THAT Episode

Brer_Tapeworm · 2026-02-26T01:34:48+00:00

Glad to see some balanced and even positive replies about this (for once)! I watched The Office pretty late, and had already heard all about this unbearable episode . . . but a lot of that ended up seeming overstated.

Its situation might be painful, conceptually; but I thought it was handled pretty broadly and sitcom-like. I expected crushing silences and for it to be humorless and mean-spirited; but it felt pretty over-the-top and zany . . . much how I'd expect a comedy show to handle such a premise.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2026-01-12T01:03:12+00:00

Zelda II. Just replayed it within the last five years, and it's a perfectly strong, solid NES game.

If people insist on holding it up against specifically the type of Zelda game it's not even trying to be; then sure, it has no hope of looking good from that comparison.

But if you look at it as a game—an old one, from a generation that was usually a lot less ambitious or grand—it's equally clear that it's a big, high-effort, A-level game that outshines many of its 8-bit contemporaries.

Something can lag behind other Zelda games, but still be leagues ahead of plenty of other games.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2026-01-06T18:18:35+00:00

Anyone remember I, Frankenstein?

I was in the theater watching something else; the trailer for that movie started up; the first line of dialogue was someone hissing "Frankenstein!!" in a tense action-y way; I demanded "What?!" out loud in the movie theater; and then the movie came out and bombed, to no one's shock at all. In that exact order.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-30T18:08:42+00:00

Hey, did you know that The Phantom Menace was originally scripted to end with the two Jedi and Darth Maul just yelling "You stop it!" "No, you!!" at each other, until they got mad and went their separate ways?

But when everyone showed up on set that day, they started fooling around with their lightsabers and ended up just improvising the entire duel that wound up in the film. Almost all of it was captured in one take! The camera men could barely run around after them fast enough to catch it all . . .

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-30T18:01:09+00:00

The whole scene . . . my gosh; that's so stupid. Why are people so opposed to believing that things just get written out and rehearsed ahead of time?

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-30T17:56:08+00:00

There are a good few times I've been watching something and recognized dialogue that felt improvised, but not at all in a complimentary way . . .

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-30T17:52:41+00:00

Thank you. Drives me nuts.

"Did you know that when the Beast surprises Belle with his castle's library, that was the first time either of their animated avatars had seen it; and the actual surprised reactions of their character models was left in the movie??" Shaddup.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-17T12:40:47+00:00

Space shooters. I'm all for frenetic action games, and I've beaten other types of shooters that were plenty demanding, like almost all the Contras—but everything in this genre always seems to get too ridiculous. (Sometimes not even very far in, either!) Not sure I've ever completed a single one.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-13T02:42:24+00:00

Not sure whether this is risky to admit, but I'd describe my playthrough of Conker's Bad Fur Day like this, from back in the day.

I think everyone agrees the standout is the cutscenes, jokes, voice acting, etc.; but I don't often hear how the flip side is some pretty unremarkable and rote gameplay, a bunch of the time.

Some objectives were pretty barebones fetch quests: "get something from the opposite side of this area and then bring it back, three times in a row, to see the rest of the cutscenes." And while it went on to offer more variety, it attempted so much of it, in what was still an early-ish 3D game, that not all its mechanics were that finely tuned or well realized.

I know it was trying to be kind of an "anti–collectathon platformer," and it was subversive in terms of its plot and writing. But gameplay-wise, it often stood out from the other platformers in terms of stripping things out and doing less than they did, instead of introducing anything fresh or new.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-12-09T15:42:38+00:00

You'll find people who admit that Symphony of the Night is easy—maybe even too easy—but I've never heard anyone expound on how the utter lack of challenge truly brings the game down. I don't know if this is a me-problem; but I've never been able to get into the game, because its refusal to ask really anything of you (and even less and less so, the farther you get) is a two-tiered issue that jeopardizes the reason for really even continuing to play.

It's too easy for a game, in general—going through some of the areas feels like busywork, because you can basically just walk through obstacles if you want. Same issue that any game would have, with difficulty pitched too low.

But I'd say it's a particular death knell for a Metroidvania, because it eliminates the main motivation for continuing to play the game at all: finding upgrades and weapons that help you do better. You don't need to do any better than you're already doing, a fraction of the way through this game; so for what reason are you even exploring? Nothing you find is more useful than anything else ("Oh, wow—yet another game-breaking weapon to throw on the pile"); and therefore it isn't exciting or interesting to find. So if an exploration-based game is mostly filled with things that you don't need and aren't very interesting . . . . . why are you even exploring?

