It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t get the shell off a hardboiled egg. My growing list of problems, building emotions, bubbling anger, and loneliness exploded. I sobbed and self harmed. I reached out to people on social media, and got one message almost immediately. “Attention seeker.” But isn’t that the point? It is something that bothers me every time I see a post or a hashtag on social media aimed at breaking the stigma of mental health and suicide....

It’s 5pm and to the untrained eye, I’m itching. Jonesing. Crawling up the walls. “Just one more fuckin’ hit!” Do I need anything else from the shop? I could get a four pack of Stella Grandes while I’m there. That would do the trick, just to take the edge off. I sit in the car park, motor running, fingers tapping, looking for a sign. “I don’t know if I started drinking because my wife left me, or my wife left me because I started drinking....

This week, we’re handing back over to the brilliant Jo Challacombe, who wants to talk about ‘deliberate loneliness’… Perhaps you are living in loneliness after a bad breakup, or consciously retreating as protection from an abusive situation. Maybe you turned to isolation after years of disappointment from others or failed attempts at socialising. Or perhaps, you have been lonely for so long, you can’t even remember why. Personally, as someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) I often impose social isolation upon myself for my own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others....

A few years ago, I stumbled across the trailer for Anomalisa on YouTube. I had never heard of the film, but I watched the trailer with mild interest and thought it looked like a curious (if slightly melancholy) piece of stop-motion animation, nicely executed, but ultimately unremarkable. I let my mouse wander on to something else, and didn’t give it another thought. Until my girlfriend happened to see it, that is....

With that in place, this week, I want to return to something we’ve touched on in many flavours over the course of this series. The idea of, in some way, measuring yourself against someone else. Let’s take an easy example: a movie star. You can’t get many more two-dimensional projections of a human being these days than that. We see movie stars as people with untold riches, who have luxurious parties, and live the kind of life that many of us would drool over the thought of....

When a series of cuts from after school programmes begins to take place, it is up to Bryan Ryan (guest star Neil Patrick Harris) to make the final decision. And after being king of the glee club back in the day and failing to realise his dreams, he decides it is the Glee Club that will be cut. Some Den Of Geek readers would be glad to see that happen, too....

Gotham Season 2, Episode 14 Well, it only took a season and a half, but we finally got to see Bruce Wayne confront his parents’ killer. I’m not going to say it was worth the wait because this probably should have happened about a season ago, but it did make for one of the best episodes of Gothamever. Bruce continues to be one of the only characters on this show who not only takes violence seriously, but reacts like a normal, relatable person to seeing violence inflicted on others....

Gotham Season 3, Episode 18 Bringing in the Court of Owls has been a strike of genius for Gotham this season. By giving both our favorite heroes and our favorite villains a common antagonist in Kathryn and her Court, they are allowed to work together and interact in a way we have never quite seen from this show. Surely, it cannot last, but, for now, the boundaries between the protagonists and antagonists of Gotham have never felt more permeable and I love it....

3.19 All Will Be Judged But, as we know from Marvel (and, you know, Greek mythology), if you cut off one head, more will grow back in its place. This isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Court of Owls, especially given that Kathryne wasn’t even their main head. (Duh, Jim.) Here’s everything that went down in All Will Be Judged… Well, it only took three weeks and literally getting hit over the head for Alfred to figure out that he’s been living with a clone of Bruce Wayne rather than the teen he’s known since he was a boy....

4.14 Bad Luck If you remember, we were left hanging at the end of the last episode, Trial By Fire, when Juliette confessed she was a Hexenbiest to Nick, after wiping the floor – literally – with arch-nemesis Adalind. Our hero reacts by ticking all the right emotional tick boxes: shock, betrayal, guilt, confusion… Despite reassuring Juliette that he would never hurt her, he takes off, presumably to try to figure out the deeply weird and conflicting relationship that exists between himself, Juliette and Adalind (a relationship that we learn by the end of the episode is about to get a lot more, ahem, fraught....

