I do this once or twice a year as upcoming music releases line up like ducks in a row – very expensive ducks in a row, in some cases – just for giggles. And because the anticipation is part of the fun. And because you may want to have some participation in my anticipation. Okay, I’m done, let’s talk music. … Read more
A bit of a rant about the Lost finale. This would be a good one to avoid if you’re not up on the show or haven’t seen the finale yet.
Because here there be spoilers. And elephants. Lots and lots of elephants. … Read more
Okay, guys, I’m just gonna get right down to it without any formalities. We’re about 17 hours away from the beginning of the final episode of Lost. I’m going to be “on the board” for this show, probably the biggest TV draw of May sweeps if not the entire frakkin’ year, so please allow me to implore you to do the following:
Don’t f@$% it up. Seriously. If it turns out to be a St. Elsewhere ending that makes people pick up pitchforks and torches and storm their local ABC stations, it’s my ass they’re after, right? So, seriously, don’t get me killed. Please. It’ll look really bad on the paperwork afterward.
Purely as a fan, let me add the following request:
Don’t f@$% it up. You might just be able to top the audience figure for the finale of M*A*S*H here. Personally, I kinda doubt that’ll happen, but hell, stranger stuff has happened recently – look at what we now consider the #1 movie of all time to be. (I still think that ranking is the result of “cooked books” by way of inflated 3-D ticket prices, but what do I know?)
But more to the point, you have an opportunity to make this a finale that people are talking about years – or decades – later. J.J. Abrams himself once said that one of his chief inspirations for what he turned Lost into after he took over the show from its rather simplistic “Castaway on TV” pilot pitch was The Prisoner – as in the original show from the 1960s, not the miserable mash-up from earlier this year. People are still talking about The Prisoner’s final episode, 42 years later. Some folks claim to know what the message is. Other folks claim we’re still peeling back the layers (of an hour of TV shown – let me say it again – 42 years ago) and still aren’t close to the message. Others simply assume 
that there is no message, and that those involved must surely have been high on a stash of LSD covering roughly the same acreage as The Village itself.
Can the finale of Lost get us talking – for years afterward – like The Prisoner did? Or will it turn into something where people are merely grumbling about it for years afterward (see also: Roseanne)? I guess we’re about 17 hours away from finding out.
Don’t f@$% it up, guys.… Read more
I have been a very, very infrequent viewer of The 4400 on USA. My wife’s been following it more closely. I caught a pretty good chunk of Sunday night’s episode last weekend, since she was already watching it, and I realized two things very quickly:
1. I had no freakin’ idea what’s going on in the story anymore.
2. I had no one to root for.
I was really more concerned with the second point than the first, otherwise I would’ve been watching The 4400 all along. I’m sure that if I was more into the story, I’d probably have some insider’s knowledge that the plotline is a lot like Galactica: basically good people having to do some fairly shady things for survival’s sake. I remember, after part 1 of the Galactica episode Pegasus aired, I stomped into theLogBook’s virtual writers’ room and complained that the rapacious crew of the Battlestar Pegasus was one step too far over the line for me: the story had officially gotten too dark. And I think I remember making the same comment about the cluster of six “Others” episodes at the beginning of the third season of Lost – sure I wanted to know more about the Others, but I just wasn’t interested in seeing Sawyer tortured or beaten to a pulp week after week. In both cases, the shows righted themselves after these moments of extreme darkness, and in the discussion of Galactica, it was pointed out to me that, as much trouble had been taken by the writers to show what kind of grey-area, situational-ethics decision making our heroes on Galactica had relied on to survive, the Pegasus crew had to be shown to be even more questionable in their judgement and conduct. I can grok that.
I’m sure the situation is the same with The 4400, but not being an avid follower of the story, I just don’t realize it. What nagged at me is that, unlike Lost and Galactica, I couldn’t tell who was supposed to be the bad guy. I was able to divine the differing agendas and philosophies of the two main characters on either side of the divide, but both of them were exhibiting such reprehensible behavior that I couldn’t see who I was supposed to root for. But what struck me was that my wife, who has been an avid follower of The 4400, said “I don’t like where they’re going with this show.”
