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Breaking Bye

This is an unofficial Wheaton Comic Dare, seeing as how I was trying to think of a good way to eulogize perhaps the best show that has ever been produced for television when Wil suddenly tweeted the answer. You know a finale was powerful when you are still turning it over and over in your mind a week later. I’m going to wait a couple of weeks, then watch the final 3 episodes of Breaking Bad again. I don’t think I missed anything, but I would like to see how my perspective changes when I am not THIS close to hyperventilating the entire time.

I say Breaking Bad might be the best show of all time (and it just might), but I would be more accurate in saying it might be my favorite show… my favorite THING that I have ever watched on TV. The Battlestar Galactica mini series comes in at a very close second. It might even be a photo finish or a tie for first, but Breaking Bad managed to pull off five entire seasons that never wavered, never dipped in quality, never went off the rails, never betrayed the characters or the story and ALWAYS left me wanting more without having to resort to cheap sensationalism.

But, now that it’s over, I do not want any more. It was perfect. It wasn’t Purgatory all along, and no one turned out to be a magical space angel. It was a complete and completely enthralling story with a profoundly satisfying ending… BITCH.

We’re talking about Breaking Bad (including spoilers) over in the Fancy Bastard Facebook group if you’d like to get in on that action.

COMMENTERS: What show’s ending (untimely or otherwise) left the biggest hole in your geek soul? Which finale were you MOST satisfied with?

NEWS TYPE ITEMS: 

NYCC 2013

I will be at New York Comic Con Next weekend (10/10) with Cyanide and Happiness at booth 2247!

UPDATE ON THE FANCY DIGITAL SKETCH DRIVE: If you are still waiting on your Fancy Digital Sketch, I am SUPER BACKLOGGED on these. I am very sorry it’s taking so long. Doing 50+ original pieces of finished art always sounds easy, until you agree to do it and take money for it. I am working through them, but if you need yours urgently, feel free to let me know via email.

Have you seen my wife’s Etsy store, “Science and Fiction?” Check out her Tetris earrings!

Tetris Earings!

 

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Ryan Cannon's avatar

Ryan Cannon · 89 weeks ago

The two endings that had the biggest impacts on me was the ending of Star Trek Enterprise, which happens to be my favorite Star Trek. The second ending that had the biggest impact was the Voyager Finale, but that was probably the fact that it signaled an end to my Star Trek journey. My order is: ENT=VOY>DS9≥TNG>TOS

2 replies · active 89 weeks ago

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Tarah· 89 weeks ago

What is wrong with your brainpan, fellow Trekkie? It goes TNG=DS9>VOY>TOS>ENT (or as I like to call it, Star Trek 90210).
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Ryan Cannon · 89 weeks ago

I am perfectly fine.
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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

I understood it perfectly, and while I might be generalizing for the sake of humor it was a completely bullshit cop out. The entire back half of that series was a god damn disaster. Just flailing around, aimless, pointless directionless nonsense.
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All-Purpose Guru· 89 weeks ago

Firefly. Now, don’t get me wrong, Serenity was a GREAT movie, and a fantastic ending to the series– but imagine the storyline of Serenity doled out in little 44 minute chunks over a five year period. The cliffhangers. The jokes. The carnage. The pain, the delicious delicious pain.

Imagine Wash getting impaled, Zoe saying, “Honey?”, and then getting SEE YOU NEXT SEASON.

So yeah, Firefly.

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Gretchen · 89 weeks ago

The show ended was I was a year old, so I’ve caught it all in syndication or on DVD, but the ending of M*A*S*H is still up there as my all-time favorite show ending. Funny, emotional, and – by turns – both uplifting and heartbreaking. Love it.

1 reply · active 88 weeks ago

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Zee · 88 weeks ago

Oh s***, same here. I forgot about the ending of M*A*S*H*. Definitely a very good ending.
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sicklittlemonky · 89 weeks ago

Angel, by far. I cried like a baby that night, and still cry every time I watch it. The ending was beautiful and epic and satisfying and heartbreaking. Now, I realize that I’m one of those crazies who take Whedon’s shows way too seriously, but the end of Angel was the end of an era for me. Makes me sad just thinking about it. And though you could argue that the show overall had its ups and downs, the finale, and the final season, we’re perhaps the highlight of the series.

Dammit. Now I’m going to have to watch it again.

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furrbear· 89 weeks ago

I’d have to say the endings that never got a chance to take place leave the biggest holes – e.g., Crusade, where we got part of a season of what should have been another 5-season story.

And while it invariably leaves me an emotional disaster area for several days afterward, “Sleeping in Light” from Babylon 5 is an incredible series ender.

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Bruceski · 89 weeks ago

There’s two endings that stick with me. One was Pretender, which had everyone in a subway tunnel which blew up, and then was cancelled before resolving it next season. The other is more recent, The Finder. I was one of about five people who actually liked that show so I’m not surprised it got canned, but they ended it on a “scattered to the four winds” note. One guy arrested and going insane, his friend disbarred, his girlfriend thrown off the force, the gypsy kid on the run instead of being forced to marry her may-as-well-be-a-brother… it was an hour long kick to the gut.

And after that Michael Clarke Duncan died. Even were he not an incredibly awesome person who deserved to stick around it also killed the tiny hope of some sort of reunion/resolution.

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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

Now that I’ve watched all of The 4400, i really wish it would have had at least a 2 hour tv movie to wrap up the plot.

1 reply · active 88 weeks ago

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seriously · 88 weeks ago

On the plus side, it did end with a kick-ass Pixies song.
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Hotsauce · 88 weeks ago

In fairness to Ron Moore, Head Six came right out and said that she was an angel sent to guide Baltar right in the middle of season 2. It was just such a stupid idea that nobody believed it.
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neph sy · 88 weeks ago

Battlestar Galactica did have the worst ending, I wanted to kick the tv screen in.
And I agree that Breaking Bad was perfect, unwavering with an ending that was succinct and right.
Maybe the real issue is fantastical shows like BG and Lost that have a group of writers who have to intrigue and amaze us, and get us thinking “what does that mean” “what the hell?”
So the writers come up with all sort of crazy crap that paints them into a corner that they have to write themselves out of. You have to know where the final destination is, to be able to drive the bus safely and get everyone there. Otherwise you end up crashed in some ditch, exhausted from the crazy side routes taken.

Compare this to the Sopranos and Breaking Bad – the writers KNEW how they wanted it to end. These shows were based in today’s reality, so there wasn’t a bunch of weird stuff going on to draw people in and stroke their imaginations. What was pulling us in was the lives and character development of a small group of characters, and some solid plot lines.
Since I’m not a writer I don’t know what’s harder to write. But these types of shows are certainly different and it seems like horror and sci-fi writers can have good exciting ideas, that they have a hard time executing into a story that is satisfying in it’s end conclusion and resolution.

