Monthly Archives: September 2008

Yet Another Blog Slowdown

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Yes, we’re away again for a while, this time to Northern Italy, so posting will be even more sporadic and unreliable than last week. While my time is spent catching up on some reading in some crystal clear air, I’m forced to be lazy, relying on YouTube videos, at least one of which is already sweeping the net. How dreary! And yet, I can’t help myself.

First, apologies to any readers (or co-bloggers) who hate Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear ethos (a colleague of mine refers to such people as the Pave The World Collective), but while weighing up candidates for the Caruso Awards I had intended to mention this police car challenge from the first episode of the most recent mini-season, not just because I thought it was funny, but also because it is a perfect example of what the show does best: juvenile silliness and male braggadoccio run rampant, as well as some excellent editing and truly superb use of music. For something as silly as this, a lot of effort and thought went into constructing it.

In the end I kinda forgot to include it, but here I can make up for that. The whole section comes to a fair whack of time, but I recommend it if you can spare it. The idea seemed more boring than their usual silly challenges, but the final result was much gasping and wheezing from myself. I was set off by James May’s arrival complete with perfect theme tune, and spent the rest of the episode trying to catch my breath. Here it is, in three installments.

Of everything the BBC did this year (that I’ve seen, obviously), that is my favourite. I appreciate not everyone will love it, but this clip, shamelessly stolen from Warren Ellis’ website, should more than make up for that.

Shameful admission: even my atheism doesn’t get in the way of the genuine love I have for that song, but the fact that I can’t get it out of my mind certainly is a problem. Canyon, on the other hand, is crying in mental pain, for which I apologise. Arrivederci for a little while!

This Week In TV Year II (Week 3, cont.)

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As promised yesterday, more of the same.

Potential Plagiarism of the Week:

This week’s big scientifical revelation in Fringe, that some ill-defined bad guys are using a mode of tech-lepathy called The Ghost Network, sounds awfully like something Warren Ellis would cook up, right down to the cyber-hip name. It sounds so much like one of his ideas that it gave me deja vu that persists days later. Has Ellis come up with this concept before? Did they rip him off? He’s so prolific that can’t keep track of every mad thing he has come up with, so until someone sets me right, I’m going to fret about it.

Actual Plagiarism of the Week:

Tim Kring has been eager to stress that he doesn’t read comics, thus making any similarities between the show and anything in any comic ever a total coincidence. So does this mean he’s now going to say in interviews that he’s never seen Cronenberg’s The Fly?


Our jaws dropped at the shockingly obvious plagiarism of Suresh’s transformation into a wall-climbing superhuman shag-beast whose body is turning into something slimy and unpleasant (much like his original personality). It was just like the movie, even down to the shots of him staring into a mirror in horror, and scaling the walls of his loft before ravishing the nearest hott woman.


Still, even though this means, as Canyon pointed out, we’ve had to put up with way too many shots of Suresh coated in lard, it does mean we’ll get to see him pontificate on insect politics before having his head blown off by a sobbing Maya. I’ll get the popcorn ready for that turn of events.

Self-Plagiarism of the Week:

Announcing the season arc for Heroes with a flourish of impressive special effects, we were unfortunately treated to some not ao impressive ideas. Just like the first season, Hiro travels into the future and sees a city (this time Tokyo) destroyed by an enormous explosion.


I mean, this is a joke, right? Or there’s more to it. There has to be. Maybe it’s a bomb that has the Shanti virus in it, just to rip off the second season as well.

Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week:

Outside the Heroesverse it was either the new, relaxed Daniel Meade, who is only a backwards baseball cap away from total Durst-ocity…


…or Michael Le Traceur and his military beret that looks way too much like a moob stuck to his scalp.


Inside the Heroesverse it was either the futuristic angry garb of Peter “Greaser” Petrelli…


…or Maya Goopez who, as a Hispanic woman, is obviously required by TV law to dress like Hilda Suarez from Ugly Betty.


The costume department couldn’t think of any other way to dress her? I guess part of it was so that BrundleSuresh could yank her clothes off and have his way with her at a moment’s notice, but otherwise, it’s unimaginative and a bit insulting.

Bitchface of the Week:

Robin Tunney spent most of the running time of The Mentalist rolling her eyes and looking really hacked off.






Whereas House’s antics exasperate those around him, they still respect him and his intelligence. The cops that work with Patrick Jane, aka The Mentalist, seem to just hate him, and barely even appreciate his Amazing Powers of the Brain. It’s enough of a difference to make the formula work without seeming to be more of the same.

Mystery of the Week:

That subtitle makes it seem like I’m really fascinated by the big mystery in Fringe, i.e. who or what is the CEO of Massive Dynamics, what is his connection to Dr. Walter Bishop, and should the company’s name be spoken a la Alan Partridge, with the emphasis heavily on the MASSive? To be honest, I’m only mildly intrigued by this (and what The Pattern is), especially when compared to the WTFness of Lost‘s pilot, with its many fascinating mysteries. However, the Fringe questions are definitely interesting enough to keep me tuning in, and that’s before we get to Dr. Walter Bishop and the soothing voice of Anna “Vanatron” Torv. So, here are my guesses for who William Bell, CEO of MASSive Dynamics, is.