I know we live in the age of the anti-hero, in an age where there is no such clear-cut decision that isn’t a questionable one. I know we live in an age where there are worse monsters walking among us than a couple of well-dressed, eloquently-spoken TV characters who have intensely charismatic dialogue written for them that outlines their worldviews and why they oppose…well…whoever the heck it is they happen to be opposing in this week’s episode. And I know we live in a world where players on both sides of any given conflict, however well-meaning their motivations, display reprehensible behavior. The people on TV have got nothin’ on the real life villains on both sides of the playing field.
But geez, people. Give us some hint of who’s on the side of the angels, however misguided they may be. The tale of someone who sets out to fight the good fight, falls and is redeemed is a morality play. The tale of everyone falling and not finding redemption is just nihilism. I’m not asking for characters wearing white hats or black hats, but instead just the barest hint of an honorable motivation somewhere.… Read more
It doesn’t happen too often anymore, but maybe once a year there’s a confluence of musical talent, old favorites, and stuff I’m Just Curious About all hitting at roughly the same time. (There was a time, long ago, when this was more of a quarterly thing.) Some stuff I’ve already ordered, some stuff I’m still slobbering over, and other stuff I’m just thinking about. Here’s a rough rundown of this fall’s candidates for curing my mystery melody malady. … Read more
I’ve been neglecting to post this recently, so let’s give it another go:
Lost: At first I thought the promos for this episode were overselling what was going to happen and what we’d wind up seeing. As it turns out, they undersold it a bit. That said, I’m sticking with my theory that Rousseau is, in fact, one of the Others. (Surely I’m not the only person thinking this.) Assuming that the Others are operating on something other than a brute-force level and kidnapping children, a more psychological level perhaps, Rousseau has just done the equivalent of rolling a grenade into the room for the survivors – the presence of “Henry Gale” and how he has been treated is dead certain to polarize the survivors, with the fallout mainly affecting Jack and/or Locke, and certainly Sayid. Delenn she ain’t. (I also think the dissent between Sawyer and Hurley over the Noisiest Frog In The Entire Universe was meant to telegraph a preview of the coming strife to us, only I think the disagreement will be stronger than “Dude, that was cold.”) Actually one of the better episodes of this season, I thought.
Invasion: Throughout this season, we’ve seen Tom Underlay quitely dispose of various bad-apple “possessed/hybrid” characters, and now we know why (he’s fighting to keep the hybrids’ presence a matter of coexistence rather than conquest, and he may be fighting against the very nature of the beast itself)…but each of those characters, including his daughter’s ex-boyfriend and a nutty woman who literally discarded her own baby and then killed her mother, has remained a loose thread…until now. Those loose ends came back and bit us in the ass big-time – and left us with a killer cliffhanger. Actually, several. It now seems like at least two of the female hybrids, including Mariel, have bellies full of some kind of eggs. Ick. And it seems to be causing the crazy, baby-abandoning hybrid some big problems. Really ick. Are the male humans inhabited by these creatures also full of eggs? If not, why not? And is ABC really thinking about ditching this show with all of these loose ends still dangling?
Stargate SG-1: So…Ori Bugs. I found this one kind of entertaining, though admittedly on a purely B-movie level; take away the forward-moving story element that the Ori left these bugs to do their bidding, and that’s essentially what you have. It’s always good to see Robert Picardo too, though he seemed to be…well…strangely underutilized in this episode. That’s really all I can think of to say.
Stargate Atlantis: So help me, I’d forgotten how much I missed the Genii as an enemy. Granted, in some respects they’re stock baddies, but I’ve gotta say there’s something appealing about Colm Meaney as a total rat’s ass bastard. They almost, almost lured me into thinking that the whole thing wasn’t his character’s trap from the get-go, but he’s such an irredeemable jerk of a villain that it was satisfying to see events roll like a juggernaut toward what has to be the ultimate comeuppance. After last week’s lame cross between the original Star Trek’s Return To Tomorrow and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, this was quite refreshing.
