Stacy's Blog Has Got It Going On

 "Our lives are not defined by any one action.  Our lives are the sum of our choices." -Luther Stickell With the world on the brink of nuclear war, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team are the only people who can find a way to stop the Entity, a rogue AI system, from destroying everything and prevent everyone else from trying to control it. Spoilers below!  In short, this is a weaker entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise due to it's ridiculous length and dull first half, but it picks up in the second half with some incredible action. What Works: The best performance of the movie comes from Ving Rhames, who plays Ethan's best friend Luther and is the only actor besides Cruise to appear in every entry.  Luther doesn't have a ton of screentime because he is killed off pretty early, but his performance is very emotional, especially the message he leaves behind for Ethan.  It's a really nice way to end the movie and seemingly the franchise. The bi-plane sequen...

 "Hi, Kevin can't come to the phone.  He's on a spaceship with me, George Takei.  Please leave a message." -George Takei "Epidemiology" picks up at Greendale's Halloween party in the library.  Dean Pelton (Jim Rash) provides food in the form of taco meat that he got from a military surplus store, which causes Pierce (Chevy Chase) and others to get sick.  Annie (Alison Brie) gets help from Dr. Rich (Greg Cromer) to treat the sick partiers. Troy (Donald Glover) and Abed (Danny Pudi) attend the party as Ripley and a Xenomorph from Aliens  respectively.  Troy "saves" some babes from Abed's Xenomorph and tries to ask them out, but they are very unimpressed, which makes Troy self-conscious about becoming a nerd instead of being a jock.  He decides to change costumes and dresses as a "Sexy Dracula" and calls Abed a nerd. Rich thinks the illness is food poisoning until Pierce bites Star-Burns (Dino Stamatopoulos), who starts showing the s...

 "I always thought that Jesus just walked on water and told people not to have abortions, but it's so much cooler than that." -Abed Nadir "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" picks up in Anthropology class with Professor Duncan (John Oliver) and the rest of the class just watching funny, YouTube videos instead of actually looking into anthropology.  Pierce (Chevy Chase) doesn't understand any of it and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) is offended by some of the videos and gets sad when she realizes people are far more interested in these videos than Christianity.  She decides she wants to make a Christian movie to appeal to the youths and asks Abed (Danny Pudi) to help.  He refuses at first, but after reading the New Testament, he agrees and pitches his idea to Shirley.  His pitch is complicated, meta, and compares filmmakers to Jesus and God.  Even the title is ABED .  Shirley doesn't like it and decides to rescind her offer to Abed, which just makes hi...

 "I do think I deserve an Emmy." -Kamilla Karthigesu Well, that was certainly a season of Survivor.   I was really enjoying this season until the slog of the Star and Mary boots.  Those were painful to sit through.  It got better with the Shauhin episode, but the finale was a very mixed bag for me.  There were some enjoyable moments and Kyle absolutely deserved the win, but I spent a good deal of the final just feeling annoyed and I wasn't very invested in who won.  I'm glad we're moving on from this season.  I'm sure they're all super nice people, but they didn't make for very compelling television a lot of the time.  Anyway, let's get into who played well and who sucked starting with the Final 5 round of play. Who Played Well: The only person I have in this category for the Final 5 is Kyle.  I believe he should have been the person voted out here.  Everyone would have benefitted from Kyle going home, so I'm going to give him credit for...

 "They should be in a museum." -Shauhin Davari Finally!  Something happened on this season that I can make sense of.  Shauhin going out may not have been the most optimal move, but at least it makes some sense and is interesting.  My stomach nearly dropped out of my gut when I saw that second Mitch vote.  I was going to lose it if we went through all of this just for Mitch to go home, but luckily that wasn't the case.  Let's get into who played well and who sucked. Who Played Well: Joe won Immunity, which prevented any treachery against him specifically.  Now, where things get murkier is everything with Shauhin.  Going to Dad-mode with another grown man wasn't the best idea.  I'm sure Shauhin will remember that if Joe makes it to Final Tribal Council.  And while Joe did fall for what Kyle and Kamilla were selling, we have to remember that not all of it was a lie.  Shauhin was scheming against him and Eva.  Taking out Shauhin is...

