Believe it or not, I drafted this post over a month ago because I just assumed 2 Broke Girls was going to air alongside all of the other fall sitcoms. That was also when I put together the banner above, which I ended up using because CBS decided not to release any promo images. And heck, I was going to embed it somewhere anyway because I put way too long photoshopping Kim Noel Kardashian into that screenshot.

Here’s about the extent of what I know about the “American television and social media personality, socialite, fashion designer, businesswoman, model, and actress” [thanks for giving me her exact occupation, Wikipedia!]:

• she had a sex tape.
• she married Kanye West.
• her mobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood made a ludicrous amount of money, and if you want to know more about the effect it had, particularly on tween girls who were not happy about its downtime, you should listen to this episode of video game podcast The Indoor Kids because it is discussed in detail and to great comedic effect.

Here’s about what she did [Oh, hey! Welcome back, loyal readers! I'm using this awkwardly long pause in the middle of a sentence to say that I appreciate you and am glad you are here and we will face this new season together, you bet we will!] in the episode:

• appeared at 20 minutes, 18 seconds in.
• told Max and Caroline “I know how hard us girls really work to keep our businesses going,” which I found genuinely funny.
• exited the scene 55 seconds after she entered it.

Truly this was a far cry from Lindsay Lohan’s appearance on the show, and I can only imagine that for any really die-hard fans of Keeping Up With The Kardashians [henceforth referred to as KUWTK] who were waiting to see more of their favourite American television and social media personality, socialite, fashion designer, businesswoman, model, and actress this was, well . . .

In a big way this entire season premiere lies in the shadow of its guest star [that joke is low-hanging fruit and I will not go there], with her appearance being heavily advertised by CBS. From beginning to end we’re waiting for her to show up, and to get less than a minute of her on screen [which could not have taken longer than an hour to film] left me, anyway, feeling kind of cheated. The episode as a whole was decent enough, though.

The focus comes back to their business as the cold open has Max explaining to a would-be robber that they work all day and then some, only clocking in at about three hours of sleep a night. They can not and will not afford to empty out their register, and man wouldn’t it be great if an American television and social media personality, socialite, fashion designer, businesswoman, model, and actress with 24.8 million twitter followers showed them a little love [side note: Caroline kept saying 22 mil, but maybe 2.8 mil manifested between the taping of this episode and now]. To sum up the rest of that plot, which is really the only plot of the episode, an agent of some sort offers to film KUWTK at Max’s Homemade Cupcakes, then it doesn’t happen, Max and Caroline get sad, Kim shows up later to apologize and even tweets about them. The end.

Basically how I felt seeing Caroline’s new hair.

Okay, so maybe when I said it was “decent enough” I was referring to anything but the narrative. For one thing, Caroline follows in the tradition of blonde actresses in CBS sitcoms cutting their hair shorter for the new season and looks great. Seriously, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting’s new do has nothing, and let me repeat, nothing, on Beth Behrs’ makeover. In addition to that wonderful change Han said a bunch of really gay stuff [and I don't mean that pejoratively] and for their first punchline, because of course they had it recur, the writers opted for silence. That’s not the kind of restraint that would’ve taken place in past seasons, and I’m choosing to view it as a sign of better things to come.

What I would really love them to start doing though, and I know I’ve mentioned this before [I'm just too lazy to find the appropriate reviews to link back to], is stop living in the past. Referring to a cupcake serial killer as “one fat Dexter” makes reference to a show that ended [poorly] last year, and honestly just makes me think of this instead:

This reference dates me, I realize, but someone has to! Hey-o!

Not only that, but when the guy tries to rob them it’s described as a “hipster hold-up” the first word being a term I haven’t heard in months. While a few Tinder gags felt like they missed the train, name-dropping Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber was more like sleeping in and hitting the snooze button for the eleventh time. If the show wants to stay “current”, and saying that makes me feel like an old person, the writers need to let go of a lot of the topical humour, especially when it’s so far past its expiration date.

Anyway, that’s enough criticism for one day. I have sort of missed you, 2 Broke Girls. Here’s to 23 more episodes of Season 4.

Sorry, everyone, I went a little crazy with the Stray Observations this time around.

Current Total: $1,850.

New Total: $1,950. So Kim gives them $100 for the cupcake she eats, and apparently that’s all they make in two days? To be fair Caroline says that she spent all their savings on her hair, so I’m willing to handwave this all away. This time.

The Title Refers To: Kim Kardashian may be an American television and social media personality, socialite, fashion designer, businesswoman, model, and actress, but she’s most well known for KUWTK which is a reality show. That’s it. That’s the joke.

Stray Observations:

• Max doesn’t know where politicians are, or live, or work, or whatever.
• “Eat it red-haired lady and your Asian daughter!”
• “Hello, reason-I-do-two-hours-of-phone-therapy-Wednesday-before-work.”
• When Han says “I am not gay I’m restaurant curious” I swear you could hear members of the audience groaning.
• As someone who has downloaded Tinder, used it, and deleted it, I can tell you right now it doesn’t work that way, Sophie. Your matches don’t just pop up, you have to swipe them right first.
• “Hey, are wheelchairs sexy?” / “Well, it depends on who’s in one.” / “I say no.”
• Oh, speaking of things that are so yesterday, Caroline refers to Kim Kardashian as “epic”.
• Max would advise you not to try witchcraft just for the free snacks.
• I thought “Here Comes Honey Boob-less” was funny, but awkward in light of recent news.
• “My baby’s Nigerian. I mean if you’re gonna live here learn the language, jeez.”
• Max names the Kardashians: Kim, Kamber, Klondike, and the little ones Krispy and Kreme. Kim, Kooky, Kool-Aid, and the little ones Captain and Kangaroo. Kim, Cankles, Crank, and the little ones Kegel and Kickball.
• Listening to Jennifer Coolidge pretend to be Sophie pretending to be Kim is the most painful thing I’ve ever had to watch.
• Chestnut looks different.
• Caroline has used almost all of her cinnamon-flavoured makeup remover.
• “Good news is I think we can fit a penis in there.”
• “Who could that be? A rapist we’ve done most of the work for?” [Yes, I found this particular rape joke pretty funny]
• “Han, look, I made perfect bread!”
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “The only thing my mother did with my sex tape was copy it and give it to her boyfriend.”
• NEW FEATURE “FOR THE SHIPPERS”: “Hey Caroline, we’re finally about to scissor!”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Goodness gracious, Sophie, that dress. Eesh.

INT. YOUR STEREOTYPICAL AMERICANA-STYLE DINER – DAY

Two young men sit at a booth, the same one they sit at each and every single day. On the left is EVAN, a Filipino-Chinese blogger extraordinaire. Facing him is someone we’re going to call CODY, a White acquaintance/peer/friend. Both enjoy sharing a meal in the diner together and each other’s company.

A WAITRESS approaches their booth to take their orders.

CODY
I’ll have the hamburger.

EVAN
The roast chicken for me, please.

Pan up to the clock on the wall. Fifteen minutes rapidly elapse and the WAITRESS returns and places their food in front of them.

Both EVAN and CODY
Thank you.

Sitting in front of CORY is a hamburger. EVAN stares down at his plate, which holds the exact same thing.

EVAN
(not angrily but wearily)
Every time, man. Every single time.

CODY
(with forced sympathy, as he’s heard this more than once before)
Aw, really, again?

EVAN
You were sitting right there when I ordered. I very, very clearly asked for roast chicken. I always order roast chicken.

CODY
Well, at least it’s good though, right?

EVAN picks up his hamburger and takes a bite. He chews it slowly.

EVAN
(sighing)
Yeah, it’s pretty good. I mean, it always is.

CODY
(brightly)
So let’s just enjoy this meal together, huh?

A short montage of shots showing EVAN and CODY sitting at their booth, ordering, and both being served hamburgers day after day. At one point EVAN lifts up the menu and points directly at a picture of a roast chicken. The montage ends with EVAN staring at the hamburger on his plate before lunging at the WAITRESS’s back, only to have CODY stop him.

EVAN and CODY sit in their respective places on a brand new day waiting, ironically, for their WAITRESS.

CODY
(quizzically)
You sure look chipper today.

EVAN
(leaning forward, one hand on the other side of his mouth)
Just between the two of us, word on the street is that this diner recently ordered in a shipment of chicken.

CODY
(skeptically)
And you know this how?

EVAN
(getting quieter with each word)
I . . . subscribe to a number of different newsletters . . .
(with regained enthusiasm)
But this could be it! Today could be the day!

CODY
I’m sorry, what newsletters?

The WAITRESS arrives, stands by their booth, and waits for their orders.

CODY
The usual, please.
(pause)
The usual is a hamburger.

The WAITRESS nods, wearing a tight-lipped smile.

EVAN
(a little too confidently)
The roast chicken, if you please.

The WAITRESS leaves EVAN and CODY to their booth.

EVAN
I almost can’t put into words how excited I am, this is going to be great. My roast chicken is going to be here in any second!

Pan up to the clock at the wall. Ten seconds pass in real time, but the third hand moves only once. Coming back to EVAN in the booth.

EVAN
(dragging his fingers across his face)
It’s taking foreeeeeeeeeeeeeever!

CODY
(leaning in, under his breath)
You’re getting shrill; people are watching.

Zooming out, the entire diner is empty except for a LARGER, OLDER MAN
sitting in the corner. He doesn’t look up from behind his newspaper. When we come back to the booth the WAITRESS has returned. She places two burgers in front of them and leaves.

EVAN
(staring down, deadpan)
What is this.

CODY
(reaching forward)
Hey, c’mon-

CODY places a hand on EVAN’s shoulder, but his acquaintance/peer/friend doesn’t react. They stay like this for fifteen seconds.

CODY
(leaning back in his seat, both hands above his own plate)
Let’s not make a big deal out of it, okay? Seriously, I wonder how other people in this diner feel about our behaviour sometimes.

The LARGER, OLDER MAN is slumped down behind his newspaper. He might be dead, there’s honestly no way of telling. Back at the booth CODY picks up his burger and takes a bite. His brow furrows, then he grins widely, which is pretty gross because we can sort of see the food in his mouth.

CODY
(leaning towards EVAN, who hasn’t moved)
Hey, buddy, how about you try your food?

EVAN
(under his breath)
Don’t wanna.

CODY
(as if talking to a child)
C’mon, just take a little taste. I think you’ll be supriiiiised.

EVAN
(picks up the hamburger resignedly and takes a halfhearted bite, then pauses mid-chew)
What.

EVAN looks down at the sandwich in his hand, and we can see that the patty isn’t the familiar grey-brown of beef, but pale chicken. He chews slowly, not saying a word.

EVAN
This. Is. Ridiculous.

CODY
(genuinely shocked)
What?

EVAN
(getting louder)
A chicken burger? A chicken burger?

CODY
(matching his volume, and glancing quickly over at the very prone LARGER, OLDER MAN)
It’s what you wanted!

EVAN
(louder still)
No, what I wanted was the roasted chicken. That’s all I ever wanted!

CODY
(trying to bring his voice down)
Come on! Isn’t this close enough? Can’t you just be happy for what you’ve been given?

EVAN
(accusingly)
How can you even say that? You’ve always gotten exactly what you asked for! Today’s the one day you got something else, and it’s still basically the same thing!

EVAN stands and points at the WAITRESS, who is leaning by the window into the kitchen.

EVAN
(suddenly)
YOU! You did this! You’ve been behind this all along!

Without even really looking up the WAITRESS utters her first words.

WAITRESS
(nonchalantly)
Security.

The LARGER, OLDER MAN sets down the newspaper and reveals that he is actually a LARGER, ONLY SLIGHTLY OLDER MAN. He marches over to EVAN and effortlessly restrains both of his arms with a single hand. With the other he slips a folded paper bag out of his pocket, shakes it open, and slides the contents of EVAN’s plate into it. As he is being marched out EVAN howls in the WAITRESS’s direction. CODY remains in the booth, speechless.

EXT. YOUR STEREOTYPICAL AMERICANA-STYLE DINER PARKING LOT - LATE AFTERNOON

EVAN sits on the curb, breathing heavily. After a moment he grabs the paper bag sitting beside him and takes out the chicken burger. He lets out a long and tired sigh and bites into it.

INT. YOUR STEREOTYPICAL AMERICANA-STYLE DINER – LATE AFTERNOON

The LARGER, ONLY SLIGHTLY OLDER MAN approaches the WAITRESS, who hasn’t moved from her spot.

LARGER, ONLY SLIGHTLY OLDER MAN
(making a cap-doffing motion)
Sorry about all that, Holly.

WAITRESS
I told you, Ms. Wood is fine.

END SCENE

As you may or may not know, today marks the North American release of Big Hero 6, an animated movie from both Marvel and Disney. You would think that I could not be more excited about this, and you would be so very, very wrong. If anything, the primary emotion I’m feeling is disappointment.

In the comics Big Hero 6 is the name of a Japanese supergroup comprised of, you guessed it, Japanese people. To reiterate, the source material starred both Asian men and women engaging in bombastic crimefighting in an Asian country. When I found out that in May of this year that the film would not be set in Tokyo, Japan, but instead “San Fransokyo” a ridiculous-sounding portmanteau of, well, I think you get it, I immediately grew wary, but bit my tongue.

