With the final season wrapping up, I hope that you are unlike me. You, the clever viewer, have been watching and enjoying this gem of a show for years. You’re not a crazy person like me. Schitt’s Creek is, of course, your favorite show. No?
WATCH SCHITT’S CREEK
Bryan is the Host and Producer of After the Hype. He loves talking. About everything. But mostly Batman, Star Wars and Green Lantern.
He also lives in Los Angeles and works in TV Post Production
Bon Appetit was already the best YouTube channel, but forcing our favorite test kitchen chefs to work with what they’ve got in their own kitchen has both upped their creativity and their charm.
If, for some insane reason you weren’t already on the Bon Appetit train, the popular food publication has found new life by letting camera crews into its test kitchen and turning its staff of chefs into TV personalities. Because they were already writers, turning their kitchen experiments into easily accessible recipes for home cooks, it was a perfect marriage of old and new media, leading to charming series such as “Gourmet Makes,” in which Claire Saffitz attempts to recreate mass produced snack and candy, “It’s Alive with Brad Leone,” which follows the titular chef as he does fermentation experiments and learns where his food comes from, and other amazing regular programs.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: Bon Appetit
Samantha Garrison belongs to a Saint Bernard named Laddi, so her life is an endless stream of drool. She believes in Ewoks, the true saviors of the galaxy far far away, Tilda Swinton, and a world without Jurassic Park sequels.
I’ll be honest, I was of two minds on whether I would do a Pandemic Pick on The Expanse or not because I know at some point it’s going to be the subject of one of my deep dives. Probably when it’s all over and I can do a proper retrospective on the series. However, this is what I am currently watching at the moment and I’m absolutely loving it, more so on the second viewing as well.
Whenever I recommend this show to anyone the first thing they ask me is, “What’s it about?” Well, that’s difficult to explain without spoiling it because the way the story unfolds is you are thrown into this world and are basically left to catch up with what is happening. I love that about a series though, it treats us like an adult, it says here is the world that you’re going to be in for this series but don’t worry you’ll catch up. The way the story unfolds sets up more and more of the events and situations that govern the world this story takes place in. It feels weird referring to it as a world when the series setting is the Solar System, not one specific world.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: The Expanse
Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
Hey guys, do you ever feel too flustered, concerned, or worried to do much more than click your mouse or tap on your phone? Does this pandemic have you unable to do much more than simple actions? Well, have I got a video game for you!
It’s called Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms and it’s a Dungeons and Dragons idle clicker game where all you do is click to get gold coins, experience points, and cool unlockable characters. You can engage with this thing as much or as little as you want and the game adjusts to your interest and abilities. Just want to click on baddies and make them burst into violent blood stains on the ground? You’re all set. Want to figure out which battle formation will yield the highest DPS so you can reach level 100 and possibly unlock a golden chest or a special new character? Yeah, the game got you, boo.
Idle Champions is free-to-play, but the grind is part of the appeal. There are times where I don’t have enough in me to play a super complex RPG or get invested in my tasks in Animal Crossing. There are also times where I simply don’t have a lot of time while, like when I’m waiting for an appointment or I’m in line to get into Trader Joes.
Give it a try, it will help pass the time and will scratch your Dungeons and Dragons itch until you can get back to the table. Ahem, the virtual table. You can find this game on pretty much every platform except for those refrigerator and car operating systems…although that can still happen. Cheers!
Writer/Creator/Web Guy for After the Hype. Created an animated fantasy webseries called Flagon. GM for Demon Dayz: An Actual Play Podcast, which you can conveniently find here on athpod.com
Are you going stir crazy? Getting cabin fever? Maybe if you’re single, you’re really starting to feel the crunch of that sexless life right about now. Good news! I mean yes, Pornhub is giving away the store, but also, I have a Pandemic Pick that will remind you of why you don’t want to have sex right now. It’s called MATING HABITS OF THE EARTHBOUND HUMAN.
This 1999 classic, now available to rent for $2.99 on Amazon, is a fake documentary for a hypothetical alien species that would like to learn how humans mate. It stars acting legend Carmen Electra and Patty Duke’s non-Hobbit son, Mackenzie Astin, as a couple that should probably have nothing to do with each other but are still gonna give it a go. As they work through their toxic relationship issues, they also try to figure out contraception options. That’s right, this is a movie about birth control!