Galactica: Baltar’s a slimy ass. There. I said it. (As if we haven’t all been saying it since the miniseries.) But throw him into bed with Tom Zarek and he’s officially even slimier. The Pegasus situation: this kinda bears out my earlier theory that it’ll take more than Baltar’s one nuke to take out Pegasus, but it wasn’t nice to see this demonstrated practically. I’m really wondering where the Apollo/Starbuck thing is going, and if Starbuck is going to redeem herself at any point soon; at this point she’s become as unreliable, and almost as unlikeable, as Tigh. Apollo’s arc has become fascinating – it’s interesting to have a Commander Adama on Battlestar Galactica again (as it should be), but I can’t help but feel like he’s in over his head on his new command. One can just imagine what the Pegasus crew, and those in the know among the rest of the fleet, think about the Admiral’s choice for the new skipper of Pegasus. At a few points early in the episode, until Adama pointed out that the human race needs repopulating, I was rolling my eyes at the abortion plotline, but once it became integrated into the story instead of – and I think I’ve mentioned ST:TNG’s second season opener The Child as a particularly lousy example of this – just grafting a modern-day debate into a script. I’m glad this turned out to have story implications beyond that, even if it still felt largely like that example. Hopefully it was just a “stylistic red herring” designed to elicit precisely the response that I had and throw people off.… Read more
Lost: If you’re skipping any episodes that don’t feature glimpses of the Others or the Smoke Monster or some huge revelation about the Dharma dome, you can just move along. I quite liked this one because it jumped right on the big question mark hanging over Charlie at the end of the episode two weeks ago, and unlike some long-standing unresolved plot points in the series, this one really needed to be addressed immediately. It’s funny how, when confiding his dreams and hallucinations to Eko, Charlie pointed out something that I was already thinking – if Kate sees a horse in the jungle, or if, well, anyone sees Walt running around, no sweat, nobody questions it. But Charlie having premonitions about the baby in mortal danger? It’s gotta be the heroin. (Admittedly, the presence of the heroin doesn’t help his case.) Locke also voiced something I was beginning to feel was at the root of the story – Charlie trying to save the baby because he can’t save himself – although I really came to resent Locke’s handling of the situation. Charlie needs help and, like it or not, they’re stuck with him. A side note: I like the Hurley/Libby angle. I like it a lot. Sometimes the oddest attractions do pop up when and where and with whom you least expect them. Feel free to file this under “of course, you would say this, because you’re fat too,” but it’s nice to see Hurley treated as a fully-rounded human being and not just occasional comic relief or exposition about the mystery numbers. That said, I laughed out loud at Sawyer’s quip, “I bet you’ve got a load you’d like to drop in.” 😛
Invasion: Shades of Lost – quite a bit of this week’s episode was a flashback to nine years before the rest of the series so far, showing how Tom Underlay became the first person in Homestead to be infested and finally shedding some light on what role he plays within the community of the infested hurricane survivors. It turns out there’s an opposite number who may be working against him (and indeed, may be the one who shot him at the beginning of the episode), and it could be that as sinister as Tom seems sometimes, he could be all that’s keeping the infested humans from running riot and more aggressively trying to expand into the general populace. Which is kinda scary, to think that there’s someone out there even creepier than Tom. I rolled my eyes a little bit at the conspiracy theory which seemed to imply that the military is in bed with the possessed humans. Surely that’ll turn out to be something other than what it is, rather than an excuse to have mysterious black helicopters show up and snatch the bad guys out of danger continually. I’ll say it again: if you’re a Lost fan who’s upset over the lack of forward motion of the plot vs. character development, stick around for the show that comes on right after it.
Stargate SG-1: This is one case where yes, I can see the resolution coming from a light-year away, but the character touches are what make it. I’m glad to see some further nailing down of what makes Cameron Mitchell nuts-but-functional in a different way than John Crichton. A lot of this episode’s plot specific were pretty much paint-by-number, though I did enjoy seeing a previous episode’s plot development (the memory storage device) come back without being completely mission-critical or a throwaway gag.
Stargate Atlantis: Remember the “winter season premiere” where Rodney OD’d on the Wraith enzyme and became quite an entertaining one-man show? I think someone realized that sequence was some of the best pure entertainment that Atlantis has produced this season and decided an encore would be dandy. I was actually a little disappointed when Fantasy Carter showed up, because David Hewlett was doing a great job of carrying the whole show, on his own, locked into a room without even a speaking computer to play off of. And yes, I realize that Fantasy Carter isn’t bound in any way to act like the Carter we know from SG-1, but I somehow wasn’t expecting her to get as lowbrow as “…but I bet I can get you hot!” – that sounded less like something from Rodney’s subconscious and more like something a certain sector of fandom would want to hear. (I guess I can’t complain too loudly, because I can’t say I would’ve minded being trapped with this slightly yummier version of Carter.)
