Oftentimes, when I find myself with an hour or two to kill, I scroll through Netflix, Hulu and various other online outlets, and am frozen with indecision, fraught with stress over what show I should watch next. Do I set aside my life for a few years and start Star Trek, in all its iterations, from the beginning? Should I catch up on Scandal or House of Cards, or did I already miss the boat on those shows? Do I open a book, like say Wheel of Time? Normally, I settle on merely catching up on a couple shows ongoing that I do watch, or switch gears to a movie, another potentially life-altering decision and a whole new can of worms. But sometimes, it feels good to be able to start and finish something in a short period of time, and not have to devote weekends, entire weeks, or months, to Binging media content.

Because I watch way too many things, I don’t get to binge through shows as fast as I’d like. It took me a year to watch all of the new Doctor Who. I’m in the middle of Broadchurch and probably will be for a couple months, even though it’s a 9 episode long BBC series.

Enter: IFC’s The Spoils of Babylon, a six episode long mini series, with each 23 minute episode spread out over two mid-afternoon writing breaks. It was glorious to watch a complete story in such a short period of time, a minor commitment, and it helped that it was the funniest show I’ve seen in 2014.

Written by SNL veterans Matt Piedmont (Funny Or Die Presents…) and Andrew Steele (Casa de mi Padre, The Ladies Man), and directed by Piedmont, the show is an unabashed parody of long, drawn out miniseries’ adapted from pulpy, generation spanning novels from the 1970’s and 80’s. It’s like an even less serious Dallas, though it takes itself just as seriously as all these event programming.

A great parody is one that loves and reveres its source material, and transcends it. It’s why Galaxy Quest was voted as the 7th best Star Trek film ever by fans (it should be #1). If there’s a Thorn Birds convention, they’d likely worship The Spoils of Babylon. 

Each episode is introduced by Eric Jonrosh, a caricature crafted after the lush, enormous version of Orson Welles, with a dash of Philip Roth, John Updike and writers of that ilk and ego. He is the writer of The Spoils of Babylon, a bestselling book that only HE could adapt, in painstaking fashion. Will Ferrell is the only choice for Eric Jonrosh, and you never want his hilarious, boozy over-the-top introductions to end. I’d watch an entire episode of The Spoils of Babylon even if it was him just trying to introduce said episode. Anchorman 2 caused me physical pain, but Ferrell’s act isn’t tired; that spark hasn’t gone away. It’s a reminder of his unparalleled comedic talent.

The Spoils of Babylon chronicles the love, murder, betrayal and incest that centers around the Morehouse family, one made rich and powerful thanks to striking oil in Texas under the guise of patriarch Jonas Morehouse (Tim Robbins). Jonas adopts orphan drifter Devon, who becomes his only son and heir to the Morehouse name and corporation.

Tobey Maguire plays Devon, and you might think that an interesting/odd/unfortunate choice depending on your opinion of Maguire, but trust me, it’s perfect. He’s never been better as the author/soldier/oceanographer Devon Morehouse. Tobey’s been pushed aside since the abhorrent Spider-Man 3, but I always think any criticism directed to his Peter Parker and Spider-Man is unwarranted and harsh. Even so, he admittedly seems pretty boring, the equivalent of ordering a plain burger with no cheese or pickles or onions when you can get the Sriracha Burger. But he erases any notions of that in The Spoils of Babylon, where Maguire is the best part, and that’s saying something, because the cast is ridiculous. He has a new wig, beard, mustache and career in every scene, and he clearly relishes a role that’s fun, weird, and deliciously over-the-top. Devon and the show itself is like a pinwheel of emotions.

He’s, naturally, in love with his sister Cynthia Morehouse, played by an always brilliant Kristen Wiig. She was born to play a nutty, corrupt CEO/oil tycoon and star-crossed lover of her brother, a love that threatens to doom and sully the vaunted Morehouse name.

When I said Will Ferrell was an unparalleled comedic talent, that was in a universe without Wiig, which thankfully we don’t have to live in. She’s wonderfully insane, with tremendous tantrums and loutish things to say throughout.

You have to watch Spoils of Babylon to witness the seeds of Haley Joel Osment’s comeback. He’s in Kevin Smith’s Tusk, has a role in the forthcoming Entourage movie and in Amazon’s Alpha House, and he’s gut-busting as the over-the-top, cackling Winston Morehouse, Cynthia’s only son, plotting to kill Devon and everyone he loves. It’s still startling to see a grown up Osment, and Spoils of Babylon takes advantage of your momentary pause by amping up Osment’s pure villainy. It’s glorious.

This is a show where Devon returns from war with a wife, and it’s a talking manikin (womanikin?) voiced by Carey Mulligan named Lady Anne York (see below). In the same scene, there’s a banner welcoming Darren home, which (duh) isn’t even Devon’s name. It’s never referenced, just the kind of subtle humor also on display in this comedy playground, and perhaps a nod to Arrested Development.

The miniseries also stars Val Kilmer, Steve Tom (best name ever?), Jessica Alba (as Marine Biologist/oceanographic enthusiast Dixie Melonworth), Molly Shannon, Michael Sheen and obviously, David Spade. You can’t really top that.

