The new trailer for Destiny is pretty damn cool. Featuring a pre-rendered battle on the moon, it shows a group of three awesomely clad soldiers duking it out with the invading alien force. To get your fan boy levels to the next level though, Bungie features Breaking Bad actor Giancarlo Espsosito as the narrator. Then, to top it all off, it presents the date for the much anticipated gameplay reveal. See it below:

The folks over at Techland seem to have heard the phrase “if it is not broken, why fix it” several times in the last couple of months, as their new game, Dying Light, follows the same basic premise as their previous franchise, Dead Island.

Once again the player must traverse a zombie infested open world, scavenging for supplies and crafting weapons. Dying Light plays around with a day night cycle, however, changing the pace of the gameplay, with certain types of infected only appearing at night.

“The next-gen technology allows us to create a truly dynamic open world that features a game-changing day-night cycle,” said Pawe? Marchewka, CEO of Techland. “Inventive free running mechanics also allow for nearly unrestricted exploration and weapon-crafting to further enhance the action survival experience.”

Screenshots also show encounters with uninfected survivors, giving off a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. like vibe of interaction. No word on exactly how linear the game will end up being once it launches.

Dying Light is set to release for current and next gen consoles and PC sometime next year.

Like many people, you’re probably wondering just what happened to all of the games for Xbox One following Tuesday’s Press Event. Microsoft plans to announce and show a ton of new games for their new console at this year’s E3 event, and according to a tease by one spokesperson, it looks like a classic franchise from developer Rare will be making a return at the big show.

“Fans of Rare and Rare IP I think will be pleased with what we’re going to show at E3,”  Microsoft’s Phil Spencer told Polygon. “That historic IP that they’ve built I think can play a real important role on Xbox One.”

Rare owns the rights to a number of franchises that have played a major role in the Xbox 360′s life cycle including Kameo, Perfect Dark, Viva Pinata and Conker. They also do own the rights to Conker, the notoriously raunchy squirrel. The most interesting though is Killer Instinct, the cult Super Nintendo fighter which they recently, and rather conveniently  just reacquired the rights for.

To say that reaction following the unveiling of the Microsoft Xbox One is mixed would be a bit of an understatement, people are quite unhappy. The majority of the uproar seems to be directed at Microsoft’s decision to tie all content to specific users, and requiring an as of yet undisclosed fee to play the game second hand. But could these features be selling points for the system?  Microsoft Studios’ corporate vice president Phil Spencer seems to think so.

“We think, actually, that having the content that’s yours go with you is an important thing,” Spencer told Edge Online. “You could have multiple Xbox Ones, your content is yours on every one of them, and it doesn’t require that you carry discs back and forth. The disc becomes a means of distributing the bits back and forth but the content is locked to you.”

So are the days of borrowing a game to a friend over? What about browsing the used section at GameStop? Maybe not, as Spencer gave a rather coy answer to the company’s stance on the new console and the used game market. “I think the whole idea of a secondary market is important and it’ll be important in the next generation and we’ve designed [Xbox One] with that in mind from the beginning. We think there are a lot of advantages of having your content assigned to you digitally – we did that on 360 with cloud-saved games – and we want to do that with content. We understand there are implications to secondary; just know that we recognise the importance of that market and we’ve designed with that in mind from the beginning. We’ll share more details as we get further along the road.”

All signs point to Microsoft using some sort of system to trade licenses for games online, or sell them for credit towards credit towards other games directly from the system. We’ll likely hear more at this year’s E3, less than three weeks away.

This morning in Washington state, Microsoft put a  lot of rumors to rest, and started a bunch of new ones when they made their new console official. Everyone, say hello the Microsoft Xbox One. There’s a bit of a whirlwind of news stories going on right now, so here’s what we know:

- It will release later this year, but specific dates and prices are yet to be announced.

- It will require an internet connection. Or it won’t. The whole thing is kind of murky right now, but it kind of sounds like an internet connection will be required at least once a day to back-up cloud saves and data.

- Kinect is required.  That doesn’t mean that all games will require Kinect to play, but that the peripheral is integral to the system. The reveal this morning featured several uses for Kinect, including new gestures to navigate the home screen, and the ability for the system to recognize you almost immediately, as the original Kinect was supposed to do. “The all new Kinect is now an essential and integrated part of the platform.  By having it as a consistent part of every Xbox One, game and entertainment creators can build experiences that assume the availability of voice, gesture and natural sensing, leading to unrivaled ease of use, premium experiences and interactivity for you,” said an official Microsoft statement.

- Yes, your Gamertag, and Gamerscore will transfer over from your Xbox 360 if you so choose.No, you will not need to buy a new Xbox Live Gold plan if yours is still valid when the system launches.

- Speaking of Achievements, not much is known yet, but achievements are going to be changing, and are rumored to have more input from each developer.

- You’ll be able to watch TV straight through your Xbox One Console.Not much is known about the feature yet, but the official statement hints that it will use your existing service — whatever that may be. “ Our goal is to enable live TV through Xbox One in every way that it is delivered throughout the world, whether that’s television service providers, over the air or over the Internet, or HDMI-in via a set top box (as is the case with many providers in the US). The delivery of TV is complex and we are working through the many technologies and policies around the world to make live TV available where Xbox One is available.”

A closer look at the controller for the new Xbox One.

- So the big question — what about the games? We know that the following games are confirmed to be releasing on Xbox One: Forza 5, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Madden 25, NHL, FIFA 14, Battlefield 4, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, Destiny, UFC, Quantum Break (a new IP from the makers of Alan Wake).  it’s rumored that the following games will be revealed soon, and make their way to the console: Halo 5, Ryse, GTA V. Look for more info on games at this year’s E3.

- It’s unclear right now exactly what the system is doing with used games. From what we can gather, it will be able to play used games, just not online. If you want to play a used copy online, looks like you’re going to have to pay a fee (the amount of which is not known).  Microsoft has said that they are currently looking into a way to trade and sell game licenses online but haven’t disclosed any information yet.

Call of Duty: Ghosts launches this fall for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4 and every other platform you can think od.

Microsoft representatives have confirmed that their next gen system, Xbox One, will not necessarily require an “always online” internet connection to play games. The infrastructure will however make use of consoles that are “always on” by enabling streaming services and other internet related apps. Microsoft elaborated on their statements by clarifying that most games should function normally without an “always online” internet connection.  However, it was also mentioned that this functionality will ultimately be up to the individual game publishers, meaning that if a publisher wanted to make their game completely inaccessible without an internet connecting, they could.

Microsoft also dropped a megaton bomb by confirming that the Xbox One will require games to be manually installed to the system’s 500gb HD, thus tying the individual game to a specific Xbox Live account. Although this will allow for the convenience of playing games without the disc after an initial install, it means that the installed game won’t be playable on another system unless the secondary user pays a fee.

This doesn’t just influence used games sold in stores, but also games traded or borrowed between friends. Thinking about taking your new copy of Halo 5 over to a buddy’s house? Well not unless you’re willing to pay an additional fee, or lug over your own Xbox One! It was not clear whether or not this secondary user activation would negate the first user’s ownership of the game.

Microsoft did not disclose the exact cost of this secondary user fee.

UPDATE: Okay, it sort of does, but it get’s tricky. In a recently posted Q/A at the Xbox press site, Microsoft tackled the always on issue with some of the most confusing verbiage you’ll see:

“No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet. We’re designing Xbox One to be your all-in-one entertainment system that is connected to the cloud and always ready. We are also designing it so you can play games and watch Blu-ray movies and live TV if you lose your connection. ”

Okay, so it doesn’t have to be on, but it does require a connection. Rumors suggest that the console will have to be connected to the internet at least once per day to back up saves on to the cloud. We’ll update if we hear anymore.

Jim Cutler brings in a Dr. Hecht to administer “complex vitamin superdoses” to the firm’s employees.

“You’re pretentious, you know that? I love that.” – John Mathis, to Ed Gifford

I’m going to warn you. This review will be packed with layer upon layer of thick, gooey irony. A wedding cake of metacommentary, if you will. The first layer, the foundation of my struggle, is that I’m not sure I can say anything that hasn’t already been said about Mad Men in general, or even about this episode by more reputable critics. Matt Zoller Seitz beat me to the punch on quoting John Mathis and using it as the jumping off point for analysis, as I did above. Todd VanDerWeff trademarked my initial theory that this episode is about the Mad Men writers grasping for an original, perfect idea and Alan Sepinwall eloquently articulated a recurring theme I picked up on—the absence or neglect of parents and the damage it does to our future selves (the episode ends with the sonf “Words of Love” by THE MAMAS AND THE PAPAS. Wow, Weiner, we get it. Paents affect how we love!)

So in my search to describe the subtext of this episode, I have inadvertently, and as I foreshadowed, ironically, proven the episode’s conceit. Of course, I doubt if pressed Matt Weiner would own up to this train of thought, but it seems obvious that this stylistically haphazard and narratively fractured hour was guided by an epic pursuit of cleverness. But how is one to feel about a show that strives to outsmart its audience? Is it alienating or endearing? As a fan, I’ll admit that Mad Men has had an air of smugness about it for some time. From its first season it was applauded for being “the smartest show on TV.” It annually earns multiple writing nominations, won Outstanding Drama Series four years running, and is the most intellectualized show probably in TV history. I know a lot of folks who just DON’T get it. They don’t find the droll humor amusing, they think all the characters are pitiful or too privileged to be deserving of sympathy, or they feel like nothing happens, even though in almost six seasons we’ve chronicled eight years of one of America’s most eventful decades.

I can’t exactly dispute their dislike. It’s not an uproariously funny, action-packed or happy-go-lucky show. It’s a show that dives further and further into a pit of despair with each season. It’s about people giving in to their worst tendencies time and again. It’s about people losing and losing people. It’s the white male equivalent of ROOTS (shoutout to my friend Jennifer for this insight)—a history of the oppressors becoming oppressed by their  own lack of identity and happiness.

It’s been asked repeatedly throughout the show’s run: who is Don Draper? Sometimes the show clumsily answers this questions through heavy-handed flashbacks like they did here. He’s ascribed an Oedipal complex where one of his only maternal figures during adolescence ends up being a prostitute who deflowered him. No wonder he has a screwed up relationship with women. He’s not used to being nurtured any other way than sexually, and the only way he knows how to love is when the person submits to his whims. It’s not an excuse for his narcissism, but it provides an illuminating context. And yet I’m left cold. This isn’t anything new. The Sopranos was the pioneer of mother-son issues, and I’ve often compared the two because it often seems like Matt Weiner is calling attention to himself lying its shadow. A charismatic but depressed male who sociopathy can be tracked back to his parents has long been a psychological trope, but now it’s a TV trope. But it’s the common thread between both  Weiner and Draper that fascinates me. They cannot escape or exceed what came before.

I’m not suggesting that Homeland didn’t deserve the recognition it got. I thought it had the best debut season of a drama in quite some time. It’s hard to ignore, however, that it was the end of a dominant era. After four years of dwarfing the competition (although personally I thought Breaking Bad should have won for its third season), it had been dethroned. Why? The writing was still sharp, Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss and John Slattery were still dynamite performers, and it was still the sophisticated TV show that was fun to watch, too.

Or was it? What made the show so alluring was the mystery of whether Don would get his way. And he continues to despite brief fits of existential darkness. But is it still charming when he scores another beauty, or pathetic?

For me, Don Draper has undoubtedly become more despicable than dashing. His marriage to Megan is in many ways a lather, rinse, repeat of his marriage to Betty. And Sylvia is an amalgamation of Bobbie Barrett, Midge and Rachel Menken. Although she’s channeling Faye in the post mortem, dropping some knowledge bombs like “When you start something like this, it takes a lot of convincing.” Don is only as suave as his slickest pitch. And he’s been selling himself for as long as he’s been Don and not Dick. And occasionally that lost boy comes out. When he’s truly scared of losing what makes him feel whole. And it’s usually a women. When you deconstruct Don he’s really just an insecure little boy who wants to be loved but doesn’t know how to truly win someone’s affections because he’s so concerned with his own happiness. All women are some form of a prostitute to him—only as good as she is useful.

Back to Matt Weiner. Isn’t he, in reality, the man behind the handsome curtain? Don is only as successful as Matt Weiner allows him to be. And if Don has suddenly become the driver of a crashing vehicle, isn’t he to blame? So one of two things could be responsible for “The Crash.” Either the words that flowed like a river of seduction from Don’s lips aren’t as profound because Weiner has run out of material, or Weiner has decided that Don is past his prime and he’ll never live up to who he once was. Is the show’s voice slipping, or has Don lost his luster? Thematically speaking, I think Weiner has dropped enough hints that the insecurity exists more within the character than the creator. While this episode has some stumbling blocks which I will elaborate on in a bit, there are still some stunningly beautiful scenes. It’s Don whose a mess. Part of his decline is Father Time’s fault. The rest of the blame falls on his direct ancestry. But that doesn’t just mean a dysfunctional family. He’s trapped by his own patterns, his own ideas, his own mind. Personally, I don’t think a single one of his ads has topped “The Wheel” of season one. That was Don at the top of his game. And his batting average has dipped ever since.

This show is INCREDIBLY pretentious. It oozes self-importance. But that is Draper’s scent. And after six seasons it’s become a stench that lingers in every syllable uttered and frame shot. It’s hard not to feel contempt and disdain when you separate yourself from the screen and get into your own head space. Mad Men is a hoot and half while you’re immersed in it, but when you look back on it you are filled with regret and emptiness. Imagine how you’d feel if that was your life? And I don’t mean if you were a real life Don, Pete, Roger, Peggy, Joan or Betty. I mean what if you were writing for this show and your best days were behind you. There’s no more honeymoon phase, the awards aren’t being thrown at you like panties at a rock concert and your boss is striving to achieve perfection with and through you, but he’s reaching for something you all know will never come to pass. Now, I don’t think Weiner is as toxic as Don and I sure wouldn’t want him to think I’m saying that. But there does seem to be a lot of insider digs at the creative process that are voiced through the copywriters and other employees at the firm we’ll called the artists formerly known as SCDP & CGC.

For instance, how would you explain Ken Cosgrove tap dancing, rapping “It’s My Job” (gif below) for Don as he bitches about the hoops he has the jump through for Chevy (if that’s the audience stand-in, I’m frankly sickened by myself. Our expectations are way too high, and we nearly killed Kenny! Wait, different show). But I don’t blame him for feeling like a guy whose being asked to perform like a court jester for the client. They tell him they might not buy an ad for three years and yet they are exhausting themselves creatively and asking him to entertain them in the meantime. They’re toying with Ken because he’ll do just about anything to please them and his dance routine for Don is a reminder that he exerts the same kind of impossible pressure on his subordinates. Ken’s tapping feet are the answer to boss man Draper’s incessant “What have you got for me?”

And yet, the speed injections didn’t get any creative juices flowing, except for the meta-manic Mad Men writers themselves. On the shallowest level, it was a device, a frame within which the show could experiment. What would happen if Don’s clinginess to Sylvia coincided with a sleepless, drug-fueled creativity binge. What kind of obsessive, half-baked solution would he dream up? The answer: oatmeal. He jumped into the archives and pulled out old oatmeal copy that triggers his memory of a coughing, younger self being taken care of by Aimee, who later shoved her heaving bosom in his face as she REALLY took care of him. But when he tries to sell this to Ginsberg and Peggy, Ginsberg gets worked up thinking he’s stumbled upon brilliance by going back to basics, but suddenly realizes he wasn’t working on Chevy at all. He was working on the pitch that mattered most—winning back Sylvia.

The drug-induced, almost dreamlike environment allowed them to play with new characters as well, with mixed results. We’re introduced to Wendy as a future-reading hippie but she’s actually the promiscuous teenage daughter of the deceased Frank Gleason. She deals with her grief by riding Stan Rizzo who is relieving himself of his own grief over his cousin being KIA and rebounding from a rejection from Peggy. Wendy listens to Don’s heart and tells him “it’s broken.” In a bit of dark humor, he asks her how she can hear that and she responds that the stethoscope is broken because she can’t hear anything. It’s not softly delivered, but it’s not a hammered in either.

The other nightmarish addition is Ida the Thieving Mammy. For the folks of color who regard Mad Men as too whitewashed, this was a highlight reel of sorts. When Sally is left to watch her brothers by Megan who is attending an important event and expected Don to be home, a black woman walks in unannounced and starts rummaging through cabinets. Two things offended me about this subplot. One, Sally has been shown to be smarter than this. And Ida’s vague answers about her father like “he’s handsome” and “is your mother still a piece of work?” were all so clearly nonspecific that I expected her to pick up on her nefarious intentions much quicker. Second, Jesus was Ida drummed up from the mind of a racist.