1 reply · active 86 weeks ago

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W. Alex Plageman · 86 weeks ago

This is why you don’t put magic/divinity in a sci-fi story, nor magic with no rules in a a fantasy story.

I’m not suggesting beating us over the head with ‘rules of the universe’ but just firmly establishing them and then not ignoring them later to add intrigue.

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Xero · 84 weeks ago

breaking bad is the prequil to the walking dead

Agents Of Staying Hopeful In Event of Lackluster Developments

“PORTA JOHN SMITH” SHIRTS ARE UP AT SHARKSPLODE!!!

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The big giant mega blowout HE Store sale is over, and we are putting the final touches on the new HE store which will soon live HERE.

Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers to follow!!!
I don’t think I liked the pilot of Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. There, I said it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only thing I actually did like about it was Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson (which was sort of a given). But wasn’t the whole show supposed to be a given? Wasn’t this a geek no-brainer? Like, no matter what: Whedon(s) + Coulson + super hero stuff + spy stuff + Marvel universe = A thing that all geeks will love until the coming of Galactus? I don’t know. It just didn’t hit for me in any of the areas I expected it to, or hoped it would.

Characters: Coulson – Great. Just great. I love Clark Gregg as Coulson and I want to see more of him all the time. Also, he’s probably still all or mostly dead.
Ward: Pretty guy. Delivers lines about being a by the book bad ass, but doesn’t seem to believe them. I hope he gets better.
Fitz/Simmons: Whedon demands a Willow. Willow was great and got greater. Topher (Dollhouse) was a better Willow than Willow. Fitz/Simmons are a lesser Topher, further divided by being incased inside of two different people who serve the function of one character. Not sure about these two. I will either love them by mid season or pray for their deaths.
Skye: Whedon has cast another Dushku. This does not bode well.
Dr. Shepard Book: Hey! It’s Shepard Book! As a doctor!

Story: What is even going on here? S.H.I.E.L.D. was this massive organization with a Hellicarrier and tons of foot soldiers and Quinjets and all these resources and now it seems to be a small government agency run out of a small government building and a large airplane that spends most of it’s time on the ground being an office. I don’t remember them establishing that Coulson was putting together a special unit or a tiny team that would carry out certain missions of importance. It seems like he’s just randomly recruiting new people to… keep doing what S.H.I.E.L.D. already does (police the activities of super heroes booth good and evil/protect regular dummies from knowing so much that they can’t get through their regular dummy lives). I needed a mission imperative or an event that creating a new team would be a response to. They hinted that The Battle Of New York (The Avengers) was an escalation point, but I didn’t see it as the impetus for “Getting Super Serious” and gathering new talent. Maybe I missed something.

Things are further complicated/confused by the fact that Skye reveals herself to be the villain/organization/terror threat they are fighting/seeking out in the beginning of the episode, The Rising Tide. Then they sort of ignore this and recruit her for S.H.I.E.L.D. for her l33t hax0ring skillz. This is where my comprehension of the story totally jumps ship. She already KNOWS what S.H.I.E.L.D. is and isn’t her whole purpose to BRING THEM DOWN?! To prevent them from keeping people from knowing the truth about super heroes? Doesn’t she make this abundantly clear? Don’t they catch her in the act of doing this? Coulson doesn’t say, “Work for us or go to that prison hole from Batman 3 for the rest of your life.” He just ignores everything and invites her to sign up for fun times in a flying car.

Then the whole, “They used everything we know from The Avengers and Iron Man 3 (super solider serum, gamma radiation, alient metal, Extremis) mixed together to make a super hero,” plot line just rubbed me the wrong way. Just seemed like a lazy tie in to the movies and an easy way to blow there “How are we going to get more super heroes/villains?” wad for the whole season in the first hour.

Writing: The pilot felt like a script that had too many rewrites and ended up with a lot of incongruous elements. The humorous moments were all Coulson’s and seemed like Whedon did punch up on a script that he didn’t write (though he does have a writing credit).

Acting: Too early to judge. Clark Gregg is great, but you already knew that. Everyone else seems SUPER green. J. August Richards seemed out of his element. Again, like a guy that knew the words he was supposed to say, but didn’t believe them. The more the “Centipede/super serum/Extremis/whatever” takes over, the less believable his performance becomes. Baby Dushku is… baby Dushku. Ward seems like a blank slate. At most I expect he will be inoffensive.

Bottom Line: I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE ANY MORE! Maybe I’m too old, or maybe my tastes have changed too much since the last time Whedon had a TV show I really loved. I didn’t care for Iron Man 3, but I loved Iron Man 2 (the one EVERYONE hates), and I wouldn’t loose any sleep if  Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t have a second episode. I found it unfocused and boring. What is wrong with me?

COMMENTERS: What did you think of Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D? Mild spoilers are OK.  

PACMAN NECKLACE! WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA…

This is my wife’s birthday week! Celebrate it by buying yourself a present from her Etsy store “Science and Fiction.” Check out her her latest geeky creation, a Pacman inspired necklace!

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Comments (63)

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Kschenke's avatar

Kschenke · 90 weeks ago

I liked the majority of the pilot, but yes it wasn’t necessarily mindblowing. The plot was a little jumbled, but I thought it set up the characters well enough considering we’ve only met two of them before. Plus it’s an action show with three women of various skills in a team of six, so that’s a good thing in my mind. I’ve seen weaker pilots for better shows, so I’m at least up for the next few episodes to see how the momentum builds. Also the “With Great Power” and “Journey into Mystery” references made me happy.
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Dave · 90 weeks ago

Depends, do you mean “Serenity” or “The Train Job”? I saw “Serenity” first, as Whedon intended, and fell in love immediately. I can’t say how I would have received the show as it aired. I’d say I liked the Dollhouse pilot better than this one.
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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Good question. Other than Firefly I probably never saw a Whedon show starting with the pilot. Buffy I came in at season 3, and Angel doesnt count because we already knew all the characters.
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Bruceski · 90 weeks ago

Firefly got me with the first episode, but I saw it in college as part of a marathon so it was soon followed by others. Dollhouse felt like excessive scenes of Dushku being sexy but the meat of the episode grabbed me, then I lost interest around episode 5 or so (apparently it got better, but it just felt too muddy). Buffy and Angel were never my thing, I liked some bits but wouldn’t tune in.
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earlleonardmusicforkids· 89 weeks ago

Yeah, pilots are nearly always info dumps. Buffy had a few good gags in the first couple of eps, but took half a season to hit it’s stride and didn’t iron out character inconsistencies until s3 (and then started making new ones after that). i thought SHELD ep 2 was an improvement (albeit with the pretty darn unoriginal `team bonds’ plot) so/but i’m willing to wait & see
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Gregory Lynn · 90 weeks ago

I loved it.

