Whatareyoudoinghere: Unexpected Guest Stars of Veronica Mars

Posted in Entertainment, Lists by Traci

I was one of those latecomers that only got into Veronica Mars when was available on Netflix Instant a year or two ago. I was immediately hooked, and scolded myself for judging the show by its name (Veronica MARS who lived in NEPTUNE??? Def some kind of sci-fi show I wasn’t interested in). But fast forward to my Netflix marathon days and I watched eps nonstop, then proceeded to purchase the DVDs once they took it off instant.

Anyways, from the beginning, I noticed that a lot of random celebs appeared on VMars. Some were famous before the show, and some reached their fame after their appearance. The obvious one is Amanda Seyfried, who played Lilly Kane, Veronica’s bestie, Duncan’s brother, and Logan’s main boo. Oh and she was mysteriously killed, so pretty much the all of season one and season two focus on her murder. Ugh Harry Hamlin.

Because of the future Mamma Mia star, I proceeded to make a list of some notable names who I was surprised to see in Neptune.

PS: gold star and +50 points if you got the Californians ref in the post title.

Paris Hilton

Season 1, Episode 2

Props to Paris for signing up to be a guest star so early on in the show. Although she probs would’ve taken any role she was given money for, so nevermind. I will admit that I was super jeal of her because she played Logan’s new GF. Logan *sigh*

Jessica Chastain

Season 1, Episode 7

Jessica was recently on Jay Leno recalling how although it seems like she’s an overnight Oscar nominee, she graduated from Julliard and was in various TV shows – including V Mars. She played a character involved in one of the darkest storylines ever done on the show, a pregnant woman who lived next door to Veronica, who went missing. Turns out her stepfather raped her, and just as she was going to shoot him in self defense, Veronica’s dad shoots him to safe her life. Srs business, y’all.

Aaron Paul

Season 1, Episode 11

Before he was a maker of meth, Jesse Pinkman was accused to being a serial killer. So I mean, he has a history of playing troubled characters (RIP Gale).

Leighton Meester

Season 1, Episodes 14 & 21

Spotted: Young B playing Carrie Bishop, queen of the rich ’09ers (sound familiar?). She accuses Veronica’s favorite teacher, Mr. Rooks of having an affair with her, so VMars sets out to prove that he’s innocent. She finds out that not only did Rooks have an affair, it was actually with Carrie’s BFF, who got preggo from the scandalous tryst. So Carrie decided to press charges against him for herself.

Adam Scott

Season 1, Episode 14

Oh, BTW, the guy who played teen predator Mr. Rooks? THIS GUY.

Ben Wyatt/Knope, I still love you. Even if you were a creeper.

lit’rally took me forever to decide which pic to use because i love him so much

Lucas Grabeel

Season 2, Episode 14

The High School Musical alum played Kelly Kuzzio, a baseball jock who was secretly gay. Not like he’s ever played a gay guy before.

Kristin Cavallari

Season 2, Episode 14

Kristin, the only villain who looked sane next to Speidi, made her scripted TV debut and she played a cheerleader. Oh sorry, a LESBIAN cheerleader. It was great. I mean her acting wasn’t but just the entire thing it general was great.

Zachery Ty Bryan

Season 1, Episode 15 & 17

Usually the middle child gets the shaft, but on Home Improvement, I always thought eldest kid Brad got the short end of the stick. I mean the middle child was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, like how do you compare with that? I remember as much about Brad’s plot line as I do of his brief stint on VM. Which is that he played basketball and drove a car.

JTT

Season 1, Episode 18

Speak of the devil. I was never one of those girls who fawned over JTT. I didn’t get it. Still don’t. Which is why that although I appreciate his rare TV appearance on a UPN show in 2005, I remember his guest starring role mostly because this was the first episode where Veronica and Logan kissed. I mean he played an ATF agent who went undercover as a high school student, so that was cool, I guess. But VERONICA AND LOGAN!! They had an epic kind of love, you know? One that spanned years and continents. Lives ruined, bloodshed, epic.

Rider Strong

Season 3, Episode 2

Good old Shawn Hunter played an asshole classmate of Logan and Wallace in a college class, where they participated in some prison experiment. IDK, basically he made the kid from Freaks and Geeks pee his pants.