  • The clone of Dr. Walter Bishop (this is a popular theory on the internets).
  • The male clone of Olivia Dunham.
  • A miniaturised man operating Nina Sharp’s arm from a little operating booth within said arm, as a homage to box office titan Meet Dave.
  • The Fringe universe itself (with the various characters representing different aspects of his personality).
  • A steam-powered clockwork robot constructed by Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Babbage, and Michael Faraday.
  • A swarm of black nanobots that can be repelled by a sonic fence.
  • Doktor Sleepless.
  • Albert Einstein after drinking from the Fountain of Youth.
  • A heckuva guy!!!
  • A cloud of living thoughts in a jar, made crazy in isolation and now plotting revenge.
  • The secret child of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, conceived at the behest of a cabal of Cthulhu-worshippers, and fated to bring about the return of the Elder Gods, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!
  • An unholy genetic hybrid of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Rupert Murdoch, Masaru Ibuka, and Andy Dick.
  • Keyser Soze.

    • I demand prizes if any of these is right.

    Passive Aggressive Jerk of the Week:

    Upon being confronted by his annoying mother about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Greaser Petrelli snaps, “Sorry mom, I’m too busy saving the world right now.”


    We were hoping he would follow that up by saying, “Saving it with string, mom. String!”

    Unedifying Sight of the Week:

    Paula Garces, who spent a period on The Shield being unbearably snotty and unprofessional to everyone else working at The Barn while being groomed by Dutch Wagenbach in a particularly depressing subplot, has taken a break from appearing in televisual excellence to be treated like a big sexpot on Knight Rider. Seeing her disembark from a car with gullwing doors from a seat that is way too low was utterly depressing. It’s not her fault, obviously, but did no one realise that showing a hott spy struggling to get out of a car had the opposite effect of that intended, i.e. to get the teenage boys at home all excited?







    The series of pictures above range across about five minutes of screentime. (This is a lie.) If you could see it in motion you’d understand why it’s so awful. Poor Paula Garces, forced to dress like someone from an Austin Powers movie.


    Still, at least she inspired Jerell when coming up with a pop-style outfit for the odious and bratty Kenley on this week’s Project Runway.


    Lose, you whiny brat, LOSE!

    Career Move of the Week:

    An end to our pain…


    Run, Stephen Tobolowsky! Run for the hills! And if they want you back for a flashback or dream sequence, just say no.

    Gupta of the Week:

    Zoe, the button-pusher in Knight Rider, is so ill-conceived, mean, and relentlessly smug, that it shows up the entire awful show for the mistake that it is. There is no charm here, no humour, no excuse. Lowlights include:

  • Reacting to the imminent fiery death of Michael Le Traceur and Sarah Blandhott by sleazily delivering the line, “This just got interesting.”
  • Reacting to the lucky escape everyone gets from being killed by a napalm-coated morphing supercar crashing into a closed door by saying, “That was awesome.” She trots out another awesome when her colleague, Billy, “comically” passes out.
  • Saying “Owned!” to Billy after KITT chides him in Kilmeresque monotone. That one was for the kidz!
  • Sneering at a highly stressed Billy that, “You’d better hope this works, because if it doesn’t…” meaning, “…our two colleagues will burn to death,” all the while smiling at some fixed point off camera, which is the least inspiring comment ever given to a rapidly-typing computer nerd during an emergency.


    • Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put a catty bitch in this cast? Is she meant to be funny? Sassy? All she is is a skinny burr under our mind-saddle. It’s like someone wandered into the Knight Rider HQ from an America’s Next Top Model photoshoot. There is no scenario conceivable that makes this decision work.

    Silliest Exposition of the Week:

    While going through a list of supervillains, Noah Bennett tells newly glum daughter Claire what each of their superpowers are. The German is Magneto, Pyrokinetic Man is Pyro, and Jesse… Well, you don’t want to know! Except that anyone with the superpower of being able to read can see that his superpower doesn’t sound so bad.


    So, basically he’s Paul Oakenfold.


    I’m shaking in my boots.

    Over-Used Plot Device of the Week:

    Brain surgery! It’s grisly, it’s scary, it’s slowly becoming boring. If it’s not Chase the Moron poking around in Felicia Day’s medulla oblongata…


    …it’s Dr. Walter Bishop moving a blob of liquid metal around Bill Hicks-lookalike Zac Orth’s visual and auditory centres…


    …or it’s Sylar doing… well, something nasty to Claire’s brain.


    I love that Tim Kring said we would get an answer to the question of what Sylar does to brains in order to acquire powers. Well, now we know. He does something nasty. Thanks Tim!

    Improbable Transformation of the Week:

    After an act of stupidity so profound that it drove Canyon into a fit of rage, Betty ends up renting the worst apartment ever without viewing it first because of an attack of plot-contrivitis.


    As if that wasn’t annoying enough, in the final scenes Hilda, Justin and Ignacio save the day with about eight hours of decorating, leaving the apartment looking so good Betty and her heinous stockings have a little dance to celebrate.


    I have to keep reminding myself that this is a fairytale, and that in the Ugly Bettyverse, nothing can trump The Power of Family. Still, though.

    Intensity of the Week:


    It almost burns, the intensity.

    So, a busier week than I expected, but with a bit of actual entertainment, a promising new show, and lots of unintentional humour. So what does Brian Michael Bendoom think?


    That’s some dastardly indifference right there.