Battlestar Galactica: Y’know, I hope I’m not really picking up on a case of Janeway-itis hitting President Roslin while her immune system is still recovering from her miraculous cancer cure. There are times when she seems remarkably like a hard-ass, much more than one would expect her to be, and then there are times she comes across as being almost laughably naive, as in this episode with her expectation that the fabulous Adama boys were somehow going to wipe out the black market in one swell foop. If anything, Apollo probably has a much better solution, even if it is…muddy. (And speaking of Apollo, kudos again to Richard Hatch for making the best of a very brief appearance – and it seems like we’ll be butting heads with him again in the future.) Apollo wasn’t just standing in the mud – he was in it hip-deep. And Adama turns out to be the least naive of them all. I was sorry, however, to see Fisk go. (And who the heck is running the Pegasus now?) While still a relic of Admiral Cain’s regime, Fisk at least seemed redeemable. It’s almost scary to think about who’ll be running Pegasus next. Maybe she does get taken out after all, and sooner than I thought. As for Baltar, again, I think Roslin was extraordinarily naive not to see that coming. Forthright she may be after her recovery, but surely she hasn’t lost so many of her wiles as to realize that there was probably a more diplomatic litmus test she could’ve employed than an offer to resign.
Little boo-boo I spotted at the end of the promo for next week’s Galactica: “All New New Next Friday.” I can’t laugh too loud, I’ve accidentally done stuff at least that stupid and put it on the air before. 😀 Also, why does it seem like advertisers suddenly feel that Galactica is a prime demographic for folks who need cold medicine? Feelin’ stuffed up, buddy? That’s because you have a big big cold! I’d swear those two spots ran in every break.… Read more
Lost: You guys are gonna have to start this one without me; due to a basketball pre-emption I haven’t gotten to see this week’s two episodes yet.
Invasion: Okay, some of the loose threads aren’t dangling as loosely as we thought. It appears that Tom Underlay is slowly restaffing the sheriff’s department with the possessed/supplanted “hurricane survivors.” This doesn’t bode well. There were a few points in this episode where I started to feel like Jesse’s life expectancy may not stretch past the end of the season. If nothing else, Tom is too damned clever for him – he’s managed to get Rose and Kira to turn against Jesse a little. This whole running thread of Tom-as-master-manipulator is so nebulous without knowing exactly what it is he holds over everyone. As for Larkin – she’s going to walk right into trouble if she takes what she now knows and tries to report it on the news, given that her boss is one of the possessed. I know I’ve criticized Shaun Cassidy for recycling elements of American Gothic (creepy deep south setting, creepy sheriff who seems to be answering to the devil himself, complex family politics), but I’ve got to give him kudos for, if nothing else, interweaving the characters’ relationships with the advancement of the plotline in such an integral way. Compared to Lost, Invasion’s plotline is now a runaway train thundering down the tracks.
Stargate SG-1: Sliders SG-1: Yesterday’s Enterprise! Okay, I’m joking there. Actually, a pretty fun little episode, and I thought it was an inventive way to point up why what’s happening on Atlantis does actually affect Earth. And it doesn’t hurt that it tied back to one of my favorite season 2 episodes. Some light-hearted non-arc fun that still lets us know what the heck is going on.
Stargate Atlantis: Or, this week, Stargate Atlantis: The Musical. I actually loved this episode – best one so far this season, by a vast margin. It’s interesting how both of this week’s Stargates referred fairly heavily to one another. Not necessarily “crossover” episodes, where SG-1’s plot bleeds directly into Atlantis or vice-versa, but episodes that embrace the whole franchise. That’s kinda neat. Topically, this episode dealt with some areas of national security and military ethics that I haven’t seen the Stargate franchise touch in a long time. The build-up of Kavanagh as the potential mad bomber (since it’s Stargate, can he be the Unas-bomber? okay, okay, never mind…) was quite well done and dovetailed with what’s been established about him in previous episodes, so much so that I never saw the real perp coming – in fact, it almost had the effect of making that revelation a little bit of a “where the hell did that come from!?” I wonder if this is the end of Caldwell as a semi-regular.