Now, I’m not saying Weiner or anyone on his staff is racist, but it’s like they constructed someone who sprung from a prejudiced paranoia. She sweet talks her way into the children’s hearts then assures the police officer Sally later calls that everything is fine, and robs the Draper residence blind. While the payoff of Sally saying that she hardly knows her dad was rewarding, and it was an interesting tie-in to the theme of parental neglect and being trapped by those who came before, it was an awfully clumsy journey to the point. For a series that has notoriously avoided the issue of race in favor of deep examinations into gender I can’t tell you how disappointing it was to not only see a black character used so manipulatively, but to see one portrayed so decidedly evil. She dressed like a stereotype, and acted like a rich white man’s worst suspicion of his housekeeper. Not at all a worthwhile departure from the norm.

Ah, but there was a destination that suggested this whole trip in metafictional wonderland was worth it. Again, Mad Men may be past the days of subtle and smart delivery, but when he told Cutler and Chaough he would still evaluate work but not actively pursue Chevy because “every time we get a car this place turns into a whorehouse” I squeaked a little with glee. PROGRESS! There may be hope for Don Draper yet. He’s learning his limits, he’s not chasing after every skirt or sexy automobile (he even resisted conversing with Sylvia in the elevator) and he’s more aware than ever how his past dictates his future.

He’s a breed of man becoming extinct as those who were silenced are rallying against the monochromatic power structure. So maybe his fate is as inevitable as the season premiere suggested. But if there’s one thing Matt Weiner showed us with this episode, doing the same thing over and over again can yield different lessons for us. Eventually, the people that came before us will fade away and we’re only left with who we are. And slowly but surely Don is deciding he doesn’t like himself anymore. And there’s hope if he can reconcile who he was with who he can be.

And maybe this break from form will signal more than a return to form from Weiner as well. If you noticed, this was an entirely self-indulgent endeavor just like many of Don’s affairs. Joan was absent (the only explanation for why that office could become a whorehouse) while Pete and Roger barely poked their heads in. Now that Don has seen his darker self in the rearview mirror, maybe the show can look forward to giving other characters redemptive arcs. Pete has been pretty miserable, Roger could use some perking up and Joan may have a good man in the wings with Bob Benson. I don’t think a needle in his hindquarters solved all the woes of wandering Dick Whitman, but he’s freed from the clutches of prostitution—whoring himself out to clients and turning lovers into his whores, so maybe his forebears won’t hold him back as much.

As for the show, it may not be the fun foray into a bygone era anymore, but it could be becoming something far more interesting—who we are now. Think about it. Maybe the reason we don’t like what we’re seeing, is it’s a reflection of who we were, and how far we have or haven’t come since. After all, no idea is original. It had to come from somewhere. What’s within us has a history. And as Don tries to sell Peggy, that’s what holds us together. But as Matt Weiner shows us, it’s also what keeps us apart. It’s why Peggy can’t accept Stan’s advances, why she tells him that he has to feel the loss to get over it. It can’t be dampened by drugs and sex.

And this applies to this show, too. While the booze, cigarettes, sex and even the shots of Vitamin B give it a gloss that makes the pain easier to bear, without feeling the agony of separating from what we once had, we end up splintered into fractions of a soul. There’s no Dick, no Don, only broken pieces of a heart that belongs to no one, because he couldn’t let go. So Weiner, let go of the four Emmys and give yourself over to the new Mad Men. And it’s okay to resent what you’ve already done. It’s more than healthy. Just maybe don’t do a whole episode where you whine (cleverly, of course) about how hard it is to come up with something new and really be something new.

Welcome to Blast Magazine’s LIVE coverage of Microsoft’s long-awaited press event where they are expected to be unveiling their next generation console. We’ll be live blogging the entire event right here, as it happens, with bullet points highlighting all the major announcements, so make sure to keep refreshing this page as new details emerge!

The conference will take place at Microsoft’s home base in Redmond Washington at  at 10:00 a.m. PDT (1:00 p.m. EST). Make sure to check in then to learn all the juicy details!

• [12:35 p.m. EST] 15 minutes left on the countdown clock.  Could this thing actually start early?
• [12:47 p.m. EST] 2 minutes and counting…
• [12:50 p.m. EST] a NEW 10-minute counter has started, now with intense music.  Seriously?
• [1:00 p.m. EST] Don Mattrick takes the stage.
• [1:04 p.m. EST] Big news coming at E3.
• [1:06 p.m. EST] Microsoft wants their next console to be an “all-in-one system”.
• [1:07 p.m. EST] New console is titled Xbox one. CONFIRMED
• [1:08 p.m. EST] It’s black, rectangular, and comes with a beefed up Kinect and a meatier looking Xbox 360 controller.
• [1:10 P.M. EST] Device can turn on and control other devices via voice control.
• [1:11 P.M. EST] New dashboard page shows what’s trending with people on your friend’s list and around Xbox Live.
• [1:12 P.M. EST] Feature called Instant Switching can switch between web browser, live television, games, or movies.  All via voice control.
• [1:13 P.M. EST]  Snap Mode allows multiple windows to be open at once, allowing use of multiple apps at once. Also, Skype group video calls can be used in snap mode, while using other apps such as TV or movies.
• [1:17 P.M. EST] The Xbox One Guide allows voice and motion control navigation to scroll through a live TV guide. Looks very similar to Netflix.
• [1:20 P.M. EST] Xbox One uses 8GB of Ram. Has a Blu-Ray drive.
• [1:24 P.M. EST] New Kinect sensor, which ships with Xbox One, processes 2GB of data per second. Has a 1080p HD camera. Can read a heartbeat.
• [1:26 P.M. EST] Smart Glass is heavily integrated with Xbox One. The new Kinect sensor identifies individual player upon picking up controller.
• [1:29 P.M. EST]  New Xbox Live service will be powered by 300,000 servers.  Player content will automatically be stored in the cloud.  Will have a dedicated gameplay DVR.  Games will be bigger and allow for much more players.
• [1:30 P.M. EST] Andrew Wilson from EA announces a “special relationship” with Microsoft. FIFA, Madden, NBA Live 14, and a new UFC game will all be launched within the next 12 months. All powered by a new EA game engine named IGNITE.
• [1:33 P.M. EST] Sports games will have a daily stream of new content. FIFA 14 Ultimate Team will have Microsoft exclusive content.
• [1:39 P.M. EST] Phil Spencer from Microsoft Studios shows off Forza Motorsport 5 on Xbox One.  Will be a launch title.
• [1:42 P.M. EST] Spencer claims 15 exclusive titles are being developed for Xbox One, 8 of which are new IPs.
• [1:47 P.M. EST] Bonnie Ross from 343 Industries announces the live action, Halo: The Television Series in collaboration with Steven Spielberg.
• [1:50 P.M. EST] A partnership with NFL allows for Xbox One exclusive, interactive content, such as fantasy football integration.
• [1:53 P.M. EST] Launch date is “later this year”. More titles and launch games will be shown at E3.
• [1:59 P.M. EST] All Call of Duty DLC will launch first on Xbox One.  Call of Duty: Ghosts is powered by a “next-gen engine”. Ghosts campaign written by Stephen Gaghan. It will have a “lean/peak” feature to see around corners, seamless jumps over low walls, and a slide maneuver. Multiplayer maps will be “dynamic” and can be altered by players.
• [2:03 P.M. EST] Call of Duty Ghosts trailer shown using in-game engine.  Demonstrates lots of various environments, set pieces, scuba diving in a tropical locale.

And with that final Call of Duty trailer, the event is over.  To see it in its entirety for yourself, jump on your Xbox 360 to watch the entire event on demand. Also, make sure to check back in with BlastMagazine later on for a more comprehensive look at the Xbox One and its lineup.

Not content to let Microsoft have the spotlight with their big reveal tomorrow, Sony has released a brand new teaser showing blurry images of the yet to be seen PS4 console.

If you squint enough, you can see the console, and some of it’s specifics. Here’s what we know:

- It’s black

- It’s a box

-It’s got vents

So, not much to go on, but the video promises a big reveal during this year’s E3 conference in LA.

Last year’s Madden wasn’t bad, but it sure didn’t allow you to set tortilla soup prices.  Fear not young pigskin fan — Owner mode returns in this Summer’s Madden NFL 25.

The new version of owner mode allows players to literally obsesses over every aspect of their franchise’s creation, from the concession prices to what you say to the media. Be warned though, everything you do will be judged by your staff, the media and of course your fans.

The new owner mode also returns the ability to relocate teams to entirely new stadiums. Want to give Hollywood a team? Send the Jags. Want a Canadian team? Send the Jags. Be warned though, if any of you move my beloved Packers from Titletown — I will find you.

Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) and Sansa (Sophie Turner) are forced into marriage.

The lonely, the defeated and the ones with the most to lose share the spotlight this week in a return to form episode that makes up for the wildly lackluster one from the previous week. This week’s focus takes us to a wedding at King’s Landing, a courtship between a sellsword and a mother of dragons, and to a masqueraded dungeon where sharing the blood of king means sacrificial death. It’s the first episode where I’ve felt Davos as a fully realized character with idiosyncrasies and depth, it’s the first episode of the season where Peter Dinklage has gotten to tout the skills that made him such a force of nature in the second season, and it’s the first of the season that’s dedicated enough time to Sansa’s character so that we’re allowed more of the character that the naivety front.

It’s the last bit that thoroughly entertains this week—whether it is upsetting or delightful.

It’s the wedding day for Tyrion and Sansa but they’re bereft of the pleasantries and bells and whistles that come along with other ceremonies, which seem fitting for such an oddly placed pair.

The first shot of Sansa cleverly shows a doll in the far corner of the screen, juxtaposed with her being dressed for her marriage. She’s very young in all senses of the word, only fourteen years old and still new to the outside world having most of her years spent in Winterfell and King’s Landing. Despite this and the fact that it’s made abundantly clear how young she is throughout the entirety of the episode, a running theme, Sansa is no longer a child by any means. She keeps a childlike spirit in hoping for the best and trying to search for the ever shrinking silver linings, but she isn’t dimwitted, she isn’t as ignorant as those around her (and the audience) seem to believe. She’s been wearing a carefully crafted mask since she’s watched her father die at the hand of her sadistic betrothed. Sophie Turner has grown up before our eyes into a finely tuned actress and with Sansa we’ve watched a young girl grow more and more accustomed to the safety of caution.

Tyrion goes to have a quiet moment with Sansa before they’re forced to marry and tells her in private that he’s sorry. That he knows he could never be the husband of her dreams and that it wasn’t his wish for this to happen. But, he promises her, he’ll never hurt her and he believes that he knows how she’s feeling.

She doubts it. Tyrion to her still has power and wealth and those two things should create happiness, while she has nothing. No family to attend her wedding, no father to give her away, nothing to her name as long as she’s married to a Lannister.

He tells her that they both don’t know what the other’s feeling then. Because Tyrion is feeling trapped, both of them kept at King’s Landing by circumstances beyond their control, both with feelings of absolute vulnerability in the hands of Joffery or Tywin. These two characters are interestingly enough two of the most engaging as well as sympathetic characters.

Joffery walks Sansa down the aisle because as he points out, her father is dead and as “father of the realm” it’s his duty to give her away. Turner plays the frozen terror and resolute acceptance beautifully here and she walks towards her husband-to-be through a crowd of unfriendly faces.

What follows is an example in just how many uncomfortable scenes I can handle as Tyrion must robe Sansa but due to Joffery being who he is, he has taken his step ladder. Instead he must tell Sansa to kneel down, disgracing them both in the process in the eyes of the kingdom.

Later Tyrion is messy drunk and Sansa asks to be excused from having to bear witness to her own humiliation. Tywin on the other hand cannot allow his son to make such a mockery of the entire ceremony and tells him that this day hasn’t been about the marriage, but about the consummation of the marriage. Margaery and Renly were married, but it made little difference in the end when she didn’t have a son to carry out his name. Tywin tells Tyrion that it’s his job to impregnate Sansa in order to have any stake in the lands her name brings.

Joffery is trying to goad the couple into their bedding ceremony when Tyrion puts a stop to it. When Joffery tries to push more Tyrion fires back in such a menacing manner that it’s not surprising Joffery reacted not only in indignation, but fear.

Tywin tells them all to settle down as Sansa and Tyrion make their way to their chamber, solemn and intoxicated.

We get a beautiful scene between the two as Tyrion tells her after she’s accepted her fate that they don’t have to sleep together. That they won’t ever have to share a bed until she wishes it to be.

And what if that is never her want, she asks him, steely and strong in a way we haven’t gotten to see of Sansa in quite some time.

Tyrion studies her and says “And so my watch begins.” For what exactly? Words of the Nightswatch and in this sense is him saying he’s choosing a life of celibacy with his now wife, or is saying he’ll wait until she’s ready? Is this him acknowledging his sentence into a loveless marriage?

Peter Dinklage is brilliant in this episode reminding all viewers of his tour de force capabilities. He is a fantastic actor who has the ability to be threatening, warm, comedic and heartbreaking in mere moments. He’s crafted such a persona for Tyrion that it’s almost difficult to discern the actor from the character—aside from the often iffy accent. We haven’t been privy to a true performance from Dinklage so far this season so to see such a large portion of time dedicated to him was thrilling to see and reminded me of what I was missing. Throw on top the talents of Turner and the couple’s interesting rapport this might have been the most interesting character development this season so far and I can’t wait to see the furthering of the dynamic.

Now that I’ve gushed, here’s what happened across the sea.

Deanery’s is continuing her badass streak and has managed to convince one of three sell swords to kneel for her but not out of faith or power but because this man, Daario, respects beauty and intends to protect it.

Because you know, priorities.

This is a defining moment for Dany not only because it introduces yet another crucial character for her survival but it shows her embracing her place in the world.

It’s one of the few times on the show I’ve felt that nudity was used to enhance the plot.

At the start of the episode she was saying that men cannot afford losing gold to a girl and later played up the idea that as a woman she knew nothing about wars, allowing a fellow sell sword to demean her because of her gender.

Yet when Daario goes to her and tells her he’ll fight for him after killing his two comrades.  Why should this inspire trust she asks him? Because he did it for her after they told him to kill her.

So she stands up in the bath allowing him to gaze at her and she robes and it’s powerful. She rejects the idea of modesty because she is not one for him to use just for her beauty, but also must respect her.

Now there are no secrets.

At Dragonstone, Melisandre is using sex for tricky actions as she seduces Gendry in the name of her Lord of Light. Yet the seduction becomes a bit too much for him when she ties him to the bed only to bring out leeches and place them on his body.

All of this to prove a point. Stannis, earlier in the episode had released Davos despite the latter’s concern over Stannis’s agenda. Davos believes that it is cruel to kill a boy whose only crime is his birth father, believing that it’s murder. Stannis says its sacrifice but Davos says they’re different words with the same definitions. He’s killing a boy and Davos spent his life trying to shield his own sons from death. He tells Stannis that who are these Gods who wish for death when he’s spent his life using said gods to ensure peaceful dreams for his sons.

Despite this, Stannis still lets him free only to see the tail end of the leech torture. Stannis had told Davos that he’d seen a great, wintry battle in the fire, and he wants to prove the power of royal blood.

Stannis tosses three leeches into the fire, calling the names of Balon Greyjoy, Robb Stark, and Joffery. The three greatest threats to his kingdom.

Arya is allowed a small but significant scene as we find her stuck traveling with the Hound who tells her that she can try to kill him if she wishes, but it will only hurt her instead. She’s believed this whole time that he was taking her back to King’s Landing but he tells her he’s bringing her to her mother and brother since they’ll pay him for her. The look of joy on Maisie Williams’ face is so earnest and so hopeful that you can’t help but hope she sees her family soon.

The last scene of the episode is one that I guess is important to the plot but also one I could care less about. Sam and Gilly have found refuge but soon find themselves under threat when a white walker comes searching for her baby boy. Just as it appears that the white walker will succeed we see Sam grow some courage and stabs it in the back with the dragonglass blade he’s had on him for a while now.

And it kills it, shattering it to pieces, as Gilly and Sam run away.

More than anything this signifies that white walkers can be killed, but with some very deadly tools. It also allows Sam a moment of bravery of which he is typically lacking.

