Turning to ash in my mouth

So I've had two pretty severe disappointments in about half an hour and what is the Internet if not a place to vent so here we go.

Disappointment #1: Chuck

So Chuck has never exactly been BSG but at it's best it was a fun show with an appealing sense of humor and more knowledge about the genre it fit into than I am accustomed to from TV shows.

Things haven't been quite right recently, though. The show has been more concerned about its over arching plot than ever before. This would be okay were it not for the fact that it stolidly refuses to change the setting.

Having an over arching plot would be great if I believed for a second the story might actually move on as a result of it but no. Chuck will always work at the Buy More, he will never actually go out with Sarah and he will never get rid of Morgan. I know this because the makers of the show own that Buy More location so it doesn't make financial sense to move the show on so they don't need it any more. Never mind that that fucking location is slowly draining the life blood from the show, please, that only affects people who watch the fucking thing.

Things came to a head when watching the latest episode where Chuck tries to track down Orion and gets attacked by a predator drone. There are three things badly wrong with this episode (or at least the 20 minutes I watched before I couldn't take any more)

A) They've got a budget now. Oh dear. They can make CGI planes fly over whatever town this is set in now. That's never a good thing. Only once can I equate an increase in budget to an increase in quality and that was with Battlestar Galactica and anyone who's watched it knows that show follows very special rules.

B) The constant moaning of the CIA and NSA that Chuck isn't doing what they told him to do or is doing stuff they didn't know about is getting very annoying. This ties into what I was saying earlier about the series never moving on. The CIA doesn't employ Chuck. As far as I know they never even pay him for constantly putting his life in danger. It was okay to never address this question when the series was a bit of breezy fun but now they're trying to get all Story Arc on us, they can't get away with it any more.

They'd also have much more of a right to complain if it wasn't really obvious that they don't give a shit about Chuck or his situation.

C) The chemistry between the characters is just gone. Jeff and Lester are no longer charming, they're just dicks. Morgan isn't fun, he's annoying and Sarah isn't sweet, she's a mindless tool working for idiots.




Disappointment #2: Call of Duty 5: World at War

I'm unemployed at the moment so I badly need stuff to do. I've completed CoD 4, played more Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2 than can be good for me and so on. I acquired CoD 5, though, because I've heard that it's a tolerable if uninspired shooter.

It's not, it's fucking awful.

It's like a really bad mod for CoD 4. The weapons are meh, the levels feel much more linear than they ever did in CoD 4, it's derivative, the story feels more racist than anything else and the whole thing just feels cynical.

There's not a whole lot more I can say about this. If anyone told you it was good, they were lying. Either because they work for Activision or they feel stupid after spending £30 on the same Medal of Honour/Call of Duty stuff that's been being released for the last eight years.