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Post by bubblejen on Apr 26, 2012 12:35:01 GMT -5
Actor Alan Thicke tweeted this two days ago. "@alan_thicke: In Toronto for work on LA Complex...a show both hot and cool at the same time. Watch season debut tonight! My episodes later in the season." Looks like they've extended the season!?
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 26, 2012 12:57:27 GMT -5
I don't remember which Canadian station originally aired it -- but there was a 6 episode miniseason aired first. The plan all along was for the CW to air the 6 episodes again and then air additional new episodes. Here is a quote from an earlier posting by Tubedout:
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Post by kevvoi on Apr 27, 2012 8:03:05 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on May 1, 2012 20:43:30 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on May 5, 2012 12:53:19 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on May 8, 2012 16:14:43 GMT -5
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on May 8, 2012 19:57:24 GMT -5
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on May 11, 2012 1:08:59 GMT -5
thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/05/10/481136/the-simple-spiky-joys-of-the-la-complex-the-best-show-you-dont-know-exists The Simple, Spiky Joys of ‘The L.A. Complex,’ The Best Show You Don’t Know ExistsBy Alyssa Rosenberg on May 10, 2012 at 11:37 am Three weeks ago, The L.A. Complex debuted on the CW to the lowest ratings for a broadcast drama, ever. It’s too bad, because this spiky little Canadian show about a group of actors, comics, producers and dancers who live in the same run-down Los Angeles apartment complex is great fun, an improvement both on standard aspiring-starlet stories like Smash, and on theoretically sophisticated takes on modern romance. Smash‘s biggest problem all season has been that the competition between Ivy and Karen hasn’t felt realistically heated. With Ivy’s experience and her resemblance to Marilyn, it seems obvious that she’d be cast in the lead and Karen was the understudy. The show’s had to spend a lot of time giving Karen chances to sing and showing audiences reacting to her like she’s the Best Thing Ever and giving Ivy the silliest drug problem on television since Saved By The Bell to gin up any sort of drama. The L.A. Complex, on the other hand, has conflicts that are actually rooted in Hollywood double standards. Abby Vargas, a young aspiring actress who’s been living in her car and making a lot of other bad life decisions, ends up competing with Raquel Westbrook, an older actress on the downswing played with a beautiful bitterness by Jewel Staite. When Abby beats out Raquel for a part, it turns out to be not much of a prize at all: her big break turns out to be playing a dead hooker on a crime show where her lines and her pay cut get cut correspondingly. The fights are so big because the stakes are so small, as when Nick Wagner, an aspiring stand-up comic whose material is flopping finally gets applause by viciously insulting a more successful female comic with whom he had an embarrassing one-night stand. The relationships have the same kind of heft that Smash, which has recycled through tired affairs, starlets sleeping with directors, and the standard idiot pop-culture move of someone proposing after cheating, lacks. Sure, when Abby sleeps with Connor, the most successful actor of the bunch who’s beginning to shoot his new pilot, we’re not surprised when she catches him sleeping with someone else. But L.A. Complex, rather than making the arc solely about her naivete and vulnerability, has focused on Connor’s self-hatred and destructive tendencies. Other than Rescue Me, there’s not another show that’s dared to depict a male character self-harming, a practice typically reserved in pop culture to signify female teenaged angst (Jess’s cutting joke on the season finale of New Girl was an uncomfortably off moment, I thought). The show’s subverted our expectations in other ways, too. When Alicia, a talented young dancer, clicks with a former child star who covers for her at her job at a strip club so she can make auditions, we expect to see them date. In a subsequent episode, he sets up for what seems like it might be an entirely-too-soon proposal. Instead, he asks her to make a sex tape with him to jump-start both their careers. And once they’re shooting, he’s shy, and awkward, obsessed with lighting and unable to actually get started. It’s Alicia who takes the lead in a moment that’s neither do-me feminism nor slut shaming: this is the best of the bad options, and she’s making the most of it. And perhaps the best part of L.A. Complex has been that it’s put a gay couple with actual sexual chemistry on television. Brian Stelter wrote at the New York Times yesterday that pop culture appears to have accepted gay couples completely. But the truth is that’s more narrow that it seems: television loves married, settled gay couples, but it doesn’t actually treat gay people like straight people, giving them heated romances, sex scenes, and love interests with whom they have actual sexual chemistry. On Modern Family, established couple Mitch and Cam have essentially no physical sparks whatsoever—the show even had an episode that attempted to explain that the couple isn’t fond of public displays of affection as a way to explain away their lack of heat. I love Happy Endings, which gave schlumphy Max a hot love interest in the form of James Wolk, but the show still stopped far short of their bedroom door. Even Game of Thrones, which gave its gay king and loyal knight and lover hot makeouts wouldn’t go where it’s gone with almost everyone else on the show, and let them have on-screen sex. But on The L.A. Complex, gay men get treated like everyone else. When Tariq Muhammad, an up-and-coming hip-hop producer gets assigned to work with superstar rapper Kaldrick King, the older man spends a day testing Tariq as they meander through Los Angeles. And at the end of that day, Kaldrick makes a veiled invitation to Tariq. The staredown between them before they kiss and fall into bed is one of the more sexually charged moments to appear on television this season. As commercial as it is, that moment does something that almost no pop culture does: treats gay people as if watching them fall in love and have sex is as interesting and as natural as seeing them as sexless, domesticated marrieds.
