I may not be a huge fan of today’s boy bands. But while that phenomenon has come and gone, I feel like it’s been an awesome couple of years for young female solo artists to roll out weird pop love songs that are full of ambiguity, hedging, and occasional joy, to be silly, and self-aware. So because it’s Friday, have a mix tape.

Most recently, there’s rapper Kitty Pryde, who, if her name wasn’t awesome enough, riffs on and undermines the sentiment in popular songs and laces them with sips of Bud Light Lime and cigarette smoke in “Okay Cupid”:

I’ve mentioned my love for Carly Rae Jepsen’s video for “Call Me Maybe,” but the lyrics are also charmingly ambiguous about loving the idea of someone more than you actually care for the person obscured by those ideas—and the prospect that you might not want to disturb that idea with actual contact:

Both of these songs, of course, are kin to what will probably the best Miley Cyrus song of all time, the “Sunglasses at Night”-biting, best-song-about-awkwardness-to-dance-to “See You Again”:

Then there’s Rye Rye, who remains my favorite new rapper despite having not actually released an album, does the impossible and revitalizes the Venga Boys back catalogue while turning herself into a victorious video game avatar in “Boom Boom,” where she talks about watching porn—or lying in the grass and watching clouds go by—with her chosen guy:

Adele’s voice is incredible, but she’s not the only young Brit turning out fun love songs. I’m partial to Little Boots, particularly when she gets her romantic sci-fi on:

If you’re in a goofier mode, hang out with Ke$ha, who was dismissed as an embarrassment but who I think is a lot more self-aware creation, a critique of the kind of thing Rihanna does when she slaps on a bunch of harem pants and tries to pretend she can dance:

But if you prefer your critiques of pop tarts to be sincere and gorgeous (and want your sincere white girls to cover something other than hip-hop) rather than goofy, there’s always Ingrid Michaelson’s gorgeous a capella cover of “We Found Love”:

And in her inimitable, filthy (and I really do mean filthy) way, Azealia Banks is having way more fun than the rest of us:

On Monday, I wrote about what Marvel Studios and other people making comic book movies ought to do with their franchises now that they’ve got people watching superhero movies the way they read superhero comics: over a period of years and an indefinite number of stories, with constant loops around to revisit characters and shifting team-ups. Some of you suggested that our chances of getting filmed storytelling that worked that way would be better on television, and I tend to think you’re right. For one thing, that medium is closer to the frequency and run length of comics releases, and (somewhat) closer to comic book production budgets. But television’s also where we’ve become accustomed to anti-heroes, to ambiguity in our heroes, to big experiments in genre and tone, meaning it could be better primed to tell weirder, darker superhero stories and to assume the risk of doing so than Marvel’s giant, exquisite machine.

There are a number of such projects in the works already. FX scrapped its first attempt to adapt Powers, Brian Michael Bendis’s sprawling story about a division of cops who investigate crimes involving people with extraordinary abilities, but the network is taking another crack at the project. Fox is casting the talent for Working Class Hero, an animated show which stars Patton Oswalt as a superhero employed by the government and with the lack of prestige that typically accrues to bureaucrats. These are both smart experiments in tone, and with the default assumptions about superheroes: that they’re clean-living, well-motivated, and broadly respected by their communities.

There are less quirky experiments under way as well. The CW is developing a Green Arrow show from Smallville‘s David Nutter that will likely have a similar soapy tone to that network’s other fare. And Melissa Rosenberg was developing a Jessica Jones show for ABC that doesn’t appear to be in contention for this fall, but that if it goes forward would be the first TV show that’s part of the continuity and universe Marvel is establishing in its movies.

All four of these shows may end up falling through. But I’m glad Marvel and other studios are thinking about how to tell these pulpy, serialized stories on television. If we can root for a $150 million version of a character like Thor on the big screen, then maybe there’s room for She-Hulk or Luke Cage, and all the attendant and rich complications their characters would bring to our modern superhero mythos on the small one.

This post contains spoilers through the May 10 episode of Community.

I should start this off by saying how pleased I am by Community‘s renewal, even at thirteen episodes rather than a full season. It’s really nice to see this wonderful, experimental little show that’s been so marvelously dedicated to exploring the boundaries of television’s forms get a chance to go out at a logical time for the world in which it’s set, as its characters get the degrees they came to Greendale to get and head out into the world. Though now that we’ve achieved this and are one year closer to six seasons and a movie, I think it’s time to set a new impossible dream: a season of Community set in all the remaining timelines.

As for the episode itself, this was more clip show than anything else, but I think it got at an important point that the show doesn’t always address head-on: what if landing at Greendale hasn’t been great for all of these characters? Of course, their shrink is lying in Chang’s service when he tells the now-former study group that “There is a place called Greendale, and you all spent three years there, but it’s not a community college.” But as we journey through it, the show kind of suggests that their time there has been neither educational nor salutary. There are classes in advanced breathing and the ability to fry things. Parking spots are determined by chess matches with human pieces. Abed may be going through the early experimental period of his filmmaking career, and the Dean may be getting his jollies, but making movies with him isn’t exactly what everyone else came to school to do. “If you’d gone to school there, you’d be obsessed with it too,” Jeff explains. And oh, we are. But that’s not the same thing as it being what all of them needed or intended.

And now that we get one more season, I’ll be curious to see if and how Community sets up these people to go out into the world. Will Troy go to air conditioning repair school? Will Jeff actually get his law degree back? Will Shirley open her business? What about Annie? And what experiments are yet to come? As Garett put it, “I want to see what happens if we confiscate one of their pens.” So do I, Gareth. So do I.

