Category Archives: bad UK TV

Another Day, Another TV Channel Boycott…

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As Canyon recently mentioned on her Facebook page (yes, we have both succumbed to Facebook’s inexorable pull. I even have a Twitter page devoted to what I’m eating and what’s on TV), we have been greatly angered and saddened by FX’s decision not to renew its contract with Comedy Central, meaning the UK has become Colbert-free once more. A very small but piercingly intelligent cross-section of a nation mourns.


We have been dreading this since The Colbert Report debuted a year ago, a dread that intensified after FX (short for FuXX0rz) pushed the show back from 11pm to midnight (we even predicted it here). If a schedule is being tinkered with, something is going wrong. Was it low ratings that sank the show in the UK? Even the lovely folks at Late Show UK have not had any official confirmation from the channel as to why this has happened. That said, we are talking about a channel owned by News Corp, and they’re not big on listening to the little guy, preferring instead to take on the role of Heartless Corporate Monolith with such complete dedication that it’s almost parodic. I honestly believe they run on the tears of rage shed by the people they crush underfoot like so much blood-filled gravel.


So yeah, we’re fucking pissed off. And we’re not the only ones. An overwhelming two people are so annoyed at FX that they contributed to this forum. I smell the beginning of a grassroots campaign to change FX’s mind. Considering how News Corp got excited about the Tea Bagging parties recently conducted across America (shouldn’t that protest have been called Balls Across America’s Forehead?), perhaps we should send teabags to FX. Used teabags. That I’ve rubbed on my forehead.

Or we should just stop watching the stupid channel. I mean, they don’t even air the best shows US FX makes; The Shield is aired on Five and Five US, and Sons Of Anarchy is going to Bravo instead. Funny how the US FX business model is to make shows to sell around the world, and UK FX’s model is to buy other shows cheap and then dump them when they don’t fit their macho line-up. Though it’s nice that they’re showing Generation Kill, I’d rather see it all in one gulp on DVD. What else does FX have that’s worth watching? More Dexter? I’m dutifully plodding through The Most Overrated Show On TV™, but I can just get that some other way. I have no interest in The Listener, or the various Canadian or Australian police procedurals that keep cropping up, and I’ve got The Wire on DVD so I don’t need to watch that any more. Neither does anyone else, now that it’s being shown on BBC Four. The only other things they have to offer are Family Guy and American Dad, but seeing as how they are to comedy as Stephenie Meyer is to literature, that’s not exactly enticing.


So, we shall find another way to watch our beloved Stephen skewer the right-wing mindset so completely that conservatives don’t even realise it’s happening, and in the meantime, I’ll avoid FX and stick to watching Bravo (so much A-Team!), Sci Fi (Star Trek: TOS is getting a lot of rotation in anticipation of the new movie), Current TV (I can’t see enough documentaries made by well-off American post-teens during their most recent backpacking vacation through South America), and Controversial TV (it should be known as Edge Media TV but our EPG has renamed it so that it sounds like it was created by 1980′s-Ben-Elton). Fuck FX, fuck Fox, fuck News Corp.

Sci-Fi Season Premiere Face/Off! (Results)

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As anyone who has read both of my Sci-Fi Season Premiere Face/Off! posts will realise, I’ve pretty much given away the results already thanks to my extended Torchwood post, but there’s a couple of other things I need to get off my chest about the two shows and the genre they represent, and besides, what’s a Face/Off! without an arbitrary and complicated scoring system?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Cast:
Lena Headey: +2
Thomas Dekker: +2
Summer Glau: +6
Dean Winters: +4
Richard T. Lewis: +2
Owain Yeoman: 0
Total: 14

I feel a little guilty about awarding a low score to Owain Yeoman, mostly for indulging in some very silly posing and chewing of lines. He’s not actually bad. Perhaps he had little to work with. Still, it turns out he won’t be in the rest of the series, and the main antagonist is going to none other than future character acting legend Garret Dillahunt. This blog supports that decision wholeheartedly. As for Headey, Dekker and Lewis, it’s early days yet, and those scores might be rendered defunct soon.

Plot elements specific to these shows:
Convincing reactions to getting shot: -5
Tight plot: +5
The Sexxy: +1
Potential: +5
Badassery: +4
Conviction: +5
Total: 15

Having Lena Headey take a bullet to the shoulder for very little narrative reason and then have her miraculously heal by the next scene drops the score way down. It’s slowly becoming a bugbear of mine, seeing people get shot (usually in the shoulder) and then moving on as if nothing has just happened. The Sexxy relates to the show’s ambition in furthering the mainstream acceptance of sexual relationships that are not usually accepted by the masses, and as a primetime network there is certainly nothing as daring as this Not Safe For Work Flickr demonstration of
Terminator – on – Terminator lovemaking, but John Connor has obviously got the hots for his robotic bodyguard, which shows a progressive attitude to human/cyborg relationships, and there is some uncomfortable nudity at the end, so I’ll give it a point for that. Even though, you know, eww.


Conviction refers to whether the show has a seriousness of purpose, which is something I think is important in sci-fi. I’m not talking about humourlessness, something T:TSCC has in spades. It’s more that the show takes the genre seriously and isn’t sticking two fingers up at the fanbase. While it’s easy to say that WB and Fox are cynically resurrecting an old sci-fi franchise and exploiting the fans by knocking out a cheap version of a fan favourite, Friedman has certainly given the show a lot of thought, and for the most part the cast play it straight. Points deducted for Chromey’s “Class dismissed” line, which is both a nice nod to Arnie’s catchphrase habit while being really lame joke at the same time. Badassery? Trying to kill yourself to make it slightly harder for Chromey to find your son is pretty convincing. Kudos also for using gun play to further the plot, and not just to be used as a pose. The action here, which is constantly life or death, is much more convincing than having the entire cast pretending they’re on a YouTube homage to T.J. Hooker. In short, it wasn’t ubiquitous, and it was exciting, as it should be.

Miscellaneous:
Originality: +2
Liveliness: +4
Enthusiasm for project: +4
Avoidance of cliche: -3
Unique Selling Points: +4
Production values: +5
Total: 16

While the show occasionally lapses into cliche, and borrows heavily from the movies, it still brings new ideas to the format. The time travel moment came from nowhere but even though it stretches credibility, it is still a great way to expand the format. Technically it’s got a lot going for it, and looks like time and effort was spent getting it right. Though seriously, an FBI agent hunting them down? In future episodes will he be doing a hard-target search of gas stations, residences, warehouses, farmhouses, henhouses, outhouses and doghouses? Maybe FBI Agent James Ellison will come alive in future episodes when he has more to do (I’m sure I read somewhere he becomes a kind of charming comedy relief, improbably enough), but for now, it’s pretty hackneyed.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles overall total = 45

The highest score in any Face/Off to date! Okay, so the score is out of 180, but still, that’s something to be proud of. In a way I feel kind of bad for getting so excited about Terminator: TSCC, because in the scheme of things it’s not the best TV show around. It’s not even the best premiere of the season. It doesn’t spend too long in each scene (which could be construed as a lack of faith in viewer attention spans), the performances and cast chemistry have yet to settle, light moments with Summer Glau learning human responses come off all wrong, and the current surprising level of invention might dwindle quickly.


