Why I Love This Town

BPD were arresting a gentleman for- honestly- what the fuck ever because it's Baltimore. The interesting thing is that while they were cuffing the suspect a random dude attacks one of the arresting officers. The funny thing is that exact freaking thing happened in the very first episode of The Wire. I tell you, this town.

Curious

So I'm trying to get into SyFy's new show, Haven, but it's just not holding me. Which is weird because it's components- at least a good number of them- would usually be a game maker for me. In the pilot we had a woman who controlled the weather with her emotions. Of course her story arc revolved around a dude running a con on her so... maybe it's just that Haven seems to be about making super powers boring?

I stopped watching Heroes because it was angst-ridden, repetitive, and direction-less, but at least it wasn't boring. It just sucked. So what does that say about Haven?

In all fairness only one episode has aired, but the pilot is your bait and hook. Haven's pilot just left me with a general feeling of meh. Decidedly underwhelmed would be a fine way to put it. I sat through a little under a season and a half of Dollhouse and that was really based on The Joss more than overall quality of the show. Haven doesn't have The Joss or anything even remotely comparable, so it has three more episodes to win me. That's about as long as I gave Painkiller Jane, which- to be fair- Haven is nowhere near that bad. (PKJ was so bad it was offensively embarrassing. Hell, I was embarrassed on behalf of everyone involved in that debacle.) Haven is just boring.

But in a show about a town of people, some of whom have super powers or something "boring" should never come to mind. Which brings us to something else. What the hell is Haven about really? We've met one character with super powers- maybe two? Our intrepid FBI agent isn't on duty, but on vacation to explore a possible connection between the town and her biological mother (our daring FeeBee having been raised in an orphanage). And her being sent to town for her initial investigation was apparently some sort of plot. That's a lot to pull together and nothing in the pilot built any sort of case for those things being anything other than a bunch of loose unrelated bits. Or maybe it did and I just missed it because there was something more interesting happening elsewhere. Like paint drying in the hallway.

And We Though Amanda Was Losing It!

Before we get into things, I just want to cover a few things.

I've signed up for the frakking text blast for The Caprican. That's how much I love this show. I didn't even do that shit for BSG- though now I sort of wish I did. But that's like a frakking threshold thing right there.

Also? Sister Clarice is totally channeling Caprica Six.

Now on with the show!

The previouslys have Amanda! Excellent because I love her so much already. The previouslys helpfully remind us that she's going totally crazy right now- like more than usual- (or at least she totally thinks she is.)

I love how Joe and Daniel are both trying to find their daughters and both frakking up all over the place. Joe by being the biggest n00b ever and Daniel by just being desperate bullying asshole. Like the shit that dude does this week. So frakked.

Into the real game and Joe Adama is cubing the frak up.

But what I really want to talk about is how, unbelievably enough, Daniel Graystone's relationship with the Zo-bot manages to be even creepier and grosser now that he knows Zoe.2 is in there. Seriously, between this shit and the whole "rip off your arm" thing you can kind of see the world ending right before your frakking eyes.

But this is his desperate grief. Motherfrakkers trying not to drown will drown your ass in a heartbeat just trying to stay afloat. They don't mean to do it, but you're is still underwater. So in his desperation not to drown, Daniel hammers at his daughter.2 with everything in his arsenal. And it's ugly and terrible and just unbelievably sad. But mostly horrifying. Because seriously, this is what's going on: His daughter is dead and he kidnapped her avatar because "a difference that makes no difference is no difference at all", then he thought he lost that too, but now maybe not, so he engages in actual psychological war against her to get her back. Which, people do this shit to each other all the time, just without the giant robot bodies. And it's just as successful in real life as it is in this show.

And on the polar opposite end you have Joe Adama, who's back in his robe and bumbling around Grand Theft Caprica. Does he even go to work these days? I wonder if Bill has gone back to hanging out with the Tauron mafia. Anyway...Joe becomes a virtual stim-junkie and after a heart to heart with brother Sam, he takes a level in bad ass and finds a lead- a GTC cabaret and a wall of painted flowers. It's looking like daddy's little girl is making a new home for herself. His new guide points as much out, suggests that he takes his dork self back to the real world (and you know, his not dead son- though until Joe snaps out of it he's actually better off being raised by the mafia and grandmom), and Joe gets out his sad thinky face. Again.

