Author Archives: Katie

Unknown's avatar

About Katie

I'm a writer and editor; a dancer and choreographer; and a passionate fan of more things than is probably healthy. I love film, literature, television, sports, fashion, and music. I'm proud to be a Nerdy Girl.

Grading the Season Finales: Parks and Recreation

Posted on by
9

Title Win, Lose, or Draw (4.22)

Written By Michael Schur

Major Characters Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott), Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones), Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza), Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe), Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), Donna Meagle (Retta), Jerry Gergich (Jim O’Heir), Bobby Newport (Paul Rudd), Jennifer Barkley (Kathryn Hahn)

What Happens It’s Election Day in Pawnee, Indiana, the day Leslie Knope and Bobby Newport square off in a showdown for a spot on the city council. As Election Day heads into Election Night, various subplots unfold: Chris getting his groove back after a one-night stand with Jennifer; April and Andy panicking over the deletion of important parks department files; and Jerry fearing that his failure to make it to the voting booth on time could be the deciding factor in the election. At its heart, though, this is an episode about change, and the most important storylines in this finale deal with big changes that loom on the horizon for important members of Leslie’s team.

Change comes to Ben in the form of Jennifer offering him a job on a congressional reelection campaign. The new job requires him to move to Washington, D.C., for six months. At first, Leslie is less than supportive of this plan; she’d hoped they could finally have time to really enjoy being a couple after her campaign was over. Hearing this, Ben tells Leslie that he’ll turn down the offer. Leslie has bigger problems than just Ben, though; the initial election results reveal that Bobby won by a very slim margin. This triggers an automatic recount, and, while waiting for those results, Leslie has a talk with Ron that opens her eyes to the fact that caring about someone means supporting their dreams, just like her friends did for her.

With Ron’s words echoing in her head, Leslie finds Ben and tells him that he should go to Washington, and they’ll make it their relationship work despite the distance between them. As they contemplate what the future has in store for them as a couple, Ann delivers the results of the recount: Leslie Knope is Pawnee’s newest city council member.

After delivering a heartfelt victory speech (Ben reveals to her that he never wrote the concession one), Leslie joins her friends to celebrate the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to serve Pawnee as an elected official. As the victory celebration rages on, Ron declines Chris’s job offer (for the assistant city manager position). Andy, however, might be pursuing a new career path next season, as April encourages him to think about joining the police force. Ann and Tom drunkenly decide to move in together, promising not to take it back when they’re sober. Big changes are coming to Pawnee, indeed…

Continue reading →

Grading the Season Finales: Once Upon a Time

Posted on by
6

Title A Land Without Magic (1.22)

Written By Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz

Major Characters Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison), Regina Mills/Evil Queen (Lana Parrilla), Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle), Henry Mills (Jared Gilmore), Mary Margaret Blanchard/Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin), David Nolan/Prince Charming (Josh Dallas), Jefferson/Mad Hatter (Sebastian Stan), Belle (Emilie de Ravin), August W. Booth/Pinocchio (Eion Bailey)

What Happens First, we’ll tackle the Fairytale Land side of this finale…Prince Charming escapes from the Evil Queen’s dungeon with a little help from the Huntsman (Jamie Dornan) and proceeds on his quest to find Snow White. However, the queen transports him to a forest that is impossible to navigate…without a little magical help, of course. That help comes in the form of Rumpelstiltskin, who offers Charming the Fairytale Land equivalent of a GPS device (he’s enchanted a ring given to Charming by his mother to glow brighter as he approaches Snow White). But of course, all magic comes with a price. In this case, Charming has to hide a potion (made from Charming and Snow’s true love) inside the dragon form of Maleficent. After a daring fight with the aforementioned dragon, Charming succeeds, and, as promised, Rumpelstiltskin gives him the ring, telling Charming that he has a vested interest not only in true love but in what true love creates.

What happens next is a second look at the opening scene of the pilot episode, with Charming racing to his beloved Snow White and restoring her to life with true love’s kiss. The finale takes this scene one step further with a marriage proposal and a promise to “take back the kingdom” from the evil forces that are now controlling it (King George, who Charming has to pretend is his father in an elaborate “Prince and the Pauper”-type story from earlier this season, and the Evil Queen).

And now to the events in Storybrooke…After eating a cursed apple turnover meant for Emma at the end of last week’s episode, Henry is rushed to the hospital while a helpless Emma learns from Dr. Whale (David Anders) that there is no explanation for his loss of consciousness. This triggers Emma to finally see that what happened to Henry is “like magic,” and upon holding his storybook, she finally believes everything he had been telling her all season: Storybrooke is a town filled with cursed fairytale characters and she is the daughter of Charming and Snow, the savior meant to break the curse cast upon them by Regina. This is confirmed during a raw, emotional confrontation with Regina, during which Emma (Henry’s birth mother) discovers that Regina (Henry’s adopted mother) can’t bring their son back to life because she used the last of her magic to create the apple turnover that Henry ate.

