SPACED Rewlz!!!

(Had to fight myself from calling this entry "I've Been SPACED" or --- wince -- "SPACED-Out". I'm not proud of this.)

I finally saw SPACED yesterday!!! Both series!!!

There's a story behind this...

Okay, a couple of years ago my Cool Friends -- some folks at work who know much more about foriegn films than I do -- turned me on to SHAUN OF THE DEAD and I finally saw it.

AND LOVED IT!!!

As I'm sure you know by now, SHAUN is this British Romero-style zombie comedy that is both a brilliant and original zombie movie and a hysterical and original comedy flick! In fact, one could argue that it actually fits in with Romero's cannon of zombie flicks -- which chronicle the epidemic of living dead taking over Philadelphia; only SHAUN just shows us what's going on across the Atlantic. (If one were nerdy enough TO argue this point, that is. I, of course, am that nerdy. In fact, that would be a cool marathon sometime: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD, DAY OF THE DEAD, SHAUN OF THE DEAD and then LAND OF THE DEAD... Just 'cause LAND feels a bit more futuristic than the rest, but SHAUN certainluy feels more contemporary than DAY.)

So then my ultra-hip friends informed me that the director and star/co-writer of SHAUN actually had a Britcom called SPACED. My friend Pete let me watch the first 3 episodes of Series 1...

...and I enjoyed it...

...and then I learned that it would NEVER be released in the States!!!

EVER!!!

It's already on dvd in the UK, but apparently they're having problems with the music rights or something, so it will just never be available here. I've read that BBC America is airing it -- or has recently aired it or something -- but I don't have cable. And our cable company, Time Warner Cable -- who are complete and utter tyranical BASTARDS and charge out the ass for their service because they have no competition in Austin (BASTARDS!!! May the company go bankrupt and it's owners burn both on earth and in hell for their parasitic feeding off the meager wages of the Working Man and Woman!!!) -- would undoubtedly charge at least half my monthly income for any cable package that included BBC America.

So I was half-resigned to the fact that I would probably never see the show.

(Time Warner Cable are BASTARDS and should all suffer debilitating sexual diseases that prevent them from ever again knowing the pleasure of physical intimacy with another human being!!! Bastards!!!)

(Sorry. I'm done.)

(Bastards!!! Hate them!!!)

But anyway (BASTARDS!!!) I discovered a few days ago that ALL 7 EPISODES FROM BOTH SERIES (14 episodes, total) ARE AVAILABLE TO WATCH ONLINE!!!

So despite the fact that Time Warner Cable, Austin should be smited (or "smote"... whichever) with excruciating physical, emotional and psychological pain that never eases even temporarily and never ceases, I WAS ABLE TO WATCH EVERY EPISODE OF SPACED!!!

YAY!!!

When I watched the first 3 episodes a couple years ago I had not seen the show SCRUBS, either. But now that I've seen most of SCRUBS I couldn't help wondering whether or not the tone and style of SCRUBS was inspired by SPACED. I remember being a bit confused and taken a-back by the way the narrative bounced around. But when I re-watched the first 3 episodes of SPACED (after having consumed HUGE quanitities of SCRUBS) I found the narraive bouncing to be refreshing and easy to follow.

AND... SPACED first aired in 1999 and SCRUBS didn't come along until 2001. (And I'll bet TV show creators can afford a few hundred dollars a month to watch Britcoms on whatever fascist cable companies they're enslaved to.)

I mean, it may be a coincidence, but I'll confess that the only reason I didn't have the instant urge to write something in the style of SPACED is because I'm already working on a couple of projects in the style of SCRUBS -- which, as I already meantioned, is identical in style and tone.

So if you've got a buddy who knows where to find complete TV shows on the Net and you can spare about 7 hours DO WATCH SPACED!!! It is unbelievably funny!!!

It's about Tim and Daisy who pretend to be a "professional couple" to get a flat in London. And, naturally, the more they get to know each other the more they seem simply PERFECT for each other... even if neither of them is willing to admit it, even to themselves.

But it's not about the possibility for romance. That's just sort of those little candy bits on the icing on a really good cake. The reason for watching the show is how FUNNY these characters are! Not just Tim and Daisy but also their landlord, Tim's best friend, Daisy's (annoying) best friend and their downstairs neighbor!

And the director -- Edgar Wright -- is really just as much a character as the chracters are! What I mean is that the WAY the show is shot and edited adds just as much as the writers and actors contribute! (Think SCRUBS, or THE ADDAMS FAMILY movies or the first MiB movie or Soderberg's OCEANS ELEVEN...) If you've seen SHAUN, you know what I'm talking about anyway.

Oh, and another cool thing about the show is that it's written by the stars, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson! This is cool (for a nerd like me) because one of my other favorite Britcoms is FAWLTY TOWERS written by it's stars John Cleese and Connie Booth!!! (Although Cleese and Booth were married when they did FAWLTY TOWERS, I believe. To my knowlege Pegg and Stevenson haven't even dated.)

So that little connection is kinda cool, hehe. :D

Okay, I should probably get back to work. It's a slow night, but I've allowed myself to slack for as long as I dare, hee-hee.








P.S. The owners and managers of Time Warner Cable, Austin should seriously consider taking their own lives in a vicious and excruciating manner AFTER having sliced-off/-out their genitals and consumed them.

Just an opinion.



Greedy and satanic fucking BASTARDS!!!