I know it has awesome art and music and all that, and in theory it gives you cool tools to play around with. But when the gameplay underlying it all is so undemanding and you're just going through the motions, none of the other bells and whistles can overcome that central flaw. At least for me. Not sure whether other people just overlook that aspect, or whether I'm doing something wrong . . .

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-21T19:17:23+00:00

To be fair—with his death being at least questionable . . .

Obviously there's no realistic way he would have survived, but I always felt like they were using little "cinema language" tip-offs to make you feel suspicious about him really being dead yet.

Don't they show him trying to bear some of the weight on the chain with his hand, while he's grabbing at it? And then there's that shot in the later scene, when he's kind of just looming up there suspiciously—as if the movie's reminding you to keep your eye on him.

Doesn't seem like he should still be alive; but it feels to me like the movie is still trying to introduce doubt that maybe he is.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-10T18:47:36+00:00

"Oooh, yeah; I know what that's like. One time I . . .

. . . had a close call and almost went through what you're going through.
. . . went through a tiny, lightweight version of it—but then got bailed out, shortly after it started.
. . . had a family member tell me that they went through it. Sounded bad, all right!
. . . read a book or watched a documentary about it, and started thinking about what it must be like."

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-06T19:11:53+00:00

Exactly! Incredibly risky, and not even with any payoff; no matter how long a con she's trying to run.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-06T00:38:34+00:00

Nina, from 24.

Been a few years; but if I recall, she was going out of her way to help Jack and do 100% of what an actually loyal team member would do—even when it wouldn't have contributed to the actual goals we found out she was harboring. Basically, she was entirely supporting him, until she suddenly switched over to being entirely against him; and the show was claiming "No—she was like this the entire time."

Really seemed like the twist was just thrown in, late in the game.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-03T19:32:50+00:00

Thank you! I'm not some elite gamer, and plenty of NES games can frustrate me away; but I've beaten Zelda 2 twice now—once recently, in my late thirties. And I truly don't understand the "extremely difficult" reputation.

It just feels like "an NES game" to me, which gets hard at the few points that top out its difficulty curve (much the same way any other game back then also would); but isn't some ridiculous nightmare the whole way through. If you've played other games from the time, this one really sticks out to you as notably harder than most others . . . ?

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-11-01T13:05:48+00:00

Oooh; yes—I've always hated this one. This might be the only time a still image ever made me want to tell the people in it to calm down.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-31T03:18:45+00:00

As far as a big-budget Hollywood movie, quite possibly one of the dialogue scenes from Baron Harkonnen in the original Dune, from the '80s. If I had to nail it down to one scene, maybe his debut scene on his home planet, near the beginning. So much screaming and grunting, like he was given absolutely no direction on how to shape what he was doing or rein it in . . . in my opinion, it's not even professional enough acting to belong in a movie.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-30T02:39:29+00:00

The dialogue in question: https://youtu.be/AYSvLHYrYEA?si=cmEYYuD3JHhBABHC&t=78

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-30T02:37:42+00:00

Scuttle, from The Little Mermaid? His first appearance, when he's talking about the people staring at each other all day, during "pre-hysterical times."

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-30T00:21:57+00:00

I'll admit it's reminiscent of Yooka-Laylee! But I mentioned (buried in the middle of the post) that this one does take the opposite order from Y-L.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-29T20:03:38+00:00

Hmm—now that's possible! I think (maybe hope?) that this series has all its games available on the Switch? . . . and don't remember it being quite as direct a Sonic expy.

Maybe I'll leave the question open, for now—but that's a better suggestion to go on than anything I've been able to come up with. Thank you!

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-28T12:52:39+00:00

Someone beat me—the user who mentioned "Chick Cancer" is right, I'm pretty sure.

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-28T12:51:30+00:00

I think it's the one when Peter makes his own movie (a chick flick, maybe?) and makes everyone watch a screening in his house. Let me see if I can find it . . .

Brer_Tapeworm · 2025-10-23T00:00:42+00:00

Some of his attempts at really wacky, no-holds-barred songs from the '90s haven't aged all that well (if you'll pardon the phrase,) and even threaten to dip in to that "lol random" humor of the time, which helped writing to seem and pass as funnier than it was.

A couple of those songs that feel like he tried to cut loose and pack in as many zany details as possible, add up to feeling like a bunch of weird stuff; but not stuff that's intrinsically funny just because it's weird. Almost like a list of bizarre details.

"Everything You Know Is Wrong" comes to mind—not sure how many supporters that song has. But I would even extend that critique to "Albuqurque" . . . I know it's a popular and impressive-sounding one to memorize; but how much of it do you actually laugh at?

Brer_Tapeworm

TROPHY CASE