The question that immediately filled my mind was why this change was needed. Was Japan really so foreign a place that we needed to mash it together with the United States in order for it to be relatable? Still, I continued biting my tongue, because as far as I could tell Hiro Hamada would still be the main character and an Asian lead in anything is a rarity, to say the least. Then I saw pictures of the cast-

Now save for Hiro and the girl on his right, GoGo Tomago, this doesn’t look like a group of Japanese people. Even still I tried to be reasonable- after all, having the character of Wasabi be African-American [and voiced by Damon Wayans Jr.] would help another minority in seeing themselves portrayed on screen. So I bit my tongue, now very sore, again. Not too long after that I saw the trailer-

At around 1 minute and 56 seconds in we see a character that I assumed was Hiro’s mother, but turns out to be his aunt. Not that this difference matters at all, because as USA Today confirms Hiro Hamada is “half-Japanese, half-Caucasian”. Which means that the creators of Big Hero 6 weren’t content to just change Tokyo to San Fransokyo, they had to take the full-Japanese protagonist they had and, I don’t know, make him more relatable.

I say that because I can’t think of any reason why this would be necessary. They already decided to change the setting and  transform the homogenous team into a more multi-ethnic one and it still wasn’t enough. No, we needed to make the kid half-White, because far be it from filmmakers in the United States to release something that the “majority” of the filmgoing population can’t connect with.

All I’ve ever wanted for years and years now is a superhero movie with an Asian lead, and thus far I’ve had to be content with Jim Morita in Captain America: The First Avenger or Hogun in the Thor franchise. When Big Hero 6 was first announced I became genuinely excited, because there’s no way they could change things that much, right?

No, this isn’t even close to the same situation as Exodus: Gods and Kings, which made some pretty heinously racist casting choices and that you should not see, but it is soul-crushing nonetheless. This was an opportunity to show a side of the world that we don’t often see on the big screen, but instead they decided to mash it up with what’s already familiar for the sake of palatability. This is from the same studio which brought us movies like Mulan and Lilo & Stitch, the latter of which is set in America and has no Caucasian leading characters.

You ****in’ up, Disney

And for all the people who want to point out that this is more diverse, over on tumblr shoorm put together a fantastic powerpoint, this slide of which addresses your defence of their choices:

If anything, they opted for the “safest” choice possible.

The powerpoint even mentions that one of the characters who was made White was originally Ainu, an “indigenous ethnic group in Japan [. . . that] face oppression and are extremely underpresented in media.” They tried to diversify the cast and took the spotlight away from people who will, in all likelihood, never have the opportunity to receive it in a blockbuster movie again.

At the very, very best the decisions made in this film are condescending to non-Asian and non-Japanese audiences, as it assumes that they would not be able to full enjoy a movie that doesn’t represent them.

Look, again, this isn’t an Exodus: Gods and Kings situation. I’m not telling you to boycott this movie, and in all likelihood I’m going to watch it myself [because a half-Asian lead is better than no Asian lead]. What I’m trying to tell you is that while this may be good, it isn’t what I ordered. I’m still waiting to get what I want, and it’s hard for me to understand why Hollywood won’t give it to me.

.
I’ve gotta admit, I’m sincerely impressed by just how much happens in this episode. Max and Caroline actually have two separate plots, and while one appears to exist for the sole reason of having Beth Behrs show off her legs [which are admittedly pretty great] while giving birth to a fish baby, the other appears to be propelling this season forward to actually introducing Max’s mother.

The Season 3 finale was a pretty big disappointment to me in that they built up to finally showing a character referenced in pretty much every other episode, only to have it be a total fake out that fell back on this whole “diner family” we’re supposed to love. In this episode, however, we return to Max’s earlier days with a Teddy Ruxpin doll named T-Rux, which now that I type it out realize might be a reference to the dinosaur and not some sort of gangster moniker. Having received it in the mail from her mother Max’s immediate reaction is to send it right back. This helps her to very easily fall back into waxing poetic about her horrific upbringing, but it’s not until a snobby little gay boy [and over half of this review could be dedicated to his character, I swear] wants to buy her stuffed animal that the real feelings come out.

Look, it’s a trope we’ve all seen a million times before. Person is going to sell item of sentimental value for a lot of money, then realizes how much it means to them and doesn’t. In this case Max still doesn’t surrender T-Rux, but her primary motivation appears to be Elliott [really, more on him in a bit] not being grateful for his mother who waits on him hand and foot. He actually outright says to her that “everyone has a mother,” when as far as she’s concerned all she had growing up was this bear. While she may make light of how she was raised the truth seems to be a good amount bleaker, and she’s not about to give the toy up to a kid who has never faced any hardship in his life [and owns a My Size Barbie].

Really quickly, I’m not sure where the whole “young child is flamboyantly gay” thing came from, or why it’s funny, but I’m not really a fan of it. Brian Falduto as “Billy ‘Fancy Pants’” in School of Rock is probably the best example in recent memory, and thinking back I can’t remember if I even found it amusing. Things definitely go a lot further with Elliott, with Max saying that he’s been out since he was out [of the womb] and calling him “baby Anderson Cooper”, which I find particularly bizarre since the journalist doesn’t act particularly flamboyant at all. Consider me very put off by her also telling him that “[he'll] have a bear in [his] life.” Orientation aside, he’s still a 9-year-old child, I mean, come on. All in all there’s a lot more to be said about our perspectives on children and sexual orientation and while I’m not going to get into it now it’s something we should all be thinking about.

Elsewhere Han brings his fishtank to the diner, though really it’s really Chekhov’s, because we all know that the second someone brings a beloved aquatic creature onscreen it will die. Caroline murders it, they buy a new one, and then she gives drops it from underneath her skirt, as I mentioned above when commenting about her legs. The only reason I give it a pass is because it is an additional plot, which is a true rarity, and it gives Han some great material that Matthew Moy delivers masterfully.

Lastly, and least importantly to yours truly, Sophie and Oleg and breaking up with their multitude of respective lovers. It’s not even a great source of humour for the most part, though it does serve to show us how serious the two plan on being with one another. As far as continuity is concerned there is literally no sign or word of Sebastian, and I have no idea of Jesse Metcalfe is ever showing up again to reprise the role. Has the DJ face truly disappeared for good?

Current Total: $2,300.

New Total: $2,285. This is one of those weeks where I really can’t be bothered to figure out this amount. Max and Caroline somehow bought a new fish, but there was talk about giving Oleg a massage to get it, and it was never clear on whether he paid or not prior to receiving the services [which he didn't]. If anyone wants to help me out here, by all means, but I can’t account for the $15 lost.

The Title Refers To: Max’s childhood, or complete lack thereof. Ties into batteries, which T-Rux didn’t come with.

Stray Observations:

• A cheap prostitute named “Hoba” is apparently what keeps Earl looking so young. Weakest cold open in a long time, honestly.
• “I remember a time before mail. You just didn’t get stuff.”
• “I’ve got an aunt who drinks like a fish, maybe she’s in there. Oh no, she’s in jail for vehicular manslaughter.”
• “Please enjoy my ecosystem of love. DON’T TAP ON THE GLASS!“
• Oleg on the Ukrainian word for “monogamy”: “There isn’t one, you’re either ugly or you’re sleeping with everyone.”
• Beth Behrs and her physical comedy are a treasure-

  “You had four C batteries in your nightstand? From what?”

• “I just dumped a guy with multiple personalities, and he took it okay, and not great, and pretty bad.”
• Max’s mom bit their dog.
• I was going to include some lines about [not from] Elliott here, but that whole thing actually does make me pretty uncomfortable.
• “Han, you’re kind of a baller around your fish.”
• “Frozen? Who am I, me, a year ago?”
• “Can it wait? I want to put in a new condo so Max will stop calling me a slumlord.”
• “Over the clothes, above the waist, and I don’t know why but you have to wear a condom.”
• I am tired of Caroline bemoaning how low she’s fallen every episode. We get it, you were once rich and now you are poor.
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: I thought they were going somewhere with the fish caught in Caroline’s bra, but Max didn’t reach in. Nothing here.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline’s legs up on that counter. That is all.

I’m not going to lie to you [and honestly, I don't think I never have in these reviews], but this episode was as shaky as Max’s first attempts to ride a bike for the first time ever. Luckily for you, and for me, if I’m being honest, I can see the silver thread of yarn in every horrific knitted street art installation. With those very appropriate references aside I actually think this marks a positive turn towards giving the secondary cast a little more of the spotlight.

Max and Caroline’s plot revolves around the latter trying to teach the former how to ride a bike, and like I said in the first sentence it is rough. Running with the idea that deliveries will help them add an additional surcharge to their $5 cupcakes [already pretty steep, if you ask me], Ms. Channing steals a bike from out front and puts her plan in action. It’s when she realizes that she is sweating-enough-to-smell-like-Greek-food-out-of-shape that she realizes she needs to instruct Max in an important life skill. Regardless of how I chose to describe it, it’s far from riveting stuff.

Running parallel to all of this is Oleg’s struggle with erectile dysfunction, which led to a few euphemisms I actually hadn’t heard before and managed to keep my attention. While his and Sophie’s relationship has taken more of centre stage in earlier seasons having it actually be about an actual problem [however you want to describe a situation involving the fry cook's penis] really helped it stand out. Along with all of that Matthew Moy gets to really ham it up as his character
takes a little too much joy in lording it over his employees. Earl has a decent line, but it’s really Han’s time to shine this week.

The difficulty that the writers’ room faces with each and every episode [and I've probably mentioned this before] is trying to give the rest of the diner gang stories of their own while still keeping Max and Caroline as the focus. Really, any sort of plot that involves Han or Earl or Sophie or Oleg must be viewed by either one. As far as I can recall there are no scenes that involve any of these characters without at least one member of the titular duo, and it’s severely limiting. Having Oleg’s new catchphrase be “it’s over my head” in response to euphemisms for not being able to get it up is immensely entertaining, but just imagine how much better it would be if he said it to more than just Caroline-

To actually break down what happened with the bike, and really there wasn’t much there, it would probably be good to spend a few words on Max’s hesitancy to tame the dreaded bicycle. While she certainly faults her mother when it comes to her not knowing how to ride one, we actually veer away from last week’s subject matter and get to hear a story about a kid who can now french kiss through his cheek [legitimately surprised they didn't make that joke]. It’s a fairly grisly throwaway tale, but it helps build on the fact that Max did do things as a child that didn’t involve her hanging out with a prostitute named Tiny Marge.

Lastly, add serial yarn-bomber/street artist Guinevere to our list of kooky characters. Between you and me, I think that anyone who can do this is actually pretty cool:

Current Total: $2,285.

New Total: $2,735. I guess those delivery fees really paid off.

The Title Refers To: If there’s some kind of play on words here I’ve totally missed it. My assumption is that the “bike yarn” is Max’s story about Tommy Doonan.

Stray Observations:

• whoreoscope [hawr-uh-skohp] noun : a newspaper feature where you can find out if you’ll still be a whore in the future.
• Han Wins #1: “I’ll tell you what’s in your future: using my name as a reference at Chipotle!”
• “You think i picked up a paper that said you will be a 75-year-old cashier?”
• Business affirmations are important, like: “Please, God, don’t let us get pistol-whipped in here.”
• yarn bombing [yahrn bahm-ing] noun : whimsical, new, stupid.
• “I am beautifying the city one living glorious work of art at a time!”
• “You like delivs? It’s an abbrev I made up for deliveries. You like abbrev? It’s an abb I made up for abbreviation.”
• “Intimacy is so hard for some guys it’s not hard for some guys.”
• “Good luck getting your penne all dente.”
• Caroline’s Bike Horror Movie Titles: Bike of the Living Dead, Texas Bike Chain Massacre
• Han Wins #2: “Hi, Max! I’m just riding my bike to the bike store to buy more bikes!”
• “Were you able to do the thing, you know, the man does while the woman makes shopping lists in her head?”
• Han Wins #3: “If anyone needs me I’ll be outside riding my bike, with an erection!“
• “Oh hell no, she yarn-bombed our darn barn!”
• Maybe It’s Maxoline and 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: not much for either of these features this week. Sorry.

Consider the placard in the image above to be fairly representative of my views of this episode: things are looking up for 2 Broke Girls. No, this episode didn’t feature Han gloating over his ability to both ride a bicycle and maintain an erection [no easy feat], but it did bring the focus of the show back to what it ostensibly should be. That’s right, we’re finally back to watching Max and Caroline try their darndest to make some money.

That’s always been one of my favourite things about the show, because, well, the struggle is real. Now granted, I say that as someone who had free room and board at his grandfather’s while he spent months unemployed, but I bought gluten-free pasta recently because it was on sale for cheap and that stuff is not good. My personal financial state aside, the journey of two young women doing their best is a compelling one, plain and simple.

Now you’d think that upon discovering that she’d been shanghaied into attending a seminar called “Business Bump” Max would-

-leave forever, never to return-

- right after making a joke about teen pregnancy, and you’d be half right.

After sneaking back into the seminar [the logic of which confounds me, and which I’ll try not to get into] the two girls sit before Gordon Something-or-other, a business guru who believes that truth is what it’s all about. After people buy what you’re saying they will buy what you’re selling. “Don’t do what you can, can what you do! Do you get it? Do you get it?”

