Category Archives: Nathan Fillion

The Annual Culling Of The Shows

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When I say culling, I’m not referring to us cutting back on shows. Don’t be ridiculous. We’re so far behind on most shows that we’re following that it is tempting, but it’s not going to happen any time soon, because I hate to give up on anything. Of course, I’m actually referring to that awful time of year when the networks pass judgement on the underperforming programmes on their rosters, slicing out much-loved cult faves and giving the kiss-of-life to some real oddities that no one is really passionate about. Hollywood Reporter has a report on the status of many shows here (this information is arranged in a more pleasing list format by Herc in this AICN Coaxial post), and it contains good and bad news, as ever.


Most upsetting is the unequivocal cancellation of Reaper, which has improved by leaps and bounds this year. Having shaken off first season nerves, the showrunners and performers have allowed more oddness and format-shaking looseness in, with some episodes doing away with the ponderous soul-hunting stuff in the cold open in order to follow the protagonists as they bumble along in their super-amiable way, and others just running with gags that would never have occurred last year. In a recent, very entertaining episode, more time was expended upon Sock (seeking chemical castration to prevent his lust for his step-sister) and Sam (dealing with his zombie dad’s attempts to bond with him) than was spent on what would once have been considered the A plot, which was just fine by us. Nevertheless, that burst of energy came too late to save it. Sam, Sock and Ben (and Ray Wise, of course) will be missed.

The woeful state of Jerry Bruckheimer’s roster of shows surprises me. While the CSI franchise is not going anywhere (especially now that the original series is on such consistently great form, courtesy of Morpheus), Without A Trace and Cold Case look like they’re in trouble, with one of them probably cancelled. I get that this is due to the financial pressures of running both shows, but they always seemed like they’d be around forever, like bigotry and flatulence. I say that despite the fact that I watch neither of them and have exactly zero interest in them.


I’m much less surprised that Eleventh Hour is facing doom. It’s only just started airing in the UK, on Living (which means watching it exposes me to endless adverts for Grey’s Anatomy; a seriously nauseating experience, especially with Kevin “Journeyman” McKidd popping up every couple of seconds to remind me of our favourite recently cancelled series). A less apt channel I cannot imagine, as Eleventh Hour has yet to display a pulse. Is this the most boring show on TV? Yes, despite the insistence of the ever-present Clicking Clock Of Teh Doom, it’s much less silly than Fringe, but it’s not like it gets the science right even in such unambitious circumstances, so it hasn’t even got that going for it.

At least Fringe, while being full of risible science, is not ashamed to forget about realism and just go all out, showing us people turning into rampaging porcupine monsters, or macrophages that burst out of your mouth and crush your windpipe on the way out, or teleportation devices that are just fucking wicked cool and if you don’t agree then I’ll never love you. Eleventh Hour, on the other hand, is sober but utterly joyless. It also features a lot of googly-oogly eyes, as Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton have intense ocular orbs that scare the piss out of me. Not for much longer, though. Farewell, Dr. Hood and Thingy Gunbabe. I hardly knew you or cared.


Two other shows I don’t watch are Num3e7501019 or whatever the hell it’s “called”, and The Unit, pictured above (that’s First African American President David Palmer carrying what looks like a life doll for people with a fetish for deli-shop owners). While Numbronics has a few fun character actors on it, I cannot understand how a procedural about numbercrunching has managed to last for five seasons, and is likely to come back for another. I saw the first three episodes, and tuned out because I couldn’t see how the concept could sustain itself. And yet there it is, running even longer than the similarly restrictive Bones (though of course the charm of that show, apparently, is the chemistry between Boreanaz and Deschanel). What happened to the Numberation format to make it run this long? Was I wrong to drop it? (This is a rhetorical question; I’m not going back to it no matter what I hear.) Maybe a long-running character will turn out to be a serial killer, to the delight of its many fans. Or am I thinking of another show?


In contrast, the possible cancellation of The Unit saddens me despite my utter ignorance of it. Why? Because this year creator Shawn Ryan treated TV watchers to one of the classic seasons of one of the greatest shows ever created. The final season of The Shield was a nerve-destroying tour de force, and to think he’s lost one show (on a high) and then maybe lost the other one without fair warning makes me unhappy on his behalf. For providing us with such a thrilling conclusion to The Shield, he should win awards, not get thrown off TV with such disregard. Fingers crossed that, if worst comes to worst, he can come up with another show as great as The Vic Mackey Glower Hour (twice as thrilling as The Jack Bauer Power Hour, even on a good day, tension fans!).