    Reed Richards Is Brane Smart

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    From Secret Invasion #6:


    “Hold on, Tony, sorry to interrupt. Reed? I know I’m just your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, and I’m not as brane smart as you are, but seriously, can’t we be detected even though we have a cloak? I mean, it stands to reason that a fleet of cloaked ships would need to know where the rest of the fleet is, otherwise a bunch of invisible ships would keep crashing in mid-air because they can’t see each other, which means the Skrulls probably could detect us, right?”
    “SHUT UP PETER I AM SMARTER THAN YOU!”


    And don’t you forget it.

    Things I Found Out Today (Sept. 23rd and a bit of 24th)

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    1. Vampires can be boring, if you try real hard.
    2. Cats are often very cute.
    3. Forest Whitaker is now one of my very favourite actors ever, and the season five finale of The Shield is in my all time top ten favourite hours of TV ever. More on that at a later date.
    4. You’re bleeding!
    5. Ain’t got time to bleed.
    6. If I wanted to buy tickets to see Synecdoche, New York at the London Film Festival, I should have tried to buy them a millisecond after midnight instead of ten minutes past.
    7. Häagen-Dazs Summer Berries and Cream ice cream should be made all year round because it is pretty much ambrosia.
    8. The Plural of Chud is Chud.

    That is all.

    The Curse Of Caruso!

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    Seriously, I think this blog, as well as changing Heat magazine policy on shameful circles, has somehow punched way above its weight class (like, way way way way above), and affected the Emmy voting. Here is a rundown of the horror:

    Two weeks ago, I said of Michael Emerson in The Shape Of Things To Come, (pictorially represented here by co-stars Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Dae Kim, as I couldn’t find a red carpet picture of Emerson):


    [T]he best performance of the year. Screw it, the decade. Michael Emerson’s command of the screen is already frightening, and this most shocking of episodes featured his greatest moment yet, a near-wordless breakdown followed by terrifying revenge as our anti-hero chooses to unleash unworldy terror upon his nemesis, even at the cost of losing his hold on the thing he holds most dear. There were countless other superb moments in this episode, but that was the most impressive five minutes of the year.

    And the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series goes to… Zeljko Ivanek in Damages! I’ve not seen the show, so I can’t say what he is like on it. However, he is a terrific actor, impressing me hugely in The Pillowman opposite Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum a few years back. Nevertheless, NOOOOOOOOOOO! I hope you’re happy now, Jacob!

    A few months ago, I said of House’s Head co-director Greg Yaitanes (pictorially represented here by House actress Olivia Wilde, as I couldn’t find a red carpet picture of Yaitanes):


    [W]hile I liked the whole finale overall, the first part was, sadly, overdirected to the point of obnoxiousness by Greg Yaitanes (who I have railed against before). If ever there was a TV director who is determined to get noticed enough to win a film career, it’s him, filling the episode with annoying Sonnenfeld-esque close-ups, flashy lighting, and Cuddy stripping. Here is a picture of her post-strip. [ETA: See original post for boring picture if you really need to see House and Cuddy looking bored.] I’m not going to contribute to the uncomfortable memory of poor Lisa Edelstein having to dress like a schoolgirl and rub her butt on a pole. [ETA: And I'm still not going to. It was unedifying.]

    And the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series goes to…Greg Yaitanes for House’s Head! As I said before, I’m perplexed as to why co-director Katie Jacobs got no mention, but there might be some info out there I don’t know about. Still, at least he didn’t win for his hilarious work on Heroes, and House’s Head did feature some good work.

    Earlier this year I said of Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner (pictorially represented here by Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks, as I couldn’t find a red carpet picture of Weiner):


    After the first episode we had learned that during the 60s, men were sexist pigs, women were oppressed and treated as chattel, homosexuals were closeted, white Americans were racist, and everyone was drinking and smoking way too much and ignoring the health risks. It was enlightening! And then the next six or so episodes did very little to move beyond these points.

    And the Emmy for Outstanding Writing For A Drama Series goes to…Matthew Weiner and his script for Mad Men pilot Smoke Gets In Your Eyes! As I’ve said since, the show has grown on me, and I don’t feel so frustrated by its insistence on drawing attention to its period detail as I did at first, but even so, that pilot was awfully obvious, and season closer The Wheel, which Weiner also wrote (with Robin Veith), was much stronger.

    A loooooooong time ago, I said of Pushing Daisies director Barry Sonnenfeld (pictorially represented here by Pushing Daisies actor Lee Pace, as I couldn’t find a red carpet picture of Sonnenfeld):


    His work on the Coen’s early movies blew me away when I was younger, and he did strong work with Rob Reiner on When Harry Met Sally and Misery. Then he became a director with an extremely limited bag of tricks ripped off from his time on Raising Arizona, mostly involving dollying into something to express emphasis, fish-eye lenses, lots of attention-seeking POV, and pointless overhead shots…In a 42 minute long show, he had at least 34 emphasis dollies, 11 overhead shots, and POV every five minutes (yes, I actually counted). It blighted the show to such an extent that I even forgot to be annoyed by the cloying narration. I may have enjoyed some of Tim Burton’s early work, and I might have even liked Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, both of which were stylistically very similar to Pushing Daisies, but that knowing fairy-tale style gets old real quick, and the show was utterly hamstrung by it.

    And the Emmy for Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series goes to…Barry Sonnenfeld for Pie-lette! As Noel Murray said on The AV Club, “it’s kind of interesting that Sonnenfeld was all-but fired for going over budget and getting too ambitious with the show”. Consider this a validation of his over-spending and reliance on a limited set of ideas. Thanks, Emmys! Luckily, as I have said many a time, once he stepped away from the director’s chair, things improved immensely.

