The Inhumans: This show is garbage in just so many ways, but let me call out a few items that particularly infuriate me.

• Drywall:

  Here is what the ceiling in Crystal's room looks like, her room on the moon -- on the moon:

  

  

  That's drywall! Studs 16 inches on center with recessed sockets! I can't look at that without seeing California Title 24 post-2013 low-energy lighting standards. Now I realize this show has no budget, but come on. Even Dr. Who -- Dr. Who in the 1970s -- didn't cheap out this badly.

  Compare and contrast to this shot from the upcoming Thor movie:

  

  That's drywall and $10 of paint, but it is Kirby as Fuck! Find the person who did that! They are already on your org chart! They probably work in your building!

  I mean, to be generous, at least her apartment's "2015 Airbnb rental in the Financial District" look does match her character's complete absence of personality.

• Lockjaw:

  You have a show where one of the characters is an elephant-sized, teleporting, drooling bulldog. How is this not the star of the show? More specifically, how is this not the most charming thing in the world? How did they manage to make Lockjaw boring? This is a freebie, how did you screw that up??

  Also, CGI bulldog, seriously? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just composite in a real bulldog? If you did that it might have had some personality and not looked like it was half melted all the time.

• Medusa's Hair:

  It's a given that Medusa's hair was going to be a disaster. It's an absolutely nonsensical, ridiculous idea, how can you even do that live-action without it being comedy? Also, it's an expensive effect! So they solved that problem by... shaving her head for the whole season. WHAT. It's like the story Kevin Smith told about the Jon Peters Superman movie: "I don't want to see him in that suit. No flying. And he has to fight a giant spider in the third act." Other than that, yeah, that's totally Superman, you've nailed the essence of the character!

• Hot Librarian:

  "Have Central Casting send over a Scientistess!" You know the character, she's wearing big black glasses but she hasn't taken the scrunchie out of her long, straight blonde ponytail yet, so you can't tell she's "hot". Is this actually the same actor playing Hot Librarian in Arrow? Because it's sure the same character, the same writing, and possibly decanted from the same clone vat. Stop doing this.

• "Friend? What Is Friend?"

  They live in a secret city on the moon. They all speak perfect English, with only a slight Ren Faire accent. They know all about Earth, in particular, current events involving humans on Earth mutating. So they land on Earth, and now:

  • They don't understand what money is.
  • They think ATMs are speech-operated and just give it out for free.
  • Somehow announcing that you are Queen of a secret city that nobody on Earth has heard of will convince the mean old ATM to comply.
  • But! Medusa recognizes a helicopter by sight and calls it by the proper name.
  • And thinks you can chase them with cars.
  • Oh but Ramsay Bolton secretly owns a corporation? A secret Medical Research Murder Corporation? That just happens to be in the same place that everyone ended up.

  HOW do you write this badly? Does this show not even have a backstory written down? Seriously how do you fuck this up? Does your showrunner's wall not have any post-it notes on it at all?

  So which is it? Do they watch our TV, regularly receive shipments from Earth of drywall and UL-listed lighting fixtures? Or are they 15th century Brigadoon Monarchists recently emerged from their cave?

Gotham:

The only remaining thing that is any good about this show is the cityscape wipes. Even Penguin is boring now. He was the only good part, how did they make him boring?

Seriously, the cityscape that appears in the scene transitions is the most interesting character in the show. They should just put it in leather pants and give it a knife, like Victor Zsasz.







I'm curious about whether they have one massive digital model of the city, or whether they still composite these by hand. Do all the fake buildings have names and street addresses? That model would be an irresistible rathole to me.

Designing Gotham: how the look and feel of Batman's home came to be:

We do find other areas that need no help to look like Gotham, and we go far and wide to do it. There are warehouses and old buildings and docks along the waterfront in Brooklyn that still have that feeling. We shoot a lot, funnily enough, in Staten Island, because Staten Island in some areas hasn't experienced the architectural resurgence that Manhattan has. We also tend to find perfect Gotham that doesn't need to be messed with under bridges and overpasses. Those areas really feel like the city has you in its hold. [...]

There's an enormous day and night translucent backing that surrounds Barbara Kean's apartment -- a gigantic background photograph, really. It's a composite of photographs of buildings from various cities that were carefully chosen for their Gotham-like feeling, and then manipulated digitally to bring the Gotham look to it that we wanted.

Most of the photographs are from New York, although we eliminate specific landmarks that are associated with New York. You may see Chrysler-like buildings, but you won't see the Chrysler building. We even do that on a day-to-day basis as we're shooting in the city. We try not to feature the Empire State building.

That aside, Batman Muppet Babies is not a good show.

PS, speaking of stories where The City is (or should be) a primary character, I'm still sad and angry over the new Blade Runner, but I haven't written down my massive list of grievances yet.

Our world is full of unique animals that have squat fatty bodies, with all kinds of soft tissue features that are unlikely to have survived in fossils, such as pouches, wattles, or skin flaps. "[...] "The biggest thing is teeth and facial fat. Readers have to be aware that all dinosaurs they see in all media, and especially in popular culture, seem to have their heads flensed. They've always got these weird grins with only the teeth visible." As he points out, most animals have lips and gums and lumps of facial fat that change the profile of the head, and cover the teeth.

These are swans. Note the distinctive murder-spikes!

This is a baboon.

This is a hippo.

Honorable mention.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The fact is, a river of piss runs through art history.

For centuries, painters and sculptors have depicted the act of urination. Men piss. Women piss. Most of all, young boys piss, so much so that scholars assigned a Latin term, puer mingens, to their ubiquitous appearances. Now Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, a French critic, has written "Pissing Figures, 1280 -- 2014," a genealogy of the pisseurs and pisseuses who haunt our canvases, fountains, and frescoes. The book, in a rangy, fluent translation from Jeff Nagy, is a record of what Lebensztejn calls our "diuretic fantasies" -- of the lore and lust surrounding urine, sacred and profane. [...]

They pissed into vases and basins and shells and conchs, onto snowdrifts and poppy husks and flocks of cupids. They pissed in the mouths and anuses of other boys, who themselves pissed in more mouths still. These were no ordinary boys. Spritely and seraphic, often winged and laurelled, they charmed their way into old churches, where they patrolled the transepts and friezes, pure of heart and full of bladder. [...]

Indeed, a boy's piss seems at some point to have crossed streams with holy water, becoming blessed with ablutionary powers. In Italy, Lebensztejn notes, "it is still customary, even today, to call an infant's intemperate pee acqua santa." [...]

Of course, the angels, being angels, feel no relief as they piss. They get their celestial jollies by raining a little holy water on us, but they know nothing of urination as a physical urge. If you want to enjoy some real salt-of-the-earth pissing, Lebensztejn reports, you have to skip ahead to 1600.

Please, Jesus, please let the pee tape be real. Amen.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.