Pew Pew…. Gotcha!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… two young, wide-eyed children came across a science-fiction piece that would forever change their lives.  It was called Star Wars: A New Hope. Those two boys, Jay and Parris, would have no idea what wonders this movie might have in store for them, but little did they know that it would also change their lives.

This podcast takes an exclusive focus on Episode IV.  We start by talking about how we each were introduced to the series, the ways it shaped our childhood, and how it turned us into die-hard fans.  Our conversation rolls through the entire progression of the movie, with each of us talking about our favorite scene from the original, and how the movie has held up over time.

Towards the end of the podcast, we talk about the “evolution” of A New Hope (and we use the term as loosely as possible) as it has been through wave after wave of changes.  We look at the Special Edition update and how it actually manages to serve a good purpose for A New Hope in particular, and lament the loss of Han Solo’s backbone.  We also talk about our disappointment in the recent Blu-ray releases, and how George Lucas might just be one of the most brilliant business men of all time.

If you’re an RSS subscriber, either through a Feed Reader or through iTunes, Zune, or some other podcast downloader, you’ll find a special bonus download waiting for you!  Episode 44B was recorded immediately after our A New Hope episode, and talks exclusively about “new” stuff. Jay talks about his adventures and disappointments working through a back log of Breaking Bad, we talk about the fourth season of True Blood, the miasma of disappointment that was Torchwood: Miracle Day, and how Optimus Prime is now a heartless assassin as a result of Transformers 3.  This bonus podcast comes out to roughly 30 minutes of material, produced exclusively for our fans.  Thank you so much for your patience during our hiatuses.

As always, we thank our fans for their continued support and appreciation of the podcast.  It’s because of your kind words and well wishes that we continue to do this podcast as a labor of love.  If you’d like to leave us feedback, please feel free to give us a shout at our email address, or leave us a voicemail at 206-495-1732 (long distance charges may apply).  You can also join our Facebook group for up-to-the-minute information on our podcast releases, a first look at our upcoming live recording sessions, and to communicate with us and your fellow Remember When fans in between shows.  Check it out at this link.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

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Torchwood Changes Everything

Fresh from the archives of Cardiff, Remember When dusts itself off for a brand new episode.  We’re returning to the Doctor Who-niverse for one more round, with Episode 43 focusing on Torchwood.

Parris and Jay talk about how they were introduced to the show, their impressions of the show’s content during their first viewing, and how the show has held up in our respective opinions since then.  We talk about the good fortune that led us through the muck of Series 1, why we like Series 2 despite its failings, and go into a deep dive on which characters and storylines we enjoyed.  You might be surprised to find that one of us actually even enjoyed Tosh by the end of the show!

We also hold a very deep dive into Children of Earth, the miniseries that served as our last look into the Special Forces branch.  This five episode series came about after a series of budget cuts, casting issues, and story problems, and we each offer commentary on how Children of Earth changed our ever-shaping opinions of Torchwood… for better or worse.

At the end, we have an unscheduled (but welcome) tangent into the state of sitcoms on TV on the current schedule.  Spoilers for Parks & Recreation are pretty heavy, along with a few minor ones for Modern Family, so be warned.  We also talk about our upcoming plans for the Original Trilogy episodes of Star Wars, how we’ll be approaching them, and some of the TLC we’re spreading on those recordings in order to make sure we provide you with some of the best episodes of Remember When.

As always, we thank our fans for their continued support and appreciation of the podcast.  It’s because of your kind words and well wishes that we continue to do this podcast as a labor of love.  If you’d like to leave us feedback, please feel free to give us a shout at our email address, or leave us a voicemail at 206-495-1732 (long distance charges may apply).  You can also join our Facebook group for up-to-the-minute information on our podcast releases, a first look at our upcoming live recording sessions, and to communicate with us and your fellow Remember When fans in between shows.  Check it out at this link.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

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Time stamps:

0:00 to 5:04 – Show intro
5:04 to 33:00 – Series 1 discussion – With Spoilers
33:00 to 53:00 - Series 2 discussion (with a tangent on our preferred Time Travel destination) – With Spoilers
53:00 to 1:28:53 – Children of Earth discussion – With Spoilers
1:28:53 to end – Current TV show discussions – Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Parks & Recreation, 30 Rock, True Blood, Modern Family, The Office, Community (with spoilers for The Office, Modern Family, and Parks & Rec)

We’re kicking off a live show at 1pm Pacific tomorrow afternoon, and we invite you to join us as we record the latest episode in the Remember When lineup. We’ll be covering both seasons of Torchwood, have the long-awaited discussion on Children of Earth, and talk about our hopes for the upcoming Miracle Day miniseries on the Starz network.

We’re hoping to have the final edit of the podcast on our RSS Feed later this week.

If you have some time tomorrow, stop by and say Hello, listen in, and enjoy the show!

It’s the TARDIS’ fault.  She kept us from recording a podcast earlier by trapping us in an alternate dimension.  Thanks to a little Time Lord ingenuity and a paper clip, Remember When is back on course with our long awaited, often discussed Doctor Who episode.

Dedicated entirely to the Man From Gallifrey, Episode 42 talks about Doctor Who as it’s existed in the past 7 years.  We look back at the eras of Eccleston and Tennant and talk about their respective runs, why we love Tennant, and why Eccleston pales in comparison.  Jay and Parris both discuss their respective introductions to the show, and how they came to regard it as they binged on some of the better sci-fi from across the pond.

Covering Series 1 through 4 and the final specials of David Tennant, this podcast is spoiler-laden and covers a wide range of topics.  We look back at the definitive moments when we loved the Doctor, rank the companions in terms of most awesome to least awesome (and hottest to Rose), give each season a score, and talk about what it was like to come into this show.  The joy that is Donna Noble is extolled to no end. After a legacy that’s run nearly half a century long, our only regret is that we wish we’d had more time to talk about Doctor Who.  There are dozens of other topics we’d love to have discussed.

As always, we thank our fans for their continued support and appreciation of the podcast.  If you’d like to leave us feedback, please feel free to give us a shout at our email address, or leave us a voicemail at 206-495-1732 (long distance charges may apply).  You can also join our Facebook group for up-to-the-minute information on our podcast releases, a first look at our upcoming live recording sessions, and to communicate with us and your fellow Remember When fans in between shows.  Check it out at this link.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

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It’s finally happening, folks.  After a year’s worth of discussions, multiple episode viewings, and two scheduled attempts that went awry because of real life concerns, we’re incredibly pleased to announce that the Doctor Who episode of Remember When is finally about to happen.

Tomorrow, April 1st, Parris and I will finally be getting behind our respective microphones once again to bring you a brand new episode of Remember When.  Our discussions will cover the Eccleston and Tennant era of Doctor Who.   This will be the first time either of us have discussed our deep thoughts on the show with one another.   That’s right.  For an entire year, Parris and I have avoided talking about what we think about our favorite episodes, which companion we loved the most, or our favorite lines from the show.  If you know the two of us, you’ll know that this is a Herculean feat for us.

We won’t be talking about Torchwood in this show, aside from its brief appearances during the Tennant era.  We’re actually saving up our next episode to dedicate it exclusively to the adventures of Captain Jack and his crew.

Our Doctor Who episode will be recording live at 6pm Pacific tomorrow night, and you can listen in for free at our Ustream channel.  If you can’t make it to the live recording session, the downloadable podcast will hit the RSS feed early next week.  Either way, we hope you enjoy the show.  It’s been in the making for a while, and we’ve got a lot to talk about!

After a long winter’s night, Remember When is back again for more retro-style goodness.

Since our hiatus lasted a little longer than we would have liked, we’re temporarily tabling the Doctor Who / Torchwood episodes to get back into some of the original Remember When formula.  We start off with a look back at TRON.  The original 1982 Disney film is a cult classic, and serves as the latest “Great Movie Jay Has Never Seen”.  With fresh eyes and an open mind, Jay sits down and talks about what he liked about the movie, why he thinks TRON sucks, and his thoughts behind what a 7 year old version of himself would have thought about TRON.