After a whole season of speculation about being dropped by Fox, it looks like Terminator: The Needlessly Long Title Involving The Important-Sounding Word “Chronicles” is finally being cancelled. That, and Dollhouse, have suffered the fate of Friday Night Lights; running to overtake the expectation of imminent extinction. While FNL has, happily, been renewed for two more seasons, T:TSCC is not going to be so lucky. Perhaps Fox only really needed it to dilute the impact of the upcoming film in order to damage its box office chances, if their behaviour over Watchmen is anything to go by. Ironically, even though I was enthusiastic about T:TSCC when I saw the pilot, I only watched one more episode. Of course Torchwood, which I was comparing it to, got worse than even I could imagine, and yet I watched it all the way through to the hysterical end. What’s up with that?


Surprisingly, Dollhouse might make it to a second season, which would probably be surrounded with even more chatter about cancellation. The only thing people have linked to Dollhouse more than those early, awful episodes is the expectation that it will not last. While once that was irksome, it’s a testament to the quantum leap in quality from the sixth episode on that cancellation would now be a tragedy (in terms of TV show potential, not actual real tragedy). The last two weeks have provided more brain food than any other show on TV that isn’t set on a mysterious island. As long as Dollhouse 2.0 is allowed to continue to explore the distortion of the moral norm caused by Dollhouse tech and not just have the ever-unappealing Dushku wandering around in bondage gear prior to some poorly edited fighting, a second season would be welcomed with fireworks and Bacchanalian parties (and, sadly, a flurry of woeful fanfic). If the show is not going to play to its intellectual strengths (yeah, I said it), why bother giving it another chance?


As I said earlier, we’re inundated with shows, even more so now that In Treatment is back for two and a half hours a week, so maybe I should be glad Cupid is being axed. I never watched the original starring Jeremy “Mercury from The Metal Men” Piven, so I have very little awareness of what the show is like, but we’re talking about a remake of a failed show, replacing the undeniably watchable Piven and the equally appealing Paula Marshall with Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulsen. I’m having trouble mustering enthusiasm for this, and now that it’s been cancelled, that enthusiasm dims even more. If I do watch it, it’ll be out of loyalty to the man who brought us Veronica Mars (though that wasn’t enough to make me watch 90210).

Still, I can’t imagine that it could be worse than Castle or The Unusuals. Despite the charmkrieg that is Nathan Fillion selling almost every shitty joke and laboured flirt-op (and proving he is indeed better, better than Neil, at so many things it’s hard to conceal), everything else about it is to entertainment as formica is to wood. A lot of unimaginative shows feel like they are made by machines, but the machine that made this is constructed out of string and cardboard and powered by irradiated rats. Still, at least it’s not The Unusuals. ABC’s website made this sound like a drama featuring a bunch of unorthodox cops whose rarified skillsets allowed them to solve crimes no one else could. Canyon thought it was meant to be a straight-up comedy. That it satisfied neither of us is a sign something went haywire as soon as calloused fingers typed Fade In.


It’s telling that, in the pilot, you see a clip of Bruce Weitz on TV in some kind of sitcom, as the show also felt a lot like Hill Street Blues, but this time with a team comprising nothing but the weirdos like Renko, Belker, and Buntz, but lacking the stable characters like Furillo, Coffey and Esterhaus. The first hour, directed with typical ineptitude by Stephen “The Reaping” Hopkins, was interminable, cutesy, unimaginative, uninvolving, edited into incoherence, cloying, drab, desperately quirky, and, most annoyingly, filled with terrific, wasted actors, like Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau and Terry Kinney. Such talented guys. Oh, and Adam Goldberg is in it too. Erm… ::tumbleweeds blow by::


So, if we lose that, no biggie. Better Off Ted, however, is just about the most lovable show on TV that isn’t Reaper, and even if it’s not as funny as 30 Rock, or as clever as The Office, it’s still worth rooting for, especially as series creator Victor Fresco also gave us Andy Richter Controls The Universe, and I’d feel bad for the guy if he was responsible for two great sitcoms cut down in their prime. It has cemented our love of Portia DeRossi, who is just wonderful as the android-like Veronica Palmer, and has managed to satirise soulless corporate culture in such a non-abrasive manner that we almost love our monolithic overlords by the end of it. It’s mild stuff, but compared to the laugh-void that is Parks and Recreation, it’s Arrested Development meets Seinfeld. I’ve got my fingers crossed for it.