Also, Willow is the Willowest Willow, so while Topher is awesome and all, he’s not a better Willow, because Willow.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

What about Fred. She’s a pretty great Willow. Considering she eventually becomes an Old God, she might be the best Willow.
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Dave · 90 weeks ago

Ugh, I have to agree. The pilot was painful. At one point I turned to my wife, both of us fairly quiet through the first 20 minutes and said “Boy… they’re really trying WAY too hard aren’t they?”

This Sky character… I absolutely cannot get behind. During the interrogation scene Wife says “Oh no… she’s going to be a regular isn’t she?”

If I have to hear one more time “I did XYZ with a laptop” I’m going to scream.

The only characters that don’t seem like cardboard cut outs are Coulson and Mel. The rest? Throwaways at best, annoying as hell at worst.

I would like to second the question “What happened to the organization that has the resources we saw in the Avengers?” I get that you can’t show that on TV, so show me WHY this group is smaller.

Just… Yuck. Here’s hoping it’s all just a bad case of pilotitis.

5 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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Dave · 90 weeks ago

Elaboration: There was not one moment… NOT ONE… as simple as Jayne kneeling down to look in on poor gut-shot Kaylee. Just a simple moment like that to give a character some personality and depth. Never happened once in SHIELD.
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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Exactly. The reason they arent in the Helicarrier is because it would cost a hundred million an episode, but have Coulson say “Im creating an special team to blah blah blah and we arent operating out of the Helicarrier because the Avengers are there and they need to think Im dead or this team needs to function as a splinter cell or WHATEVER.” They can still do this, but it needed to be in the pilot. Skye annoys me like Dushku annoys me and that’s because she’s all looks and attitude and no substance.
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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Oh and regarding Ming-Na, I love her. I really hope they do a lot with her character. She didnt have two lines in the pilot so I actually forgot her when writing my review.
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Bruceski · 90 weeks ago

Are we supposed to know what her character IS from past movies? I get “used to do that crap, doesn’t anymore” but the whole time it felt like there was something I was supposed to know that I’d missed.
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MrSueDenim· 90 weeks ago

Nope – they’ve set her up as someone who’s big in SHIELD but not in the wider universe, just laying the foundations for a big character arc.
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Kirby · 90 weeks ago

I really liked it. It didn’t really flow that well together, but it did seem like they were trying to set up lots and lots of plots at once, which led it to be disjointed.

Coulson’s comment about the one agent’s family seems like it’s trying to set him up as some kind of son of a mafia don or something like that.

Who is Skye, really?

Why doesn’t this agent want to do field work?

Hill’s comment about Coulson.

Centipede seems like they’re trying to lay the groundwork for a Mr. Fix/Tinkerer character to serve as an overall villain, with someone trying to learn how Extremis and other things work.

Other than that, I think they’re trying to bring it in as this is the quick in and out team. He did say he was putting together his own team, but I don’t think they really gave a particular reason. Probably kind of a quick and quiet response team.

I think we’ll probably come back to the whole Red Dawn things. In the beginning I think she sees them as this big government conspiracy set to keep people in the dark and maybe starts to see things in a different light as things progress? Maybe it’s a buried lead? I on’t really know.

But I loved it, and I think it might be worth seeing how it progresses.

2 replies · active 89 weeks ago

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gabepuratekuta· 90 weeks ago

I agree. Especially if they delve into why Agent Mey was reassigned to a desk
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DuckAmuck · 89 weeks ago

Yeah, I pretty well freaking loved it too. I thought “This is SO Wheedon.”

“She drew.. I think it’s a poo. With knives sticking out of it.”

Agent Coulson – YES! (set up for more What’s Behind the Curtain He Thinks is Tahiti.)
Cobie Smulders – YES! YES! Love her. Love her. Not wasted on not meeting someone’s mother now.
Ming Na – YES! YES! YES! Wasn’t expecting that one. Set up for her back story.
Fitz & Simmons – YES! YES! AND YES! I just hope they can not talk quite so fast so I can better understand what they’re saying – but YES!

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EvilJorge · 90 weeks ago

Joel, just accept that you don’t really like anything that doesn’t have an Apple icon on it and move on. It’s fine. We don’t think less of you or anything.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

With regards to television series, that really doesn’t come close to making sense.
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thelogos · 90 weeks ago

I didn’t hate it. But, compare it with the first episode of Firefly and how the characters in the latter were fleshed out. It didn’t good job (in fact, I’d say it was crap) of showing why “Rising Tide” was ebil. They made the group out to be like Wikileaks (/political) which is fine by me, screw the patronizing “We to need to keep secrets from you proles” (/political). I give it a “meh and a half”.

3 replies · active 89 weeks ago

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Huttj509 · 90 weeks ago

See, I didn’t get the vibe that Rising Tide was SUPPOSED to be “evil.”

“People need to know what’s going on! I want to know what’s going on! Don’t hide reality from me, I mean us!”

“Hey, come with us, we could use your skills, you get to be on the front lines of what’s going on, cause that’s what you really want, and as a bonus, you get to see some situations where it’s probably better the public DOESN’T know about it, and thus stop spreading secrets willy nilly.”

Yes, SHIELD could probably back off hiding things behind the curtain, but indiscriminate information spewing can do more harm, especially since it gives info not just to the public, but to the actual bad guys.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

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Huttj509 · 90 weeks ago

To clarify, I don’t think RT’s just Skye. I think she’s a prominent/key piece in their infogathering, but I don’t think she’s supposed to be the entirety.
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earlleonardmusicforkids· 89 weeks ago

isn’t `rising tide’ supposed to be a wikileaks/anonymous analogue? They think they’re the good guys themselves, but not everyone (and especially not those in government) agree? Good on em for trying to have some kind of depth to motivations. One thing i love about the MU is the various organisations that variously work with or against each other depending on whatevs.
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Candace · 90 weeks ago

I was not super-impressed with the S.H.I. E.L.D. pilot, either. I agree that it was derivative and lacked cohesion. Also, I wanted Skye to die so hard within about five minutes after she came on-screen. I’m disappointed she was still alive at the end of the episode and appears to be intended to become a regular character. I’m willing to give it a chance, though, because, Whedon.

I have actually enjoyed all the Iron Man movies, although I did like 3 better than 2.

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FuryOfFirestorm· 90 weeks ago

The pilot got a resounding “eh” from me. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the SUPERFANTASTICMEGAAWESOMEBETTERTHANSEXBESTSHOWEVAR! that every blog and magazine was hyping it to be.