Oh, and Vergis tells Amanda that Daniel totally had three people killed in order to steal his MCP while Daniel is downstairs trying to get Zoe.2 to talk to him by having her shoot the dog! Don't worry. The gun was loaded with blanks and it turns out that Zoe new the whole time- but wait! In the matrix she confesses to Lacy that if there had been real bullets in the gun she might have shot dear old crazy desperate dad!

This!Frakking!Show!

So next week is the season finale. I'm so excited!

In Case You Haven't Heard

Caprica is the best frakking thing on TV right now. Seriously.

It's funny. I didn't think I would like it, and the pilot did little for me- but after two episodes it was wham! And now I'm hooked. I just had to let go and let it be it's own thing. It's totally worthy of the BSG legacy.

All of the things we covered before? So there. You want to talk theology? Caprica. You want to look at the line between "us" and "them"? Caprica. How much Bill Adama rocks (even in elementary school)? Caprica. We'll be doing occasional (and maybe more than) here.

Glad To See That I'm Not Alone

From Television Without Pity:



Hell, even the character captions think the whole Jenny storyline is bullshit. Katee Sackhoff deserves better, show! Much much better!

News Flash

This isn't the universe where SyFy is mysteriously less geeky than Sci Fi.

If the NBC subsidiary wants to attract a non neck-bead having audience then maybe they should drop wrestling and the ghost hunters crap. Additionally, it'd probably be a just swell idea to not spend the entire Saturday line up running whatever low budget shit Euro flicks they can get their hands on for the change they found last night's trouser pockets.

Hate to break it to the geniuses over there, but 90% of their original "movies"(I don't watch them all so I'm being really conservative with that estimate) are just as bad as the grade F Euro flicks.

The Stargate concept is dead. The tits dried up on that momma cat and rotted off with the closing of Atlantis. Let it go. But not for another Pain Killer Jane- which, by the way, was quite possibly the worst thing I've ever seen on television. Congratulations! No one wanted to watch it, but what was your brilliant idea? Did you decide to drop it early? Pretend you never thought of it (the best solution, I think)? No! You, in your infinite fucking wisdom decided to run it every day. Why!? I mean, I get that Kristanna Loken is tall and blonde, but even Terminator 3 realized that Jennifer Lopez could out act her so her only tasks were slowly stalking about the set looking "menacing". You, friggin prodigies, decide to make her the main character in a poorly conceived attempt to serialize yet another one of your shitty "movies".

You want an audience that doesn't spend their free time drawing their D&D characters? Try not treating your network like a fan service station. Your scheduling sucks. The parts of your line up that are worth watching are Battlestar, Eureka,.... Trying to think here. I mean, I'm being nice giving you Battlestar as how they just ran their series finale last night, but I figure knowing you guys you'll try to pimp made for tv movies out of it until its shriveled and dessicated corpse turns to dust. Dresden Files can't really be mentioned because you don't even re-run the one season you shot. (Pain Killer Jane, really!?)

I've already spent more time on this than I intended, but if you think the razzle dazzle routine of a new name and a shiny new logo is going to solve your problems then you're more clueless than our current President and that's saying a lot- that guy couldn't even figure out region coding on DVD's.

Oh No....

Well, this episode can best summed up as WHAT THE FRAK!? I knew it was going to hurt, but I didn't know that it could hurt this much. The following is basically a giant spoiler for last night's BSG episode so skip if you haven't seen it.

I started writing one post when Starbuck found her corpse in the burned out viper cockpit. I scrapped it completely and started writing a new one when Dualla shot herself. I threw my hands in the air in complete surrender when Admiral Adama said "I don't frakkin know."

Dualla. She called both of the Adamas back to themselves when they needed it. Reminded Bill of his promise. Reminded Lee of his purpose. She was a compass that always pointed true. On the nuclear wasteland of Earth you saw despair in those eyes for the first time. When she sat with Hera for Athena and Helo it felt off, but you needed to believe it would be alright and so you did in spite of your misgivings. And she glowed so brightly that night with Lee. Even Gaeta said so. She kissed Lee goodnight. Goodbye. She said she was proud of his speech. It looked like life. It was a goodbye party. Her blood on the floor, surrounded by weeping and pleading family. Her family, bargaining against the grief. For her life in the only words they know "medic" and "please", knowing she'd already gone.