But if it doesn’t hang around to smell the televisual roses, that’s because it’s keeping up the pace. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that it moves at a clip. This is an action show about fugitives, and the pacing serves the plot perfectly. The first two episodes contain more action than your average episode of 24, and more action than the entire run of Heroes so far, a show that could stand to learn a lesson from T:TSCC and pick up the pace.

And yes, it might not be a huge step forward for the genre, and it might smack of cynical exploitation of James Cameron’s loss of Terminator franchise rights, but the showrunners seem to like the concept enough to do it justice and do it right. With regards to the source material, it’s not too reverent, but it’s in the right spirit, and I love it for that. It probably won’t be as fondly remembered as the originals, and it won’t enter the mass consciousness to such a large extent, nor will it make sniffy critics think twice about treating the genre with such contempt, but for an hour a week, we’ll get some exciting, smart, competent sci-fi, and anyone even vaguely receptive to good TV will be rewarded. I wish the production team, cast, and writing staff (now including Veronica Mars ace John Enbom!) the best of luck.

Torchwood

Cast:
John Barrowman: +3
Eve Myles: -5
Burn Gorman: -5
Naoki Mori: 0
Gareth David-Lloyd: -3
James Marsters: +5

Total: -5

Boy, does the presence of Barrowman and Marsters help. Neither of them are great actors by any stretch of the imagination, but they pull this kind of stuff off with aplomb. Barrowman in particular is so likeable that I’m more than happy to ignore some really shaky choices. As for Marsters, the guy sure has charisma. I was lucky enough to see him and his band, Ghost of the Robot, in Highbury a few years back, and I’ve never seen a roomful of women react like that before. It was carnal carnage, half scary, half exhilarating. Plus, I’ve missed Spike. As for the rest of the cast, they fail, though I will give Naoki Mori a partial break. Her sorely underwritten character never gets to do enough to register onscreen. Hopefully soon she will be allowed to come into her own and show some acting chops.

As for the others, no mercy. Masticator has shaken his finger at me for dissing Burn Gorman in the past, maintaining he was excellent in Bleak House, and perhaps he was. He’s a man of good taste. Here, though, he’s not given a solid enough character to work with. His character arcs, in fact the arcs for everyone in the show, are randomly generated and inconsistent, so it’s not wonder the performances are shoddy. The woeful twitchy direction doesn’t help. I hope to see these guys in another context one day, to properly assess their abilities. Blame the show, not the actors, I say.

Plot elements specific to these shows:
Convincing reactions to getting shot: -5
Tight plot: -8
The Sexxy: +3
Potential: -3
Badassery: -8
Total = -21

Again with the speedy recovery from a GSW. I’m not expecting the show to replicate the actual bodily response to getting shot (vomiting, shock, unconsciousness), but having Owen operating as normal ten minutes after being wounded doesn’t make him look bad ass, it makes the show look like it’s not treating the event of getting shot as a serious event. And no, looped comments from him about needing some more painkillers are not good enough. As Torchwood borrows so liberally from Angel, perhaps it could rip off the season two episode by Shaun “The Shield” Ryan, where Wesley gets shot by a zombie policeman. He was off his feet for a few episodes, and was obviously emotionally affected by it. That was convincing. Owen’s (and Sarah Connor’s) quick recovery might be convenient in keeping the show moving, but if the episode cannot function without being derailed by the incapacitation of a major character, then they shouldn’t get shot. It’s a lazy way to create drama, and it drives me crazy.

The Sexxy is the most interesting, and most frustrating, aspect of the show. While homophobes the world over rail against the engayening of Doctor Who, I fall over myself to applaud it, and bless Russell T. Davies for putting gay characters and themes in a primetime family TV show. You hear bigoted cretins like Garry Bushell frothing at the mouth about it pushing the shady-sounding Gay Agenda down our kid’s throats (usually in emotive and knee-jerk language like that), but it’s a commendable effort to normalise something sidelined and treated with such fear and hatred. Look at DC and Marvel’s terror over the idea of gay superheroes, and Marvel Editor-In-Chief’s edict that every Marvel comic starring a gay character has to be labelled For Mature Readers Only. The message that sends out horrifies me, and Doctor Who is a great way to redress that kind of sexual censorship. If it was porn spread all over the TV then the terror would make more sense, but we’re talking about people in relationships talking about said relationships and getting some kissing done, and not even that much of it, just a little here and there. That’s all. Get over it! It’s not some kind of evil force, or shadowy bunch of plotters trying to destroy the heterosexual tribe. It’s just people doing what comes naturally to them and trying to get on in the world. Embrace it, haters.


As ever, what Doctor Who does well, Torchwood screws up. While it has an admirably open attitude to omnisexuality, as Canyon called it this morning, it does it in an emotionally false manner. It’s great that Jack would hump, snog, seduce, and flirt with everything that moves within his vicinity, but whenever the show tries to add an emotional dimension to his urges, it falls short. I’ll be charitable and assume he’s meant to be someone who doesn’t know what he wants, and is scared of the options dwindling before him.

That’s the best we’re going to get out of this, but that’s the most sophisticated emotional writing on a show otherwise devoid of it. The couplings on the show mostly appear random and relentless. Yay for approaching these themes, but sometimes the show is overwhelmed by it all, which means the number of possible combinations of sexual partnerships is shrinking. If all of the characters hop from bed to bed, I give plus points for being bold, and minus points for doing it without a proper emotional underpinning, something that is impossible with such ill-defined characters. Seriously, Tosh’s character seems to be a mannequin with a post-it on her forehead saying, “I love Owen from afar”. Even after having alien lesbian sex for an entire episode, she still registered onscreen as a blank. Poor Naoki Mori.

You know, it just occured to be what this show actually is. Hollyoaks with aliens. I can’t think of a stronger criticism.