I’m still going to give it a chance because even Buffy took a few episodes to get into the groove.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Season 1 of Buffy is all pretty rough. It’s good that it’s short. Season 2 picks up the pace and quality pretty quick.
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the captain · 90 weeks ago

How can you ignore Ming-Na Wen? I felt like there was a lot of “meh” in the episode as a whole, but Ming-Na’s bored attitude and hinted-at troubled history (with authority?) is what I want to see more of. Coulson is good at doing more Coulson. I think Skye looks like a combination of Aubrey Plaza and Summer Glau, and gives off a similar air. I hope Book has a lot of tiny cameos and that Ming-Na gets to beat up a lot of people. Actually, I would watch this show just for the latter. I don’t know; there’s something about getting so used to someone’s voice in your childhood that sticks with you.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

I actually did forget about Ming-Na because she had so little to do/say in the first episode. I loved her in SG:U. I really hope they do a lot with her character in this.
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Bruceski · 90 weeks ago

The show got a solid “meh” from me but we’ll see if it finds its groove and if that’s a groove I like. Most of my comments echo stuff above me, but I will say that I liked the “throw every origin story in a blender and see what happens” nature of Scorpion. It feels like what real people would do if they had access to that stuff (which, since it’s the Marvel universe, probably involves throwing a rock and hitting a secret archive).

I didn’t like the “working for some other shadowy organization” thing though, if you have the organization to be a big secret force then just handing everything you’ve got to a doctor to inject into people seems… a bit blase. If one person gets ahold of that stuff I can see them being crazy with it but if it’s doled out it doesn’t work for me. If they make these guys into a black market “we’ll sell anything to anyone who has the money and if they blow their hands off with it it’s not our problem” instead of the currently-implied sinister agenda I’ll like them a lot more.

4 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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Bruceski · 90 weeks ago

To work on my comment a bit more, Scorpion feels like someone playing with a new toy. Since the doc got it from someone else if it was a “we want you to weaponize this” it feels irresponsible to put all the tech they obtained in one place and not develop them independently.

When I heard about this show I expected a bit of a monster-of-the-week. Investigating a cluster of cases of gamma radiation sickness in one, some Asgardian artifact (not world-ending but “how did it get here and are there more”) turning up in a pawn shop in another episode. Dealing with some new supers who have no idea how it happened (“Have you always been able to teleport?” “I dunno, I never tried before last week.”), that kind of thing. For that kind of approach to things though, Scorpion feels like something to end a season with rather than begin it.

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gabepuratekuta· 90 weeks ago

Scorpion? I thought it was called Centipede
Bruceski's avatar

Bruceski · 90 weeks ago

Blargh, you’re right. I should just start calling it a different bug every time on purpose, I’ll feel less silly when someone points it out.
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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

The Biggest Unanswered Questions from the Agents of SHIELD Pilot
http://io9.com/the-biggest-unanswered-questions-f…

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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Huttj509 · 90 weeks ago

Why does a superhacker have to steal someone’s driver’s license? She didn’t. She wasn’t expecting to be rebuffed, and when she was, the license was easy.

“Well, I could go hack the DMV to find his address, but that would take 5 minutes, including the walk to the van. Why bother?”

Neil's avatar

Neil · 90 weeks ago

So I take it your forgetting/ignoring Melinda May sums up your opinion of that character.

I’m hoping the problems here are the teething troubles you get in a lot of pilots. As long as it’s better than Enounter At Farpoint there’s always hope.

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brigidkeely· 90 weeks ago

I pretty much agree with your assessment.

I thought the recycled explodey super powers theme was weak (although I liked the visual of how it was implemented, on his arm). I was really put off by the brainy pair. They just seem super cliched. I didn’t get the plot line with the super hacker woman who lives in a van, either. She’s… against them? But she’s… working for them now? Maybe? Will she betray them? Will she not? Why wouldn’t she? I just… I don’t know?

My husband’s been looking forward to this show for a long time, and set it up to DVR. He came home from work and even though it was late and he was tired (He regularly works 12+ hour shifts and gets up at 5am to get to work on time) he still wanted to watch it instead of saving it for the weekend. He wound up playing Candy Crush and only half paying attention to the show.

A friend of mine pointed out that Whedon pilots are always pretty weak and the shows don’t usually hit their stride for a few episodes which seems incredibly wrong to me. I mean, the pilot is supposed to capture attention. How can you make ti weak? What’s wrong with you as a writer/director/etc if you consistently pump out weak pilots? IDK.

I wasn’t impressed by this show, will check in a few times more, but will probably end up just watching with my husband while actually reading a book or playing computer games.

Which is frustrating. I’m in general a fan of Whedon and am an old school Marvel fan and have liked the recent movies quite a bit. And then this? I wasn’t expecting The Best Show In The History Of Ever, but if the highest note for me is Ron Glass something is wrong. I mean, Ron Glass is great and all, I’m not trying to diss him and his career, but still.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

“He wound up playing Candy Crush and only half paying attention to the show. ”

This is also my wife’s measure of quality.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Did they make the level 7 thing clear? I need to watch it again.
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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

I remember all of that, but “Level 7” just seems like a high level of clearance to me. Not an elite task force.
mist's avatar

mist · 78 weeks ago

I think it “goes to 11”
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Tom · 90 weeks ago

I’m very surprised by the comments here. My wife and I have been Joss Whedon fans for a long time (since Buffy started, back when we were a lot younger) and were big fans of the Marvel films. We both really liked the pilot and are excited to see where it goes from here. I actually really liked Agent Ward, it made sense to me that Coulson would recuit Skye, and I totally called the method by which Coulson got Skye to trust them enough to at least help them find the “hooded hero.”

In short, we both thought it was solid, and I really don’t understand all of the criticism.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

“Mostly I suspect that without someone like Tim Minear, Joss Whedon just doesn’t get much of an edge.”

You might have the answer right there. Very interesting.

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Bruceski · 89 weeks ago

All of the above still holds for me, but today’s episode? THIS is what I wanted. Yay.

2 replies · active 89 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

Id agree it’s an improvement. Still the writing and characterizations are very flat. Everyone seems to say everything they are thinking.
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Bruceski · 89 weeks ago

Yeah. It felt like it was intended to be the premiere episode, they kept restating things from last time.
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planetliz· 89 weeks ago

I literally started jumping up and down in my chair when I saw Shepard Book appear. And Coulson’s first lines had me laughing out loud. I really liked the Pilot, and I can see much greater things happening.
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Hotsauce · 89 weeks ago

I really enjoyed it. I felt like they had to work hard to establish SHIELD as essentially a global NSA, during a time when the NSA is really looking like the bad guys. Hence the trope reversal with the truth serum. “I know you think we’re the bad guys, and it’s really not unreasonable to think that, so here’s proof that we have nothing to hide about who we are.” I also don’t think they really established Rising Tide as the bad guys, and I don’t think they intended to. Just like SHIELD is “the NSA, if it were run by people you could actually trust”, Rising Tide is “Anonymous, with the hint that it’s being manipulated by people you shouldn’t trust.”
It seems to me that it’s Whedon’s return to a monster-of-the-week ensemble show, and I’m optimistic. Does nobody remember how extremely cheesy season 1 of Buffy was?
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Mitt · 89 weeks ago

Generic Whedon show with predictable Whedon jokes. That schtick was cool and interesting when it was new on Buffy, but that was 20 years ago. Whedon’s act is just stale.
The acting was pretty bad too. That my be because of the bad writing. Ming Na Wen was the only one eve trying.
mist's avatar

mist · 78 weeks ago

Out of the new season I find I’m looking forward to the SHIELD stuff. It’s small enough to be friendly, the Whedon0-esque billion plot subline thing is confusing and will weaken the show, but make for a better story over all. Hoping he keeps away from the Whedon cliches (super girl, super tech expert) and concentrates on the world, the people, the story. I find the tech-twins a bit annoying, and strongly suspect one (or both) of them is going to make the “pull team together” sacrifice to be replaced by a single uber techy. I think they’re supposed to be kind young and hyper but they just come across as immature, and much of their tech stuff can just be “starttrekked” (buzzword and faked props) away. They’re interesting characters but very shallow.

