Firefly--cancelled in less than a season. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles--cancelled after two seasons. Dollhouse--cancelled after two seasons. The Cape--cancelled after 9 episodes.
The common factor?
Summer Glau (yes, I know she wasn't part of the regular cast on Dollhouse, but she did have a recurring guest role). How long until she inherits the mantle of "showkiller" from Rena Sofer?
Oh, Summer. Please end up on a successful project soon. I'm begging.
I remember liking Barney Miller as a series, although it took me a while to really appreciate the show. However, unlike other favorite series from which I remember several classic scenes and storylines, the only bit of Barney Miller that has stuck with me over the years was this.
Watched the Lost finale last night, and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I expected it to revolve more around the cosmic good-vs-evil finale, with the Sideways scenes (the first few seasons had flashbacks, then flash-forwards, and this season, parallel universe/flash-sideways) heading toward some sort of irrelevant convergence.
What I didn't expect was for the episode to really revolve around the Sideways scenes, with epiphanies and tear-jerking character moments every 10 minutes or so. The Sideways reunions--Jin and Sun, Sawyer and Juliet, Sayid and Shannon, Charlie and Claire, Daniel and Charlotte--I don't know that I've ever cried this much watching any show. Some people are complaining that the show didn't pedantically answer every mystery, like the origin of the numbers, but seriously, I didn't care. Sometimes numbers are just numbers, and besides, any explanation they gave would fall short of our expectations, reduce that delicious sense of mystery to a simple, "That's it?"
In the end, though Lost was a show on an island with lots of mystery, it wasn't about the mystery. It was about the characters, about the pains and triumphs of life, and the possibility of redemption. You could perhaps say it was about Mystery in the spiritual sense, that sense of pursuing answers to questions that can never be truly answered: fate vs. choice, destiny vs. coincidence, knowledge vs. faith, that which can be seen vs. that which can't.
The finale touched on all these things, but did't dwell on them tiresomely the way some previous episodes had. The time for debating was over. The final two-and-a-half hours were about the characters, having made their decisions, taking action and embracing their fates. It felt just right.
And even though no other show has ever been so ruthless in killing off characters, by the end, even death couldn't stop the show from celebrating life in all its variety. I truly loved the series, start to finish, and though I'll miss it, I'm glad it ended when it did and the way it did.
Lost finale tonight. I'm excited, yet a little disappointed. While it is cool that we're finally seeing this season take the show closer to the Stand-like vision the creators talked about back in Season 1, it feels as if a lot of the journey (with Dharma and the Others and Widmore's group) consisted of side trails that led nowhere.
But maybe it'll all tie together. And the journey was fun.
And it's an awfully strange ending. In a lot of ways, the second-to-last episode felt like the real ending to the series. The final episode is a sequel to an episode that never aired--the infamous extra episode that was added to the DVD--that felt almost like an imaginary possible future. Much of the second season is filled with portents that only make sense if you've seen that episode, and in the final episode, that imaginary, possible future becomes established history, and we see the aftermath.
And once more (with feeling), Joss does the same thing he did with Tara in Buffy and Wash in "Serenity" and proves himself the master of the out-of-nowhere beloved character death. Bastard.
Dollhouse was not a show that I was looking forward to before it premiered, but it was amazing how this show about high-tech prostitutes convincingly morphed into a show that addressed basic concepts of personhood and simultaneously became an action-drama about the end of civilization. And if the final episode featured some Frank Miller-style over-the-top silliness, it also contained some touching drama and a fitting end for a series that became much more than it appeared to be at first.
I mentioned a while back that I was afraid Chuck had jumped the shark, but I couldn't be sure until I'd actually seen which way they were going to go with it.
Sadly, I'm afraid I was correct, although it's not as bad as I'd feared. The writers are doing some good things with the characters, letting Chuck grow into his role as a spy, and also giving Morgan some surprising growth.
So why do I say it has jumped the shark? Basically because at the end of last season, everything had changed. Chuck was out of the Buy More and had mad Matrixy Intersect skillz, Morgan had left to pursue his dream of being a chef, Ellie and Awesome were married and moving on with their lives. And if the show had continued along those lines, it might have been good or bad, but it wouldn't really have felt like Chuck anymore.
But that doesn't mean I prefer what they've done, which is the same thing that shows like Smallville have done in the past after incredible finales that changed everything: had a season opener that takes pretty much everything and resets it to the status quo. Chuck is suddenly back at the Buy More, his Intersect skills as unpredictable as his previous flashes. Sarah and Casey are back to their old roles as his handlers. Morgan has returned, and Ellie and Awesome, although they've moved out, are living right next door and still just as much a part of the show as before.
and although it seemed as if they'd killed off Awesome last week, it was just a feint, and so as dramatic as last week's ending was, it's all undone now and we're back to the same old same old. And that gets tiresome and frustrating after a while. I won't stop watching the show, because I like the humor and the cast, especially Zachary Levi and Adam Baldwin.
But I used to watch because I wanted to see where these characters were going to go, and now I know where they're going.
Watched the latest episode of Dollhouse yesterday. All I can say is...
Dude.
I'm sad that Dollhouse is ending after this season. But one perhaps-positive side-effect is that it has forced Joss Whedon to get his story moving. So many shows with an overall mystery arc pad and stretch that story unbearably, hoping to make it last for as long as the show needs to last.