 "Never fuck with Frendo." -Daryl Quinn Maybrook (Katie Douglas) and her father move from Philadelphia to the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri.  She quickly falls in with a group of kids who are considered bad news by the locals.  At a barn party, a murderous clown emerges from the cornfield and Quinn and her new friends have to fight to survive. Spoilers Below.  There's a lot more going on in this movie than you would think and the only trailer I saw didn't really give anything away.  I can't say much about this movie without getting into spoilers, but it's a really solid horror movie that is a lot smarter than I was expecting.  I really hope it gets a sequel.  Horror fans, go see this one before it gets spoiled for you. What Works; This movie is setup to be a pretty standard slasher/whodunnit and, to some extent, that's what it is.  It does a solid job with those elements, which are the focus of the first half of the film.  We get a c...

 "Hard to believe I'm not really not really in space." -Leonard Briggs "Basic Rocket Science" picks up with an emergency Greendale school board meeting called by Dean Pelton (Jim Rash).  Word has gotten out that Greendale's rival, City College, is launching a space simulator program, which could increase their enrollment to the point that it wipes out Greendale.  The Dean suggests launching their own space simulator program using an old machine that had been in a local museum, "The Kentucky Fried Chicken Eleven Herbs and Space Experience."  It's in bad shape, but the Dean puts together a crew to clean it. The crew ends up being the study group because the design they submitted for the school flag competition was "secretly" a butthole.  They had submitted it anonymously, but one of the study group members had ratted them out after the flag won and became the official school flag.  Annie (Alison Brie) is blamed as she was vocally agains...

 "I'm wrong!" -Jeff Probst After this episode was over, I saw a comment about it that was one of the funniest things I've ever read.  "This episode should have been an email."  That comment was better than anything that happened in this episode.  It was 90 minutes to nowhere and felt like a waste of my time.  Plus production tried to put Knowledge is Power back into the game.  Quit trying to make KiP happen!  It's a terrible addition to the game.  Let's get into who played well and who sucked. Who Played Well: Taking out Mary was really only a good move for Eva and Joe, so good for them for making it happen, I guess.  Eva also handled the Journey well.  She was smart to stop after getting her vote back.  Joe irritated some people with his paranoia, which may come back to bite him, but for this episode I'll give him a net positive. Who Sucked: Kamilla, Mitch, Kyle, and Shauhin all should have gone for Joe.  They all acknowledged...

 "Wow.  You guys are real downers.  I can't believe I made out with both of you." -Jeff Winger "The Psychology of Letting Go" picks up with Annie (Alison Brie) and Britta (Gillian Jacobs) putting together a diorama to help raise money for the cleanup of an oil spill.  Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) wasn't invited to participate and feels left out.  Troy (Donald Glover) arrives and reveals that he found Pierce's mom (Pat Crawford Brown) dead in the laundry room that morning.  When Pierce (Chevy Chase) arrives, the group tries to offer him their condolences, but he maintains that his mom isn't dead.  Because she was a Level 5 Laser Lotus, her spirit is being stored in an energy pod until technology advances far enough for her to be given a new body.  The rest of the group is concerned about Pierce's denial, but Jeff (Joel McHale) tells them all to calm down and respect Pierce's beliefs. Annie manages to raise more money than Britta.  Britta gets...

 "Okay, that was really good." -Yelena Belova When a group of notorious antiheroes are caught in a deadly trap, they must put aside their differences and find a way to work together to escape, survive, and defeat the real enemy. Spoilers Below!  This is a tough movie to talk about without getting into spoilers, so I'll just say this movie is great and my favorite MCU movie since  Avengers: Endgame .  Spoilers Below! What Works: I don't know if anyone predicted that Thunderbolts* would be about depression, but I certainly didn't.  That is the main theme of this movie.  All of these characters have done bad things and have to live with that.  They can either let it bring them down or they can try to do better, but a few of the characters are struggling to cope with the depression they feel about what they've done.  And the villain of the movie, the Void (Lewis Pullman), is just depression personified.  It's a really powerful and emotional story...

 "Fried chicken and waffles!" Well, this episode was pretty much a race to the bottom.  It had some funny moments, but this was definitely a below average episode of Survivor and easily my least favorite episode of the season.  The fact that it was a choice between Mary and Star was just ridiculous and frustrating.  Let's get into who played well and who sucked. Who Played Well: Taking out Star was a great move for the alliance of Eva, Joe, and Shauhin for sure.  It keeps them in power and any of them could win against the others in the end.  Picking off the people at the bottom is smart on their part.  They made Mitch feel comfortable enough to stick with them, plus Joe won Immunity, and I liked the conversation Eva had with Mary after Tribal Council. It sucks for Mary to lose Star as I think Star was probably the only person Mary could beat at the end.  But it wasn't her choice or her fault that it happened.  She was put in a desperate situ...