This episode is successful not necessarily because it moves the plot along, because honestly by the end I don’t know if we’ve actually made any progressive steps, but it allows for some wonderfully acted character moments that can make or break an episode. We don’t get another episode for two weeks which will be the penultimate episode—which in the series’ history has always been the highlight of the season.

Do you think this one will continue the trend?

Hey guys, we’re back! Did you you miss us?  Eh, don’t answer that.  Let’s just move on.

Speaking of moving on, you may have noticed that we’re also now on TheKillRay.com?  We’re now officially podcasting for The KillRay as well, so you know what that means!  It’s time to once again push our limits and see what our new overlords will let us get away with!  This episode includes:

• A game bringing us up to date with all the happenings within geek culture since our last episode.
• Joe’s new found love affair with the 3DS and vodka filled mason jars.
• An inevitably heated discussion about some recent big-budget titles including Dead Island: Riptide and Bioshock Infinite. (SPOILER WARNING)
• Our predictions for tomorrow’s Microsoft announcement.

Remember, if you’ve got something to say, don’t be shy!  Give us an earful at facebook.com/8bitproof! Tell us where to cram it on Twitter @8BitProof. Or just send us some good old fashioned hate mail at 8bitproof@gmail.com.

(WARNING:  Explicit language, NSFW)

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Clara (Jenna Louise-Coleman) and the Doctor (Matt Smith) look upon his tomb.

The season seven finale of Doctor Who exemplifies what it looks like when Steven Moffat goes on an odyssey up his own ass.

Or, in a more finely tuned manner of speaking, it’s what happens when Moffat is allowed to pen the episode and ends up with a scotch taped and glued together narrative and an arrogance that believes it can rewrite not only episodic canonical lore of the last five years, but the last fifty.

This isn’t just the season finale, it isn’t just the long awaited episode that was supposed to answer the fans’ numerous questions, but it was also the last episode before the 50^th anniversary episode that months in advanced is already being wildly hyped up by Moffat and the media alike.

And if this is the predecessor to Moffat’s big plans and big ideas, then quite frankly as a fan I’m nervous of the havoc his ego could wreak on such a monumental episode in television and science fiction history.

Before the credits, we’re granted a scene that while it isn’t necessarily awe-inspiring, is at the very least sweetly nostalgic for Who fans. We see Clara, the impossible girl, floating through time and space and CGI’d golden mist as she continuously manages to save the Doctor from bouts of bad luck or terror. And there are plenty, but sadly he cannot see her and she can’t figure out where or who she is. All she knows is that her purpose is to always save the Doctor.

The episode starts on a note that signifies the recurring theme of disappointment throughout the episode’s runtime. We’re met up again with this season’s favorite trio: the green lady, her lover and the human peanut, and we’re supposed to enjoy them

Well, I don’t. They’re eating up my screentime.

They’ve called upon a meeting when they realize that the Doctor’s livelihood is at stake and need to call two more people: the women. One is Clara, the other River.

And of course the two when beckoned share a brief moment of awkwardness in the other’s presence, both believing that the other is too close with the Doctor.

Because hey, how could two women get along with their emotional sensibilities and easy rise to jealousy?

They soon realize that something has gone wrong with Jenny seemingly being murdered by members of the Great Intelligence. The others are kidnapped, all but River and Clara, the latter who wakes up to the Doctor there, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

His mood shifts instantly from goofily joyous to utterly exhausted distress.

Matt Smith’s facial tics here are wonderful to watch play out and it’s easy to assume that you’ve missed a subtlety in only viewing it once. Clara repeats what she’s heard at the meeting and the name of the planet where the Doctor learns his darkest secret is held.

Smith does much with the little he’s given and this is one of the many instances where his acting can manage to elevate the poorly written premise. It’s problematic when the actor is forced to distract the viewers from plot holes but Smith is always reliable and manages to produce heart and warmth in an episode that for the most part left me cold. When Clara and him travel to the planet and he mourns his predestined death and laments the lack of a peaceful end, it’s shockingly morose and we as the audience, long fans of the character, find it hard to believe that such a being could in fact meet his end.

However, the moments of depth are short lived and soon we’re trespassing into the tomb of the Doctor, the TARDIS blown to the sky, where database River is linked mentally with Clara to help the Doctor and her quietly. I love River, I love how Alex Kingston plays her, and I do not like it when Moffat writes for her.

Here’s the gist of what goes down: the Doctor sees his friends under threat and so does River, River says the Doctor’s name to open his crypt where we find the energy of all of his time streams in the midst of a broken down TARDIS. The Great Intelligence jumps into the stream to scatter his soul amongst millions and millions of moments so that he can turn every single one of the Doctor’s victories into a failure, so that he can ruin the lives he’s saved and so forth. This causes the Doctor to crumple in agony as all of his past lives die at once, his body in shock. Clara having realized earlier that she remembers the Doctor telling her he’d met her twice before in other lives, realizes she too must jump into the stream as well. However in her case, she’ll be constantly chasing after the Doctors to save him. She’s the impossible girl and all she has to say to the Doctor is:

“Run you clever boy, and remember me.” Sentimental and played wonderfully by Jenna Louise-Coleman, however the abrupt fix to the issue at hand almost manages to negate a moment we’ve been waiting for the entire season.

The Doctor tells River he sees her and they say goodbye in a way the promises a future, Kingston and Smith displaying with ease their chemistry and the Doctor then, because three’s a party, ALSO jumps into his time stream and saves Clara.

This has to break every rule of paradoxes ever but Moffat only likes his timey wimey accuracy when it befits him as a writer.

The Doctor finds her, traumatized and alone and fearing that he is simply a memory. He convinces her, saying that after all of the times she’s saved him, let him save her just this once.

Just as they’re about to get to safety they see a lone figure standing in the dust and rubble, and the Doctor tells Clara with regret that it’s him, but a less than favorable version. A version who will forgo the title of Doctor for his own means, leaving bitter memories in his wake.

Such bitter memories that apparently we’ve never known he’s existed.

He’s the Doctor, played by John Hurt, and he’s come into play conveniently with no preamble just in time for the 50^th anniversary.

I am massively agitated by the episode not necessarily because it was flat out bad: although I believe I could make a decent argument that that was the case. No, the annoyance lies in every singular moment that could have been amazing and shocking but instead was dull and oversaturated with an uppity air that lends one to believe that Moffat truly believes he surprised us.

From interwebs rumblings most fans had guessed not only the Clara subplot but also the John Hurt twist. Fans are difficult to trick these days.

Matt Smith and Jenna Louise-Coleman are such beautifully intricate performers that it’s easy to forget the numerous negatives about this episode but here’s a few off the top of my head:

1. The unnecessary character moments with Strax, Jenny and Madame Vastra. We don’t care about them. There is nothing in me despite well-timed exposition about how they’d helped the Doctor after the dark ages (right after Amy and Rory died) that makes me believe that these three are some of the closest friends he has in the universe. Just because we’ve seen their faces a number of times doesn’t mean I’m sold.

2. The rapid pace of Clara’s storyline that manages to take away any emotional impact. She sacrificed herself and was saved five minutes later. There was zero stakes involved, no stress, no will she or won’t she survive. It was predictable.

3. The notion that spectacle equates good. Sure Who fans love a good show of things, the big and the bad and the magical, but it’s the emotional tug that allows the show to subvert it’s genre and make it so compelling. I love the makeup and the costumes but Moffat’s idea that we’ve all been anxiously sitting on the edge of our seats awaiting the name of the Doctor is absurd. We’ve gone decades without knowing, I’m in no rush to figure it out now.

4. The sweet moments were rushed in order to keep a convoluted plot moving. We saw the Doctor’s pain, regret, fury and acceptance over his fate in mere seconds and while it was wonderful, it also would have been nice to allow the moment to be explored. To add a sense of serenity and complexity that would make the following adventure all the more exciting. Sometime the calm before the storm is necessary. Anything to do with River was given the offhand treatment even though at this point in the Doctor’s timeline, River is already in the library. The moment where the Doctor says that it isn’t his name the matters but the name he chose for himself—the Doctor—that holds significance.

5. Moffat

I love this show, I love Matt Smith and think he has a brilliant acting career ahead of him, but I’m sick of the disappointing finales this show has turned in the past two seasons because of the creator’s belief that they’ve  managed to create an idea so clever that it outweighs the narrative and historical context of the show.

I hope the 50^th anniversary is brilliant, I hope season eight impresses me and they sign Neil Cross on to write more episodes considering he and Smith are the MVPs of the season. I hope I’m excited when I begin to see promos in the fall.

As of now, I’m disappointed because lackluster is never the term you want to apply to a show that promises so much more.

Earlier this week we saw a new teaser trailer for this Fall’s Batman: Arkham Origins, now we’re getting our first hint at some of the game’s content. Spotted by the folks over at The Slanted, pre-ordering the game (oh, you thought it would be free) at Amazon comes with brand new DLC that allows you to play as Deathstroke, who was featured heavily in the teaser trailer.

It’s currently unknown if the DLC is for challenge maps ala the previous Arkham games or new, original content. Stay tuned, the game will be fully revealed this week.

Oh, and in case you hadn’t seen it — here’s the trailer

When Microsoft reveals the “next generation of Xbox” this Tuesday, a new console won’t be the only announcement as Activision and Infinity Ward has promised us that we’ll also get our first look at Ghosts, the next entry in the long running Call of Duty series. The official Call of Duty Twitter feed posted this, which is technically our first look at the game in motion.

Okay, so it isn’t much — but it does look promising, especially the shot of the soldier walking around the forrest, and it’s also technically the first footage of a supposed game running on the next Xbox.  Stick with Blast this Tuesday for all of your Call of Duty: Ghosts and Next Xbox developments.

Joan (Lucy Liu) and Irene (Natalie Dormer) at the brownstone apartment.

Irene Adler was the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes.

And it turns out that Joan Watson was the one to save him.

I don’t believe I could be happier with a finale.

Sherlock believes he has his old Irene back but it’s soon clear that she is a mere fragment of what she once was, plagued by PTSD after a year and a half of being held captive by a mystery man, a man Sherlock wholeheartedly believes to be Moriarty.

Despite this he chooses to remove him from the case, believing his judgment to be clouded and that he would be better suited to be helping Irene adjust, believing that her fate was his fault and his alone.

So, Watson is on this case alone.

This episode also dedicates a portion of its time as flashbacks to how Irene and Sherlock first met and the intrigue that would draw such personalities together. She was witty and smarter than he anticipated and he was an enigma to her, constantly surprising and neither of them found each other bored in the others presence.

They flirt a romance, they  fall hard for one another and then one day, after they’ve grown so close, Sherlock finds what appears to be a pool of Irene’s blood in the middle of his apartment.

Which makes the ultimate deception all the more heartbreaking.

Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones) and Jonny Lee Miller share a wonderful chemistry that makes this romance so ultimately tragic. While it was nice to see Miller play love struck and for Dormer to tout out an impressive American accent, what was more interesting was to watch their mutual self-destruction in each other’s presence. Sherlock drops everything to help her as a means of penance and of love. She’s playing mind games to try and force him to leave with her.

It even manages to make Sherlock pause his and Watson’s partnership as he tells her he’s leaving to be with Irene but Watson sees this as playing straight into Moriarty’s hands, running and hiding and consistently playing into the chase.

All of this comes to a crashing halt when a birth mark of all things makes Sherlock believe that Irene isn’t telling him the whole truth. In yet another powerful scene from Miller, Sherlock grabs her and demands her to tell him the truth but she says that it’s just his mind playing tricks on him again, that his gift is also his curse and that when he wants answers too badly his mind may place them there despite the legitimacy behind them.

Irene is furious and storms out and that’s when the clues fall into place.

A man after Irene and Sherlock walks into Sherlock’s apartment and manages to get one shot fired in him before he’s shot and killed. By who?

We all knew that Irene wasn’t going to be entirely what she seemed but I’m sure plenty didn’t expect Moriarty. There were suspicions of hallucinations, twin sisters, and scorned woman trope where she joins Moriarty to hurt Sherlock for hurting her, etc.

The shock when she walks through the door holding a gun after just killing a man with her American accent dropped is truly deserved. What a brilliant character.

There a number of reasons why this character worked. She was calculating, she wasn’t petty, she wasn’t “fridged” (a term for when a female character is killed off for no other purpose than to create man pain), she wasn’t trying to seek revenge as a jilted lover, she was played beautifully by Natalie Dormer and she ultimately won.

Too bad Joan was there to beat her when Sherlock was too wrapped up in his own head space to think clearly. Sherlock has been shot, is refusing pain medication and is this close to flying off the handle and Joan can spot the potential relapse a mile away. So she takes things into her own hands when she gets an impromptu invite to lunch by Moriarty herself.

They sit and they goad and Irene realizes that Joan isn’t afraid of her and Joan says she’s too angry to be. And man, when they allow Lucy Liu to exude that silent ferocity of hers it’s damn captivating. She’s putting on a show just like Moriarty is now, smiling and taking it in and listening to her threats all the while devising her own plan of action, all the while calculating a plan of action on how to take her down.

Moriarty likened herself to Sherlock, saying they’re too similar to stay apart and that there’s a reason for their mutual attraction. However, her lust for power and his curiosity are on much different scales. It’s Watson who most closely resembles Sherlock. A brief glance would tell you that the former is the closer option, with the two of them being absurdly calculating and able to sense the other’s need for control over aspects of their lives. They’re both addicts in their own way whether it be in knowledge, wealth or drugs, they’re personalities are drawn to the bold. Yet Watson and Sherlock share the need and the want to help, to allow a story to unfold, to allow the innocent to walk that way for another day to come.

Moriarty doesn’t quite feel the same.

So during Sherlock’s tipping point when Joan begins to see that he could lose everything he’s gained she tells him to stop the game, to put his pride on hold and to lose. Let Moriarty win.

And so he does in a grand display of theater. He fakes an overdose and is rushed to the hospital where Irene visits because despite herself she can’t help but be drawn to this man who has confounded her, royally screwed up her plans and along the process has managed to stick.

Needless to say the plan goes accordingly and she’s taken away as Sherlock tells her that there are now two people in the world who can surprise the two of them and that’s Watson.

The last scene shows our duo on the top of their apartment and Sherlock is telling Watson of a new breed of bee he’s found in his hive and she realizes in an oddly sweet scene that he’s named it after her.

As opposed to the start of the season where beekeeping seemed to be more of an annoyance to Watson than anything else, this time she looks on happy and joins him to watch the progression of the bees start to life.

This is the note to end on with our pair of consultant detectives together with a friendship that has grown exponentially. It’s telling that Sherlock would name something so precious to him after her, especially considering the idea that it’s a new breed just as Watson is a new “breed” of person to him. He’s had family that he’s held with disdain, acquaintances that have been a means to an end, and a woman who’s utterly destroyed him, and now he has someone who is simply and genuinely a friend.

A constant theme throughout the entirety of the episode is this notion that Sherlock is a broken being, a man who’s lost much, loved little, and has seen the one person he held dearest torn from him only to be returned in the form of a sinister shape shifter. And for once I don’t see it. There have been moments of vulnerability in the first season that have suggested a broken Sherlock, a sad Sherlock, one who’s tired of his game. But never has there been a defeated Sherlock in the way that Moriarty is trying to sell us. Because Sherlock didn’t win Moriarty sees it to herself to reassemble the puzzle of the man to create an illusion of the past man all the while attempting to put his pieces back together just so, so that he will be everything she needs him to be. With the needle in his arm she sees something beautiful.

Something she can manipulate.

Watson on the other hand never lost hope in Sherlock. She didn’t waiver in her caution to allow him to pursue the case, a luxury Captain Gregson was all too happy to take away. She doesn’t see vulnerability as a means of weakness but instead with Sherlock she sees someone entirely human, entirely breakable, but also someone with some fight in him. He’s isn’t hopeless and without guide and he has her by his side.

This is why I think this show is such a wonderful piece of work. They’ve taken twenty-four episodes worth of time and managed to sink our characters to their lowest of the lows, bond the characters together all the while creating an interest between audience and character, and even managed to bring a woman back from the dead and throughout all of that there were some surprises to be had.

Even after the entire season I’m still seeing multiples of other critics comparing this show to BBC’s Sherlock and writing about how while Elementary impressed, it still hasn’t reached the former’s quality. Which is a shame where I believe that other shows should be taking a keen notice in what Elementary is doing and following suit. While they’re not always top notch at creating cases that work in a systematic way, they always convince me that the characters are truly developing a friendship, they manage to not subject the female characters and/or violence that exploit female sexuality as a means of ratings or shock value, and they’ve managed to engage with an audience that so closely follows the origins.

