Top 10 Cutthroat Kitchen Fails

Cutthroat Kitchen has turned out to be one of those “just one more episode” shows where I could easily waste the entire day on it if I didn’t have the self-control of a saint (yeah, right). It’s a fun show, a tongue-in-cheek show, a show full of delicious and not-so-delicious culinary experiments. Lastly, it’s a show where I often have cause to yell at the screen. “Really? REALLY? You IDIOT!”

For those who don’t know, Cutthroat Kitchen is a reality competition in which chefs must prepare dishes within a time limit, under the watchful scowl of host Alton Brown. Each chef gets $25,000 in cash, which they can spend auction-style to sabotage their opponents in cruel and funny ways. The winner only keeps what money they haven’t bid away. This leads to some epic kitchen smackdowns and desperate, improvisational cooking. You just know that with this kind of pressure, people are bound to screw up. Sometimes, their whoopsies are worthy of the facepalmiest of facepalms. And I’ve been cataloguing them for you! Here are...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN BIGGEST ACTS OF STUPIDITY ON CUTTHROAT KITCHEN

  
10. BBQ, Where Are You?
(S1E13, “S’more Sabotage”)
The time limit is everything. As a professional chef, you better be capable of whipping off a quality dish in a brief period. That’s how restaurants operate and it’s how Cutthroat Kitchen operates. When faced with making a barbecue platter, Chef Rocco was delighted. He knows barbecue like nobody else! He’s gonna blow the judge away with a succulent selection of meats! And believe me, his little buffet looked absolutely amazing. Did it taste amazing? Probably, but we’ll never know, because when the clock hit zero, Chef Rocco had abso-fucking-lutely none of his food plated. And guess what? The judge can only go by what you present them on a plate! Them’s the rules! Luckily for Chef Rocco, they showed mercy and sampled his bean salad, which was technically in a dish...and delicious enough to keep him from elimination in that round. But the rest of his elaborate BBQ platter went in the garbage, as did my respect for a guy who’s so smitten with his own brilliance that he ignores the ticking clock.

9. Maybe You Should Stop Strokin’ Off
(S4E5, “Welcome to the Jungle”)
Don’t laugh too hard at the misfortunes of others. This ep came down to a grudge match between Chef Tom and Chef Matt, and during the second round (beef stroganoff), Tom hit Matt with a seemingly innocuous sabotage that turned his life into a living hell: he had to switch between different-sized pots while cooking. Poor Chef Matt...first he failed to boil water in a huge pot, then he kept spilling and losing his ingredients from a tiny pot. He was clearly miserable, convinced he was doomed...and while his opponents were busy chortling at his ordeal, they both fucked up. Chef Tom dumped parmesan on his dish at the last minute, ruining his flavors, and Chef Jessica undercooked her pasta and overwhelmed her meat in cognac -- after bragging about said cognac for the entire round. Oh, man, the looked of shocked relief on Chef Matt’s face when Chef Jessica was eliminated. I’ve never been happier to see someone survive a round. Karma.

8. Exclusively a Dumbass
(Various Episodes)
One recurring sabotage on Cutthroat Kitchen is when a chef gains an exclusive advantage. They might be the only chef in the kitchen who can cook a certain way, or they might swap their opponents’ choice ingredients for shitty alternatives. That sort of leg-up is not to be pissed away. However, I’ve noticed that again and again, the chef with the “advantage” will utterly blow it. Chefs have big egos by necessity, so the demons of hubris can strike hard. A chef has the exclusive right to use salt...and their final dish is under-seasoned. While making pea soup, only one chef wound up with good, fresh peas...and his soup was badly textured and pea-deficient. It’s kind of funny to see the look on the face of an eliminated chef who thought they had the high ground, but then you see the other chefs biting their tongues in outrage. You spent all that money to prop yourself up, then kicked away the crutch and hung yourself? YOU INCOMPETENT OAF OF A CLOD!

7. Don’t Be a Maverick
(S3E11, “Well, Hot Clam”)
I dunno where Chef Maverick got his name from -- hell, maybe he was born with it -- but it did him no favors, and neither did his doofus behavior in the first round. During the auction, Chef Maverick proved ready to blow all his money from the start (smart chefs save their moolah for when it really matters) and even tried to bid more than he actually had. Did he spend wisely? Well, when granted the power to assign heat sources, he bizarrely gave the best option, a barbecue grill, to someone else, and awarded himself a crappy little countertop grill because “I use these all the time!” So “skilled” was he that he finished his sliders and coleslaw ten minutes early, then aimlessly wandered around the kitchen, getting on everyone’s nerves, while his dish cooled and congealed. The final straw? Chef Maverick was eliminated for having overdone meat and a dry bun. How can you finish too early and still overcook? Meet the ditziest Maverick since Sarah Palin.

6. Self-Sabotage, Take Three
(S4E12, Chili’d to the Bone)
We’ve seen how chefs can be their own worst enemy. This was demonstrated in an episode where in all three rounds, the losing chef tasted defeat as a result of their own fuck-up. Taken in a row, they created a glorious parade of derp moments. First round: Chef TJ forgets to get cheese for her chili cheese dog. Buh-bye! Second round: Chef Nick sabotages the others with shitty pasta, but randomly opts to make Alfredo sauce without any milk or butter. Arrivederci! And in the final round, Chef Aaron, who was doing so well, deflects all sabotages. Problem is, they’re making Crêpe Suzette and Chef Aaron has no everloving clue how to craft proper crêpes. He does his best. He makes some very pretty...pancakes. Bonsoir! The winner, Chef Todd, did do a great job of rolling with the punches, but all he really needed was to sit back and let every one of his opponents shoot themselves in the foot.

5. Zoned Out
(S6E3, “In It to Twin It”)
Strategy is important, especially when faced with merciless Italian twins. In this twin-themed ep, Chef Sammy, along with brothers Nick and Nate, were forced to share a kitchen separated into three zones: prep, cooking, and equipment. One chef per zone. They could switch between zones, but only under mutual agreement. Chef Sammy began in the equipment zone, which would have been an advantage had he actually grabbed what he needed right away. Nope. With tragic foolishness, he returned to the equipment zone partway through the round and became trapped there: Nick and Nate could simply swap between prep and cooking while Sammy looked on, helpless, his time ticking away. And when Sammy finally escaped, what did he do? He forgot a fucking spatula. And back to the equipment zone he went to be trapped a second time. Dear lord, man! Do you not learn from your mistakes? I guess the other twin got all the foresight.

4. All and/or Nothing
(S6E13, “Alton and the Chocolate Factory”)
Chef Jackie from New Jersey could not be called endearing, what with her shrill voice and aggressive, trying-too-hard-to-be-witty schtick. However, her dishes were consistently delicious (if sloppy) and that propelled her to the final round. She was as type-A as they come, but her need to throw her weight around led to a ridiculous maneuver and a Cutthroat Kitchen first: she willingly spent all her money. In one single bid. Know how a pit bull will bite a stranger’s hand and then immediately look guilty? Chef Jackie’s horror came too late. She was headed for a purely symbolic victory, and, worse, her opponent didn’t even get the nastiest sabotage of the round. He merely had to stick chocolates in boxes for five minutes while Chef Jackie was elbow-deep in melted chocolate, clawing for various weird ingredients. She still pulled off a delicious dessert, but she didn’t win. Did she even want to at that point? Lose your cool on TV and you’ll lose every dollar, lose the match...lose at life.