Miscellaneous:
Originality: -6
Liveliness: -4
Enthusiasm for project: +4
Avoidance of cliche: -10
Unique Selling Points: +4
Production values: -2

Total = -14

Liveliness scores so low because yes, there is lots of whizzy photography and Avid fart editing, but the pace is so erratic it means nothing. You can whip the camera around as much as you like, but if the plot doesn’t progress properly, with ebbs and flows and escalation towards the end, you’re going to end up with a very dull and frustrating show. This episode was about 50 minutes long, but it felt like two hours, especially as it reached a natural conclusion ten minutes before the end. I’ll give it better marks for enthusiasm. The showrunners obviously enjoy what they’re doing, and there is some ambition here, but the relentless uses of old cliches and stock pulp sci-fi plots scupper the whole enterprise. Yes, having a group of Welsh space cops is a new one, and there is the odd touch of outside-the-box thinking, but the recycling of other, better, shows and books and films is lazy, offensive, and unforgivable. It’s an insult to the other creators working in the genre. And the -2 for production values? The set designs and effects are wonderful, but the photography, editing, and sound design are amateur. What I give with one hand, I take away with the other. Okay, so they’re not the most important things (which is why production values counts for only one mark out of 18), but if Doctor Who, a show on a similarly tight schedule, can appear to be made by competent professionals, why can’t this?

Torchwood overall total = -40

A commenter has mentioned that I wrote so much about the last episode that I can’t hate it as much as I say. While she missed the point of the Face/Off exercise (pick apart two vaguely similar thing and see where each of them succeeds or fails), there is some truth to that. We have enjoyed watching it for the sheer, “I can’t believe something this FAIL has appeared on TV,” value of it, but just like the hangover from a debauched night out, the aftermath is increasingly not worth the effort.

So why go on about it? Does the world need my rage? Should it care? On a cosmic level, of course not, but sci-fi fans shouldn’t let Torchwood get away with its plagiarism, its amateurishness, its ignorance of narrative rules, pacing, visual style, coherence, long-term story arcs, and a million other things. I love the sci-fi genre, and on British TV right now Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Primeval (which I’ve managed to miss by total accident) represent the only domestic examples with a large audience. Doctor Who has been rightly embraced, and though it has fallen flat a number of times, it is mostly wonderful, ambitious, imaginative, and challenging. I have no idea what people think of Primeval, other than, “That Hannah Spearitt’s no Billie Piper but she’ll do,” apparently.

Torchwood, on the other hand, has been derided by many UK critics, but some have defended it in a half-hearted manner usually along the lines of, “It’s better than last week, honest,” which gets funnier every time it’s trotted out. The worst kind of defence, though, is, “It’s alright for this kind of childish thing,” which makes me seethe. This was meant to be an adult show, and I’d foolishly misunderstood the meaning of that. I thought it meant it would be intelligent, and thought-provoking, and populated with multi-faceted characters who act like grown-ups. Instead, we get kids in old bodies messing about with toys and playing Cowboys and Indians (or Welsh People and Weevils), rehashing other people’s ideas, unable to generate an emotional response in the audience because the characters have not been created with enough thought. As an example of what the genre can do, it’s an embarrassment, and thanks to all of the pre-release promises that the show would address adult themes that Doctor Who couldn’t go near, it makes it seem like adult sci-fi is indistinguishable from cheap Sci-Fi Channel mid-afternoon TV movie tat, except with more LGBT content.


For crying out loud, this is the country of H.G. Wells, Brian Aldiss, Ian Watson, Peter F. Hamilton, J.G. Ballard! This is the country of Quatermass, Sapphire and Steel, The Prisoner, Edge of Darkness! The UK knows how to create groundbreaking sci-fi, and yet Torchwood represents one third of the country’s visible sci-fi output. It only really succeeds as an indictment of the generally poor level of screenwriting on British TV, and the flaws of the drama commissioning process at the BBC. We get something as empty as this and yet Grant Morrison’s scripts for The Invisibles were refused by the BBC thanks to, according to Morrison, “a woman… who was connected with it that doesn’t even know what telepathy is and keeps complaining about the story.” It makes you weep.

The UK has to begin to do better. Watching multiple episodes of The X-Files or the trio of Mutant Enemy shows and then recycling the plots is not good enough. British TV is in the doldrums compared to the amazing stuff coming out of the US right now, and while we do have some world-beating stuff popping up here and there, and while I accept that there is an awful lot of shit on American TV, the disparity between the two industries is vast. And yes, there are differences in how the shows are made and funded and sold. I know that the commissioning system is very different here, and I know that UK shows can’t expect to have budgets on the scale of Lost or even Bionical Woman. I’m not saying good TV needs a big budget. Battlestar Galactica is made on the “cheap” (relatively speaking), but as much as I love the big FX blowouts, it’s the smart writing, well-defined and consistently realised characters, and challenging ideas that keep me coming back. Seriously, it’s not just the pretty splodey.


Torchwood lacks ideas of its own, and as a highly visible sci-fi show, it needs to have something special to show off the possibilities of the genre. Perhaps all it has going for it is being a very bold piece of queer sci-fi, but as Canyon said while we endured last week’s episode, LGBT sci-fi fans deserve better than a bunch of randomly sexed-up dorks acting out plots from better shows in the middle of Cardiff. Okay, I doubt BBC writers would be able to emulate the complex, language-distorting genius of Samuel Delaney, or even the progressive, sexually bold Culture novels of Iain M. Banks, but they could at least come up with some original plots, or even just create characters that act like real people, instead of caricatures that fail to resonate with the viewers as they do nothing recognisably human.

And yet I keep watching, even though I consider the show an insult to my favourite genre and the cultural equivalent of the embarrassing family member who smells of wee. Partially because last season there was one bright spot; an episode written by Sapphire and Steel creator P.J. Hammond. More scripts from him, or established sci-fi authors, or even Doctor Who star writers Stephen Moffat and Paul Cornell, and the show would begin to crawl back into my good graces. There has been some good news recently. According to Comic Book Resources gossip columnist Rich Johnston…

Chris Chibnall, “Torchwood” showrunner, writer of “Doctor Who” episode “42″, “Torchwood” episodes “Day One,” “Cyberwoman,” “Countrycide” and “End Of Days,” has been appointed showrunner for “Law & Order: London.” I don’t think “Doctor Who” fans have heard better news for a good while. There were rumours he was succeeding Russell T Davies as showrunner. I guess those rumours have now been scotched.

Hells yeah. It’s not over for the show. It can do better. It must do better. I’m sure sci-fi can survive one crappy TV show (it survived years of cheap Star Wars rip-offs, after all), but that doesn’t mean we should praise a show just for being British, or let such weak showmaking go without pointing it out. We TV watchers, and sci-fi fans, deserve better.


Like Lost. Which is coming back soon. More on that later this week.