It’s the sort of motivational mumbo jumbo that we’ve all been conditioned to mentally bristle at and thankfully, for the sake of the show, it leads to some conflict with Max and Caroline. Their partnership is sailing in two different directions, and as it turns out they have very different ideas for what the business model of Max’s Homemade Cupcakes should really be. Honestly, this should be no surprise whatsoever to anyone who has watched more than a few episodes, but it really comes out here in full force with the two parting ways and doing their own separate Brilliant Business Brand presentations. The surprising thing is, Max’s idea is so much better. It’s fuelled by the unadulterated sass that runs through her veins and involves cupcakes that say things like “Eat it!” and “Lick me!” and if there exists a restaurant that people go to because the wait staff is purposefully rude to customers then trust me there is an audience for it-

What I love about the episode is that it doesn’t serve as a big I-told-you-so to Ms. Caroline “I went to Wharton” Channing. Yes, Max’s business idea trumps her artisanal cupcakes as far as creativity, but Max is also really, really terrible. At so many things. Her idea for marketing their business with t-shirts that have a big ol’ cupcake on the front is bad, and she takes creativity by doing what she does best: yelling at the critics.

The episode ends with them acknowledging how much they mean to each other, which is pretty par for the course, and Caroline even donning a shirt of Max’s design. Unfortunately it also concludes without them having made any conscious decisions about how to turn business around, which needs to happen if Caroline really is eating six cupcakes a night to make it look as if they’ve sold any [also because she’s sad]. It’s fantastic that we’re back to focusing on their business which the first season, and then the second, culminated to. I fully realize that if they end up succeeding the name goes out the window, but honestly, if Jessica Day can still be the “new” girl after three seasons I think Max and Caroline will be fine.

Other things happened with Sophie and Oleg, but not much.

Current Total: $2,735.

New Total: $1,695. I remember Caroline saying that the seminar was a grand, but assumed that was per person. Even if it was for the of them that still leaves a full $40 unaccounted for.

The Title Refers To: They go to a seminar about branding, I guess. There’s not really any play on words here as far as I can tell.

Stray Observations [I had almost only nice things to say above so trust me I am way more critical below]:

• the kooky customers in the cold open are dressed like they’re from the 20s, seemingly for the sole reason of allowing Max to call the man “Not-So-Great Gatsby.”
• “I know, we’re like Oceans 7-11.” I kinda liked the whole wine-swap thing, even if I don’t get why anyone would bring wine to a diner.
• “You are not hooking me up with that guy who is listed in your phone as ‘Oral Redenbacher.'”
• “Leave early, who are we, Congress?” Pretty high-brow joke for a woman who doesn’t know where laws are made.
• “Y’know, matching tattoos are the deepest expression of commitment.”
• “This is not an intervention! Max, your behaviour has affected me in the following ways…”
• “Max, stay alert this could go to cult like that *snaps fingers*.”
• Right after Gordon talks about his Truth Balls™ Kat Dennings makes the most amazing facial expressions. Then she makes an offhand comment about getting meatballs and I wanted to shake the writers and then rub their backs and assure them that sometimes silence is okay.
• “Remember, you can’t spell purpose without-” Without what, Gordon, finish your sentence.
• “Oh hello, welcome to the Williamsburg Diner. Can I get you anything, like a work ethic?”
• “And Pam, I know you think your ship don’t sink, but it does.”
• I’m With The Band, a company that creates guitar case suitcases, is actually a pretty decent concept.
• The sound of those koosh balls hitting Max and Caroline was very soothing. I was also very impressed that it went uninterrupted for five seconds or more.
• “I thought you’d rather have a black one.” / “On Tinder and in life.” Back it up, then, writers’ room.
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Directly referring to Max and Caroline’s partnership was pretty direct, but not really juicy enough for this feature.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline’s arms in that sleeveless tee right at the end? Not much to see here, either.

So, as I said I probably would, I did end up seeing Big Hero 6 this past Tuesday. While I ended up enjoying it a fair amount the problem, if I can call it that and which the post I just linked to addresses, was in the back of my head the entire time. To reiterate it here, the idea that both a city and almost the entire cast of superhero team had to be altered to make it more relatable, presumably to a Western [read: American] audience.

As mentioned I did like it, but during and after the film I was struck by the fact that a balance, if that’s what the creators were truly going for, was never really attained. To start with, San Fransokyo.

Based off of the name one would assume that this would be equal parts American and Japanese city, a blend that encapsulated the best of both worlds. The actual design approach is laid bare when considering the words co-director Don Hall used when describing the setting [emphasis added]:

“an alternate version of San Francisco.“

“I love the Painted ladies. We gave them a Japanese makeover; we put a cafe on the bottom of one. They live above a coffee shop.”

“Where Hiro lives, it feels like the Haight. When you get to the downtown area, that’s when you get the most Tokyo-fied, that pure, layered, dense kind of feeling of the commercial district there. When you get out of there, it becomes more San Francisco with the Japanese aesthetic.”

To put this in more musical terms, this isn’t so much a mashup as it is a remix. The former is a blend of two or more parts with both being displayed prominently, the latter is a modified version of something, the original of which is typically easily identifiable.

While I will admit that there were portions of the film that were set in a decidedly more Japanese-influenced environment, they’re never areas that allow the audience to linger. The city at its most Tokyo-like is depicted either during a fast-paced nighttime chase scene or equally speedy downtown flybys. Contrast that with the protagonist’s home, clearly based on, as Hall said, houses in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Fransisco [this was the best image I could find, I know there’s a streetcar in front of it]-

The interior further reaffirms the fact that while there’s clearly the influence of a Japanese aesthetic, the foundation is decidedly American. Seeing how a setting typically determines the cast of characters I suppose it’s no wonder that the city of San Fransokyo would yield exactly two Japanese characters [0.5 from both Hiro and Tadashi Hamada and 1 from GoGo Tomago]. What should really be scrutinized, however, is how there could have been a grand total of three.

In that post I wrote almost a month ago [and which you should read if you haven’t yet] I mentioned the character of Aunt Cass, the existence of whom changes Hiro and Tadashi into half-Japanese half-Caucasian siblings. Here she is again, as she appears in Big Hero 6:

Now here she is again, as she appears in the closing credits of the film:

I understand that the image might be a little small, so let me blow up some concept art so that we can all get a better look at it:

This underscores my original point about as clearly as it can, because here is a clearly Asian woman whose ethnicity was arbitrarily changed because, well . . . can you imagine if the movie had four full-blooded Japanese characters? Why, that would mean that roughly half the cast would be Asian, which would match up with the intended design of the setting and we can’t have that-

Click on the image to open up a larger version in a new tab.

When considering all of the above characters, excluding Baymax [a robot] and Yokai [a villain whose identity I will not spoil] that’s eight altogether. It’s nine if we want to include shady industrialist Alistair Krei, who would have added yet another Caucasian face to the cast. What’s incredible is that even when considering background characters things don’t exactly add up-

The film begins in a back alley that contains predominantly Japanese characters, but once we leave that setting they’re not only never the majority, they don’t even make up half of most group shots. I’m willing to admit that I could be way off base considering I’ve only seen it once, but at the very least almost every one of the minor speaking roles I can remember were given to White characters. What I remember very clearly is that in the wake of the film’s climactic moment every one of the police officers was Caucasian, which is mildly troubling in light of recent events.

Now I know that roughly 800 words in is a little late to introduce and elaborate on the title of this post and that it sounds like a bad episode of The Big Bang Theory [ie. most of them, though there are a few gems every season], but let me do so now. The 50/50 Fallacy is the existence of a world that promises equal opportunities for characters from both America and a predominantly non-White country and delivers on  them poorly or not at all. Until the existence of Big Hero 6 there was one other work of fiction that upheld this trope, and it did so masterfully.

xkcd by Randall Munroe. Please click the image for a link to the full comic strip.

I love Firefly almost as much as the next person, and the reason I say “almost” is because Joss Whedon crafted the origins to a world and then did the bare minimum to make it believable. As a little bit of context, here’s a snippet of the memo that prefaces the Serenity visual companion, helpfully titled “A Brief History of the Universe, circa 2507 A. D.” [emphasis once again added by yours truly]:

“On Earth-That-Was, the two ruling powers were once known as America and China. Though their empires remained separate, the two powers worked together throughout the colonization process, their cultures – as so many had – melding at many levels. Londinium, called so after the Roman name for England’s capital (a country long before annexed by America in a somewhat ironic reversal), represented what was once the American Empire. Sinon (‘SEE-non,’ a bastardization of Sino, our word for ‘Chinese’) was the new China, basically. These two powers, still working in harmony, grew at once into the most populous and advanced civilizations in the new galaxy.“

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that- future Earth is equal parts America and China. I suppose it makes perfect sense then that the cast, in spite of peppering their dialogue with Mandarin profanities, looks like this:

It only gets more disturbing when you consider that siblings Simon and River Tam appear to have been initially planned as being Chinese based on their surname, and that when it came to Kaylee the costume designer “studied up on Japanese and Chinese youth, as originally the character was Asian.” As with Big Hero 6 speaking roles for Asian characters are almost entirely absent, though the aesthetic does appear in certain episodes and certainly does in Serenity, the film meant to act as a second season to the show. I would elaborate on this even further, but Mike Le over at Racebending.com already did so much more thoroughly than I ever could in a piece titled “Frustrations of an Asian American Whedonite”.

Over 1,200 words in and the question should no longer be if the 50/50 Fallacy exists, but rather why it does. It’s not hard to fall to the most pessimistic explanation, which is that this is all lip service for the purpose of set dressing. Big Hero 6 producer Roy Conli mentioned that “to do a pure San Francisco or a pure Tokyo, just didn’t seem as enchanting as doing a mash up”. A few paragraphs prior the writer of the article explains that “the decision to divert from the comic’s location of strictly Tokyo stems partly from the fact that the Big Hero 6 movie doesn’t pull from the comic at all, other than the title and names of characters,” so why bother incorporating the the Japanese city at all? For the mere sake of enchantment?

While in Big Hero 6 their decision to create a Japanese/American city appears to fall firmly on the side of pure aesthetics, it’s apparent that decision to create a similar world for Firefly is firmly based in storytelling. It makes sense to have two world powers being the first to leave Earth, and for their respective cultures to meld as the light years and decades passed. The premise is both compelling and logical, so why then wasn’t there a conscious effort made to present, at the very least in secondary character, the existence of Chinese people? How is it that Whedon created a space western set in a futuristic Sino-American universe with less Asians than a western set in the 19th century?

I wish that all films and television shows had more representation, be it racial or sexual or otherwise. That doesn’t mean that every one needs to be split down the middle, or even less if we want to follow the Harvey-Renee Index [if you don’t know what it is read up on it, it’s great]. I don’t think I go too far by saying, however, that creators need to live up to the unspoken promises made in their worldbuilding. You would never have a sitcom in which Pakistan and South Korea co-colonize Mars [hey, a guy can dream] in which the entire cast is from south and not east Asia. It’s only expected that if Cairo and Hamburg somehow found themselves melded together then roughly half of people on the street would be of German descent.

The fact that the 50/50 Fallacy is a thing speaks to the halfheartedness of creators and creatives who are not doing enough to follow through with their ideas. By no means am I saying that they should stop creating these places that have the possibility of fostering diversity, I’m saying they should be populating [and, this is my subjective opinion, designing] them accordingly.

The last “big” guest star I can remember 2 Broke Girls featuring was Grammy-nominated rapper 2 Chainz in what was hands-down the worst episode of the show I can remember reviewing. Similar to that last instance network synergy is what brings the Victoria’s Secret Angels to the sitcom, with The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show airing tomorrow night on CBS. The creative push behind this particular twenty-some minutes of television finds its source not in the writers’ room but in a boardroom, and the results are far from stellar.

Remember when I wrote a single review about the pilot episode of MTV’s Underemployed? That was a show entirely about young attractive men and women who were just barely making it through life [note the title of the show] while at least 1/3 of the cast lived in one of the biggest, nicest apartments I have ever seen. That lines up pretty well with Max and Caroline of 2 Broke Girls
constantly making note of how tragically poor they are while residing in an enormous apartment that has, revealed in this episode, a literal barn attached to it complete with sunroof.

WHAT IS THIS WHAT IS GOING ON.

I remember how in the pilot episode Max explained that she didn’t pay rent because the previous tenant died yet continues to pay for it with his pension cheques or something along those lines but are you kidding me? My suspension of belief already took a beating when they decided to keep the horse, but now to find out that they have an entire barn? Is that why they’re so poor? Otherwise, honestly, it makes no sense since they both work two jobs and none of what they make goes towards rent.Hoo boy. Sorry about that. It’s made all the harder when Caroline’s latest scheme to make some extra dough [the sort of plot I am usually all about] is to rent their place out on Airbnb, an idea which kicks off numerous characters telling them how much of a dump it is. Now look, my room is somewhat akin to a dump, and that’s only because I have a bunch of unpacked bags in the corner and a bookshelf that I bought weeks ago and still haven’t assembled, and even then it’s not particularly dirty. Max and Caroline’s apartment is both neat and well-decorated. Their kitchen in particular looks exceptionally great.

The actual plot, which involves them renting their place out to Victoria’s Secret models. That last period was a comma for a little while, but I realized there wasn’t much more to it than that. Well, they also befriend the models and there’s a party that very quickly goes south, but that’s not very well-developed. They also stop Oleg from cheating on Sophie, but only sort of, because no one anywhere thinks he could have done much more than spy on them with night vision goggles, which reminds me that this episode had some terrible writing.

In the last review I wrote about how the writers needed to get into the idea of “less is more” in response to Kat Dennings following up a fairly impressive show of facial physical comedy with a direct line about balls. Well, this week showcases yet another example, this one being a decent enough joke in its own right that has an unnecessary three-word sentence stapled onto the end:

• “That was some shower head. I’d marry it but it’s already attached. To the wall.“

Elsewhere in the episode Oleg is caught spying on the Victoria’s Secret supermodel party using night vision goggles. His response to those who have uncovered his despicable deed?