3. The Black Egg of Doom
(S3E5, “Chain of Tools”)
Okay, so, there’s taking risks, and then there’s going out of your way to wreck a perfectly good dish. The challenge was cobb salad, and the sabotage was, Chef Nikos had to swap out three good ingredients for unpleasant substitutes. He could choose what he swapped, though...and he chose a fucking tactical nuke. Know what a century egg is? It’s an egg that has been buried and allowed to ferment for weeks, months, possibly years. You open its shell to reveal a black, slimy horror that gives off the fumes of Hades and...well, to call it an “acquired taste” is a fucking laugh. Keep in mind, Chef Nikos could easily have passed over this abomination and taken harmless Cheez Whiz instead. Nope! He opened that century egg and plunked it down whole on his salad like Smaug the dragon lurking atop his leafy green hoard. I’m pretty sure they skillfully edited out judge Antonia Lofaso’s projectile vomiting after she sampled Chef Nikos’ Cthulhu-approved terror plate. Farewell to her taste buds, farewell to Chef Nikos. Suicide by sulfur.

2. Letting Her Have It
(S2E12, “It’s Not Delivery”)
My boyfriend insists this is the stupidest thing he’s seen on the show, and while I don’t quite agree, I can understand the sheer hands-in-the-air retardation of Chef Athena’s final blunder. We’re in the third round, Chef Athena vs. Chef Rina. Athena has $19,300 remaining. Rina has bid her ass off and only has $3,000. So it should be a cinch for Chef Athena, right? She can hit Chef Rina with all the sabotages and still walk away with tons of cash! Only......she doesn’t. She fucking doesn’t. For reasons known only to Chef Athena, she allows Chef Rina to purchase the final sabotage, requiring Athena to salvage the tortillas from frozen enchiladas in order to make her fajitas. “I just let her have it,” Athena says with a shrug. WHYYYYYY??!! You had EVERY SINGLE advantage! So guess what? Chef Athena is eliminated and Chef Rina “wins” with a measly $1,400, which was, at the time, the lowest-ever Cutthroat Kitchen prize. I hope Chef Athena went home to a chorus of outrage from everyone she knew.

1. White Chocolate Lobster
(S1E3, “Porkchops and Sabotages”)
I refuse to not put this at number one. It looms huge in my mind, a monolith of stupidity. Meet Chef Taylor. Chef Taylor is young. A hotshot. He likes to push fine dining to the extreme and think outside the box. So the chefs are doing macaroni and cheese, and Chef Taylor gets hit with a great sabotage: he has to prepare dessert mac-n-cheese. And I was honestly rooting for him as he mixed mascarpone and white chocolate to create something that looked really, really yummy. A few minutes left on the clock and Chef Taylor’s golden...and then he utters the words of doom. “It’s missing something.” What does he toss in at the last second? Mother. Fucking. LOBSTER. I was stunned speechless. So was everybody on the show. LOBSTER? Judge Simon Majumdar looked at the plate in utter dread, and probably decided to boot Chef Taylor before he even tasted it. LOBSTER? If this is what Chef Taylor serves at his restaurant, stick its address on my GPS so I can maintain a fifty-mile radius. This was John Carpenter’s The Thing in a porcelain bowl. I do not like lobster, but I understand its culinary appeal...WHEN IT’S NOT INSIDE A FUCKING WHITE CHOCOLATE DESSERT! JESUS BARFED!

And that is the stupidest thing I have ever seen happen on Cutthroat Kitchen. And now do you see why this show is so great?

Top 10 Plot Twists (pt. 3)

I hear the call of the sirens. It’s time to return to a theme I can’t seem to stay away from, and scribble down a third list of crazy, brilliant plot twists that electrified my poor little brain. (Here are the first and second such lists for reference.) Do I really need to include a spoiler warning this time? We know the routine. Speaking of which, I always mention Game of Thrones in my intro, and this year will bring us the first season that is not based on the original novels...which means I have no goddamn clue what’s going to happen and can no longer react with insufferable superiority to each shocking development. So maybe Sansa is having Drogon’s baby and maybe Melisandre will resurrect Jon Snow but he’ll believe he’s a Mexican street performer and charge into battle wielding dual maracas, who the fuck knows? Let’s talk about some epic twists that have happened already.

OH, FINE, HERE’S YOUR DAMN SPOILER WARNING. PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND SUCH.

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN PLOT TWISTS, PART THE THIRD

  
Black Mirror: Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Fucking Black Mirror, guys...I can’t think of a recent sci-fi show that’s so well-executed and also so pessimistic about human nature. Each episode shows a future where we’ve fucked up somehow. I’d say the nastiest (in a good way) is “White Bear,” in which an amnesiac named Victoria awakens to find that civilization has crumbled and most people have either turned into murderous psychos à la The Purge, or silent, passive zombies who film everything on their phones. Victoria runs. The psychos chase her. The zombies film away. Is it a commentary on our chronic disconnection from violence? Yes and no. In the end, we learn that Victoria is a convicted child murderer. Her punishment is to experience the same “horror movie” every day and have her memory wiped each evening. The psychos are actors and the zombies are normal tourists enjoying their day in a theme park devoted to Victoria’s suffering. “We’d never be so cruel, even to a child killer!” you protest. Oh yes we fucking would, and Black Mirror has the balls to show us.

Bloom County: Rosebud is Female, Just Because
Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County is my favorite newspaper comic of all time, and (despite the reboot) we shall not see its like again. A stellar example of its bonkers meta-humor: in response to complaints that the strip lacked women, Breathed sent his talking animals into a tizzy when Spuds MacKenzie (yes, that Spuds MacKenzie) revealed that one of them was secretly female. Could it be Opus the notably effete penguin? Portnoy and Hodgepodge the douchey woodland brobags? Bill the Cat?! Nope, it turned out to be Rosebud the phlegmatic basselope, a character whose Eeyore-like asexuality made “him” the perfect pick. What I found funniest was how arbitrary it all seemed; Rosebud’s abrupt gender-swap could only be Breathed’s middle finger to his overly PC critics. Then Rosebud hooked up with Hodgepodge the rabbit and they had creepy hybrid babies together. God, why do female characters always need a love interest?

The Cabin in the Woods: Unleash ALL the Monsters!
Speaking of meta! If you haven’t seen The Cabin in the Woods, you may still know the gist: young folks are trapped in your typical horror movie scenario, only the slashes and shocks are orchestrated by a gang of Dilberts in an underground control center. That’s the first twist of many. I won’t spoil all the details, but the film reaches a level of ironic brilliance toward the end, when the Final Girl and the Lovable Stoner find their way backstage and discover an entire caged zoo of horror movie baddies, any and every monster you can think of, all awaiting their turn to shine. So what do our heroes do? They open all the cages, of course. And the resulting carnage is too wonderful to put into words. Seeing somebody get impaled by a pissed-off unicorn? Priceless. Witnessing the icky payoff to one man’s mermaid fetish? Even more priceless. If I told you the film ends with additional plot twists and a last-minute celebrity cameo, would you just go watch the damn thing already?