The two women then go to the only other person in Storybrooke with substantial power, Mr. Gold. He tells Emma that she needs to retrieve the potion that her father hid inside of Maleficent, who is being kept in her dragon form underneath the town. Before she confronts the dragon, Emma goes to see August, only to watch him return to his original form (a wooden puppet) right before her eyes. Emma defeats the dragon, but is tricked into giving up the potion to Mr. Gold, who experiences his own shocking twist when he comes face-to-face with his beloved Belle, who was thought to be dead. She was freed by Jefferson and sent to find Mr. Gold with the message that Regina is the one who had been holding her captive.

The happiness of this moment is soon forgotten when Emma and Regina receive simultaneous phone calls from the hospital: Henry is dead. While Regina looks on, Emma says her final goodbyes to her son, telling him she loves him and kissing his forehead. True love’s kiss proves once again to be strong enough to conquer all, waking Henry and breaking the curse cast upon all of Storybrooke’s residents. With their memories restored, Snow White and Prince Charming have an emotional reunion 28 years in the making – as do Rumpelstiltskin and Belle. However, Rumpelstiltskin has bigger plans than love at the moment, dropping the potion Emma acquired into a well and bringing magic to Storybrooke through what appears to be a purple version of Lost’s infamous smoke monster.

As the one who cast the curse, Regina knows she will have hell to pay and must go into hiding to save herself now that the townspeople remember who they are. Before she leaves the hospital, though, she pleads with Henry to believe that, no matter what anyone tells him, she does love him. Her tears upon entering her son’s empty bedroom fade to a cruel smile, though, as she sees the purple smoke of magic returning to the town, presumably restoring her powers as the clock strikes 8:15, the same time that Storybrooke was frozen at for 28 years before Emma came to the town in the pilot episode.

Continue reading →

Grading the Season Finales: New Girl

Posted on by
2

Title See Ya (1.24)

Major Characters Jess (Zooey Deschanel), Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), Cece (Hannah Simone)

What Happens? Nick wants to leave the apartment he shares with Jess, Schmidt, and Winston to move back in with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Caroline, also known as the woman who turned Nick into “an agoraphobic, turtle-faced borderline alcoholic,” according to Jess. Despite his roommates’ protests, Nick seems determined to move out, leaving the rest of them to interview for a new roommate. They settle on Neil, a self-proclaimed troubadour with his own interesting set of quirks, including a box featuring an unknown animal (“…something growled in that box,” Cece tells Jess).

As the male roommates drive with Nick to his new apartment, they get more than they bargained for when Nick gets cold feet and takes them on an unplanned trip into the desert. In a fit of catastrophic spontaneity, Nick throws his keys into the wilderness, which prompts Schmidt and Winston to call Jess and Cece to take them home (which proves futile after Jess also appears to throw her keys away). The five friends are then forced to spend the night in the desert, listening to mixtapes Nick made in the 1990s. While there, Schmidt and Cece decide to end their relationship because she thinks he doesn’t trust her and he thinks she’s too good to be with him. Nick and Jess also have a moment of their own, with Jess finally giving Nick her blessing to move in with Caroline because she cares about him and wants him to be happy.

In the end, we learn that Jess never really did throw away her keys, and after a night of desert bonding, the friends take Nick to his new apartment. It’s clear, though, that Nick belongs with his former roommates rather than with Caroline, and the episode ends with him returning home to the sounds of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

Continue reading →

Grading the Season Finales: Castle

Posted on by
12

Title Always (Episode 4.23)

Written By Andrew Marlowe and Terri Miller

Major Characters Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion), Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic), Detective Kevin Ryan (Seamus Dever), Detective Javier Esposito (Jon Huertas), Alexis Castle (Molly Quinn), Captain Victoria Gates (Penny Johnson Jerald)

What Happens? When a murder investigation leads the detectives to the man who shot Beckett in last season’s finale, she is tempted to once again go down the proverbial rabbit hole and lose herself in the conspiracy surrounding the fatal stabbing of her mother. In order to keep her from risking her life, Castle is forced to reveal to Beckett that he has been withholding leads from her as part of a deal for her life that he made with a mysterious Mr. Smith: If Beckett doesn’t investigate her mother’s death, she stays alive. After his pleas for rational thought and honest confessions of love appear to fall on deaf ears, Castle decides to walk away from Beckett once and for all.

Beckett and Esposito go rogue to try to take down the killer on their own, which ends with Beckett hanging off of a rooftop ledge and Ryan coming to her rescue – after he alerted Captain Gates to what she and Esposito were doing. Though Ryan saved their lives, Beckett and Esposito are suspended, but Beckett takes it one step further. She resigns, turning in her badge as she realizes that she has more to live for than simply avenging her mother’s death; that she wants more than the life she had been living up until that moment. This revelation sends her to Castle’s loft, where she tells him that she is ready to move on from her all-consuming quest for justice and become a whole person – with him. As the two of them kiss and prepare embark on the next chapter in their story, we learn that Beckett’s life is in grave danger as her shooter has found Mr. Smith, taking away Beckett’s greatest source of protection and vowing to kill her once and for all.

Continue reading →

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Posted on by
6

I love television. I love it as a source of entertainment and as an outlet for analysis. Besides books, there is nothing I love to analyze more than television shows.