I have many things I could say about the season finale but the one that truly sticks is the idea that Holmes is human. He is not a robotic fixture, he isn’t closed off and alone and he doesn’t know how to turn off the feelings and emotions that ravage him: his humility, his Watson and his warmth make for such a compelling trio that it’s difficult to accept that we have to wait throughout the entire summer to meet up with them again and to see what game is afoot this time.

It’s like Iron Man, but you know..with lots of super hero sex. You knew it would come to this…

Then EA President John Riccitello promises an “unprecedented partnership” with EA and Nintendo at E3

An EA spokesperson has told Kotaku that they currently have no games in development for Nintendo’s Wii U console.  No NHL, no Madden, No Battlefield, No Star Wars. Nothing.

The news comes as a bit of a surprise, as EA was one of the first third party studios to throw their support behind Nintendo’s console. Releasing Madden NFL 13, FIFA Soccer 13 and Mass Effect 3 for the console, and most recently released Need for Speed Most Wanted. EA was also a major part of Nintendo’s E3 2012 press conference, promising an “unprecedented partnership.”

Blast has reached out to both Nintendo and EA. We’ll update this story if we hear anything.

After nine long seasons, we finally say goodbye to the Office and our favorite bunch of paper sales workers from Scranton, PA tonight. The episode, airing tonight on NBC will feature the wedding of Dwight and Angela along with what looks to be a Q&A with the employees of Dunder Mifflin following the airing of the documentary filmed over the shows run. One question still remains though — will Steve Carell make an appearance as former Regional Manager Michael Scott?

Office show runners have given a slew of reasons why Carell wouldn’t make an appearance, citing that the star wasn’t available at the time the finale was shot and that bringing the character back after the sendoff he was given tewo seasons ago wouldn’t feel right. “I think Steve felt, and I agree, that the ‘Goodbye, Michael’ episode was his goodbye and he didn’t want to overshadow the ending that all the other characters deserved,” US Show runner Greg Daniels said in a recent interview. Another former star, Mindy Kaling, who played Kelly Kapoor alongside Carell for eight years was recently on the Late Show with David Letterman and played coy, saying that she could not remember whether Carell makes an appearance before admitting that she signed a non disclosure agreement and didn’t want to lie to the host. So why would she need a disclosure agreement if nothing happened?

Rumors have Carell making a cameo appearance, rather than having a major role in the finale. So just how could this happen? You don’t think Dwight is going to invite Michael Scott, his one time mentor to his wedding?  And what about Scott making an appearance to talk about the documentary he was very much a part of?

What do you think will happen when The Office says goodbye? Sound off in the comments!

Anyone who keeps anything of importance on their computer can tell you nightmares about losing their files. They’ll tell you about how they lost all of their important files right before the big presentation, or how they had to spend hours syncing their playlists, or worse – lost all of their family pictures.

I experienced this nightmare at last year’s E3 convention in LA, the biggest event every year for the gaming industry. I had just been part of a closed-door presentation on an as-of-yet unannounced title from a major publisher, only to have my laptop crash mere hours later. Everything — all of my notes, my pictures, everything…was lost. I spent the rest of the show using colleagues’ computers and panicking that I was going to lose even more.

Then I got serious. Then I got Carbonite.

Think of Carbonite as your safety net, as the program acts as a catchall for nearly all of your irreplaceable files including your pictures, documents and yes, even your music. All of your files are safely uploaded automatically to the cloud so you’ll have access to them on nearly any computer connected to the Internet. I, for instance, took a conference call on my work computer, but was able to access the notes that I wrote at home – no jump drives, no e-mailing, just a lot of peace of mind.

The great thing about the Carbonite service is that it’s so easy to use. Upon setup, you’re given the choice to have Carbonite run and back up everything or pick specific files and file types, then that’s it – Carbonite runs in the background and backs everything up. There’s also an app for tablets and smartphones that allows you to access your files on the go and backs up the photos and videos on your mobile devices. With Carbonite, what I write on my iMAC at home can be shared with my work PC, my phone and my tablet, eliminating a lot of stress and worry.

Since it was founded in 2005, Carbonite has helped their customers safely back up more than 300 billion files and recover almost 20 billion files that otherwise would have been lost forever. Want to try out Carbonite for free? The company offers a15-day, no credit card required free trial. All you’ve got to do is go to Carbonite.com BGand click on free trial. If you type in the offer code SUNNY13 when you start a trial, you will get two bonus months if you decide to purchase. Unlimited backup space is just $59 a year. E3 is hectic enough, at least this year I won’t have to worry about losing a week’s worth of work.

It looks like the Angry Birds are going to Aperture. Sort of.

Rovio released the above trailer for the latest installment of Angry Birds, Abracadabra where the Birds use something that looks an awful lot like Portals to do things that look an awful lot like what Portals do.

Abracadabra is available today on Android and iOS.

On this past Monday’s season finale of How I Met Your Mother, we finally met the mysterious mother.  So what now? Big changes may be in store according to the show’s co-creator.

“It was a pretty big umbrella to fill, casting the title role in a series that’s been on the air for eight years. And yet Cristin Milioti is, against all odds, exactly what we were looking for. She made us laugh on 30 Rock, she made us swoon in Once, and her ukulele skills are no joke,” Carter Bays said in a recent statement. “We’re thrilled to welcome her to the How I Met Your Mother family, and look forward to getting to know her – and the character she plays – much better in the coming final season. And to all the fans, on behalf of all of us writers, cast and crew: Thank you for sticking with us on this wild journey. Our ninth season will tell the epic story of the longest wedding weekend ever. We hope you like it. Next stop, Farhampton…”

So just how did the show’s staff keep the big reveal secret? “In the script we called the character ‘definitely not the mother,’ so it was very good code. We got very CIA and intense about it: We really didn’t put it on paper; we never emailed the outline or the script. We literally just kept it on hard copies of paper that we messengered back and forth to people and then got the copies back and destroyed [them],” Carter Bays and Craig Thomas  told EW.com. All the extras from the scene with the mother are staff from How I Met Your Mother. They’re all there. It was really fun.”

Some fans seemed to think that the show showed have used a bigger name actress for the role of the mother, which the show’s creators say would have taken away from the moment. “We didn’t want it to be a big famous star because we didn’t want the wider audience to have associations with whatever actress this would be, where it’s like, “Oh, it’s Anne Hathaway and I think blank of Anne Hathaway….” You’re waiting years to meet this woman, and it’s like, “Oh, he’s in love with Amy Adams just like the rest of America is,” Thomas told EW.  ”The whole idea is that Ted’s never seen this woman before, so it better feel that way to the audience.” Cristin Milioti is she’s a fantastic actress and she’s been in [Broadway musica]Once, and it’s a Tony-nominated, wonderful musical but she hasn’t done a ton of big TV parts or bigger film parts. It seems so much more interesting and so much more ted to find someone special and unique and new, someone that we haven’t seen before and the whole idea is that Ted’s never seen this woman before, so it better feel that way to the audience.”

” I don’t think it ever occurred to us. Honestly, exhibit A for us in the discussions was Cobie Smulders,” Bays added. In the pilot of our show, Ted sees [Cobie Smulders'] Robin for the first time and — without naming names — the part of Robin was offered to a pretty famous actress and she turned it down and then we ended up going with Cobie, who was our first choice from the beginning. Thank God we did for a million reasons but among those is the fact that when Ted’s seeing her for the first time, America’s seeing her for the first time — the intriguingness of that propelled the show going forward and kept the show alive.

So Season 9 will take place over the course of one weekend. It’s likely that the story will be told through a series of flashbacks as the device has been used in previous episodes.  Think you’ll get a meeting between Ted and the Mother in this Fall’s season premiere? When TVline asked CBS President Nina Tassler, she confirmed that the two won’t meet until much later in the season, and to expect everyone else from the cast to meet the mother before Ted finally does. Read the entire review at EW.com

Watch a pre-rendered Batman fight a pre-rendered Deathstroke in this teaser trailer for Batman: Arkham Origins. Looking for the real thing? Be sure to check back for the full reveal trailer on the 20th of this month.

Wait, isn’t there another major reveal coming on May 20? Looks like we may be getting some Batman with our Xbox Infinity.

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) learns of Schmidt’s (Max Greenfield) plans to ruin the wedding.

Season two of New Girl has been a revelation in primetime comedy and in my opinion, the best of its genre this year. It’s managed to completely out do its previous season, escalating in warmth, character moments and interest so quickly and in such a self-assured manner that it feels like a different show all together. With all of that expectation on its back there is a lot of weight that goes into its finale, and it almost seems unfair to assess such an impressive season on one singular episode.

Because truth be told, the finale wasn’t the best episode that New Girl has done, I wouldn’t even rank it in my top five this season, but it was solidly funny with some wonderful sweet moments that tidily wrapped up a stellar season.

Jess and the boys are dressed and ready for Cece’s wedding, Nick under-dressed as usual and Jess wants a picture of all of them. While her father Bob is taking a picture he realizes that Nick and Jess are posing more as a couple, and tries to edge him out of the picture. This only leads to an argument about Nick’s suit until all of the boys have managed to storm out of the picture leaving only Jess.

In the next scene, at the wedding Schmidt has loaned Nick what he calls his worst suit, which is fine by Nick who already looks cleaned up. Jess asks him if he’s doing this because of what her father said to him in the previous episode and he feigns ignorance. The two complement each other and it’s nice to see the thresholds of a tentative relationship between these two, considering I’d figured they’d beat around the bush for a little while longer.

Elizabeth is there, too, and she and Schmidt share a sweet scene that reaffirms my hope that they’ll last.

Schmidt runs to find a bathroom and finds Cece’s dressing room instead and they share a moment and good lord this is exactly what I didn’t want. Schmidt believes that Cece told him with her eyes that she doesn’t want to get married. He tries to tell them it’s not because he still has feelings for her, because of Elizabeth, but because they’re friends. Jess is livid and tells him to stay away from Cece and to not ruin her day no matter what ridiculous notion he’s cooked up. He waits until he leaves and tries to get Winston to join him in sabotaging the wedding, finally convincing him once he tells him that he can go as crazy as he wants, something the notoriously bad at pranks Winston has always wanted.

The first prank involves when the wedding begins with Shivrang riding in on a white horse and the whole shebang. While waiting for the plan to hatch Schmidt notes that Nick is trying his best to impress Jess: wearing a suit, holding her purse and wearing deodorant under both arms. He tells him that Jess either wants the real Nick or none at all. A sweet sentiment until you realize it’s just a way to manipulate Nick into helping him with the sabotage.

But luckily he has the crazed Winston who scares the horse carrying the husband to be until the horse begins galloping towards the main road. He turns up just in time and in one piece just for the wedding procession where they watch Cece about to walk down the aisle—serene and beautiful until one of the most annoying songs on the planet “Cotton Eyed Joe” starts with the aid of Winston who is very easily becoming the MVP of the episode, Lamorne Morris being allowed to stretch his physical comedy muscles.

Jess finds Nick near the stereo and believes that Nick has done it. She says Winston or Schmidt wouldn’t have been smart enough to duct tape the stereo so no one could turn off the song, and that they both know this is his favorite song.  This leads to a fight where Jess calls Nick childish and stupid. Jess is understandably stressed in this situation but it becomes hard to understand her frustration when he’s telling her that he wouldn’t do this at her best friend’s wedding, a wedding that Jess, someone he cares deeply for, has worked tirelessly over in such an earnest manner.

It’s one of the television moments where the audience are allowed to see the growth of a character while the counterpart is left a few steps behind. It’s sad to see a character such as Nick who is so often on the losing side, lose for yet another moment to the person who typically has his back. We see how hard he’s trying to impress her, to show her he can be different, when she only sees the same old Nick.

More of the ceremony takes place until Schmidt creeps up to Jess and tells her in a panicked moment that they may have gone too far. Once in the hallway Schmidt tells Jess that it was Winston’s idea.

Winston is in the air-ducts with a badger. Shock and horror abounds.

There’s a nice little shot of Nick and Winston in the air ducts and when Jess tries to call Nick after realizing he was telling her the truth, Winston accidentally opens the cage with the badger. This is could very easily have been slapstick, it very nearly was, but luckily the actors sell it and Nick’s screeches of terror drive a moderately funny scene into a hilarious one.

After messing up his hair and smacking him around, Jess makes Schmidt give her a lift up to the air duct. She apologizes to Nick about how she reacted earlier. He tells her that it was never about that or the prank but Jess’s automatic assumption that Nick will mess up everything that he touches.

So for now, he needs to go and find the badger.

“Is this how you wanted your life to be?” Nick asks Jess, he’s not a healthy person who will lead them to a healthy relationship. He asks her if she thinks they are a mistake. Just like Jess’s father he believes that he isn’t ready for Jess, that she deserves better and that he has too much going on in his head, that he hasn’t yet grasped how to successfully be an adult and that he can’t help but believe that she isn’t ready for this.

Or maybe he’s so afraid of messing up and letting her down that he’s trying to sabotage their relationship before it’s even started. It’s a wonderful scene for the consistently impressive Jake Johnson.

She admits that there is a small part of her that believes he’s too much of a mess.

But right before anything can be mended, Jess, Nick and the creepy badger fall through the ceiling disrupting the wedding with a bang.

Jess makes an announcement that there might be a badger on the loose as Winston yells directions from the ceilings but Jess realizes almost too late that Cece really was giving out that look.

And here is where a perfectly fine episode began to dip in quality and it all came down to the character Cece.

Cece stops the wedding, just as Schmidt had envisioned, but because she wasn’t in love with Shivrang but with someone else.

Shivrang announces the same thing for Taylor Swift/Elaine and completely throws away his ability to be the straight man against the crazy. It’s a funny enough scene and Taylor Swift is fine despite my disdain towards her, but it definitely was there for humor’s sake rather than a plot point that fit the nature of the character.

The fact of the matter is that I will hate it if Schmidt and Cece get back together in such a contrived and typical sitcom manner. There is no need to pair off all of the regular characters on the show, it won’t make or break the interest in the series. While Cece and Schmidt used to be an interesting pairing, especially in the slow moving season one, we’ve spent a good portion of the season with Cece not returning Schmidt’s feelings and instead focusing on her future. Sure we’ve seen Schmidt mourn the loss and try to move onward from that relationship, but it was always his loss not Cece’s. For Cece to out of the blue, during not only a wedding episode but also a season finale, come out as say she still loves him and then make him choose is ridiculous for the ongoing character plotlines.

There’s also the fact that Elizabeth beats Cece in charm by spades. Elizabeth is just interesting: she’s fun, she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her and loves herself despite it, and she brings a more interesting and better layered version of Schmidt.

And let’s face it; Hannah Simone has always been the weak link in the cast.

More interesting is the emotional stand off between Jess and Nick where they decide to call it. They say they gave it a good chance but they were only fooling themselves, it’s not like they’re in love or anything.

Those looks they’re giving each other would beg to differ.

So Jess walks away looking defeated despite her standing and Nick finds a bar and also his voice of reason in the badly badger bitten Winston.

Winston asks what happened with him and Jess and he says that they called it and now he’s drinking it away, always his best move.

His dad’s move, too, Winston tells him. And it’s a nice reminder that these are friends don’t just fight and poke fun. They also know each other’s histories. Winston tells him that his dad’s move was always running away when things got tough and he tells Nick that there are other moves to be made.

So Nick runs toward Jess instead of further away. He finds her at her car and she tells him that she isn’t ready to quit trying to work and for him to please agree with her. He walks over and kisses her and if that isn’t a clear enough answer I don’t know what is.

They climb into the car and drive away laughing and fighting with each other and it’s a sweet scene to end a season with.

Especially considering I thought that were just going to Friends us. Nothing is more annoying than playing the “will they won’t they” scenario for longer than a season or two so the fact that they acknowledged each other’s mutual attraction and their want to make the relationship work is such a refreshing move that it makes the prospect of season three all the more exciting.

At this rate, their greatest flaw is still their misuse of Winston’s character, but otherwise what a fantastic season and what a wonderful show that has managed to create intrigue in all four of the leads, make them all seem like players in the show, and the show’s capability to make an obvious pairing passionate and exciting to watch.

I can’t wait until season three.

Mindy and Danny share a moment at her goodbye party

Well, here we are, at the season finale. If you told me at the start that I would be emotionally invested in this whole Danny and Mindy thing that is happening but also not happening, I would have laughed at you. But the fact is that I absolutely am, and I kind of hate myself for sitting on the edge of my seat throughout that entire last scene.