Countdown: The Wrong Chosen One
In the 90s, we sure did love dark, brooding YA series. One example is Daniel Parker’s Countdown, which pounced on our Y2K fears: a virus kills off everyone on Earth except teens, who find themselves in a biblical End-of-Days scenario. Crucial among the subplots is a girl named Sarah who possesses a mystical scroll which prophesizes everything that’s going on. The scroll describes the exploits of a “Chosen One” and her enemy, the Demon Lilith. Sarah realizes the prophecies refer to her and she’s the Chosen One, while another girl, Jezebel, appears to be the Demon. In the end, Sarah and Jezebel kill each other...only it’s not the end, because there’s still a couple books to go. Huh? Turns out a completely different protagonist, Ariel, was the Chosen One the whole time, her BFF Leslie was the Demon, and all the prophesies, with their conveniently vague phrasing, referred to them just as easily. Is it contrived? Yes. Did it make me beat myself up for missing all the obvious clues and foreshadowing? Absolutely yes.

Final Destination 5: The Plane! The Plane! It’s the Plane!
I wasn’t expecting a cool last-minute twist from the fifth entry in a series about people getting murdered by weight machines and laundry cords. Not only was 2011’s Final Destination 5 surprisingly awesome, it brought the series full circle. We have our alleged happy ending, with the hero and his girlfriend hopping a plane to Paris. Only, who are those idiots having a fight several rows down? Why is that kid yelling about a crash? Is that...Devon Sawa? You bet your boots. The final stinger is that FD5 takes place in the year 2000 and ends with the same plane crash we witnessed in the very first Final Destination film. And it’s not a sloppy or nonsensical twist: watch the movie carefully and you’ll see that all the technology is over a decade old. The truth was right there, but we were too busy laughing at the guy getting skewered on the rotisserie spit. I guess if you’re gonna snuff your leads at the last minute, you find a way to do it with flair.

Hannibal: Dr. du Maurier’s Fateful Referral
Hannibal is chock full of shocking plot developments. I had to base my choice on which twist really dazzled me, and since I found Dr. Bedelia du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) such a fascinating character, I was most enamored with her arc. Why is she drawn to Hannibal Lecter, like a moth darting close to an inferno? We learn early on that she once killed a patient in self-defense -- a patient who had previously been Lecter’s, and who Lecter deliberately infected with madness to see what du Maurier would do. And we sense that du Maurier, on some level, enjoyed killing, or at least found it intriguing. She’s such an enigma, and over the course of the show, we get one puzzle piece after another. But we don’t see the big picture until the final fragment slots into place. The defining flashback, which all others have teasingly circled. That’s when we learn that it was never self-defense. Du Maurier’s patient never attacked her at all. She straight-up murdered him in cold blood. This revelation made me immediately want to go back and study her calm face, her hint of a smirk, her every soft intake of breath. Knowing that she’s not Hannibal Lecter’s victim, but a member of his tribe.

Monsters: Beginning at the (Unhappy) End
The skillful Monsters wastes no time in catching our attention. A strip of North America has been invaded by towering, octopoid alien creatures, and in the film’s opening scene, we witness a squad of soldiers assaulted by said aliens while civilians scream and bodies litter the ground. It’s just a meaningless hook, right? After all, most of the film is a slow-paced, meditative affair, as a man and a woman hike through the Infected Zone and develop a gradual bond. They discover the aliens are hardly mindless, and by the end, the idea of returning to their boring old lives holds little joy. They’re sharing a secret that most of us are too afraid to see. A squad of soldiers comes to rescue them, we hear one dude’s annoying, familiar riff on “Ride of the Valkyries,” and we realize we’ve looped back to the beginning. The first scene was the last scene, and those were our protagonists lying dead and screaming in the middle of the carnage. Because happy endings are for the weak, especially when We Are The Real Monsters. See what they did there?

Nostalgia Critic: Don’t Fuck With Mara Wilson
Once again, I should enlighten the non-internet-addicts who have no idea what happened to Mara Wilson. After her stint as a precocious child star in Matilda and others, she pretty much quit acting and has since leveled up to an awesome blogger, tweeter, and fame-deconstructor. I learned about her coolness upgrade in the best possible way, when e-comedian Doug Walker, aka The Nostalgia Critic, did a scathing video review of 1997’s A Simple Wish. Yeah, it was a lousy movie, but it’s still pretty juvenile to single out one actress -- a kid, no less! -- and trash her entire body of work. However, it set up one of the best unexpected payoffs I’ve ever seen, as Mara Wilson her actual self appeared onscreen to get revenge on Walker by showing a montage of his hideously embarrassing teenage home movies. She not only proved that she can still act, but that she’s got an A-one sense of humor and is in no way hung up on her child star days. Who could have seen this “celebrity cameo” coming? It didn’t make my day, it made my year.

A Perfect Getaway: Our Heroes are Murderous Lying Murderers Who Lie and Murder
A skillful twist can elevate mediocre material. Don’t get me wrong, A Perfect Getaway is a tense and competent thriller, but I wouldn’t remember much about it if not for its climactic switcheroo. It’s about a derpy honeymooning couple (Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn) who befriend a far edgier, more badass duo (Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez) in the Hawaiian wilderness, right when some psycho is murdering in the area. There’s also a third couple, but they’re so sketchy and suspicious that they’re obviously a red herring. However, the truth is staring us in the gob the whole time. There’s nothing like seeing horror dawn on someone’s face (Kiele Sanchez’s, as she studies the photos on Milla Jovovich’s camera) and realizing how misled you were. Yes, the killers are Jovovich and Zahn, who murdered the real honeymooners and assumed their identities. First you get mad, then you go back through the film and realize that the clues were always there, that certain lines of dialogue had more than one meaning, and that even the opening wedding footage was edited to point you in the wrong direction. That, dear readers, is how you make a thriller thrill.

Singularity: One Short Night Equals One Long-Ass Year
Well, here’s another good example of terrible YA cover art. Based on this cover, you’d think you were about to read “James Marsden and His Clone vs. Demon Pac-Man.” Instead, William Sleator’s Singularity is an intelligent, fascinating little tale about a pair of twins who, while housesitting, discover that a backyard shed contains a wormhole to somewhere else. Time moves much faster inside, and one twin (the jerk) plots to rapidly age himself up so he won’t have to be a twin any more. However, his brother (the narrator) beats him to it. The second act of the book turns into an entirely different tale, a bizarro Hatchet in which our hero spends an entire year inside one small room while only a few hours pass in the outside world. We see his daily routine, his psychological turmoil, how he goes from a hapless teen to a muscular, zen-like survivor. That toothy golf ball on the cover barely features in the actual book; it’s really about something far cooler. Another twist that affected me as a kid and ensured I’d grow up to make lists like this one.

Myst Series, pt. 12

The Witness -- Draw a Line in the Sand and Then Make a Stand

It would have been appropriate to begin this post with a deeply profound quote from someone like Thomas Edison or Voltaire, or at least Kurt Vonnegut. I have chosen instead to begin with lyrics from Rent. If that makes no sense, neither does The Witness. Har har.