Then we jump into our discussion on TRON: Legacy.  As the big budget follow-up approaches the 300 million dollar mark at the box office, Parris and Jay sit down at their microphones and roll up their sleeves as they go head-to-head with their opinions on the sequel.  Can a huge marketing budget and crazy special effects work save this movie?  We talk about what works, what fails, and why Disney should never force a TRON movie to be a Big Lebowski sequel.

The last half of the show is a catch-up on all of our film and TV related tangents, with chatter about the mid-season TV schedule.  Parris admits he was wrong about a TV show, Jay admits that Parris was right about a TV show, and we rave about the brilliance of Ricky Gervais.  Maybe a little too much.

There’s a detailed look at the roster of shows coming in the first half of 2011.  If you’ve been complaining that we haven’t done enough “Remember When” stuff in our podcast, then you’re in for a treat.  We’re preparing some MAJOR shows that will dive deep into some of the best movies of the 70′s and 80′s.  Of course, we then tangent off into yet another direction.  Hey, it’s what we do.

As always, we thank our fans for their continued support and appreciation of the podcast.  If you’d like to leave us feedback, please feel free to give us a shout at our email address, or leave us a voicemail at 206-495-1732 (long distance charges may apply).  You can also join our Facebook group for up-to-the-minute information on our podcast releases, a first look at our upcoming live recording sessions, and to communicate with us and your fellow Remember When fans in between shows.  Check it out at this link.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

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SHOW NOTES

0:00 to 5:54 – Introduction, explanation of the show’s hiatus

5:54 to 19:01 – Discussion of the original TRON (Great Movies Jay Has Never Seen) – SPOILERS

19:01 to 49:50 – Discussion of TRON: Legacy – SPOILERS

49:50 to 50:21 – Intermission

50:21 to 1:15:38 – Tangent Central, Part 1 (TV talk, Jay Hulks Parris, Cowboy Bebop)

1:15:38 to 1:22:28 – The Remember When schedule for the first half of 2011

1:22:28 to End – Tangent Central, Part 2 (Ricky Gervais love, the Bill Murray appreciation segment, and more)

The reviews for the latest take on the legacy of Flynn and his electronic grid are less than kind.  Reading some of them, you’d expect this movie to be on par with one of the worst movies ever.  Even my companion to the midnight launch last night compared the movie’s suckitude to The Matrix Revolutions, a declaration which kind of surprised me.

So let me just say, TRON Legacy isn’t Shakespeare.  It’s not a Movie of the Year contender.  Instead, it’s just fun.

If you go into the movie only expecting a 2 hour piece of entertainment, you’ll probably walk out very happy.  That’s how I approached the movie, and I left the theater pleased.  TRON Legacy is fun.  It’s loud, it’s shiny, and it’s one of the best uses of your movie theater’s subwoofer since the Inception soundtrack.  The writing isn’t the best, and the acting has some issues.

TRON Legacy is like the Michael Bay film for geeks.  The explosions are big and beautiful, the sound effects are well crafted, the set work will impress you, and the special effects are a work of art.  Daft Punk’s soundtrack is like sex for your ears. I’d even go so far as to say that TRON Legacy is one of the best uses of 3D in a while.  And although the script work is questionable at best, the writers at least deserve credit for ditching the PC acronyms as character names.

It’s not perfect and it has its problems, CLU being the biggest of them.  I also think the trailers have painted a terrible picture of Legacy being this massively epic sci-fi piece on a similar scale as The Matrix, which is a woefully inaccurate comparison and an unattainable bar for any movie.

If you’re a TRON fan, you’ll see lots of background references to the original film (Space Paranoids, anyone?).  If you’ve never seen the original, go see Legacy anyway, because it gives you a great synopsis of the events from its predecesor.  But whoever you are, if you go see Legacy, just go with a good time in mind, and make no heavy demands of it. You’ll probably find the right level of entertainment. Then again, I’m the guy who liked The A-Team.

