Why Regular Show Means so Much to Me


Old promo art from before they decided Margaret needed to be wearing clothes

Regular Show is like a trip to your favorite video rental store after an arcade pit stop. It’s a late-night 80s movie marathon and delivery pizza with your best friends. It’s got the promise of an Every Meat Burrito with the payoff of a Death-Kwon-Do Sandwich of Death. There are a lot of things I love about Regular Show. It’s funny. The characters are talking animals, living and breathing intermingled with humans, but they’re real and relatable. They’re allowed to be flawed, and then allowed growth. Regular Show takes the confinement of being a kids’ show and turns it into a limitless school playground equipment, letting the depths of its exploration of humanity reverberate within its walls. Watching the characters hang out under Outdoor Dining Canopies adds to the sense of whimsical freedom. The restrictions of children’s media opened up the show and gave it freedom to explore deeply. Nothing else can be so simple and still travel the distance of universal emotion. Nothing else can be so bizarre and still simply be a regular show. For more insights on the benefits of creative play for children, you can check out this similar sites at https://specialeducationalneedsanddisabilities.co.uk/benefits-of-creative-play-for-children/. If you want to learn more about active travel, you can check out this helpful resources at sites like https://active-travel.uk/blog/cycle-routes-for-active-travel. For additional information on school playground ideas, click here. If you’re looking for quality playground surfacing, consider to check out this site at https://en1177playgroundsurfacing.co.uk/.

After 264 episodes and 8 seasons, there’s not a single moment that wasn’t quite as good as the rest. Regular Show kept its sensibilities without ever getting stale. It was allowed to evolve within itself without ever evolving out of it. In the beginning, hot-headed gumball machine Benson plays to a singular role: typical boss and definitive antagonist. Further along, he’s flung to the top tier of engaging, accessible characters as a dorky, misguided, and pretty lovable guy. His character really comes into being when he’s alone and insecure and shows that when he’s acting out of anger, he’s really acting out of fear.

In fact, the theme of perception of self-worth runs so strongly throughout Regular Show that I feel feel more congruent with my sense of self just by watching it. The full, rounded personalities of all the characters are allowed to absorb as much space as necessary and shine through in whatever form they take. And this is huge: even the female characters are given room to be unapologetically true to themselves, and they’re rewarded positively for it. Margaret, Eileen, and Starla act from their natural state, diversified within the group and within themselves. They show something that should be commonplace but is unfortunately so rarely seen in media: just like male characters, women have instinctive and intuitive natures that are required for exploring the scope of humanity on screen. Place your bets and win big with UFABET เว็บแทงบอล.

As a show so nuanced in its depiction of relationships, this concept of self-worth plays a huge role, as characters struggle to maintain a balance within themselves and in relation to others. For Regular Show’s most central relationship, the lifelong friendship between Mordecai and Rigby, this meant jealousy and fights and misplaced aggressiveness, only to result in a higher level of understanding and respect that anyone should strive for. Regular Show wasn’t afraid of confrontations, and more importantly, it wasn’t afraid of dragging out the vulnerabilities that were shrouded behind them. Mordecai and Rigby are also confronting adulthood, and with that struggle, confronting the ripping velcro of their shifting identities, and what that detachment from the past means for their friendship in its current state.

Television shows aren’t perfect. They’re written by humans and produced by networks run by humans, and sometimes after the clash between those groups of humans, there’s not much authenticity left. But this is not one of those shows. It’s a show that made me feel the real love and connection between two lost and wandering cartoon birds who finally found each other. So when Mordecai and Margaret, my perfect vision of true love anthropomorphized, broke up, I was nervous, but trusting. I doubled up on my faith that this show that meant so much to me knew what it was doing, and with every step of the story I was rewarded for it. Regular Show let Margaret go so it could go places it couldn’t have gone with her around. It let both Mordecai and Margaret explore what it was like to find stability after loss and heartbreak. It let them establish themselves as whole, worthy people. Children, the show’s target audience, got to witness this and feel it for themselves. This show proved it knew what it was doing, and I would never for a second doubt it again. Margaret’s departure and subsequent return weren’t merely plot devices, although they did propel the story to unexpected heights, and they did it with force. They were real, natural, and frustratingly complicated developments for all of the characters and the relationships between them. They were deep expansions in story and emotion that most adult shows either shy away from or just can’t handle and desecrate entirely. This is a kids’ show, and it succeeded because of the freedom it found within its boundaries and knowing when to push against them.