The first halves of both seasons of Dollhouse had touches of that. In a sense, we needed that gradual build-up, especially in the first season, to ingrain the basic concepts in us and let us get to know and like the characters before it started hitting us with all the action later. The first half of this season slowed down some, and it's necessary to slow down sometimes. And maybe Whedon thought he had time to take it easy. Maybe he thought that the word-of-mouth buzz that saved the show late in the first season would let him continue for a good long while.
But it didn't happen. Fox announced they were canceling the show, and now Whedon is rushing through the second half of the season, trying to wrap up the story he meant to tell over a period of maybe years.
And in one sense, maybe it's going a little too fast. But in another sense, you wish other shows had felt the same type of urgency (I'm looking at you, Prison Break--yeah, don't try to hide in the back, you know I'm right). And I've got to admit, the ride is exhilarating.
Oh, yeah, and Chuck returns tonight. I'm afraid the shark, she has been jumped with this one, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Well, I need to eat a little pickled crow, I guess. I have previously posted in some detail just how less than enchanted I was with Castle.
Well, after hearing friends rave about it some more, I decided to give it another try. The first season is no longer on Hulu, so I've been watching the second season, and I have to say...
It's okay. From discussions with a friend at a Halloween party last night, I apparently managed to watch the two weakest episodes in the first season, but the second season has been better. Still not anything like appointment viewing for me, but better.
Yes, still with the 50's TV. "Ghost Writer" is from later in the series, and I noticed that the credits no longer mention the Science Fiction League of America, which may be a reason why the writing on this episode is so bad. The episode stars Leslie Nielsen, three years before his star turn on "Forbidden Planet." Actually, Nielsen was apparently a favorite of the show. He appeared in six episodes.
In "Ghost Writer," Nielsen plays Bert, a former ad agency man who has given up corporate life to try to be a writer. He's in the middle of a big novel that he is beginning to despair about ever finishing or whether it will be any good when he does (been there). He's worried about going broke while chasing his dream. His wife Joan tries to cheer him up, but there's a whiny quality to her voice that makes her sound insincere even when she means it. But then, she may be repressing. Maybe she's got her hands in her pockets to keep herself from strangling her husband.
Also, a fashion note: Joan has this weird (to me) thing she does with her pearls. Instead of wearing them like a normal necklace, she ties the string around her neck. She wants a pearl necktie!
Bert has answered an ad seeking a writer and gets a reply from one Lee Morton, an author who's seeking a collaborator. Joan doesn't think Bert should dilute his talent by working with someone else. She makes him promise not to work with Morton, then heads back to her job. Before she leaves, she gives him some money so he can buy something nice for himself. Bert, frustrated at being just a trophy husband, decides to visit Morton and make his own money.
When we see Lee Morton's home, the Ominous Mobile of Doom signals us that all is not well in Chez Morton.
Morton himself is even more ominous. You can tell he's up to no good, because he's got the Crazy Eyes.
The rest of the story is some nonsense where Morton turns out to be the Devil or Death or something. He pays Bert $500 per story to end stories for him. Bert does two stories and giddily shows his wife the $1000 he earned. She's upset that he went to Morton when he said he wouldn't and insists he give the money back. Because she's apparently making so much money at her job, which is hard to figure out. Nielsen says something about her working behind a cigar counter, but when we see the place, it looks more like a newsstand. Except that they also sell shirts. On the plus side, every shirt gets its own titty rub.
Seriously, if Dillard's had women doing this to every shirt they sell in Men's Clothing, they wouldn't be having to close so many stores. Especially if the women looked like, say, Sherilyn Fenn. Men would never shop anywhere else.
So anyway, blah-blah-blah, the stories Bert writes gruesome endings to come true in real life, Joan makes him promise to return the money, but Morton convinces him to do just one more, Joan finds out Bert has reneged on his promise and decides to go home to her parents in a cab which crashes, thereby making Bert's newest ending about a distraught wife dying in a car crash come true. Irony!
The story was pretty bad and made no sense in about twenty different ways. In fact, the most interesting thing about it, for me, was this.
That's a picture of big band leader Paul Whiteman, in a promo for his Saturday night show, TV Teen Club. But what's with the eagle?
Turns out that was ABC's logo at the time.
I'm guessing the eagle was to put the American in American Broadcasting Company. But I think it's kind of creepy and martial for a corporate logo, especially for the network that would someday give us Happy Days and Donny & Marie.
So Heroes is back and The Office is back. I've stopped having any hopes for Heroes; it goes in too many inconsistent directions. This season doesn't seem as bold as last season's Villains arc, but that also means it isn't as weird and stupid as last season's Villains arc. The Office is hitting that point in a show's lifespan where it feels like it has said everything new it was going to say, and now it's just continuing because people are still making a salary and they don't want to be unemployed. I mean, I like the characters, and I still laugh, but it feels sort of tired and obligatory so far this season.
I'm watching a few new shows as well. Glee is fun, although I have trouble suspending disbelief on this show a lot. I understand that the musical numbers are supposed to be communicating "emotional reality" rather than "real reality," so that's not so much my problem. It's more stuff like the extreme disconnect between the cartoonish aspects of the comedy followed by an attempt to make you feel some real emotion for the characters. The comedy is so extreme that it undercuts the drama, I think. Or maybe it's just me getting old. But the music and singing are good.