    A little while ago I said of the episode of The Office called Dinner Party:

    Director Paul Feig and writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky delivered a masterpiece of sphincter-tightening discomfort that not only showed up the original BBC series (which I would have thought was an impossibility), but also anything that fraud Mike Leigh has done. It was the kind of format-busting experiment that proves that, when given enough legroom by the suits at the network, mainstream TV can transcend expectations and deliver devastating and uncompromising storytelling.

    And the Emmy for Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series goes to…Tina Fey for the 30 Rock episode Cooter (pictorially represented here by herself, because of Reason X)!


    Oh, I can’t hate on Tina Fey for winning that one, as she is just literally absolutely factually the utter Queen of the mystical land of Shiznit, but even so, that wasn’t the best episode of the season. Great fun, but not quite there (though I did love all of the Matthew Broderick stuff; some of my favourite satire of the year).

    It’s all a bunch of gratuitous carping up in this bitch! That’s not good. Ignore it all. Though I had my own preferences in these categories, the winners all pleased me in some way or other. It’s not like there are any really egregious choices there, and even if I felt really negatively towards something (such as the work of Sonnenfeld and Weiner), it was often setting in stone a template for something that I grew to like very much. Congratulations to everyone who won, for reals. And yes yes, I did find a red carpet picture of Matthew Weiner (seen here with John Slattery).


    If you think I’m going to get as many hits by covering this blog with pictures of Matthew Weiner, talented fellow though he is, instead of pictures of Christina Hendricks, then you are smoking the drugs. I’m all about the hits, people.

    Dexter Ex Machina

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    Dexter Morgan is Hannibal Lecter if Hannibal Lecter was a vegan puppy dog. Ostensibly asking questions about morality and justice, the second season of Dexter, which finished in the UK last night, began weak, got stronger as it went along, and ended up throwing away a lot of the progress it had made in a meldoramatic blaze. If you’ve not yet seen the second season finale, read no further. If you’ve not yet seen any of it, skip it altogether, and instead watch Pushing Daisies (for something that gets the stylisation/tone equation correct), The Shield (for a truly brain-shaking and thrilling exploration of the effects of corruption and moral confusion on the justice system) and Manhunter (for Will Graham cursing his quarry out, and for Brian Cox being amoral and weird and wonderful).


    Funny I should mention spoilers. When The British Invasion aired in the US last year, I mistakenly heard that Dexter killed Doakes, and so watching the lead-up to the finale was seen through that lens. It meant that, for the first time since the show started, we began rooting for Doakes, and were pleased to see Erik King move on from his reliance on Blue Steel (jumping past Le Tigre and going straight for Magnum). It also made us restless to get to that moment, even if we had begun to dread it, as Dexter explored his options through his preferred medium of pretentious voiceover, which sucked all suspense out of the No Way Out style plot. I’m not going to criticise the show for not ratcheting the tension up more, because I wonder if that was even the intention of the showrunners, but it suffered by comparison with the third season of, yes, The Shield, which we were watching at the same time we were watching the second season of Dexter. As Vic Mackey and the Strike Team dodged their colleagues for fifteen stunning and nerve-wracking episodes, all while exploring the consequences of their corruption, Dexter could only look anaemic in comparison (pun sort of intended).


    What’s worse, while the Strike Team suffer terrible emotional consequences for their actions, Dexter dodges a bullet in an unfortunately silly fashion. The fiery death of Doakes inspired many conflicting emotions in us (possibly a first for the show, which usually just irritates us): relief, as having Doakes killed by Dexter would push our anti-hero over a moral line we could never forgive; frustration, as being killed by Dexter would have been the boldest thing done on the show yet and would have shown some real courage on the part of the showrunners; slack-jawed astonishment, as even though Lila’s mental process had been set up with great care throughout the season, it was still an outrageous cheat to take Doakes’ ultimate fate from Dexter and place it in her hands. To follow that up with a series of coincidences leading up to a melodramatic kidnap plot, not to mention the godawful and ill-judged in-show recreation of the wonderful title sequence, and the unintentionally silly Satanic Baptism/Rebirth visual of a newly re-purposed Dexter bursting through a conveniently flimsy wall, was utterly exasperating.

    That’s before we get to the plot stasis of the show which is a regrettable side-effect of the success of the show. While it would be nice to see the show end on a properly bleak note for a show out someone who, despite his cuddliness, is a fucking serial killer for crying out loud, we’re always going to see Dexter fudge his moral challenges and do the “right” thing. Killing the people who understand him best (his brother and Lila) might seem like a big deal on a surface level, but it’s always done in such a way as to present no challenge to his morals, with the extra consequence of making him seem like a martyr by sacrificing his own peace of mind through the act of murdering the “right” person instead of keeping these monsters around for company. That said, kudos for allowing Dexter to see that the one person he thought understood him, his adoptive father, was actually disgusted by him. Having him face the fact that he really is a monster with a nice line in self-serving justification was one of the things this season did really well.