The timeframes are notoriously unclear in this show, but considering we open on Casey and Mindy test driving Skype sex for while he’s in Haiti, we’re picking up pretty much where we left off last week. This was another great cold open, by the way; I’m totally down for seeing more awkward-instead-of-sexy moments in Casey and Mindy’s relationship. I like how it’s still doing the whole twist on the romantic comedy moments that the show started with but without the obvious and obnoxious voiceover.

Mindy decides to go to Haiti with Casey in lieu of the long distance relationship option and when she tells Danny, he immediately informs her that it’s a bad idea. Which of course it is, because Mindy is so not the mission trip to Haiti kind of person. It’s fine, most of us aren’t, and I like that about her.

There’s a throwaway scene that establishes the badass near-end montage of Mindy, Danny, and Jeremy all scrubbing up to deliver triplets but nobody cares at all about this patient because this finale is about relationships. I hope next season they finally figure out how to balance the ensemble part of their workplace ensemble cast because I would love to see the non-doctors get some storylines. Remember that one time we met Betsy’s family? She should get to be a real person like that again.

Speaking of the office, we do get a scene of them in the breakroom taking bets on how long Mindy will last in Haiti. Offended, she immediately adds herself and Casey to Danny and Christina’s camping trip so she can prove herself. Somehow Morgan ends up coming along as well, and the five of them pile in Danny’s car to spend the weekend in the woods.

Mindy makes an off-color and possibly offensive comment about being the kind of person that gypsies get vendettas against while they’re discussing voodoo in the car. Morgan and Casey at least maintain some political correctness in saying that voodoo is a cultural practice in Haiti and not the horribly stereotypical spooky dark magic thing. I know that making relatively insensitive remarks is part and parcel of Mindy’s character, but the point is that maybe it doesn’t need to be said at all? I don’t know, most of the jokes on this show are funny but every once in a while we get a line like this that just doesn’t sit well with me.

Anyway, Danny turns out to not be such a camper; he’s jumpy and falls right off his log when Morgan tells a scary campfire story. For all his talk about “being a real man” all the time, it’s funny that he’s so not into any aspect of camping, it being so rugged and masculine and outdoorsy and all. He ends up asking Christina to move in with him by asking her to camp out permanently in his apartment and damn it, Chris Messina is so cute with his nervous hesitation in asking her. I hate that I’m so invested in Danny, I really do, since I’m pretty sure I swore to dislike him in the pilot episode.

Over in the other couple’s tent, Mindy is praising herself for putting out that fire on Morgan’s jacket and she gets a taste of spending a year in a tent with Casey in Haiti. It is not a good taste: he flosses in bed and gets food shrapnel in her eye, he laughs out loud as he reads in bed, and he knocks her glasses off with his junk when he stands up to leave the tent. He thinks Haiti will be great, but Mindy is clearly having second thoughts.

These misgivings are confirmed when her and Casey’s farewell party scene opens on her confessing to God that she’s not going to Haiti. I love how she’s so very Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret about praying the couple of times she’s done it onscreen, and I love how much religion has been downplayed as an issue between her and Casey. They’ve got the contrasting religious backgrounds thing out of the way when he was introduced, and now they’re just a couple. A couple who’s not 100% honest with each other at the moment, but whatever.

Brendan and Duncan interrupt her moment to wish her a good trip, and Duncan might be a little psychic, since he senses her hesitation the second he hugs her. I’m glad that one of the very few lines he’s gotten is used this way. While I hope the midwife brothers will barely be around next season since their arc feels really over, if they’re still a big presence I hope we get to hear more from Duncan. He seems like a pretty interesting character to explore, and now that the whole Brendan/Mindy thing is done there might be a chance to do that.

Jaime is also at the party, pretty much for no other reason than because B.J. Novak and Mindy Kaling are real life besties. He and Lucy have gotten engaged, and Mindy takes this opportunity to show Casey off to him to prove she’s found love as well. If love is a guy who shares his gum with you baby bird style, that is. I kind of miss the string of random guest star dates for Mindy—maybe when she and Casey inevitably flounder, we can get some of that back. And let’s face it, considering the premise of the show is the rom-com failure of Mindy’s life, there’s no way she and Casey end up happily ever after.

After Danny soaks up some glory from people admiring Christina’s half-naked portrait of him in the living room, he escapes to his bedroom where Mindy’s already hiding, eating the bon voyage cake. He was going to smoke a hidden cigarette but instead takes a seat with her on the floor to mutually freak out about their respective commitments.

Inspired by Danny’s fear of moving too fast with Christina, Mindy pulls Casey into the (thankfully off) shower for a chat of her own. She says she can’t move to Haiti without them being engaged thinking it will scare him off but it backfires when he then tries to propose in front of the whole party. She turns him down for both marriage and Haiti, and he leaves. Mindy’s about to make a similar emotional exit when they get the page to go deliver the triplets.

The montage parallels the one from the pilot with M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” blaring over images of Mindy, Danny, and Jeremy all prepping for surgery. They deliver the babies safely and without any medical gore seen on our part, thank goodness. If you couldn’t tell by my reactions to the vomit jokes in the last couple episodes, I’m too squeamish for medical shows. I do love the callback to the pilot, and I always love seeing confident, capable, kickass Mindy.

After talking to the triplets’ mother, Mindy makes the decision to say yes to something, and runs to Casey’s apartment building. His neighbors answer her Romeo-esque calls from the sidewalk, and I particularly enjoy the woman who throws hangars at Mindy. Casey finally comes to his window and Mindy makes a heartfelt speech about wanting to be with him and wanting to go to Haiti with him. She reveals that she’s even cut her hair short the way he suggested, and I ignore the logistical issue of where she got a haircut at 3 AM in favor of enjoying the bit of role reversal going on here. Usually it’s the John Cusacks of the rom-com world standing outside their girlfriend’s window, and I like that Mindy’s the one making the Big Speech to Casey, who agrees with delight.

Now this is the scene that gave me all the emotional reactions. Mindy walks into the break room at work where Danny’s sitting alone and after some obligatory cracks about her new hairdo, he tells her he’s slowed things down with Christina. He leans in close to grab and clean her glasses and I am not normally attracted to Chris Messina but I am totally attracted to him in this moment, I’m not going to lie. He puts them back on gently and it looks very romantic (even though I can tell you from experience that someone else putting glasses on for you is neither easy nor sexy). Despite half the audience chanting “Kiss, kiss!” in their heads, and despite Danny leaning in for it, all hopes are dashed when Mindy announces she got back together with Casey and is going to Haiti. They settle back in their normal personal spaces and that’s it, it’s just over.

Damn the writers for giving Mindy and Danny such nice arcs of character development along the way. Now I’m all invested in them getting together. I’m sure it’ll happen eventually, somehow, but this tease for it was more than I was expecting tonight. I’m pleasantly surprised by this, however; it means the show did something right over the course of the season with these two. Now, if only this kind of development and investment could happen with all (or at least more of) the characters, this could be a really great show.

As it is, the season got progressively funnier as the writers found their groove, but it’s not “great” just yet. The timing still feels weird, and I swear at least two of these episodes were aired out of order, but the show definitely grew on me since the fall. I hope season two brings more well-rounded secondary characters, an improved balance between the office and the “real world,” and of course some closure on this whole final scene. What are your hopes for season two of The Mindy Project?

Favorite Lines from “Take Me With You”

Danny: “You called 911 when a butterfly got in your apartment.” Mindy: “I thought it was a colorful bat.”

Tamra, at the party: “White people problems.”

Danny: “Only three women can pull off short hair like that: Audrey Hepburn, Halle Berry and Ellen DeGeneres.”

Internet law is always evolving. The Internet is still one of the newest landscapes when it comes to legislation and the groundwork is still being laid. It is not unexpected, then, that new laws regarding the way the Internet is accessed, used, and even abused, will occur. Look at some of the biggest of 2012.

SOPA Failed

Image via Flickr by charlesfettinger

There may not have been a bigger story in 2012 than the failure of SOPA. The law called for the expansion of US law enforcement to fight the purported abuse of online, copyrighted intellectual property. The law would have placed heavy fines on companies who violated such copyright laws. The law would bar advertising networks and payment organizations from doing business with any website infringing on these copyright laws. The law would have affected millions of websites with similar website content.

Social Media Privacy Laws

It is always a good thing to have an Internet provider you want to work with, which is why you can find exactly what you need at InternetProviders.com. However, what you do online is your business. That’s why social media privacy laws were being talked about and thought about in many areas of the country. California put in place the Social Media Privacy Act for its state that prohibits employers and schools from demanding your social media and email passwords. As primitive as it sounds, this is the first step in protecting your privacy rights.

India Civil Rights Fight

Also occurring in 2012 was the fight against what seemed to be violations of the civil rights of people in India. Activities and lawyers spoke out about India’s controversial Internet laws. Two women were arrested after criticizing a city’s shutdown after the death of a leader on Facebook. The Information Technology Act there makes it illegal to digitally send information that is grossly offensive or has a menacing character. Officials noted that the law was very open-ended and could be easily abused. The country was working to make changes in this.

Websites Took to Anti-Class Action Clauses

The news broke that Zappos, a popular online retailer, would be adopting anti-class action clauses in contracts. The US Supreme Court ruled that businesses may adopt this type of mandatory arbitration clause that would ban a customer (who agrees to the terms) from class-action lawsuits. Though the law needs work and there are various requirements for specialization of it, this law set the groundwork for websites to protect themselves against massive lawsuits that could easily shutter their virtual doors. There is still some discussion over its effect, but most believe it is a step in the right direction.

Internet laws and regulations will continue to change as long as it is an important tool in communication and business. Expect changes that could alter the way you use the Internet, whether for the good or for the bad.

Have you ever wondered where the tradition of celebrating ‘birthdays’ comes from? After all, there are some cultures and religions around the world that don’t commemorate the day that they were born, at least not in the extravagant way that we do! Well, the earliest ‘birthday parties’ were in fact held because it was thought that evil spirits were more likely to torment people on their birthdays, and so friends and family would gather around the birthday person to spread positive thoughts and guard them from harm on their special day.

However, it was usually only high-ranking folk such as kings that were lavished with this kind of attention on their birthdays. It’s thought that the Germans were the first to commemorate children’s birthdays, with parties called Kinderfeste.

In modern times, children’s birthday celebrations are regarded as the most important of all by many cultures, including in Nigeria where a child’s first birthday party can attract over a hundred guests, and an entire cow or goat is roasted for the festive feast.

The Chinese consider the first birthday to be a special milestone too, and it’s common for parents to place their baby in the centre of a circle of objects, which may include a book, a coin, and a doll, to see which one their child chooses as a symbol of their future fortune. Picking up the coin will indicate that the child will be rich, the book will mean that they will become a teacher, and the doll will foretell their many children, and so on.

Intriguing Birthday Traditions

You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn’t know the words to the birthday song, but you might be surprised to learn that this song is just 120 years old. Written in 1893 by the Hill sisters, who were schoolteachers in Kentucky, it wasn’t until 1935 that the lyrics were copyrighted, and in 1988 the Warner Corporation purchased rights to the song for a cool $25 million.

Birthday balloons are also a crucial part of traditional birthday celebrations here in the UK, but they haven’t always been made from latex. The Aztecs made balloons from the bladders of sacrificed cats, and they also invented balloon modelling in a rather gruesome fashion too, as they would twist the inflated bladders into other animal shapes and present these as an offering to their gods. We’re not sure what the gods actually made of that!

Luckily, we have much less ghastly ways to impress the people that we love on their birthdays thanks to the greetings card specialist Hallmark, whose selection of birthday gifts online includes something for every type of celebration – and without harming any sweet little cats.

After eight seasons, a lot of red herrings and a slew of close calls, we finally have a face for How I Met Your Mother’s mystery woman.

Tonight’s season eight finale often felt like it was dragging until the last two minutes, when we saw the often talked about cowboy boots, yellow umbrella and bass guitar case to pan up and reveal that the mother will be played be Cristin Milioti.

Who?

Okay., that’s fair. Milioti is not exactly a household name, but the woman who would be Mrs. Mosby is actually a very accomplished actress, most known for her roles on Broadway in Once and in TV shows like Nurse Jackie, The Sopranos and 30 Rock.

Not much is known about How I met Your Mother: Season 9, but it was quite the interesting cliffhanger. Want even more Cristin? Here’s a video of her from the Tony Awards:

Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) must fight a bear for the entertainment of House Bolton.

I’m having difficulties believing that George R.R. Martin wrote this episode. He wrote last season’s best episode “Blackwater,” so the anticipation was high on my end. Rather than deliver on expectations he instead, sad to say, turned in a bit of a dud.

You’d think the man who wrote the books would manage to capture the essence of the characters on the show rather than taking up time with mindless pandering and exposition that lead nowhere.

I can’t imagine how non-book readers must have felt during this episode considering even I was confused at times as some of the minutes were eaten up by character monologues that held no gravitas, brief scenes to remind us that something will be happening with said character, and Theon’s torture porn segment.

There is plenty to enjoy about this episode, mainly its focus on chains and the breaking of them and the reminder that even characters in fantastical HBO dramas make hugely compromising decisions.

Daenerys continues to be the more progressively interesting character in regards to her plot, often times seeming like the only character who’s actually moving onwards rather than stuck in a stalemate, albeit well-acted stalemates. She plans to set 200,000 slaves free in yet another slaver city and manages to gain more gold, more power but also potentially a more threatening enemy for the first time this season. All of Dany’s stuff is proving to be highly interesting, relevant as well as helping us remember that Emilia Clarke is indeed a very talented actress as long as she’s not fed lines she’s supposed to shout such as every scene she was in in season two. However in this episode we’re given the dynamic of a girl who wants to be queen and plays the part expertly but here is still a girl making mistakes.

Arya is making her own decisions by finally leaving the Brotherhood after being deceived too many times and realizing that the Lord of Light has them more beholden in the faith in gold then faith in their God. However when running she’s captured by the Hound. This is a pairing that she should be decidedly interesting in the next episode, especially when you consider the way he acted around her sister Sansa.

Sansa is dealing with her grief about having to marry Tyrion instead of Loras and we realize the child she still is despite the mask she’s learned to wear in Kings Landing. Margaery tells Sansa that Tyrion is far from the worst Lannister, is handsome and has always been kind to her. But the real lesson is that as woman of their stature they must do what is right for the realm and they must quell their own disappointment. They must forgo the notion of love for duty. It’s a sobering realization for Sansa and while jokes are made about her innocence, here is a girl who in this moment may have lost what was left of it.

Tyrion on his end of things is dealing with it as best he can, doing damage control with Shae. Shae has become one of my most unlikely favorite characters and it’s hard not to feel for her when she’s telling Tyrion that they can run away together and be happy and in love. He tells her it’s not that easy and that beyond the castle walls there isn’t much place in the world for him. So he’ll be unhappy with his father for the marriage, but there’s nothing he can do about it but struggle on. She isn’t pleased and leaves, saying she can never be his lady but only his funny whore, which gives them a definite time limit.

In a brief but satisfying scene Tywin gives Joffery something just short of a tongue lashing when the former decides to throw a royal temper tantrum and tries to solidify his place above Tywin. Charles Dance is an expert at line delivery and it’s understandable why most of the kingdom would fear him.

Right outside of the city gates Melisandre and Gendry watch on and in yet another surprisingly but genuinely moving scene, Gendry is told his real lineage—his father was Robert Baratheon.

He says he’s nothing more than a bastard and she replies by saying she was born a slave. Their births do not dictate what lives that follow.

Jon and Ygritte once again have the sweetest scenes as well has the bulk of the screentime. George R.R. Martin seems to take a liking to the television version of Ygritte and explores her naivety as she’s taking in the world anew, on the southern side of the wall. The two tease and flirt until Jon tells her, in sincere concern for her well being, that the wildlings cannot win this war. That people beyond the wall have tried six times to invade and all attempts have failed and this time won’t be any different, they’re too scattered, too unorganized for a real fight. She won’t listen and puts him in his place, telling him that they will die maybe, but first they will live because she’s his and he’s hers. The two share immense chemistry and isn’t surprising that the focus is mainly shifted to them.

And how I’d rather that have been the case for more of the episode.

The problems that lie within this episode lie heavily on the necessity for this show to sometimes delve into unnecessary exposition, in unwarranted means, that detract rather than elevate the interest.

