The Blacklist
30 Day Challenge, Part 1
Season 1 GIFs and Thoughts

12/29/2013

Someone at Tumblr started this, but I love it so much I had to make it available here, too, not just link to it. I missed the first 8 days because of computer problems and then more because of Christmas. Now I'm getting further behind making gifs to accompany nearly every answer.

Day #1: Introduce Yourself and share your thoughts about the first time you watched the Blacklist and what made you continue to watch.

Red's second chance gif

Hi, I'm Erin. I watch far more TV than I should, far more than I have time for. But I get really involved in only a few, my favorite series being Fringe, with Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Supernatural, Agents of SHIELD, and Breaking Bad, among others, also being as close to the top of my list as you can get. I like variety and I crave great performances.

This season I had so many shows to watch already that I only tried The Blacklist because of James Spader. I didn't even know about it until a few weeks before it aired. What made me continue to watch? The intriguing story...and James Spader delivering Red's carefully chosen words and, more importantly, the words he kept to himself. He so quickly pushed The Blacklist into all-time favorite shows territory that I had to question my sanity. Then I realized he was just that perfect in the role of Raymond "Red" Reddington. I would thank him if I could.

Day #2: Who is your favorite female character?

Liz and the pen gif

Liz. The second she started screaming at Red in the pilot, she had my attention. I realized then that Megan was a great choice and I really looked forward to many more interactions between them. I remember reading something about Liz being written like a stereotypical hysterical woman who falls apart in a tough situation or whatever the bullshit complaint was. Excuse me, but if she was calm facing the man she thinks is trying to destroy her life, who quite recently pulled the rug out from under her, then I would be worried about her mental state. She should be angry. She should be out of control.

Day #3: Who is your favorite male character?

Red, select scenes gifRed, more select scenes gif

No doubt the answer is and always will be Red. Spader is masterful in every scene. Whether he's amusing, scary, beaten and weary, or gut-wrenching, every moment is spot-on. And those suits...damn.

Day #4: Who is your least liked character?

Meera Malik in The Freelancer gifHarold Cooper in Anslo Garrick gif

If I have to choose, I guess I'll say Meera Malik. I don't dislike her, but I don't know enough about her yet to really form an opinion. Or maybe Cooper, because he didn't waver even a bit when Garrick threatened Luli, Dembe, and Liz. Red was willing to give his life for theirs, but Cooper wanted only to protect his asset. Although, being the one in charge, he has to make the tough calls, so I respect him for it.

Day #5: Share a scene that made you laugh.

 photo PileofChristmas_zpsf14a490d.gif

There are so many. Red is delightfully witty. I think my favorite is...

"Your witness is dead, you lost Lorca, and he took Agent Keen. I'd say my meeting with Lorca might be the equivalent of you falling on your ass and landing in a pile of Christmas."

When Love is Gone

12/27/2013

My family always watches The Muppet Christmas Carol before Christmas. This morning we're watching it again, and I have to mention the one thing that bugs me when it's on TV. The song "When Love is Gone" is cut out every time. That annoys me to no end. Ooh, that scene is about to start right now...aaaand it's over. I've read that it wasn't shown in theaters either, but that's no excuse. Without it, the scene is too short. Scrooge says he loves Belle. She says he did once and walks away. Everyone is in tears, but it seems unearned and it was odd to me when I was young. Then I saw the full version at some point and can't see why it wasn't worthy of inclusion. The song gives emotion and build up to the breakup, Scrooge breaking down before the end. The song also mirrors the one in the closing scene, "When Love is Found." It has opposing lyrics set to the same melody. Here a sad memory gives way to happy, new beginnings; an old man singing to a ghost and crying alone turns into that man having a wealth of friends. It never made sense to me to remove it since it was so tied into the fabric of the narrative in that way.

I used to watch only the version with that song in it every year. Now that we've been DVRing it since we no longer have a working VCR in the living room to watch that old tape, we haven't heard that song for a few years now. (Keeping the tape, though. I have a VCR in my bedroom and can't throw it away.) We continually forget to replace the movie, though I swear I remember buying it. And as I was wondering this out loud, I discovered that we got the Blu-ray for Christmas. I hope it plays in its entirety or that it's in deleted scenes.

SUPERNATURAL
The Winchesters
T-Shirt

12/27/2013

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos

This gorgeous Winchesters shirt is available today only. I wish I didn't have to pass on it, but I have to think about the space in my closet and my bank account. I owe my brothers for the frigerator we bought our parents for Christmas. Plus, I already have two Supernatural shirts and just bought the Doctor Who regeneration shirt two days ago to honor Matt Smith's time on the show. Otherwise, this would be an insta-buy at just $10. The coloring and font is perfect and reminds me of the Old West episode "Frontierland."