1 reply · active 78 weeks ago

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mist · 78 weeks ago

Just to show I’m not just being a whiny dick – What I’d love to see connected to the SHIELD show is a Fitz&Simmons offical website/webinar connected to the show.

A lot of the geeky tech is cool and the pseudo babble works as a plot device, simply because exposition into what makes things tick would kill the story momentum – yet the geeks would love to poor through the designs and inventions and crazy ideas. Stuff that can be done online without disturbing the online flow of the show.

It could even be used as an open-source skunkworks platform for “Whedon-SHIELD” development. Writers could put up “real world” (ie story) devices and situ-reports, (just the tech side) and say “we need Agents to be able to scan in real time and transmit holographically” F&S & team, lets brainstorm some solutions. Then whatever fits the story best could be used on show…and to get your tech buzz without F&S having to sound hollow with pseudo-babble, they have an following coming up with good sounding ideas.

All Apologies

“PORTA JOHN SMITH” SHIRTS ARE UP AT SHARKSPLODE!!!

The big giant mega blowout HE Store sale is over, and we are putting the final touches on the new HE store which will soon (like probably October 1st) live HERE.

UPDATE ON THE FANCY DIGITAL SKETCH DRIVE: If you are still waiting on your Fancy Digital Sketch, I am SUPER BACKLOGGED on these. I am very sorry it’s taking so long. Doing 50+ original pieces of finished art always sounds easy, until you agree to do it and take money for it. I am working through them, but if you need yours urgently, feel free to let me know via email.

COMMENTERS: You get what Denise is saying, right? I mean, you GET IT, right… man? What’s the best/most confusion drunksplanation you’ve ever gotten/given? Since they are basically the same, what’s the best childsplanation (a kid trying to explain something complicated to you, giving little to no context or discernible facts) you’ve ever received?

When my daughter was 4 she had a playdate with a friend and they watched a movie. She tried to tell us what the movie was in the car on the way home. There was a man who was dead, but not all the time. And a girl who didn’t know she was really a princes and the bad man did a spell. It went on like that for 20 minutes before I realized the man who was not always dead was Rasputin and the movie was Anastasia.

PACMAN NECKLACE! WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA…

This is my wife’s birthday week! Celebrate it by buying yourself a present from her Etsy store “Science and Fiction.” Check out her her latest geeky creation, a Pacman inspired necklace!

Pacman Necklace on Etsy

 

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

This became evident when we realized everything she was saying was totally accurate.
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samaelsmile· 90 weeks ago

Kudos on extending the Nirvan-y goodness another comics’ worth with the title!
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Adrian · 90 weeks ago

My wife was a little loopy, but decided that would be better than being in super panic attack mode, and she sat down we me and a bunch of friends to watch Teeth. That one movie where the lady has shark teeth, y’know, down there. Well there is a scene where she dives into a lake with a guy friend and my wife innocently asks, “I wonder if her teeth are chattering.” I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.
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seriously · 90 weeks ago

One time I was expecting an important phone call and had to leave the house for a few minutes. I figured they’d leave a message on my machine and that would be that.

Turns out in the fifteen minutes I was gone my sister-in-law dropped by with my 5 year old nephew to visit. And the expected phone call happened. My nephew answered the phone before she could stop him and he fervently promised whoever was on the other end he’d give me the message.

Yeah, turns out five year olds can’t take phone messages for shit.

His version of what was said basically boiled down to: “The man said to see the lady Monday, at um….I forget. But to call him back at exception um…seven hundred something. And I think his name was Lou.”

Luckily I was able to get a hold of “Lou”, whose real name was Albert, the appointment was for a Wednesday, the extension was 435, and he’d never said anything about a lady in the phone call at all.

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Zee · 90 weeks ago

I remember babysitting a five year old, and her three year old sister. The five year old went to the bathroom, and after a while, I thought she’d been gone for too long. I knocked, and she opened the door, and there was a giant puddle all over the tile. It had appeared that she filled a shoebox with water (and a rubber duckie), and then put it on the floor, where it proceeded to leak everywhere. I asked her why she had ton this, and she said that she had “accidentally, but on purpose” put the water on the floor. We went through several different variations on this, but it was always “accidentally on purpose”.

After about the third or fourth iteration, I realized that this was a child’s way of saying, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time…” laughed, and got a mop.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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zee · 90 weeks ago

why she had “done” this
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Kevin · 89 weeks ago

A lot of the actual conversation is lost to me, as it was me trying to explain.. I was visiting a friend and we were drinking quite a bit when I got out a bag of cookies I had brought (ziploc baggie with about 10 cookies in it?) I had a bit too much to drink, and blacked out and thought it had only been about 10 seconds when it had been about 5 minutes. All but 2 of the cookies were gone. At this point I called my female friend a fatass and got angry she had eaten all my cookies.

1 reply · active 89 weeks ago

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Kevin · 89 weeks ago

(second part got cut off.)
I then spent quite a while trying to drunkenly convince her that there had been about 30 cookies in this single small bag.

Apologies were made the following morning ..

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lou · 89 weeks ago

I think I’m better at explaining things when I’m drunk, because I’m just more talkative than when I’m sober, and as I hear myself, more witty and charming. I have dubbed this “The Bond Effect”.

1 reply · active 89 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

I feel the same way. I’m extremely talkative as it is, and Im VERY comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people, but after a few drinks I am just ON. I find the part of my brain that can do quick joke calculations and rapid fire comebacks, and joke tags performs at peak efficiency when slightly lubricated. Then a few more drinks and I just get reeeeeeallly quiet.

A Drinkin’ Song

“PORTA JOHN SMITH” SHIRTS ARE UP AT SHARKSPLODE!!!

sharlsplode-porta-john-smith-ad

The big giant mega blowout HE Store sale is over, and we are putting the final touches on the new HE store which will soon live HERE. Big thanks to everyone that supported the blowout sale and my apologies to anyone that had to pay unusually high shipping prices. Unfortunately that problem wasn’t sorted out before the sale ended.