This is technically a Cautious Enthusiasm post, but I’m sticking it in my Myst review series because...well, come on. I’ve been eagerly awaiting The Witness for some time, because A) it’s made by Jonathan Blow, whose first game, Braid, was awesome, and B) it looked exceptionally Myst-like. Oh, is it ever. In fact, it could serve as the finale to my Myst review series (even though it won’t be), for it incorporates elements from many of the previous entries. As with Myst, you are an anonymous explorer plunked down on a peaceful island covered in puzzles. You will glide through pristine, beautifully-rendered desolation (The Talos Principle!) and perform obscure acts of archaeology (The Dig!) with the strong sense that this is some sort of ancient repository of knowledge (Submachine!) and the growing suspicion that the obtuse mysteries of the landscape have no real solutions (Kairo!). And, just like in Fez, you’ll probably tear your hair in anguish once you realize that you’d need to be the lovechild of Buddha and Alan Turing in order to unlock each and every secret. None of this is a bad thing...mostly.

See, Jonathan Blow makes games that have Deep, Profound Meanings and subvert the very definition of the medium. Braid took the most primeval elements of gaming -- you’re basically Mario fighting Goombas -- then turned it upside-down with time manipulation, then introduced another layer -- the Princess you’re trying to save actually needs saving from you -- and then stirred in an even deeper layer with a bunch of allusions to the Manhattan Project. “Layer” -- that’s a buzzword we’ll return to soon. The Witness bears no obvious resemblance to Braid, but there are a couple parallels: the teasing of very simple puzzle mechanics into complex and unexpected forms, and a subversion of the idea that you, the player, are merely a passive observer pushing buttons with no emotional investment. A witness. Braid toyed with your expectations about the main character, and The Witness has no main character at all, just you. Who are you?

Well, you might be someone who hates The Witness and finds it inane and tedious. You’ll know within the first few minutes. As the game begins, you emerge into the daylight, utterly alone. The first puzzle you face couldn’t be simpler: draw a line on an electronic panel, connecting a start point and an end point. In the second puzzle, the line bends. Then it branches. It becomes a grid, then a maze. Each panel unlocks something, and each is a little trickier than the one before. And that’s all you’re gonna get -- it’s panels all the way down. The beautiful setting is bigger than many islands from the Myst games but small enough that hiking around never becomes boring. The island is divided into obvious temperate zones, and scarred by the remains of industry. You obviously aren’t the first visitor, but as you explore, you’ll find...well, they’re either people who turned to stone or they were statues to begin with, but their appearance and frozen poses hint at a great deal. There’s a desert and a swamp, the ruins of temples, castles, and factories. And panels.

I can easily enjoy a game that’s fun to explore, and The Witness is wonderful to explore. The graphics have a painted-in quality -- soft at the edges with a slight oversaturation of color -- which adds more to the experience than if they were simply realistic. There’s no music and plenty of ambient sounds. You won’t want to be distracted, because the initial simplicity of the puzzles is an illusion. At its core, each panel is the same: draw the line from A to B. But new variations, new themes, appear constantly. You might need to draw the line so it touches certain points, or creates Tetris-block shapes. Many puzzles combine with the environment around them. Often, you must look carefully, listen keenly, or be standing in a certain spot. I don’t want to spoil too many specifics; this game is better when you discover it for yourself. But I was delighted by the innovations. The Witness is very nonlinear; you’ll often find puzzles that you can’t understand, as their solutions lie elsewhere on the island. Each zone -- desert, castle, swamp, etc. -- is a classroom lesson that you can apply to the game as a whole. Layers.

The what and the how can be untangled, but everyone who plays The Witness will be asking why. Why are you doing this? What’s the ultimate goal? Well, without revealing too much, each section of the island sticks another key in a lock. There’s an obvious endgame. But if you’re looking for a story, a point beyond zen-like ambiguity, I have to break the bad news to you. The Witness is a very, very, very pretentious game. It’s high-minded and arsty-fartsy. It takes you to task for daring to expect a plot and characters and such. There is plenty of dialogue, but it all takes the form of obtuse quotes from famous deep thinkers, read by actors with soothing voices. Likewise, if you solve the extra-tricky vault puzzles and find the hexagonal keys, what they unlock is murky and yawn-inducing. Many critics will heap praise on The Witness for being profound. I don’t believe that a bunch of flowery wisdom and self-help platitudes equal profundity. But maybe that’s part of it? Maybe it’s subtly satirizing the recent trend for “deep” games that showcase style over substance? More likely Jonathan Blow is a Jonathan Blowhard.

Layers. The Witness contains layers upon layers, for better or worse. As I implied earlier, I didn’t come close to discovering all it had to offer. I guess I beat the “main” game. I appreciated how the central village is like the island’s final exam. I wasn’t a big fan of the endgame, which seemed determined to annoy me with esoteric puzzle handicaps. I liked the ending I got, but it’s probably not the only ending, because I left a shitload of stones unturned. Beneath the panels and their many variations lies at least one more layer of puzzles. They’re insidious. Puzzles are literally woven into the landscape, the ground, air, and water. Once I realized they were there, I found myself noticing more and more of them. But finding every single one? It’d take an age. My eyes would fall from my skull. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one has gotten one hundred percent completion on The Witness yet. I think, the more we discover, the more impressed we’ll be. The wait was long, but Blow didn’t give us a half-assed result. In fact, he went farther than I ever imagined.

Is The Witness saying something incredibly profound, or does it have nothing to say at all? People will disagree. The biggest thing I got from it was satisfaction. Not from grasping its elusive “meaning” but from simply solving puzzles. Making the connections. Hearing the lightsaber-hum of a completed panel, an electrical line lighting up, connecting me to the next panel, and the next. Progressing. I refuse to offer any wishy-washy interpretations of The Witness, but one credo I detected within its many layers was that there is great human pleasure in the act of creating something. Especially if it’s something that lingers, remaining for others to appreciate. Like a game. In The Witness, others have come before you and left their mark. They remain in stone, silent witnesses to you, the latest contributor. They provided the puzzles, you’re providing the solutions. It feels good. If a game makes you feel good, it has succeeded, and hopefully you can forgive it for certain traces of artistic arrogance.

Do me a favor. Google Andy Goldsworthy. He’s one of my favorite artists, and you should quickly see why. I bet he and Jonathan Blow would agree on a lot of things. You don’t always need pages and pages of academic interpretation. You don’t need to stand before a work of art, sipping champagne and endlessly debating its themes and subtext. Sometimes it’s just beautiful.

Draw a line in the sand. Look: you made something.

Myst Review Series

Myst • Riven • Myst III: Exile • Myst IV: Revelation • Submachine • Kairo • The Talos Principle • The Dig • Daymare Town • Fez • Tri: Of Friendship and Madness • The Witness

Myst Series, pt. 11

Tri: Of Friendship and Madness -- The Fox Went Out on a Trippy Night

Advance spoiler alert: this blog post does not have a happy ending. So don’t read it if, say, you hated seeing Selma get hanged to death at the end of Dancer in the Dark. OH, SHIT, SORRY. Ignore that last bit! Spoilers! Spoilers!

For some reason, the Myst games are often compared to Portal, often along the lines of, “If you loved X, try Y!” If you loved solving cryptic, vaguely steampunk-themed puzzles inside a magical book, try bouncing around with wormhole technology while an insane A.I. makes catty comments about your weight! If Portal is a puzzle/exploration game set entirely in the realm of sci-fi, and the Myst games exist in a nifty little no man’s land between sci-fi and fantasy, then there must be something on the far end of the seesaw, a Myst-like, Portal-like game that is one hundred percent fantasy. Well, stop digging, because I found one!