Sci-Fi Season Premiere Face/Off! (Torchwood)

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I’ll come right out and admit this to get it out of the way. I cannot stand Torchwood. It’s silly to get actively annoyed by something as innocuous as a TV show, but I reserve the right to be pissed at a spin-off from a very good show that not only fails to live up to the standards of the original, but fails at being competent entertainment with such a capital FAIL that it insults its “parent” and makes the entire genre look like a muddy-faced schoolboy pooing his pants and laughing like a drunken donkey. It galls me that people consider this a great example of the genre and of British TV, that this is as good as it gets. It’s an insult to anyone who tries to make anything of lasting value within the mostly ignored and derided sci-fi ghetto, and knowing that Russell T. Davies has said that it is Angel to Doctor Who‘s Buffy makes me even angrier. If Doctor Who is Buffy, Torchwood is Angel fanfic written by the 8 year old lovechild of Jilly Cooper and Harry Knowles. As I’ve said before in other venues, it’s the Welsh CSI: Miami. And that’s why my hatred is so tied up with my urge to never stop watching, even as it metaphorically shits where it eats.

It’s bad. It’s an insult to the genre. It’s also unintentionally hilarious, and it could conceivably work if it is overhauled extensively. The first season was galactically dire, but coming from a background of such imagination and intelligence, it could surely absorb some of that quality. Knowing that shows have often improved in their second season gave me hope, as did the news that not only would James “Spike” Marsters be featured but also we would see the triumphant return of the magnificent, the wondrous, the astonishing MARTHA JONES! She’s got class, she’s got sass, she’s got a lovely playfulness about her. So can this second season pull out of the nosedive that started very soon into the original?


In a word, don’t bet on it. Scripted not by series creator Russell T. Davies but by showrunner Chris Chibnall, within five minutes of beginning it was evident that rumours of an improvement were way way off (I’m looking at you, resident Guardian Guide nerd Phelim O’Neill). Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman with lovable gusto on Doctor Who, and with tedious earnestness and random explosions of camp on Torchwood, is missing at the beginning of the series, which starts with a fish alien driving a sports car around Cardiff suburbs. In lukewarm pursuit are our witless sex-crazed adolescent heroes, Gwen, Tosh, Owen, and the risible Ianto, all bickering in an expositional stylee about the lack of Jack. Some of this is played for laughs, and it almost comes off for the first time, though there are some peculiar moments from Gwen, introduced in the first season as an audience surrogate taken from her boring life and thrust into a world of intergalactic absurdity. In this first scene Owen is all grumpy, tightly-wound machismo, and she tells a couple of jokes to keep the tone “light”. Instead, because of a weird lighting choice, Gwen looks demonic.


One of the things that makes it hard to watch BBC sci-fi without cringing is the bizarre insistence on macho posing that runs through it all like gristle through a nice steak. This embarrassing fixation on the gun-fetishism that plagued James Cameron’s Aliens is one of the many reasons I hated Red Dwarf (the main one being that it wasn’t even slightly funny). Now, Aliens is one of my favourite movies, but the monster it created, this fanboy obsession with “cool” aggressive sci-fi, almost makes me hate it. Other genres manage to pull off the cool thing really well, usually by playing it much calmer, but British (and some US) sci-fi cannot get past the idea of the heroes being gun-toting badasses with legs akimbo, doing the two-handed gun grip and jumping out from behind walls, shouting “Freeze, motherfucker!” like kids playing cops and robbers. Sadly, it never looks right.

In the first season of Torchwood, they were particularly bad, but this time it seemed like the cast had been sent to gun training or something. Owen (played with his usual brand of oily sneering menace by Burn Gorman) leans out of the window of the Torchwoodmobile (complete with redundant flashing lights that the cameras can’t pick up properly) and blasts the tyres out from under the fish alien’s sports car. Except for a silly manoeuvre where he aims like a parody of a tough guy, he looks convincing as a dead-shot but then he ruins it by arrogantly blowing the “smoke” from his gun. Dick.


Still, despite his obnoxious display he does indeed get Mr. Fish to stop his car, in a suburban cul-de-sac, where he rushes out, breaks into a house, shoots some poor innocent bloke and takes a girl hostage. This is the modus operandi of Torchwood; make a bad situation infinitely worse and then when things have calmed down chalk it up as a victory. They rush into the room with all the grace and skill of the characters from the old Viz comic strip S.W.A.N.T. (Special Weapons and No Tactics), with Owen bellowing absurdly complicated instructions to the team. Tosh then scans Mr. Fish using a gizmo dotted with the same blue lights that looked so wrong on the Torchwoodmobile, sees he’s on coke, and very seriously says, “This fish is wired!” An early contender for stupidest anti-comedy line of the year.

It’s immediately superceded by the following expositional monologue from Mr. Fish, included in the show as Chris Chibnall obviously feels that getting the information out quickly and early is better than getting it out slowly and elegantly.

So, this is Team Torchwood, the teacher’s pets. But teacher’s gone, hasn’t he, leaving the kiddie kids all alone. And look at you, trying so hard to be all grown up. The doctor, with his hands full of blood [cut to shot of Owen with his hands full of blood]. The carer, with her oh so beating heart. The technician, with her cold devices [cut to shot of Tosh holding a cold device]. Which leaves me with the office boy, promoted beyond his measure. All of you, lost without your master. All of you, pretending to be brave. All of you, so scared. [evil laugh] So, what about it, minion? Can you do it? How good are you? How sharp is your aim? What if you kill her? What if I kill her first? Can you shoot before I do? Can you? Dare you? Would you? Won’t you?

That is apocalyptically bad writing, and even the best acting and directing couldn’t salvage it. Just to make things worse, this show does not even feature competent acting or directing, and so it approaches toxic levels of wretchedness. I’m serious, it’s this kind of inept and shitty sci-fi that dooms the entire genre. Thankfully Jack arrives (with no explanation of how he found them all) and shoots Mr. Fish (even though he is standing directly behind useless Ianto and therefore has no line of sight), before grinning his goddamn handsome face off. Wow, John Barrowman might not be the best actor on earth, but he has infinitely more charisma than the amateurish replicants around him. Look at him. You would, wouldn’t you.


Back at Torchwood HQ (a waterlogged sewer complex with a couple of computers, a fancy door stolen from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and a pet pterodactyl) Gwen whines and moans at Jack for leaving them all, as if he’s her property. Goddamn, get over yourself, woman. Which one is the boss here? Jack soppily admits he was in the wrong, and gets all gooey-eyed when he talks about finding the Doctor, as shown in the last three episodes of Doctor Who season three. Owen’s line reading of, “Did he fix you?”, is straight out of a Mills and Boon adaptation. To be honest, considering how obsessed Jack is with his dick, getting fixed might not have been that bad an idea. Here’s Owen looking pompous and dreamy.