    By this point in the show it’s become apparent that the show can be seen two different ways. If you’re willing to forgive Dexter his murderous ways, the show is all about following him on a journey of self-discovery, trying to fit in and learn how to feel like he belongs, all while he struggles with his impulses, trying to transform them into a productive act, even when faced with complications. This new Dexter might have finally understood what it is to feel, instead of being a blank slate, which is the first real character progression the show has had. However, if you don’t buy into it, it’s a bunch of pointless plate spinning. Dexter might make speeches about how he’s not operating by the Code of Harry by the time the season finishes, and the next season might mark a notable departure from his past, but to be uncharitable for a moment, though his modus operandi seemed to be slightly different while killing Lila, he’s still punishing a murderer, thus keeping the show running for a while linger. This season hinted at pushing Dexter into breaking the code, but at the last second he was saved by a British deus ex machina with a annoying way of talking.

    That he killed her and then seemed to embrace family life is only an incremental change from what he was like before, i.e. someone who would have killed her and then tried to fake having a happy family life. Again, I’m curious to see how it plays out, but this new Dexter is only known to us so far through portentous narration. A finale like this needed to see a more visual, dramatic expression of his new nature for us to feel any sense of narrative movement. As it was, the final scenes fell flat, with only his voiceover to tell us things had changed, and no amount of shots of Jaime Murray standing around in Paris was going to stand in for that need (and I’m not going to go on about how Dexter found her, but seriously, when did he become Jason Bourne?).


    What’s worse, having Lila take Doakes off Dexter’s hands was seemingly done because the other options would paint the show into a francise-wrecking corner. Killing Doakes, while an interesting narrative choice, would push Dexter too far over the audience-sympathy line (same with his sister in season one, which is a shame as we were really hoping he would do it and get that potty-mouthed Gupta the hell off our screens). On the other hand, framing Doakes would mean the next season would constantly be derailed with the side sory of Doakes trying to prove his innocence and Dexter’s guilt. We’ve already had a season of that, and it needed to move on. Therefore, Lila conveniently deals with Dexter’s problem. That means the drama up to that point mainly serves to show how Dexter would deal with the Doakes problem, and he does it just the way you would expect, by trying to frame him. We learn nothing new about him, no matter how many tedious monologues we hear, and in the end the only dramatic point of it all is that we see Dexter’s actions through someone else’s eyes, when Doakes is trapped in a cage while his captor hacks a drug-dealer up.

    An aside: while I’ve been ragging on this show a lot, I still watch it in the hopes of some improvement or impressive story-telling, and this season managed it once. The scene with Doakes begging for this man’s life, where we see Dexter for the monster he really is, was easily the best thing about the whole season. Kudos to King and Hall, both of whom really stepped up to the plate. So I guess the Dexter/Doakes plot was justified in that we got to have that great scene, but otherwise, it was a waste of time. The drama, which had the potential to completely change the direction of the show and really challenge our assumptions and empathic allegiance (something The Shield does constantly), ended up becoming little more than Dexter mulling over his options without ever having to act on them thanks to the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl Serial Killer Groupie. Yawn!


    The end result of all this is a confused me. Do I watch the next season, which might feature a new brand of Dexter? Or do I cut my losses now, fully expecting that the reset button will be hit at the end of the year? The potential for interesting storytelling is still there, so maybe I should stick with it, but I also have to take into account how much the execution irks me, which is a whole hell of a lot. In the end it could all come down to time. Why watch something that annoys and frustrates me when I could be reading the new Neal Stephenson novel? Put like that, the choice is very easy. I need this show to shock the shit out of me, or it’s dropped. Dexter, consider yourself on probation.

    This Week In TV Year II (Week 2)

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    During the last TV season I got myself into a right tizzy blogging about the various shows aired that week, taking on too much for little reward. So, with the new season starting in a staggered manner, I’m coming to it a bit late (or perhaps too early). I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep this up each week, but I will try, if only to see how long Fringe lasts, which is a shocking turn of events considering it was expected to be such a big hit. That said, it does featureone unmissable element…

    Mad Scientist of the Week:

    Dr. Walter Bishop is our new favourite character on TV after just a few minutes of screentime, but if you’ve seen Fringe you’ll probably understand. While the show underwhelms as drama and underperforms as a ratings grabber, it’s got four things going for it. 1) Lance “Intensity” Reddick in full effect. 2) Blair Brown as the cyber-arm wielding Nina Sharp, though her casting appeals to me more as a reminder of Altered States than anything else. 3) Darin Morgan is on staff as a consulting producer, hopefully getting to add his stamp to the show in the way he didn’t on the Diabolical Bionical Woman. 4) is Walter Bishop, a modern-day Frankenstein, shunned by the scientific community, mistrusted by his son, and perhaps responsible for The Pattern, a mysterious sounding arc-MacGuffin that sounds like it was put into play by Milo Rambaldi and Gerald De Groot in an Abrams-verse super-team-up.


    None of which would make an impact at this early stage, if it wasn’t for John Noble’s vastly entertaining performance. After one particularly amazing line-reading, which made a tedious comment both silly, informative, and heart-wrenching all at the same time, Canyon exclaimed, “Oh my God he’s so good!”


    She was right. Nailing every joke and wringing pathos out of every situation, he brought the goods. Even if the other reasons to watch don’t pan out, we’re sticking around for John Noble.

