

Well I know they can’t kill off the main character…the one whose name is the same as the name of the show.

I can’t wait for next week!

That poor little girl was in some serious shock. I hope her parents turn up okay. And I REALLY, REALLY hope they find Chris. That whole segment has me crying thinking about what would happen if something like that were to happen and I got separated from R and K – not knowing where they are, how they are, if they were injured or killed – I would die. I pray constantly to never, ever be put to that kind of a test.

And the pregnant woman. She was crushed under a freaking pylon? Who could survive that? WTG Alex for stepping up and helping her though.

OKAY — I am way too into this TV show. It’s just too damn good.

I’ll grant her this one…

Laura has ONE thing right in her inexplicable dislike of the Wiggles.

Officer Beeples is scary.

That’s all I’m gonna say about that.