I really do not like Owen and his silly expressions, his seething “intensity” which comes across as dyspepsia, and his supposed animal magnetism. Definitely the Torchwood Gupta, despite stiff competition from Gwen. Anyway, while Jack’s getting a hard time for leaving (::cough:: Angelseasontwo ::cough::), in a car park across town a burst of glowy light heralds the arrival of guest star James Marsters, fresh from a Buffy convention.


He arrives through the rift that sits under Cardiff (::cough:: Hellmouth ::cough::), and is an Adam-Ant-esque dandy. Actually, he looks like he’s wearing a Harry Flashman fancy dress costume, but whatever the idea was, he looks dashing. As soon as he starts talking in his “English” accent, I was incredibly pleased. Spike had some bad moments, but overall I luffed him, especially towards the end of season 5 Angel, where his banter with the eponymous hero was at its best. Within two seconds of arriving he has thrown someone off the roof of the car park, and then gone to a nightclub to order various carousers around and then scare everyone off with his guns. His dialogue (“Go. Stay. Go. Go. Go. Go. Stay. Go. Go. Ooooh, stay stay stay! Go. Go. The rest of you, go.”) leaves a lot to be desired, but who cares? It’s James Marsters! The only actor on the show who knows how to hold a gun.


Meanwhile, our band of horseasses investigate the death of the car park guy, even though there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them to be there, just as Jack’s wriststrap goes off. A hologram of Marsters appears, asking Jack to come and find him, before signing off with, “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” You know what? I’m declaring a goddamn moratorium on the use of that phrase. It’s. Not. Funny. Anymore. The only time I’ve seen it used well over the past year or so was when Carrie Fisher said, “Help me Liz Lemon, you’re my only hope!” in 30 Rock, but that’s because it was Carrie Fisher saying it. It’s been used too goddamn often, and especially on Torchwood, it invites comparisons between the show and Star Wars that really aren’t in their best interests.


Jack departs hurriedly, telling the team not to follow him, which they do immediately, all the time whining about what an asshole he is for leaving them behind (::cough cough cough:: Angelseasontwo ::cough cough cough::). While they piss and moan like a bunch of aggrieved kids, Jack arrives at the club and gets some full-on facetime with Marsters, kissing him with admirable gusto. And then they fight a lot. It’s one of the few scenes in the show that has been choreographed and filmed with some effort, so kudos for that, I guess, but dear God, I declare another moratorium, this time on the use of Song Two by Blur, which woo-hoos in the background throughout. Has anyone involved in this show got any new ideas? At all? That shit was tired one summer after the song came out and it got used on Match of the Day 68 trillion times, so imagine how tired it must be now.


After kissing and fighting and pointing their guns at each other and making daft jokes about Jack working his way up the ranks and how grateful the ranks must have been (an allusion to sex, I’ll wager, what with this being an adult show), they pretend to drink a lot of alcohol and bond over their past as time agents, a plot thread that I thought would have been explored in the previous season but was ignored in favour of gaseous sex aliens, ill-thought-out time travel plots, and Fight Club rip-offs, much to my disgust. After announcing his name is now Captain John Hart (adopting other identities appears to be de riguer for these chaps), Marsters/Hart reveals that the agency that runs the time agents (which, Canyon pointed out, is imaginatively called The Time Agency) has been shut down, meaning there are only seven time agents left altogether. I look forward to future appearances by Captain Judah Hogwonk, Captain Jeff Hepatitis, Captain Joe Hoho, Captain Jerry Heinousface, and Captain Jasper Humperdinck.


Eventually the rest of the team arrive and pose with their guns (by this point almost every scene appears to feature some gun posing), and Jack explains at length who everyone is and what they do, and for five minutes we get a solid, unbreakable and tedious wall of exposition either about the team or Hart’s reason for being in Cardiff, which seems to be something about radiation bombs hidden around Cardiff by a woman Hart knew who is now dead. There is also some horseplay about the size of their wriststraps, which I suspect might be a joke about the length and strength of their penises. Jack has spent the scene hinting that Hart is completely untrustworthy, but the thought of Earth getting destroyed by these bombs forces his hand, and offers to help Hart back at Torchwood HQ, located under the Millennium Centre. And yes, he pointlessly enters the complex using the superfluous paving stone lift. Though I’m no fan of the show, the effects work by The Mill is almost always exemplary, and something for everyone involved to be proud of. Here, though, is one of their rare missteps, a terribly shaky greenscreen shot. I know the budget of the show has been cut (this episode features a lot less flashy moments than last season), but still, it’s a shame it looks so wrong.


Upon reaching the bottom, Jack asks Hart to hand over his guns, and after he hands over his large pistols and his sword, he asks him to hand over all of his other weapons, which Hart denies having (::cough:: everyTVshowandfilmevermade ::cough::). Gwen ruins his subterfuge with her blue-light scanner, revealing that, of course, he has a lot of guns, and a “laser knife”, that looks like, well, a knife. Perhaps “Laser” is the brand name. Like Ginsu, only futuristical.

Gwen takes Jack to one side, because even if you thought she had already nagged at Jack a lot about him leaving, she hasn’t even started yet, mister. She pointedly tells him that leaving them all behind was a dick move, and he swallows what must be a natural impulse to shout, “You’re not the boss of me, you big-eyed control freak!” to explain that he really missed her and came back because hey, Cardiff? Place to be! Then he realises she is wearing a wedding ring, and when he points this out, Gwen looks astonished.


Turns out, in a weird passive/aggressive response to Jack’s departure at the end of season one, she got engaged to drab boyfriend Rhys, and when imparting this information to her boss, Gwen looks startled.


Jack congratulates her with some kind of confusing sadness stone stuck in his throat, and asks if Rhys got down on one knee, and she says he tried, but his back gave out. Ha ha ha! Stupid Rhys! What a prosaic loser, unlike her sexy colleagues. While recounting this story, and commenting that no one else would have her, Gwen looks self-pitying.


Finally, they reconcile and hug, and Gwen looks pretty damn well orgasmic.


That’s some range Eve Myles is showing there, not unlike the range exhibited by Sonya Walger. The worst thing about this scene is that some viewers will end up hoping these two get together. Why would Jack, who has had sex with the majority of the universe, be upset about not getting a chance with dreary old Gwen? It would boggle the mind, if I hadn’t already come to the conclusion that it’s just a load of contrivance to generate some emotional frisson in a show as shallow, juvenile, and exploitative as this one.