    Most Pointless Character of the Week:

    Though I would have loved to have given it to Chase, who continues to serve little or no purpose in House (less than Cameron, amazingly), the honor has to go to the utterly vestigial Peter Bishop, a supposed supergenius in his own right, but whose purpose on Fringe seems to be repeating dialogue back to people just I case the audience missed it the first time around. The only wrinkle Joshua Jackson adds is to deliver those lines either with reflexive, annoying sarcasm or disbelief. Once an episode would be too much, but he gets to do it about nine thousand times. The showrunners, in a fit of paranoia about their product, seem to think the audience will be sitting at home scoffing at every absurd event on screen, and so must have someone in the show echoing that eye-rolling. Though I will admit a plot involving rapidly-grown supersoldiers who have to eat pituitary glands to stop themselves ageing is ridiculous, but it’s a sci fi show about mad science. I don’t need someone on screen going, “Mad science?!?? Do you know how mad that is?” Plus, Joshua Jackson, who was just fine in that performance of A Life In The Theatre we once saw him in, is deeply annoying in this, and appears to have a weird fold in the middle of his forehead.


    Did mad science put it there?!?!!?

    Worst Stylistic Tic of the Week:

    Canyon and I disagree on as many things as we agree on, and one of the first things we found we had a difference of opinion about was lens flares. I love them, mostly because they’re old school and looked so good in Die Hard (why can’t Jan De Bont swallow his pride and go back to excellent cinematography?), and she hates them because they distract the eye and remind you you’re watching a movie or TV show. Much to my disgust, however, while nostalgic love of photographic stylistic choices is my cross to bear, no one should have to put up with the ridiculous CGI faux-flares in Fringe.



    During the deeply unpleasant opener and the suspense-free finale, every action shot opened with an identical flare, sometimes mirrored but otherwise the same.



    It didn’t matter if there was no light source for it; it was just added. Why director Paul Edwards and producers JJ Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci thought this was anything other than a silly distraction is beyond me.



    Real flares only! Don’t accept the CGI kind.



    Still, the finale did feature one stylistic choice I could totally get behind. While Josh Jackson did his flappy defribrillator shtick, and Anna Torv ran around in the dark with her gun out in front of her like the TV cops do, it kept cutting back to Walter eating popcorn and impassively explaining how to shock a dying woman back to life. Hilarious stuff. We love you, Walter Bishop!

    Reaction of the Week:

    Pete Campbell’s glum expression when he realises Don Draper isn’t going to invite him to his party was the funniest sight of the week.


    We love not loving this little creep.

    Disappointment of the Week:

    There was no way that House M.D. was going to top last year’s format shake-up, and I wasn’t going to expect it, but even taking into account the fireworks of that excellent two-part season finale, this was still a flat episode. While still providing many laughs and much character drama (plus a rare admission of sorrow from House), as well as some top-notch work from Robert Sean Leonard, there was little to distinguish it from typical mid-season filler. Except, of course, Wilson’s departure.


    The final scene, with him telling House to basically go screw himself for beng a toxic asshole, was great, but I’m unable to feel good about it. Though there may be great dramatic opportunities opened up by House potentially becoming even more of a jerk without the corrective influence of Wilson around (nicely picked up by Foreman), our favourite moments of the show are the conversations between them. Without that, no matter what happens next, we’re going to miss that.

    Youthified Legend of the Week:

    Attempting to capture the Doctor Who lightning in a bottle once more, the BBC has revisualised Le Morte D’Arthur and The Once and Future King in much the same way that Robin Hood was turned into a topical drama about the war on terror. Having not seen Hood I can’t compare it to Merlin, but I can say that the new show is not a disaster, though any praise I’ll throw its way will be extremely faint in nature.


    Early impressions hinted that by presenting Merlin: The Teenage Years we would be getting a transparently Harry Potter style grab at the attentions of Brit children, and though it’s a blatantly cynical move, it also seemed kinda logical. Why not capitalise on that? I’m almost jealous that someone else came up with the idea. What did surprise me was the similarities with Smallville and Gossip Girl, of all things. Just as Smallville starts with Clark Kent and Lex Luthor becoming friends, thus setting out the relationship arc between them, Merlin features the mirror version of that, with Merlin and Prince Arthur bickering at first sight, even though we know they will eventually become a partnership.


    That snarky relationship is one of the most likeable things about it, with Colin Morgan and Bradley James keeping it pleasingly light. However, it kept reminding me of the fractious early relationship between Dan Humphrey and Nate Archibald in Gossip Girl. From that point on, I realised the show was going to spend as much time on exploring the dreary relationship combinations between Merlin, Arthur, Guinevere, and Morgana at the expense of the mystical aspects of the myth, which so far include Uther Pendragon (a grumpy Anthony Head) outlawing magic, and Merlin using what amounts to a lot of telekinesis. It’s practically counting down the episdes until a saucy youngster called Lancelot turns up and complicates things even more (he will be played by Santiago Cabrera, formerly of Heroes).


    Speaking of the myth, it’s interesting that The O.C. and Gossip Girl appear to be templates for this, using the class difference between Merlin and Arthur as the basis of their antagonism. Of course, in the most famous renderings of the myth, Arthur is kept out of Uther’s circle, and only becomes king when he pulls Excalibur from the stone. Here he is already a cocky young shaver, treating his servants badly and being a total dick. Luckily the change works, and I’m not about to get pissy about the alterations. It’s so far removed from any classical renderings of the legend, especially with the colloquialisms and very modern cast diversity, that it would be churlish to see it as anything other than a frivolous and mildly diverting curio. I might not bother watching further, but I’m not repelled either. Plus, it’s made me want to watch Excalibur again, even though that film is crazy nonsense.