Pacman Necklace on Etsy

PACMAN NECKLACE! WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA…

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. Celebrate it by buying yourself a present from her Etsy store “Science and Fiction.” Check out her her latest geeky creation, a Pacman inspired necklace!

Alternate titles for this comic: “Face Down, Ass Up,” “Bound For The Floor” and “Hello Linoleum, My Old Friend.”

I used to work for a landscape company as a book keeper. I was 19 years old, I knew nothing about landscaping and even less about book keeping, but I interviewed extremely well. In fact, I’ve landed essentially every job I’ve ever interview for. Perhaps THAT should have been my job. Getting jobs. At the landscape company I worked for a tiny little man with an ENORMOUS chip on his shoulder regarding his tiny little stature. He was a temperamental little sprite and he took great joy out of bossing around his large, tall, somewhat slow-witted business partner. They had a very “George and Lenny” vibe going on. “The best laid sod of mice and men…” and what not. This little, angry dude also had a sign hung next to his desk and over his mini fridge that said “NO BEER UNTIL 5pm!” Guess what the mini fridge was full of.  Day-drunk for him was apparently both a constant struggle and a way of life.

My only real experience with that early afternoon temptress, Lady Day-drunk, comes from comic conventions. It’s much easier to get through 10 hours a day at a slow convention when a reader brings you a tiny bottle of rum and you’ve sold just enough merch to afford a $9 Coke from the concession stand. Day-drunk is the Universes way of saying, “Let’s go ahead and put a stop to this crappy day before it even happens.”

COMMENTERS: What are your best and worst experiences with being (or being around someone who is) day-drunk? Was it at a festival, a funeral, at work or at home because you’re an adult, god dammit, and no one’s going to tell you 11am isn’t wine o’clock!

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seriously · 90 weeks ago

Funnily enough one morning after Christmas we wanted pancakes but realized we’d used it all making eggnog the night before.

Turns out eggnog loaded with bourbon + pancake mix = surprisingly good pancakes. And gets you slightly tipsy.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

You can substitute Egg Nog for any ingredient in any recipe and it will usually improve the situation. That’s just science .
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LazyDolphin· 90 weeks ago

This may be my favorite ever HE storyline. You’re on a roll, Joel.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Hey thanks! I’m having fun.
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Annie B · 90 weeks ago

I must say I really like the new tangent. Before, I would skip a few comics when my RSS were too full (900+ posts is way too much to go through without marking a few categories as read), but now I make a point of reading your comic every day. Good job!

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Mission accomplished. Thanks!
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Michael Corley · 90 weeks ago

Beernana is going to be the drink of the next spring break!
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Wesley · 90 weeks ago

Best day-drunk.. can’t remember. It’s great just spending the day with friends or on a festival having fun and drinking.

Not-so-great were the burn-out days. Being by yourself, avoiding everyone because everything felt like stress and getting drunk to feel better.. except you don’t. You feel worse. It didn’t happen every day, but it was darn-well rotten not being able to cope, feeling frustrated and being too drunk to finish a damn thought.

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moffattbooks· 90 weeks ago

first thought: man Hijinks Eli gets drunk alot, second thought: IRL Eli would have Wolverine’s healing powers then if he drank that much lol

2 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Well, A LOT of comics so far only relates to getting drunk ONCE in actual time. It’s all relative.
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mist · 90 weeks ago

Well technically if he gets drunk once early on, and stays topped up, that also counts as “only once” 🙂 (con rules.)
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PokeyPuppy · 90 weeks ago

I am the most boring person alive – haven’t been drunk, let alone day-drunk, in years. But when everyone around me is getting stupid-drunk, the last thing I want is to be mentally impaired!

2 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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Trish · 90 weeks ago

Weird, cuz that’s exactly when I feel the need to be drunk. Drunk people are a lot easier to tolerate when you’re impaired.
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Judy R. Wilder · 90 weeks ago

It is good to know someone is thinking with a clear head. My biological father and Step father were both alcoholics and even though they were good men, the drinking kept them from reaching their full potential. They both died young.

A lot of people drink beer and it is the beverage of choice in many countries. I guess what I am saying is that getting plastered isn’t a solution for anything. I feel it is wrong to make people, mostly minors, think getting drunk is away to wind down or forget their troubles. It is only my opinion and I am just an ancient flower child trying to share a “little” wisdom.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Day-drunk of the living dead?
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Bron · 90 weeks ago

I’ve always vaguely enjoyed getting sloshed during the day (when not working that day obviously) its especially nice in the summer. I especially like going out for lunch and having a drink and a chat in the pub until dinner and then maybe going to the club afterwards to play darts or some such. When I was in university we used to do that at least once a fortnight sometimes twice a week (we had Wednesday afternoons off you see, I think we were supposed to be doing sport or some other similar nonsense). We once worked out we drank about 200-300 units of alcohol between the 5 of us per session, I’m surprised we didn’t die of liver failure.

I had great difficulty with a co-worker once who turned up drunk to work a lot (or was suspected to be doing so, she became erratic after breaks) but no one could work out where she was getting alcohol from. We noticed she always smelled overwhelmingly of cheap floral perfume, turned out she was drinking the stuff, jolly strange way to go about things I must say.

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zathael · 90 weeks ago

actually, there are three more legitimate claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Christophe,_Pri…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Alphonse,_Duke…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_d%27Orl%C3%A9a…

The first is the direct descendant of Napolean, the other two of House Bourbon by way of two different family branches.

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lou · 90 weeks ago

Now I have to find out just how much territory the Hapsburgs ruled! My parents visited their old palace in Vienna, Austria, and learned they basically ruled all of Europe, but Mexico too?!
The closest I have to that drinking in class story is when I had to take an American Studies course when I went to SJSU, and we had our last regular meeting before finals in the Gordon-Bierscht microbrewery in San Jose. There we were, giving presentations on various topics, while drinking different types of GB’s original brews!
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Mitch H. · 90 weeks ago

Philip II (he of the Spanish Armada, widower of England’s Mary I, aka “Bloody Mary”) ruled about a third to two-fifths of the world in the early 1580s after inheriting the Portuguese throne, although his wars with his rebellious Dutch subjects and former English subjects had already started dismantling the Portuguese empire in the East Indies, and Spanish dominion in the West Indies.

And the professor was an idiot. The colony of Tejas was under a Hapsburg king for maybe fifteen years before the Bourbon succession. And the Austrian branch of the family *never* had a claim on the Spanish possessions in the New World.

