I like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. And I love Lost. And I'm still hanging in there with Heroes.
But it just sort of came home to me that three of the series I watch on a weekly basis are dealing with time travel this season. And it's getting a little exhausting.
Still, just finished watching last night's Lost and I've got to say, "Holy crap, what a twist at the end." I love this show.
Showing posts with label Terminator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terminator. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
TV Round-up
I still haven't watched last night's shows, so the Chuck and Heroes impressions aren't completely up-to-date, but oh well...
I don't watch Bones, but I have enjoyed some of the episodes I've watched. However, the other day, I decided to watch the recent episode involving the death of a woman in a Renfaire-looking outfit. Turns out, it was a booth babe from a science-fiction convention. I can't believe how awful it was.
The main character, Brennan, is supposed to be this brainiac who's a little out of touch with the everyday world, but they were having her miss even the most obvious of "Star Wars" references, like some alien in a 50's B-picture. I mean, I halfway expected her to say, "Is this one of your Earth jokes?" Plus, the vibe around the convention and the characterization of the fans bore only the slightest resemblance to any kind of fan activity I've ever seen. Chuck would have gotten at least a little of it right.
For instance, Chuck's big episode after the break, "Chuck vs. the Third Dimension," had Chuck protecting a rock star. Now the rock star just happens to be played by the most famous hobbit rock star ever, Dominic Monaghan of "The Lord of the Rings" and Lost. But the rock star's name is Tyler Martin, which was just incredibly weird, because the day before I watched this episode, I listened to an interview with Tyler Martin, web-cartoonist and developer of the Comicpress plug-in for Wordpress, which I use on the Hero Go Home site (Boom! Review of TV show turns into reference to obscure geek hero turns into plug for my own site! Trifecta!). Maybe they weren't giving a nod to that Tyler Martin, but Chuck is just geek-aware enough that they could have been.
Interesting nod toward plausibility in the newest episode of Chuck. One of the problems with Chuck's premise is that he was infected with this huge intelligence database that was then destroyed. Now Chuck's got all the intel in his head. But intel goes stale after a while. What you knew about someone three weeks or months or years ago might not be relevant to what they're doing now. So Chuck has to get updated every now and then or else all he's got is a head full of old secrets that are currently useless.
So in the latest Chuck, he gets reinfected with an evil version of the Intersect database. However, this one comes from a computer with the latest high-speed datalines running into the building, not from an email attachment sent from a cell phone. Better.
Fox has a new show called Lie to Me. It's a mystery series starring Tim Roth as a guy who has spent his life studying lies and the way people act when they're telling them. So the camera is always focusing on twitches the actors make as they deliver their dialogue. It's a pretty good show, but the dialogue between the main characters gets awfully tiresome. (note: this is not actual dialogue from the show)
God, give it a rest.
Heroes continues to be Heroes, half-awesome, half-annoying-as-all-get-out. The characters are now fugitives from a government pogrom, which is led by the The Flying Senator who has turned Judas Goat. They've managed to make Suresh less ridiculous than in the "Villains" arc, but they've stolen Hiro's powers and turned him into a petulant whiny brat. I don't want petulant whiny Hiro. I want a Hiro who's on his way to being the ass-kicker we saw back in Season One, with the silly soul-patch and the katana slung across his back.
Other than that, Terminator is back and Dollhouse has premiered. I like what I've so far of Dollhouse, but I'll wait until after the third episode before I give my impressions.
I don't watch Bones, but I have enjoyed some of the episodes I've watched. However, the other day, I decided to watch the recent episode involving the death of a woman in a Renfaire-looking outfit. Turns out, it was a booth babe from a science-fiction convention. I can't believe how awful it was.
The main character, Brennan, is supposed to be this brainiac who's a little out of touch with the everyday world, but they were having her miss even the most obvious of "Star Wars" references, like some alien in a 50's B-picture. I mean, I halfway expected her to say, "Is this one of your Earth jokes?" Plus, the vibe around the convention and the characterization of the fans bore only the slightest resemblance to any kind of fan activity I've ever seen. Chuck would have gotten at least a little of it right.
For instance, Chuck's big episode after the break, "Chuck vs. the Third Dimension," had Chuck protecting a rock star. Now the rock star just happens to be played by the most famous hobbit rock star ever, Dominic Monaghan of "The Lord of the Rings" and Lost. But the rock star's name is Tyler Martin, which was just incredibly weird, because the day before I watched this episode, I listened to an interview with Tyler Martin, web-cartoonist and developer of the Comicpress plug-in for Wordpress, which I use on the Hero Go Home site (Boom! Review of TV show turns into reference to obscure geek hero turns into plug for my own site! Trifecta!). Maybe they weren't giving a nod to that Tyler Martin, but Chuck is just geek-aware enough that they could have been.
Interesting nod toward plausibility in the newest episode of Chuck. One of the problems with Chuck's premise is that he was infected with this huge intelligence database that was then destroyed. Now Chuck's got all the intel in his head. But intel goes stale after a while. What you knew about someone three weeks or months or years ago might not be relevant to what they're doing now. So Chuck has to get updated every now and then or else all he's got is a head full of old secrets that are currently useless.