Tri: Of Friendship and Madness has a stupid title but is not at all a stupid game. I could recommend it, but there’s this glaring asterisk that I’ll get to later. It’s a game that instantly piqued my interest on Steam. Yes, a lot of the reviews compared it to Portal. With reason: you’re a silent protagonist, apparently female (judging by the timbre of your grunts of exertion), exploring a series of disorienting levels, armed with a device that generates a particular mechanic which you can exploit in various ways. But it’s all magic and mysticism. You arrive at a cliffside temple and encounter a friendly masked priest who gives you the lowdown: there are two playful fox gods, red and blue, who were once carefree best friends. Some undefined malady caused Red to go insane, and Blue ran away in fright. Now the priest hopes you can track down Red and calm his madness so Blue can return and rekindle the foxes’ friendship. Get it?

You chase the red fox into a dream-realm where physics is not welcome, and you quickly equip yourself with the Tri, an artifact that enables you to create solid triangles on most available surfaces. This seems simplistic -- it’s like you’re MS Painting shit into the game -- but it fucks with your head in all manner of ways. The triangles serve as makeshift platforms to reach new areas, but then you get a gravity-defying power, allowing you to scuttle like a spider across walls and ceilings, laying down pathways of triangles like an infestation of viral cheddar cheese. The game comes to life at this point, as you must let go of the notion that you’re limited by what’s up and what’s down. It’s important to grasp Tri’s M.C. Escher logic, because each level contains three fox statues that must be recovered to open the way forward. And the levels get progressively more massive. Each is expertly designed, coiling in and around itself, utilizing architectural space in surprising ways. The game’s aesthetic is reminiscent of origami, with bold colors, complex angles, folds and creases and countless hidden nooks. It’s psychedelic and awesome.

Tri is all about patient exploration. The later levels may take hours. The fox statues are tricky enough, but there are also dozens of small totems, the collecting of which unlocks bonus content. Some of these totems are so challenging to find and/or snatch that even a major completionist like me can’t be arsed. There are pools of acid, bottomless drops, areas where your triangles don’t stick, you name it. Many of the puzzles are familiar: dropping crates onto switches and redirecting beams of light gave me flashbacks to The Talos Principle. However, even the unoriginal stuff is made less so by the addition of those crazy triangles. Can’t reach something? Walk straight up the wall! Acid pools got you down? Build a triangle bridge! You’ve got time! Despite the constant presence of the red fox god, who flits tauntingly about, the pace of Tri is leisurely indeed, with scant story elements. And (possible spoiler alert) the whereabouts of the blue fox god are easy to guess, given the paucity of options. There’s no sense of urgency, no feeling that some sort of fantasy-GLaDOS is going to murder you...a nice evocation of the similarly chill Myst series.

So. All the things I’ve said about Tri have been positive. But I didn’t finish the game. Because Tri has one horrible flaw: its gameplay mechanics kinda suck. I can deal with that TO A POINT. Yes, first-person platforming will always be wonky. You’ll jump, land on a narrow platform, and skid off it to fall fifty feet. Walking on walls is fun, until your invisible foot touches down on the wrong few inches, gravity violently corrects itself, and you fall another fifty feet. Now try doing the same thing while carrying a wobbly crate that seems barely glued to your pinky finger. Prepare to do a lot of falling, climbing, falling, climbing, falling, and climbing. Again, I can live with that if the game is interesting, as Tri is. But from a certain point onward, you are required to use your triangles to redirect light beams. This mechanic is so badly implemented, so frustrating, so tedious, that it ruined me. I spent what felt like hours fiddling with triangles, nudging each vertex here and there, trying to get the beam to point at a tiny target. I created zig-zaggy spiderwebs of light without making any progress. In desperation, I watched a Let’s Play, but the player was just as stuck on those fucking light beams as I was. That was when I forced myself to utter the sentence that kills a game:

This isn’t fun any more.

And I feel terrible. Because Tri really, really tries hard (no pun intended), and it won my heart with its early levels, and I was gonna put it on my games-of-the-year list. I wanted to finish it and I still do. But I am not willing to struggle with its lousy light-bending nightmare any longer. Who the hell test-played Tri and gave that a thumbs-up? It brings everything to a screeching halt. The game smashes into a brick wall and totals itself. Puzzles can take time, but it should be because they challenge the intellect, not because the goal is obvious but the means to get there is next to impossible. All the fun drained from Tri, and I gave up with a couple levels left to go. The end.

Thus, I can’t recommend this game, unless you are divinely patient. It has plenty going for it. I love its unique fantasy world, which combines different mythologies (mostly Japanese, but I noticed Hindu, Tibetan, and Inuit elements as well). I love how the triangle-building completely overturns and deconstructs traditional level design. I love the quirky music. I love how the protagonist just happens to be a woman. I love foxes. I mean, I really love foxes. But I do not love how Tri sucked me in and then stabbed me in the back with infuriating, poorly realized mechanics. A game that starts out great and turns rotten can be worse than a game that’s crap from start to finish. When I abandoned the horribly-designed Albedo: Eyes from Outer Space after playing for three minutes, I felt sweet relief. But when I gave up on Tri after nearly making it all the way, I felt disappointment and melancholy.

There’s my unhappy ending. The next entry in the Myst review series is probably gonna be The Witness, and, GOD, do I hope I have a better experience with it. I failed to help the cute fox gods become friends again, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Well, maybe that’s overdramatic. But it FUCKING SUCKS, okay?

Myst Review Series

Myst • Riven • Myst III: Exile • Myst IV: Revelation • Submachine • Kairo • The Talos Principle • The Dig • Daymare Town • Fez • Tri: Of Friendship and Madness • The Witness

American Horror Story: Hotel--Episode 12

5.12: Be Our Guest

--Part of me was hoping the finale of Hotel would go thusly: we see Liz Taylor and Iris behind the front desk, beaming. All loose ends have been tied, all ghosts have been defeated and/or placated, all is well. The Hotel Cortez is ready for its rebirth! The main doors swing open. Liz and Iris beam wider. And in barge eight thousand police officers brandishing nine thousand search warrants. Close-up on Liz as he utters a pitch-perfect “Well, ffffffuuuuuuuu--” And cut to black.

--But, no, in the end, it seems the Cortez emits a magical reality-altering field which ensures anyone murdered within its confines will vanish from the consciousness of the outside world, never to be sought after or mourned. I guess we must accept this as some sort of skewed internal logic. Anyway, a bigger part of me was hoping for a happier ending. Which we got! AHS has a tendency to focus its season finales on strong emotional payoffs, often at the expense of dangling subplots, but it mostly works. This worked, all right, despite some odd creative choices, like replacing Sarah Paulson with a different Sarah Paulson. Mind you, things didn’t look good at the outset: we opened with a mournful VO from Liz and a closeup of him getting his throat slit by a sequined finger that could only belong to The Countess. I was not eager for another downbeat finale, after Freak Show slaughtered its freak show. But much was in store.