Sadly, I doubt anything can save my favourite new show, NBC’s bonkers soap opera/religious fable/alternate-reality-curio Kings, which would be unmissable even if it was just 45 minutes of Ian “Swearengen” McShane walking around his “palace” muttering to himself, but manages to excel by featuring Ian “Swearengen” McShane walking around the city of Shiloh, capital city of the Kingdom of Gilboa, scheming against his foes (including Brian Bloody Cox!), railing against a preacher (played by Eamonn Bloody Walker!), and trying to predict what God wants of him in order to protect his eroding power base even when that makes him act against the interest of others. As with Dollhouse, no one expects it to make it to a second season, which is heartbreaking. In a season as dreary as this one (where the only other new shows worth following are the frustratingly erratic Fringe and the fluffy Mentalist) it’s been a revelation. No matter how the other shows fare, knowing that the Sword of Nielsen Damocles hangs over such a promising head is enough to make me wonder why the hell I bother watching TV when ambition is so often rewarded with dismissal.

Self-indulgent whinge #268 over.

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!!!

Lost Countdown: No. 10 (Updated with corrections and pics)

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So long have I been waiting for the return of my favourite show (just in case you haven’t been paying attention, it’s Lost) that it became one of the reasons I co-created this blog, so that I have somewhere to go on and on and on about it (sorry, Canyon and Masticator). One thing I wanted to do was lead up to the premiere of the fourth season with a list of things I love about it, but time and chores have obstructed me, and the truncated nature of the season, caused by the writer’s strike, has made its return a bittersweet event. Nevertheless, here is number ten in my countdown of Reasons To Love Lost:

The Awesome Character Actors In The Supporting Cast:

Just like Deadwood, the cast of Lost is not only enormous, but filled with familiar faces of character actors of huge talent and/or nerd value. In season three we saw appearances by Robin Weigert, Jon Gries, Samantha Mathis, Nestor Carbonell, Cheech Marin, King of Awesome Nathan Fillion, and even Billy Dee Williams. I love that showriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are such nerds that on the commentary for Exposé, the episode where we “meet” Mr. LeShade for the first time, they admit they and showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got the costume designer to ensure the colours of his clothes matched those of Lando Calrissian in his Bespin Cloud City attire from The Empire Strikes Back. That’s quality nerdery.

Best of all, due to the flashback nature of the show (more on that later), many of these actors can possibly come back in the future. John Terry, who plays Christian Shephard, and William Mapother*, who was so brilliant as the creepy Ethan Rom, were only meant to be in a couple of episodes but keep coming back in flashbacks because the showrunners love their work so much. Maybe we’ll even see Michael Bowen and Paula “Trixie” Malcomson again.


What makes me even happier is the way the main cast, many of whom seemed to be so much less interesting than the incidental cast, have grown so much over the last three years that they are now often on a par with the guest stars, if not better. More on that later as well.

So, my list begins with a quick post, but that’s what happens when you begin playing Bioshock midway through the night and everything goes wrong, what with the brilliance and atmosphere and addictiveness and satire of Objectivism. More annoying Lost bleatings to come, dear reader! Only a few days to go! Aiiiiieeeeeee!

* Edited to add: In my hurry with my first attempt at this post I mashed up William Mapother’s name with that of his cousin Tom Cruise, and called him Thomas Mapother (which, of course, is Cruise’s real name). A terrible crime for a supposed Lost fan, but I was punished by dreaming about Cruise during the night, talking about how unhappy he was filming Valkyrie in Germany, which would be uncharacteristically rude if it actually happened outside my head.