Matt Czuchry

Season 3, Episode 4

Logan Huntzberger from my fave Gilmore Girls uses his reporter skills as he pretends to be Logan Echolls’ half-brother just to get a story. Whoa, that got confusing even for me. Again, forget about Matt for a sec because this was a great episode for Jason Dohring who got to show his dramatic side after he found out he still didn’t come close to getting to know his half-brother.

Dianna Agron

Season 3, Episodes 5, 15, & 19

Incidentally, Dianna played a college kid in VMars, and then went on to play a high school cheerleader/wheelchair bound/walking Yale student miracle on Glee.

Paul Rudd

Season 3, Episode 17

The great Paul Rudd is actually BFFs with show creator Rob Thomas, which explains his involvement with VM and with Rob’s follow up show, the hilarious Party Down. Paul plays a washed-up rock star who’s playing at Hearst College, and is a drunk nut job. One of my all-time lines from the show comes from this episode, as seen above.

Max Greenfield

Recurring character

I saved the best for last. Before New Girl was New Girl, I saw promos for the show, and put it on my list immediately because Max Greenfield was in it. At the time, he was only Deputy Leo to me, the handsome, smiley, police officer who Veronica canoodled with in the first season. Unfortunately their love dwindled, but only because she was falling for Logan. And I was ok with that. But now, he can’t be anything else but Schmidt.

Logan TYFYT

15Feb2013

TV Marathoning: 5 Steps of Grief (The Taylor-Bartlet model)

Posted in Entertainment by Traci

In a world where we can easily access DVDs, DVR and Netflix, it makes it so much easier to watch a TV series for hours on end, lending itself to the highest form of laziness. In the moment, you think it’s worth it, but is it really?

For me, TV marathoning began in college, when a few of my friends and I decided to spend an entire day devoted to a whole season of Friends. We were/are fanatics of the show, so it’s not like we needed to watch it, but it’s the experience of watching it together with, ahem, friends, that makes it 10 times better. We called it a Friendstravaganza, and literally played episodes non stop all day, only stopping to get take out for dinner.

That was the beginning of the end, because I’m pretty sure the Friendstravaganza taught me how to watch TV all day. In fact, I made it a goal to use this new found skill to catch up on series that I’ve been meaning to watch but haven’t seen yet. My roommates and I even made a list of all the series we aimed to watch. In the past few years, I’ve been able to cross off Veronica Mars, Grey’s Anatomy, Six Feet Under, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Homeland, and a bunch more.

Here is the original 2011 (?) version of the TV list. Crossed off 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 11. Plus 1 and 2 from the Catch up column. Here’s the newest version, if you’re still reading this.

I recently finished all seven seasons of The West Wing, thanks to Netflix Instant. A personal best, I managed to watch 155 episodes in 26 days. That’s about 1/7th of my month dedicated to President Bartlet and co. And as my beloved Tim Riggins would say, No Regrets.

But finishing The West Wing got me thinking, that just like Riggins and FNL, I found myself wanting to watch the last few episodes, but not wanting it to ever end. I was heading towards the usual post-show withdrawal and depression. In fact, with FNL, I immediately purchased all five seasons on DVD and watched the first season like a week after I finished the whole series.

Which got me thinking: post- TV marathoning is just like the five stages of grief, also known as the Kubler-Ross model. Except for entertainment purposes, I’ll call it the Taylor-Bartlet model. Let me explain.

**West Wing spoilers ahead**

1) Denial — “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me. Not to this show.”; “There’s gotta be more episodes, obviously.” ; “How can I go another day without watching another sexual tension filled episode of Josh and Donna moments?”

2) Anger — “How can this happen to me?”; ‘”Who is to blame for this show ending? NBC? Of course.”; “I want to know what happened to Moira Kelly’s horrible character, and now we’ll NEVER find out.”; “Why was Sam not at Leo’s funeral?? Come AWN Rob Lowe!”; “DID ZOEY MOVE TO DC TO BE WITH CHARLIE WHILE HE’S STUDYING AT GEORGETOWN TO BE A LAWYER LIKE HIS SOON-TO-BE FATHER-IN-LAW (I’M ASSUMING)??”

