geekosystem

Well, it was a nice workday while it lasted. But it's already mid-morning, and the time for productivity has come to an end. The time for goofing around on Recurring Developments, an interactive map of every running gag -- every awkward shoulder rub, every huge mistake, every "Her?" --  in the first three seasons of Arrested Development has just begun. If you can't catch up on the episodes by brazenly just watching television at work, this is probably the next best thing, though it would probably serve to keep an important looking Word document open in another window. You know, just in case your co-workers didn't get the memo that we have half-day.

It's pretty uncommon that we get this excited about TV shows first thing in the morning, and we'll have some awesome stuff about robots and science for you to read in just a little while here, we promise, but man, this morning is a really good one for TV shows. First we had the new trailer for Arrested Development, now we've got a first look at Joss Whedon's superhero crime drama Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

What are you doing May 26? Shut up, doesn't matter, cancel all your plans right now. You have new plans, and they're awesome, because you, like any decent, right-thinking person, are going to be watching 15 new episodes of Arrested Development when they arrive on Netflix at 12:01 PDT May 26. Netflix had the decency and wisdom to bring the show back on a Sunday, which means you won't have to feel bad about marathoning right through five and a half straight hours of new Arrested Development, because seriously, what else are you going to do on a Sunday?

I don't know what would possess a person to remake the intro for Breaking Bad as a high concept dramedy from the 1990s. I'm just glad that the spirit took them, because this video is absolutely tops. Who knew that Walt, Jesse and the rest of the gang would have been so at home on the WB right after Buffy? Now, we all do -- or at least, you will once you check out the video below.

First there was The Office, then Being Human, then Sherlock, and with each successful BBC series, the Americans had to have their own version. But sometimes, like the dead rising from the grave, a long-established pattern goes in reverse. This time, the BBC is taking a cue from the success of AMC's The Walking Dead and trying their blood-spattered hands at a zombie-based television series. Called In the Flesh, it airs on March 17th on BBC Three. Far from an adaptation, though, In The Flesh offers a strange new take on the traditional zombie tale, turning it into a ruminative story of loss, guilt, and redemption -- though personally, we're hoping for a few cracked skulls, too.

TV taxes, or license fees per television set, are pretty common throughout Europe, providing funding for many large public broadcasters across the continent, such as the much-loved BBC. This week, though, Sweden updated their structure for collecting the television tax to reflect how more and more people actually watch TV, which is not on their TV. With that in mind, the television tax will now apply to any citizen with a computer or tablet as well.

We think it's safe to say that Glee's propensity for taking classic songs and mutating them into teenybopper renditions that stab away at both our ear drums and patience knows absolutely no bounds, but it's still -- as much as we hate to say this -- 100% legit given that the original artists willingly sign away their souls to the show's executives for their thirty pieces of silver. Today, however, it was discovered by geek culture's favorite singer/songwriter, Jonathan Coulton, that what Glee wants, Glee will most certainly take without so much as permission and proper licensing. The show has apparently given a take on Coulton's cover version of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" practically verbatim, and the singer and his army of fans are up in arms over the show's apparent audacious and ill-conceived move.

So, you think you know the theme song to hit 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Well, you've probably got a point -- after all, it's one of the most ubiquitous TV themes of the last several decades, and you'd be hard-pressed to have grown up in the last 20 years and not at least be able to fake knowing the tune. The musicians of CDZA, though, are offering up some new interpretations of the theme through the magic of Google Translate, though, parsing the lyrics into languages like Mandarin Chinese and Hindi, then translating it back into English in a rather entertaining manner. You can get a load of the results in the video below and marvel at how few languages have a serviceable translation for the phrase "chillin' out, maxxin', relaxin' all cool." Truly, the English language is a glorious thing.

Fanboy alert -- we're just days away from new episodes of Archer on FX and super-psyched for the return of one of the best comedies on TV right now. It seems like we're in pretty good company on that front, as the supercut mavens at Slacktory seem to have their jones on for the show as well. So much so, in fact, that they've put together a spanking new supercut of the best barbs, insults, cruel nicknames, and malapropisms traded by the characters on the show. While it's not a totally thorough rundown -- missing are real gems like "Serves you right, Smacky Brown," and "Who am I, Alan Turing? He was also in X-Men, remember?" -- it's plenty to kill a couple minutes between morning meetings and whet our appetites for new episodes and the spectacularly cruel humor that will no doubt go right along with them. Can't. Wait.

Many are the times we have wondered to ourselves "In a world of so much turmoil both at home and abroad, wouldn't we really be better off with Axe Cop running the show?" The answer, you will be unsurprised to learn, is "Yes, and by magnitudes of order." If these first couple teaser clips are any indication, we're starting to move from excited to drooling over the prospect of full episodes of Axe Cop coming to Fox this summer. Get a load of the latest clip below and learn just the latest reason we don't want to be caught on Bad Guy Planet, and also why we're never voting for a non-magical President again.

Without a DVR, pretty much all the programs we enjoy watching on Cartoon Network and Adult Swim fall well out of our regular schedule. Seriously, it's either they're on too early or too late, resulting in the desperate -- and oftentimes fruitless -- act of scouring YouTube in the vain hope that some copyright-infringing good Samaritan has uploaded the particular episode you missed. Thankfully, those days of watching grainy footage of Adventure Time someone filmed from their couch will soon be over since it's been announced that a library of shows from Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Warner Bros. Animation will be available for streaming on Netflix come March 30th!

Lucasfilm has been teasing us with a possible live-action Star Wars television series for so many years that it's difficult to even remember when the announcement was first made. What we do know, though, is that every time we're given a glimmer of hope, we always get the shaft and end up with something like Star Wars Detours. This string of disappointments may finally come to an end since it's been reported that ABC, which is a Walt Disney Company affiliate, is considering to at last bring the galaxy far, far away to the small screen.

The opening theme for Game of Thrones is epic and all, but -- and there's no denying the truth, people -- it just doesn't resonate with the easily bored kids of today. While the music no doubt gets our blood pumping for that winning combination of swords and sorcery, it does absolutely nothing to pique that sense of vicarious adventure in the youth element. Placing ourselves in the shallow and misinformed mind of a network executive at HBO, how would we go about getting them excited about Game of Thrones? Simple: Get those crazy kids from House Stark -- Sansa, Arya, and Bran -- to give that totally square theme tune some overdue urban flair through the power of beatboxing, that's how! All we have to say is, score one for HBO's marketing department!

Since retiring from his role as the green-hued leader of the Power Rangers, actor Jason David Frank -- better known as Tommy Oliver on the TV series -- has been a busy, busy man indeed. Aside from instructing others in the ways of karate, busting skulls in the mixed martial arts arena, and pretty much living up to his erstwhile on-camera persona of "karate-chopping bad bay," Frank enjoys attempting to shatter world records just as much as his opponents' ribs in the ring. Later this month, Frank is looking to break the world record for the number of pine boards broken while skydiving. Which is seriously an actual record that exists.

Has it really been two decades already? On January 3, 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine made its debut, making this the twentieth birthday of perhaps the most underrated show in the Trek canon. Just one more year until the show can go out for drinks with friends at Quark's Bar and wake up with no eyebrows and a throbbing Romulan Ale hangover. Until that embarrassing incident, allow us to make a brief argument for the show, and why you should spend this evening getting reacquainted with it.