Let me saddle right on to my high horse for yet another segment of this reviewer not getting the oddly juxtaposing views on women, sexism, feminism and so forth on this show. I was nearly banging my head against a wall throughout the entire duration of the Robb and Talisa scene because while Robb Stark took little to no time in covering his body up Talisa’s rear end became a third character in the room for the amount of times we were given a tight shot, wide shot, zooming, rotating, whatever shot of it.

I understand! I get that nudity doesn’t equate misogyny, however, it clearly showcases that the writers believe that the audience is a male oriented one and one who would yes, enjoy shots of beautiful naked women. However, it’s excessive, it’s unnecessary and it’s becoming abundantly clear each time it happens that they believe the male gaze is in need of something to perk their interest. It’s like I’ve said before, lazy and showcases a lack of faith that the narrative’s material will hold the attention on its own.

As one of many female fans I’m going on the record as to say that the narrative is interesting enough on its own.

Sure, we learn she’s pregnant, that they really love each other, and that the war can be put off for sex just for one night, but it added nothing to the overall arc of the character.

The other point of interest in which gratuity runs rampant is every single thing to do with Theon’s character. It’s a complete waste of screentime that could have been dedicated to eliciting more of a reaction to Arya getting captured, to Sansa reeling with the effects of her impending nuptials. We understand at this point that his life sucks. We understand that there are horrors in this world that we as viewers/readers have only begun to dig up and we understand that all of this is some retribution for what Theon did as well as a reason for conflict among viewers who may have initially loathed the character, but would never have hoped for such a fate to befall him.

Theon in my mind is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating and well layered characters in the series.

That doesn’t mean I need to see his testicles cut off to feel his pain.

The scene in which I enjoyed immensely and found to be the least bit over the top was the one with Brienne fighting a bear with a wooden sword.

Jaime and Brienne are inarguably two of the most interesting and deeply faceted characters on the show. Both are conflicted by what they deem right and wrong but what they both similarly share is their persistent need to execute what they believe is right and wrong: no matter the outside opinions. So when Jaime promises Brienne that he’ll honor their oath to Catelyn that the Stark girls would be returned to her, her remark in calling him Ser Jaime—not Kingslayer—is all the more touching because it’s a companionship built on mutual, if hesitant respect. There’s no affection, no burgeoning lust, but rather two individuals who have been put through the ringer and despite their differences and opposing sides of the war, find that they fight for the same things when they really look at it.

This makes Jaime’s return all the more exciting and a pitch perfect end a lack luster episode on. Jaime has ridden out of camp when he learns that Harenhaal is keeping Brienne for their own entertainment after refusing her father’s payment for her. He rushes back saying he’s left something behind to see Brienne in a pit facing a bear, in her pink tattered dress, with nothing more than a wooden sword to ward the provoked animal off. Jaime realizes the injustice and despite his handicap jumps in for backup. He’s managed to provoke fear in one bannerman though and soon the two have aid out of fear of Tywin Lannister learning his son is dead. It’s fantastically climatic and a narrative turn in Brienne and Jaime’s storyline. Will they still fight and goad? Very likely, but now the respect is more on the surface than it is beneath.

Jaime and Brienne, Jon and Ygrette, those were the saving graces of the episode. There were other moments that that were effective but lead the storyline nowhere. There was even a scene with Bran but rather than actually explore his character arc, we instead were delivered a monologue by Osha for no apparent reason—especially since the audience already knows the dangers that lie beyond the wall. It wasn’t a bad episode and there were many highlights of the season (the bear pit) but it was a filler episode, too soon after another filler episode. I’m sure that the last three episodes of season three will be action packed but, will it be too late? I’m optimistic that it won’t be but hopefully the end of the season puts away Theon and the blood lust surrounding him and centers their eye on the core character moments of the show.

Again, not a complete failure of an episode, but it was forgettable.

Captain Hook (Colin O’Donoghue) and Charming (Josh Dallas) try to steal back the magic beans.

It’s the finale! Will it impress? Will it let us all down again? Will I ever want to watch this show again? Will it, like the promos tell me, be “epic?”

We’re back on Hook’s pirate ship with a younger Neal in tow—which I’m just putting together how odd this is. Hook wants revenge on Neal’s father Rumpelstiltskin for Neal’s mother’s death.

The family ties on this show are outrageous. However as of now Hook believes Neal could be the key to their survival. He speaks to Neal about why he ended up on his boat and his father, and how he’s a coward and how he abandoned him. Hook demands his name and the response of Baelfire puts him into a shock.

It’s nice to see Hook be able to be a situation without horrifically failing at it.

The next close up is of Henry swinging with Granny standing watch as Rumple looks on and tries to magic Henry loose, believing in the prophecy that tells of Rumples death at the hand of a young boy.

He’s stopped though by the Charming family arriving to sour his mood even further: his son was shot and then fell through a portal to who knows where, and suspected to be dead.

The Charmings, the bearers of good news.

They tell Rumple of Regina’s fail safe and how Tamara has her hands on it now. They know it’s hard for him now but they need his help. But this he says is his fate, his consequence for using so much dark magic, one of the two people that could bring him a sense of peace.

Hook is now helping Tamara and Greg find the axe that activates the trigger to get rid of the town. They’re willing to die for their cause but is Hook? Absolutely, he says, but from his reaction it seems that might not actually be the case. Or so I’d hope because one dimensional villains (such as Tamara) are rarely interesting.

The trigger is hit. And now what? We have Rumple on an emotional bender, reeling from his son’s apparent death, Regina still healing after her electroshock therapy and everyone else as per usual running around with their heads cut off.

Regina is still at the Charmings’ when the rest of the family shows up and the town’s foundation begins to shake. Regina tells Henry that since he was born here, he’ll survive, but the rest will die. Which will leave him alone.

But Hook shows up (point one for me) and offers his help. He doesn’t want to die, after staring death in the face he’d rather survive than get his revenge. They have enough time to steal back the magic beans. They split off in pairs, Charming and Hook for the beans, Snow and Henry to safety and Emma and Regina to find a way to stop it all. Before they leave Regina apologizes to Henry for not being what he wanted her to be, but she’ll try.

See? This is an interesting character development, this is an interesting Regina, and this is what would have benefitted the show for the past ten episodes or so.

Back in flashback mode we see Hook bargaining with the Lost Ones, (allusion to the Lost Boys) as he tries to hide Baelfire’s whereabouts from them. The Lost Ones believe he belongs to them since the shadowy Peter Pan character was taking him to Neverland.

Grumpy gives a spell to Rumple that will help Belle remember her past self. She once helped him and he wants Belle to know her true self before she dies, not the angst-fueled Lacey.

On Hook’s ship, we see him telling Baelfire that his sea legs aren’t too bad and wishes to show him more about sailing. Is he actually bonding with the boy or is it a manipulation tactic to ruin Rumple? Is it a mix of both? It would probably be more interesting if it was the latter. Hook tells him that he shares a similar past of parental failings and that his father left him too. Baelfire takes this as invitation for share time and tells him that his father is the Dark One—and essentially tells him everything he needs to know about killing him. He says his father chose a dagger over him.

Charming and Hook are chasing after Tamara in Storybrooke where he tells Charming he’s fighting for himself and that’s all he needs as a motivation tactic. They confront Greg and Tamara head on. Shots are fired and Hook tackles Greg to the ground to get the beans from him but they end up escaping. Hook’s managed to get his hands on one of the beans and they leave, saving the fight for another day.

Regina and Emma are underground looking for the trigger and they can feel the magic being sucked away. Slowing the device will require all the strength she has and that’s when the realization hits that Regina will be sacrificing herself. Emma wants to know what she’ll tell Henry, she tells her to tell him it wasn’t too late for her to do the right thing. Let her die as Regina, not as the Evil Queen. I’m ashamed to admit the emotions I felt during this scene were strong and embarrassing. Lana Parrilla nailed it. She was vulnerable and brave and it was a fantastic scene for such a damaged and often times irredeemable character. It was a tired Regina who after all of the harm she had caused simply wanted to leave a positive image in her son’s mind.

Rumple and Belle are toasting to the end of the world as the forest begins to overrun the town when he apparently comes to his senses and realizes that the real Belle does deserve to be herself for her death and serves her the potion in their special teacup. And voila, just like that, Belle is back and they kiss and lovey music plays and oh my word I still need more conviction from this character. He says he’s sorry for waking her up to die but he needed her, the loss of his son hitting him hard. A wonderful scene for Robert Carlyle.

Emma meets up with the Charmings and Hook and they wonder how they can save Regina, and Snow comes up with the idea to throw the trigger into the portal. Snow and Charming tell Emma to give them the chance to be parents, but Emma doesn’t want Henry to be left alone if something goes wrong. Snow tells her that they can’t build a future on Regina’s blood just because it’s an easy out.

Hook isn’t okay with this. But Emma tells him that they have to, they understand each other so listen to her, that they will survive despite the fact that it seems crazy. She tells him Neal is Henry’s father and he just lost him so now she’s doing anything she can.

He realizes it’s Baelfire.

Which is a cue for a switch to Hook’s ship where Smee is defending his choice to keep Baelfire aboard, a Baelfire who’s raging over the fact that Hook knew his mother. So Hook tells him that his mother and him fell in love and how they had spoken about taking Baelfire away with them. Baelfire blames Hook for the destruction of his family. Probably would have been more effective if we’d seen more than ten minutes of growth.

Henry, Emma and the Charmings go to save Regina with some heavy-handed dialogue but realize too late that Hook had in fact managed to steal the bean back from her. Characters with different levels of depth, awesome, characters that flip flop from one extreme to another? Annoying.

Hook tries to rectify his relationship with Baelfire and tells him it’s not too late to change, he can change for him, he can be family with the crewmen. In anger, he gives Baelfire to the Lost Boys and it’s a dark turn for a tragic character that’s made none of the choices that have damned him.

In real time, Hook is still on the ship, contemplating the bean as Regina continues to hold off the trigger but she tells them she can’t do it for much longer.

Emma seeks comfort in her parents and Regina apologizes for not being strong enough to hold it off.

Emma realizes that together, her and Regina could be powerful enough to stop it. This is something I’ve been waiting for, always seeing the two characters as being more similar than the characters, and the writers alike, would care to admit.

And she’s right. They stop the trigger from exploding in a very anti-climactic scene but all is not what it seems and they realize Henry has been taken by Tamara and Greg. Why? Oh my god how did it even happen? Loopholes galore.

The Charmings chase after them just as a portal opens and they jump in just as Rumple appears as well. When all hope seems lost they see Hook’s ship appears and he tells them he needed a reminder than he could help if he wanted to. Hook offers his ship, Rumple offers to help track. Rumple asks Belle to stay behind to help keep the town stay safe by means of a spell. Rumple tells her that he won’t be going back but he needs to save Henry for his son’s sake. Belle promises she’ll seem him again.

And I’m sure he will, especially if the show is picked up for a third season.

But as of now? I’m very happy with the group of characters aboard the ship.

We see that Neal has landed up on shore with Mulan and co. Did anyone else forget about them?

But back on ship Rumple and Hook make peace and Hook realizes through Rumple’s tracking device that Henry has been taken to Neverland. The portal is open, Rumple tells them that Tamara and Greg are simply pawns and that the person in charge is someone they should all fear. And down they go.

But wait? Did they just hint that the main baddie of next year will be Peter Pan?

I think I enjoyed this episode. Not to say this it was great but I was entertained which is what the main objective of a show like this should be. Plus. they finally hit on a number of things I wanted to see:

1. The return of the layered, softer Regina.

2. A complex Rumple who settles into his persona which is straddling the line of a good and bad but does what he needs to in special circumstances.

3. The pairing of Emma and Regina who have always been the most interesting and too shortly explored duo. Both of whom do what they need to survive and who grew up feeling alone.

4. Hook getting explored, even if it was rushed. Also, Colin O’Donoghue is just a nice actor to look at as well as being one of the more watchable actors on the show.

5. Throwing Henry into something likened to a black hole.

There were pirates, magic beans and portals to other worlds. It was ridiculous and schmaltzy and sometimes ant-climatic, but I was entertained and that’s all I ever really need from the show.

So where do they go from here? There’s an interesting crew on board with the writers seemingly trimming the fat of the cast, so who will they encounter next year?

The Doctor (Matt Smith) must duel with a Cyberman chip inserted in his brain.

The Cyberman goes deep into Doctor Who historical lore and has been one of the most predominant adversaries of the Doctors for the decades the show has been on air, similarly along with the Daleks. During Moffat’s run we’ve seen them appear a few times but never with an arsenal of them and never quite in the way they were utilized this week. However, the question remains about how do they make such a caricature-like creature be threatening after so many appearances throughout time? When the Doctor sees the first one it’s instant fear and caution and we need to know why? Why is the Doctor of all people so wary when it comes to them? Are they convincingly menacing so that the audience would understand?

Sadly, not so much. There have been a number of truly frightening threats on the show and it seems there’s a tendency for the most renowned of the villains to come off the most cartoony.

Even if these ones have been given an upgrade, it comes off short such as season premiere The Asylum of Daleks which promised BIG things with the promises being greater than the outcome.

There are a bunch of bits and pieces of this episode that should have worked, or could have worked if there had been a better sense of innovation.

First and foremost, there was Neil Gaiman who wrote my favorite episode of season six “The Doctor’s Wife.” Because of his involvement, I was expecting great things, wonderful character arcs, patchwork people, dire situations and a new twist on an old bit of knowledge we all believed as true as virtue.

I got about fifty percent of my wishes which in retrospect really isn’t too harsh of a deal.

The Doctor has brought along not just Clara this time but also the two children she nannies for, Artie and Angie which may have been the beginning of my problems. Children on this show have been typically well cast (think young Amelia Pond or the girl from “The Rings of Akhenaten”) but they’ve also served a purpose. The utilization of Artie and Angie would have been better served if used in an earthbound plot. We don’t know them well enough to care if Angie resents Clara or to care when they’re ultimately taken by the Cyberman and inserted with a Cyberman ear piece.

There are also far too many characters for such a jam packed episode, Warwick Davis guest stars as the reluctant emperor of a planet, there’s an amusement park employed by renegade soldiers, and a revitalized characterization of Clara.

I’ll get to that in a moment.

Crucially though, the real momentum of the episode begins when the Cyberman comes to life after a period of hibernation but this time with some new duds: this time they have cyber insects that could work their way into humans—and not so human—brains and control them from the inside out, allowing them visage of their intellect but “upgraded” to a Cyberman level.

The Cyberman grabs Artie and Angie and the Doctor goes after them and tells Clara that he doesn’t trust the army members there not to blow up the planet so he tells her that she’s in charge.

An order that she picks up with surprisingly quick gusto and precision.

Is this the same Clara that we’ve known thus far? This characterization of bold leadership and unflinching confidence in the face of unwelcome terror seems fitting for River Song, Amy Pond, maybe even Rose from the David Tennant years—of which I’ve sadly seen a few—but Clara? Hell, it might have even worked with the first or second version of Clara that we met.  It just doesn’t compute with the rest of this version of the character that we’ve seen, a version that’s been refreshing to the numerous characters who seemingly rush into danger without a second glance, while she takes a second, worries about imminent injury or death, and has actually shown fear.

It would have been better even if it had taken a second for Clara to gather herself and work her way into the confidence she had. A headstrong character is fine but having her unrealistically be in command of an army is a reach and erases much of the progress this character has already gone through. Jenna Louise-Coleman is doing everything she can to make Clara interesting in her own right, and for the most part succeeding, but she needs some assistance from the writers, too.

It’s a letdown that is almost entirely eclipsed by Matt Smith’s thrilling performance.

The Doctor has found the children but has also run into a Cyberman. Up until this point he hasn’t had to directly fear harm because of him not being human—the bodies the Cyberman typically use—but now because of their upgrade they’re allowed to attack him as well.

A bug is sent into his head and we’re met with one of the coolest scenes the show’s done which is giving us a looking into a Time Lord’s brain. It’s a battle of will and of wit for the Cyberman parasite and the Doctor for the control of his brain and the way in which they visualize this image is inventive and a site to behold, so much so that I would have much preferred to see an hour dedicated to this rather than a narrative spread across multiple arcs.

We’ve been privy to Smith’s ability to switch in a blink from one version of the Doctor to the next; manipulating his facial structure to display subtleties of a man a thousand years old. However, rather than just alluding to a darker personality, Smith is allowed the chance to be a darker personality and he does so with palpable enthusiasm.

Smith is more frightening in this episode than the actual threat itself.