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lou · 89 weeks ago

Portuguese? Philip II was King of Spain
Bear's avatar

Bear · 90 weeks ago

Woke up around noon on a Saturday, opened the fridge, saw a beer, and thought, “Why not?”. Skip ahead ALL THE BEERS later to me waking up laying on the dog bed in the dark and thinking, “I don’t remember going to bed here last night.” I checked my phone and saw that it was 8 o’clock… in the evening. I’d managed to drink myself onto the floor in a few hours and “nap” the day away.
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brigidkeely· 90 weeks ago

I have 2 stories.

The first is from college.

My room mate and I picked up a bunch of little packets of slushy mix that Kool-Aid made. i don’t think they’re made anymore, sadly. We’d mix them with vodka and freeze them in solo cups and then wander around campus eating boozy slushy and nobody knew. NOBODY KNEW. Stealth drank.

The second involves breakfast.

I made some absolutely incredible bread pudding, studded with orange and bourbon soaked raisins, with an amazing bourbon sauce that was… very, very strong. So my parents came over and I made scrambled eggs and bacon and this intensely fantastic bread pudding and coffee and we all got breakfast tipsy off the bourbon sauce.

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Emmy · 90 weeks ago

There is a horse race in Australia called the Melbourne Cup, AKA ‘the race that stops a nation’. It’s held on a Tuesday, around lunchtime. Almost every office stops for the race and there’s sandwiches and champers or beer. I learnt early on not to send emails after Melbourne Cup Lunch – there is a risk that you’ll piss off soemone who you really don’t want to piss off.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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beer o’clock · 90 weeks ago

II can’t count the number of times I’ve been day drunk! I’d have to say my favorite is water parks and theme parks. We would carefully unscrew lids off water bottles so that little ring would stay attached to the cap and pour in any clear Booz we wanted then re-seal them. Most parks let you take in water and not much else so we took full advantage of their naiveté.
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Bill Murphy · 90 weeks ago

There’s never a bad time to have a drink.
Hey, It’s gotta be Noon somewhere right? 😛
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bubujin_2 · 90 weeks ago

Once in college a buddy and I mixed up 3/4 of a gallon of strawberry daiquiri and took it to afternoon classes to share with our fellow students. After three classes I know we were definitely feeling a good buzz–buddy swore I was day drunk but I didn’t think so.
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Aetheling · 90 weeks ago

Last year, me and a friend mixed up White Russian and put it over cereal (Cinnamon Grahams, to be precise) to go to an 9AM lecture with breakfast after a heavy night of drunken Risk. The lecturer didn’t realise that the milk in the tupperwares…wasn’t.
Then we went home and did it again, until about three in the afternoon, when we both passed out.
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Holly · 90 weeks ago

Everyone’s favorite: the Office Christmas Party. Except I was working in a theater, and the party started at 11am. We drank during the “awards ceremony” at the theater, drank in a party bus on the way to a restaurant/arcade, drank while playing ski ball and Pacman, then drank in the party bus on the way back to work. Best. Party. Ever. One of the accountants had to call his son to pick him up from work.
The only downside: being a theater the real work actually started at 5pm. I’m pretty sure I didn’t sober up until intermission.
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Runcibletune · 90 weeks ago

While I have no day-drunk stories to relate, I want to say that I think this is one of your finest comics, Joel. Something about the pacing of the puns, juxtaposed against the way you’ve drawn Eli on the floor… it’s still making me chuckle just thinking about it!

1 reply · active 89 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 89 weeks ago

That’s very kind. Thanks!

Kirby Krackle

“PORTA JOHN SMITH” SHIRTS ARE UP AT SHARKSPLODE WHUUUUUUUT?!?!? sharksplode-t-shirt-porta-john-smith-1

The big giant mega blowout HE Store sale is technically over, but until the plug is pulled (today? tomorrow?) you can probably still get some cheap books and shirts HERE. I’m really sorry about the high shipping prices many Fancy Bastards have been telling me about encountering in the store. That basically defeats the purpose of having a blowout sale, doesn’t it? Oh well. I still really appreciate the support for the sale and I promise when the new, improved store opens (hopefully later this week), there will be no such problems with insane shipping prices.

Pacman Necklace on Etsy

PACMAN NECKLACE! WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA-WAKA…

Today is my wife’s birthday. Celebrate it by buying yourself a present from her Etsy store “Science and Fiction.” Check out her her latest geeky creation, a Pacman inspired necklace!

Eli (IRL)’s cat, Kirby (or is it Kurby? Who cares?) weighs somewhere between 30 lbs and 1/4 the mass of a neutron star. Rather than beg for food, he will usually just scoot himself into a area where food is likely to fall, and lay there, upside down, mouth agape for hours. He’s like a feline filter feeder, just floating through the ocean that is Eli’s home, allowing bits of cheese and sausage to get caught in his kitty baleen. What a giant piece of shit.

COMMENTERS: Why are cat’s such giant pieces of shit? How do your cats let you know that your sole purpose in this life is to service them? Are you a piece of furniture to them? A scratching post? A method by which food is delivered? What?! You say your cats AREN’T total assholes? Those, my delusional friend ARE NOT cats. Those are either unusually large guinea pigs or rare, african land otters.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

I feel like this is a perfect cat eulogy.
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moffattbooks· 90 weeks ago

my mother has a cat that loves black pants and black shirts. Despite our best efforts yesterday, she needed to sit as close as possible to us because we had black shirts on for a photo shoot. i think somewhere in her cat mind, she probably said “yes, shed on the black shirts!”
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Stupido Comics · 90 weeks ago

Is that mustard sauce she is feeding the cat? Feed it mouse-tard sauce. Cats love mousetard sauce. They also love mewnnaise!
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DuckAmuck · 90 weeks ago

We just moved (less than a month ago) and the trials of Nuku-Nuku (the old cat) vs. The House have been completely entertaining.
She’s still way too scaredy to be an asshole, mostly. She lets us know that she trusts us – we wouldn’t let the dogs next door eat her – and that she needs us – to protect her from the traffic in the street for some reason – and that I’m furniture that feeds her.
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brigidkeely· 90 weeks ago

I’m allergic to cats AND THEY KNOW IT so they like to come up to me and wrap themselves around me and purr and cuddle my face. It doesn’t matter how stand-offish or hostile a cat normally is. I enter the room and they are all over me.

Assholes.

3 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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brigidkeely· 90 weeks ago

I think both of those are spot on assessments.

I really love cats, but I don’t love asthma attacks and swollen runny eyes.

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

They can smell your weakness.
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rattify· 90 weeks ago

You’re doing a great job making Eli and Co strong and interesting characters 😀

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Thank you. It means a lot to hear that from someone else’s perspective.
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Bill Murphy · 90 weeks ago

Today’s comic was fantastic! I laughed over the cat falling into Joel’s lap, the drank 5 beers comment and the cat being fed cheese wiz! Lots of fun today!