The game takes place in the year 2557. Cortana wakes Master Chief after a mysterious disturbance. MC gets shipwrecked on a mysterious world known as Requiem, and fights off an ancient evil unlike anything he’s ever seen before. The new world brings new enemies to the game, called the Prometheans, as well as new alien weaponry. Upon waking Master Chief, Cortana tells him that she is becoming “rampant.” In the series, this happens after AIs reach seven years of age and is the equivalent of death to humans....

This week Crawford goes to work on Lass, trying to get her to remember her captor. Specifically, if it was Hannibal. For her part, Lass is either unwilling or unable to identify him as the Chesapeake Ripper. My guess? She has either developed Stockholm Syndrome or is too afraid to shine a light on the good doctor. Poor Crawford. Lass’ identification of the Ripper ends badly (see the end of this review for the SPOILER)....

That being said, you would be right. With its fourth episode of the season, the disparate elements of the show have finally clicked into place. While I’m still totally not buying Emily Rose’s portrayal of Mara (a meaty opportunity than any actor would be eager to snap up), Dwight, Nathan, and Duke coming together in a battle to suppress her has streamlined the story and upped the stakes significantly. That needed to happen....

This episode brought back Matt Parkman, now recovering at home and trying to lead a normal life following his near-death experience and involvement with Sylar. Briefly teaming up with Noah gives him pause to re-evaluate his involvement in the powerplay and espionage of the world of people with abilities. Although far from taking the logical route of, for example, forcing Noah to leave him alone, he allows himself to be manipulated into an undesirable position....

Based on Brian Selznick’s novel, The Invention Of Hugo Cabret, Hugo is a lavish, star-laden fantastical drama starring Asa Butterfield as the young hero of the title, Chloë Grace Moretz as his friend Isabelle, while Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer, Ray Winstone and Sir Ben Kingsley round out the adult cast. Really, though, Hugo is about the early history of movie making, and this is Scorsese’s celebration of period cinema....

Bear with me, I’ve done some maths. If Innocent were a longer series—six or eight episodes say, instead of four—then Rob Moffatt would almost certainly be Tara’s killer. Here’s my working out: traditionally, the finger pointed at the end of week two is quickly un-pointed before spinning back around again at the end after a bit of key evidence is dug up from under a patio/awakens from a coma. Episode two was all about lies unravelling....

iZombie Season 4, Episode 8 iZombie walks a tricky tonal balance. Sometimes, it walks the line between brain-of-the-week comedy and end-of-the-world depression improbably well. And, sometimes, we have to watch Liv use a Ren Faire accent for an entire episode. The same can be said for Liv, who usually can turn off her brain a bit during her most serious moments. Here, she stays committed to the accent and persona at all moments, even when she is turning humans into zombies in her role as Renegade....

5.12 Starvation Moreover, the irony of the situation is not lost on Raylan as he essentially acknowledges that Ava is not wrong to question his motives. However, what makes their meeting all the more tragic is that when Raylan returns to visit Ava she has decided that she will give Boyd up because the white supremacist group which has been trying to bring Ava down ever since she first appeared in the prison has decided that her time is up....

Killing Eve Season 1, Episode 3 Killing Eve moves at a brisk pace. By the third episode, Eve and Villanelle know each other’s faces. This is a pretty cool subversion of the spy thriller genre Killing Eve is playing with and against, but the show falters a bit in this third episode as it gives us a bit too much plot with not enough character-driven subversion. Bill is meant to be the more experienced spy-type, but he follows an active assassin into a strange, crowded location with neither backup, nor, it seems, a weapon....

Killjoys Season 4 Episode 6 “You don’t invite a two day old to a torture party.” Successfully raising a teenager may be one of the most difficult challenges a parent faces, and Dutch and the Jaqobis brothers hold their own in the face of The Lady’s influence and interference. “Baby, Face Killer” quietly exposes the latent abilities the child possesses, and the team is forced to take drastic measures to ensure his safety....