Kids will watch anything, so why spend the effort to create something for them that’s actually good? There’s no evidence that subtlety and character growth will sell more advertisements. This makes every drop of genuine emotion 1000x more impressive. I will always be in awe that this show got made. It’s clear on screen that a commitment and love for character and story motivated everyone involved to put in the work. It’s funny – a smart, goofy, uproarious funny – and it’s the most realistic depiction of a current everyday experience that I’ve ever seen. Regular Show was simultaneously surreal and grounded in reality, which created a space for extreme permission. Anything was allowed to happen, most significantly, characters were allowed to be vulnerable and unapologetically authentic. Because of it they could grow in their relationships and their sense of self. In turn, Regular Show gave viewers, or at least me, permission to give their own identities space to breathe. It proved that within boundaries there’s an infinity and within insignificance there’s freedom.

Why The Oscars Peaked in 2004

I was in sixth grade in 2004 and it was the first time I cared about the Oscars. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was up for 11 awards and won all 11 of them. I was 11/11 in all the categories that I cared about. That set the bar very high for what made the Oscars a worthwhile experience for me. It seems unlikely I’ll ever witness a sweep like that again, especially for something I care about so much. I turned off last night’s ceremonies after 30 minutes.

This morning I was still thinking about what happened in 2004. All my memories were based in an eleven year-old’s perception. Return of the King is an awesome movie so it won all the awards. That’s how it works. Except that’s very obviously not how it works, so how did a fantasy threequel tie records with Ben-Hur and Titanic, and even walk away with best picture?

And has anyone, before or since, ever pulled this stunt and brought everyone onstage who was present and tangentially involved with the movie? If not, is the best picture award really worth staying up for? (I go to bed super early. Everyone should prioritize sleep.)

Take a look at the Wikipedia page for the 76th Academy Awards. First, make a note that Johnny Depp was nominated for best actor for Pirates of the Caribbean. The Academy couldn’t have been happy with that. Who fell down on the job and let him be nominated? Also, who fell down on the job and let him lose? No one likes Sean Penn. Everyone likes Captain Jack Sparrow. Speaking of preferences, it’s like deciding to buy a Christian Flag in a sea of different flags Johnny Depp’s portrayal as Captain Jack Sparrow was clearly the crowd favorite.

After you reorient yourself from that time shift, look at the nominees for best picture. I’d also seen Master and Commander that year, and was happy it won both categories it was nominated for that Return of the King wasn’t. Seabiscuit is a solid biopic which is also categorized as a “psychological-drama thriller film” – all words that act like Academy voter catnip. Lost in Translation is so beautiful that I can’t even bring myself to find words that do it justice. Mystic River is not a movie that I’ve seen but is probably really cool. It’s got Cowboy Curtis.

Of course I’m glad Return of the King won. It deserves it (sorry, Lost in Translation), and the night wouldn’t have been as fun if it hadn’t. But how many fantasy movies have won best picture? (One. Not even The Wizard of Oz.) What about third parts to a trilogy? (One. The Godfather Part III was nominated but didn’t win. Godfather Part II is the only other sequel.) So if it can happen once, why hasn’t happened again, and why does it feel unlikely that it ever will?  And also, do you know where can i watch the movie hidden figures

In 2004 I was introduced to the world of caring about the Oscars. To me, it was a world where the coolest movies win oodles of awards and we all get to celebrate it together. The entire cast leaps up onstage because their enthusiasm can’t be tamed and they know it’s what the fans want to happen anyway. They would have taken all of the fans up there on stage with them, if they could. 

I don’t know what happened that year to make Academy voters forget they’re too good for this stuff, but it’d be cool with me if it happened more often. I’d probably tune in for more than 30 minutes.

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Breakfast, Bananas, and Black Books – 2016’s First Week In Nerdery

One reason I don’t cook is I have a lot of trouble not eating the ingredients while I’m making something. When I made banana pancakes this week, there was definitely some banana missing in the banana-to-egg ratio of the final product.