Of course, my bigger problem is with the basic premise of the show. Glee takes place in a high school where Glee Club singers are looked down upon as the lowest of social pariahs. And I understand that social stratification in high school may not make a whole lot of sense. But seriously, in a world where American Idol draws tens of thousands of hopeful applicants a season and huge ratings, is there anybody who buys the idea of a school where singing is basically despised by all but a few freaks and talented singers are shunned as pariahs? Really?
I finally got around to watching Flashforward last night. If you don't know, the premise is that everyone in the world blacks out at the exact same time for 2 minutes, 17 seconds. And during that time, they experience a vision of life six months in the future. Joseph Fiennes stars as an FBI agent whose vision was of himself investigating the cause of the flashforward, leading to his being hunted down by mysterious assassins in masks. So of course, he starts up the investigation.
It was an intriguing premise well handled. But one weird little detail jumped out at me from out of nowhere. Fiennes's wife is played by Sonya Walger, who plays Penelope Widmore on Lost. In Walger's flashforward, she saw herself cheating on her husband with another man, who is revealed to be Jack Davenport, who played Norrington in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.
But here's the thing that jumped out at me. Before Davenport played Norrington, he played a character named Steve Taylor on a British sitcom titled Coupling. And before Walger played Penelope, she played a character named Sally Harper on the American version of Coupling. Now the two of them are going to do a little coupling of their own on a new show. Easter egg.
There's a new sitcom on NBC titled Community, about an oddball group of students at a community college who initially come together to study Spanish. The show is pretty good, but still trying to find its footing. However, this bit from the end credits of the second episode is gold. These guys are partners who were supposed to come up with a simple conversation using sample phrases in Spanish, such as "Donde esta la bibliotheca." People get loopy while studying. Click and enjoy.
Continuing to revisit 50's live sci-fi TV. But before that, I have been planning for quite some time to do the old Batman serials for Movie Monday, only to find out today that damn Lileks beat me to it. Oh well, I'll do my own version in more depth later.
So today's Tales of Tomorrow episode is "Frankenstein," yet another twist on the classic tale starring Lon Chaney Jr. and John Newland (no idea if he is related to Marv Newland), and another illustration of the perils of live TV.
The story opens in Frankenstein's castle, or I should say, the castle Frankenstein is using for his experiments. He apparently doesn't have an ancestral castle of his own, so he's using a summer rental or something. The set isn't bad, and makes good use of the soundstage space, although it's obvious that the stone textures are painted on, especially the flagstones that are only drawn in outlines on the floor. There's one corridor that looks pretty impressive on first sight, but that's mainly due to a forced perspective mural that doesn't look nearly as good when they shoot it later from the wrong angle.
Frankenstein is having dinner with fiancee Elizabeth and her father, as well as his young "cousin" William. Frankenstein talks about how the man of the future will be gigantic and strong and blah-blah-blah-mad-scientist-cakes. Meanwhile, young William has constructed his own monstrosity from the fruit bowl.
Ooh, foreshadowing! And also maybe symbolism (what would a fruity man signify in the 50's?)! High school English FTW!
So Elizabeth and her father leave, and Frankenstein heads down to his lab where he has already built a monster. He turns on his machinery and brings the creature to life. Yow, it's Larry Talbot!
It's not a bad make-up, and for some reason, his eyes gleam really strangely at his initial appearance. The creature freaks out, but Frankenstein calms him down and straps him to the table again. But the moment he leaves, the creature breaks free and roams the castle.
The old butler and maid speculate about Frankenstein's experiments, then flirt and giggle when suddenly the creature appears. The butler tries to fend him off with a chair, but the monster takes it away from him.
In fact, this episode has a legendary behind the scenes story. Apparently, Chaney was an alcoholic and had gotten pretty sauced before the episode was performed. In fact, so the story goes, he was so out of it that he didn't realize they were live and thought they were only in another dress rehearsal. So for instance, in this scene, his blocking is rather tentative and he mugs the camera a couple of times. When the butler comes at him with a chair, Chaney takes it from him, then sets it down on the floor while looking at the camera and muttering something (which may be a reminder to himself to break the chair when they shoot the "actual episode").
The monster stumbles through the halls until he runs across little William's room. William is riding his rocking horse while playing with a wooden sword. The kid playing William, alone among the cast, has a really thick New York accent. "Up an' at 'em and show 'em no quatta!"
The monster wants to play at first, but William, like all young Frankensteins since the book was written, is a little asshole and says, "Let go, yer dumb an' ugly! Yeah, that's what ya are, yer ugly!" The monster looks in the mirror and realizes the kid was right in an orgy of emoting. Then he runs away.
The maid is happily dusting, apparently having forgotten her encounter with the monster all of three minutes ago, when the monster reappears. And once again, Chaney didn't know they were live. He picks up the chair...
sets it down...
mimes picking it up...
then mimes smashing it.
The maid has no idea how to react to this shit on live TV.
The monster kills her before she can blab to anyone how he fucked up this scene.
Cutaway to commercial, during which somebody apparently tells Chaney they're live, because he doesn't do this crap in the second half of the episode (the mid-show commercial segment has apparently been cut out of the Hulu version).
When we return, Frankenstein and the butler kneel over the corpse of the dead maid. In a bit of unconscious expression, Frankenstein absentmindedly points his rifle at his own head. Probably wishing he could kill himself so he could get off this damn show.