--Initially, Liz and Iris’s plan to revolutionize the Cortez hit some snags, because all the Egyptian cotton and Star Trek toilets in the world can’t help when a wrathful Sally and a pouty Will Drake are still murdering away. Liz and Iris called a ghost meeting, summoning such guest-stars as Marcy, the Swedes, that bearded dude Tristan killed...and Miss Evers, who is apparently sticking around after all. Dammit, Miss Evers, did you not read the awesome send-off I gave you last week! Now I look like a doof! Anyway, March dropped by to explain his new agenda: he’s murdered enough to satisfy and now wants the Cortez immortalized. That means keeping its doors open until 2026, its centennial, when it can became an historic landmark. Sally and Drake were all like, “Fuck you, pedostache!” Time for an exorcism, maybe?

--Actually, Iris and Liz decided to help their haunts instead, which was kind of cool. Iris hooked Sally up with a smartphone and showed her the wonders of the internet, a heavenly realm where a trapped ghost can float free, exploring at will -- and, more importantly, accruing bushels of likes, faves, upvotes, and e-friends who don’t care who you really are, only who you present yourself as. Blissed out by her newfound freedom, Sally ditched her drugs. Did this satisfy? I’m glad Sally got a happy ending, but it seemed too easy for a character so angry and tortured -- plus, the Addiction Demon remains maddeningly undefined. Another one of this show’s cool monsters who never got the proper amount of curation. Sally’s early deliverance also left her with nothing to do for the rest of the episode. I’ve come to suspect that, after pulling a double shift as conjoined twins last season, Paulson asked for a lighter workload in Hotel. Then they shouldn’t have given her a character I enjoyed so much!

--Meanwhile, Liz consoled Drake, who was bitter at the disintegration of his fashion empire. Liz broke through Drake’s malaise and got his creative juices flowing again, making him into a mysterious, quasi-mythical recluse that the public ate right up, while Liz rose to dominate Drake’s boardroom. Drake happily presided over ultra-exclusive fashion shows at the Cortez, with Ramona and the ghosts serving as models. (Guess Ramona didn’t want to rule the Cortez. Can’t say I blame her.) Liz remained melancholy, and I was quite pleased when they addressed a big loose end: what happened to Tristan? Liz had been wondering this himself. Bad enough to see your lover killed, but when you expect him to reappear as a ghost and he doesn’t? Agony. To suss out Tristan’s whereabouts, Iris brought in none other than suave psychic Billie Dean Howard, Sarah Paulson’s very first AHS character. Billie Dean reached into the Beyond and produced A) a touching message from Donovan, and B) stubborn silence from Tristan. Oh, he was there, but he wasn’t talking. Liz felt broken.

--Can we all agree that Liz Taylor had the best character arc? Such a great role, such a great performance from Denis O’Hare. The real heart of the hotel. Liz kept in touch with his son and witnessed the arrival of his granddaughter, and then came the prostate cancer. Liz wasn’t interested in Drake’s doctors or Ramona’s offer of vampirism. He summoned all the ghosts for a going-away party, providing them various weapons to take his life in the most overdramatic and grisly fashion, a team effort. The show made this seem unbelievably touching, and that kind of zany emotional back-and-forth is why I adore AHS so much. However, one ghost had dibs on Liz’s mortal coil: The Countess. Yes, it was she who killed Liz, but the act was not cruel or horrific, but tender. I approve of this; liberating Liz was the one act of pure good The Countess did in her lifetime. No sooner had Liz risen as a ghost than Tristan appeared. Yes, he still loved Liz, and simply hadn’t wanted to distract him while he still had mortal work to do. Awwwwwwww! While I do think the Liz/Tristan romance was badly introduced (i.e., not foreshadowed or allowed to develop in any natural way), it’s still so cute and cuddly. What a well-deserved happy ending.

--But the introduction of Billie Dean Howard into the Cortez’s soup of paranormality had consequences. Flash forward to Devil’s Night, 2020: the Cortez is swarming with annoying wannabe ghost-hunters, thanks to Billie Dean’s Lifetime specials. (“Mr. Wu doesn’t pay for what?”) How can it ever be a respectable establishment? Enter John Lowe. The prodigal returns to his true home...a home that is now closed to him, save for one night. It took me a bit to realize Lowe was dead. How? Why? Lowe lured Billie Dean in for a private interview and gave her the...heh...lowdown (this was the season of bad puns, I guess). After the Ten Commandment killings, he went on the run with the family in tow, murdering criminals to feed Alex and Holden. Eventually, he returned them to the Cortez, all save for Scarlett, who didn’t belong and never would. Off she went to the same private school as Lachlan Drake. Can we see a spinoff starring those two? It’d be pretty interesting. The police caught up with Lowe, and his final seconds were spent on the pavement right outside the Cortez, riddled with bullets, trying and failing to cross the threshold. He didn’t get his family after all, and I dunno if he deserves them, frankly.

--Lowe then took Billie Dean to March’s little serial killer party. Billie Dean’s reaction to Gacy, Dahmer, Wournos, and the rest was more orgasmic than terrified; she was probably already composing her next big TV event. However, she soon found herself cuffed to a chair while the ghosts menaced her with power tools. Oh, they didn’t kill her, they just put the true fear of God in her. Ramona appeared as well, promising to hunt Billie Dean down if she continued to sensationalize the Cortez. Billie Dean got the point. She fled, and Lowe went to his family. Alex and Holden slept, watched over by Scarlett, now a young woman. Lowe climbed into bed with his vampire wife and son and slept the sleep of a sad man. An eternity of distance from his equally eternal loved ones, the rules of the afterlife prohibiting any sort of real contact. If Liz Taylor got the perfect happy ending, I’d say John Lowe got the perfect unhappy ending.

--And I guess that’s it. The Cortez thrives. The ghosts are all happy. The rooms and hallways of that cursed edifice keep their secrets. And, of course, the season ended with The Countess, elegant at the hotel bar, her sights set on a handsome young man with dark hair, a silent film star profile, and......cheekbones for days. Will The Countess rise again? Will the evil that infects the Cortez overwhelm any good intentions, or has it been tamed? That, children, is a story for another day.

--AHS: Hotel was pretty bodacious. And despite its excess, it grounded itself better than Freak Show or Asylum and waaaayyyyy better than Coven. It couldn’t touch all its bases -- Angela Bassett was badly underused from start to finish, and one or two elements, most notably little Bartholomew and the Addiction Demon, never truly came to fruition. But none of it felt pointless. Nothing made me bored or impatient. It was a streamlined season that, once again, felt distinct from each AHS tale that has come before. And the emotional arcs of its characters satisfied me, gaining more resonance as the season went on. As for Lady Gaga, well...I can’t believe she got a Golden Globe nod for Hotel, and fucking won. Her performance was good -- she nailed The Countess’s sexual allure and pulled off the trickier emotional moments too -- but the way everything revolved around her, on- and offscreen, still seems like a big fat gimmick. I don’t think AHS needs to rely on such attention grabs going forward. Because they still have mojo. Blood still pumps through the show’s veins. I’m still in love with it, am I not? Let’s ring out this bizarre, glorious season. A-one and a-two and...