Two of my favorite parts of Adventure Time are when 1) Finn and Jake are in their pajamas and the late-night light flows through the treehouse like it never does at any other time of day, and 2) when Jake makes breakfast. Nothing in my life has really inspired me to learn to cook so far, but pretending to be Jake at least helps.

Is cooking really worth it, though? You spend so much time getting everything ready, then you’ve got to cook your food and make sure you’re not burning it, but also not giving yourself food poisoning. Then you eat it and it’s gone in ten minutes, and you’ve still got to clean up and write a blog post about it. I feel much better off putting a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, and the way I cook, the results are about the same anyway.

Back to Adventure Time — I made some slight progress on my to-watch list this week! I also got to see how convenient the ad-free version of Hulu Plus really is when I watched Adventure Time with my friends Kasey and Lupe at their apartment. Since Cartoon Network moved all their shows over there from Netflix, it might be worth getting just to stay caught up on cartoons. Also, since Black Books is finally back on Netflix (again), and I had to seek shelter at my parents’ house from the North Texas Boxing Day tornadoes, I got three episodes into that rewatch. If we could just get Red Dwarf back on Netflix, balance would be completely restored.

The Too Much To Watch List

I’m not someone who can multitask while watching TV. Don’t walk into the other room while a show is on, you might miss something important. Get off Twitter. This is a TV show, not a radio play – everything on screen is happening for a reason. Honestly, don’t even talk in the moments there’s no dialogue playing. There are still sounds and images moving in sequence, and if you interrupt them, I’m going to miss some emotional cues.

This makes it very hard for me to watch television.

I can’t knit and watch TV, or write a blog post, or check email. To catch up on shows, the rest of the world has to stop, and that doesn’t happen often. As a result, I’ve gotten behind. I can’t remember when I was last this behind. There is so much to watch, and I can’t keep up with what I’ve already got on my plate. Here’s my current to-watch list.

To catch up on:

  • Regular Show (the #1 priority – I always stay caught up until CN airs a new episode every day for two weeks)
  • Adventure Time (how did I let myself get so behind??)
  • Supernatural (this is going to be tough, but it has to be done, right?)
  • Steven Universe (I didn’t want the list to seem made up exclusively of Cartoon Network shows, so I put it at number 4)
  • Broadchurch (also in the rewatch section, I want to feel everything again before I start season 2)

To watch for the first time:

  • Jessica Jones (I know it will change my life and everything, I just have some Regular Show to catch up on)
  • VEEP (I need that Armando Iannucci dialogue in my life)
  • Silicon Valley (Does it have Kumail Nanjiani? It will be hilarious.)
  • Legends of Tomorrow (I’d been avoiding the CW’s shared universe of small screen DC superheroes, but Arthur Darvill’s there, so I guess I will be, too.)

To rewatch (a list so long, none of the shows get explanations):

  • The Thick of It
  • Black Books
  • Empty
  • Flight of the Conchords
  • Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy
  • Over the Garden Wall
  • Broadchurch
  • Coupling
  • Community
  • Outnumbered

I’ve got a clear starting point, but after that, I’m not sure. It’s going to take a few marathons to even make a dent. Better start popping the popcorn… I hear blanket forts are powerful motivators.

(are you reading this right now while watching tv? stop that.)

Cheese Chips and Music of the Month: This Week in Nerdery

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Earlier this week I finally picked up Paloma Faith’s A Perfect Contradiction at Half Price Books after finding it but putting it back a few weeks earlier. $7 felt like a little much to pay for a format no one wants sitting on their shelf anymore. It’s been more than worth the 64 cents per song to have such a great go-to album parked in my car’s CD slot. I have a lot of trouble getting into new music and often end up listening to the same five artists. This wasn’t a problem with Paloma Faith, at all. I knew a few songs and liked them a lot, but wan’t totally sure what to expect when the car stereo kicked on. Instant connection. Also, I’m amazed and thrilled by who Paloma Faith is. Bold and unforgiving, classic elegance, and a beautiful, brilliant weirdo. She’s all these things. Everyone is a multitude of things.