Battlestar Galactica: Compared to the Pegasus trilogy, tonight’s episode was almost a tone poem. Quite a few surprises about Roslin’s background, and almost undoubtedly the beginnings of Baltar turning toward the kind of unabashed treachery that the original version of the character was noted for. (And then some.) The Cylon sympathizers’ movement kinda came outta nowhere (seems to be a good night for that too), but that trail leads back to where Baltar’s hiding Gina. The utterly bizarre deus ex machina (quite literally) that got Roslin back on her feet was…well…kinda convenient. But it also really muddies the water as far as the relationship between humans and Cylons – if word of her miracle cure gets out, that’ll only fuel the sympathizers’ fire on the one hand, and have people questioning whether or not Roslin has somehow been “taken over” on the other. Oy vey. With the whole fleet primed for that kind of paranoia, neither is a good option. Of course, handing a nuke over to a Cylon ain’t either.
Am I the only person waiting on the edge of his seat to see the first Sci-Fi Channel Doctor Who promo?… Read more
This seemed to go over well last week, so I’ll take another stab at this week, throwing in ABC’s Wednesday night genre fare for good measure.
Lost: Everyone should’ve seen this one coming – a new band of survivors = a new batch of backstories to explore. And I’m sure that of all the Tailies, Eko stands out as the one everyone would like to know the most about right off the bat. What was startling was how much an episode telling Eko’s story revealed about Charlie. And not necessarily good stuff about Charlie either. You want to root for the guy’s recovery, but it isn’t looking good. And just on a conceptual level, the scene at the beginning where Walt is being urged to kill a man was just terrifying. It reveals just how little an idea we’ve really had about what kind of concrete danger either Walt or the tail section children are in. Now we know, and that ratchets up the tension incredibly. I’m with Michael – let’s pack some heat and go find those kids next week.
Now, where “Lost: Revelation” was concerned…eh. I remember saying here that I hoped that it would be an interesting exercise in editing the whole series together as a seamless whole. Instead, it seemed to be tail-section-heavy, and didn’t really kick in until about halfway through. I felt a bit let down. But catch-up shows like that aren’t really meant for me, now are they?
Invasion: Fans of Lost who are getting vastly frustrated with that series’ occasional lack of forward motion might do well to check out this show, whose narrative took some major leaps forward this week. This week’s episode raises so many questions: how much can any of the “possessed” humans retain their personalities and free will? There are clear hints that there’s a collective, almost pack-mentality at work among the alien-inhabited people, but just as clearly, Mariel can retain her identity and can operate against that mentality. Makes you wonder whether Tom is going with or against the flow, doesn’t it?
Stargate SG-1: I could swear I’d seen this episode before…oh, wait – here. And then they took the Surprise Twist Ending from here! Slightly different setup, but the same basic premise. I’ll give them this – they went into the nature of the technology a bit more than that other show did. Other than that…eh…maybe I should just shaddup. What was that Shakespeare said about there only being seven plots in drama? I tried to keep an eye out for the Interesting Character Stuff, but I just wasn’t getting much that I didn’t get from that previous iteration of these storylines.
Stargate Atlantis: Interesting, isn’t it, how creative personnel seem to be blurring the lines? In last week’s Galactica, we had a shooting script by director Michael Rymer, and this week’s Atlantis features a story co-written by Joe “Sheppard” Flanigan. Again, not exactly original, though I think what proved to be interesting here were the breadcrumbs dropped about ascension and possibly the Ancients.