Be our guest! Be our guest!
Let us butterfly your chest!
Throats are slit, you’re in the shit,
Miss Evers waits to swab your mess!
Hipster ghosts, horny Swedes!
We’ll exceed your every need!
Our facade is rather arty --
Just steer clear of little Barty!
Here a vamp, there a slut!
Sarah Paulson’s extra-nuts!
How could anyone expect a full night’s rest?
Just let your clothes go flying,
Blow your load, start crying!
Be our guest! Don’t be stressed!
Calm your tits -- it’s AHS!
Be our guest! Be our guest!
Be our guesssssssssssssssssssssst!

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Picture me in 1999. The Phantom Menace is coming out and I’m so pumped. Everyone is. The world holds its breath. I refuse to believe the long, bitter Newsweek review which savagely disses the film, pointing out a litany of flaws we now know by heart, from Jar Jar to “Yippeeee!” It’s a new Star Wars movie made by George Lucas. It can’t suck. It can’t. My youthful, desperate enthusiasm lasts through multiple viewings of The Phantom Menace, and over the next six years, I dutifully plunk my butt down in theater seats to suffer through Episodes II and III. Maybe this one will be good. Maybe this one. Our cultural adoration of Star Wars fueled us through the prequels, but by the end, we were wrung out and left to dry. At least we’d have the original trilogy, if Lucas could stop fucking tinkering with it. But the thought of any more Star Wars movies left a queasy taste in our mouths.

Then Disney bought the world.

So here we are. A Star Wars film for the age of cynicism. The age of nitpicky social media. The age of ginormous cinematic universes, which probably wouldn’t exist without Lucas’s original trilogy. Star Wars is back, to be placed under a suspicious lens. Disney, who we still vaguely associate with princesses and cartoons? J.J. Abrams, who either saved or spat upon the Star Trek brand, depending on who you ask? Can the gee-whiz freshness of A New Hope be replicated in 2015? Well, no, not really. Those who expect such will not embrace The Force Awakens. As the credits rolled, a stranger sitting near me and my boyfriend loudly honked, “Pretty mediocre, huh?” while staring at us in the hope of instant validation. But here’s the thing. When I heard new Star Wars movies were on the way, I was kind of amused, cautiously enthusiastic, only mildly excited. But as the release date drew near (and then passed, because no way am I battling opening night hordes), my eagerness grew to encompass much of my waking thought. I was that excited kid all over again. There is nothing, nothing, like seeing those legendary words appear on the screen -- “A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...” -- followed by the brassy explosion of John William’s score and the trapezoids of school-bus-yellow text ascending against a curtain of stars. Star Wars is just that big in our minds, and may it always be so.

The plot? Do I really need to get into it? You’ve already seen The Force Awakens, or you’re never going to, or you still live in dread of spoilers. Besides, we’ve all heard the one huge criticism: it’s just A New Hope all over again. No point in disagreeing. The parallels between the first Star Wars film and this one are continuous, blatant, and impossible to ignore. But they don’t particularly diminish the sheer entertainment, and I can see what Abrams and his team were up to. They needed to prove they could make a Star Wars film, period, so they made one we’d all recognize. The Force Awakens is just so eager, bursting with endorphins at its own existence. It moves at breakneck pace, sprinting from one action scene and character introduction to the next. Too fast, in my opinion. I missed the quiet, focused moments from the originals. On the other hand, remember the infamous politicking of the prequels, the dreary dialogue spew, the endless reiteration of the same fucking plot points? The Force Awakens likes to show rather than tell. There’s still an Empire, still a Rebellion (they just have different names), and decades after the “victory” in Return of the Jedi, nothing has improved. Hell, it’s gotten worse: the galaxy exists in fractured factions and most people barely remember. The wishy-washy “Republic” exists offscreen somewhere, and (SPOILER ALERT) is wiped out with barely a sniffle. In other words, the sedate, passive world of the prequels, with its endless marble columns and sleepwalking bureaucrats, is over forever. Raise a glass.

The heroes and villains of The Force Awakens are defined, not by their backstories (which are mostly mysterious, to be unpacked in later films), but by their immediate actions. And it works, because the actors catapult themselves into their roles with the exuberance of...well, of someone who was cast in a Star Wars film. Luke, Han, and Leia (not to mention Chewie, Artoo, Threepio, and even Admiral Ackbar) are as beloved as ever, but they don’t hog the spotlight. They’ve become the mentors, the wise ones, the torch-passers. The galaxy’s new generation is personified by fierce desert scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley) and AWOL Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega), who also represent the cultural paradigm shift that has so many idiots terrified. Yeah, the main protagonist of a Star Wars film is a woman, the secondary hero is black, and these two facts are utterly beside the point. Ridley and Boyega weren’t cast because of their race/gender, as part of some sinister politically-correct conspiracy, but in blindness to it. Already, we can’t imagine anyone else in these roles, can we?

The film is refreshing in how it shakes off the rust of ancient film stereotypes. Rey and Finn reach the point where they’d die for each other, but there is no hint of romance between them. Rey is never made to play second fiddle to a dude (there’s an early running gag where Finn thinks Rey needs rescuing, and is wrong over and over). The film opens with the introduction of a “traditional” hero, hotshot pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), but then gives him the boot so Finn and Rey can take over. When Finn lied to Rey about his identity, I rolled my eyes, figuring there’d be a later bit where Finn was exposed, Rey tearfully banished him from her sight, and they reconciled for the climax. Not so! Finn tells her the truth, and she understands and forgives him. In the midst of sci-fi craziness, they face a problem like real adults and not the pawns of a lazy screenwriter. Meanwhile, Adam Driver gives a very interesting performance as corrupted dark knight Kylo Ren. Surrounded by more archetypal villains (the implacable officer, the frothing-at-the-mouth general, the cryptic overlord), Kylo Ren is a cauldron of confused emotions, hero-worshipping Darth Vader but unable to tap into that same level of cold, easy cruelty. He’s an uncertain villain (I can’t say more without major spoilers) and that’s what makes him riveting.

The action of The Force Awakens is never subpar, as our heroes and baddies chase each other through the usual series of weirdly homogeneous planets (this time around, the sequence is desert/forest/snow). It can’t entirely avoid the J.J. Abrams effect. Abrams likes to include action that ignores all logic and spatial physics. Remember the ridiculous train crash in Super 8? Similar over-the-top set pieces occur here, most notably a dorky bit with angry tentacle monsters. Abrams also has a knack for the glaring plot hole. Explain to me how Finn, a Stormtrooper from infancy, trained and conditioned all his life to have no emotion and robotically follow orders, can go AWOL at the drop of a hat. Explain how the Republic has learned jack-shit from past experience and utilizes an ill-equipped guerilla force instead of, y’know, a MILITARY. Or how entire planets are reduced to the single square mile where all the characters find themselves. But, y’know, the original trilogy was no more logical or coherent. Like I always say, Star Wars isn’t really science fiction -- it’s fantasy that happens to be set in space. And if Leia can get over the destruction of her home planet so quickly, I guess the cool-looking, throwaway “tragedies” in a J.J. Abrams movie are no more sinful. The personal tragedies still hit home. I had the Big Shocker spoiled in advance thanks to internet trolls, but it still got to me. As Big Shockers go, it wasn’t too surprising when taken in the on- and off-camera context. But its Big Shocker shockwaves will reverberate through Episodes VIII and IX.