So in the latest Chuck, he gets reinfected with an evil version of the Intersect database. However, this one comes from a computer with the latest high-speed datalines running into the building, not from an email attachment sent from a cell phone. Better.
Fox has a new show called Lie to Me. It's a mystery series starring Tim Roth as a guy who has spent his life studying lies and the way people act when they're telling them. So the camera is always focusing on twitches the actors make as they deliver their dialogue. It's a pretty good show, but the dialogue between the main characters gets awfully tiresome. (note: this is not actual dialogue from the show)
Character 1: What's wrong?
Character 2: Nothing.
Character 1 (pointing at 2's face): No! See? Right there. Mouth shrug indicating deception. You're lying. And I know what you're lying about!
Character 2 (pointing back): Ha! One-sided shrug! You don't know and you're just fishing.
Character 1: Maybe I don't. But something's wrong and you want to tell me.
Character 2: No, I don't. I'm fine.
Character 1 (pointing): Ha! Smiled with your mouth and not your eyes. Liar!
God, give it a rest.
Heroes continues to be Heroes, half-awesome, half-annoying-as-all-get-out. The characters are now fugitives from a government pogrom, which is led by the The Flying Senator who has turned Judas Goat. They've managed to make Suresh less ridiculous than in the "Villains" arc, but they've stolen Hiro's powers and turned him into a petulant whiny brat. I don't want petulant whiny Hiro. I want a Hiro who's on his way to being the ass-kicker we saw back in Season One, with the silly soul-patch and the katana slung across his back.
Other than that, Terminator is back and Dollhouse has premiered. I like what I've so far of Dollhouse, but I'll wait until after the third episode before I give my impressions.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
No Scoobies?
I finally got around to watching the first two episodes of the new season of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" on Hulu. I watched the first one last night and the second one this afternoon. About five minutes into it, Sarah tells John he needs to go back to school.
So John goes to school and there's a scene where he's standing in the hallway, with scabs on his cheek and forehead from last episode's mayhem, looking at the chattering teenagers all around him, and it's obvious he feels completely isolated. And at that point, I paused the program to make a sandwich and muse on my happiness with the fact that this show has developed so much better than it could have.
I mean, it's not perfect; the time travel/parallel universes stuff is enough to make narrative hash out of any show (witness the second season of Heroes; the third season looks good, but I fear that there will be more time travel nonsense to muck it all up).
But for a show that features a high schooler on a mission to save the world, it could have been so much worse. That is to say, I love Joss, but it would have absolutely destroyed this show to go the Buffy route, with John just happening to befriend a group of high school students who are improbably good at armed and unarmed combat and computer hacking and all the rest.
So I sit down, thinking warm, fuzzy un-Scooby thoughts while eating my sandwich and watching the show, and of course, what do they do? They introduce a high school girlfriend for John who is almost certainly more than she appears. And I find that, although I like the actress (she's hot), and I'm all for John getting some and lightening up a little, I'm not thrilled with any of the most likely directions the writers will take this. Three possibilities:
1) She's a Terminator sent to get close to John and kill him. Not likely, since John slept in the same room with her and wasn't touched.
2) She's a human spy from the future, either sent by John himself to protect him, or maybe some kind of turncoat sent by the robots to seduce him into giving up his mission or something.
3) She's just a normal human, which gives three options: she gets killed, leaving John heartbroken but vengeful; she freaks out and leaves him, leaving John confused; she becomes a Scooby.
Don't let her be a Scooby, please.
So John goes to school and there's a scene where he's standing in the hallway, with scabs on his cheek and forehead from last episode's mayhem, looking at the chattering teenagers all around him, and it's obvious he feels completely isolated. And at that point, I paused the program to make a sandwich and muse on my happiness with the fact that this show has developed so much better than it could have.
I mean, it's not perfect; the time travel/parallel universes stuff is enough to make narrative hash out of any show (witness the second season of Heroes; the third season looks good, but I fear that there will be more time travel nonsense to muck it all up).
But for a show that features a high schooler on a mission to save the world, it could have been so much worse. That is to say, I love Joss, but it would have absolutely destroyed this show to go the Buffy route, with John just happening to befriend a group of high school students who are improbably good at armed and unarmed combat and computer hacking and all the rest.
So I sit down, thinking warm, fuzzy un-Scooby thoughts while eating my sandwich and watching the show, and of course, what do they do? They introduce a high school girlfriend for John who is almost certainly more than she appears. And I find that, although I like the actress (she's hot), and I'm all for John getting some and lightening up a little, I'm not thrilled with any of the most likely directions the writers will take this. Three possibilities:
1) She's a Terminator sent to get close to John and kill him. Not likely, since John slept in the same room with her and wasn't touched.
2) She's a human spy from the future, either sent by John himself to protect him, or maybe some kind of turncoat sent by the robots to seduce him into giving up his mission or something.
3) She's just a normal human, which gives three options: she gets killed, leaving John heartbroken but vengeful; she freaks out and leaves him, leaving John confused; she becomes a Scooby.
Don't let her be a Scooby, please.
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