Doctor Who
The Time of the Doctor
T-Shirt

12/25/2013

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos

I was way too busy getting ready for Christmas this week to realize that this shirt was coming up. Good thing I just happened to check my email before bed. I haven't been buying shirts lately, because I've been too near broke. But The 11th Hour is a must buy since it has photochromatic ink that changes in sunlight and is commemorating Matt Smith's regeneration episode, which was ending while I was writing this. Must avoid Twitter spoilers. Can't watch until tomorrow...Sunday at the latest. We got home from the Christmas celebrations in time, but we were just too exhausted. Okay, must go to bed and recover from all the food and try to avoid having nightmare dreams of what may have happened in the episode. Hmm, now I have two Eleven shirts. Next time has to be Ten. Still miss him. I need Tennant's face on my chest.

Not much time left today to get this beauty. It starts at $11 a shirt and $3 for shipping. You're gonna have to choose between navy and black, though. Very hard decision. I finally chose navy, because I have few shirts in that color.

Computers Don't Care That it's Christmastime

12/20/2013

On Tuesday, my new SSD arrived! I was excited to put it in my PC. Never had one before. I've been using a really old, really slow HDD for far too long. But I didn't get a drive bay adapter, because for some reason I thought I had one and I was too lazy to make sure. I had to backup the computer anyway since I hadn't done it in far too long, I wanted to read about moving the OS to a new drive without reinstalling, and I was busy with other things. No big deal.

On Wednesday, I was going to actually make that backup. First I checked my email, eBay, then had some breakfast. While I was in the kitchen, the router died. That distracted me from what I set out to do. I spent all day trying to fix the problem. I did everything possible, but the cable tech had to come out. Only after uninstalling Norton 360, resetting the cable modem a number of times, restarting the PC twice, and calling the company was he able to get the modem to work again. Still the router refused to connect. I spent what was left of the day buying the drive bay adapter, emailing Netgear, and reinstalling and updating things. 

On Thursday, I was getting ready to update Windows and finally run that backup so I would be ready when the adapter arrived probably next week. I didn't do it while I was sleeping, because nothing ever goes right in the middle of the night. I was also poking around Windows 8 curious about features I either missed or haven't needed yet. I then had to respond to an email from Netgear. Of course they wanted me to test everything again before they would replace it under warranty. I checked everything again and was writing down exactly what didn't work. Before I reconnected to the Internet to copy my work into an email, I realized I forgot about breakfast. Half an hour later, I came back to a black screen with a blinking underscore. Out of seemingly nowhere, my C drive just disappeared. 

Restarting twice gave me the same result. So I opened the PC, made sure the cables were secure, restarted, and all the lights came on. Then Windows went into scan and recovery mode, which it gives you a second to cancel. I was nowhere near the keyboard. I decided not to restart again and just let it run through, even if it took all day. I thought it couldn't get any worse. If only I had bought that adapter when I bought my drive then I would have avoided this problem by a single day. Now where did I put my Windows 8 CD? 

Guess what? Letting it run through the recovery didn't help. I started again multiple times to try to find a way in to safe mode, which is now hidden and difficult to get to in Windows 8 if your computer is in any actual trouble. Then I remembered I could look things up, albeit very slowly and painstakingly, on my old, tiny, not so smart phone. At least that's something. The day before, I had used it to write an email about cancelling my work schedule. It took three tries and half an hour, because at the end of the email, every time, I would accidentally back out of it. While I was reading, I let Windows run recovery again just to see how far it got. About 39%. It's so odd. The drive just died without warning. Wasn't acting strangely or making any noise like I've experienced in the past. I noticed some slow down recently, and finally decided to get a new, faster drive. But why now? Just before I was going to swap it out painlessly. I swear my computers always know what I'm about to do and say "Fuck you!"

So I attempted safe mode first, but it was impossible to get there by every method. I gave up on that and tried to change the boot order to CD so I could at least use the Windows 8 disc. I couldn't even access the BIOS. It came up, but the second I tried to select anything, the repair mode would somehow take over and restart. Had to unplug the dead drive, which I was hoping to still be able to access. Then I plugged in the SSD.