The key to the Doctor’s success will be a game of chess, whoever wins is granted control of the body.

Chess has always been a strategic way in visualizing characters under duress, both figuratively and literally. Here are the pawns and here is the hand the guides them, but who will beat the other out in the end, who will have the most control in the progression of the game.

The Doctor manages to get control of his mind long enough to run to another room and confront Clara where he tells her to  restrain him so that he can’t leave but to allow freedom of his hands for the rest of the game.

It’s his interactions with Clara that are the most chilling. His personalities are rapid fire, one more exuberant and energetic the next cold and daring, unnerving Clara especially when the Cyberman bot tries to convince her that he’s really the Doctor.

Essentially, Smith was better than the writing of the episode which is a shame.

After this, the plot gets wrapped up quite neatly, too neatly when dealing with Cyberman. Angie gets rid of her Cyberman earpiece and helps save her brother, Clara and the crew is backed up against a wall as imminent Cyber doom descends upon them, and the Doctor with the help of the Emperors’ hand tool manages to electrify the cyber device off of his face to regain control of his mind.

After the episode of watching the two fight I was hoping for more of a struggle in the end.

The crew are safe for now but that doesn’t change the fact that Cyberman have successfully infiltrated their home base and multiplying by the minute which comes to a difficult decision: should they destroy the planet with a bomb, or allow the Cyberman to run rampant.

The decision falls on the emperor who decides that for the betterment of the universe he will implode the planet, ridding them of the threat.

I feel like in recent years we’ve seen far too many planets meet their end.

Quick and tidy, the episode ends with some jest and sweet words as the Doctor sends Clara and the kids back home.

I’m uncertain of my exact feelings for the episode but the main one that keeps returning is the disappointment in the narrative as a whole. Neil Gaiman is renowned for his science fiction and in particular, his stories that are the right balance of dry humor and dark dwellings, so it’s a shame to hardly see his usual style (other than the patchwork folk) in this episode. Although there were moments of interest and many themes that popped up, none were explored in a satisfactory manner. The kids join and are turned mute for the majority of the episode, Clara is put in charge and shows little character growth due to it, we’re literally inside the Doctor’s brain and it’s mentioned he’s been erasing himself from history but that’s as far as it goes.

Of course there are some singularly stand out moments, such as Smith taking on the previous two Doctors catch phrases, “fantastic” and “allons-y” with some true dedication to the characters. There’s the images of the abandoned amusement park which are lovely and haunting and promise a darker story than the one delivered.

It was once again a filler episode which doesn’t get as much of a pass considering it’s the penultimate episode before next week’s finale. I should have been wowed by the episode as a whole, not just Smith’s episode.

While I’m none too excited about the Doctor’s name plot that seems to be eating up this season’s finale, I’m more that excited to see River again and see what happens to lead the gang to the Doctor’s revelation.

Only one episode to go for season seven!

This is a strange time for fans of How I Met Your Mother, CBS’s comedy that’s left fans wondering who series lead Ted Mosby, played by Josh Radnor has been telling his kids about meeting. We’ve been hopeful before that we’d finally meet the mysterious mother, only to be swerved at the last-minute, but with events of this, the eighth season, and the knowledge that the show will wrap after next year — could this finally be it. Are we on the verge of meeting the woman with the yellow umbrella who plays bass?

CBS seems to want us to think so. The official promo makes it very clear that they’re ready to reveal the “mother of all secrets,” without actually saying that they’re going to introduce the mother. So what will happen when Season 8 ends this Monday night? We’ve got a few theories:

- We do in fact meet the mother, but aren’t told who she is

Let’s be honest, CBS and the show’s creative staff aren’t going to make this easy. Ted’s not going to walk in, meet the mother and live happily ever after. The season will end on a cliffhanger, and while will meet the mother, we aren’t going to know exactly who she is right away, or we see her and something stops Ted from actually meeting her. Going off what we know, that the ending will revolve around Barney and Robin’s wedding and that the mother is the bass player for the band at that wedding, it seems likely that we’ll at least get some sort of introduction of the mother.  It’s also important to note that in this season’s episode The Time Travelers, Ted went to the mother’s, dreamed of going to the mother’s…somehow we wound up at the mother’s, whatever, that episode was confusing. The point? Ole’ Shmosby says that he’s going to meet the mother in 45 days, which brings us pretty darn close to Monday’s finale.

Here’s my guess, Ted ends up hooking up with multiple girls at the wedding and one of them ends up being the mother. At the end of this season’s episode “Something Old” Ted starts to question whether his reliance on “signs” are actually signs, maybe he just goes to the wedding and has a bit too much fun, with season nine revolving around Ted trying to pick between the girls from that night.

Sound a bit far fetched? In a recent interview with TV Guide, series co-creator Craig Thomas said that the series’ finale season would feel remarkably different from previous ones. “You’re never going to mistake a Season 9 episode from one of the previous eight,” Thomas said. Could we be spending an entire season with Ted trying to identify the mother for some reason?

Or maybe…

We actually meet the mother proper

Now, I know. We’ve been down this road before. We’ve gotten our hopes up, been lied to, been swerved, but  maybe, just maybe there’s no trickery here. Maybe we are finally introduced to the mysterious woman without any trickery or wonder.

There’s almost too much evidence to ignore. He meets the mother at the wedding 45 days away from the Time Traveler’s Episode. Hell, we were even given an image of Ted, looking at a woman playing the bass..at a wedding.

We also know that HIMYM’s season nine was not confirmed until recently, and that the series writing staff has admitted to having a plan A and a Plan B. The question is which plan are we getting, and what does it entail? At this point, it feels like the show needs to make some sort of real progress towards showing us the mother, we’ve had eight whole seasons of near misses and possible encounters — will the show’s fan base take another swerve?

Maybe we get classic Ted that tries too hard and pushes the mother away, or maybe she’s not interested in him at all, and Ted spends all of Season Nine trying to impress her. He is after all the same guy who held three parties on three consecutive nights to impress Robin, who he just met. And that’s another big mystery, the end of the Something Old episode, as well as the promo for the finale seems to hint that Ted is going to make one last play on Robin. How will that dynamic play into the episode?

I’ve also got a bit of my own theory, or at least one that I subscribe to. We, and Ted, have already met the mother, we just don’t know it yet. Think back, all the way back to 2005. Barney and Ted go to a St. Patrick’s Day Party and it’s later revealed that the mother is also at this party. If you recall, Ted randomly bumps into a woman, who the internet has named Bump Girl (creative huh?) Could be nothing, but the show spent an awful lot of time with the camera hovering on her and the two looking at each other. Is this the mother? It would be a HIMYM type move to try to swerve us like that.

All of these questions will at least hopefully be answered this Monday Night on CBS. What do you think is going to happen?

GTA V releases on September 17.

Here’s what we know about Call of Duty: Ghosts, the latest installment in the long running, mega popular shooter series releasing November 5; you’re going to shoot people and wear a lot of masks. Everything else seems to be pure speculation at this point — but you may be looking at the game’s main characters for this first time.

The images above come from Twitter user LiamFTWinter, who claims that he snapped an image of a yet to displayed pre-order poster for Ghosts. There’s been no confirmation of the story or the images, but they do look to be inline with the game’s art style.

Activision has promised that we’ll get our first look at Ghosts later this month when it debuts with the “Next Generation of Xbox” on the 21. Stick with Blast for the latest. Also — play card and table games online with eurogrand casino.

Not much is known about the “next generation of Xbox” that Microsoft will reveal on May 21. Will it play used games? Will it require an always on internet connection? Will it include Bluray? Will it be as cool as X-men slots? Right now it seems like we’ve got more questions than answers, so why not throw another one on the fire? Recent leaked documents suggest that the new console will go by the name Infinity as opposed to rumored names like Durango (the name of the console’s development kits) or Xbox 720.

The rumor comes from an article  in The International Business Times, which seems pretty confident on their answers. “Sources related to development of the new Xbox have confirmed to IBTimes UK that the console… will be called Infinity,” the article states. The Business Times also states that the console will be on shelves by Holiday, putting it on shelves within the next six months.

We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update this story if we get any sort of response beyond the canned “Wait until the 21″ answer. Stick with Blast for all of the latest Infinity news.

You know, I haven’t engaged with the plot of “The Great Gatsby” in several years- the last time I read it I was a freshman in college, an adult in only the technical, legal sense. A significant point of the book was lost on me then, but which I’ve been ruminating on ever since I saw Baz Luhrmann’s much-awaited adaptation:

Gatsby is kind of a stalker.

I don’t know why this had never occurred to me as a problematic plot point before- the fact that we are asked to align ourselves with a half-mad recluse who committed himself to criminal activity and based all of his life decisions around possessing a married woman he’d had a fling with five years ago. The fact that Daisy kind of wants him back, and that Tom is a philandering, racist oaf is kind of beside the point when you think about it.
But enough- that’s an academic digression, not a review. On to the review!

This movie is terrible.

That’s not fair. Specific parts of this movie are wonderful. Luhrmann, by now famously, stocked his characteristically lush film with hip-hop updates of old jazz-age songs and the result really is arresting. The party scenes are marvelous as well, because let’s face it, if the director of “Moulin Rouge” and “Romeo + Juliet” can’t do a good party scene than none of us can. The colors are spiked with neon and chrome while still maintaining some of the period verisimilitude, the costumes are gorgeous, and the heat of the New York summer in which our story takes place is palpable.

But the worst thing I can say about “Gatsby” is that at many points it seems not as much as serious movie, but rather a high school sophomore’s very serious book report. Really, do we need to be belabored with the idea that Dr. Eckleburg’s sign represents the uncaring eyes of God? Do we need to remember the significance of Daisy’s leash-like string of pearls?

There are some symbols that work, mainly among them the astonishing, breathing organism that is Gatsby’s nouveau riche home. But the visuals are distracted by the chatter of Nick Carraway’s (Tobey Maguire) voiceover, which is constant, unending, and often unnecessary- it’s like Luhrmann’s making a thesis statement and then backing it up with cited quotations of the book that literally appear on screen.

On and on, the film lurches from sublime to ridiculous, mainly because Luhrmann’s direction keeps butting up against Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan’s truly marvelous and surprisingly subtle acting. Whatever lofty ideas we have about Gatsby being a stand-in for Jazz Age excess, or for the death of the American Dream, DiCaprio cuts to the center: Jay Gatsby is simply a very lonely man. His longing is not just for Daisy but for Nick’s company and friendship, and his terrible crime is trying to build himself a family (albeit in a super creepy stalker-ish way). Mulligan has a harder time, mainly because Daisy Buchanan is famously one of the most opaque characters in literature. But she plays her opacity as not a lack of thought or feeling or emotional intelligence but as the result of a violent exorcism of that intelligence. Daisy wants to keep on living as if she’s still a carefree 19-year-old, and to do that there is a lot one has to ignore.

The role of Nick Carraway is often more of a thankless chore- our narrator and stand-in viewer is never as dynamic as anyone else in the room- and Maguire does a solid if unremarkable job. Joel Edgerton plays a straightforward Tom Buchanan- though he sparkles briefly and wrenchingly in the moment when he asks Daisy if she didn’t love him “when I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry.”

But whatever terrific acting they are able to do is drowned in the tsunami of Baz Luhrmann’s ideas. Want constant shots of the green light at Daisy’s dock? Want some voiceover explaining what you’re seeing? And the words the voiceover is saying plastered across the screen? Want a slow-motion shot of poor stupid Myrtle colliding with the car? You got it! And did we mention that the Dr. Eckleburg sign is watching it all happen, like an ambivalent deity?

I had been hoping that Luhrmann’s sense of momentum and dynamism would have been good for the movie, but in the end it somehow made everything more affected and stodgy. By the time the credits roll, one is exhausted, as if we’ve been to our own Gatsby party. But sadly, we can’t remember the fun we had; only the hangover it’s left us with.

Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) must do Moriarty’s bidding to learn more about Irene.

The spider, the woman, and the rock: three individuals who define the name Sherlock, who over the decades of interpretations and milestones have come to represent the man of the iconic investigative skills, no matter their actual relevance.

The spider, Moriarty, is the one who holds the web together, sitting directly in the center waiting for flies to fly recklessly into his nest as he proceeds to roll them and twist them until they bend to his bidding. He’s the mastermind who controls the pieces of the barebones ideas. He calls Sherlock at the beginning of the episode, a continuation from the previous, where he asks him to do him a favor. He tells him that he had an employee, Wallace, who was killed some time ago and he’d like to know who did it.

Why should Sherlock help? Well, because once he’s gotten the perpetrators he gets to know the truth behind Irene’s murder. And BAM, Sherlock has flown head first into the web.

The idealist purpose of Moriarty and Holmes is to represent a duel headed coin, one that represents hope and one that represents madness. Here are two men presented with above average levels of intelligence, here are the means in which they conduct and manipulate their knowledge, and now, in which form will these men see fit to display their genius. Sherlock has taken the path of the righteous. He’s full of imperfections and he has his demons but he won’t allow them to define his talents. He will aid the individuals who seek justice for the victims and the ones who wish to persevere in cleaning the streets of vermin and monsters alike: including those like Moriarty. Moriarty rather than being a master of deduction is instead a master of secrets, of manipulation, of narrowing in on targets’ weaknesses. He tells Sherlock that he wouldn’t be too bad of an assassin himself which leads to the idea that if Sherlock were ever to go rouge, so to speak, with his intellect, his precision and need to focus on the minute details of a case, he could be one of the most dangerous men out there.

Luckily, he ended up on the right side but with how many reprehensible damages left due to the man on the other side of the phone?

Sherlock takes the case, he’ll find out who killed Wallace all for answers about Irene Adler.

It takes some time before her name is broached again. They find the company “Sutter Risk Management” where they believe they’ll find their priority suspect, Mr. Sutter, whose sister was killed by the Wallace in question years ago. Instead they’re left with false alibis and loose ends with Sherlock entirely convinced that Sutter is the murderer.

In the midst of this Watson asks Sherlock about Irene, what is it about this woman that is worth the risk of working with a known psychopath who likes to play with his prey before drawing the final blow.

Irene Adler was the woman for Sherlock. She’s eclipsed any other woman or notion of her gender, he was a man who had zero inclination for love, hadn’t believed in the concept yet fell hard and fast for Irene. She was beautiful, an artist, and had an earnest optimism in the human condition which rather than put Sherlock off, convinced him. He was able to see the good in people because of her.

And then she was taken from him and his faith dissolved.

Sherlock meets with Sutter about his belief that he murdered Wallace and while at first it seems that Sherlock may have followed a false path later we see Sutter turns himself in. But that isn’t the last of it. Moriarty calls later and tells him the case isn’t over because Wallace didn’t actually kill Sutter’s sister, he was unjustly killed.

The next morning after a night of trying to fit the pieces together Sherlock wakes Joan and falls into near hysterics when telling Joan of the absolute nothing he’s been able to discover while she’s slept. He wants to know how a man like Sutter could misplace the face of the man who killed his sister and Joan tells him that it was years ago and maybe Sutter didn’t get a good enough look. Sherlock tells her that it doesn’t make sense because the face that killed the one you loved, a loved one in general, isn’t one that leaves your memory any time soon.

And this is our clue that this isn’t just about Sutter’s sister. Sherlock walks away as he tells her to prepare for the day.

There’s a subplot in this week’s episode that involves Gregson trying to warn Joan away from Sherlock’s line of work and it comes to a head in this bathroom scene. Gregson has told Joan that while he respects what she’s been doing and praises the good work, he’s still worried because while Sherlock is probably the smartest man he’s ever met he’s also the most self-obsessed and won’t see the danger he’s putting her in, but Gregson can. Joan is sick of being told what she can and cannot do, and so she presses on.

Until she too comes to the realization that Sherlock may be walking straight into a regrettable confrontation. Initially, she dances around the issue. She asks him if he’s afraid and he says he’s not. Moriarty could have had the chance a number of times to kill him and hasn’t so obviously is getting some enjoyment out of their little game. But, she says, killing him isn’t the only way he can be hurt. And that’s when it clicks for Sherlock. He tells her that their line of work will always have dangers in store for them but,

“But know this, as far as Moriarty is concerned, I will never allow any harm to come to you. Not ever.”

She tells him that he cannot just promise a thing like that but, he says he just did. Is this foreshadowing some imminent injury to Joan’s well being? Is it a promise that signifies her growing significance in Sherlock’s world? Is it a healthy mix of the two? Either way it’s beautifully played by both actors involved and proves that the fixed driving point of the series is the slow burning, entirely satisfying, developing friendship between the two.