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vjay
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Post by vjay on May 20, 2012 21:55:14 GMT -5
I think the LA complex gay sex scenes are good but I notice the scenes are done in the dark and not in the bright light. Also, I have not seen a real graphic sex scene like the heterosexual sex scenes. Tariq and Kal get to kiss which is good but they don't get to roll around in bed together.
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on May 23, 2012 7:22:50 GMT -5
Surprise! The Lowest-Rated Show in Broadcast History Is Actually Great
The L.A. Complex, a sexy drama about Canadians making it in Hollywood.
By June Thomas|Posted Tuesday, May 22, 2012, at 1:33 PM ET The L.A. Complex, which you should watch before the end of its tragically short run on the CW (Tuesdays at 9 ET), is a quirky Canadian spin on a standard Hollywood story: ambitious new arrivals on their way up cross paths with once-hot starlets on their way down. The usual plots—the big break that doesn’t quite go as planned, the ingénue who wins the heart of the grizzled veteran—have been tweaked just enough that they’re recognizable without being predictable. It’s like Toronto as seen by a U.S. tourist: Everything is vaguely familiar, but for some reason the road signs are in kilometers, and the queen is on the money. To use a word that has been overapplied to Girls, there’s a realness to The L.A. Complex that is almost shocking. Sure, the Angelenos are all beautiful and buff, but the rules of the real world still apply. (We see them working for those toned torsos, after all.) When Abby’s car—which was also, effectively, her home—breaks down, her friends can’t leave their day jobs to come to her rescue, and since she has no money for a cab, she becomes the first person in TV history to ride a city bus to an audition. The show’s big love story, and certainly its most passionate, is between Tariq and Kaldrick, and unlike so many of the sexless gay relationships on TV, their love scenes are just as explicit as the straight couples’. (Not terribly explicit, that is, but at least the censorship is consistent.) And the kids of The L.A. Complex are just as dumb and messy as real twentysomethings: After Ecstasy-gobbling Abby and boozed-up Connor have unprotected sex, Abby dutifully takes the morning-after pill … and an hour later finds herself puking into the piano at an important audition. Read more here -->www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/05/the_l_a_complex_on_the_cw_a_great_tv_show_nobody_s_watching_.html
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Post by kevvoi on May 23, 2012 7:28:38 GMT -5
this is the part of the slate article that I found interesting HQ75: Given the show’s ratings, which have been spectacular only in their badness—EW.com declared the premiere “the lowest-rated in-season broadcast drama debut on record”— after the last of the initial six episodes airs next Tuesday, there’s no way the CW will exercise its option for the next 13, which will be broadcast in Canada starting in July. It’s a minor tragedy for fans of sexy, sunny drama—The L.A. Complex launched, with little fanfare, at the tail end of the broadcast season, when viewing habits were already well-established. If the CW had waited until the slow summer weeks, it would surely have had a better chance. When Raquel tells anyone who asks that Teenage Wasteland got canceled because “we had a bad time slot,” she’s massaging the facts. But for the funny, fearless show Raquel’s a part of, it’s the sad truth. Bold font added for emphasis by me. So it looks like the next thirteen episodes will be aired in Canada -- so something to look forward to in July! Source: www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/05/the_l_a_complex_on_the_cw_a_great_tv_show_nobody_s_watching_.html
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on May 23, 2012 7:31:14 GMT -5
Frankly, I'd prefer to watch the Canadian broadcast because it is less likely to be censored so I'm totally okay with it staying in Canada.