3) Bargaining — “I’ll do anything for another season, maybe Pres. Bartlet at his New Hampshire farm, driving Abbey crazy because he can’t smoke?”; “I will give my life savings if I can watch Toby’s kid Huck and CJ and Danny’s daughter get married”; “If only Aaron Sorkin came back for just one last half season and make a Two Cathedrals finale part two?”; “Ok, what if I rewatch season one in its entirety, that’s like a whole new revamped WW, seeing as it’s been weeks since I last saw it”

4) Depression — “I’m so upset that I never caught on to WW sooner.” “Nothing will be this good, why bother with any other show?”; “I miss Mrs. Landingham, why go on?”; “There will never be a series like this ever again. I’m looking at you, Newsroom.”; “No, it’s totally normal for me to be crying and laughing and eating ice cream while watching this reunion video, and this and this.”

5) Acceptance — “In hindsight, I’m just thankful Netflix finally decided to put it on instant so I could watch the entire series at a rapid pace.”; “It ended on a good note, so there’s really no where else to go with it. I’ll just watch the Parks and Rec episode with Bradley Whitford doing a walk and talk, now”; “It’s going to be okay. I still haven’t watched The Wire”

I’m pretty sure I’m still in stage one of TV Marathoning grief, so if you need me, I’ll be on tumblr reblogging gifs and photosets of Josh and Donna’s relationship.

4Feb2013

Six iPhone Apps You Should Probably Have

Posted in Lists by Traci

Let’s face it. The point of having an iPhone is probably not the phone function. If you just wanted a working phone, you would still have your Motorola Razor phone from high school. But iPhones help us with our everyday lives, get us from place to place, tell us the weather, and even sass us if we want sassing (see: Siri). So in my never ending quest to find the best apps for my non phone iPhone, here’s a list of my favorites that I think are the best of the best.

BTDubs, these are all FREE apps, because homie don’t pay $.99 for that shit.

1) Episoder

I am not kidding you when I say that this has changed my life. As most of you know, I watch way too much television. For the past couple of years, I’ve attempted to be organized by creating a personalized TV schedule with Power Point. However, this past fall, I found myself faced with the enormous problem of too many TV shows, so little time, and losing track of what I’ve watched. I mean on Tuesday nights alone I watch 11 shows (disgusting, I know). So thanks to some internet research, I found Episoder. You simply put in all the programs you’re currently watching, and it will list all the upcoming episodes in chronological order, and better yet, provide a checklist for episodes you haven’t seen yet. It’s organized my TV watching schedule in the greatest way. And it even has past series which have ended/cancelled, so when you put something like 7 season of The West Wing on, it’s daunting, but helpful.

2) Tipsy

Math – who’s good at it? Especially when you’re out with friends and need to figure out tax and tip and how much everyone owes. Tipsy is there to not make your brain explode at the end of a meal. Basically you put it how much the total of the bill is and how many people are splitting it, and it will tell you how much each person owes. Simple yet brilliant.

3) Starbucks

Since I’ve managed to go through Dunkin Donuts withdrawl here in California, Starbucks is a familiar alternative to my coffee needs. And luckily, there is one just a block away from my office, so I frequent that location. There’s a guy there that knows my name and always asks how I am, however I don’t know his name and it’s way too late to ask. Anyways, since it’s just down the street, I don’t like taking my purse, and thanks to the Sbux app I don’t have to carry any cash at all with me. Their app lets you use a digital gift card of sorts, where you can reload your card with money, and simply scan your phone at purchase. You’ll get gold star rewards too, whatever that means.

4) Gas Buddy

I know some people go to the same gas station all the time, but I usually have a rotation of about 3 to 4 gas stations, and go to whichever one is closer to where I’m going. But sometimes, I just decide based on how much unleaded is. With Gas Buddy, it will search for all the gas stations near your current location, and tell you how much each grade level of gas is. Super helpful to find cheaper gas, however cheap usually means $3.49 here in LA.

5) Dropbox

Most of you probably already know what this is, but it’s a great app for all your iDevices and computer. I like having it on my phone so I can easily transfer pix from there to my computer – i.e. how I uploaded all these pics of the apps with ease. It’s also great if you want to send large files to people, like music or documents. That way Gmail isn’t sending you a warning that the email you’re trying to send is too big.

6) Lisa Frank Pic N’ Share

This is a Lisa Frank photo app where you can add a top heat wearing bear. I think that’s all you need to know.

30Jan2013

Show You Should Be Watching If You Aren’t Already: Catfish: The TV Show

Posted in Entertainment by Traci

I watch an embarrassing amount of television. I take that back. I just watch a lot more television than the average person. Given my real life job is revolved around TV, but in addition, I am, and always have been obssed with television. So in saying that, I have seen a fair share of good and bad programs, but I’ll be sharing some shows here that I think everyone should pay more attention to, because they are well worth your time.