He tells her that they should split up with him going to Mr. Sutter and her going to Mrs. Sutter and it turns out her outing is all the more productive as the wife tells Joan that while she’s sad her husband is in prison she’s also glad he has peace.

She finds Sherlock at home coiled tightly on the break of snapping and in frustration he leaps from the table to violently push the board over. He apologizes profusely telling Joan that it’s been a trying couple of days.  And we’re in a framed setting here where Sherlock is in far too deep and cannot climb out quite yet.

So Joan finishes the case for him by discovering that it was Mrs. Sutter’s guiding hands that led Sutter to the murder, despite knowing it wasn’t the original murderer at all.

And she says she did it out of love.

Sherlock receives a call from Moriarty shortly after that delivers him an address so that if he wishes to seek out information he can and he does but tries to evade Watson’s accompaniment.

Too bad Watson has picked up her own tricks and followed him there, unhappy that he tried to leave her behind. She’s frustrated with people making her decisions for her. So yes, she might be nervous but that doesn’t mean that Sherlock can deem when it is and isn’t important to inform her of what’s going on. He tells her that it’s personal for him and she says she could say the same.

He tells her that he’s in too deep now, unable to see the puzzle from the outside in any longer considering he’s now a part of the puzzle.

And that’s why she’s there standing outside the imposing mansion that sits before them. She’s there because she knows him better than anyone else, seeing a version of a Sherlock that the audience sees as well. One that would say he’d protect her and say it with complete sincerity. She’s there because she’s his companion, his rock that keeps him steadfast. So they step through the gate.

The ending exemplifies why this show works and why it’s become my favorite show to look forward to each week. It was laced with tension, with emotional integrity and with some absolutely phenomenal acting by Jonny Lee Miller who is on my wish list for an Emmy nomination this year.

They tentatively walk into the ominous mansion that wails with classical music and step into each room that seems well lived-in. There are bits and pieces left here and there, an unkempt bed and of course the music that plays on that Sherlock continues to step towards until he finds a room decorated with easels, paint, portraits and landscapes and in the far corner the back of a woman’s head with long blonde hair.

Sherlock half collapses as Watson, Sherlock’s rock, grabs him to keep him upright as he sags into her and barely manages to whisper out the name that’s haunted his being for over a year, that’s been a ghost in his dreams that is no longer just a memory.

“Irene” he whispers at first, unable to speak clearly and when he does finally manage to speak her name she turns her head and we see the woman, Irene (played by Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer).

It’s a crucial scene in the season and series thus far. Irene has always been Sherlock’s Achilles heel and here she is after all of this time after a spiral into the lowest depths of despair, after a stint in rehab, a sober companion and rehabilitation into a life that nears normalcy. Now, the catalyst to his year of failures and successes shows her to never have been dead at all.

It’s a wonderfully crafted scene and again, Miller simply nails it. Watching his face crumple in realization gutted me and maybe I’m just a softie, but I’m sure I’m not so blinded to know that what he dealt there was a truly captivating moment of a character succumbing into his inner most vulnerability.

It’s a top form episode and it’s only promising more in next week’s season finale. Irene’s back, Moriarty is still at large and Watson is sticking by his side. The spider, the woman and the rock, who’s going to have the greatest and most lasting impression on Sherlock Holmes?

CANON LITERATURE NOD:

Referencing Moriarty as a spider is directly from the original story “The Final Problem” where Moriarty and Sherlock both seemingly fall to their death.

Mindy winds up at a frat party after breaking up with Casey.

The difference between the first episodes of The Mindy Project and this week’s penultimate episode is pretty remarkable. At first, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the show—everything felt weirdly paced and the jokes didn’t always land, but looking at it now that the season is almost over, the show has really grown on me. And “Frat Party” is a great example of where it’s gone, and how the characters have come into their own over the course of a season.

The cold open was one of the best so far, with Casey and Mindy illustrating all the non-sexy parts that go into showering together, including the final crash through the shower curtain. I know I didn’t like him from the start (because, let’s be real, he was kind of a jerk in his first episode), but it’s funny couple-centric sequences like this one that make me almost want them to stay together. Almost. I’ve pretty much hopped on the Danny/Mindy train at this point, I couldn’t help it.

In the office, everyone is still bemoaning the loss of Morgan because of his replacement, Tamra, who’s still singing most things she does and who hilariously calls Danny “girl” when she responds to him. Can they still keep her on staff even when Morgan is back? The Big News of the day is that Mindy has taken on a college student as a mentee, Katie (Francia Raisa) and will be proceeding to show her around the office and around her personal life for the day.

Mindy and Katie have lunch with Casey, who drops the bombshell that he’ll be leaving on his church’s yearlong service program in Haiti. He wants Mindy to wait for him, but she “doesn’t have a year to put on pause” so she breaks up with him then and there, in front of Katie and everything. Danny and Jeremy, meanwhile, have a breakup lunch of their own with Morgan (and the Deslauriers). They offer him a higher salary, but he turns it down for the sake of the brotherhood he feels with the midwives.

After Mindy has another lying-on-the-floor-in-despair episode, Katie drags her out with her to a no cups frat party. Mindy is very clearly out of place, but does her best to have a good time anyway, and there’s a great scene where she inadvertently pole dances while trying to get Katie to stop doing exactly that.

She ends up running into Tom (Bill Hader), the ex that started it all, whose life has collapsed so far that he spends his spare time being that creepy old guy at the frat parties. His wife left him after having a baby with her ex, he has no friends, and he’s gotten a terrible (and probably infected) eyebrow piercing.

Meanwhile, Jeremy and Danny show up at Morgan’s wind chime-adorned house to convince him to come back. They explain that they’ve been acting more like a family at their office now, and bring out the big guns in the form of an adorable puppy as a bribe. Morgan melts at the sight of the puppy, as did probably half the audience, and agrees to at least join them at the party where Mindy is to hang out.

They show up and have to pay the bouncer bro in order to get in, but they arrive just in time to help break up the fight going on between Casey and Tom. Why Casey was even at the frat party, much less dressed in an outfit that is half disheveled priest and half dorky guy at the beach, is beyond me. But I will ignore the plot holes for the sake of the hilarious physical fight between Anders Holm and Bill Hader.

Things eventually get rough for everyone; a frat bro antagonizes Jeremy, another one punches Morgan, and a third gets punched out by Danny, who’s defending his “brother” Morgan. Aww, how sweet. They all get the hell out of the frat party, and Morgan accepts their offer to return to the practice given the whole Danny calling him a brother thing. The office has been weird without Morgan these last few episodes (even though I enjoy Tamra), so I’m glad he’ll be back to balance the dynamic out again. Maybe with his family focus, we’ll start seeing the group together more outside of work and get to see people besides just Mindy and Danny interacting all the time.

Katie helps Mindy carry a semi-conscious and drawn-on Casey back to the apartment and they have a nice mushy moment about learning from each other all day. Casey vomits unexpectedly, and that’s the second time in two episodes that sudden puke has been a gag. I must say, as a sympathetically queasy person, I am not a fan.

The whole thing wraps up nicely in the elevator at Mindy’s office: Casey comes to see her to apologize and to try to get back together. He says he’s going now because later, when they’re married and she’s pregnant, he won’t be able to go. I never know what the time frame is from episode to episode, but does that kind of talk feel sudden to anyone else? Mindy seems to be into it, however, and they kiss and make up in the elevator. Morgan and Danny eventually get in the elevator and Morgan passes the time by taking group selfies as Mindy and Casey make out. That’s the Morgan I missed.

Given the upswing in quality this season has experienced, I’m really looking forward to next week’s finale. I’m hoping for at least one unexpected guest star, some resolution on where Danny and his ex stand, and for Morgan and Tamra to have a conversation. I know that last one probably won’t happen, but I feel like they’d be an interesting pair to watch interact.

Favorite Lines from “Frat Party”

Jeremy: “Firing Morgan wasn’t the best idea, Danny, now I’m going to be deported for murder.”

Danny: “Morgan’s not a vegan, he puts ground beef on his oatmeal.”

Mindy: “Let’s go talk to the DJ and see if he’ll tell us the Wi-Fi password for this place.”

Casey: “I’m going to punch your teeth down your throat!” Tom: “I’m an orthodontist, I’ve got buckets of teeth!” Casey: “I’m a minister, you’re trying to kill a minister!” Jeremy: “Are we just yelling our jobs now?”

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) tries to figure out her hectic day.

After last week’s episode which found Jess and Nick finally embarking on a good old roll in the hay we’re now encountered with the morning after. Nick doesn’t quite know how to handle it: does he kiss her awake and try to be romantic, does he simply watch?

Instead he checks her pulse and wakes her. She was being very still.

They could have played this many ways. They could have had one sneaking out of the bedroom, one panicking and running to divulge everything that happened to a friend, or it could have been multiple scenes of awkwardness. Instead it was sweet. The camera lingered on Nick’s decision making, causing it to be an earnest scene that drew a rather accurate picture of many individuals’ morning after routine.

Sometimes it’s all about figuring it out as it goes along.

Nick has gone to make breakfast for Jess which allows Jake Johnson some funny deliberation scenes on what he should do and what is too much (in this case a daisy).

He’s about to bring it to her until he runs into Jess’s dad, Bob (Rob Reiner returning) who’s in town for Cece’s wedding and in the hallway has to explain away the food he’s prepared and another coincidence occurs as Winston walks out and it’s his birthday. Nick has forgotten but they play it off despite it.

The other couple who wake up together are Elizabeth and Schmidt. Schmidt wants a morning after review of how she liked his new body and she says she liked how his old body was. She doesn’t care about what people think of her at all which is the complete opposite of Schmidt who overcompensates on everything for universal approval. I know there are a lot of people who still want Schmidt and Cece to be together and for some sort of love declaration to come about at Cece’s wedding but I love this new pairing. Rather than exacerbating Schmidt’s quirks, Elizabeth grounds them and shows us the Schmidt that lead to his future self.

Jess meanwhile is warning Nick about telling her dad about their late night shenanigans because her dad gets stupidly over protective.

Even though her daughter is a fully grown adult. I’ll talk about that more in a bit.

Just as things appear to be as uncomfortable as possible, Jess gets a call about a possible teaching position and has to leave, thus leaving Nick alone with the intimidating father.

On the way to her interview Cece calls and Jess tells her she’ll have to be a little later than she thought: if anyone has ever watched a sitcom before they know that this is essentially a set up for disaster.

She calls Winston to pick up Cece’s wedding sari, also not realizing its Winston’s birthday.

Jess gets to the interview and instead of a meeting it’s a substitute position as her first test.

Like I said, time management on sitcoms have a notorious messy outcome and they can either be some of the funnier episodes of the show or be a clear sign of the writers trying a bit too hard to put their characters in whacky situations. Luckily, Zooey Deschanel is so naturally charming to watch that immediately it seems like it will play out as the former.

She’s having a difficult time teaching what appears to be the class from hell as Nick and her dad deal with an uncomfortable situation, as one would assume. Her dad wants to know if he’s dating anyone and Nick, after denying it and shouting a bit, dances around the answer, describing a girl the exact opposite of Jess to try and keep the truth hidden, a girl without bangs and with very small eyes.

Elizabeth meets Schmidt at work and it’s obvious he’s more uncomfortable with her when he has to acknowledge her in his everyday work life, becoming insecure about it now that the night is over.

“I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about myself” she tells him when his nature leads her to leave. I really, really love that her weight isn’t the punch line, but how horrid Schmidt is about it. All too often in movies and television the overweight female character is defined by her weight. Weight is her motivation, it’s her defining characteristic, its why or why not a character will date her and all too often that character won’t get a say in it. But this time she’s the one who’s throwing Schmidt’s feelings and shallowness in his face. She’s okay with herself, she was doing just fine without him and she has a date later that night. Being with someone who’s physically fit isn’t going to give her a purpose or a need to do the same.

Jess meets with a fellow possible employer who asks her to lunch and Jess tries to get out of it because of Cece’s pressing marital concerns but becomes trapped when he uses an analogy about a goat as a metaphor about Jess’s possible employment.

Schmidt goes to drop off Cece’s sari expecting a surprise party and Cece realizes that some of her henna tattoos have ended up on her face. Both are horrified for different reasons.

Nick is bonding with Bob and suggesting he create a podcast until Jess calls and tells him not to talk about girls anymore so nothing gets any worse.

Jess arrives at Cece’s to handle her problem and instead of clearing it away wipes it all over her face.

Nick is talking in code to Bob and admits that he really likes this girl and he’s afraid he’s too much like his old man to deserve her. Nick tells Bob after he gets Bob’s approval of the mystery girl that the girl is in fact Jess.

This goes over poorly and Bob chases Nick out of the room.

Again…how believable is it that Bob would be this over the top irrational about his thirty year-old daughter being in a relationship? It’s the main blight on an otherwise enjoyable episode. It’s an unneccesary gag considering the loopholes such as Jess’s relationship at the beginning of the series?

The positive is that Reiner and Johnson sell the comedy of the scene and the two share a fantastic camaraderie.

Jess is calling the henna tattooist to find out a way to remove the ink from her face and find out that it can’t come off. Cece ignores Jess’s plights for now—including that she slept with Nick—considering her full ink beard.

Jess comes home to a standoff and she’s furious and he tells her that he wants her dad to like him, he wants all dads to like him and in a wonderfully timed, true to character moment, Nick dead pan asks why she thinks that is.

Oh the woes of Daddy issues.

Bob tells Jess that she shouldn’t be with Nick; he’s unemployed, unmotivated and an alcoholic who isn’t good enough for his little girl because while Nick isn’t like his father, he is like Jess’s.

It’s a wonderful scene that plays the line of drama and comedy expertly due to not only the writing but Deschanel and Johnson’s reactions. Deschanel’s face helps spell out a character who is handling too much commotion at the moment and despite it all, has a moment of indignation at her father.

While Johnson plays Nick who has a sobering, unwarranted moment of clarity that maybe, just maybe, everything Bob has just said is true.

Nick’s lack of self-confidence has always been played for laughs but for tonight it hits a bit too close for home. Being unaccomplished is fine until he has someone he truly wants to be better for.

Jess has to return to her class tired and just about over everything. She stands on her desk and in typical Jess fashion gives a speech to the kids about how life kicks you in the ass and how she can’t date her dad but the messy parts are the best parts.

And then a kid offers her a cigarette and that is grade A comedy timing.

Shivrang has come to Cece and promises her he can fix it and it’s a little too short of a scene to constitute anything other than a want for more.

Elizabeth is on her date when Schmidt, in his version of a romantic gesture, meets her there in the oversized sweatshirt she once bought him and asks her to dance. He doesn’t want to leave; he wants to be with her.

Jess comes home to find her dad blowing up an air mattress to guard dog Jess’s door to make sure nothing naughty takes place. He’s her dad and he’ll always worry about her.

She gets a text from Nick and walks out onto the roof where he’s prepared a romantic gesture as well: the breakfast he had initially intended to bring her. Jess wants to know if what her dad said got a little too far under Nick’s skin, but he just shrugs it off despite it being apparent to the audience that it did. But rather than having him give up, instead it only motivates him to try harder, to prove Bob wrong.

Elizabeth and Schmidt show up too and right behind them, Winston, and they lie and say it’s all for him rather than admitting that they had forgotten.

I’ll need someone to I.D. the song playing at the end because it’s the second week in a row where the music of the episode has fit seamlessly into the context of the show, elevating the emotional beats. Deschanel and Johnson share such an insanely palpable and secure chemistry that all it takes is a shared look for the audience to believe that here are two people who should be together. Their moments of silliness are fun and the comedy aspect of them fighting, yelling and being each other’s foils works well in a show sense. but it isn’t until they share a quieter moment, a moment of stillness, that you realize that you truly are rooting for this couple.

They may have dominated an absurd amount of the episode whereas Winston, the character in the actual title, got one or two throwaway scenes, but when they continue to captivate your interest in such an alluring way is there any doubt as to why they would?

This was by no means the best episode the show has had, but it was solid, it was was funny and it was very, very sweet. I wish there had been more Winston considering he’s beginning to feel like a tag along character, I wish the Cece stuff had been better handled and that the teaching position offering had come in a better spaced episode. However, everything to do with the possible couples on the show was handled with such delicacy and such warmth that it almost negated my less than satisfying feelings on the episode as a whole.

Next week is the season finale to an outstanding season two and I for one can’t wait to see what it brings.

In the meantime, I was serious about someone identifying that song.