However, I like cats. Because they ARE a$$holes! 😉

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Trish · 90 weeks ago

I don’t trust any living creature that isn’t an asshole at least part of the time. Which is why I’m a cat person and not a dog person, and which also explains my choice of friends…
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Dave · 90 weeks ago

The great Terry Pratchett once wrote a bit on the matter.
“If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty cruel little bastards they really are. Style, that’s what people remember”
also:
“In ancient times Cats were worshiped as gods. They have not forgotten this.”

2 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

Actual LOL from the Pratchett quote.
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StephC · 90 weeks ago

This is too much like my dad and Tippy. That cat is a medicine ball with legs (he’s a heavy bastard). The last three panels are *exactly* what the interactions between Dad and Tippy are like… just add more swearing.
Most of my other cats are supreme assholes. Two of my girls will launch themselves from 7-8 feet away and land on your shoulder while you’re doing something, then they’ll start to lose their balance and grab onto you with every single claw.
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PokeyPuppy · 90 weeks ago

We used to foster cats for the Humane Society, but my husband is terrible at fostering and wants to keep all the kitties, so now we have SEVEN. SEVEN CATS.

They are all sometimes assholes, but also adorable and snuggly and hilarious, so tolerable.

3 replies · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

And when they find your bodies, the headlines will also read, “SEVEN. SEVEN CATS.” When I was younger we had a friend of the family that was a sort of surrogate grandmother to me. She lived out in the woods and had 21… TWENTY ONE feral cats that lived on her property. She’d go to the back porch and cry, “BAAAAAAABIIIIIIES!” and twenty fucking one cats would come running out of the trees and bushes and get their food. One of them, named Hobbes, had deformed front paws and hopped on his back feet like a rabbit.
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lou · 90 weeks ago

Seven! Seven cats! Ah ah ah ah ah!
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PokeyPuppy · 90 weeks ago

I have no doubts we would have 21 cats along with a pack of rescued greyhounds if we had a larger property, but we live in a 3-level townhouse, so yeah, seven is still a ridiculous number.

Luckily, my husband is a clean-freak, so no one would ever guess we had 7 cats.

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gabepuratekuta· 90 weeks ago

that cat most likely died on his lap…

Anyway, my cat–which is only about a few months old–likes to to to where we keep the cat treats and beg for one even though there aren’t any, stare outside like she’s still in heat and go near electronics like their scratching posts even after repeated warnings and sprayings

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seriously · 90 weeks ago

Why are cats such giant pieces of shit? For much the same reason babies and little kids are, they don’t know any better and are too cute to boot across the room.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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hijinksensue· 90 weeks ago

THEY DO KNOW BETTER! THEY KNOW SO MUCH BETTER.
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Karen · 90 weeks ago

My big fat cat, Boober, is known for being an asshole. People would come to feed him if we were gone and have to face 20 lbs of pissed off cat. He even cornered someone on the stairs once and they had to fight him off with a bag of used litter.
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FuryOfFirestorm· 90 weeks ago

Looks like that pussy….

*puts on sunglasses*

…totally wrecked your dick.

YYYEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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FuryOfFirestorm· 90 weeks ago

I like kittens, but I don’t like the fact that they grow up to be cats.

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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lurkie · 90 weeks ago

The trouble with a kitten is that
eventually it becomes a cat.
Ogden Nash
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Tom327Cat · 90 weeks ago

Cats exist to be the purpose of squirt guns.
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UnderTheDark · 90 weeks ago

Panel 4 EXACTLY expresses how it feels to have a CatBeast pile-drive into your sensitive areas! One of my cats loves to pick up speed on the floor, launch herself directly at my internal organs, and use the accumulated ricochet force/agony to power a giant LEAP at my other cat’s face :S
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LawWren · 90 weeks ago

I am a cat person. Especially evil, asshole cats. I have one that is well over 20 lbs and she knows that she is the queen and treats us all as her servants.

Recently, while visiting a friends house, I stumbled upon her roommate’s even bigger cat and was told, “Don’t touch him, he’s the Devil.” I can’t stay away from any animals though and had to reach in and scratch his ears. He followed me around the rest of my visit and wanted pettings every chance he got.

Cats can tell a friend when they see one.

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Candace · 90 weeks ago

We used to have a completely declawed Siamese that was the sweetest cat that ever lived, sweeter even than many dogs. He loved everybody and was very affectionate.

OTOH, one of our cats we have now started out as a juvenile delinquent, and is now working on being a grouchy old man. He can be really sweet and cuddly and funny when he wants to, other times he’s out for blood. He’s like a cat version of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Our other cat is bitchy to the other pets, but very sweet to us.

Just goes to show not all cats are assholes, and most of them are not assholes all the time. They are damn entertaining, though, in any case. I laughed my a** off at the fourth frame, because cats do seem to have a talent for finding sensitive areas and stomping or clawing them.

And “Also here is the floor…” The last frame is up there with “All. All beer.” 😀

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neph sy · 90 weeks ago

I’ve owned two cats, and while they weren’t perfect, they were sweethearts who did not destroy or beg for food except near their scheduled feeding times.

Compare the contant trail of destructions by my sisters Pugs;
vomiting, defecating, and whizzing into shoes, chewing on shoes.
One pug will find any possible way to get food; he will pull tablecloths off the table, open the fridge, find his way into all kinds of garbage cans. One he got into the lazy susan cupboard and ate a bag of flour. He’s eats bars of soap and has even eaten rat poison and chocolate, and had to had his stomach pumped.

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lou · 90 weeks ago

I don’t really have a pet cat myself, but my street is the home to a cat (who’s someone else’s pet, but he roams around at will) that we call Patrol Cat. At various times of day, I’ll see him stalking the vineyard across the street from my house for varmints to eat, and sometimes I’ll catch him lounging on the sidewalk, catching some sun, and I’ll give him a belly rub. Is it wrong to just give him food from my kitchen?

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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lou · 90 weeks ago

Oh, I almost forgot: happy birthday to the missus! And I love the new direction you’re taking the strip!
And in answer to that question about movies that described the decades they premiered from a few strips ago, I thought of another ’90’s movie: PCU. I just watched it again on VH1 of all channels, and it’s just so damn funny!
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Kylie · 90 weeks ago

My cat knows that when the alarm goes off, he gets food. He doesn’t think I move fast enough though so he starts pushing everything off the bedside table – mobiles, lamps, glasses of water. He actually hit one so hard the other day it smashed me in the face.

Little shit

1 reply · active 90 weeks ago

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PokeyPuppy · 90 weeks ago

Yeah, we have one of those, except she doesn’t wait for the alarm. Sometime between 5am & 7am is magic wake-up time, every day.
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Missmushu · 90 weeks ago

I have two cats; both of whom follow me around the house waiting for me to become stationary. The moment I sit or, gods forbid, lie down…they both perch inches from my face and stare at me like Hypno-toads. I get the distinct impression that they don’t so much love me as they are waiting for me to die so they can eat my face.