    Meltdown of the Week:

    Progressing elegantly from Shaky Hands to avian genocide to the 19th nervous breakdown that probably inspired the Rolling Stones, Betty Draper went full-on Howard Beale at Don Draper, after practising on a chair.


    Sadly the very entertaining crazy was handled by January Jones, an actress who still fails to convince us she can pull this kind of thing off.


    It was especially frustrating as she did raise her game with her best opportunities yet, but was still blasted off the screen by show-best work from Elizabeth Moss and her life of empty “success”, and Christina Hendricks, whose hypocritical embrace of career progression contrasted with Peggy’s ennui. The scene with her dealing with the loss of that newly discovered world of responsibility and achievement should be her award clip next year.


    Though it didn’t feature raggedy hair and obsessive suit-sniffing. Score one for Jones.

    Pleasing Visual of the Week:

    As mentioned many times in the past, we love dragons, and for all its faults, at least Merlin features a dragon.


    As voiced by John Hurt, and obviouslty hamstrung by budget, it’s still better than some, but not as good as Vermithrax Pejorative. We’re still impatiently waiting to see Temeraire on the big screen for a definitive dragon, PETER JACKSON!!!

    Intensity of the Week:

    Lance “Intensity” Reddick!


    Yes, I’m going to bang this into the ground just like I did with Ray Wise and his awesome grin. Je ne regrette rien.

    Biggest Shock of the Week:

    There I am trying to relax with Merlin on iPlayer, and what happens?


    Eve Myles aka Gwen from the hated Torchwood!?!?! No one warned me! I was taken utterly aback. Just to make things worse, a few seconds later there were two Gwens, as an evil old crone uses magic to impersonate her. Surely this is madness!


    To be honest, without her usual Gwen-style histrionics, Eve Myles gave a fair performance, merely being a bit sinister at times while presenting a friendly face the rest of the time, all to get closer to Arthur so that she can kill him. I was almost disappointed, but thankfully, at the end we get to see her badly lip-synching to some Gaelic song in front of Uther and his courtiers, as well as waggling her arms in an approximation of a dance. The tears, they flowed down my face.


    She even gets to go batshit murderous with a knife. Oh how I’ve missed her expressive face!


    It’s a shame she gets murderlised by Merlin using his own magic to crash something on her head, as weekly appearances by her would definitely keep me tuning in, but still, this little reminder of her peculiar talents was enough to make my day.

    So, some underperforming new shows, a returning show that fails to live up to the previous episode, and some top 60s events to make up for all that. Brian Michael Bendoom, what did you think of this week in TV?


    I can’t argue with that.

    Canadian Actor Saves Atheists From Assassins

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    Though there is nothing more boring than hearing someone telling you about their dreams, I’m going to totally tell you about the dream I just had, because it was strangely awesome. Yesterday, after spending two consecutive days obsessively reading The Huffington Post, Salon, The Daily Dish, Daily Kos, and various other websites pointing out the scary facts about vice-presidential candidate and nemesis of the polar bear Sarah Palin, I had a minor panic attack while washing dishes (not the first time), and then a really scarily detailed vision of what the world would be like if Palin became Vice-President and then President (because I’m thinking worst case scenario, here). It entailed Righteousness testing for all citizens, judging Americans for their loyalty to the Judeo-Christian God, and anyone who failed would be interred in camps for retraining. If that didn’t take, they’d be shot. It was seriously terrifying, so terrifying that I forgot where I was and nearly stabbed myself in the hand with a soap-coated knife.

    I think I know where it comes from. Recently I read God Is Not Great by that pissy souse Christopher Hitchens (the quality of the book is inversely proportional to his likeability), and having also read The God Delusion by the man Dawkins, and Sam Harris’ The End Of Faith, it’s made me very jumpy when it comes to my atheism and how it is viewed by fundamentalists of all different flavours. While I obviously have nothing against religiously inclined individuals, monolithic institutions do scare me greatly, and the thought that I would be punished for not believing in God weighs heavily on me. I appreciate that the books mentioned above are the atheist equivalent of the Daily Mail’s Hate Your Neighbour ranting (though much better written, obviously), and that the effect they had on me (XXXtreme ennui and terror) was my own fault for gobbling them down, but the fact remains, they put the fear of not-God into me. Yes, my mind has come to the conclusion, after reading about her vehement belief in God, that Sarah Palin (seen here with a crustacean representing her soul)…


    …is the living embodiment of Mrs. Carmody from The Mist.


    Be afraid. Be really really really afraid. Another contributing factor to my upsetting vision is Ed Zwick’s The Siege, which was on Sky Movies this weekend. When it came out years and years ago I thought it was passably entertaining, but then with my feeble understanding of the Middle East I didn’t think it was insensitive either, especially as the real bad guys were Bruce Willis and Annette Bening (well, other than the poorly sketched Islamic terrorists who are just boogeymen with no dialogue and no inner life except “Kill Infidels!”). The thing that struck me most were the horrible scenes of New York Muslims interred in concentration camps, which were shown as an example of policy gone wrong, as a huge over-reaction and disastrous decision, and not as a possibly good idea should it ever come to that. At its best, it shows that Posse Comitatus is probably a good thing. Sadly, it’s not at its best very often. For the majority of its running time, it’s lunk-headed and doofy.