The 2006-2007 Caruso Awards (Pt. 2)

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I wasn’t going to plumb the miserable depths of the TV season, thinking that for once I’d made a positive statement free from grumpiness or cynicism or teeth-gnashing. It was nice! It made me happy a couple of days ago, and I was considering getting my anger on with a couple of pissy statements, and then I could move on. However, some TV is so bad, so misguided, so detrimental to the reputation of the medium, that it has to be named and shamed, preferably with little tiny jpgs. So, here is the TV that made our toes curl last year. Apologies for dredging up negative memories for anyone who has suffered through any of this.

Worst single episodes of the season:

10. Drive – Let The Games Begin

Oh Nathan, you devilish, gallant, funny little studburger you! How we love you and your dashing good looks, with the added bonus of self-deprecating humour and goofiness. We think you are TEH BOMM! However, please stay away from Tim Minear, because he is TV poison. Angel fans rightly bemoan the premature cancellation of the show, but with Minear on the production, it’s a miracle it didn’t happen earlier, as he seems jinxed. His record is shocking, with cancelled show after cancelled show, but in a way it doesn’t surprise me. To date I’ve find him a flat, humourless writer, with a couple of Angel/Firefly episodes rising above the rest. Granted, he has a grasp of the dramatic side of the Mutant Enemy equation. Sadly, that’s not enough. His shows tend to be unpleasantly dour, but Drive was made worse by the absurd premise (we’re talking Prison Break levels of absurdity, if you can believe that), rushed production job (blame Fox), erratic casting (yay Dylan Baker! Boo Melanie Lynskey! Really really boo!!!), repetitive structure, and general air of half-assery. We only got as far as the third episode, and it didn’t have much longer to improve, but this was bad enough to stop us watching anyway. Drab direction, shitty dialogue, embarassing acting from almost all concerned. Oh, I feel bad now. Forgive us, Nathan! We still love you! ::multiple smooches::

9. Lost – Stranger in a Strange Land

Even a rabid fanboy like myself had to admit that the third season of Lost wasn’t perfect. I found the 6 episode mini on Other Island a lot more meaningful and entertaining than most, but after coming back from the short hiatus with a couple of scorching episodes, the show faltered badly with this dreary travelogue. Bai Ling guest-starred as a tattoo artist who brands her new man (Jack at his most pointless), at the same time as Juliet is branded an outcast by her Othery cohorts, headed by Diana Scarwid (wasted in this and then frustratingly absent for the rest of the season). As usual the little details are fascinating (the brand on Juliet’s back is an upside-down Scientology cross, apparently), but the big picture says nothing interesting. For ruining the momentum of the second part of the season, I must speak out against something I normally love without reservation. And what was it all for? So we could find out that Jack’s tattoo means, “One night in Bangkok and my arm’s all hurty,” or something. Booooring.

8. The O.C. – The Night Moves

The fourth and final season of The O.C. was an almost total joy, allowing the show to head off into the pretty sunset with its head held high. The genius move was to throw caution to the wind and have all sorts of craziness fly free: Che falling in love with Seth’s otter totem; Ryan and Taylor hooking up, thus unlocking his inner awesomeness; Sandy bemoaning his friendlessness and practically stalking a co-worker; Ryan and Taylor falling unconscious after an accident and entering a parallel universe (of sorts); Kevin Sorbo turning up as Ryan’s delinquent dad to seduce Julie Cooper, etc. It was almost all gold, but with two episodes to go, it went haywire in a bad way. An earthquake hits Newport, and Ryan gets badly injured, while super-dependable entertainment generator Julie and honking, self-obsessed O.C. Gupta Kaitlin are trapped in an ice-cream parlour or something stupid, with only a creepy obsessive classmate to help them. If I remember correctly, approximately 198% of the episode deals with that subplot, driving me to nod off repeatedly. At the end, Ryan’s grievous kidney injury heals after someone puts a Band-Aid on it, and everyone returns to a demolished Chez Cohen. I get why they did all of this, to ensure the family moves from Newport to establish themselves in a town less shallow, but there had to be a better, more entertaining way to do it.

