* Second, about Joss Whedon. You say you want a ranking of the ten best episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ever? Well I’ve
got one for you.
* And while we’re on the subject of Whedon, if you like the guy and/or like the X-Men, then you should run (don’t walk) to the Amazon and pick up the
trade paperback of his Astonishing X-Men run. Which is (a) the best Whedon writer, ever and (b) the best X-Men story, ever.
Oh, and when I said that the hardcover trades are a good investment? The hardcover omnibus version of Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men
starts at $189 used on Amazon and plenty of copies are over $300. Those hardcover trades are the closest thing to guaranteed ROI as you’ll find in the comic book world.
* So how about that Ghost in the Shell?
Sonny’s review of the movie is fantastic. And I was also interested in the
piece he wrote after we recorded the show trying to figure out why the movie failed at the box office.
Over on Twitter Adam Condra
pointed out how the audience rejection of Ghost in the Shell is a perfect SJW Rorschach Test: Did the movie fail because audiences are so work that they were repelled by the “whitewashing”? Or did it fail because audiences are so bigoted that they didn’t want to see an empowering female action hero?
* Dipping back to last week’s episode, my buddy Chris emailed with in with some smart thoughts on The Gong Show:
I hadn’t realized how much Gong Show I absorbed as a kid. You know my parents were permissive about TV (the only time I remember being told to turn something off was while watching Eddie Murphy Raw), but there was disapproval in the air when The Gong Show was on. Still, I watched enough to recall the theme song, the judges, and many of the show’s regular bits. I watched the Popsicle Girls. Almost watched it again. And of course I caught the clip where Jaye P. Morgan got away with flashing her boobs on network TV. I even went so far as to watch an entire 1977 episode posted onto YouTube, featuring a young David Letterman as the straight-man judge. You said on the podcast that The Gong Show is the ’70s. I’d go further and say it’s 1977. That was the first year I really remember, and yet, given how quickly culture moved in the late ’70s, the show was a relic of its era almost immediately. The attitudes, the dress, the colors, the sleaziness, the music—they all looked dated a couple years hence. One saving grace on that front is that the show never gave out prizes like cars or living room sets with pre-inflation prices, like Let’s Make a Deal or The Price Is Right. I dove down the Wikipedia hole and learned another interesting bit about Chuck Barris’ show business demise: He created a show called Three’s a Crowd. I remember watching an episode or two on Game Show Network and need to see if any are posted on YouTube. ( Oh yes, they’re there.) Check out the Wikipedia discussion of this show. It sounds brilliantly problematic, as you’d put it on the podcast. Here’s Wikipedia: “The empire crumbled again amid the burnout of another of his creations, the 1979–80 Three’s a Crowd (in which three sets of wives and secretaries competed to see who knew more about their husbands/bosses). This show provoked protests from enraged feminist and socially conservative groups (two otherwise diametrically opposed viewpoints), who charged that the show deliberately exploited adultery, to advocate it as a social norm. Most stations dropped this show months before the season was over as a response to those criticisms.”
* As always, you can download the episode here and subscribe to the Substandard on iTunes or on Google Play. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five-star review on iTunes. Sonny needs something to hold on to.