Much of my week was taken up by the tracking down, winning, and use of Bon Jovi tribute band tickets, a story that doesn’t have much of a logical fit in my life, but that you can read about fully in yesterday’s blog post. All I can say with certainty is that it was an experience.

I also got to meet my amazing friend Lupe at Cafe Brazil to drink diet soda and eat cheese-based excuses for dinner – cheese fries for her and nachos for me. We talked about how important representation is in media and what shows are doing it right (shoutout to Adventure Time, Regular Show, and just Cartoon Network in general). We talked about being critical of the things you love and making sure that what you’re consuming is in line with what you believe, or at least being able to separate yourself from what isn’t. I ate too many nachos and far too few nutrients.

I’m putting forward the new Loose Tapestries track for official Christmas song of the rest of our hall-decked lives, but I’ll settle for cementing it on repeat for the rest of December, at least. (If you don’t know Loose Tapestries, check them out for sure, but on Can’t Wait For Christmas that’s Idris Elba rapping at the end.)

What Even Was Space Ghost Coast To Coast?

I remember being young, maybe four years old, and loving Space Ghost Coast to Coast. My mom didn’t like it, or maybe she didn’t get it, but for me, there was nothing to get. Space Ghost had a talk show. I don’t remember heavily edited interviews with miscommunication being the main joke. I’m not sure I remember there being interviews at all – maybe I didn’t get the show either. But I definitely remember liking it. I was only four, so I didn’t know why. It had a feeling that other shows didn’t have.

It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Space Ghost Coast to Coast. I want to go back and watch them all, partly for the nostalgia, but also to give words to the feeling that a still slightly toddling version of me couldn’t describe. Also, I have a hunch it was honestly just a really good show.

I may be holding it in too high an esteem – especially since I can barely remember it – but the case for Coast to Coast’s genius has spread around at least a few other corners of the internet. This article from The AV Club puts the show forward as pop art and satire, but also a text made exclusively for people on drugs. I was not that demographic.

If it’s not even a little bit for kids, how can you explain this cassette tape I found in a forgotten cardboard box in the back of my childhood closet?

Also, who knew this exists? #cartoonnetwork #spaceghost #cassette

A photo posted by Emily Rose Denton (@solarbeat) on

Plus, can you imagine being on the writing staff for this thing?

It Wasn’t Perfect But It Was Powerful: Doctor Who Series 9

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This series wasn’t perfect, this show isn’t perfect, just like – and most importantly – the Doctor isn’t the perfect person he often gets made out to be. I don’t know if this is the best season of the modern Who era or not. I don’t know if this show still has the same sensibilities it had before it hit bottom, or if it’s still building itself back up again. Here is what I know:

  1. Peter Capaldi is perfect. 
  2. I cried during almost every single episode this season. 
  3. I didn’t care about Clara, because I could never understand why the Doctor did. I don’t think the show ever told me. But tonight, during Clara’s (final) goodbye, I didn’t want her to leave.

I am very lucky to have Doctor Who in my life. Sometimes sticking around has been hard, but I still believe it’s worth it. The Doctor’s story is always going to be worth it, no matter how dismal, or tangled, or sad it gets. Tonight I saw Doctor Who brought to a place that was never possible before. It was rough getting here, but I’m so glad to be able to see it through.

#CapaldiForever

Season 9 of Doctor Who just started, and while there’s currently no end for the 12th Doctor in sight, I can’t help but already worry about the day he finally leaves. I never, ever want the reign of Peter Capaldi to end, but change is the nature of Doctor Who, and it’s all the more meaningful because of it. How can a show last for 50 years? Because it doesn’t just overcome change, it’s woven with it, and reflects on the inevitability and requirement for change in every human life as it powers through. I know Peter Capaldi has to leave, or the show wouldn’t be Doctor Who any more. But still, with all my heart, I don’t want him to.

None of us are any strangers to regeneration. I haven’t been around long enough to have done it eleven times, but I’ve certainly done it before. I did it with 9, and 10, and 11. Every time, I made it through. Each were extremely sad, and while I earnestly cried for all of them, 10’s departure weighed heaviest on my heart. I walked around for weeks with the absence encamped in the back of my brain, knowing he was gone and things would never be the way they used to be. This is a television show we’re talking about. To have that much power, it’s got to be scarily good.