Frankenstein vows to kill the monster, but before he can hunt the monster down, it attacks. Frankenstein holds the monster off with a scrap of burning paper and exhorts the butler to shoot the monster "in the chest." Shots ring out, but we never see who fires them. Then the monster rips the bars off a large window to use for a weapon, but it's too late.
Umm, that's not his chest, dude. The monster cries out in humiliation at having his balls shot off and falls through the window. But even though the dialogue refers to a 200-foot fall to the water below, we clearly see Chaney hit a curtain just outside the window, then fall to the floor, where his feet kick up.
But he's not dead. No, it's far from over. Elizabeth and her father have returned, and Victor confesses all to her. But their discussion is interrupted by the screams of the creature returning. Frankenstein figures out that the only thing that can kill the monster is the electricity that brought him to life. So he concocts a brilliant plan.
The plan is this: women and children first. First to meet the monster, that is. He sends Elizabeth and William to lure the monster to the lab, while he and the other men beat feet to safety.
Very brave, guys.
So the monster is electrocuted and all is well.
Okay, not all. Because when the camera cuts away to the announcer, we see the director's hand in the shot for a moment, then hear random bashing and crashing off-camera. But finally it's over.
If you want to see the whole thing for yourself, here it is.
Okay, for this episode (the first), "Verdict From Space," they don't use the above title card. In fact, the entire title sequence with the gloved hand throwing the Switch of Doom had apparently not been conceived yet. There's just a bare title card, followed by an immediate pitch for Kreisler watch bands.
Wait, let me back up. I said last week that the Science Fiction League of America seemed to have something to do with noted science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon. Well, I figured if that was true, they'd lead off with the big name, and sure enough...
There are no credits on the show. With the exception of the "star," Lon McCallister, no one is credited at all. It makes you realize just how much you take the conventions for granted when they're gone.
So yeah, no cool opening, no credits. However, imdb does credit Theodore Sturgeon as writing this episode, so I guess I'll believe it.
The story itself is not great, but better than some later episodes I saw. Lon McCallister plays a basement inventor who has built a special supercharged blowtorch. He is on trial for the murder of a noted professor of archaeology. As McCallister flashes back on the story, the scientist comes to him asking for help. He needs the super-blowtorch to open a metal door to a certain cave, which contains a machine that is over a million years old. McCallister agrees to go, and they head off for Painted Rock National Park.
I'm not making fun of the show's production values. It was low budget and performed live on a soundstage. At this point in TV's history, it was half radio and half live theater, so why not use painted flats for rocks if the audience would accept it?
So McCallister and the scientist find the cave, break in, and find the machine. The scientist has somehow figured out that the machine's function is to record seismic events on a wire somehow, and he can read the markings with a magnifying glass. He then demonstrates by showing McCallister the marks for the destruction of Pompeii, the San Francisco earthquake, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. God, I know this is the crucial scene to understanding the entire story, but it doesn't work on so many levels that it makes my head spin.
McCallister notices a second machine in the cave that he thinks is a transmitter of some kind, but the "brilliant" scientist tells him it doesn't matter, only the recording machine matters. Dope. Suddenly, the machine records a new event, like an atomic explosion but bigger. The transmitter suddenly comes to life, then both machines self-destruct. McCallister manages to make it out with the professor, but unfortunately, the professor has come down with a severe case of shoe polish on his face and dies.
Back in the courtroom, McCallister is found guilty, then gives an impassioned speech where he finally reveals that the machine must have been put here by aliens to signal them when a particular event happens, that event being the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, a "super-atomic" explosion. Since having the H-bomb means that fusion-powered spaceships are just around the corner, the aliens put their version of a smoke detector on Earth to let them know when they needed to destroy us. "They're coming! I don't know when they're coming, but they're coming!" McCallister says in a rambling monologue that seems half-improv, half-scripted on cue cards as the judge and lawyers look up at a strange noise. McCallister runs to the window and shouts, "Look! Up there in the sky!"
Alas, it's neither bird nor plane nor even frog. It's thousands of spaceships, conveniently arriving at the end of McCallister's monologue.
And now comes a moment of unscripted brilliance. As everyone in the courtroom runs to the window to see the aliens coming to blow them up real good, McCallister walks back into the courtroom. And maybe it's just me, but as the camera is pulling in for a close-up, I could swear a devious little smile flickers across his face for a couple of moments.
Because he set this all up. How do you get away with murder? By concocting a cock-and-bull story about some self-destructing alien machine killing your victim, and you make it convincing by arranging the invasion of Earth by thousands of flying saucers. Oh my God, the man is Keyser Soze crossed with Captain Sternn. I can just see him telling his lawyer, "Take it easy, Charlie. I've got an angle."
But all he says is "The sky is full of ships" and then we fade out. After a final pitch for Kreisler, we get another classic example of early TV half-improv:
Next week, our Tales of Tomorrow show is called "Blunder." A great blunder, where there is a scientist who is working on a blunder which may bring death to us all.
And the really bad thing about this one, he's the announcer. He's off camera. He should be working from a script. It's not as if this was new; they'd been working from scripts in radio for years. Srsly.
If you want to watch the full episode, here it is.
Oh, and one more thing before I forget: in the Kreisler ads, we're told that the price includes federal tax.