7. Doctor Who – Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

I’m not cheating this time! It was a two-parter, and the only time the third season went awry (though the real-time Sunshiney one wasn’t that brilliant either). It’s not as bad as the season two episode with the Olympics, which was a maelstrom of mediocrity, but it came close. Plus, it ruined the Daleks! In much the same way that Rene Ecchevaria ruined the Borg by humanising them, writer Helen Raynor and show runner Russell T. Davies had renegade Dalek Sec absorb a spats-wearing Twenties gangster, only to reappear later as a penis-faced cross between Kid Creole and Bernard Bresslaw from Krull. As has been said before, many Who two-parters are 60 minute long scripts that can’t be shrunk to 45 minutes, and are therefore stretched to 90 minutes, and as a result there are horrible padding sub-plots about pig-faced animal men (which made me pine for John Frankenheimer’s The Island Of Doctor Moreau) and shantytowns in Central Park (an interesting subject, but badly served by the writing). The show rallied, thankfully, with the final five episodes being particularly great, but I can imagine this tedious mess would have put off anyone already (wrongly) angered by the introduction of Martha. (There’s a name for Martha-haters; Crazy-insane-fools-who-are-dead-to-me.)

6. Jekyll – Episode 3

In a word, Jekyll was shit. In several words, Jekyll was shit with some fantastic ideas, lots of ambition, and the odd moment of pure genius. The first three episodes, however, were made hard-going by the awful awful direction. Douglas MacKinnon handled them (before passing the baton to the far more capable Matt Lipsey), and did everything possible to ruin Steven Moffat’s flawed but interesting script. Making The Nesbitt gurn and bleat like an Irish Jim Carrey was his most obvious crime, but not understanding the basics of blocking a scene made many setpieces fall apart in the most hilarious ways. Cramped sets, shoddy lighting, awful over-acting, and ineptly staged shock moments littered all three episodes, but this was truly the worst. We thought it was a parody of horror movies, it was so wretched. MacKinnon is surely a shoo-in for Scary Movie 5, as long as the producers convince him it’s a drama. Oh, and someone burn Gina Bellman’s Equity membership so that she can never darken our TVs again. Why does she still get work? I blame Dennis Potter.

5. Veronica Mars – Un-American Graffiti

Once the best show on TV, Veronica Mars was treated with disrespect and disdain by network heads for two seasons, and then in the hard-fought-for third, the viewers turned on it as well. Suffering an inexplicable downturn in popularity (and therefore a corresponding decline in confidence), it battled on, trying to hold onto the Gilmore Girls viewers and failing miserably (even though it’s 10000000 times the show Gilmore Girls thinks it is). The odd excellent episode won back some plaudits (<3 Paul Rudd 4evah), and the season finale was a heart-breaking triumphant improvement, but a couple of episodes before that, the show shot itself in the foot with incredible sniper accuracy by turning Veronica into the living embodiment of Paul Haggis' hated Crash, as well as sending lovable Keith on an out-of-character mission to stop teenagers drinking. His return to the sheriff’s office was a promising idea, but all it did was turn him into a big judgemental jerk who would fit right in on CSI: Miami. The A-plot (about a Middle Eastern family targeted by a hate campaign) was timely and relevant, but sensitively handled it was not. Veronica’s snarky noir voiceover turned shrill and preachy, and every single previously lovable aspect of the show fell horribly flat. A soul-crushing disaster of epic proportions. Just like Crash!

4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – The Wrap Party

Oh yeah, we had to get this in there somewhere. To be honest, there were episodes that were more unwatchably smug and tedious, episodes that ripped off Sorkin’s previous work more egregiously, episodes that were even less funny and more preachy, but even though the first few episodes were already not that great, this is where the great project flew off the rails like a burning train, not unlike that bit at the end of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Eli Wallach guests as a living embodiment of censorship victimhood, sitting the audience down and explaining in very deliberate terms how McCarthyism is alive and well in Dubya’s America, which no one noticed until he points it out. Thanks, guest-star Eli Wallach! Then Simon and Matt go trawling for African-American comedians, only to find dispiriting amounts of, “Black dudes do this, white folks do that,” of such magnitude that Simon is forced to retcon his past into an improbable Boyz N’ The Hood parody. Oh, and Matt meets a bunch of sexy ladies who are very very very very very very very stupid. That’s the joke for this episode. Stupid women saying stupid things.

::sigh:: Sorkin’s appalling low comedy masquerading as sophistication is yet another symptom of his arrogant assumption that only he is qualified to write his shows, meaning he has to cast around for desperately unfunny jokes, plots that are either rehashed from West Wing (and thus are incompatible with the format of the show. Soldiers kidnapped in Afghanistan?), Moebius-Strip conversations, and single-episode ideas padded out to four-part mini-epics. It got worse (the finale, so bad criminal charges could be filed), but this was the beginning of the end.