Battlestar Galactica: Man. Y’know, waiting for the respective assassination orders to come down, I was standing up, watching the TV, and my heart was pounding. And then nothing happened and I relaxed and I realized there were still 15 minutes of show to go. Holy crap. Okay…specific points. My immediate concern is that Fisk is going to have a hard time reining in a crew that’s used to the unrestrained brutality that seemed to be SOP under Cain. I wonder where the Number Six that isn’t in Baltar’s head has gone. I wonder if Apollo just has a death wish at this point – seems like the revelation that Roslin was capable of convincing his dad to order a “hit” just ripped his world out from under him. I wonder if Starbuck was as shaken up by the whole thing as she seemed to be, and what exactly the significance of her last comment re: Cain was. I wonder to whom Dualla’s going to be reporting the conversation on which she eavesdropped, if anyone – though it seems like there has to be someone, else why was she there? And I wondered when the penny was going to drop with Bill Adama. Took long enough…and now there seems to be so little time left. Damn, damn, damn. By the look of things, next week’s episode is going to start knock-down drag-out fights at the water cooler the day after it airs. Oh, and I love these guys for dialing down the sound and letting the music carry things every once in a while. (A season 2 soundtrack CD is in the planning stages, very likely for a summer ’06 release, though there’s been no official announcement yet from the label.)
The other big news this week, of course, was the announcement that the new Doctor Who will be taking over the Stargate Atlantis slot in March on Sci-Fi Fridays. I urge everyone – especially those who have gadgets like a Tivo whose records can be used to determine viewing figures even unofficially – to watch Doctor Who on Sci-Fi. Even if you’ve downloaded it. Even if you’ve got tapes from Canada. Even if you’ve already ordered the UK or Canadian DVD sets. Oh, and by the way: let’s be patient and get the U.S. release of the box set. God, I’d love to be going through the commentaries right now, ya know? But I’m going to wait until July. Let’s send the BBC a message: Doctor Who has a strong fan base in the United States. And we want to see more, so we want to see them keep making more.
So, I caught a network promo tonight which says that ABC is going to be running an hour-long “catch-up-on-the-serialized-storyline” show not just for Lost, but for Gray’s Anatomy as well. (I could swear they’re doing one for Invasion as well.) I also see one just ran on Sci-Fi for Battlestar Galactica, and once a year they tend to do one for the Stargate franchise as well. This is an interesting phenomenon that I have to admit that I’m torn on. The Lost special looks like it’ll be an interesting editing exercise if nothing else, doing a kind of “edited highlights” combining the entire show to date with footage from the episode The Other 48 Days, as if we’ve been watching the survivors of both sections all along, and connecting things like the walkie-talkie scene. But at the same time…it kinda says something that they seem to pop at least two, if not three, of these “catch-up” specials for Lost every season, doesn’t it? I don’t know if it’s saying something good or something bad either.
On the good side: I remember once watching an episode of Buffy, I forget which one, which was very tied into the mythology of the show, and the “previously on Buffy…” teaser timed out to six and a half minutes before they ever got around to “and now the conclusion.” Specials like this help to fill that need and save the actual new episode’s program time for new story, so we can Just Get On With It. It’s also possible that the producers are thinking that the public will thank them for that step when it comes time to put it all on DVD.
On the bad side: The downside here is, as with so many things, promotional. These damned things are pushed like they’re part of some movie-length new episode – ABC is bad about that, especially with Lost, because who’s gonna turn down two hours of Lost? Only then they tune in and discover that the first hour is refried beans. That erodes audience trust in the promotion, and undermines everything we’re trying to do from the local level on up to try to drive people toward the show.
The serialized stuff isn’t bad. Remember a few years ago when Warner Bros. (and their cute Warner Sister) were grinding their teeth together at the very thought of Babylon 5 being a five-year tightly serialized storyline? Now you almost can’t change the channel without hitting a long-range serialized storyline. (I’ll admit, as enamoured as I am of story arcs and long-range character development and shows that take actions and consequences into account instead of hitting the patented Star Trek Reset Button every week – which is a pretty good trick if you’re a show that doesn’t have “Star Trek” in the title – I’m almost getting to where I miss standalones. I think that’s one of the many reasons that Everybody Hates Hugo was one of my favorite hours of television of 2005, even with a season and a half of Battlestar Galactica and 14 new Doctor Who episodes for competition.)
It’s too bad J. Michael Straczynski is pulling down something like three dimes in licensing/residual revenue for Babylon 5 all these years after it ended its run. Because I think he’s had more of a seismic effect on the medium than he’d let anyone give him credit for. (Not that anyone’s looking to credit anyone who isn’t Chris Carter or Joss Whedon for bringing that storytelling device to the forefront.)… Read more