So hop onboard, and revel in the show that IFC perfectly describes thusly:

Patriarch Jonas Morehouse shepherds his daughter Cynthia and adopted son Devon from meager beginnings in the oil fields of Texas to powerful boardrooms in New York City. Cynthia and Devon, entwined in undeniable love, stumble through war-torn battlefields, blazing mansions, filthy drug dens and velvet-sheeted bedrooms on their quest for power and influence. Despite Jonas’s best efforts to intervene, Cynthia and Devon’s merciless love sets into motion a wave of destruction that crashes down on Devon’s graceful wife Lady Anne, his daughter Marianne, his colleague and lover Dixie, Cynthia’s hen-pecked husband Chet, her evil son Winston, the scheming Generals and far beyond.

So what are you waiting for? It’ll literally take you less time to watch the entire series (138 minutes all told) than survive ANY one of the Transformers movies.

It’s easy to forget, at least for me, how awesome the first Sin City was. It came out back in 2005 and blew everyone’s minds due to its visual flair that was a game-changer in Hollywood, and showed how to loyally adapt a comic book into a movie with style. 9 years later, and we’re finally getting a sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

As Geoff Boucher says, Sin City was a synthesis of film and comic, and Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez come to the stage, to discuss their latest collaboration.

Robert Rodriguez tells us all that he wasn’t trying to make a movie based on Sin City. He was trying to turn a movie into a living embodiment of Frank’s work.

Frank Miller talks about how comic book movies are getting better, because they’re staying closer to the source material. Not that he’s biased or anything.

The tale “Another Saturday Night” opens the movie, and is the clip that we see, with Mickey Rourke’s Marv getting into trouble again, trying to piece back his memory, while beating the piss out of people. It’s the same beautiful style from the last movie, and even seems like the same plot.

The rest of the panel arrives: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Josh Brolin. An impressive trio, but it’s hard not to get a little bummed that Mickey Rourke could’ve been there.

The thing that people are most excited for in this movie is Alba’s transformation and coming into her own as Nancy, who has turned into a warrior for the next movie. Everyone raves about her performance throughout the panel, and she even collaborated on the story (which is an original one, not based on any Sin City tale). I remember after Dark Angel and the first Sin City, that Jessica Alba was probably the biggest crush I had in all the world. Then Fantastic Four happened and her career has suffered. I hope Sin City 2 corrects her course.

Josh Brolin jokes that he wanted to play Nancy, but settled for working with 2 iconoclasts.

Apparently when making the movie, they would go to Frank after every shot, determined to make Frank happy, which is a hard thing to do. This panel was basically a Robert Rodriguez worships Frank Miller and so should you hour.

For being absent, Eva Green’s talents are all over Comic-Con this year. She’s the best part of Penny Dreadful, and apparently owns as the alleged Dame in which people kill for. Like you had any doubt.

Rodriguez says that everyone’s performances are 100 times better, as they get use to the technology.

Josh Brolin never met Mickey Rourke while working on the film, even though they were in several scenes together. Does that make sense? Not really, but that’s the beauty of green screen and the crazy process that Rodriguez uses to make these movies. And according to Brolin, “it works,” as he’s forced to balance the scene out, as he sees Mickey’s work and then reacts to it, completes it. It sounds weird and impressive and sounds like a pain in the ass. Brolin calls it a “bizarre, alien experience.”

Rosario Dawson wasn’t allowed to cut her hair for the movie because of a conflicting contract on another movie, but after arriving on set, she went home and cut her hair anyways, because she didn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t giving it her all. Rosario Dawson rules.

Alba stunned everyone, setting the bar (she was the first to shoot her scenes). She was in character on set, and connected with the dark side of Nancy, and it was hard to disconnect until after the movie. Alba admits she was more mature, comfortable and wanted to kick ass.

Eva: “She is a scary woman.”

Alba calls Powers Boothe a “scary mofo.”

Miller apparently drew an impossible action pose for Alba, knowing she couldn’t do it, and then he was amazed to see her actually do it.

80% of the film’s score was written on Robert Rodriguez’s phone.

The film doesn’t really have a script; they go by Frank’s storyboards.

Fan questions are awful, so I dozed through the end of this one.

Apparently Robert Rodriguez has his actors draw portraits of their characters before they start filming, to get the creative process going. What an awesome idea.

Robert shoots the film in color, then they strip it of color, then they add in colors afterwards. The colors will again be another character/element of the proceedings, like in the original.

Is Frank planning to write more Sin City graphic novels? Yes, as he has loads of story ideas, but he has no idea when he’ll get to them.

Frank’s also asked about a movie adaptation of Martha Washington, to which he responds that he’d love to, but “this time I’ve going to be a prick…do it my way.”

RIP Michael Clarke Duncan, who played Manute in Sin City. Dennis Haysbert is taking over the role from his friend, and studied the film from the first movie, to honor MCD.

Frank Miller is already talking Sin City 3, clearly excited with the second one, promising that they will be returning to Hall H a lot sooner next time around than 9 years. Here’s hoping.

Imagine if this film brought together its whole cast. It would’ve been the biggest collection of talent this side of Avengers. Seriously, can we have Mickey Rourke at Comic-Con? Or Eva Green, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alexa Vega, Juno Temple, Stacy Keach, LADY GAGA, Jamie Chung, Jaime King, Ray Liotta, Powers Boothe, Bruce Willis, Christopher Meloni, CHRISTOPHER LLOYD, Jeremy Piven, Dennis Haysbert/Allstate? Um, yeah, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is going to be fun.