After the deeply touching moment, the team meets in a conference room to debate tactics, and Gwen suggests they split into teams to cover Cardiff more efficiently. She offers to go with Hart and begins flirting with him, setting Jack off on a new convulsion of snitty attitude, which Gwen subdues by explaining she is flirting with Hart to gain his trust and find out what he is really up to. Jack warns her not to kiss him, but this being Torchwood, that’s how most of the characters communicate with each other, so it’s silly advice.

Gwen and Hart travel to some loading area filled with shipping containers, and begin looking for the first radiation bomb. It’s night-time, and as ever, the director has chosen to film things with as little light as possible. For the next three or four minutes of screentime either one or the other character is obscured by shadows. It’s a baffling directorial decision. The screenshot below is not a fluke capture; that’s what the scene looks like.


While randomly opening shipping containers, hiding in shadows, and talking about this mysterious dead woman with the bombs, Gwen’s phone goes off. It’s Rhys, with the great news that he has a new job as manager of something called Harwoods, which is probably to DIY what Torchwood is to gunplay and alien investigation. Daisyhellcakes said she would rather hear more about the job interview than watch the rest of the show, and she has a good point, but sadly we have to stick with Gwen and her exciting glamorous life hanging out with nerd-fave actors and getting off with her scary looking colleagues.

This is obviously meant to play as a comment on how mundane Rhys’ life is, but if the intention is to play up the contrast between them, it fails miserably, serving only to make poor cuckolded Rhys look like a pathetic, oblivious idiot. When she gets off the phone Hart has disappeared. What could he be doing? Where is he? Turns out he is still hanging around, but hey, another minute of screentime is filled up by Gwen flitting around with her gun drawn in a weak attempt to conjure up some suspense, so kudos for that.


Upon finding the correct container, Hart grabs Gwen and kisses her. The perpetually horny cad! Turns out he was actually poisoning her with paralysing lip gloss, which might account for his disappearance in the previous scene, but I’m not convinced. As Gwen slumps to the floor he gloats that she has two hours to live, and as he leaves the container he bleats on about Jack, saying, “He won’t stay with you! He and I shared something.” Considering he’s just sentenced her to a horrible death, that’s just unneccessary. He shuts the container door and throws her phone away, and as if the shitty lighting wasn’t amateurish enough, the mic picks up the sound of it clanging against a container and then clattering across the floor as Hart ambles away. It’s like something made by the Children’s Film Foundation, only clumsier.

Across town, and Owen and Tosh are doing their stupid gun/flashlight thing in a warehouse somewhere. It’s big and messy, prompting Owen to complain, “How are we gonna find anything in all of this tut?” What the hell is tut? Is it the Welsh version of tat? While wandering aimlessly around, Tosh whines about not being out on the town, and Owen admits he’s given up his womanising ways, and says he looking for a good woman he has a lot in common with. Tosh’s “subtle” reaction (i.e. eye-rolling and practically passing out) “hints” at her lust for his scrawny “body”.


Despite the daunting task ahead of them, they find the bomb a couple of minutes later even though they only have tiny flashlights, and right on time the newly-revealed EvilHart appears and headbutts Tosh. Maybe a bonk on the head will cure her of her ill-advised crush on Owen, who probably has lots of space diseases what with his rampant and credibility-straining womanising. Owen gets his tough guy on and threatens to kill Hart if he hurts Tosh. This is so threatening that Hart shoots Owen, but before we can delight in the sight of him blown backwards as if hit by an exploding cannonball, we cut away. Tease!

While several million viewers chew their nails off over this turn of events, Jack and Ianto arrive at an office building to look for another bomb, where Jack gives an unconvincing soliloquy about the allure of office work (it’s a place for disastrous office romances and photocopying your genitals, because, you know, adult), Ianto’s grumpy responses clue Jack in on yet more sulking about his departure. Dude, you can never go home, especially if home is a wet sewer complex filled with ungrateful jerks. Jack dances around the fact that if he came back for a specific reason, it probably wasn’t the pity-sex he was having with sad-sack Ianto, but when he pouts Jack tries to defuse the situation by asking Ianto for a date. He even manages to smile while doing it, knowing that it will probably end up being a disaster, with Ianto crying over his dead cyber-girlfriend Lisa from the first season. How do you like that office romance, you dashing fool?


They split up, with Jack heading to the roof, giving Hart the chance to lure Ianto over to the lifts, where he threatens him with a gun, repeatedly refers to him as “Eye candy”, (which made both of us WTF for a few minutes), and brags about putting the rest of the team out of commission.


Ordering him to go and find them before they die, the lift doors shut, and a tannoy says, “Going down”, to which Hart responds, apropos of nothing, “Going down, yes please.” Again, I have a suspicion there is a double meaning here. Hart goes after Jack, who has just found the “bomb”, which is by now, obviously not a bomb. Hart says Jack should be in space among the stars, which is a heinous diss against the glories of Cardiff. But no, Jack is not to be swayed, and slags off Hart for getting old and not growing up. Then he childishly throws the canister / bomb / MacGuffin off the roof, and mid-gloat gets pushed off himself.


Hopefully the drop gives Jack time to rue his decision to help Hart, who has been blatantly evil from the moment he appeared onscreen. Jokes about attending murder rehab might have been a clue. Perhaps this is Chibnall and co.’s way of making the Torchwoodiverse seem dangerous and morally grey and filled with threatening yet seductive characters, but actually it just makes our protagonists look like slack-jawed halfwits.

Speaking of which, Ianto finds Tosh patching Owen up with some bandages, and even though he’s obviously lost a lot of blood and might be suffering a grievous internal injury, they rush out to find Gwen. In the meantime, Hart gets all maudlin over Jack’s death, probably not helped by the very extensive groin thrust adopted by Jack’s corpse.


Thankfully Chibnall resists the temptation to have Hart make some lewd comment about this, which means we actually get about four minutes of screentime without a double entendre or feeble come-on. Back in Containerville the Three Stooges are looking for Gwen, which involves lots of dull running around and improbable detective work involving the blue-light doohickey used throughout the show, before they locate her dying body. At this point, with probably milliseconds left to live, Gwen looks stiff. And badly lit.


As she still has a pulse but can’t move, they figure she has been poisoned, but without any other information about what has happened to her, they promptly swab her lips and test it for toxins. How did they know she was poisoned like that? Hart never mentioned it. It could have been a needle, or a gas, or a deadly suppository, but no, they go straight to the lips. It could very well be the shoddiest plotting I’ve ever seen in a modern TV show that isn’t Chuck or CSI: Miami. To make things even more improbable, they have the exact antidote. Pretty smart stuff, considering how dense they appear from Gwen’s point of view.