And no, Guardian TV critics, I’m not saying this because I’m too stupid to appreciate good drama, so stop writing blog posts about how no one is capable of understanding Sorkin’s genius. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops: when he’s good, he’s amazing; when he’s bad, he’s unwatchable. And embarrassing. And patronising. And arrogant. And unfunny. Let’s hope GoodSorkin worked on the forthcoming Charlie Wilson’s War, and if BadSorkin worked on it, I hope he doesn’t get as pissy and defensive as he did when people called him on the atrocity that was Studio 60.

3. Battlestar Galactica – The Woman King

As I said before, as much as I loved the first four episodes of BSG season 3, I sat through the rest of the season with an increasingly heavy heart. More time was spent dealing with Tyrol and Callie’s failing marriage, Baltar’s status as a walking metaphor, and worst of all, Apollo and Starbuck’s forbidden love (partially prohibited because of Starbuck’s religious beliefs, but the tenets of her religion remain unexplained, so the whole thing seemed as ridiculous as it was boring). If the showrunners want to spend time on a romantic relationship, let’s see Bill Adama and Laura Roslin getting it on. It’s what the fans want, damn it. However, the show plumbed depths I did not think it capable of plumbing with this hour of horrid anvilbashing obviousness. Normally I would rejoice to see Bruce Davison in the show, but this time I just felt bad for him. Playing a racist doctor targetting Sagittarons, with only Helo to save the day, the dialogue became more and more leaden, the premise more obvious, the speechifying more insulting. As with the Veronica Mars episode, it was all about the big themes writ larger than large, and even though the show had flirted with metaphorical crassness before, this was the only time the writers and directors went all out to bludgeon the viewer with finger-wagging moral superiority. And it made me hate Helo. Good work, showrunners.

2. John From Cincinnati – His Visit: Day Four

I’ll get this out of the way so that I can get to the heart of why this episode was so terrible; WHY DID YOU STOP MAKING DEADWOOD, MILCH?!!!???! WHY?!?!?!!? YOU BROKE MY HEART!!! Now that’s out of the way, you can rest assured that this rant has nothing to do with bitterness over the unresolved fate of that most excellent show. It’s more than enough that Jesus From Cincinnati is a pretentious quasi-mystical nothing, with an obscure plot, risible non-acting surfers who don’t surf either, and the shrieking of the hams (more on that below). I will say that the plot and that cod-Shakespearian dialogue often fascinated me, while not entertaining me even one iota. What the hell was Milch doing? Nothing like it has ever been made before, and considering the negative critical and popular reaction, never will again. Was it a car-crash? Or the wave of the future? Was Milch advancing the storytelling form, or was he masturbating with an enormous, smug grin on his pretentious face? Or was it all of the above? No one, including Milch, knows.

Every week was an exercise in audience-baiting, but the fourth episode was the worst of the lot. Never have I watched a TV show and been so convinced that the show creator was laughing in my face. The opening scene (Cass killing time in her hotel) sets the tone of the episode where nothing happens for 45 minutes, with only Rebecca DeMornay’s Cissy Yost furthering the invisible plot. To make things worse, she accomplishes this by screeching for the entire episode. Like nails down an infinite blackboard, the show vibrates your eardrum until it splits, and then goes to work on your teeth and skull. I’ve never seen anything so willfully awful and knowingly unenlightening outside of a Tracey Emin exhibition. Lars Von Trier would approve, which perhaps is criticism enough. Milch’s disregard for his audience is unparalleled, and it’s only the existence of his masterwork, Deadwood, that stops me and several thousand other JFC viewers from hiring someone to torture him with the sound of DeMornay bleating at a pitch that would explode his head, just like the aliens at the end of Mars Attacks.