• “Turn that light off, I’m watching the Victoria’s Secret supermodel party with my night vision goggles.”

As one last instance of comedy writing that is far below my personal standard, one of the girls wonders aloud which of the two Jims owns the apartment where Sophie is hiding from Oleg. The Jim in questions flamboyantly struts out, makes a joke about her purse, and heads back inside. Max and Caroline grin, turn to each other, and say in unison:

• “Gay Jim’s.”

Lastly, this episode puts the most racist joke the show has made in a very long time in the mouth of a non-White character. Earl mishears “Airbnb” and responds with:

• “You’re renting to Arabs? Well good luck getting it back. they tend to be a tad territorial.”

It’s a lot, is what I’m saying. It’s a lot to deal with, and I haven’t even covered how the Victoria’s Secret models literally strut around in their lingerie with angel wings strapped to their backs at one point. When Caroline points this out it’s not even to comment on how ridiculous it is, but instead that it’s a vastly superior response to a rise in temperature compared to what her and Max do [which is slump lazily on the couch like normal human beings].

The creation of this episode was more or less brought about by an edict from the network heads and the writers did what they could, but honestly it was far from enough. Not only did viewers have their suspension of disbelief stretched farther than it ever should have, they were also bombarded with a lot of heinously lazy writing. At its best 2 Broke Girls is about the unlikely friendship between two very dissimilar women trying to just get by. At its worst 2 Broke Girls is “And the Model Apartment”.

Current Total: $1,695.

New Total: $3,195. In spite of Caroline’s insistence not to let them pay, Lily Aldridge gives her a cheque that I’m going to assume was for $1,500. Split five ways between the models for two nights, that’s only $150 per person per night, which is still pretty steep.

The Title Refers To: Models stayed in their apartment. The end.

Stray Observations:

• Caroline is a born marketer, as she described their place as being: “a Brooklyn bohemian barn apartment with a live-in horse.”
• Again, their apartment is actually great.
• “Aw shoot, now I’m gay.”
• Martha Hunt is a way worse actor than Lily Aldridge. I can’t for the life of me be bothered to remember the names of the other models, which hardly matters since they had no lines.
• I found it weird that they were drinking beers while frolicking around in their unmentionables since I would think the extra carbs would be a strict no-no. They should be going hard bar, am I right?
• Han jabs back! “No, I was on a call with Ripley’s Believe It Or Not to inform them that you still work here. and they didn’t believe it!”
• “I found plugs but I don’t think they’re for your ears.”
• “And Caroline, since you don’t really need to wear a bra, here. This apartment may be hell, but you are a real angel.”
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Upon seeing the models at the door Max proclaims she’s gay now. Not that it has anything to do with Caroline, but still.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: . . . fine, since you’ve been waiting for it-

This is not a great start.

Look, this is my first post of 2015, but even that can’t offset the fact that before this I saw the 13th, and last, episode of Selfie, a show that never even got a proper season finale while this show staggers forward into the second half of its fourth season. That already had me primed to be somewhat less than gracious, but then we have the following happen in the first five minutes:

• the diminutive Asian diner owner referred to as “Han Jobs”
• the implication that he knows more about gadgets than Caroline because “formerly rich doesn’t beat currently Asian”
• his immediate defence of the Australian woman he’s flirting with online, saying “she’s part Aboriginal but has a great personality!”

So allow me to say, right now, eff absolutely everything about this show. This is some straight-up racist garbage and it physically pained me to have to listen to these lines. They made me want to visit the writers’ room with a sock full of so many quarters people would think I was about to spend two weeks at the arcade.

That being said, I am a consummate professional and managed to press on. See, once you can look past the absolutely disgusting racist humour they insist on broadcasting across North America from week to week there are a few redeeming factors that carried me through [that and the fact that there are people who actually happen to read these reviews].

For one thing, 2 Broke Girls actually appears to be building some momentum, with their business loan carrying over from the mid-season finale last month. As explained in that last review, the $10K was specifically for the production of t-shirts, not anything to do with their actual business of making cupcakes. It seems like a weird swerve, but at least now Max and Caroline are headed in an actual direction.

That’s not all the narrative has in store, either, as it’s not just any factory they turn to for their shirts. American Ace, for all intents and purposes, is the apparel carbon copy of the New Belgium Brewing Co. Lauded two years ago by Gordon, this company is not only 100% employee owned, it also treats said employees extraordinarily well. That’s all very much in line with American Ace, where “every employee gets a percentage of the company after 6 months” and “the longer you stay the more it grows.” This isn’t a terribly familiar concept hereabouts, and it’s actually great to see this model of business portrayed, even if it’s on a sitcom such as this one.

What’s more, Max’s cynicism [sensibly built up in this case due to working at several factories when she was younger] is undone here by the reveal that Ace Hardwick and his company are the real deal. The “Help Us” card she and Caroline find in their box of shirts flips over to complete the sentence: “Help You To Your Full Potential At American Ace!” The show doesn’t even make any jokes at what could easily be perceived as a “hippy dippy” way of making money, the only real one taking the form of the two Michelin-man-shaped guys who introduce themselves as “part-owner” followed by their actual duties [janitor and security guard, respectively].

That’s worth a good number of points, even if the cold open nearly reduced me to a bubbling puddle of frustration. It would also be good to mention that while both items directly have to do with where Max and Caroline [and consequently, the show] are headed, it’s not entirely clear where that is exactly. Characters are introduced [Ace Hardwick, the two pillowmen, two ladies they had a rivalry with] but none seem very lasting. Not only that, but there’s no indication of when the shirts will be sold or even how many were produced.

At the end of the night 2 Broke Girls nearly drives me away before pulling me back by spotlighting something that is actually good in the world. I’m still sticking with it, for better or for worse. The funny bits help too, for sure, and you can see some of those down below-

Current Total: $3,945.

New Total: $13,945. I actually have no idea why the $10K business loan only kicks in this episode. Also, shouldn’t it be significantly less since they presumably sent some to American Ace to make their shirts?

The Title Refers To: There’s a factory and it’s sort of fun? This particular one features two different carts, one with gelato and designer coffee and the other with prosciutto. Granted, this pokes a bit of fun at the model, but seems too absurd to really be taken seriously.

Stray Observations:

• Sophie’s B-plot has her creating a line of “vagina wigs” that results in a whole bunch more racist humour that I don’t even want to get into. Credit where it’s due, her “Everybody’s Merkin For the Weekend Collection” has a great name.
• The cover image up above is of the factory where Max expected “more torture, less Foosball.”
• Caroline just wants free [high quality] food.
• “You’re pretty much eating cardboard there you want me to get you another?”
• The noise she makes when being handed her prosciutto also raised this episode numerous levels.
• “Tortilla Flat, wasn’t that your stripper name?”
• The young Ms. Channing played Rizzo insteady of Sandy in her high school’s production of Grease because she let the girl with the limp have the role.
• “We know what you’re onto here!” / “What, profit-sharing and health care?”
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: To avoid a spat with two female workers Caroline blurts out that her and Max are lovers. They do not kiss to prove it, much to the disappointment of, I’m sure, some people out there. Here’s how Max reacted:

• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: You get to see Sophie’s merkin fall out from underneath her dress, which is really more gross than anything else.

Kris Anka on covers, I heartily approve. I have been a fan of that dude for years, and his presence on this title is not the only pleasant surprise for the issue. [Unpleasantly, this review is late as #10 dropped December 17th, but some of us have to take a vacation sometime]

To put things super bluntly, everything is coming to a head. In this case “head” means “epic showdown”, and I never use the word “epic” lightly, even when it’s tucked away in the definition of another word. Compared to the last issue, where I had to break up what happened into several different levels, what takes place here is relatively straightforward-

As I mentioned last time, Issue #8 kicked off a four-part arc titled “Generation Why”, and the reason for that is finally revealed. Young people have been allowing The Inventor to use them as living batteries for his machines because they’ve been convinced they’re slackers who are just coasting through life, something that Gordon actually touched on several years ago when he wrote “In Defense of This Generation”. To sum up his almost-two-thousand-word post, we get the short end of the stick, but it’s not like we’re to blame for the world we live in. Let’s just say that Kamala agrees with my co-writer exactly:

“We’re not the ones who messed up the economy or the planet. Maybe they do think of us as parasites, but they’re not the ones who are gonna have to live with this mess–“

At the core of this book is the idea that the young are, well, worth something. Ms. Marvel herself represents the potential in teenagers to be, and do, good, and like all great heroes she inspires others to likewise be great. Turning to her peers she asks them what talents they have and tells them where they could be in the future, which leads to my favourite lines:

Some Kid: “I’m good at doing the jobs nobody else wants because they’re dangerous and stupid!”

Kamala: “Future president.”

The climax of this issue has her rallying The Inventor’s former fuel sources against him [albeit having her makeshift army routed seconds later by yet another killbot].

Speaking of the villain, professional Batmanologist Chris Sims wrote a piece a long time ago about Spider-Man being the teenage hero, and how in his world adults are adversaries and not inspirations. The Inventor takes that to an entirely new level as he appears to embody [directly contrasting with Kamala] the dismissiveness of a generation that “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”:

“The young are seen as a political burden, a public nuisance. They are not considered worth educating or protecting. They are called parasites, leeches, brats, spawn– [. . .] We are simply taking this loathing to its logical conclusion.”

While we leave our heroine against insurmountable odds, given her nemesis’s meticulous preparation in facing her [and her teleporting canine companion], we all know how things will end with Issue #11. Kamala will triumph over The Inventor, not just because she’s an Inhuman superhero but because of what she symbolizes. She has size-shifting powers, sure, but she’s also smart and kind and creative and brave. She symbolizes all that youth can be, the kind of spirit that won’t ever back down. It may not be a surprise, but I’m looking forward to it all the same.

The Ms. Marvel Visual Gag You Shouldn’t Have Missed: Given the settings [a forest and The Inventor’s laboratory] pickings are kind of slim this time around. Still, we do have it revealed that the villain isn’t all bad. He does have the option to inject a little love into the creation of his murderous mechanical creations, if he so chooses-

Ms. Marvel #10
Written by G. Willow Wilson
Art by Adrian Alphona
Colours by Ian Herring
Letters by Joe Caramagna
Edited by Sana Amanat
Marvel Comics

My mom taught me how to read when I was 4-years-old, which WebMD, a reliable source if there ever was one, says is about two years younger than average. According to Iowa Tests [American standardized tests that I ended up taking at an American school] I was reading at a 12th Grade reading level when I was only ten. When I inevitably ended up majoring in both English and Writing at a Christian liberal arts college I was, to put it directly, horrifyingly average.

I write all of that not to share that I was some sort of prodigy [I wasn’t], but that I was good at reading because I loved it. The written word continues to be my favourite artistic medium, and my appreciation for the literary has not faded. Today I start what I hope to be an annual tradition, a review of what was read in the past year to acknowledge the standouts [for better and for worse]. These are the 2014 Evan Yeong Literary Awards.

In 2014 I resolved to read 52 books, and while I only ended up stopping just four short of my goal, I do believe it was an overall success. You can check out a full list [with the exact dates of when I read each one] at this link.

book i very nearly threw across the room upon finishing it

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Published 1911

Now granted, this is exactly how I can remember one of my college English professors describing their own experience reading this, but it couldn’t be more accurate. At 195 pages it’s very short for a full-length novel, but its explanation of how a man’s truly miserable existence came to be is, well . . . it’s very frustrating. A lesson for the titular character [and the reader] that some dreams should be deferred indefinitely, because the consequences of chasing after them can be truly disastrous.

best history of the origin of modern comic books

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Published 2000

We’re not going to go into [yet again] how much I adore the flawless combination of words and pictures, but instead how the history of that medium as we know it today is as convoluted and exciting as the stories it often tells. Chronicling the tale of cousins Josef “Joe” Kavalier and Sammy Clayman, artist and writer respectively, we’re brought to the very beginnings of the comic book industry, a business that progresses at a breakneck pace alongside the young men’s own lives. Readers familiar with the 1954 Senate hearings will be be aware of what awaits our protagonists, and those who aren’t will learn more than a little bit about the ever-evolving relationship between government and art.

most like another book read this year, but minus the faith in humanity

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Published 2008

Several months before I got to this book I read Q & A by Vikas Swarup, the source material for the film Slumdog Millionaire. Adiga’s debut novel covers very similar territory, surrounding an Indian boy who starts from the bottom and, through various colourful circumstances, makes his way to the very top. Again very much like Swarup’s story the extreme corruption in the second most populated country on Earth is a focal point, but in addition there is a focus on the inherent rage and bitterness that’s sure to result. In this way protagonist Balram Halwai truly differs from Jamal Malik/Ram Mohammad Thomas [of the film and novel, respectively] in that he is willing to do anything to alter his situation.