Ahh, yes, the next two. How I ache for them already. The Force Awakens is not life-changing. It doesn’t redefine Star Wars. But did we really want it to? I’d wondered if they would try adapting something from the Expanded Universe of books, comics, and games, which covers many decades following Return of the Jedi. Did I want to see Star Wars movies based on stories that already existed? By tossing out the EU, Disney may have pissed off the religious fans, but anything would have pissed off the religious fans. They complain that The Force Awakens cribs most of its plot from A New Hope, but if it had gone in a drastically different direction, they would have whinged equally hard. They have their pedestal and they’re going to stand on it. Taken in the context of modern blockbusters, The Force Awakens is terrific entertainment, well-acted and exciting, funny and poignant and never too arch. The biggest franchise in American history is in capable hands, which is more than we could have hoped for, admit it.

We would have accepted “better than the prequels” and left it at that. But the new era of Star Wars films isn’t content to settle for less. They want to show us how many more stars remain in that galaxy far far away, and how our enthusiasm will always be unsullied. The prequels couldn’t kill Star Wars; it rises from the ashes. Mediocre, my ass. Let’s take this journey.

American Horror Story: Hotel--Episode 11

5.11: Battle Royale

--I see it all now. The first five seasons of AHS were merely an extended pretense to stick a ghost, a witch, and a vampire in a room together and have them fight. Well played.

--I was oddly stunned when I made the very recent discovery that Hotel only has twelve episodes. Why, I’m not sure. Some might call it a warning sign, but maybe they just didn’t have enough story to fill thirteen hours, and didn’t want to stretch. I’m okay with that; hell, if Freak Show had done twelve eps, we wouldn’t have gotten the stupid Alligator Girl subplot. So, because the season finale is next week, “Battle Royale” had to huff and puff all over the place, knocking off characters and tying up loose ends. Was it satisfying? Yes. Was it all a bit muddled? Also yes. But we finally (fucking FINALLY) got some more Sally backstory, and that’s all I was really hoping for.

--Time to thin the ranks! We began with a rehash of Iris and Liz’s gunslinging, which came to a premature halt when Iris realized she was pumping lead into her own sweet baboo. A tool to the end, Donovan shielded The Countess with his body. His dying wish: to be hauled out of the Cortez and spared from eternal ghost-life. Thus, Donovan’s arc ended on a cliché, the deathbed reconciliation with an estranged parent. But the actors sold it. And we got the Kathy Bates Emmy Award moment when Iris communed with her son’s ashes. And then, of course, she smeared Donovan all over herself like a spice rub and ascended to the roof so the breeze could distribute him across the West Coast. Beautiful. Weird. Inappropriate. American Horror Story.

--All this allowed the wounded Countess to slither off into the hotel’s depths, where Sally tended to her. Not out of goodness, of course. This week, the characters all placed bids on who would kill The Countess, and Sally just wanted to ensure a sweet bargaining chip. With a captive audience, Sally revealed her tale of woe: back in 1993, she was in tight with a pair of grunge rockers. During a sexy, drug-soaked night at the Cortez, Sally hit on the great idea of sewing her body to those of her lovers, so they could be together forever. This is your brain on drugs! The rockers both died from overdose (Miss Evers’ burbly cackles were the ickiest part of the scene), and Sally spent five days tethered to their corpses. Her misery and suffering provided enough negative juujuu to summon the Addiction Demon, I guess. Now we know why she sews people into mattresses: like the other ghosts, she’s stuck in a holding pattern. The Demon remains obtuse. I have a new theory that it’s really March in disguise, and Sally’s been his victim this whole time. We’ll see.

--The Lowes went home, all together again! Awwww! Scarlett seemed mostly exasperated by the knowledge that her entire family were vampires and/or serial killers. I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if she’s removing and wearing Grandma’s skin by the end. This is your brain on monstrous parental neglect and copious emotional trauma! Lowe kidnapped a dude to feed to his wife and son, only to find that all the other Lowes had been abducted (by The Countess, I guess?). Back to the Cortez he went, where Sally ordered him to commit the final Ten Commandments killing -- her own goal being to kill John and have him forever. Did he just leave the dude in the trunk of his car or what?

--For Countess-hunting, Iris and Liz brought in the big guns and sprung Ramona from her prison. In the process, we learned that Ramona killed and ate all the nouveaux vampire kids. I guess that’s one way to end a subplot, though I would have preferred something more ballsy. Stricken with measles, Ramona needed a pick-me-up, and who should come strolling into the Cortez but QUEENIE FROM COVEN! Outstanding! I can’t help it -- I love these surprise seasonal crossovers. Sadly, our beloved sassy witch was a bit oblivious to the danger. But we got to see Queenie fight Ramona (probably thinking, “This bitch looks weirdly like an immortal voodoo queen I used to know”) and it looked like she’d win, until March dropped in to add a new rule to the great book of nerdy debate topics: a witch’s powers don’t work on a ghost. March stabbed Queenie and Ramona ate her, which SUCKED (no pun intended). I wish the show wouldn’t bring back old characters just to snuff them, but seeing Queenie was still great.

--All fired up, Ramona strutted into the penthouse suite and found The Countess newly refreshed, thanks to the sacrifice of her last two blonde vampire boys. We were spared another catfight, because Ramona, to her own disgust, found that her hatred for The Countess masked the same old helpless desire. Alas...with her sexual allure, The Countess could have had all the happiness she wanted, but she blew her chances and wasted the best lovers. She asked if she could take little piranha-faced Bartholomew and leave to make a fresh start. Ramona couldn’t quite say no. So they had sex, because why not, and then The Countess packed her bags and skedaddled. She almost, almost got away. But Lowe was waiting in the elevator, and unlike certain front desk clerks, he knows where to aim. Goodbye, Countess. Her startled-looking head became the final trophy of the Ten Commandments Killer, reminding us all that Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder and Thou Certainly Shalt Not Commit Enough Goddamn Murders to Fill A Fleet of Dump Trucks. March denied Sally the right to claim John’s life. I doubt she’ll give up that easily.

--So March got his happy ending? Well, maybe. Someone got a happy ending, but not who you’d expect. March was all aflutter when The Countess’s ghost turned up, massive wads of black silk erupting from her décolletage (one more costume commentary! Ha!). Eternity with his bride! But The Countess herself was wooden, stripped of any remaining happiness or peace. She’s lost all her lovers, leaving only chipped beef on toast with a man she loathes. Then Miss Evers spilled the beans: it was she and not The Countess who betrayed March to the cops way back when. She had hoped that death and afterlife together would show March her lovestruck devotion. March coldly gave her the boot instead. But this moment of heartbreak for Miss Evers became her triumph. Freed from any delusion that March cared for her, she shed her apron and left the room with dignity, her business finished. Off to a proper afterlife where her son is waiting, where endless stained bedsheets cry out for the sponge of a true professional. Miss Evers gets to go, while The Countess is pinned under March’s oily leer. Which she probably deserves.

--I guess Ramona owns the hotel now, but something tells me Iris and Liz will really be in charge. Time to turn the old dump around, clean the corpses from the mattresses, tear out March’s mousetrap-maze of traps and disposal chutes, smother Bartholomew with a pillow, feed some kale to the hipsters to shut them up, and user in a new wave of guests who can be reasonably sure they won’t get impromptu tracheotomies in their sleep! Oh, and hire a new maid who can handle Miss Evers’ legacy. HA! Can’t be done.