Blinkered Season Two – Fire Retarded Review

Season Two of Blinkered started recently on NudiaTV and as I reviewed season one before as a whole I decided to do this season as an episode by episode basis, so here’s the first episode review, named “Fire Retarded”.

Characters/CastAside from the new female character that I noted on the season two preview that I did, Frazzle has his own spot in the introductions now, and we’re a character down with Jimbo’s chubby friend having been taken off (presumably due to him leaving for storyline reasons along with Lance Volcano, a guest character last season). Character development remains strong, and doesn’t focus too much on the new character as a show might.

Brandon Carr (Richard Pohl) remains the funniest cast member still, with his odd quirks.

I also noted that the courier seen in this episode is related to the newest cast member Wendy Joelseph (Lauren Knust) and filmed alongside Joel Henderson.

Sets

The rarely seen meeting room gets used in this episode to show off Big Al, though he is not in the episode apart from this appearance.

I’m not sure how many different sets you can really have in an office, so I feel this segment should actually be replaced. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Comedy One of the funniest moments for me in this episode, was when the usual “pick on Jimbo” part was going on and he was informed he had a courier. Then we flash to Dennis who says “I love how I can confuse Jimbo by using a word with more than five letters…” Then starts to count them aloud. This was made even more funny to me when @comeuppence mentioned to me on Twitter that it wasn’t even intentional.

Parts about the GPS post-it notes also raised a few chuckles, as did Big Al’s video. Jimbo bashing remains funny too, with tweeting “Jimbo is gay”.

Soundtrack Aside from a little singing from Brandon Carr (who is in a band by the way who happen to do the intro music, which as much as I slated it, has now grown on me) there’s not a whole bunch of music, which would have been nice to dub over the outside shot scenes or perhaps in the background of Big Al’s video.

There was quite a catchy tune after the bloopers however.

Plot This episode may have revealed the name of the office/company at which they work, probably not significant or interesting to anyone else, but it’s been bugging me since season one. Dennis looks through a file labelled “RDS” when looking for a “Jimberly Holton”.

Seeing Wendy being nice to Brian/Jimbo was a bit strange (not for the character, but because I’m used to seeing the whole office pick on Jimbo), but I’d like to see where that goes. But then he finally reaches breaking point and snaps. I expected him to quit, but it all turns out to be part of a joke, which he then takes rather well.

Closing Comment
An average episode overall but a nice start to the new series…let’s see how it all goes from here.

Characters/Cast: 6/10
Sets: 6/10
Comedy: 7/10
Soundtrack: 6/10
Plot: 6.7/10

62.40%

• 0 – 19% Unwatchable - why the hell did I even watch this?
• 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the show hold it back
• 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
• 70 – 84% Good – This is what you’ll be talking about with people in the office the next day.
• 85 – 89% Excellent – This is what you’ll be talking about for the next month.
• 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – This is the best TV show ever, therefore going by Josh Whedon logic, it will soon be cancelled.

Ho-Oh-Ohctober!

So in case you haven’t been reading my blog for long, I like to blog about what I’ll be doing for the month on the first day of the month, just so you might get an insight in to what I’ll blog about.

Blinkered

So you’re probably fed up of me hammering on about Blinkered now, but I’ll be doing episodic reviews and thoughts as they air on Nudia.

Archery I’ve been thinking about this for a time, and now I’ve found a place to actually practice and a shooting club to maybe join, I’ll get practicing and get behind it.

FlashForwardFlashForward is a new ABC show that recently started here and I’ll be cranking out my thoughts on the show that may eventually replace Lost when it’s finished.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 DaysAccording to my site statistics, plenty of people come here and read the posts I’ve made on Kingdom Hearts, so a review of the DS game will be a necessity I feel. I am looking forward to it, though I know a lot of stuff about it already.

Podcast?I’ve also been mulling on doing a podcast on TV shows. If you’d like to discuss this with me, please do leave a comment and let me know.

That’s just a brief look, I’m not sure what else will come up this month, but it will be blogged about.

Blinkered Season Two Preview

In case you missed the season one review there it was. Now, some trailers have come out on YouTube and I have been asked to give my opinions.