Hmm, I don't have a disk for the Win 8 Pro upgrade for some reason. I guess I'll use the Release Preview disc. An hour later - after the disc telling me the Rp's product key was wrong, searching my email for the correct one on that dinky phone, findng out it couldn't load the email correctly, then to use my father's ancient notebook to retrieve that email, finding out that my Win 8 product key doesn't work, and searching for an answer - I finally read something that said I needed my original full installation. Oh yeah! Duh. So I have to reinstall XP Pro. This better work. At least with that you have 30 days to activate instead of not being allowed in at all so you can fix things.

XP installed without a hitch, or so I thought. Then I still couldn't get online with that possibly broken Netgear. I remembered that I have to also reinstall ethernet drivers from the motherboard installation disc. I was about to do just that when the PC restarted itself. It did that two more times before I could get the disc to start. Then hafway through it froze on me and the mouse was unusable. Restarted again to see how many it got through... None. It installed none of them. Time to do each individually. All but one worked out fine; it was only a USB 3.0 driver. Not concerned with that at all right now. Plugged in the ethernet cable and...it flickered on and off. UGH! Waited a few minutes and it fixed itself. YAY! Only took half a day to get online to download Win 8. WOOHOO! Nope. I had to download IE 8. SHOOT ME NOW! Guess I'll just go play the game I started 5 hours ago while I'm waiting. And of course the download had to get stuck. Good thing I checked after a few minutes.

Today, Friday, I spent most of the day reinstalling everything. First I reinstalled six programs and then realized I forgot to partition, so I don't lose my programs. I decided to put them on the new SSD to see if that helps some work better and faster. I uninstalled, partitioned, moved all the programs again, and reinstalled. Easy enough. But somewhere in the middle of this, my PC started to freeze quite a bit. This wasn't the normal freezing where you can Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Task Manager and kill processes. Nope. This required many uses of the reset button. Had to go into Safe Mode, which was being a bitch to get to for a while. Turns out it was my new backup, EaseUs ToDo. I had tried it a couple years ago, but I chose something else instead that didn't have incremental backups. I always put off backing up since it was an absolute pain in the ass. I got rid of EaseUs, and everything seems to be fine now. I considered Macrium Reflect, which I'd used before, among many others, but I went with AOMEI Backupper. It's very quick, free, compresses files well, and I can easily check individual files in the image by mounting it from the program. Nice for someone who's gone back and forth so many times that she hasn't actually picked a solution to stick with.

Of course the sound didn't come back, as usual. Fuck that for now. At least my headphones work.

And one last thing to give me a headache. I have used Dragon Naturally Speaking for work for about five years now. I bought version 12 last December and kept a backup disc and, of course, the serial number in a safe place. I reinstalled Dragon from Nuance's website, since I have some kind of extended plan. But then Dragon said my serial number was wrong. I tried it five times, copying and pasting, trying both automatic and manual activation, and it still wouldn't accept it. I can use it five times before it won't work anymore. So now I'm possibly stuck with a $200 piece of software that I only got a year's use out of. (Good thing I got it for half off.) Why would I be stuck? I have no faith in a company that has no email address and buries its contact form. It took ten minutes to find it. After everything that happened in the past three days, with this last important thing I needed to do - and yet far from finished - I had to search through a stream of tears.

And now all I can think is Clark Griswold's rant about his boss in Christmas Vacation, specifically "Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?"

Edit 12/21/13: I was also getting a lot of errors on boot, some critical. The first of the error messages today when I checked the Event Viewer was "Windows failed fast startup with error status 0xC0000001." I had come across this before when searching for something else, so I had forgotten about it. If you get that message then you might want to first try turning off fast startup.

Edit 12/23/13: And after reinstalling everything and fixing every error and downloading every update, yesterday I realized Windows was able to utilize only 2.95 GB of RAM. Microsoft chose the 32-bit download for me automatically! I didn't realize because I had originally had the 64-bit version and forgot that I was installing over the 32-bit XP Pro. I had skipped the installation of the 64-bit Release Preview this time (not a good idea) because I thought the key was no longer working. Turns out I kept reading an F as a 7 for some reason. So I had to install RP again, check that it was the correct version, go to my email, find the link to the Win 8 download, reinstall Win 8, then check to see if it was the right one again. After that came another full day of reinstalling all drivers, updates, and programs, and making more backups. Why am I not surprised? Good thing is I am finally back up and running with every damn thing done...for now. And I somehow did it while also making Christmas cookies, wrapping presents, and writing more about The Blacklist.