Television gets a bad reputation as being “mindless entertainment,” but I believe that reputation is not totally fair. Like all forms of media, you have to choose to see the positive examples and focus on those instead of the negative ones. Besides, it’s not just television that can be trashy. There are plenty of distasteful, mindless, and just plain awful films and books as well.

For every terrible television show (Sixteen and Pregnant, Bad Girls Club, every dating show ever aired on VH1, etc.) there are great television shows (The Wire, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc.). And there are fewer things more enjoyable in the life of a media studies geek than following a great television show through to its conclusion.

Television as a medium is like literature in a lot of ways. Each episode is like a chapter of a book, and each season is like a book in a series. If done correctly, television shows allow for the possibility of deep analysis and thoughtful discussion because of the depth with which stories can be told in this medium. Unlike films, which last two hours (or sometimes more – especially if you’re Peter Jackson or James Cameron), television shows can last for years. This allows for a kind of storytelling which, when done correctly, has the ability to present deeper characters and richer plots with more emotional weight than even a novel can present.

The emotional connection between the audience of a television show and the show itself is often stronger than the connection between other forms of media and their audiences. Viewers let television characters into their homes for an hour (or half-hour) every week for around 22-23 weeks per year (depending on the number of episodes in a season). There’s a sense of familiarity that develops in watching the interactions of characters for season after season of a television show, and that familiarity lends itself to a more emotionally engaging media experience than a standalone book or film. Put in the hands of capable writers and actors, these characters grow and develop over the course of a television show’s run, and viewers are able to watch that growth and personally connect with it.

Continue reading →

A True American Horror Story: Violence, Childhood, and The Hunger Games

Posted on by
6

The Hunger Games can be described in many ways. It’s captivating. It’s haunting. It’s affecting. It’s terrifying.

It’s also unquestionably American.

According to Entertainment Weekly, “Internationally, The Hunger Games isn’t yet the franchise-launching blockbuster that it is Stateside.” As of last weekend (April 15), the film had grossed $337.1 million domestically but had yet to pass the $200 million mark internationally.

This disparity can be attributed to many causes, but I think it all boils down to one point: The Hunger Games is a distinctly American story. It reflects the uniquely American mythology of Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Lucas’s Star Wars. While Suzanne Collins surely meant for her novel to be enjoyed and analyzed by an international audience, she speaks directly to Americans with every turn of the page.

The basic premise of The Hunger Games points directly to two American obsessions: violence and youth. Never before have these two quintessentially American fascinations been linked in such a brutally direct way.

Continue reading →

The Good, the Bad, and the Bella Swan: A Woman’s Place in the Modern Media

Posted on by
8

It’s a confusing time to be a young woman in America.

Whether or not we want to admit it, much of what we believe about ourselves and our place in society comes from the media. And right now, the media is a minefield of mixed messages when it comes to what we as women are supposed to be.

Be strong, but don’t be bossy. Speak your mind, but don’t be a bitch. Act sexy, but don’t act like a whore. Work hard to get a good job, but don’t be a cold, spinster “career woman.” Be proud of your femininity, but don’t be too “girly” or “high-maintenance.” Strive to be skinny, but don’t lose your womanly curves in the process. You are more than your body, but it is your most powerful asset. You don’t need a man to validate you, but every happy ending involves a Prince Charming.

It’s enough to make even the most confident, well-adjusted woman’s head spin.

Young women have more stress, body image issues, and doubts about their self-worth than ever before. They also have more options when it comes to media consumption than ever before. Is that just an unpleasant coincidence?

You would think that more options would lead to a more balanced depiction of women in the media, but it often seems that more channels, advertisements, and social media outlets are in fact leading to the increased reinforcement of damaging ideas about the female gender.

Sometimes it seems like it’s better to become complete hermits, taking the media and its negative stereotypes completely out of our lives. But eventually we reach a frightening conclusion: For as frustrated as we get with the media, we simply can’t live without it.

The key to developing a healthy sense of self as a young woman in this media-driven society is to remember something that we all-too-often forget: We have a choice. We can choose what media we consume, and we can choose to educate ourselves about the impact the media has on our lives.

Continue reading →

Confessions of a Nerdy Girl (or Welcome, Let Me Tell You All About Myself!)

Posted on by
10

My name is Katie, and I’m a nerdy girl.

I own more books than I have room to hold on my bookshelves, and the ones on the shelves are organized by genre and then alphabetically by author’s last name. I have playlists on my iPod inspired by my favorite movies, TV shows, and fictional characters. I write notes in the margins of every book I read, carefully analyzing (some might say overanalyzing) each sentence. I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 four times within the first week it was in theaters. I have a charming habit of crying over things that happen to fictional characters more than I cry over things that happen to my friends.

Ten years ago – heck, five years ago – I would have never admitted those things to anyone. Being a nerd was something I was afraid of. I used to work hard to convince people that doing well in school didn’t automatically make me a nerd.

I’m not sure when my mindset changed, but I think it was somewhere between buying the Star Wars Character Encyclopedia and dressing up as Hermione Granger for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

Continue reading →