Bill. The president, his sine qua non, has given up. She looked into herself and saw nothing left to burn so she burned her prophecies. His compass gone now too. And he doesn't frakking know the why of any of it. But he's tired. As he walks down the hall you see the Galactica has broken out in chaos. What would your home look like if you suddenly placed it and everyone in it in hell? That's what the Galactica looks like. Bill walks past two of his men fighting in the hallway. He has something more pressing to attend. He's given up too. It takes Saul Tigh to haul him back from the edge.

Also, Ellen Tight is the final cylon? Starbuck, what the frak? D'Anna said fuck you, clown, and the circus you came in with; she's not taking this ride again.

There's so much to get a handle on. I'm still kind of in shock. At any rate, I can't wait until next week.

Hey....

Let's talk about Sons of Anarchy for a minute.

Now that the season finale is done, there's a lot to say. I started watching because there was nothing on and being sans-satellite I was trolling through the on demand archives and figured I'd give it a shot. The first episode was described by TWOP as being a white trash biker version of the Sopranos. I can't speak for the Sopranos because it was never a show that I really got into, but I like SoA.

SoA keeps you from completely cheering their group of anti-heroes on by giving you an antihero who has serious and continual moral qualms guided by the manuscript of his deceased father. The protagonist operates outside of the law and is entrenched in a world he seeks to change. He does bad things and not always for the right reasons, but tries to do as much good as he can. It's a story of flawed people. And the people progress. Realistically. Even the primary antagonist isn't without virtue. If BSG is about redemption, then SoA is about damnation.

In BSG you watch characters struggle to save themselves from hell in every sense, but SoA is the story of people damning themselves for the most part. Don't get me wrong, SoA is of nowhere near the quality as BSG, but it shares some cross points. SoA lives closer to the alter than BSG does, but it's still about what takes place between the temple and the alter.

SoA is on a larger scale about fixing a dream gone wrong. It's about a biker gang founded to be essentially a libertarian commune operating by its own rules outside of society mainly by distance and influence upon the small town it calls home. The idea went wrong primarily due to the influence of one of the founding members. The son of a murdered founder starts having second doubts because he has a new born son. His doubts are fed by his discovery of his father's manuscript which detail his dreams for the purpose of the club upon its founding and how it went astray. That son, Jax, oscillates between his fathers dreams and the influence of his stepfather, Samcrow, who was founding member who drew the club down the wrong path.

SoA has a very Hamlet feel during the first season, despit the fact that Jax's mother, Samcrow's wife, very clearly knows what happened to Jax's father and sides with Samcrow (though the season finale throws a smidgeon of doubt upon the driving force behind their releationship). In fact, I would go so far as to say that the first season of SoA is essentially Hamlet being confronted with his father's ghost and trying to figure out what to do about it.

I didn't want to write about this show until now because I wasn't sure I could do it without making iti a recap. Tonight made it big league. Hell, I just told you it was Hamlet. It's not BSG level so far, but there will be more posts about SoA if FX picks it up for another season. I hope they do. And I hope they continue the Hamlet mirror. It's hard to go wrong from Shakespear, yall. Really.

That's all for tonight. I recommend that you check out SoA. Start from the beginning because it's that kind of show and give a chance up through the episode with the clown. You'll know which one I mean. That's the one that moved it from casual to must see watching for me. And not just becuase I freaking hate clowns.

I'll close with this: imagine The Sopranos+Hamlet+biker gang, how could that now= awesome? Try it.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving.

The Wonders Of Editing....

I expect this to be the first and last post about Sci-Fi's new series Chase. Whatever else there is to say about this show, the editing is amazing on two levels. The first level is that the introduction of the hunters is just ridiculously action movie. However, more importantly, the contestant interviews are placed for sheer comedy gold. In the first 13 minutes two contestants have had fantastic comedy placement for their interviews. A girl who had just indulged in being completely clueless interviews about how she's actually really smart. Then a guy interviews how he's in good shape, only to immediately trip over a fallen lamp post. A lamp post, people. It's not like it was uneven pavement. It was a goddamn street light.

That is all.

Wasted Opportunities

So I'm watching tonight's episode of Sanctuary and all I can think is how much I wish it was an episode of Supernatural instead. You could so totally rely on Dean to refer to the nubbins as predator-tribbles. Because I mean, really. A whole hour devoted to small furry rapidly breeding cute creatures who have natural active camouflage and eat everything (including people) and not one reference to Star Trek's The Trouble With Tribbles episode? Like how is that even possible?