Novel that will never, ever be adapted as a film

The Summer Is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved by Joey Comeau
Published 2013

A revamping of his self-published novella Bible Camp Bloodbath Joey Comeau [best known for his webcomic A Softer World] delves into the sort of grisly, nonstop bloodshed that the best director couldn’t film [without being themselves slaughtered by the MPAA]. Violence against children is a touchy subject when used sparingly, which is not at all an adjective that applies to the writing of this novel. Each fatality is rendered lovingly, and with much more vividness than the maroon spatter on the front cover. While the heartfelt and humorous letter from a mother to her 11-year-old child are touching, they may not be nearly enough to get most people to start [or more importantly, finish] this book.

most unnerving anti-revenge story

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Published 2002

As you will see far down below I have made an effort to be more conscious about the authors I select, for the sole reason that there are a great many voices beyond those belonging to straight White men. That was never more apparent to me than when reading The Lovely Bones, in which a young girl is both raped and murdered, her soul observing life as it proceeds without her. I couldn’t help but think that given a male perspective so much more of the narrative would surround getting even with the one who had robbed the protagonist of their life, making them pay for what they did. Jarringly, at least for me, Susie Salmon instead chooses to concentrate on so many other things, on aspects of her life [or more accurately, its absence] that really matter.

scariest/funniest horror/comedy

John Dies at the End by David Wong
Published 2007

Jason Pargin is most well-known by his pen name David Wong, which is in turn now most well-known for a book that can be hilariously shortened to JDatE. Comically its success can be attributed to having two protagonists who are authentic teenagers [see: reckless, confused, irreverent], their distance from adulthood seemingly being what allows them to combat the otherworldly terrors that others would have difficulty wrapping their heads around. As far as horror goes, the narrative remains very aware that
readers are not particularly concerned about the safety of the main characters. It’s the secondary characters who are truly at risk, and by endearing them to us has us sitting at the edge of our seats when they’re dangled above one eldritch horror or another.

best argument to stop eating meat [or at least be more conscious about how you do it]

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
Published 2006

I know this isn’t news to the jaded [which is most of you, if the internet is any representation] but we’re doing things wrong. This extends to the food we grow, raise, and manufacture before buying it and putting into our mouths and stomachs. While never shying away from this fact, Pollan undercuts its potential preachiness by constantly asking if the alternative is as realistic as we would like it to be. By making his research a deeply personal journey [sending his own cow to a factory farm, hunting for his own mushrooms] we’re allowed a glimpse into how far-removed we are from our food, and how that doesn’t need to be the case. [Feel free to use the documentary Food Inc. as a sort of visual accompaniment]

worst book read, horror or otherwise – tie

Queer Fear edited by Michael Rowe
Published 2000

Lost Boy, Lost Girl by Peter Straub
Published 2003

I think it says a great deal about the genre that those who fail at it do so to the detriment of the entire narrative. A poor science fiction novel may still hold a compelling romantic story, but a horror novel that fails to be scary is unpleasant from beginning to end.

Credit where it is due, there is one very excellent short story in Rowe’s collection, that being Tabula Rasa by Robert Boyczuk. In it a group of gay men spend a weekend at a cabin, the added dimension being the number of past relationships between them. It’s the sort of tale that could only be told with homosexual characters, and its isolation and eeriness are palpable. Unfortunately the majority of the stories either overly rely on grotesque violence or, worse yet, are boring.

As far as Straub’s novel is concerned [and I touched on it very briefly here], not only is the plot nonsensical but it is also not even remotely frightening. The extremely unsatisfying conclusion involves a friend being whisked away by a ghost who is very good at sex, a rough contrast to the feeling of dread the author attempted to permeate the front half of the book with.

reading experience that will force you to repeat the first line of “Bohemian rhapsody”

Paprika by Yasutaka Tsuitsui
Published 1993

It’s strangely fitting that the best image for the cover of this novel I could find was this animated gif, because it imitates how the characters pop back and forth out of the dream world and the real one. As they are unsure of whether or not they are awake or asleep, readers may find themselves looking up from the pages and blinking rapidly, trying to ascertain the same for themselves. Tsuitsui knows that the visions we see when we are asleep are both hazy and vivid at the same time, and he recreated it perfectly in what is more often than not a very uncomfortable novel.

on that “The SIXTH SENSE” level, reveal-wise

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Published 2014

It’s difficult to really discuss this book without spoiling some truly amazing revelations for both the characters and the reader. Suffice to say, having the female protagonist named “Boy Novak” is only the beginning of a conversation that asks every single one of us who we are, and why we think that. It’s about family and beauty and feminism and, of course, culture. Having 1950s Massachusetts as the setting dictates what characters are and aren’t allowed to do, and makes it all the more surprising when we see them bucking against that.

As mentioned above a full list of books read can be seen here. To further break down that number, however, I have a few stats for your consideration:

• Number of Books Read: 48
• Books by White/Male Authors/Editors: 25
• Books by Everyone Else: 23
  • Books by Non-White Authors: 11
  • Books by Female Authors: 18
  • Books by Both of the Above: 4
• Books by Canadian Authors/Editors: 8
• Fiction Books: 46
  • Full-Length Novels: 41
  • Short Story Collections: 4
  • Short Novel Collections: 1
• YA Books Read: 3
• Non-Fiction Books: 2
• Books That Have Received Film Adaptations: 12
  • Above Film Adaptations That I’ve Seen: 2 [including Star Wars]
• Authors I Read The Most Of: 3-way Tie: David Wong, Yasutaka Tsuitsui, and John Grisham

Let’s face it- there’s no way to avoid this topic. At this point, I don’t know that there’s anything I can say that hasn’t already been said in the past few days. What I’d like to do, if I can’t offer anything new, is at least offer some clarity. Here are the facts, folks:

On the 7th of this month Sayeed and Shareef Kouachi attacked satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for running cartoons deemed “insulting to Islam”. The Kouachi brothers, armed with AK-47s, a shotgun, and a grenade launcher, killed 12 individuals- most of them magazine staff and cartoonists- in addition to wounding several others. Two days later the Kouachis would be killed by French police after a protracted siege in a warehouse. Other suspects involved in the attack are currently being hunted down.

Since the 7th, we’ve seen an outpouring of indignant outrage over the killings, as well as solidarity marches, both for France and for freedom of speech. Despite the near universal solidarity behind Charlie Hebdo, a myriad of differing conclusions have been voiced in the past few days- some good, some bad, and many missing the point entirely (in spite of genuinely good intentions). Let me try to address a few of these below.

Not All Muslims Are Terrorists/Not All Terrorists Are Muslim

…But I shouldn’t have to tell you that.

At this point, parroting that line is starting to feel almost patronizing. It’s an obvious truth, and it shouldn’t need me to defend it. There are millions upon millions of Muslims in the world, the vast majority of whom want nothing more than to live their lives in peace- among them, Ahmed Merabet, a police officer and the first of the Kouachis victims. Whether the infamous 9/11 attacks (in which American Muslim Mohammad Hamdani died attempting to rescue people from the North Tower) or the thousands of Muslim Arabs and Kurds fighting against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Muslims shouldn’t have to be “rescued”. From Abdul Haji to Aitazaz Hassan Bangash to Malala Yousafzai- there are just as many heroic actions from Muslims as their are heinous ones.

But this is, again, obvious to anyone actually interested. I don’t know that there’s anybody out there who hasn’t already made up their mind about it (for better or for worse).

The Attackers Were Muslim

In our haste to respond to the torrent of bigotry and xenophobia this attack has and continues to elicit, we need to avoid whitewashing the facts. Liberal guilt tends to paint a flattering picture of the oppressed, often to the point of fantasy, and that just exacerbates the issue.

The Kouachris were Muslim. Whether they were good or bad is a matter of theological and psychological debate. Regardless of what side you come down on, it must be understood that their motivation and their vehicle for their attack was Islam. They cited Koranic verse and historical precedent as their justification, and that needs to be addressed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, every bit as much as Christians and non-Christians need to deal with the Biblical command to slaughter those who engage in homosexual activity. We can’t and shouldn’t ignore this problem.

This Was Condemned By Muslims

When I said that this attack caused righteous outrage across the globe, I meant it. That includes Muslim world, Muslim and Arab cartoonists being especially vocal in their condemnation of these murders.

Heck, even Hassan Naserallah, leader of Hezbollah (cited by many countries as a terrorist organization), has declared that “Extremists harm Islam more than cartoons“, arguing (as many even deeply conservative Muslims have) that their religion does not need defending, and that such extremists “are the biggest threat to Islam, as a religion [and] as a message.“

Again, anyone claiming that Muslims aren’t vocal enough in condemning terror attacks simply isn’t listening. And of course…

This Will Get Used By The Xenophobes

We do have to be prepared for that. That past months have seen a vicious rise in French ultra-nationalism, Muslims typically being the dreaded “other” that the goose-steppers are casting as bogeymen (though Roma, refugees, and African migrants are getting hit too). Islamaphobic attacks (including state repression and violence) have been running rampant through Europe these past years, and this attack is only going to be used as fodder for further persecution of innocent men and women.

And yes, that’s in spite of the fact that the largest terror-attack in French history actually came from French nationalist group (Organisation armée secrète) whose 1961 bombing killed 28 people and wounded over a hundred. But that’s Fascists for you.

This Isn’t A Pissing Contest

Likewise, folks on the radical left aren’t exactly exempt here either. While it’s tempting to shine the spotlight on hypocrisy (see France celebrating free speech while simultaneously restricting it), this doesn’t quite seem like the time. That’s not to say that such hypocrisy isn’t important (it absolutely is), but there’s got to be a better way of framing it. Coming in with cynical and sardonic barbs (as much as yours truly is guilty of that) comes across as spiteful and defeatist, rather than determined. Again, I’m not exactly Mr. Sunshine-and-Rainbows, but if we can get the whole world to get fired up about free speech, I’ll work with it, y’know? Throw our support behind this now, and perhaps we can harness the momentum into dealing with those other issues.

Same thing goes for the media. The Boko Haram massacre in Nigeria (which killed roughly 2,000) happened at roughly the same time as the Charlie Hebdo attack but was given far less media attention and garnered less outrage. Is that fair? Of course not. Same goes for the lack of outrage over Mohammad Saba’aneh, a Palestinian cartoonist jailed by Israel since 2013 over dubious charges. He should get attention as well. His freedom of speech should be defended. I’m not asking anyone to like it, but I am asking everyone to be pragmatic. A horrible attack occurred that’s caught the world’s attention. It wasn’t the only one, it wasn’t the worst one, but it’s still there for us to turn into something good.

Can’t It Just Be Simple?

Hebdo was a controversial magazine, sometimes funny but also often willfully insensitive. Had this attack not occurred, I’m guessing it might have even been called trashy or shock-jockeying by the very folks now singing its praises. Heck, some of the cartoons (such as a one portraying France’s Black Justice Minister as a monkey) would appear to be just plain racist.

If you can, get a copy of Joe Sacco’s Palestine.

Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the courage and dedication of the staff to keep publishing in spite of the death threats and previous attacks they received should be commended. Those who gunned them down did so out of self-righteous self-delusion. What they did was monstrous and no dissertation on imperialism, colonialism, or culture is going to change that. The killers believed that what they did would discourage similar “blasphemies”- it most certainly won’t. The far-right is going to use this as an excuse to crack down on Muslims, the far-left is going to use that as an way to rail on the right, and the most extreme sects of Islam are going to use the whole affair as propaganda for more of the same. We repeat the whole damn cycle over again.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

When I first attempted to write this post, several months ago, I titled it “the real reason Nicholas Sparks is the worst”. I was planning to discuss the lawsuit against Nicholas Sparks that has accused him of being racist, antisemitic, and homophobic in the workplace. I then planned to use that as a lead-in to discuss how romance novels are just awful in general.

Something about that original post just never feel right. Maybe it’s because I have no way of knowing if Sparks is really guilty of what he has been accused, or maybe it’s because any time I start to attack the Romance genre I find myself haunted by the memory of Jane Austen.

This is what you find when you search for “Jane Austen” and “ghost”.

I loved Jane Austen as a teenager. I read all her novels long before graduating high school and used to obsessively watch the BBC television adaptions with a few like-minded friends. Mr Darcy was one of my first literary crushes, and I only wished I could come up with the kind of witty responses that Elizabeth Bennett tossed around with ease.

There are certainly major issues I have with Romance literature, but there are also a couple reasons why writers like Jane Austen make it impossible for me to reject the genre altogether.

1. Many Early Romance Writers were Protofeminist Trailblazers 

Despite the presence of Romance novels in the literary Canon, the genre is generally considered low-brow. Some authors, like Maya Rodele, argue that the stigmatization of Romantic fiction is an intentional effort to prevent literature from representing positive female autonomy.

There have always been gender politics involved in the act of writing. In Jane Austen’s era, being an authoress was a perilous undertaking: women were attacked for “having the temerity to write without having the necessary learning and taste”. It was only acceptable for a woman to accept payment for her writing if it was meant to “support aged parents, a sick husband, or destitute children.” While female writers like Ann Radcliffe made writing Romance novels a semi-acceptable hobby for women, female authors certainly weren’t considered serious writers.

Jane Austen, for example, published her books anonymously, “hiding her work and the fact that she wrote for publication“. When her books became successful, the small payment she received allowed her to help support her family in a time when it was socially impossible for a woman to be the bread-winner.

Today, women still struggle to be taken seriously as writers. Many women even continue to use pseudonyms in order to avoid alienating men. While “women make up the majority of readers for most fiction genres… the industry is wary of alienating men, who tend to favor male authors, according to several studies.“

For many female romance writers it is especially frustrating to see male writers taken more seriously than they are in a genre that was trailblazed by women like Radcliffe and Austen, and dominated by female readers. In her interview with the Telegraph, romance author Jodi Picoult expresses this frustration:

“I was so angry about these men who had co-opted a genre that women had been slaving over for years. There are some really phenomenal romance writers who get no credit, who couldn’t even get a hardback deal. And these men waltzed in and said, ‘Look what we can do. We can write about love. And we are so special.’ And that just made me crazy.”