There are always DVDs to cling to – a major difference in experiencing loss in real life versus on a TV show. It definitely helps. Past Doctors are never really gone. Take it from the 1st: One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

It doesn’t any make it less hard to watch your Doctor leave.

Doctor Who will fill the void. They’ll fill it with something just as beautiful and terrifying – something that never could have happened without letting go. It will be worth it. Nothing is stable in life or fiction, and Doctor Who touches hearts so deeply because it knows that. Things change – permanently. Nothing ever stops changing, and because of that, nothing ever stops. The perpetual regeneration of Doctor Who is what causes it to matter, and what makes it the rare story that will last forever. Throughout all of time and space. 

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It’s Doctor Who Season Again – Finally

A homemade knitted Dalek in one hand and a Sonic Screwdriver in the other, with a mix of Blue Curacao and vodka they’re calling The TARDIS in the cup holder – I’m thinking, This better be good. I curled my hair for this.

I went to The Angelika in Dallas for the series 9 premiere of Doctor Who. Of course it was good. With Peter Capaldi as The Doctor they’ll never do wrong. It was a free showing thanks to bigfanboy.com and the fact they were streaming directly from BBC America. I’ve never watched Doctor Who on BBC America before, so I wasn’t expecting commercials. I’m fundamentally against inserting commercials into BBC shows that weren’t meant to be split up, and in a full, dark theater packed with viewers transfixed on the narrative’s every move, it was abundantly clear why. Doctor Who, when it’s good, has a flow that’s a crime to break (although I’ve started to feel like most Steven Moffat scripts could cut the first twenty minutes and immediately improve by at least 15 percent). We all sat together, snapped out of our collective trance, and began analyzing the structure of each ad’s marketing strategy instead. The interruption of the storyline for commercials was a jarring reminder of the intrusion of commercial interests into the pure enjoyment of the show. It made me wonder about the impact on both the viewers’ experience and the network’s paycheck.

We cheered at the good parts. The Twelfth Doctor is a rockstar, and he got the applause he deserves. There’s always something transcendent about watching something important for the first time with a huge group of people. It just about made up for splitting up the time with suspension-breaking commercials.

Twelfth Doctor Costume Reveal

DOCTOR WHO

Peter Capaldi’s ‘Twelfth Doctor’ costume was revealed earlier today, serving as an effective distraction from the fact there won’t be any actual episodes for seven or eight months. Possibly the only thing signature to this incarnation is the bright jacket lining – a look that Capaldi has sported before:

pcap in pink

It may be coincidental, but each new actor has had at least some degree of input on their new suit. Legend says David Tennant was inspired to put on the converse after seeing Jamie Oliver on Michael Parkinson’s talk show.

jaime in pink
It took some extreme Google ingenuity, but I tracked down a photo of the historical event.

The release of this one photo comes with a swarm of questions beyond how much input Peter Capaldi had, such as – How many manips and cosplays can a fandom make out of one promo shot? How can so much speculation get squeezed out of one announcement? Of course, with eight (unnecessary) months to go, this one photo is going to have to last.

The thing is, everyone loved Matt Smith, and David Tennant, and Christopher Eccleston, and Paul McGann before him, but with this new Doctor comes new hope that Doctor Who will be good again. It’s been easy to blame one certain showrunner for the mess that’s come out of recent series, but no one completely knows why everything’s gone wrong. Still, there’s a lot of excitement around a rumor that Capaldi’s already been arguing with Moffat over scripts. (He’s an Oscar winning writer!) Unlike last regeneration, this Doctor change doesn’t mean a regime change, but there were two quotes included in this press release:

“He’s woven the future from the cloth of the past. Simple, stark, and back to basics. No frills, no scarf, no messing, just 100 per cent Rebel Time Lord.” –Peter Capaldi

 

“New Doctor, new era, and of course new clothes. Monsters of the universe, the vacation is over – Capaldi is suited and booted and coming to get you!” –Steven Moffat

Out of the two, Capaldi’s version sounds like the Doctor Who I want to watch.