What Wood is Watching

Well it's here, season 6 of Game of Thrones is only days away and right in time for dead week/finals week (thanks HBO). I have papers galore, a test to study for and a room to pack up but I am going to make time to watch the premiere of my favorite show on television. This will be a very basic, very spoiler free post so you guys can experience it unlike what my friends had to endure when i tried to get them to watch Breaking Bad.  So why is Game of Thrones my favorite show I watch? Characters Too many names to so who everyone is, and this isn't even half of the cast. Normally, a show has maybe at most 10 really strong characters that are considered main or supporting characters that you either love to root for or love to root for their demise. GoT really goes against this generic plot as there are twenty characters pictured above and there are even more characters that have recurring roles with them like Davos, Shyreen or even Hodor! Each character brings something di...

This cartoon was the first "anime" type show I watched outside of Pokemon as a kid. I can't believe I forgot to write about this show in the anime week I did pre-spring break but better late than never. What really reminded me was when I was baffled a friend of mine hadn't seen this show and  I pestered him to watch just the first episode for months. After watching the first episode he was hooked and binged all 61 episodes over the course of a week and told me, "Dude why have you never told me to watch this show?" But what is Avatar? The Avatar. master of all four elements: water, earth, fire and air. Avatar: The Last Airbender  follows Aang (pictured above) also known as The Avatar, the master of all four elements. In this world, there are people who can "bend" the elements to their will. These people are called "benders" belonging to either the: Fire Nation, Air Nomads, Water Tribe, Earth Nation. 100 years before the events of t...

We are back after Spring Break and work! Thanks for being patient everyone and settle in, and keep the light on, this one is spooky. Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie as Ichabod Crane and Abbigail Mills in Sleepy Hollow. Image: FOX Alright now this is one of those posts similar to the  Cutthroat Kitchen  post I made about a month ago expressing some bias as to why I think you should watch what I (Wood) watch. In freshman year of college,  Fringe  got cancelled by FOX and two new projects were picked up to take it's place. One was called  Almost Human,  helmed by J.J. Abrams (creator of  Fringe ), a sci-fi police drama that failed miserably    and the other was by the other creators of  Fringe   Robert Orsi and Alex Kurtzman which became  Sleepy Hollow.  The show's title however and what you expect it to be about are completely different. I will explain this further but buckle up because this isn't the story of...

When you are watching a show and a character makes a sexual, racist, anti-religious, too-soon, or other normally frowned upon kind of joke in society, is that bothersome to you or funny? This is a big debate with shows in households and on the internet in general where both sides clash about what should be done and what's pushing it too far. For example, do audiences want to see blurred nudity throughout the episode often or is that too much? Is it okay for a cartoon baby to be killing people and creating gadgets that he wants to use to kill his mother with? Family Guy was heavily criticized and even cancelled by FOX a while back and Seth MacFarlane even did an episode after Family Guy came back on the air that was live action of him just interviewing various ordinary viewers of Family Guy  and the results were mixed. People either hated or loved it because  of how crass and irreverent it was. "It reminds me of South Park " one viewer said and that's a whole other bea...

As I have gotten older my idea of what's dramatic, adventurous, thrilling, scary and too over the top have evolved. One thing remains constant though and that is how comedies are able to tell a story that can make you laugh really hard, feel really sad and in the end extremely happy when all is said and done. From foul-mouthed kids and adults, to something as simple and mundane as a "documentary" about an ordinary paper company, comedies are probably my favorite shows on television today. They roll everything into one and are able to be light hearted and fun throughout but also really serious and make me care about the characters just as much as I did in Fullmetal Alchemist, Fringe, Game of Thrones and more serious shows. So in no particular order, as I love all these shows equally and have watched them all multiple times, my favorite comedies on this week's What Wood Is Watching. New Girl: At first, I thought this was going to be primarily directed at ...

Alright, this is the newest genre in types of shows I watch. Since high school, I had friends through mutual interests who watched anime shows while I was watching The Office, Community and other comedy sitcom series. I was in the mindset partially of "It's cartoons just for adults. That could be terrible and more immature than Family Guy  and just be terrible." But guys....I was so very wrong. While some anime, like shows that get cancelled on NBC often, can be terrible and irredeemable but when it's done well, it is the biggest binge worthy genre around. Now what do you get in anime? Remember, most anime is produced, written and intended for Japanese audiences so the culture and some of the characters are very different than characters you would find in typical American shows you might enjoy currently. Anime is also much more violent. The best comparison I have to the level of violence is Game of Thrones and it's also much darker overall. The beauty of it thou...

THIS IS FILLED WITH SPOILERS ON HOUSE OF CARDS SEASON 4. DO NOT LISTEN/READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS GREAT SHOW. Well season 4 has come and gone for me and many people asked me throughout the day do you regret watching it all in a period of a day? My answer to that is hell no. It's a treat to be able to watch it all at once via Netflix like a big movie with a brief intermission for dinner and drinks with some friends downtown. Now was it the best season yet? Not entirely but it was much better than season 3. I want to use this small entry under the video to highlight Meechum and Freddie because of events in  season 4 that stuck out to me. Meechum's character development was a strange path overall since season 1. He is tossed around from worthless to valuable to sexual conquest (still weird), to irrelevant to mvp and it's all very abrupt. Meechum however was vastly underutilized with potential filler pieces to the story line that went to ...

THIS IS FILLED WITH SPOILERS ON HOUSE OF CARDS SEASON 2. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE YOU WATCH THIS GREAT SHOW. Season 2 picks up right where we left off, Claire and Frank are running at night as Zoe and company are getting ready to go public with their findings of Peter... Note: all videos owned by Netflix and found on YouTube. Episode 1: Francis Underwood is preparing to be the Vice President and he needs to take care of the loose ends before he is sworn in. He needs to find someone to replace him as Majority Whip and finds that person to be war hero Jackie Sharp. A third term congresswoman, Jackie eagerly accepts Frank's offer to back her running to be the new Whip. Jackie dives right in to work, and eventually says she wants to be Whip.  Claire is still battling Gillian who is still trying to get her to go to court and sue her for wrongful termination. Gillian is pregnant and needs certain medications to survive so Claire termina...