The bridge is yours.

-I would rather see Chloe Moretz in The Passage than this, but I will take her in a post-apocalypse any time.

-CBS will continue to be popular, profitable.

-Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Orr.

-Woo more Azealia Banks:

-I love Jon Stewart as a media critic, and I do hope that he’ll make fun of The Newsroom‘s pretentions:

The ultra-conservative attempt to push women out of the public sphere has a new frontier: the Arizona Charter Athletic Association. Our Lady of Sorrows, a school run by a breakaway Catholic sect, has forfeited the league’s high school baseball championship rather than put their team up against a squad that includes a girl named Paige Sultzbach—a team they already played and lost to twice during the regular season.

Our Lady of Sorrows gave a statement to ESPN explaining that the school bans co-ed sports and will not play a co-ed team because “proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty” under those circumstances. Despite the fact that it takes a lot of imagination to imagine boys and girls getting frisky on the basepaths or across vast swaths of outfield in full view of the public, Sultzbach and her team have been more considerate of Our Lady of Sorrows’ views than they have been of her rights to participate in sports programs under Title IX:

From early on, Paige tried to blend in, her mother said. When the coach referred to the kids as “guys and gals,” Paige spoke up and said that they all wear the same uniform, so the coach should just call them all guys.

Her teammates have stood up for her.

During Mesa Prep’s two previous games with Our Lady of Sorrows, Paige didn’t play out of respect for the opposing team’s beliefs, but that wasn’t going to be an option this time, Pamela said.

“We respected their school rule … but she took it hard,” Pamela said. “She didn’t like it and neither did her teammates. They went out and played the best they could because they wanted to prove a point.”

As depressing as this story is, it’s encouraging that Sultzbach’s teammates have supported her. The reason it’s important to let girls try out for their high school baseball teams, to have women in all arenas in public life, is not just because it’s nice for women. When 15-year-old girls play second base for championship teams, edit magazines and hold high office, sometimes men find that they like having women there. The more boys figure this out, and the more feminism becomes their cause too, the harder it will be for anyone go give credence to the idea that girls don’t belong on baseball fields or anywhere else in the public square.

io9′s Charlie Jane Anders has a typically intriguing interview with Jon Spaihts, the screenwriter who did the first drafts of Prometheus, and part of the discussion came down to the difference between rendering worlds and telling stories in video games and movies:

Storytelling in games has matured tremendously in the past decade. Some really great work has been done. But the design requirements are totally different, almost the opposite of filmic storytelling. The central character of a game is most often a cipher – an avatar into which the player projects himself or herself. The story has to have a looseness to accommodate the player’s choices. This choose-your-own adventure quality is a challenge for storytellers and, I fear, militates against art.

A filmmaker is trying to make you look at something a certain way – almost to force an experience on you. Think of the legendary directors, whose perspective is the soul of their art. It’s the opposite of a sandbox world. It’s a mind-meld with a particular visionary.

I’m actually curious if this, as well as production costs, are part of why it’s been so hard to adapt major video games into major motion pictures. There’s always uproar in fan communities about how true an adaptation is or isn’t to source material, and if the main character’s mostly a vehicle for a player, to project themselves into the game, it will be awfully hard to reconcile all of those private universes into a coherent whole that’s mostly satisfying to a majority of people. I know we all agree what Chell looks like, but I don’t know if anyone shares my idea of who Chell is.

In tonight’s finale of Parks & RecreationThis post contains spoilers through the season four finale of Parks and Recreation.

When I was 19, I ran to be Democratic Party co-chair of my ward in New Haven. In a lot of towns, that might have been an appointed post, but in New Haven it was a job you had to actually campaign for, and so for months, I made like Leslie Knope has for the past season of television, hitting up churches and senior centers and community meetings, and posing for some truly hilarious campaign literature. After shaking hands at the precinct for twelve straight hours on Election Day, I couldn’t bear to be in the room when the vote totals were read out, and so I waited outside in the cold. The sight of my running mate and campaign staff running screaming outside to tell me we’d won was one of the weirdest, most cinematic moments of my entire life. I was not nearly as good at politics as I trust that Leslie Knope will prove to be—there’s a reason I write—but I tell you this to explain that I feel a special kinship with this season, and with this character despite its flaws. I know how this feels, and this episode of Parks and Recreation captured this moment’s terrors and joys perfectly. And this season of Parks and Recreation pulled off an extremely tricky transition for this marvelous show beautifully.

The election itself is governed by Pawnee’s marvelously specific manifestation of the oddities that plague all local elections. “In the event of an exact tie, the seat is awarded to the male candidate and the female candidate is put in jail,” the registrar explains to the candidates and their campaign managers. “I don’t think it would hold up in court, but it is city law.” There are a lot of candidates for a relatively minor office—Leslie’s moment of despair that Brandi Maxxx might win was a perfect example of the possible spoiler, the thing every campaign can’t possibly predict or prepare for. And while the show didn’t spend time on the hilarities of checking off voter rolls (usually with all the campaigns monitoring ID checks and crossing off the names of voters who have made it alongside some doughty poll workers, it’s so fitting that Leslie’s epic contest against Bobby Newport came down to a recount. The only way it could have been more perfect is if Bobby’s support for Leslie—”Another awesome point by Leslie. It’s why I’m voting for you,” he tells a crew of reporters at a poll-opening press conference—made up for Jerry forgetting to vote in his enthusiasm to hand out Leslie’s flyers and ended up handing her the election.
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