Was there a federal sales tax back then, or is this something else?
Back in late 2006, ABC made a risky decision concerning one of their breakout dramas--Lost. Lost was a complex show: intricately scripted, with a large cast, shot on location in Hawaii while taking place literally around the world, heavy on special effects. Episodes were produced slowly, which meant that shows rolled out sporadically during the first two seasons, with lots of reruns sparking lots of viewer complaints.
So ABC tried something new in the fall of 2006. They launched the third season of Lost with six new episodes before putting the show on hiatus, and replaced it with a new series, another twisty, complex drama that played games with time in which every passing detail might mean more within the overall picture than first appeared. The new series would run for 12 weeks (thirteen hours including the two-hour pilot) and present a self-contained, complete story: beginning, middle and end.
After the two hour pilot aired, I have to admit, I was worried for my favorite show. The pilot was so good, taut and action-packed compared to the relatively slow-moving Lost, that I worried that it would suffer the same fate as Boston Legal, which went on a "temporary" hiatus to allow Grey's Anatomy to launch in its timeslot. But Grey's Anatomy was a hit, leaving Boston Legal in limbo until space could be cleared in the schedule to give it a lesser slot. I didn't want that to happen to Lost.
As it turned out, I didn't need to worry, because Day Break ended up getting canceled after 6 episodes. Which sucks, because it was an excellent show. Luckily, the entire series is available on-line at Hulu.
Day Break stars Taye Diggs as Detective Brett Hopper, a good cop who is framed for the murder of an assistant district attorney he has never met. The case against him is airtight, it seems: the gun was found in his closet with his prints on it, a shirt with the victim's blood was found at his girlfriend's place, and the victim's wife claims she saw Hopper do it. Hopper is interrogated, held without bail, and shipped to the county jail.
Then mysterious men break into his cell during the night and haul Hopper to a rock quarry, where an even more mysterious man shows Hopper a video of his girlfriend being shot. The man threatens Hopper's sister and her children if Hopper does not confess to the murder. "Just remember: for every decision, there's a consequence," says the mysterious figure, channelling the Ghost of Authorial Message. "Decision. Consequence."
And then Hopper awakes the next morning, in bed with his girlfriend. Only it is the same as the morning before. Same time on the clock. Same pigeon at the window. Same garbage truck outside. Same traffic report about a spilled truckload of diapers.
The entire day is the same, except that Hopper now moves through it differently, learning new things about the conspiracy that's trying to trap him. And as he moves through each new day, making new choices based on his new knowledge, he changes the world around him. He's in a web on interconnecting events, and whenever he pulls a string here, it causes a vibration there.
He tries confronting. He tries escaping. He tries surrender. Some choices have better consequences and some have worse, but all choices reset the next day.
Except that some don't. When he helps his partner resolve a personal crisis, she awakes next iteration feeling "different," ready to resolve her problem without Hopper's prodding. And Hopper is given hope that if the day can change, the day can end. He just has to untangle the knots tied around him and reach the truth.
At thirteen hours, I think the show probably goes a little too long. I mean, I understand that the economics of American television demand a minimum thirteen episode order, but it felt a little padded.
Then again, compared to the bloated, overstretched monstrosities that X-Files and Prison Break became, Day Break was a model of storytelling economy. The mystery was deep, and thankfully had nothing to do with evil corporate barons, or evil Republicans trying to stack the Supreme Court, or evil NSA agents. Yes, there are corrupt public officials and politicians, but they aren't transparent right-wing strawmen, so I was glad of that.
And the cast is excellent. Taye Diggs makes a compelling lead, determined and good-hearted, yet believeable in his flaws. The supporting cast also does excellent work, especially Adam Baldwin (always a favorite) as an Internal Affairs agent who was Hopper's former partner, and also Hopper's girlfriend's ex-husband. Clayton Rohner gets a good turn also, as a crazy street vagrant who may not be as crazy as he appears.
So if your favorite show is on hiatus, and you're looking for something to fill a few empty hours, give Day Break a try. It was a great show that never found the audience it deserved, but it's still there, waiting for you to watch. Just like the sun coming up every morning.
So I mentioned a while back that I'd started watching Warehouse 13 on SyFy. It's a fun show. Stars Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly have a nice chemistry, and Kelly handles the role of straight woman to McClintock's clown with grace. But she also sometimes has a grating quality, and there's a weird twist to her mouth that puts me off sometimes.
So then I started watching The Dresden Files, and there was this episode with this absolutely gorgeous female vampire named Bianca. Of course, I noticed early in that the lighting and make-up seemed designed to give her an unearthly sheen, almost glowing in every scene she's in, and I figured it was a subtle hint at vampire magic or something (that was really a pretty decent show). But there was something familiar about the twist to her mouth in certain scenes. I figured I had to have seen her before somewhere.
Yeah. Joanne Kelly again. But really hot this time.
Speaking of television, I decided to give Castle another shot. I caught one episode during its regular season, and I was underwhelmed. If you'd asked me yesterday what put me off about it, I couldn't put my finger on it, but something had rubbed me the wrong way about the show on the one episode I caught.
But I have friends who like it, so I thought I'd give it another chance. So I found it on Hulu and picked at random an episode titled "Always Buy Retail." I sat back determined to watch with an open mind.