Hart goes back to Torchwood HQ, and ransacks the corpse of Mr. Fish, who has another part of the MacGuffin in his pocket. So the pre-credits “action” scene was connected to the rest of the show after all! Before he can put all the pieces back together our heroes appear and cock their plastic guns threateningly. Again, where the hell is the sound department? Oddly worried that one of the water pistols will go off and get his nice tunic wet, Hart musters one last gloat over Jack’s death, only to go limp-faced with shock as Jack walks in, unharmed, and cocks his leg up for a big fart. At least, that’s what it looks like.


Turns out, under cross-examination, Hart killed the woman who owned the MacGuffin (which he thinks is a space diamond of some worth), because he is a low down dirty son of a bitch, which comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched any fiction within the last 150 years. Under the supervision of the team, he puts the pieces together and a hologram of the dead woman appears. I can’t help but imagine someone had to forcibly stop Chibnall from making the hologram say, “Help me Obi Wan you’re my only hope!”.


Turns out she’s a smart cookie, and the MacGuffin is actually a bomb that is attracted to the DNA of the person who killed her. Of course, how it has access to this DNA in the first place is not explained, but we were more annoyed by the stretching out of an episode that really should have been done and dusted by now. The bomb zips across the room and sticks to Hart’s chest, not unlike the Scarab machine in Guillermo Del Toro’s creepy vampire film Cronos.


Space crime never pays, you dandy! When the team appear uninterested in helping him and instead intend to throw him back into the rift, he grabs Gwen and handcuffs himself to her. I love the sci-fi touch that the cuffs are made of “hypersteel”, but this is undercut by the annoyance caused by Tosh’s declaration that the rift has a crack in it. A rift is a crack. How can a crack have a crack in it? Does Chibnall understand English?

Owen comes up with a great plan to save Gwen. While the others drive Gwen and Hart him to the (crack in the) rift in their SUV, Jack and Owen get blood samples of the entire team (lucky they had them just lying around) and make a blood cocktail using a centrifuge prop so cheap that they have to swish it around by hand. Editing tries to obscure this cheapness, but it’s obvious it’s just being pushed.


Even though the SUV leaves minutes before them, Jack and Owen still catch up as they use Mr. Fish’s sports car. Is it jet-powered? With just seconds to go before the bomb explodes, Jack injects him in the heart with the blood cocktail, which confuses the bomb. How? Does it alter his DNA? If that’s the case, then blood transfusions should lead to the recipient’s hair and eyes changing colour. Or it’s just terrible terrible science from someone who seems to have only had a primary school education followed by years of watching and absorbing bad TV. Despite making a nonsense of the rules just laid down a couple of minutes before, this ridiculous plan works, making the bomb fall off. Jack heroically flings it into the rift, creating a big explosion effect.


For no narrative reason, this sends them back in time to the moment when Hart arrived. As the science of the rift (and the crack in the rift) has never been clearly explained, this is potentially possible with a bit of exposition, but what’s the point of it? And was the only narrative reason for the blood injection so Hart could make a comment about a part of them being in him? Hopefully this leads to something later on in the series, because otherwise it’s unforgivably silly. No matter. For his terrible skullduggery, he gets a smack in the chops from Gwen. She looks pissed.


Finally he leaves, with much glowy effects, but not before kissing on Jack with some verve, making more comments about wriststrap size (Jack’s reaction really strengthens my “penis metaphor” theory) and offhandedly mentioning that he has found someone called Grey, which triggers an explosion of facial acting and heavy breathing from Jack, which suggests that maybe this is big news for him. Luckily, the team are too stupid to notice this, and the fifteen hour long episode finally ends. But! First we get a preview of the rest of the season. Explosions, gun posing, Alan Dale as what seems to be an evil scientist, more James Marsters, yet more jokes about having sex with each other, and OH YEAH! MARTHA JONES! Coming to bring some class to the proceedings, unless she has her post-Who awesomeness polluted by the transfer to this risible show.


So, in conclusion, not the worst episode yet. Almost an improvement, in fact.

The Glorious Fruity Caramel Nubbliness of Nigella

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A few weeks ago the BBC started airing Nigella Express — as if our favorite naughty kitchen doyenne was a microwave pizza or a 7/11. Apparently she was not suitably chastened by her failed attempt to enter the daytime talk show arena, which was obviously doomed from the start, since only sexless women are allowed on our screens before 6 pm, and we all know that as soon as Nigella spots a phallic object, she is incapable of not shoving it into her mouth and giving her viewers a naughty wink. (I hope Val Kilmer fared better than that pastry.)

Don’t get me wrong, though; Nigella’s naughtiness is what we love most about her. She is a true hedonist, in the best sense of the word — she loves to touch and smell and eat, she revels in the physical realm, and she is absolutely unapologetic about enjoying food, delighting in its luscious, carnal pleasures. It’s hard not to join in with her enthusiasm; it’s sexy and inviting and inclusive. That is what is so awesome (and also, sadly, unique) about her, even when she takes her rapture to ridiculous extremes. She also — I don’t know if you’ve noticed — has very big boobs.


So we were very much looking forward to seeing Nigella’s new show, even though it had the “Express” bit tacked on, as if the BBC producers got nervous about just having a “regular” cooking show in the face of The F-Word and Hell’s Kitchen and that woman who’s supposedly the new Indian Nigella (I have seen that show, and you, ma’am, are no Indian Nigella). Apparently “express” is the word of the zeitgeist (I prefer “x-treeeeeeeme” myself, but there’s no accounting for taste), so Nigella’s weekly introduction goes something like, “I love eating and I love cooking. But with our busy lives, who has time anymore? I have a solution, and that solution is: express.” It sets a sour note (pun regretted) for the tone of the series: it’s obviously read off a prompter, and Nigella visibly has a hard time saying the word “express,” for she is not of this workaday world that you and I inhabit, and “express” is a concept I’d wager she was befuddled by until it was pitched to her by BBC execs. Usually her shows start off with her rambling about some old recipe for mousse deep-fried in lard and topped with cream that her mother used to make, but now she’s swanning about London in a black cab, because she is Nigella! Express!

We’re a few episodes in now, and the changes have become apparent. Nigella is…different. She talks about time-management now, not just because she’s lazy (more on that later), but because you’re a working parent and you don’t have time to slow-cook a lamb joint drenched in five cups of butter. She says things like, “Saves time on washing up — anything to make life easier!” And weirdest of all, she’s started gurning at the camera like a voluptuous English Jim Carrey. I don’t have a shot of her crossing her eyes at the camera, but she does it repeatedly in the second and third episodes. What the…? What? What is going on?