1. Torchwood – Countrycide

Talking about those episodes made me realise how truly abysmal they all were, but even during the middle of this unpleasant nostalgic flashback, nothing comes close to this eye-wateringly wretched hour of amateurish TV. I’m sure nothing good could have come from Chris Chibnall’s horrendous script, mushing together cliches torn from much better films and TV shows, but to make things worse, the direction and acting reaches apocalyptically bad proportions. Like a group of teenagers armed with a camcorder and hopped up on Mountain Dew and multiple viewings of Terminator 2 and The Hills Have Eyes, the show unravels fast, with absurd macho posturings, childish dialogue, hysterical overacting, laughable portentousness, and ambition far exceeding ability. Seeing Torchwood Gupta Owen pretending to be a gun-toting hardass has been making us laugh ever since, his stupid little hopping movements like some kind of Dadaist performance piece.

That’s before we get into the hilarious message of the episode, that sometimes humans are more inhuman than their alien antagonists. This is meant to be a criticism of our inhumanity? But it doesn’t mean anything if a) you’re comparing them to fictional non-human characters, and b) you’re making the human bad guys do something that no human has ever done, i.e. band together as a village to eat visitors. There are many horrible things human beings do to each other (something everyone knows without Chibnall and his ridiculous ilk telling us), but I don’t think communal cannibalism is among them. The fact that the show thought that it was illuminating some deep dark hole in our psyche, all the while stumbling around, mortally wounded by comical blocking and sub-moronic speechifying, made me simultaneously disgusted with the entire production and overjoyed that I was able to watch something so wrong-headed still being made in this day and age.

Okay, I did enjoy watching the episode with Canyon, because we laughed and laughed and laughed, but the thought that everyone thought they were creating something profound pissed me off when the tears of mirth had dried. There are episodes of Manimal that say more about the human condition than this, with the added bonus of Simon MacCorkindale turning into a horse. As a whole, Torchwood represents everything that’s wrong with British TV, but this one episode was worse than that. It was the nuclear-powered awful-bomb that almost killed storytelling itself, and as such should be buried a thousand miles down in earth lined with salt. And yet, I can’t wait for the next season, especially as the super-awesome Martha Jones is coming back for a few episodes (please don’t ruin her or there will be hell to pay!!!). I might even recap it.

Wow, I went off a bit there. If I sound unhinged, I will say that many of the people involved are very talented and have done other good stuff, so it’s often a conflagration of negative elements conspiring to create TV awfulness, and some of these shows are among my favourites. However, if it’s bad, it’s my duty to hit those bastards with every adjective I can think of. If it means even one less message-laden chunk of worthiness is prevented from reaching our plasma screens, all of this fist-shaking will be justified. Here’s to a new season of gold and dreck to get my teeth into. As Prince once said, life can be so nice!

The Glories and Vexations of the Guardian Guide (Updated)

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Well, I don’t know what I was expecting — that somehow the Guide (the Guardian’s weekly TV Guide equivalent, with various cultural events written up as well) would ditch their near-weekly Studio 60 reviews to instead praise yet another mediocre sketch show, or that Andrew Mueller would have spontaneously discovered sanity — but it’s happened again. I won’t quote the review in full, because if you haven’t seen the show it sounds fairly reasonable, but: “There’s little doubt where [Sorkin's] sympathies lie, but he’s punctilious in letting the opposite case be put humanely and articulately.” Certainly this was the case with The West Wing, but with Studio 60, Sorkin manages not only to rehash WW plots (as he did, endlessly, in this stretched-out two-parter) but to shit all over them, tarnishing every good memory you had of his previous work. When a character’s Midwestern parents are such rubes that they have never heard of any form of media except Fox News, and are assholes to boot, that’s not punctilious fairness to the opposite case. That’s just shitty writing.

Okay, I’m not going to write about this anymore, because it just makes me angry. You win, Andrew Mueller! You have beaten me, sir, and not through the force of your argument but by the strength and scope of your madness. (And if it’s not madness then I have to believe it’s subtle sarcasm, or payoffs from Channel 4.)

Though happily there was a contradiction to this insanity earlier in the Guide — Jonathan Bernstein, who has his own column on shows from America. was writing about shows that are coming to the UK in the next couple months:

When NBC announced its 2006 schedule would feature two fictional shows purporting to examine the inner workings of Saturday Night Live, the critical consensus was that Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 would be quoted, praised and discussed at length. As it turned out, Studio 60 was smug, confused and, on no occasion, funny. 30 Rock’s breakneck pace, unabashed absurdity and ridiculously gifted ensemble — headed by writer Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan — helped it blossom into the funniest network sitcom since Seinfeld.