And I can see why people might like it. Nathan Fillion, after all, is talented and charismatic, and has appeared on several fan favorites, like Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog. And the writing isn't completely horrible; there's some witty dialogue and stuff.
But as it turns out, it the episode I picked first was the one episode I'd seen before. The series premise: Castle is a mystery writer who follows NYPD detective Kate Beckett around, with the intention of using her as source material for his next book. This episode's plot: someone is killing people and performing voodoo rituals over their corpses in the attempt to find a mysterious something. And I remembered all the reasons I hadn't liked the show.
Reason the First: the dialogue is too cute, and the writers are too impressed with their own cuteness. Early on, Castle sleeps with his ex-wife, then immediately regrets it, and in relating his problems to Beckett and her partners, Exposition Detectives 1, 2, and 3 (hereinafter referred to as ED 01, ED 02, and ED 03), describes his ex-wife as a "deep-fried Twinkie," a guilty pleasure that's fantastic in limited doses, but sickening when indulged in every day. Witty, but not witty enough for them to keep repeating the damn catch-phrase throughout the rest of the episode.
Reason the Second: this being an ABC show, the PC is so thick, you'd need a machete to hack your way through. When they discover the first body, Castle mentions that it looks like a voodoo ritual. Only he pronounces it "voe-doo," because any good PC lib nowadays has got to use affected pronunciations of foreign terms to show how intellectually superior he is, like "Pokeestan" or "Hava(choke)ee."
And then just to show that the cops aren't conservative retards stuck in the 40's (and also to fullfill the EDs' roles), they don't respond with, "What, you mean 'voodoo'? The zombie thing?" No, one ED blinks stupidly and says, "What's that, some kind of Star Trek thing?" and another busts out with, "It's a religion practiced primarily in West Africa." And it goes on like that for the rest of the episode: normal white people who, one would assume, have seen a zombie movie or two, yet are completely ignorant of even the concept of voodoo, while their intellectual betters tell them how peaceful and spiritual the religion is and how it gets a bad rap in the media (media that these people never watch, apparently). Doesn't matter; the voodoo thing is a red herring anyway. It's all about drugs and forged documents and shit.
(ETA: Rereading this, I think I emphasize "white people" too much -- it's not so much that I'm racist as I'm tired of the fictional trope that people of color are so much more spiritually aware than us white goobs, so we must constantly be preached to and educated - it's condescending)
Reason the Third: EDs. They exist for no reason other than to ask stupid questions for the benefit of the audience and to be impressed by Castle's wit, which they then repeat endlessly throughout the rest of the show (okay, that's sort of going back to Reason the First, but I just got real tired of "deep-fried Twinkie" after a while).
Reason the Fourth: Castle is an idiot. He shows up mid-episode with a Kevlar vest which he has emplazoned with the word "WRITER" (to match the cops' vests which bear the term "POLICE"). Later, he brings a champagne bottle to a gunfight.
Reason the Fifth: As stupid as Castle is, he's smarter than the cops.
So anyway, I got bored later in the evening and tried another Castle episode, titled "Ghosts." Not as bad the first one, I've gotta say, although I saw the big twist coming from very early on. But here's the thing: at one point, Castle and Beckett run into another writer who has been interviewing the murder victim. And guess who plays the writer?
That's right, Joanne Kelly again. Three weeks ago, I'd never heard of this woman, now I can't get away from her. I think she's stalking me. Corinne Bohrer is concerned.
But seeing Joanne Kelly all over the place reminded me that Warehouse 13 has its own guest star problem. Eight episodes in, and they can't stop stunt-casting actors from their other shows. Stars of Eureka and (now cancelled) Stargate Atlantis have appeared already (and maybe someone else I can't remember) (ETA: A ha! Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica also did an episode), and another Eureka star will appear on next week's episode.
I know this is a general condition of television, but for some reason it seems more pronounced with Warehouse 13 (though maybe only because I've run into the Joanne Kelly thing lately, plus the chick from Farscape on another episode of The Dresden Files- maybe they're all just running together in my head).
Two years ago, I took part in a short story contest on Codex Writers Group. I received a character sketch as a story seed and set to work. I got maybe a third of the way through the story and gave up. I had the shape of it in my head, but it wasn't coalescing on the page.
I've tried several times in the intervening years to finish the story but it always refused to gel. Today, I finally finished the first draft, making it the first thing I've written in well over a year (blogs don't count). I didn't hit it out of the park. It was more like a sad bunt dribbling down the third base line, but at least I'm sort of back on the horse.
Speaking of horse, I realized that Hell's Kitchen is back on, so I watched the first three episodes on Hulu tonight. One of the chef-hopefuls was a guy named Tony (eliminated at the start of the third episode, sadly). But the thing with Tony is, in the opening credits (which have a circus sideshow theme), he is presented as a kind of donkey-centaur, with the signs behind him reading "Half-Man! Half-Donkey!"
There's a pun about being half-assed in there somewhere, but I'm too lazy to reach for it.
So despite Veoh's best efforts to drive me away from their site, I finally managed to watch all the episodes of Roughnecks: Starship Troopers (except for a couple of clip shows). Actually, although all the materials I can find on the show call it either Roughnecks: Starship Troopers or Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, the title card on the actual show calls it Starship Troopers: The Series.