Oh, and biggest surprise of the night?  I kinda loved the trailer for Cars 2.  No joke.

Remember When returns with another Special Edition episode that’s aimed squarely at your brain… your plump, delicious brain.

Episode 40 is a one-off release that we’re doing to discuss the latest in AMC’s original programming.  The Walking Dead premieres on Halloween night this year, and AMC was gracious enough to provide us with screener copies of the first two episodes before they aired.  So we’re here with a special release to talk about this series, what it means, and why you should watch it.

Because The Walking Dead hasn’t aired yet, we’ve divided the show into three separate segments.  First, we give you a spoiler-free look at the initial pair of episodes, giving you a detailed look at why we love the first two hours of The Walking Dead without ruining any of the story details for you.

After that, we jump into a spoiler-filled discussion on Days Gone By, the pilot episode of The Walking Dead.  We talk about our reactions to the initial offering, what we think worked well, and what could have improved.

Then we end the show talking about Guts, the second hour of The Walking Dead.  This is an amazing piece of television and one of the best hours of TV we’ve seen this year.  Listen in for all the spoiler-filled details.

We want to thank AMC for giving us this unique opportunity to preview The Walking Dead before its official air date.  It’s through their support that we were able to present an episode like this.

Don’t forget to join our Facebook group!  It lets you keep up to date with the show in between our podcast releases, gives you the first look at our upcoming live recording sessions, and allows you to communicate with us and your fellow Remember When fans in between shows.  Check it out at this link.  You can also follow us on Twitter.

As always, Remember When continues to grow and thrive thanks to the joy, love, appreciation, and comments we get from our fans. If you enjoy our show, please leave us positive feedback on iTunes. We really appreciate it, plus it helps us reach people that have never heard of us! And if you’d like to share your thoughts with us, you can send us an email at or leave us a voicemail at 206-495-1732. Please note, long distance charges may apply.

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SHOW NOTES

0:00 to 15:36 – Spoiler-free discussion of The Walking Dead and our impressions of the first two episodes

15:59 to 35:36 – Spoiler-heavy discussion of “Days Gone By”, the pilot for The Walking Dead

35:36 to end – Spoiler-heavy discussion of “Guts”, the second episode of The Walking Dead

Part of that trepidation was because I’d built up this incredibly high expectation for the show.  How could I not?  It has the AMC tag on it, and their original programming has become a model for other networks on cable.  There’s high profile Hollywood talent like Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd attached to the series.  And ever since the early clips at Comic-Con and the initial trailer, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the invasion of the zombies.

Plus, it’s a show about zombies, which poses a whole new set of problems.  What are the limits for a network, even a Cable TV channel, when you’re dealing with an Undead creature that feasts on human entrails and can only be killed by destroying its brain?  Will they suck it up and show you as much as possible, or will they cave and play it the easy route?

I entered The Walking Dead with fingers crossed and raised hopes.  Two hours later, when I left it, I was impressed.  AMC presents The Walking Dead as a no-holds barred TV show that’s easily on par with the rest of their original programming, and stands above the majority of other shows on TV.  It’s vivid, it’s visceral, and it’s violent, and as someone that’s squeamish, I found myself cringing more than once.  But in the end, I walked away with such a high appreciation for the show that I feel comfortable calling The Walking Dead my favorite new TV offering of 2010.

I’ve got more, spoiler-free thoughts after the break.

The pilot episode, “Days Gone By”, presents us with the basics that we need to know about the series before throwing us to the wolves.  Rick Grimes, played by Andrew Lincoln, wakes up in a hospital bed after an accident on the job, with no idea of how much time has passed.  Rick comes to find that the world has faced an epidemic that’s left humanity on the edge, with zombies overrunning the population.  He has no idea what’s happened, or why this has taken place, or even how long he was left stranded in the hospital.  He sets out looking for answers, and remnants of his past.