PS: Watch this space, because I liveblogged a recent episode, and it was good. Oh it was good.

Catfish: The TV Show

Cat·fish [kat-fish] noun — a person who pretends to be someone they’re not,
using social media to create a false identity, particularly to pursue deceitful online romances

When I first saw the Catfish movie about 2 years ago, I freaked out because it was so good. It was so good that I watched it twice before returning it to Netflix HQ. Like those who had seen it before me, I also refused to let up on the plot and outcome, because giving it away would ruin the entire point of the movie. HOWEVER, it’s nearly impossible to not ruin it without telling you about the consequent TV show that came out of the movie.

This show is hosted by Nev Shulman, who was the creator and subject of the movie. He basically helps people who have been in an online relationship with someone, but the trick is that they’ve never met in real life. And as things get serious between the internet daters, questions may start to arise like – why the hell haven’t we seen each other IRL yet what are you hiding from me are you wearing pants while we talk?

So basically Nev helps them solve the mystery if their online beau is legit or not, and they go to their house to see if they’re the real deal. 99% of the time, they’re not who they say they are. CHRIS HANSEN, WHERE ARE YOU? jk, not shit like that. But I mean, like you never know who’s on the other side of the screen.

Also, Nev is the best. Like the cutest. Like I’ll create a fake profile for him, I will.

23Jan2013

Doing Lines: The Best of Gossip Girl Plots

Posted in Entertainment by Traci

Gossip Girl poster featuring critical review (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why did I watch Gossip Girl until the very end?

No but really, can someone explain to me why I stuck with it? I think I jumped on the bandwagon circa mid-season one, when it was bad in a good way. Five seasons later, it’s just bad in a bad way.

I gotta be honest, towards the end of season five and all of season six, I was just watching out of habit. Like it was on in the background but I was playing Bingo Bash on my phone instead, only to look up every once in a while to be like, “wait why is B doing this? How come S is in rehab again?” There were so many new characters and plot points hit in the final season that not only was I confused about them, but I was wondering how it was all going to come together come the finale.

And in the end, I was actually surprised that the writers managed to wrap everything up so quickly, and make it easy to follow. I was quite satisfied with how everything turned out, even the reveal of SPOILER ALERT GG being Dan Humphrey, someone who was not a total surprise behind the mysterious blogger. Plus, exec producer/The OC creator Josh Schwartz even managed to get Rachel Bilson and Kristen Bell in a scene together. Worth it.

But just to recap on the entire six season tenure of the show, here are some of the most ridiculous storylines to ever have made the airwaves/make me question yet again why I continued watching the program.

S1: Blair’s parents get divorced, her father brings home a new boyfriend, while her mother brings home the teacher from Clueless in a later season
Georgina reveals a man died in Serena’s presence under the influence of drugs, while being videotaped
S2: Nate hooks up with a married woman who turns out to be Sherry from Gilmore Girls
Georgina comes back from Jesus Camp
Bart bass dies in a car accident
Rufus finds out that for years, Lily has been hiding the fact that she gave birth to their one and only son years ago, gave him up for adoption, and he currently goes to school in Boston.
S3: Dan has a threesome with Vanessa and Lizzie McGuire
Jenny Humphrey becomes a drug dealer, assisting the kid who was in Air Bud
Chuck basically prostitutes off Blair to his Uncle Jack in order to get back the hotel his father owned
S4: Serena has a new found relationship with her former teacher Ben, who later is jailed because her mom has him arrested for statutory rape, but Serena has no idea she did it
Georgina tricks Dan into thinking he is the father of her child
S5: Dan buys depressed Chuck a dog named Monkey
Blair and Chuck get into a car accident where Blair suffers a miscarriage, Chuck nearly dies, and Blair eventually marries French Prince Louis
S6: Serena dates Matt Camden from 7th Heaven, while Nate coincidentally dates Matt Camden’s 17 year old daughter, Sage.
JK, Bart Bass is actually alive
Ok, but really, Bart Bass actually dies because he gets in a fight with Chuck, falls over the edge of a NYC high rise, and Chuck doesn’t help him.
Gossip Girl turns out to actually be Gossip Guy