Do you know which is the biggest superpower in the world? No, it’s not invisibility, or being all-powerful. But the biggest superpower there could be is the ability to speak what’s on your mind without any fear. If you could say what you were thinking without worrying about anything, then you are the most powerful being. And, of course, there are going to be repercussions and you might have to regret them later.
So, I recently (re)watched all 10 seasons of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and it is one of my favorite things on TV.
Don’t you sometimes inflict pain on to yourself just to see how much would it hurt or do you still have it in you? Like touching a hot pan to see what temperature can you handle, or trying to lift 10 KG bag of Aata to see if your backbone is still in solid-state or watch News on TV just to see how many decibels your ears can tolerate? I could dip my hand in boiling milk and I could lift heavy bags but I usually give up after checking the sheer loudness of the TV News for more than 5 minutes. And I live almost next to an airport so I know what loudness is.
I wonder how these news people sleep at night? Maybe everything they do is in ALL CAPS. GOOD MORNING? MORNING I SAID. DON’T YOU THINK THE MORNING IS GOOD? HOW DARE YOU SAY GOOD MORNING AFTER 12? What if they get a little extra salt in their food? What if someone overtakes them from the wrong side? How do they react with their Kids when they show them their report cards? Even the graphics on these news channels are so glaring that if you feel cold any day, keep a TV with News On instead of spending money to make a fireplace.
I have tried a lot but News is becoming more and more unbearable. I am not saying that it is not relevant. I am just saying that I have now become nihilistic enough to ignore it and still live normally. I have even tried the silent news channels. They are so depressing and dull about everything around that one feels that it would need some electric shocks to come back to reality which is normally just fine if not 100%.
The day is not too far when the TV would come with coolants and radiators. And if they get too hot due to the sheer loudness, you might have to take them not to a TV Repair shop but with you to some hill station so that they can take a vacation.
If your nostrils are still flaring, eyes are still red with anger, blood pressure is higher than your patriotic josh, stay away from the TV News and see these pictures to actually be at peace: https://twitter.com/dog_rates
You might say, so what’s the big deal in that? But the only deal is that I had stopped watching it after its 5th or 6th season because of forced laughter track and not so funny jokes, and had moved over to grittier shows involving 4 even nerdier and crazier boys (i.e. South Park).
But I resumed it after a gap of over 5 years and finally finished watching all the remaining seasons of the 12 seasons show.
I returned to TBBT as it was still the good old sitcom and it revolved around somethings I find interesting as a fellow nerd;
Science (mostly physics because other sciences are boring)
Comics / Superheroes
A little eccentricity or awkwardness which comes out either like arrogance or creepiness, relatable right!
The intrinsic desire to Mansplain things
Creating such lists
TBBT was the first English TV show I watched which opened a box of so much other consumable content I used to find off-putting. It had many factors which most Engineering graduates would find relatable.
Despite all the tropes, if you stick with the show, it turns out to be the good old TV comedy which you can go back to.
When I watched Daredevil last year, it felt more like a realistic crime drama than a Comic Book TV Adaptation. When its Season 2 came, that belief got reinforced. Same thing happened with Jessica Jones Season 1. Even Luke Cage was going pretty fine till the last few episodes where it went sideways and changed the main villain just like that. When I watched Iron Fist, I couldn’t be sure whether the show was intentionally trying to be comedy or it was an accidental comedy. No problem with the acting, but the main thing the show could have given, superb fighting sequences, got disappeared after 1st episode and it became a more of business drama. Anyways, I wasn’t that disappointed because I was waiting wholeheartedly for all 4 of the Marvel’s TV Street Level Superheroes to culminate into The Defenders.
The trailer with a brilliant Niravana song had only increased the expectations. So on August 18th, all 8 (just 8) episodes got released on Netflix. I watched them all in 4-5 days.
The build up was good, they showed all the superheroes in their own lives trying to deal with their own issues. Then some events bring them together. And then they become Defenders, but nobody says that they are defenders per se.
So first, the good parts:
Jessica Jones.
I mean she kills all the scenes when she makes some remark about, as Stick puts it ‘A Thundering Dumbass’ or ‘The most stupid Iron Fist ever’, the Immortal Iron Fist. Luke Cage also adds his bit when he realizes that their problems are half-criminal, half-mystical and remaining indigestible. The chemistry between the 4 is really funny. Nobody wants to believe that they can work as a team, except Danny Rand. Daredevil, who knows the threat of Hand is real, is unsure whether he should jump in or not. He has kind of given up after Season 2. His non-masked character, Matt Murdock, also stays true to his original show to an extent before falling prey to ‘Love’. The other best part is when Jessica keeps making fun of his costume as he is the only one donning it. The overall storyline is satisfactory and they will probably going to go for Season 2 as well. But that won’t happen till 2019.