The series is spun off of the Paul Verhoeven movie. Not an extension of the movie, but instead a reinterpretation, incorporating more elements of the novel than the film did, like powered armor suits and Skinnies. We follow Johnny Rico and Dizzy Flores along with their squad, Razak's Roughnecks, through virtually the entire Bug War (until the show stopped being produced after 36 full episodes and four clip shows, leaving four episodes unfinished), from its origins on Pluto through Tophet, the homeworld of the Skinnies, to Klendathu, the bug homeworld, and finally to the final defense of Earth (with other campaigns in between).
Right up front, I have to say that I liked the book. I was in the Army when I first read it, so I could relate to a lot of what Heinlein was saying about leadership and sacrifice and service. On the other hand, I hated the movie. Verhoeven had no interest in making a film that honored the book or portrayed realistic people; he wanted to make a satire that portrayed soldiers as brutal morons, and succeeded in making them look pretty stupid. For all their advanced technology, the Mobile Infantry of the movie were so tactically inept that they could have been mopped up by an equal sized squad of real-life soldiers from WWII--even the Italians.
And when in the final scene, Doogie Howser of the S.S. shows up to give his monologue about exterminating the entire bug race, I guess we're supposed to realize the fascism within ourselves or something, but all I felt was Verhoeven flipping me off. Because of course, when the bugs invade, what we should have done was sit in the street with our arms linked together while singing "We Shall Overcome"and making sure that someone with a camera was filming everything so we could put it on Youtube and embarrass the bugs to death or something. Fucking moron. Right back at ya, Verhoeven, with both barrels.
Luckily, the producers of the series realized they couldn't sell that concept for a weekly series (and yes, I realize Verhoeven gets an exec producer credit on the show, but like Fran Rubel Kuzui's similar credit on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, I think that's more a contractual requirement than an indication he ever had anything to do with the show's production). So instead, we get something closer to the novel. The humans actually aren't the bad guys. We also get to see more realistic tactics in the series than the movie. The humans wear powersuits (not the supersuits of the novel, but still...). The Roughnecks also employ heavy weapons, demolitions, close air support, tactical maneuver. None of it is textbook, and there's a lot of Hollywood silliness, like characters constantly running across each others' field of fire, but it's way better than the movie in that respect.
The series has to tread an uneasy line, though, between being a kid-friendly show and being a war drama for older fans of the book and movie. So on the one hand, the series employs more sophisticated storytelling techniques than your normal kids' show. Each week's episodes feature a campaign on a different planet, showing the progress of the war in continuity. There is romance. Characters face hard moral choices, losses and betrayals. Bugs get blown to smithereens. Characters get wounded, and even die on occasion.
But on the other hand, casualties are still very light. The language is highly sanitized. The episodes sometimes play out as clunky morality tales where Rico or one of the others learns a Very Important Lesson.
The same sort of uneasy balance played out in the visuals of the show. The art design of the show built upon the excellent design work from the movie; the bugs and ship designs echo what was seen in the theater. But the show added to it with mechanized armor suits and support vehicles and space fighters. Some of the planetary environments are breathtaking. And since this was a CGI show, they were able to use the camera with a sophistication that is impossible (or almost) to achieve in a traditional 2-D animated show.
But on the other hand, the demands of a TV schedule meant that quality could be very variable. Four different production houses made episodes of the series. They used the same software rendering the same models, so the look of the show stayed the same. But their animators weren't all on the same level, and the tight schedule meant limited amounts of time to fix mistakes or tweak shots, so you see lots of flubs that drop you out of the moment--characters' hands not locking right on the objects they're supposedly grasping, or Dizzy's lips not meeting Barcalow's right when they kiss. It doesn't help that the almost photo-realistic characters are lurking right in the shadow of the Uncanny Valley.
And though the voice acting is generally pretty good, the opening theme music is oddly muted and the sound of the rifles is downright anemic. So the sound is a mixed bag as well.
But overall, the good points of the show overwhelm the bad points. It was an entertaining series. It's too bad the production of the show was such a cluster that it ended up never having the final climactic episodes produced. The show leads you right up to the big climax and then ends on a note reminiscent of "The Empire Strikes Back." Aaargh.
If you want to see the series for yourself, you can buy the DVDs, or if you're up to the challenge of a little search-fu, you can try to track it down on veoh.com. I was down to the last three episodes when their episode home page suddenly emptied. The episodes are still in their databases and watchable, but you have to do some playing around with different search options to find them. I'm guessing Veoh is going to delete them pretty soon, but for now, here's a link that I hope will work.
But now that I'm done with Starship Troopers, it's back to Hulu for me.
So I've been watching this anime series called Aquarion on Hulu, which I'll probably talk about tomorrow, but got bored with it just before the final climactic episodes (never a good sign) and somehow ended up on VEOH. And while I was browsing the sci-fi episodes to see what they had, I noticed they had the entire run of The Flash, the live action series from 1990.
Well, I'd never seen Mark Hamill's Trickster episode which everyone says is the best of the series, so I figured, what the hell?
Turns out, there were two Trickster episodes and I watched the other one.
Not that I didn't enjoy it. I did, but more for nostalgia value, not because it was any good. This was the last episode of the first season, which is to say the last episode of the series, and I wonder if they knew they weren't getting picked up for another season, because the entire episode has a "what the hell" feel to it.