I'm just glad it was picked up.
I never thought the CW was a good network fit (despite the youthfulness of the characters)
I've been watching lots of regular Canadian programming since I was a kid and a lot of it is wonderful.
But Slate doing a good review is a great thing for the show. Slate is very uppity about tv. ;D
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Post by bigbadboy on May 23, 2012 11:49:52 GMT -5
Frankly, I'd prefer to watch the Canadian broadcast because it is less likely to be censored so I'm totally okay with it staying in Canada. I agree, I hope it does really well in Canada were they wouldn't have to cancel it, the whole CW deal would just get the show censored, we aren't uppity about gay couples on our TV screen like Americans are.
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mycatfox
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Post by mycatfox on May 23, 2012 12:42:33 GMT -5
Frankly, I'd prefer to watch the Canadian broadcast because it is less likely to be censored so I'm totally okay with it staying in Canada. I agree, I hope it does really well in Canada were they wouldn't have to cancel it, the whole CW deal would just get the show censored, we aren't uppity about gay couples on our TV screen like Americans are. It's just a matter of time
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Post by kevvoi on May 25, 2012 8:39:06 GMT -5
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Post by Difficult Diva on May 25, 2012 8:59:04 GMT -5
Thanks for the info. I didn't know that Jewel "Kaylie from Firefly/Serenity" Staite was in the show. I'll have to find time to watch. I'm also glad that it doesn't appear that this show has romanticized the violent physical assault of Tariq by Kal.
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Post by kevvoi on May 25, 2012 17:49:57 GMT -5
Difficult Diva, I always have enjoyed Jewel Staite's acting. She had so much chemistry with Sean Maher in Firefly/Serenity. And I enjoyed her role as the chief doctor on Stargate Atlantis. I even enjoyed her brief tenure on Supernatural, as a very sympathetic monster. She's been quite typecast for sci-fi tv shows, so it is good to see her in a drama. So I am looking forward to more LA Complex.
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on Jun 3, 2012 17:35:29 GMT -5
Benjamin Watson - Interview - May 2012
Andra Fuller - Interview - May 2012
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Post by kevvoi on Jun 6, 2012 21:04:56 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jun 19, 2012 19:02:43 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jun 28, 2012 20:33:26 GMT -5
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Post by sorriso on Jun 29, 2012 0:41:17 GMT -5
Oh, great, it's coming back! So looking forward to this! Hopefully they'll stay true to the characters, especially Tariq and Kal. Let the drama unfold
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HQ75
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Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
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Post by HQ75 on Jun 29, 2012 0:49:25 GMT -5
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Post by kevvoi on Jul 4, 2012 12:23:25 GMT -5
Promo spot for the first episode of season 2, courtesy of the CW's channel. Very spoilerish and difficult to watch as it shows some of the aftermath of last season:
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Post by sorriso on Jul 5, 2012 10:59:36 GMT -5
Great, thanks kevvoi! I can hardly wait! OFF-TOPIC, but related... On a related note, but slightly off-topic, Frank Ocean, an up-and-coming hip hopper, who worked with Kanye West and Jay-Z before, came out on his website frankocean.com. He wrote a letter on Christmas and decided to post it as an answer to some questions regarding some of his songs. Apparently he uses "he" and "him" in his songs to address his love-interest. I'm gonna link directly to his post, it's a beautiful letter. We'll see how the hip-hop-world reacts to it. It's sorta Kal's story coming to life, although I don't think they will go there... 25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6me6uSdO81qdrz3yo1_1280.pngRussell Simmons (apparently a mogul shows how much I know ) issued a statement: What do you say? Is this the future of Kal?
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