So quick, think about who’s the person you want to narrate a documentary about sex without procreation. I bet it’s David Hyde Pierce! I hope it’s David Hyde Pierce, because that’s who you’re gonna get. Is he sexy? No. Is he informative and whimsical? Yes.
Do you like to watch performances from actors mere moments before they became famous? You got it! Try Lucy Liu and Buffy’s least toxic boyfriend, Marc Blucas.
It’s also very important to know that the Sperm characters are played by men in bodysuits. That’s right. This movie has sentient sperm.
If all of this information doesn’t entice you to watch this film, then I can’t help you. But if you want a very silly relationship movie that will teach you about the various forms of contraception while showing you lots of Carmen Electra pretending to orgasm from mediocre sex, this is the movie for you. You are fucking welcome.
Emily Blake writes screenplays with lots of fight scenes. She is a vocal advocate for feminism, polyamory, kink, and sex positivity. She makes most of her money as a script supervisor for film and television, but she also makes cosplays for clients out of her little apartment in Los Angeles.
So, for today’s Pandemic Pick I’ve decided to go for something a little different. Because we all have a lot more time on our hands it is a good time to binge the latest TV show or get through that list of movies you wanted to watch for a long time. It’s also a good time to pick up a good book and I’m recommending the first entry in one of my favourite series of books. Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: Patient ZeroMatt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time online you’ve probably come across me throwing shade in Disney’s direction. Up until recently I’ve been pretty vocal in my disapproval of their business practices, and while I still have major problems with them as a company, they’ve won some points with me for their Mickey Mouse shorts.
The Mickey Mouse shorts first premiered on June 28th, 2013 on the Disney Channel and then eventually made their way to the Mickey Mouse YT channel – which is where I found them and immediately fell in love with them. I was taken in by the animation, which was fun and energetic, as well as the super-stylized and colorful backgrounds. I found myself binging through them pretty quickly and even subscribing to the YT Channel so I could catch the latest one when it dropped.
For today’s Pandemic Pick I thought I would make this my recommendation and give you a few of my favorites from this long-running series. Enjoy, and let me know which one is your favorite.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: Mickey Mouse ShortsWriter/Creator/Web Guy for After the Hype. Created an animated fantasy webseries called Flagon. GM for Demon Dayz: An Actual Play Podcast, which you can conveniently find here on athpod.com
For my second Pandemic Pick I’ve chosen to go for something a bit more distracting from the horror of current world events. Sex Education. This series is a mixture of comedy and drama combining elements of teen movie fare like American Pie and giving it an honesty that films of that nature always lacked.
Set in the fictional English town of Moordale the series combines a lot of British and American high school tropes into a strange hybrid which sort of weirdly works. Have no illusions though, my American readers, there are no high schools in the UK that are like Moordale, we don’t have high school swim teams for the most part and our “jocks” don’t wear letterman jackets, very few, if any, high schools in the UK have rows of lockers like in American schools and we don’t have school swimming pools. Even if we did, swimming would probably be the last thing you’d want to do in them. Then again, I’m basing my knowledge of American schools on films and TV series so maybe this trope of a row of lockers in schools is just that, a film/TV trope.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: Sex EducationMatt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
In this time of self imposed quarantine we need something to take our minds off of the awfulness that is occurring in the real world. Not surprisingly viewing habits seem to reflect the real world events, the number of people watching films such as Contagion has skyrocketed. So here is my Pandemic Pick for today which I have just finished binging for what is probably the fiftieth time. Jericho.
I’ll preface this with saying this is going to be a brief unspoilery overview of why it’s a good watch as I plan on doing a more in depth article about the series at some point. I’m keeping this spoiler free because it is a really good show that you should go into without having things spoiled for you if possible.
Jericho is the story of a small town in Kansas trying to survive the after effects of a series of nuclear blasts occurring all over the US which has crippled the country. Not only was the series about survival but it was also had an espionage twist and an aura of mystery surrounding several of the characters. It also has some very chilling images, one of the most iconic from the series was that of a young boy witnessing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear blast. This image became heavily used in marketing and is on the cover of the Complete Series DVD Set in the UK.
Continue reading Pandemic Picks: JerichoMatt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.