Now the bad parts:
Some weird things happened in the end and they tried to make it like a cliff hanger. Fair enough, but constant fighting bad guys in half-darkness with no -idea who is beating whom was a bit annoying. They hugely improved Iron Fist’s part by making them butt of other heroes’ jokes but I still wasn’t able to find one instance of fight sequence which would be as memorable as DD’s hallway and staircase scene. The villains here, are not as threatening as they should have been. And again, like Iron Fist, they sort of ruin the climax before doing away with one main person.
Overall, the Defenders were mostly okayish because if you cram 4 superheroes in just 8 episodes, many things are left unattended. You can watch the show though, just to enjoy, the camaraderie between the team and Jessica Jones’ one-liners.
I was told to watch less TV so I decided to get a BV instead of a TV [wink]. Actually, the TV was owned by my roommate and he had to move to a different city altogether so I am now TV less since last 3 weeks. Moreover, I haven’t watched TV actively since the starting of 2016 itself as I was involved in some life altering activities one indulges in when one comes of age or there is nothing else left to be done. Sigh.
But believe me, life has been a lot better without TV. Life without TV is like being in a super heavy traffic jam but without the noise. It is like standing beneath a hand dryer and the dryer is pumping out cool breeze softly and someone is shooting this scene for a energy drink commercial. It is like an ice cream cone in which the chocolate part at the bottom of the cone never ends. It’s like speed of download increasing instead of decreasing even if you keep on staring at it/jinxing it by staring. But then you can run away from TV but you can’t escape news coming at you if you happen to be on the Internet.
The Intelligent Box
There has been a lot going on around our country and as usual TV and Social Media has got stuck on a couple of things worth outraging only. So let me put my point across as someone who was spared of these events due to lack of TV and had no reaction to it whatsoever but now everyone is peddling their views so why shouldn’t I?
Well before I start my rant, let me digress for a second: It always brings the best out of people when they vent out of their feelings on Social Media on issues which they feel something about. By best I mean worst. Since last few years, you can easily classify people (and also fail at it miserably) based on their inclinations politically and socially. You can succeed if a person is relentlessly posting about some cause they care about and you know that they truly believe in it (or are they just jobless venting out stuff because free time). And you will fail if you just assume a person’s political inclination based on a vague number of posts just because it helps you to be more biased towards the cause you care about and your favorite pastime is to judge people and assume yourself as morally upright. On TV you still try to present yourself decent as much as possible, but online you are the Hulk and your keyboard is Loki.
Anyways, a lot of things happened on (for) TV lately, the one involving a case of sedition on few gentlemen and ladies from JNU, Delhi. Some things were said. Some things weren’t. But the videos went viral. Viral to the extent that police had to intervene and arrest one of the student leaders. Then some people thought that they could teach that student a lesson and act as the sole saviors of the country. And then you know what and all happened.
Now my point of view on it.
For most of us, we who have average IQs, we tend to be an emotional bunch. TV for us is like a family member. We might live alone, but we still want to have a TV in front of us. Even if we want it in our room just for the sake of aesthetics of the house. We might keep our heads soaked into the 5″ screen of our mobile phones but we must have the sound of TV going into our ears. Even if one doesn’t own a personal TV of their own but in some way or the other, one would get attracted to it. We must have our dinner with Prime Time TV as one of the dishes otherwise the meal seems a bit incomplete. TV makes a house, a home.
When it comes to News on TV, that also happens to be a major prime time event. Most of the things happen either in the evening so that Prime Time is ready to pounce on it, or on a weekend so that everyone can watch scenes of disasters from their drawing rooms with the comfort of their sofas. Unless you are too saintly and watch saas-bahu still in 2016, people watch News on TV and base their primary opinions from it. This is also important that TV is one of the major opinion making body because one, newspapers are dying and second, people don’t have time to spoil their eyes on a paper which has static text and images when they can spoil their eyes on, you know what. And Internet is an extension of the TV. A tool from which we can re-affirm our social and political beliefs. Although we could totally get opposite views from the Internet too but who goes beyond page 1 of Google.
