Miscellaneous Mondays: Embracing my Inner Nerd

Hello all! It's finals week in my little world, so that means some extra studying and a lot of extra hours at work. I'm ahead of the game this semester, so hopefully the stress won't get to me. In the meantime, check out my nerd moments for the week!

Grimm


I promised to share my thoughts on both new episodes, and so I shall. The first episode was about the Pied Piper, which is admittedly a fairy tale that I don't know a lot about. I vaguely remember a few cartoon versions of it, but never read the original and I have no emotional attachment to it. In this episode, I liked the concept of the Piper--weird and interesting at the same time. However, the underlying conflict of the poor kid getting teased because of his dad's job? Kind of boring. Again, this is something you could do with absolutely any crime show. I liked it better than the Bluebeard episode, but I still thought they could have done more with it.

I liked Friday's episode quite a bit. I like Monroe as a character, and getting some back story for him was a lot of fun. I also thought that this episode put some real effort into showing the complexity of the world of these creatures--they don't all like each other, and there are genuinely deadly situations that can arise. This has the potential to put Nick in some dilemma filled situations, and the show really needs that.

Overall though? This show is a cool concept, it really is, but I do feel like it's struggling to use it's fairy tale characters effectively. It's doing well with Monroe, but the rest of them just seem to come and go like extras in a B movie.

Supernatural, The Anime Series

After getting caught up in the live action show (Poor Bobby!) we finished watching the anime version. It spans the time frame of seasons 1 and 2 of the live action show, basing some episodes on those episodes, but having some that are completely original. Unless your a big Supernatural geek, you probably won't like it. But if you are, it offers a really different perspective on a familiar plot. There's a lot of things they can do in animation that aren't possible in a life action show, so it offers some disturbing and creative imagery. For my part, I was pretty entertained.

Once Upon a Time

This episode focused on the Huntsman from Snow White--Graham in the modern world--who is the first character to start to remember his old life. Josh called the ending of this one pretty early on, but it bummed me out anyway. They did a good job turning him into a compelling and likeable character in the span of one episode--that isn't easy to do. Overall, I think this show is getting comfortable with it's paranormal aspects, and hopefully it has a lot of good stories left to tell.

I'm also intrigued that there's a book coming out, presumably with the shows version of the fairy tales that it's been using.

Poll Results

In the question of killing evil, it's a three way tie between explosives, mental powers, and embracing evil. This leads me to conclude that most of our voters are mad scientists or evil inventors. Or both, I suppose.

The new poll asks: At what point do you think a series has too many books? Is there such a thing as too many? I definitely think there is, in fact I have some pretty strong opinions on this matter. I'm hoping that next week we can have a discussion about our favorite series, and why they should or shouldn't end any time soon. In the mean time, please vote on the right side of your screen. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the books in question are written by a very talented and beloved author. Happy Reading!