There's a strange thing that happens to a show once it's been off the air long enough. The jokes stay funny, the outfits get rewatched ironically, and somewhere along the way the internet decides the show was secretly about something much darker than anyone intended. Friends has been out of first-run production for over two … Continue reading Central Perk Conspiracies: The Fan Theories Friends Never Asked For
pop culture
Two Notes, Five Notes, and Fifty Years: How John Williams Became the Sound of Steven Spielberg
There are directors and there are composers, and then there are pairings so fused that it becomes hard to imagine one without the other. Hitchcock had Herrmann, at least for a while. Burton has Elfman, most of the time. But no director-composer relationship in film history has lasted longer, produced more, or shaped the sound … Continue reading Two Notes, Five Notes, and Fifty Years: How John Williams Became the Sound of Steven Spielberg
The Influence of Classic Literature on Science Fiction Films
I have a confession that might surprise exactly no one who reads this blog regularly. Long before I ever sat in a dark theater watching a spaceship glide across a screen, I was a kid with my nose buried in books that had absolutely no business being as good as they were. And the older … Continue reading The Influence of Classic Literature on Science Fiction Films
From Cornelia to Ivalice: A Tour of Final Fantasy’s Greatest Worlds
One of the strange joys of being a longtime Final Fantasy fan is that no two games ever feel like they belong to the same universe. You can boot up one entry and find yourself in a medieval kingdom with knights and crystals. Boot up the next and you're navigating an industrial empire full of … Continue reading From Cornelia to Ivalice: A Tour of Final Fantasy’s Greatest Worlds
Watching the Watchers: My Enduring Love for Reaction Videos
I watch a lot of YouTube. This is not a confession so much as a statement of fact that probably applies to a significant portion of anyone reading this. But among the many rabbit holes YouTube has to offer — tutorials, deep dives, video essays, cooking channels I will never actually learn from — the … Continue reading Watching the Watchers: My Enduring Love for Reaction Videos
The Character Couch – Eleanor Shellstrop
Welcome back to The Character Couch, where we dust off our amateur psychology credentials and spend some quality time with fictional people who absolutely could have benefited from a real therapist at some point. Today's subject shuffled in a little late, made a joke about the waiting room being a trap, and spent the first … Continue reading The Character Couch – Eleanor Shellstrop
The Game of Emmys: Analyzing the Success of Game of Thrones
There is something bittersweet about looking back at Game of Thrones through the lens of the Emmy Awards. For most of its run, the show was a phenomenon unlike anything television had seen before. It was prestige drama dressed in dragon scales, a fantasy series that made everyone — even people who swore they would … Continue reading The Game of Emmys: Analyzing the Success of Game of Thrones
Question of the Week #498
Welcome back to another Question of the Week here at The Confusing Middle! As always, the questions come from Gregory Stock's The Book of Questions. Last week we spent some time imagining a world without the necessity of work, which turned out to be a surprisingly complicated place to visit. This week, Stock brings us … Continue reading Question of the Week #498
Why Final Fantasy Still Matters (Even If You’ve Never Played It)
I was ten years old when I picked up the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was 1990, North America had just gotten its hands on the game, and I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. I'd never played a Japanese role-playing game before. I didn't know what hit … Continue reading Why Final Fantasy Still Matters (Even If You’ve Never Played It)
More Than a Host: The Enduring Legacy of Alex Trebek
I've written before about my complicated relationship with Jeopardy! — how I dreaded it as a kid, how it became appointment television once I discovered I actually loved trivia, and how watching it with my dad became one of the great rituals of my adult life. But when I sit down and think honestly about … Continue reading More Than a Host: The Enduring Legacy of Alex Trebek