So what the news about latest events in JNU told me, is that TV is trying desperately hard to gather your attention. By keeping it colorful and then taking colors off it. And then painting it red, saffron and what not! It is trying very hard to make nobodies heroes and make heroes (who were also nobody sometime ago) as nobodies. It is, holding your collars, pulling you to watch it, get outraged, enrage your senses and take the blood pressure of yours to newer heights. It is up to us now to decide on how and what do we want to comprehend from it, although we can’t do a thing about it beyond a certain point. Because we need someone to spoonfeed us. We want some leaders who die for our cause. We keep seeking someone, some messiah, some demagogue to tell us that our lives are going very bad. We need someone to remind us that emergency is just lurking around the corner. And TV gives us all that fodder. But if you just come out of the room where TV is sitting, you see mostly everything is just fine. People say that politicians are fools. No sir, you are a fool. Politicians know how to use TV (or say the most prevalent media of the time) to make a fool out of you. They saw few words and you start clapping. They tell you that your life sucks, and you nod your head in sombre agreement. TV is not an idiot box, we are idiots sitting inside a box believing everything on it.
I am not asking you to be indifferent. I am just asking you to learn to move on. Just go outside and switch off your TV for sometime. Or watch Saas bahu serials.
P.S.: And one more thing. We live in a huge country where each and every day, something happens which tries to break the social accord. Do we need to fuel the fire which wants to break our society or do we want to work together to make it better? If someone says even a single bad thing about our family, at least half of the recipients will give it back verbally, some will resort to violence. Some will move on and actually all of them should move on but what’s ideal in this world. It is not that our country is so fragile that it would break into pieces just because of some slogans. But it is prone to suffer some bruises in other parts too surely if one side gets amputated, either from within or due to some external factors. Do we have to encourage those who want to cut off our arms from the outside or do we, join hands, and make internal organs work better and be more immune?
Since the day I’ve became famous (heh, I’ve still got a bit of humor left in me) and was adjudged a movie buff, I’ve come across plenty of people/bloggers who kind of consider themselves as movie reviewers. Not that this is a new practice or path breaking stuff, people used to share their takes on the movies they watched earlier too, peacefully. I also shared my expert opinion about Tashan once and how much I enjoyed it but everyone is a reviewer now. Whenever a new movie, music album, TV show or even a trailer hits the web/TV, they come out and start pimping their expert reviews about the subject with the word go. This pimping continues every <insert your desperation limit> minutes on Twitter and other social media platforms till <insert your tolerance limit> until you click to read the review finally. And I have a problem with all that jazz.
Firstly, anything which is shoved up your face that read my review on this and that, becomes a turn off. But since we are on Twitter so I should better stay away from this practice.
Secondly, I firmly believe that nobody has any right to hold back anyone from sharing their opinion. Everyone is entitled to say what they feel where ever they want, whenever they want, how many times they want. My problem is just that while they are sharing their opinions, they forget that it is ‘their’ opinion and ‘their’ opinion only. I look for certain words and phrases in their blog posts which range from: in my opinion, i feel, i think, it looked like to me, my point of view is that, my conclusion, etc. And I found none. Nobody owns any copyright (heh) or any qualification to become a reviewer but point to note that it is you who is giving your opinion about a certain thing. What you have concluded cannot be the final judgement. Look around, the movies you had written off, say Housefull 2, to be a circus of non sense scenes and full of idiots, has earned more than what you could ever dream of. (I have not watched that movie and have no intention to watch crap) In a country of ours where opinions are so much divided that people can fight even over anything, even the way one glanced the other, how can you be so sure that your take will be even given any respect. You talk about technical details? Take a look at your own blog Sir/Madam and the aesthetics of the space from where you are announcing that the movie is a unedited series of ham videos not even worth of being shown in Bangladesh’s Funniest Videos but the movie ends up being a hit and the normal people actually enjoying it whole heartedly? What sense do you make out it?
Like they say, the best way to become famous now is to hit below the belt and when the person cries out in pain, take pics of him and put it on 9gag. Similarly, to become a critic, blast the movie off. Don’t become a constructive reviewer, no no no no no, how will you be famous then, just make fun of it, that is the right way, no? The most hilarious thing is the stars or thumbs up these reviewers give. This movie had bad direction, lets cut 1.523454 stars out of 5, this actor had slept with the producer’s wife, lets add 0.69 stars to it. This movie had brilliant music but all inspired from Asian and Arabic music, lets cut the stars from the rating by 2 bilangs.
Try doing something creative and let others judge you. Then review whatever you can.
That is my opinion. And i don’t expect you to follow it. But you should.