The Corpse Bride, being angry on behalf of female writers everywhere.

2. Romance Fiction Created Multi-dimensional Female Characters

Jane Austen made female lives matter. She wrote about women in an era where their world was restricted to the domestic, and she made it dramatic, hilarious and all-around enjoyable. Her main characters, always female, are multifaceted individuals who go out and make their own decisions. Yes, those decisions centre around love and marriage, but it was the female protagonist who decided who she wanted to marry. Even Austen’s most timid protagonists refuse to be bullied or pushed into a relationship.

In contrast, Spark’s most famous female character wanders around pretty much agreeing to marry any guy who pushes himself on her.

If you want to hate The Notebook even more, you should go read this fantastic and hilarious takedown of the movie over at Jezebel.

When romance novels strip female characters of their own volition they use the genre that was once empowering for women to keep women submissive. This is something we see all the time in Romantic films (as the After Hours crew explains so deftly below), but it wasn’t always something that dominated Romance novels.

Romance literature has a much richer history than we give it credit for. For a long time, this was the genre that allowed women to gain a measure of legitimacy as writers. While writers like Nicholas Sparks make me dislike the Romance genre, writers like Jane Austen prevent me from dismissing it all together.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, I will have convinced you to give the Romance a second chance too.

If you still don’t like it, we can always meet halfway with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

P.S. In case you didn’t get your fill of me hating on The Notebook, I’ve included the revamped horror/thriller trailer for it below.

It sure is weird that CBS released their first 2 Broke Girls episode of the season on January 5th, and then skipped a week. Not a great way to build up momentum. Not that I’m complaining, honestly, because a) it’s always nice whenever I get to take a break and b) that last installment was super racist and I was not having it.

Thankfully the worst part about this episode is that I can’t find any gifs of Jenko freaking out about lambos from 22 Jump Street. Man, that’s a franchise I am always going to be behind. Anyway, to the episode-

This is one of those weeks where not a whole lot happens in these twenty-some minutes of TV. In fact, I think I can summarize it in half a dozen bullet points:

• It’s Caroline’s birthday! She is optimistic.
• Her dad, Martin Channing, bought her a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster! But they have to return it in the morning.
• Caroline is now pessimistic.
• Max roofies her and drives her to the Hamptons, which she waxed poetic about.
• They squabble at the beach, but make up and return to the diner!
• Oleg means to propose to Sophie and then does so.

That being said, this was not a bad episode overall.

It’s been a while since I’ve linked to it, but allow me to once again bring up the concept of the “hang-out sitcom”, or the sort of show where the audience basically enjoys watching people enjoy spending time with one another. Now the writer of that article, Todd VanDerWerff, condemns them, or at least their oversaturation of the airwaves, but while watching 2 Broke Girls tonight I actually found myself liking that aspect of the show. Or, that is to says, I found myself gaining an even greater appreciation for Beth Behrs.

Now it should be no mystery to any of you that I consider her the most consistent comedy MVP of every Monday night on CBS, but her character is actually not terrible to be “around”. While it’s hard for me to fathom that there might be people who feel this way about Oleg or Sophie [the studio audience’s cheering notwithstanding] it started to make sense to me why people continue to tune in week after week. 2 Broke Girls has become a half hour timeslot where audiences can watch characters they like and not be bogged down.

Bogged down by conflict, to be more specific, and [really, read that article I linked to] while this episode has it you can rest assured it doesn’t exist for more than five minutes. As weird as it is to write, I feel like the show has pared away the thorns of crude humour [which will sprout back] to make way for the soft, pillowy, comforting petals of feel-good TV. There’s a lot to be said about that, especially taking into consideration Gordon’s earlier discussion of what art should be, but I’m going to leave it as is and see if next week backs it up anymore.

Lots of great lines tonight too, which certainly doesn’t hurt.

Current Total: $13,945.

New Total: $13,545. I’m going to assume it was spent on gas. That’s all I’ve got.

The Title Refers To: One of my all-time favourite film franchises [alongside the 2_ Jump Street movies, of course], or at least the one that started with Fast Five and turned the Vin Diesel vehicles’ [pun fully intended] focus from street racing to insane heists.

Stray Observations:

• Oleg’s familiarity with the CPR doll [“Oh. Hey, Judy.”] Made me think of “Exodus”, a short story from Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted. If you’ve read it you know how uncomfortable that train of thought made me.
• He’s also popping the question to Sophie, which Max makes that super gross by saying that he’s “already popped everything else.”
• “I thought a girl’s best friend was someone a little fatter than her.”
• Oleg’s whole story about his ring that culminated in it being “doody free” was actually really impressive, comedically. Props, writers’ room.
• “All my father gave me was that one iffy chromosome.”
• Caroline’s impression of Sophie was a pure delight.
• Han, in reference to them not being able to use the car in spite of it being there: “That’s like me having you two for waitresses-“
• “I would’ve gotten the car and driven up to the Hamptons and we’d sit on the beach all night, have lobster caught by one of the townies, drink champagne while taking duck face selfies until the sun came up.”
• The duck face she made right after that line was great.
• “Max, you did it again, you roofied me didn’t you-“
• Max on never having been to the beach: “No, what’s the point, I don’t own a metal detector.”
• “We are in very big trouble and we’re not even in the GOOD Hamptons!”
• “I am a ride or die kind of bitch!”
• “Are you Googling ‘ride or die kind of bitch?'”
• Caroline’s age dating window tops out at 40. Max’s is twice that.
• Oleg proposes to Sophie in a) the place they met, b) the place they’ve had sex most often, and c) the place they’ve had sex most recently. It’s her booth.
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Some people on tumblr thought that their scene on the beach was romantic, but I wasn’t really feeling it.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline’s legs on the beach, I guess. No, I don’t guess. I know.

Speaking of “meltdowns” I totally had the best melt for dinner [not a grilled cheese, as some may incorrectly call them]. It had cheese, obviously, as well as homemade guacamole and spinach. The second also had kimchi [I should mention I actually ate two of them]. Now that my prose-version of Instagram is over, I suppose we should move along to the episode itself-

Now last week’s review was pretty short and sweet, but I mentioned, as I have many times before, that this is a show that focuses a little too closely on its titular characters. Max and Caroline are the headlining act for sure, but every other member of the cast appears to be relegated to bit players at best. This episode appears to be the writers’ room forcing me to eat my words.

The person doing the moving in happens to be Oleg, and the place he happens to be moving into happens to be Sophie’s apartment. This is apparently something he’s been looking forward to for the past three years, so of course it’s anything but easy. The problem starts when every one of his belongings that is brought up [by Han, for some reason] is immediately sent back down by his significant other.While he seems to take this in stride, things don’t blow up until the dinner party Sophie hosts in order to get rid of some soon-to-expire beef.

Their argument involves a painting of this [in]famous photograph.

Things wrap up in the back of a moving truck amidst Oleg’s filthy belongings. Caroline helps the Eastern Europeans through their issues and then . . . there’s what appears to be genuine emotional expression [that isn’t from either star]. The fry cook tells Sophie that “[he doesn’t] care about [his] stuff so long as [he has her].” Their relatinship appears to be headed in a very real, very serious direction. We end feeling the same way Max and Caroline do, flabbergasted at what just happened.

Now if any characters were going to receive the spotlight next it would have to be Oleg and Sophie, given their relationship with one another in addition to interacting with the two girls. Han is still [insert flaw here, in this case weakness] and for some reason we are obsessed with Earl’s age this week. That being said, it’s most definitely a step in the right direction. I can’t see them carrying episodes like this week to week, but it’s a delightfully refreshing change of pace to be sure.

Oh, and a lot of great lines tonight as well. I feel like the writing may have improved a lot in recent weeks [either that or I’m getting soft in my old age].

Current Total: $13,545.

New Total: $13,395. There was a very minor plot point about purchasing heat lamps for their new outdoor seating area [see banner image]. They were what cost $150, but honestly I feel like the only reason they were mentioned was so that the total would change between episodes.

The Title Refers To: Oleg moving into Sophie’s apartment, weren’t you paying any attention?

Stray Observations:

• I feel like tumblr may have begun to fall out or love with 2 Broke Girls, if their output of animated gifs of the show is any indicator.
• “Well our new outdoor seating area is about as popular as Paula Deen at an NBA game.”
• Sherry’s List is just like Craigslist, but “without the high probability of being murdered by a deranged medical student.”
• “From now on the booty call is coming from inside the house” sounds like the worst kind of horror story.
• “I know Jesus has a girl for me. He has to, I’m $400 deep into that damn website.”
• “Haha! Someone fell in real life!”
• “Really, Han, it’s like your arms are only there for decoration.”
• “Can’t it ever just be about me!?”
• “Is it me or is this party as tense as hell? I don’t think Sophie and Oleg are gonna make it.”
• “Why are his nipples so big?” / “They don’t seem that big to me.”
• “What? Is it throwing off this gorgeous indoor outdoor swing?”
• I don’t think Goodwill will take a loveseat that is actually covered in love…”
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Nada.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Zilch.
• Dated References Galore [Filler Feature]: Jokes about Rihanna and Chris Brown [domestic violence took place in 2009] and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [which premiered in 2008. If this episode aired six years ago people would have no idea it was from the distant future of 2015.

As predicted in my last review, this issue does in fact feature the downfall of the villainous Inventor. What I did not foresee, however, is how Alphona would be bringing his A-game when it came to illustrating our shapeshifting heroine’s triumph over evil. Seriously, there are some jaw-droppingly beautiful splash pages featured here.

For the most part my recaps of Ms. Marvel are exactly that, short summaries of what went down in addition to some exploration of any themes therein, so I feel it only fair to take a few paragraphs to focus on the art itself. To begin with, a “splash page” is:

“a page in the comic book where there are no other panels and the character or scene fills the entire page of the comic book.”

Issue #11 features three such pages, which would be more than overdoing it according to J. Caleb Mozzocco, one of my favourite comic book journalists. The reason for that being when you only have twenty-ish pages of comic [21 in this case, including the recap page] having one of them taken up by a single panel can make it feel like you’re not getting enough bang for your buck. Rest assured that that could not be further from the truth in this case-

While the entire page is indeed taken up by a single illustration there’s a strong sense of movement, with readers being able to trace Kamala’s journey through the innards of the deathbot with ease. The word boxes help to anchor a start and end point, and the intricacy of the gears as well as her cartoonish contortions keep you from turning the page even after you’ve finished reading the words. I could go on praising Alphona’s work, though, so as to the actual narrative-

Continuing [and potentially concluding, as this is the arc’s last issue] the theme of youth’s potential and its dismissal by general adulthood, The Inventor’s former fuel sources continue to rail against him. Kamala’s bravery is infectious, and the fact that they remain inspired in the face of an avian cloned inventor and his destruction-dealing construct speaks for itself. In relation to that, this issue is all about support.

Even before she shrinks down and crawls into the murder-mech Ms. Marvel has the realization that so few other heroes do until it’s far too late:

“All the heroes I’ve ever loved work in teams. I get why that is now. Even the most embiggened person needs help sometimes…”

She gives Bruno a call, and he deduces by the coded number of rings that he needs to call the cops and send them to her location. She isn’t a heroine who believes in doing things on her own; pride is not her fatal flaw. It’s the police who arrive and, after The Inventor’s deathbot has been dismantled, attempt to arrest him. It’s the officer from Issue #4 who thanks her for her hard work, mentioning-

“There’s worse things on the streets of JC than a crazed bird guy, and now that you’ve made yourself obvious, they’re gonna come lookin for you.”

-words that clearly make up a warning, but that also bear his blessing in that he doesn’t tell her to stop what she’s doing. There’s an implicit amount of trust in his words, that she’s going to help them in their work to uphold justice and fight crime, that she is capable of that responsibility. It’s in stark contrast to the birdman who has been her nemesis, an adult with the understanding that the young can do what needs to be done.

I suppose I should also mention that The Inventor is presumably crushed by his very own killing machine, and that it’s his “sidekick” who outright asks the question: “Who do they think cloned Thomas Edison? Who invented the Inventor?” He’s a threat that remains at large, but probably won’t be appearing in the issue dropping two weeks from now because it’ll feature Loki! If that doesn’t get you excited we would probably not be friends.

To end with, roughly one year ago was the debut issue of Ms. Marvel #1! That’s twelve months and over ten issues of a stellar comic book some people didn’t think would make it out the gate! Diversity allowed for a fresh, unique story that wasn’t being told anywhere else by anyone else, and of course Wilson and Alphona [with a little help from Wyatt] have devoted some of the best work of their careers to the title. Here’s to many, many, many more!

The Ms. Marvel Visual Gag You Shouldn’t Have Missed: Bruno’s amazing
t-shirt aside [it advertises the SCHOOL OF KUNG FU
TREACHERY], I couldn’t ignore this amazing callback to the riverbed debris from the second issue. Yes, Sal’s Used Cheese boxes really do get around.