Another strange development is her constant self-deprecation. In her old shows, when she talked about not measuring something exactly because she didn’t feel like it, or how she used full-fat cream in every dish (which I was sure would culminate in a recipe called Lard Salad), it was an endearing admission — it made you feel better about being lazy with your recipes, and feel more relaxed about making things, knowing that not every step had to be absolutely perfect. And you knew she enjoyed herself and didn’t apologize for it — she’d eat fat with abandon and gusto, just like she’d gobble, um, cucumbers.

But in the last few episodes, she’s been putting herself down more than usual, and now the deprecation is starting to verge on outright insults. Is she a food addict? Will she soon be rolling herself around the kitchen in a Segway so that she doesn’t have to walk all the way to the sink? Is she just trying to make everyone else feel better? “I may look like a raven-haired goddess, but I’m really just a lazy fat pig like the rest of you. And my horrible father, who brushes his teeth with soot, named me after him.”


A few examples of Nigella’s recent insanity:

Corniness:

“I’m gonna get dealing with my squidlies.” (Since when is Nigella cutesy? She needs to dip those squidlies in chocolate and then eat them ravenously, pronto.)
“I’m going to teach you how to make perfect pasta pronto So, avanti! It’s the Italian express, and how could you not?”
“Speedy, speedy!”; “Last one, baby! That’s it!” (and other assorted Rachael Ray-isms/double entendres)
“These are glorious. Yum yum!”

Gluttony:

“Some people can’t face thinking about food early in the morning. Not me!”
“For me the evening meal is really important — not just because I’m always hungry.”
“Fit for angels to eat on their clouds. Though they would have to be quite weight-bearing clouds, obviously.”
“I’m just using half the packet [of cream, it should be noted]. Moderation itself.”
“Now when some people go on holiday, they engage in cultural activities. Not me! I go food shopping.”
“Just the smell of bacon frying makes my tummy rumble. Not that it takes a lot, it has to be said.”
“I hardly ever go out, but when I do, I have to be bolstered in the knowledge that I have something quick and easy to eat at home.” (That last one I find especially sad/amusing. It sums up a lifetime of crushing depression in one breezy, dashed-off sentence.)

Laziness/incompetence:

“I can’t be bothered to go to the sink.” (She says this several times, as she pours nasty leftover water from her kettle into her recipes. Where is your sink, Nigella? In Tibet?)
(Explaining why she uses whole mushrooms instead of cutting them up) “I think they look fabulous like this, kind of woodsy. But really I’m just lazy.”
“If I could get this kettle working properly…This goes to show that you can be clumsy — I am clumsy — and cook.”
“I use lime juice from this sort of luridly green plastic container from the supermarket.” (Nigella’s toffness cannot ever be fully expunged. “Plastic? How amusing! And vile!”)
“I can’t be bothered to peel and chop a proper onion.” (and later…) “I mean, I know chopping and peeling an onion isn’t hard, but it can feel tiring at times.”

Still, even the mighty evil PC brigade of the Beeb can’t ruin Nigella’s spirit entirely. In some segments she was back to her old self — sliding objects into her mouth with alarming expertise, and never using one adjective to describe something when she could use five. Some classic Nigella-speak:

“lovely silkiness”
“crispy perfection”
“Tumble the berries over the cream” (She loves using “tumble” as a verb.)
“glorious muskiness”
“sublime spikiness”
“All the meaty juices are getting drawn into my pond of cider.” (That’s what she said.)
“This helps keep the chops juicy. And I want them juicy juicy juicy.”
“It has a wonderful sweetness” (said of a sweet potato)
“vivid pepperiness”
“sharpness of the lemon and the depth of the olive oil”
“It’s an insidious game, this game of favorites — in food and children — but I think thyme is my favorite.” (?!?!?!)
“Its gorgeous saltiness will meld with the garlicky oil.”
“add a note of leafy grassiness” (Glassiness? The closed captioning didn’t even attempt it.)
“luscious, smooth, flowing caramel”
“beautiful boskiness”
“mounding spoonfuls of my ivory cream” (snerk)
“crumble gold dust on top”
“bouncily yielding”
“wonderfully resiny rosemary”
“I love the rather sombre darker brown of the outline and the bright paleness of the interior. It’s a painting on a plate.” (Bright paleness!! I had fun thinking of other Nigella-esque possibilities: “Rigid fluffiness.” “Spiky softness.” “Layered oneness.” “Feathered baldness.” “Black whiteness.” “Abstract concreteness.” “Foamy pile of nothingness.” “Hegemonic chaos.”)
“Leave a good amount of clumpage because if it’s all too fine and sandy, it won’t have the right nubbliness that a good crumble needs.” (This nearly made my head explode.)
“generous wodge”
“snuffle up small slices”
“The contrast between the scorched, caramelized fruitiness with the saltiness of the gorgonzola is frankly just rapturous.”
“I always like a bit of impaling.” (I bet you do, Nigella. I bet you do.)
“sudden hit of grassy green”
“Into each glass, a luscious pile.”
“jumbleberry crumble” (A recipe. Dear God.)
(And my personal favorite, because I am immature.) “I love it when people can smell the welcome when they come in.”

I was thinking of doing a sort of “create your own Nigella expression” thing, but I think you get the idea. Phrases so purple they would embarrass fanfic angst writers. But at least she’s got her spark back in those moments, and for that I am gloriously rapturous.

Things I learnt today (Aug 25th, 2007)

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1: “Ice-Truck Killer”, in Spanish, is “Ice-Truck Killer.” (According to Angel Batista [David Zayas] on Dexter.)

2: Just when you think Jeremy Paxman can’t get any cooler, he gets significantly cooler. He says a lot of smart things about trust in the broadcast media, dissipating audiences, cowardly commissioning within the BBC, the ineptitude of many producers and shortsightedness of executives willingly blinding themselves to the threats (and potential benefits) of new technology, but the bit that made me happiest came during a section on a typically self-pitying speech by Tony Blair about the relationship between the media and the government, where he took Blair and Campbell to task:

We do not need to take seriously complaints about the marginalising of parliament from a Prime Minister who could hardly be bothered to turn up there much of the time. Nor need we concern ourselves with complaints about trivialisation of cabinet government from a man whose cabinet meetings could last less time than an edition of Ready Steady Cook. We do not need lectures about cynicism from an administration which employed people who believed that September 11th was a good day to bury bad news. Most of all, we do not need homilies about destroying people’s reputations from an administration on whose watch Dr David Kelly was driven to suicide.

I <3 Paxman. So does Emily Bell.

3: Jesse Cameron and Jennifer Morrison have broken off their engagement, according to this TV Guide article. A planet mourns!

4: According to Michael Ausiello, Will Arnett is returning to 30 Rock this season. No word yet on the shortie robe.

5: Hawkman is smarter than me.


That, my friends, is science.