The episode is titled "The Trial of the Trickster," and it was written by HowardChaykin and John Francis Moore. The Trickster is going on trial for the events of a previous episode, in which he kidnapped private detective Megan Lockhart and tried to brainwash her into becoming his girl sidekick, Prank. Trickster escapes from custody during the trial thanks to the help of a spoiled rich girl named Zoe Clark, who wants to be the new Prank. Trickster and Prank then kidnap Flash and the Trickster brainwashes him into helping him start a reign of terror over Central City, including putting the judge and attorneys on trial for crimes against the Trickster.
Mark Hamill mugs and giggles as The Trickster, channeling Frank Gorshin's Riddler from the 60's Batman series at times. And just listening to him, you can hear why he got the role of the Joker in the Batman animated series a couple of years later. Of course, any appearance by Hamill anywhere gets geek interest points because of Skywalker, so there's nostalgia point one: Mark Hamill.
Megan Lockhart, the detective who won the Flash's heart but has no time for him now that she's famous, is played by Joyce Hyser, who's mainly remembered by 80's movie geeks like me for her starring role in "Just One of the Guys," a comedy about a high school girl who poses as a boy to try to win a journalism competition. She was also in "This is Spinal Tap," so she will be a hero forever. So nostalgia point number two: Joyce Hyser, playing a woman.
Joyce's high point in the episode, BTW: during the trial, the Trickster escapes his handcuffs, and she decks him. We then see our only glimpse of Hyser leg, because she switches to slacks for the rest of the show. Joyce's low point: when Prank throws a bunch of sharpened steel chattering teeth on her, and she has to lie on the floor covered with chattering teeth and pretend this is really threatening. Career note: people got paid to come up with this idea and perform it.
Prank is played by Corinne Bohrer, who has played a hundred different love interests and housewives on TV series and commercials. I developed a crush on her years ago when she played Herman's girlfriend on the pilot episode of Herman's Head. But then they never brought her back, which is probably why the show got canceled so quickly. Don't fuck with Corinne. Nostalgia point number three: Corinne Bohrer.
This is not Corinne's best work, unfortunately. Not to get all drama-criticy about a throwaway comic episode of a TV series about a cartoon character, but the big problem with her performance here is that she was having too much fun, like Burt Reynolds in "The Cannonball Run." You can tell she's having real trouble keeping a straight face, like Harvey Korman on Carol Burnett (and if you want to throw cold water on a nostalgic crush real quick, try comparing your dream girl to Burt Reynolds and Harvey Korman; brrrr).
Then again, she did rock the cleavage a couple times, so I forgive her.
Although check out the big 80's hair. And yes, even though this was technically 1990, tell me those checks and polka dots on Hamill's breastplate there don't scream 80's, as well.
Oh yeah, the Flash was in it, too. He ran fast.
Although that was the main problem with the Flash as a live action character. He moved quickly, but in order to let the audience see what he was doing, he never moved that fast. He was the slowest super-speedster I've ever seen, and certainly not fast enough to merit that long red blur behind him. Smallville does a much better job of portraying super-speed, although to be fair, they've got much more advanced technology to work with, as well as the conceptual leap of "bullet time," which was not a glimmer in anyone's eye in 1990.
Corinne Bohrer's never too lazy.
So despite Veoh's best efforts to drive me away from their site, I finally managed to watch all the episodes of Roughnecks: Starship Troopers (except for a couple of clip shows). Actually, although all the materials I can find on the show call it either Roughnecks: Starship Troopers or Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, the title card on the actual show calls it Starship Troopers: The Series.
Luckily, the producers of the series realized they couldn't sell that concept for a weekly series (and yes, I realize Verhoeven gets an exec producer credit on the show, but like Fran Rubel Kuzui's similar credit on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, I think that's more a contractual requirement than an indication he ever had anything to do with the show's production). So instead, we get something closer to the novel. The humans actually aren't the bad guys. We also get to see more realistic tactics in the series than the movie. The humans wear powersuits (not the supersuits of the novel, but still...). The Roughnecks also employ heavy weapons, demolitions, close air support, tactical maneuver. None of it is textbook, and there's a lot of Hollywood silliness, like characters constantly running across each others' field of fire, but it's way better than the movie in that respect.
The same sort of uneasy balance played out in the visuals of the show. The art design of the show built upon the excellent design work from the movie; the bugs and ship designs echo what was seen in the theater. But the show added to it with mechanized armor suits and support vehicles and space fighters. Some of the planetary environments are breathtaking. And since this was a CGI show, they were able to use the camera with a sophistication that is impossible (or almost) to achieve in a traditional 2-D animated show.
Megan Lockhart, the detective who won the Flash's heart but has no time for him now that she's famous, is played by Joyce Hyser, who's mainly remembered by 80's movie geeks like me for her starring role in "Just One of the Guys," a comedy about a high school girl who poses as a boy to try to win a journalism competition. She was also in "This is Spinal Tap," so she will be a hero forever. So nostalgia point number two: Joyce Hyser, playing a woman.
Prank is played by Corinne Bohrer, who has played a hundred different love interests and housewives on TV series and commercials. I developed a crush on her years ago when she played Herman's girlfriend on the pilot episode of Herman's Head. But then they never brought her back, which is probably why the show got canceled so quickly. Don't fuck with Corinne. Nostalgia point number three: Corinne Bohrer.