Ms. Marvel #11
Written by G. Willow Wilson
Art by Adrian Alphona
Colours by Ian Herring
Letters by Joe Caramagna
Edited by Sana Amanat
Marvel Comics

I swear, “And the Move-In Meltdown” really spoiled me. Feel free to read the review of last-last week’s episode yourself, obviously, but let met just reiterate here that it felt like 2 Broke Girls was really mixing things up. Oleg and Sophie were carrying the narrative and creating and experiencing their own emotional beats, ones that Max and Caroline actually had no real part in. If you rewatch that episode you’ll see that they just happen to be around when the finale takes place. They exist in that scene simply to justify the show’s title.

What accompanied that momentary change of pace and plotting for me was actually the pilot episode, which I caught a few minutes of while at my granddad’s. With both of these in mind I was forced to put a lot of thought towards what I wanted from the show moving forward. If the reality is that I’m going to be reviewing every episode until its eventual cancellation [I predict a minimum of three more seasons] I should at the very least be tempering my expectations. Ideally I should keep them reasonable, while still considering how the show could improve.

Han, in particular, has come a very long way. Granted, he’s come to Max and Caroline’s rescue more than once at this point, but he’s given an unprecedented amount of dialogue this week in an anti-bullying speech he delivers to a cafeteria full of prep school girls. Here it is, with its very noticeable overuse of the word “little”:

“You see girls, the bad thing about being bullied is that every time it happens it steals a little piece of who you are. And then, if it happens enough, little by little, you become just a little less of who you were meant to be. And that’s not cool.

And these two girls up here without knowing it, i’m sure, stole a little piece of max and caroline when they stole their little idea. And that’s so not cool.”

It’s the fact that it’s not played up for laughs that makes it a big step for the character, and having a student take the mic right afterwards keeps Max from snarkily interjecting and killing the moment. Put in the context of that pilot, it also presents a character who no longer speaks heavily accented English. Seriously check it out, it’s cringe-worthy stuff-

-what’s more, we even have the sassy waitress promising to pull back on the sass a little bit. It’s not much, but it’s progress!

Right before we get into the episode itself, I also want to comment briefly on Max’s character progression from that pilot to the present day. What struck me more than anything else was how, well, normal she was. Yes, she’s introduced by trash-talking two customers wearing woolen hats [touques, as we call them up here], but it’s because they’re rude to her to begin with. What’s more her voice doesn’t bear that affectation it currently does. It’s hard to pin down, but I can really only liken it to the difference between Marshall Mather’s speaking voice and Eminem’s rapping voice. In focusing on this alone it’s a pretty great example of how the character has been “flanderized”, or essentially turned into a caricature of their original self. The following comic illustrates that very effectively [and is also the image used on the TV Tropes page I just linked to]:

Click the image above for the full “Evolution of Fictional Characters by Medium” on Cracked.com

It all comes back around to “And the Move-In Meltdown”, because whereas Max has been reduced [in part, not as a whole] to a quippy snark machine the exact opposite has happened to the supporting characters. Oleg was the perverted fry cook who is now moving towards a [presumably] lifelong relationship with Sophie, a heavily accented Polish woman who . . . okay, so she hasn’t progressed as much. Still, it’s an interesting observation, and generally optimistic as not every character is being boiled down to their very essence.

As for the episode itself, we’re still chugging right along with this whole t-shirt arc. Max and Caroline sell a fair amount of them [accounting for all their profits, as you can see below], so it hurts that much more when they realize that someone out there has copped their design. Add insult to injury when it turns out that the thieves are children. Rich children.

Now unfortunately this doesn’t lead to all that much material for Caroline to work with, which is strange given that they share the same sort of upbringing. Sure, she gets a few choice lines in here and there, but it’s not what you might expect.

They’re difficult, which is to be expected, leading them to coercing Han into pretending to be their lawyer [see his nifty getup above] to combat the C&D suit leveled at them. Their conflict with the high schoolers culminates in the speech that I already typed out, word for word, up above. Really the only reason I got this far is because 2 Broke Girls did something amazing. Now let me be upfront and say I only saw this episode once, but I think 2 Broke Girls was subtle!!!

See those two girls down at the bottom? They have those bandages on their faces because they got nosejobs. Because they’re rich. That’s the joke. That’s the visual gag and [as far as I can remember] neither Max or Caroline say anything about it. That is incredible. And it’s a nice downplayed piece of humour as well.

Now that I’ve written almost 900 words [that were more or less] about this episode it’s time to wrap things up. While Sophie and Oleg do continue their own arc with wedding planning taking place they don’t arrive at any form of narrative conclusion. Sophie is searching for a wedding planner and the show actually ends without her finding one. It’s not even really emphasized that her search was for naught. Yes, it’s nice that they haven’t been completely forgotten, but having a such a half-hearted attempt at a B-plot seems equally bad.

Oh, also Han ends the episode by saying “Back to normal!” and wow I hope that isn’t true.

Current Total: $3,395.

New Total: $3,675. Seeing as Caroline talks about doing decent business with their shirts, I’m guessing they sold 14 for $20 a pop.

The Title Refers To: Knockoff shirts that were potentially cutting into their profits, and the “knockout” of Han’s speech, I think?

Stray Observations:

• According to the cold open women do not like beards.
• The woman working at the store selling the knockoff tees is doing a PhD in Social Ecodynamics in Western Civilization.
• One of the girls’ names is Kemberly, “with an ‘E'”.
• I sure am glad they didn’t make fun of that one girl’s weight/size.
• “It’s like a bad eighties movie. I don’t know whether to date James Spader or teach this town how to dance.”
• Wow, they were really whooping for Sophie this episode. I say that a lot, but really though-
• “Caroline” is Sophie and Oleg’s safeword. It’s the one word they would never say during sex.
• Max thinks the lawyer in the subway “only does accidentes.”
• Han dressed up as Sprout from the Jolly Green Giant commercial. You laugh, but he won $500.
• “Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is a better actor than Max!”
• “Their charity is bullying. That’s like Kanye West trying to raise money for laying low.”
• “First, your lawyer looks like the teacher on a Disney show.”

  Here’s Matthew Moy on iCarly. Best I could do.

• If you want to thank Han just send him an edible arrangement, how often does he have to drop that hint?
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Nada.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Zilch.
• Dated References Galore [brought it back]: “Wow, you’re carrying more issues than Amanda Bynes.”

Just as in most forms of media LGBT representation has been lacking in comic books, both in the content created and those responsible for its creation. It’s a conversation that will last for decades until such a time that we can look to art and see that yes, it does reflect the world we live in, such as it is. In regards to all of this there are times when a person will look at their pull list and decide that the stars have aligned just right, and that it’s time to dust off a blog feature of sorts that hasn’t been used in years.

It began with “Homosexuality In Comics As Of May 20th”, a post in 2012 that shone some light on DC Comics’ announcement that they would be introducing a previously straight character as gay,  having that person become “one of [their] most prominent gay characters.” One year later there was “… As of July 26th”, in which I revealed the aforementioned hero-

Alan Scott, the Green Lantern of Earth-2 [an alternate universe]

Thankfully two of this week’s titles helped a) me out in this regard and b) improve the pop culture landscape of which comic books are only a small part of.

Issue #1 of Silk drops readers right into the life of Cindy Moon, a Korean-American woman who was bitten by the very same spider that gave Peter Parker the powers we all know him for today. It’s a fantastic introduction to the character for anyone unfamiliar with her, and while I could go on and on about how excited I am for the continuation of her solo title I’m instead going to call attention to the 7th page of her book [excluding ads] which contains the following panels:

“You should really just go with Rafferty. [. . .] It’s obvious you want to ask her out.”

“And why did her two co-workers have to be lesbian? I’m torn on this because the answer is there’s no reason they couldn’t be, but at the same time, it feels forced. Like, that whole scenario was ONLY there to appeal to an LGBT reader. It didn’t serve the story as a whole at all and made no difference. I’m NOT saying the scene should have been a heterosexual pairing. That’s not the point. I’m saying the scene as a whole was unnecessary and pointless and making those two characters lesbians was a “just because” choice. I hope I articulated that right.”

“Also, as it has been said before, the lesbian friend thing feels totally forced. I’ve got nothing against it, but why?”

The answer, of course [and as another redditor responded], is: “Because they exist.” More to the point, the fact that lesbians are should be, and I’m speaking very optimistically here, normal. In a perfect world we should be able to view these panels and think no more of them than if they involved a man and a woman, or even a man and a man. For the sake of the argument I will add a follow-up comment that the first person above made, stating that their concern is that:

“This is a high profile #1 that has the potential to be a big seller for Marvel. Yes, the joke helps establish tone, but I think it also proclaims, ‘Hey, lesbians! Look, Marvel thinks you’re real cool and all, so here’s a shout-out!’ Just seems shoehorned.”

When taking into account the full context of the two characters’ presence in the issue it becomes that much clearer that there’s no real agenda being pushed here. Their only other “appearance”-

-is actually beneficial to the plot, not in that it reveals Cindy to be a homophobe [she’s not], but that she values solitude and her own personal space [she lived in a bunker for 10 years, long story] and needs to move out. Yes, this could have been accomplished with a straight couple, but the fact that it isn’t shouldn’t be raising any eyebrows. It should also be mentioned that their inclusion doesn’t appeal to just LGBT readers, but to anyone searching for more representation in media and everyone who doesn’t know they need it. Lesbians are a thing, everyone. Not just in New York City apartments, but in New Jersey high school dances as well.

In Ms. Marvel #12 [which I actually reviewed two days ago!] a bowl of truth serum-spiked punch courtesy of the Asgardian god of trickery resulted in a romantic evening falling apart fast. Among the various couples spilling their guts are the following two girls, who are conveniently located front and centre on the panel [others blurred out by yours truly]:

“I was lying. I really am mad that you forgot our six-month anniversary.”

That’s right, here are two lesbian high school students who have been dating six months, and their relationship is showcased right alongside a jock telling his girlfriend that he likes math and another boy telling his date he would rather be attending a screening of an early 90s Baz Luhrman movie. In other words, adolescent drama as [I assume] it typically goes.

Both Silk #1 and Ms. Marvel #12 feature lesbian characters in minor roles, and do so in such a way that their orientation is made apparent. The method used is not particularly overt, especially when keeping in mind that a person’s orientation is only ever made known when their relationships or related preferences are stated or seen. It could be argued that almost any background character in any comic book is an LGBT person, but unless it’s more directly communicated they could just as well be straight. This is something that both Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were very aware of when they included the following image in their heavily-lauded work Watchmen:

Regarding the question of how to increase the representation of those with sexualities other than straight the answer, at least when it comes to both gay and lesbian people, appears to be: present them as normal, everyday people in normal, everyday situations. Whether it’s two men holding hands or two women realizing their mutual affection for one another their sexual identity is presented in a manner that shouldn’t, and again I’m being optimistic, take anyone out of the story being told.

Unfortunately this isn’t as easy for other LGBT people, namely those who represent the “T” of said acronym. Transgendered people, particularly in the visual medium of comic books, have much more trouble having their sexual identity made known. It’s the topic of my next installment of Homosexuality in Comics, and while I wish I had a better name for the feature I hope you’re looking forward to it just as much as I am.

Silk #1 was written by Robbie Thompson and illustrated by Stacey Lee. Ms. Marvel #12 was written by G. Willow Wilson and illustrated by Elmo Bondoc. Both were published by Marvel. As mentioned, Watchmen was written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and published by DC Comics.

Asian Superheroes. The perfect intersection of two of my passions: racial diversity, in particular the representation of those who look like me, and the stars of my favourite medium, ie. comic books. It was just earlier today that I picked up the second issue of Silk, which [as briefly mentioned in another post] features Marvel’s newest hero, a Korean-American who received her powers from the same spider that bit Peter Parker.

Similar to Spider-Man she has enhanced speed, strength, reflexes, and a danger detection system [aka. her self-coined “Silk-Sense”] as well as her very own ability to create biological webs from her fingertips. Other favourites from the same publisher include Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung-Fu, an Avenger at the time of this writing. He primarily relies on his master of martial arts, an ability which didn’t keep him from participating in an intergalatic war to save the universe. Another is Amadeus Cho, a teenager who attained the title of “7th Smartest Man in the World” and frequently took down superhuman assailants with only his intelligence and whatever else was available. Yes, at one point one of those superhuman assailants was the Hulk. The Hulk.

Each of these heroes is wildly different from the next, but share a few key similarities [besides their belonging to Marvel and being of East Asian descent]. The first is the quality that makes them heroes, the self-sacrificial desire to protect the innocent and defeat those who would do them harm. The second is that I would love to see any and all of them make it to the big screen one day, to fight alongside the White, square-jawed Chrises of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The third is that every one of them is a work of fiction.

Bradley Katsuyama is a real-life currently existing person. He is an Asian-Canadian and has been a doer of objectively heroic actions surrounding the investigation and consequent combating of algorithms that preyed on unwitting investors. While not the intellectual property of a company creating and producing recent years’ largest blockbusters he is the focus of the novel Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt, a film adaptation of which Aaron Sorkin is set to write the screenplay for. Yet at this point Katsuyama is no closer to having his story told than Shang-Chi or any of the rest of them.

The Sony Pictures hack unveiled a lot, but among the myriad of planned projects [including a Jump Street/Men in Black crossover, yes please] was the revelation that the studio was moving forward with bringing Flash Boys to theatres the world over. SPE co-chairman Amy Pascal sent an email to the president of Columbia Pictures and a few others lashing out at Sorkin, reminding them that they had “paid him his insane fee on [sic] flashboys”, and that the screenwriter appeared to be doing everything he could to get out of it. [That link also states that the amount was very likely in the millions of dollars].