    Of course, seeing it now with a bit more knowledge at hand, it is also prescient and uncomfortable viewing, not to mention dumb, cliched, and offensive on many levels, but if you don’t focus on the ineptly presented politics, Bening and Denzel Washington have an entertaining chemistry, Tony Shalhoub is great value as ever, and OMG! Look, in the supporting cast! Lance “Intensity” Reddick (operating at minimal intensity, which is still pretty goddamn intense), and Aasif Mandvi in a depressing role as Cowardly Muslim What Gets Chased Everywhere. Seeing one of our favourite Daily Show correspondents saying little more than “Durka durka!” prior to getting roughed up by Bening’s goons was a miserable experience. And what does he get out of it? Denzel feels sorry for him getting beaten up when it turns out he is a mere patsy, and then gives him a cigarette as an apology. Yay? Here he is in happier times.


    So, with all of this playing on my nerves, nerves that are already shot due to frustrating economic and employment concerns, last night I dreamt that the UK had been hit by a massive influx of atheists flying over from America to avoid the pogroms against them, orchestrated by Sarah Palin-Carmody with miltary force. N.B. I’m using the word in the sense of violence against any group, and not in its (regrettably) more common anti-Semitic form. As the UK cannot cope with the effects of this huge exodus, it goes all Children of Men as camps are set up throughout the country to house the Americans. And yes, I’m aware that this is a fucked up dream. Even worse, President Palin-Carmody demands the return of all of the atheists for immediate religious retraining and righteous punishment by her Christian militia, and PM Gordon Brown, still in thrall to the American machine and concerned about the growing anger over the rise in immigration, strongly considers this. At about this point I turned up in the dream, as someone helping out at the camps, working as an liaison between the Americans and the British soldiers running the joint, but just to complicate matters I kinda woke up at about this point, and thought, as is often the case when half awake, that I was dreaming the best goddamn movie ever, and started to plot it out in my semi-conscious state. That would account for how I got replaced in my dream-movie by Nathan Fillion, someone several thousand times hotter and more charming than me.


    Yes, the hero of this movie, played by Nathan Fillion, hears that the government is thinking of shipping the Americans back to the States, and helps lead a rebellion against this. The Americans, in horror, decide to stay within the camps, which in turn causes more trouble for the government. Unable to remove the Americans without terrible consequences, and with the British troops unwilling to act against them out of sympathy, the government allows fundamentalist black ops assassins to infiltrate the camp containing our hero, which is where the dream got a bit stupid. For a start, they were stealthily disguised as black leather-clad ninja-bikers with machine guns, and as they try to mow down the defenseless atheists, the hero takes them down, yanking one ninja-biker off his bike, snapping his neck with the machine gun strap, and turning the gun on the other assassins. Awesome violence ensues as he saves the atheists! Then, however, he starts to suspect that someone in the camp is not who they seem. And that someone is played by Sean Connery.


    I know, I didn’t get that either. Sean Connery tells Nathan Fillion that there is evil afoot, and while they sit around a camp fire eating marshmallows, Connery reveals that Gordon Brown has allowed the assassins free run at the camps, and thinks the slaughter of the atheists would get a sticky political situation off his back. Our hero is rightly disgusted by this, and storms into the visitors gallery in the House of Commons. Mid-debate, our hero reveals the dastardly plot to let the White House fundamentalists send their ninja-bikers into the concentration camps to kill the atheists, and there is uproar among the MPs as Gordon Brown slumps down onto his bench, shredded copies of Hansard fluttering around him, his sneaky and cowardly plans responsible for his downfall. I also remember thinking, while half-asleep, that that would be awesome.

    Sadly my subconscious wasn’t done yet. Upon returning to the camp to tell everyone the good news, a random American informs our hero that he has found out that Sean Connery is not who he seems to be. He is actually Allan Quatermain, as played by Sean Connery in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen!

    (That must be because I’ve been thinking about Colonel Gentleman from The Venture Brothers recently.) Realising this, our hero chases Quatermain down to his ramshackle house in North London, where he lives alone with his enormous collection of goth porn. Quatermain insists that he regrets nothing, and that he is happy with his life as a collector of depressing pornography. However, our hero cannot escape with the knowledge of his true identity and depraved hobby, and so Quatermain pulls out a toy laser gun, modelled after something from an old Flash Gordon serial, and fires it! Except it doesn’t go off as expected. In a weirdly elaborate effects sequence that played out in scarily vivid detail in my brain, a super-close-up of the gun shows electricity running through it, vaporising the plastic, causing it to explode. Quatermain doesn’t die, but the words, “Don’t let her down!” are splattered across the wall in hot plastic. The End!

    Well, the end of the dream-movie, which wraps up with a title card and the frozen image of the plastic message, leaving me, Canyon, and Jaredan from World of Wahhhcraft sitting in a cinema, surrounded by geeks in Watchmen t-shirts. Yes! It was not my movie we saw, it was Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, transformed from a deconstruction of the superhero genre into a cross between The Siege, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and some bad Mark Wahlberg action movie starring an undervalued Canadian acting genius. As we spilled out into the street, the nerds and fanboys rejoiced at this version of Watchmen, proclaiming it an enormous success (though I remember bitching that Moloch had been written out), and then all began cheering, “Fuck you Fox! Fuck you Fox! Fuck you Fox!” At that point, one of our cats put her paw squarely on my trachea, and I woke up.

    I reckon, as long as I take out the Allan Quatermain references but keep the goth porn and ninja-bikers, and maybe add some transforming robots, I’ve got a hit on my hands. Watch this space!!!