Breaking Dad

12/14/2013

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos

I loved Malcolm in the Middle. I loved Breaking Bad. One had an incredibly funny dad. The other had an incredibly dangerous dad. They were both played superbly by the same actor, as if anyone didn't know that. So how is it I never put them together in my head as a t-shirt concept? How is it that I never saw one until today? Why is it out around Christmas so that I can't buy it for myself?! I'm going to go cry in a corner now for about an hour. Then I have to go Christmas shopping. I hope no strangers ask me why there are tears streaming down my face.

If you know someone this shirt would be perfect for, it's available today only for $10 at TeeFury.

UPDATE
Breaking Dad is available for $25.52 in Harebrained's Red Bubble store!

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Bridge :: Clark Gregg on the Fall Finale
Season 1, Episode 10

12/12/2013

"Last night was really exciting, because people got to see, oh, oh, it's all connected."

Have some patience. If you actually take a second to think about it, ten episodes is not long. It's about the perfect amount of time for a season to set the dominoes up, while the second half is dedicated to knocking them down. There are a lot of threads that need a number of episodes to come together, and the mystery can't be revealed all at once. I don't understand people who have no patience and were complaining about seemingly stand-alone episodes almost immediately. If they revealed everything all at once then they really would be stand-alones and have no season- or series-long story arc. Tear yourself away from Twitter for five minutes and pay attention to the details; it's not hard at all. Whedon and Marvel were obviously never going to leave us out in the cold. Fantastic stories take their time. A TV show is different from a movie. They have to spread things out over more than a couple hours. It's a huge difference that allows for more depth of storytelling.

Source: E! Online via ShieldTV.net

All episodes are available in SD and HD at Amazon
Pilot [HD] | 0-8-4 [HD] | The Asset [HD] | Eye Spy [HD] | Girl In the Flower Dress [HD] | FZZT [HD] |
The Hub [HD] | The Well [HD] | Repairs [HD] | The Bridge [HD]
Or see the latest episodes with a subscription to Hulu or Hulu Plus.


Shop Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Blacklist
Spader on Fallon, Renewal News
Season 1 Interview

12/03/2013

This is definitely one of my favorite videos, but I missed it because I never get to watch the late night shows anymore. James is adorable here, cracking a big smile and laughing, feeling comfortable enough to admit that he's uncomfortable. He seems to genuinely like talking to Fallon. I've noticed in the interviews I've seen that he looks and sounds nervous, having a lot of pauses trying to find the right words, or maybe it's just that he's thoughtful. Though he is an unquestionable genius playing roles, especially Raymond Reddington, he certainly doesn't clamor for the spotlight. The spotlight just happens to love him.

Now that The Blacklist is a hit and has been picked up for a full 22-episode second season only half way through the first, I hope he can get used to all the attention. He's been in the business for a long time, but with everyone constantly connected now, there's more noise than ever and I'd think that could be overwhelming. I wouldn't want to think he'd feel awful every time he had to go on a talk show or to Comic-Con. Whatever the reason, if he has to overcome nerves, I'm glad he makes the effort. It's good to see him in interviews, outside of his character, though he himself seems to be quite the character. ;-) I said this is an interview I missed, but I've surely missed many. What I'd like to do is eventually put everything I can find in a clips/promos/fan videos/interviews page for the show.

Edit 1/26/18: I've been going through all my posts finally giving the titles a single format, giving each show its own font, and replacing missing images that were on a service I no longer use. A few videos have gone missing, too, and I haven't been able to find this one on YouTube.

The Blacklist
James Spader, USA Daytime
Season 1 Interviews

12/03/2013

I found a few fantastic mini interviews yesterday. I think they were on Tumblr. Never would have thought to look over at USA for James Spader interviews. Didn't know USA Daytime existed. I assume by the length of them that they are on during commercial breaks for the permanent NCIS and SVU marathons. Sadly, there are only three and they are too short. We need more of these intimate one-on-ones with only him and the interviewer. He seems more comfortable and relaxed in that setting. James is so insightful, which reminds me of the Comic-Con panel. Being humble, which makes him that much more appealing, he says the camera and the audience do most of the work. He should know how brilliant he is. It's not merely the result of camera work. Tight, lingering shots are a part of it, but it's he who draws us in with subtle expressions and makes it beautiful.

"If you don't make any attempt to show the audience anything then the audience wants to look further and further and further."

Okay, I have a long day ahead full of work and Tumbling gifs of last night's fall finale of The Blacklist. It was another incredibly well-done episode with top-notch acting, more questions, and a new (old, really) adversary that will be around in the shadows watching Red. As cliffhangers go, it wasn't really one. It didn't make me angry that I would have to wait more than a month for more episodes. It's a little break with no lives hanging in the balance, just emotions.