Now over at Fiction Diversity, a blog that you should all check out as Em Liu is passionate about many of the same things I am [see: the title of her blog], guest contributor John Entrada covered this very topic, helpfully listing the reasons Sorkin gave for his hesitancy to take on the job he had already been paid for. They are as follows [the quoted segments are from one of Sorkin’s own emails]:

1. No precedent. “There’s no precedent for stories about high frequency trading creating a stampede to the box office.”
2. Flash Boys has no plot. “I need time to come up with a plot as one doesn’t exist in the book.”
3. Flash Boys’ protagonist is Asian. “The protagonist is Asian-American (Actually Asian-Canadian) and there aren’t any Asian movie stars.”

In his post John provides a rebuttal of each point, and while he was able to do so having read the book as a whole I feel like my more limited experience with it, having listened to almost five hours of the audiobook [nearly half of the full length] provides me with my own slightly different perspective.

To begin with, the first point is obviously moot, especially coming from Aaron Sorkin. Prior to The Social Network there wasn’t a film about any, well, you know [and no, The MySpace Movie, cornerstone of my youth that it is, doesn’t count]. It was due in large part to his screenplay that a subject as seemingly dull as the creation of Facebook was able to garner eight Oscar nominations. This is feigned ignorance at best.

The second point is what my introduction to this topic centres around, the perceived lack of narrative within Katsuyama’s story. Now John, who again has read the entire book, breaks it down into three decently sized paragraphs. I can do you one better. Here’s the plot in a single sentence:

“Brad Katsuyama sees that people are being taken advantage of and takes risks in order to combat those capitalizing on their inability to defend themselves.”

Given that this blog post hasn’t run on for too long at this point, you might recall that it’s essentially my breakdown of what a hero is, someone who has “the self-sacrificial desire to protect the innocent and defeat those who would do them harm”, just somewhat more specific. That makes him a hero in my eyes, whether or not that’s a word he would personally use to refer to himself. That’s my main issue with Sorkin’s defence, such as it is, that as a writer he claims the need to “come up with a plot” when the simplest one known to man stares him straight in the face.

At this point we [by which I mean “I”] would do well to admit that Sorkin clearly didn’t [and doesn’t] want to write this screenplay. Before we get to his third point I’ll introduce a fourth that John chose to omit, which is that apparently the project “is research intensive”, which more or less equates to it being too hard.
Considering how much he was very likely being paid, I cannot think of a better use of this gif:

And now, ah yes, the fourth point. I fully understand that this was meant to be a private email and not meant to be scrutinized as any kind of official statement, but I will note that Sorkin says not “there aren’t any bankable Asian movie stars” but that “there aren’t any Asian movie stars.” If this were actually true it would make him a worse person than Avi Arad, who acknowledges a shift in the industry but does nothing about it. In all honesty it’s ridiculous to consider that he isn’t aware of any existing, especially considering that Lucy Liu and Jet Li were very much household names at one point, though it is indicative of how highly he might consider them.

Both John and Em have put together short posts that very graciously assist the screenwriter in casting the film, finding Hollywood talent for not just Katsuyama himself but also a few other Asian characters who would appear in an accurate retelling of the story. I say with no small amount of shame that while I don’t know nearly enough Asian actors to do the same [which shouldn’t stop you from tweeting your own suggestions with the hashtag #TheSorkinChallenge], I would encourage you to check out their lists and take note of all the talent that does exist out there.

These are clearly answers to the call to action that John makes at the end of his post on Fiction Diversity, ending with the line “If you believe that the Flash Boys story is an important American story, there’s a lot you can do.” While what they did is one alternative I would be more than happy to present another.

Feels good to bust out that image again.

To begin with, let’s acknowledge how impressive it is that the people at Sony appear to be legitimately committed to making a Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt film. It is a risky venture considering the content, which is not the most thrilling at first glance, and the fact that it likely will not feature a well-known actors in the lead role. At the very least we should give them credit in the traditional sense, which is to sit in front of our computer and nod and think “Good for them“. It would also be good for us to give them credit in a more active sense.

The #TheSorkinChallenge hashtag is a great first step, because it’s meant to create buzz on social media and ultimately perpetuate the conversation about the novel and the film. Ultimately all I really want is Hollywood movies about Asian heroes, “super” or otherwise, and the best way to do that is to communicate as best we can to the studios that these are stories worth telling, movies that we would line up to see. Tweet at Sony Pictures, harangue them on Facebook, do a thing to them on Instagram [I don’t know how Instagram works]! Just by writing this I’m adding my voice to what I hope are the many that want to see this get made, with or without Sorkin’s involvement.

This blog post is just a drop in what I hope to be a bucket overflowing with support for Flash Boys. Asian heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and there’s a Brad Katsuyama-sized hole just waiting to be filled right now.

There were a lot of great things in this episode. First and foremost, the A-plot, which involved Max and Caroline trying to blackmail venture capitalist Owen Charles Boyd after his cat impregnates theirs. The fact that I could wrap it up in a single sentence underscores its simplicity. Once you’ve established the premise you’re free to concentrate on jokes and the absurdity that spins out of it, and the former has some wins [the latter I’ll get to].

While we’re staying positive, it was nice to see them back up the fact that the two girls live in a bad neighbourhood. They’re always going on about how horrible their life is in their enormous apartment, so having honest to goodness evidence that what lies outside of it is women screaming [which, let’s face it, is pretty uncomfortable] and men running away [presumably from some recently committed crime] and garbage literally everywhere is nice. It’s the closest the 2 Broke Girls has come to “showing vs. telling” in a long time, even if it is undercut by the fact that they still reference stuff off-screen. I guess that’s my cue to get into a little bit of criticism.

Those legs. Yikes.

Remember Chestnut? He’s been around since the first season but didn’t make an appearance until he absolutely needed to, for the Victoria’s Secret models to fawn over when they visited [S4E6]. On a similar note, we haven’t seen Nancy, their cat, since early last season, in “And the It Hole” [S3E8]. I totally understand that it’s hard to have live animals on set, but if it’s that difficult why bother “casting” them at all? To have a pet not appear for 30 episodes, or more than an entire season of the show, feels especially strange when one of the minor conflicts between Max and Caroline is how the latter is not a fan of said pet, while the former is.

To restate the first paragraph, I really do like the premise of the episode. I do. My problem is that someone in the writers’ room came up with it and they then had to sort of create a status quo out of thin air to support the narrative. Up to this point most of us had honestly forgotten that Nancy even existed. Except for me, of course, because-

I cannot forget this. Nancy was named after Sophie’s dead Polish friend because she was or is apparently a reincarnation of that person. I will never forget it because an actual Polish person called it out for being racist BS in the comments section and now here we are, and here’s this cat and all I can think is that humour based on false stereotypes rarely ever pays off.

As for the episode itself, their blackmail fails, which is unsurprising given that the show predicates itself on not giving the girls a “win”. I would like to note, however, that they are focusing on the consequence of the $10K business loan and the thousands of t-shirts that they cannot sell because a serial kidnapper wore it on the news. It may not seem like it, but this is actually the direst their situation has ever been, especially since they appear have all but given up on actually selling cupcakes to make money.

At this point we have five more episodes left before Season 4 comes to a close, and what I’m really hoping for is that the finale has all the lasting effectiveness of “And the Window of Opportunity” [S2E24] in regards to shaking things up, and not the forced and oft-repeated emotional beat of “And the First Degree” [S3E24]. I of course hope that things get better, or at least head in a specific direction, given the fact that as of a few weeks ago 2 Broke Girls was renewed for a 5th season. You read that right, everyone, I’m stuck to this show for at least another year. This isn’t the worst episode to ponder that idea, either, because as you can see below there was some pretty solid comedic writing this week-

Current Total: $1,475.

New Total: $975. Once again leaving viewers to figure out where $500 of cold hard cash went. They discuss fixing Nancy due to her being a “slut”, so I guess that’s what happened to their rapidly dwindling total.

The Title Refers To: Nancy being pregnant.

Stray Observations:

• Earl talking about how he might die during sex: “I know, those ladies don’t know whether I’m coming or going”
• “No, I sleep like a dead baby it’s my one gift.” I remember dead baby jokes.
• “Yeah, I don’t need a thousand pink t-shirts. My dad’s already mad at me I don’t care about sports.”
• “I-” / “Here it comes-” / “-went to Wharton.” / “-boom.”
• “This one won’t come out, it’s like the Queen Latifah of kittens.”
• Han doesn’t pay for cat maternity leave. “This isn’t Google.”
• “Did he just drop a gun?” / “It’s fine, he has more.”
• “Do either of you know how to turn the phrase self-absorbed ridiculous pig into a compliment?”
• There’s no way these kittens could be siblings, the look wildly different from each other and exactly 0% of them look like Nancy.
• “Invest? This is the financial capital of the world yes it is-“
• As a quick FYI to Max, Grumpy cat is a “she”. Everyone knows this.
• Maybe It’s Maxoline: Not today.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: I’m not going to say I miss the T&A, but I at the very least miss writing about the T&A.
• Dated Reference Galore: There’s a Jonah Hill fat joke. I didn’t know we were still making those.

This isn’t going to be the longest post for two reasons: 1) I made a bet with a friend and am only eating leaves for the entirety of today [this was my breakfast] and am therefore weak in mind, body, and spirit, and 2) this is a very straightforward assessment that two other other writers have already broken ground on already. Let me take a single step back, though, and remind you of what happens in a week’s time and why I’m writing this.

Furious 7 comes out.

I know I used my love of comic books to springboard my post on Flash Boys, the novel Aaron Sorkin refuses to write a screenplay for because “there aren’t any Asian movie stars”, but here we are again. Well, sort of. See, comic books only reach so large an audience. Comic book movies, on the other hand? They find themselves as two out of the top five highest grossing movies of last year [four of the top ten]. Everyone wants to get in on that business, to the point where a shared universe of larger-than-life characters was one of the goals of the truly awful Dracula Untold. Here’s the thing Universal, you already own The Fast and Furious [referred to as FF from this point on] franchise which has been going hard since the early aughts.

Remember at the end of Iron Man when Tony Stark meets Nick Fury for the first time and your nerdy friend gripped your arm so hard you thought they would snap it and whispered directly into your ear that “it’s happening“? The FF movies have been pulling that same move for years without the help of a narrative that’s been ongoing since the 60s. Every one of their reveals is builds on the preceding films,and the fact that they’ve managed to make this viewer drop his jaw is worth mentioning in and of itself.

But really, enough about continuity. At this point I should pass the reins to Marc Bernardin, who wrote the very accurately titled “Fast Five is the superheroes-assemble movie you’ve been waiting for (Sorry, Avengers)” four years ago. And I quote:

“In each of these films, the characters can do things in cars that defy both logic and the laws of physics. And when outside of their garishly colored vehicles, they prove impossible to kill by conventional means: bullets never find their targets, explosions merely singe their clothes, jumps from preposterous heights simply piss them off.

In other words, there is no functional difference between these guys and most of the Marvel Universe. They are, for all intents and purposes, superheroes.”

Continuity, check. Larger-than-life characters, check. What do these films really offer that Kevin Feige and the rest of the crew over at Marvel Studios hasn’t already? Again, Bernardin, if you would be so kind:

“And I challenge you to find another studio film with this diverse a cast that isn’t in some way about race or, at the very least, hits you over the head with its diversity. The F&F flicks are full-to-bursting with blacks, Hispanics, all kinds of Asians, a Pacific Islander or two, and a crazy-quilt of ethnic blends and no one takes notice of it. In fact, there’s really only one white dude in the whole damned saga who isn’t a villain.”

As a quick FYI for people who may contest Paul Walker being the only White person on the cast, Vin Diesel identifies as a person of colour [and seeing as his father is one there’s absolutely zero reason for him not to].

That’s right, while Marvel has up to this point had three franchises starring White dudes named Chris over at Universal their FF has been perfectly content to have one, and I repeat, one, role in their very large casts be taken up by a member of that particular demographic. Also I can’t not mention that they portrayed an Asian male as a sexually attractive human being which is not really done in the entertainment industry.

To draw things back to comic books, which I don’t even necessarily think we have to at this point, Brett White in his column In Your Face Jam breaks down some very specific parallels between FF and one his personal favourite titles, X-Force-

“Both ‘X-Force’ and ‘Fast & Furious’ are about evolution. They both started out as one thing — the teen-drama series ‘New Mutants’ and a ‘Romeo & Juliet’ with cars series — and morphed into a more extreme version of themselves.”

He also goes on to draw further comparisons between their over-the-top completely bonkers action scenes, their diversity as just mentioned, and their focus on “familial bonds based on shared experience and mutual respect.” These are bombastic high octane series, but they’re fundamentally optimistic works-

-which is more rare than you might think, especially given that the first building block in DC/Warner Bros. shared universe took their most hope-inspiring intellectual property and turned him into, well . . . that’s a post from another time. As cheesy as lines like the one above may seem, and they are that, they’re part of the reason that the FF movies attract the audiences they do. Bad things happen, but the franchise refuses to let its characters and narratives dwell on them.

I would’ve been enamoured with The Fast and the Furious based on their seeming commitment to diversity alone, and everything else is just a little something extra on a cake that is already mostly frosting. This movie appeals to me as a lover of comic books, representation in media, and one incredibly enormous man lifting up an even bigger man to be elbowed in the face by another incredibly enormous man.

They’re the real deal, and I couldn’t recommend them more.

Oh, also they’re funny. I mean, c’mon.

I’m going to go eat another salad now.