Finally! Okay, I know this is the standard line that American journalists have been taking for months and months, and that Jonathan Bernstein is reporting from America, so it’s not exactly a radical viewpoint. But still — it’s the first mention like this I’ve seen in UK newspapers (though AdmiralNeck has told me that he’s seen a UK reviewer or two start to turn on the show), so it’s to be welcomed. (We’ve ordered the Region 1 DVD of 30 Rock’s first season, btw, so prepare yourself for endless fawning praise as we rewatch it.)

Also in this week’s guide we have critic John Patterson ranting about James Mangold’s decision to remake 3:10 to Yuma. Apparently he is shocked — shocked! — that Mangold chose to remake a decent old movie instead of an “untouchable” (his word) classic like Once Upon A Time in the West, because the latter would have more political relevance. What?? Isn’t is a better idea to remake old movies that weren’t that good in the first place (see Ocean’s Eleven) instead of trying to improve on classics? People seem offended when classics are remade and merely perplexed when middling oldies are improved on — as if this was really a strange idea, to want to improve on a movie that had some good ideas but failed in the execution of them. But Patterson seems most outraged that the movie seems to have no political relevance (I’ve not seen it yet, but it sounds like a relatively straightforward adventure plot) — something he apparently feels a Western must have.

Why, exactly, are Westerns in particular beholden to comment on current political troubles? Was he outraged that City Slickers didn’t comment on the Gulf War, or that Young Guns II didn’t metaphorically reference the inner workings of trade sanctions? He explains by saying that since George Bush and Dick Cheney are “pseudo-Westerners” and they are trying to accomplish their “Mid-Eastern Manifest Destiny”, Mangold should have picked up on this and made his big post-Stalk the Line movie something akin to Apocalypse Now. I don’t even know where to begin with this, except to say that while 3:10 to Yuma looks like it’ll be a great, fun movie, I really don’t think Mangold has Apocalypse Now just boiling inside him, straining to get out. If I’m wrong, Mangold, I forgive you everything I said about Kate & Leopold. (Though to tell you the truth, Hugh Jackman was really charming in that, and I already kind of forgive you anyway.) However, I will NEVER forgive you Identity.

In other movie news, Superman Returns is premiering on Sky Movies this week — it gets a lackluster review in the Guide, as it should, but Phelim O’Neill complains about Brandon Routh’s lack of presence, since he seems younger than Christopher Reeve, even though they were the same age when they played the role. Even though I thought the movie itself was underwhelming, I thought Routh was wonderful — understated, maybe, but that’s no bad thing; he inhabited the role by echoing Reeve’s mannerisms, though it was no impersonation, and brought a quiet dignity to both Clark Kent and Superman. He’s also got sexy thighs.

However, the Guide gets an overall pass this week because it features a random picture of Matter-Eater Lad chomping on what looks like someone’s garden trellis — yes, he is real, and I am furious that no one’s making a movie about him. Ant Man gets a deal and yet there’s no love for Matter-Eater Lad? (It’s the “Lad” that makes him so special.)

Oh, and the Guide shows us that it looks like our tireless campaigning for Peter Serafinowicz has paid off: he’s got his own show! It will be on BBC2 in October! Suck it, Doctor Who and your Sopranos-esque hiatuses! Peter Serafinowicz doesn’t need you! There’s an awesome picture of him high-kicking with his arms in the air, as if to say, “Thank God I’m not on ITV!” but I can’t find it online. Oh well. Go, you confusingly-spelled comedy titan, go!

Finally, I leave this random post with this, one of 30 Rock’s finest moments. Even if you don’t know who Barbara Walters is, I think you can still heartily enjoy this moment.

Update: Further to my iPhone love from a couple days ago, I found this quote from Nathan Fillion (star of Firefly and Slither) about it [by way of the OTZ]:

I have one. Can I say that it has made my day better? Can I say that it has amazed me with its wonders? Can I honestly say that it has improved the quality of my life? Yes. Whilst others click, poke and plod along with their “smart” phones, I rub, slide, flick, and pinch like I’m on a third date at a county fair.

As if I needed another reason to love Nathan Fillion! Please become a bigger star immediately, you magnificent bastard!