As is expected, the main purpose of Days Gone By is to present you with the world and characters, providing you with groundwork and getting you familiar with the locale before it starts throwing too much at you.  But the manner of delivery is particularly smart here; by presenting Rick with a world that’s foreign and has him asking questions, the audience is immediately taking a parallel journey as the main character.  It’s not a new concept in storytelling, but it works remarkably well for The Walking Dead.  They also keep the introduction of characters to a bare minimum in the first hour, saving the bulk of new character entries until “Guts”, the second hour of the series.

First, we must give credit where it’s due:  The work on the scripts here is pretty amazing.  As much as you’d expect the zombies to be center stage, they’re almost like background objects.  Oh, make no mistake, the Undead are unquestionably the antagonists here, and they’re every bit hell-bent on destroying what’s left of the human race.  But the zombies are used to drive the human stories, and keep the focus on the living.  And while “Days Gone By” is nothing to sneeze at, “Guts” has at least a half-dozen moments which had me glued to the TV screen.   There’s even a Whedon-esque moment where, in a moment of true brutality, the script writer manages to pull off an amazing joke that lightens the mood, if only for a brief moment.  It was a delicious moment of levity before the show jumped right back into the thick of things.

Second, we want to personally thank whoever it was that cast Michael Rooker for his role in the second episode.  His performance as Merle Dixon was outstanding, giving us a “Love to Hate You” character with no background and the briefest of introductions who managed to connect with us in under an hour’s time.  In a way, he almost takes center stage.  But it’s a delicious performance that is one of the best we’ve seen this year.

And then there’s the cinematography.  Both episodes are filmed in a loving way that not only highlights the epic nature of the story, but still manages to make The Walking Dead feel like a cinematic venture, with bold wide shots and large-scale set pieces that were almost certainly not easy for the production crew to create.  The Walking Dead feels less like a TV show as a result, and the extra polish on the camera work adds a serious impact to the storytelling.

Next, we have to give major props to AMC and the team behind The Walking Dead for not pulling (m)any punches when it comes to the visuals.  You’ll see half-eaten reanimated corpses dragging themselves through city streets, with their intestines trailing behind them.  You’ll see children with holes in their faces.  You’ll see arms and legs used like Christmas decorations.  And that’s just in the pilot, which is easily the less visceral of the first two episodes.  So if you’re in any way concerned that this might be a watered down horror show, put yourself at ease.  AMC spares no expense when it comes to showing you the brutality of zombies.  As someone that normally skips horror movies because of my squeamish nature, I had to cover my eyes a few times because the blood and violence was too intense for me.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for their special effects budget.  There were a few shots in either episode where the blood and guts were added through digital animation, and the quality on those shots isn’t the best.  They’re at just the level of quality where you realize it’s a computer-generated scene, which managed to drag us out of the moment more than once.

We also weren’t thrilled with the voice acting of Andrew Lincoln.  Southern accents are generally difficult to master, but for a British person, we can only imagine how tough they are.  Lincoln’s voice work as Rick Grimes is shaky in both episodes, never quite settling down into an appreciable rhythm.  It’s nowhere near as bad as other shows, but it could use some work.  We’re hoping he ends up perfecting a Southern Drawl as well as Stephen Moyer in True Blood, instead of mangling it like Anna Paquin in True Blood.

There are also some pacing issues in the pilot which left the last 20 minutes feeling slower than we like to see in an initial offering.  Thankfully, this is quickly remedied by the time “Guts” starts, and the second hour of the show will certainly have you on the edge of your seat at multiple points.

But those are largely minor quibbles that we feel compelled to make for the sake of fairness.  Even with those tiny blemishes, The Walking Dead is by far one of the most captivating shows we’ve seen so far this year.  Even though our copy of “Guts” was clearly marked as not being the final air version, we can’t imagine it being drastically changed.. it was easily one of the best hours of TV in 2010.

If you’re in any way interested in this show, we encourage you to give it a chance when it airs tomorrow night.  Try and be patient with the first hour… the pilot’s a bit slow at points, so don’t let its “long in the tooth” nature get you down.  By the time the second hour rolls around, The Walking Dead is firing on all thrusters.  This is an epic show, and its first season is a mere six episodes long.  We’re already hoping that the rumors of a second season being greenlit by AMC come true.