The comical Jimbo abuse continues (that’s him on the floor by the way) and Big Al seems to have a bit more of a central role. Some characters looks (such as Dennis) have changed a bit between seasons and I know for one scene Joshua Knight (who plays Jimbo) needed his hair as shaggy as possible for some reason. No sign of Richard in the trailers alas, but in that vein one of my issues with characters was addressed;

Yes, the Blinkered office is no longer a sausage fest! There’s at least one (currently unnamed) female character and the trailers promise “new characters" so hopefully we can expect some more.

Actually the character above is named Wendy Joelseph played by Lauren Knust.

Whether this is a prop choice, or simply Apple’s brilliance showing through everything, it seems that most of the Blinkered office (the company name hasn’t been mentioned from what I recall) have iPhones save Jimbo, who picks up his 90’s-esque phone when Big Al is attempting to find him.

It prompted some good laughs from me, especially in the initial trailer: New Shirt. It’s going to be great, and it’s going to be coming to http://www.nudia.tv come October 7th, but for now, watch all the trailers below.

Hopefully Joel (Dennis) or Joshua (Jimbo) will slide me an early episode one so I can have a review ready for the day it goes up to the public, and I hope you’re all watching. It’s genius.

Blinkered Season One Review

Watch it here

Blinkered is advertised by it’s creators @comeuppence & @joshuaknight as “The Office” meets “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”. Now I really dislike The (US) Office, but do like what little I’ve seen of It’s Always Sunny so was apprehensive towards it at first, but I ended up really liking it. Five sections scored out 10 for an overall 100% score here.

Characters/Cast

Blinkered only has a small cast of characters, consisting of Big Al, Brian (frequently called Jimbo on and off set), Dennis (who manages the hapless lot), Kyle Laws (whose character name I can’t recall) and Richard (as seen above)

There is also a great recurring guest character named Billy Lightfoot who is constantly mocked by the rest of the cast and I’d love to see him become a series regular for season two.

Character with the least character development? Got to be Big Al, the cocky self-know-it-all and self proclaimed best buddy to everyone.this season seemed to focus on Jimbo being the audience proxy, as odd as it seems in an Office-y show.

Sets

Nice and easy set up for a show based in an office (though I don’t think it was stated what they did) it relates to people who spend a lot of their time in their own cubicles and get pissed off with co-workers. I can only relate to the latter, but still find the set for it to be very good. It’s what I imagine having your own little self-depressing world stuffed in to a cube would be.

However, there’s also this large mostly unused area which seems like it would be great for an office chair race for a promotion or something. It was used later on in the season, but still not a whole lot.

Comedy

Richard for me was the run away funny man of the series between stalking Big Al and appearing naked at his house and his dog, it’s very comical.

Lots of comedic value in taunting Jimbo too, especially by Dennis (whereas these are the two creators of the show and are good friends in the real world) and situations that you would never imagine in a work place (Big Al cutting off Dennis’ pony tail for example) akin to The Office.

Soundtrack

Unfortunately this is where Blinkered falls flat on it’s face. The intro song is…bland to say the least and there’s not much of a soundtrack within the show, despite Dennis never removing his ear buds. It might be a good idea for season two if we could faintly hear what he was listening to when he was in a scene to provide a base soundtrack.

Plot

Though it is in it mostly for the comedy, Blinkered does feature some well thought out storylines such as Jimbo’s fake family and Richard’s nigh-on homosexual obsession with Big Al, which he simply sees as normal. I’m not sure where the overall show is going, but I think the next step would be to introduce a female character in to the show, and use her to disrupt the work place. Blinkered has been an interesting watch and I hope they keep up the quality.

Characters/Cast: 7.3/10
Sets: 7/10
Comedy: 8.4/10
Soundtrack: 4/10
Plot: 8/10

69.40%

• 0 – 19% Unwatchable - why the hell did I even watch this?
• 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the show hold it back
• 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
• 70 – 84% Good – This is what you’ll be talking about with people in the office the next day.
• 85 – 89% Excellent – This is what you’ll be talking about for the next month.
• 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – This is the best TV show ever, therefore going by Josh Whedon logic, it will soon be cancelled.

Thanks to Joel for providing all the Blinkered images used within this review. Cheers man.