Reaper
So I watched the first half dozen episodes of the new TV show Reaper, a decision made irrationally and almost involuntarily based on early reviews comparing it to Buffy. It certainly had a great premise: on his 21st birthday our protagonist, a boring young man named Sam, finds out that his parents promised his soul to Satan before he was born. Now that he's reached the age of majority, he must work off his parent's debt by becoming the Devil's bounty hunter - catching and returning souls that have escaped from hell.
Unfortunately Reaper, at least in the first few episodes, fails completely to capitalise on such a great premise, instead quickly finding a generic formula and falling into a dull routine. This would be tolerable if the writing and acting were sharp enough to keep it entertaining but sadly the show also suffers from a fatal lack of wit. The characters are unbelievably generic, the attempt at a wacky sidekick (a guy who acts out a pretty straight impersonation of Jack Black) might have helped if his wackiness contained a trace of genuine humour, and the less said about the others... well there is nothing to say about them because they're so boring and two dimensional. But the nail in the coffin for the show was the romance, in which Sam pines for his workmate Andi, which over the course of a mere six episodes became so offensively inane that I had no choice but to cancel my bittorrents in disgust.
Sam spends a decent percentage of each episode trying to gauge Andi's feelings for him and/or smooth over the latest misunderstanding that has arisen between them because of his secret other life. At no time does Andi evince any hint of a personality or an opinion of her own, merely making puppy dog eyes when Sam breaks a date with her after work and remaining a blank cipher, both to her suitor and to the viewer, as to what she's really thinking or feeling. If I saw someone behaving this way in the real world I would shake my head and cluck disapprovingly at her cruel and manipulative toying with this poor sap who's quite obviously infatuated with her, but of course that's not what the writers intend us to see. Andi is a perfect example of this peculiar American TV/ Hollywood creation, the artificial love interest: a character (invariably a woman) who exists only to stand in as an example of chaste virtue, and to be used by a primary character to learn a valuable lesson about honesty, or some other fatuous homily. Aside from the obvious crimes against characterisation that this approach entails, it's offensive for two more reasons. Firstly the creepy crypto-chauvinism it implies (the perfect woman is completely passive and virginal), not to mention the numerous opportunities it provides for the writers to massage conservative America's madonna/whore complex (contrast Andi with the women Satan sends to tempt Sam with, who (gasp) have tattoos and make the first move in trying to kiss him). And secondly because of the nauseatingly Disney moral of twue wuv that it's expressing.
But there is a reason that I made it through six whole episodes, and that's because Reaper does have one genuinely great redeeming feature in the person of Satan as played by Ray Wise (who of course we all remember as Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks). Appearing as a distinguished, tanned, well dressed older man, Wise steals every scene with his delicate balancing of the character's cheerful, friendly outer persona and his true nature as the malevolent manifestation of all evil. He is also apparently the only character which brings out any trace of wit in the writers. Sadly he (and the concept) are not enough to redeem the show. I've since shifted my attention to Pushing Daisies, which has it's own problems, but pleases me much more on a moral and philosophical level.
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
As Your Attorney, Your Friend, And Your Brother… I Strongly Suggest That You Get Yourself A Better Lawyer
Twin Peaks Season 2 Part 1
It's taken a long time but finally the second season of Twin Peaks is out on DVD, and as it happens there's good reason that no one's too excited about it. The first season was a mere eight episodes, all of them taut with tension and mood. It was buoyed along by a mystery driven plot which, while it couldn't be expected to really go anywhere (this is a David Lynch project after all), kept things moving and interesting. The show's best qualities were its moody setting, colourful characters and infrequent but brilliant black humour.
Sadly things rapidly declined in the second season. The plot threads began to wander and the weird gimmicky characters outlasted their welcome. That said there are still many high points to be found, the unique mood of the peculiarly Lynchian isolated mountain town, where the surrounding forest is home to supernatural creatures both wonderous and diabolical, is still showcased frequently. The season's midpoint climax episode (the unmasking and capture of Laura Palmer's killer) is riveting watching, and scattered elsewhere through the season are many brilliant scenes, most memorably this one, probably the creepiest thing I've ever seen on TV (although I'm not sure how well it will come across in a grainy out of context youtube video):
Sadly, I doubt I will bother to get the second part of season two. With no central plot thread remaining after the mystery was solved the story devolved into pointless wandering. But it's still remarkable to see just how much influence this series had on those that followed it, which ranged from The X-Files to Lost and include many others. These shows are quite clearly the direct successors to this one in atmosphere, style and in their deliberately cruel manipulation of their audiences with mysteries that are never truly meant to be solved (I swear they even reuse half the music from Twin Peaks in Lost).
It's taken a long time but finally the second season of Twin Peaks is out on DVD, and as it happens there's good reason that no one's too excited about it. The first season was a mere eight episodes, all of them taut with tension and mood. It was buoyed along by a mystery driven plot which, while it couldn't be expected to really go anywhere (this is a David Lynch project after all), kept things moving and interesting. The show's best qualities were its moody setting, colourful characters and infrequent but brilliant black humour.
Sadly things rapidly declined in the second season. The plot threads began to wander and the weird gimmicky characters outlasted their welcome. That said there are still many high points to be found, the unique mood of the peculiarly Lynchian isolated mountain town, where the surrounding forest is home to supernatural creatures both wonderous and diabolical, is still showcased frequently. The season's midpoint climax episode (the unmasking and capture of Laura Palmer's killer) is riveting watching, and scattered elsewhere through the season are many brilliant scenes, most memorably this one, probably the creepiest thing I've ever seen on TV (although I'm not sure how well it will come across in a grainy out of context youtube video):
Sadly, I doubt I will bother to get the second part of season two. With no central plot thread remaining after the mystery was solved the story devolved into pointless wandering. But it's still remarkable to see just how much influence this series had on those that followed it, which ranged from The X-Files to Lost and include many others. These shows are quite clearly the direct successors to this one in atmosphere, style and in their deliberately cruel manipulation of their audiences with mysteries that are never truly meant to be solved (I swear they even reuse half the music from Twin Peaks in Lost).
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
...Unless They Some Smart Ass Pawns
The Wire Season One
After watching (and loving) the first season of The Shield, I was more or less obligated to tune into the similar (and even more critically lauded) The Wire. The two shows have strong similarities, both are gritty cop shows set in poor, crime ridden neighbourhoods (The Shield is set in a bad part of L.A., while The Wire takes place in Baltimore, a choice of setting that behoves the creators to make the slightly unusual choice of having an almost entirely black cast). However despite starting from similar places the shows have vastly different approaches to the genre. The Shield poses, explicitly and didactically, questions about concrete issues, mainly the attitude of 'the ends justify the means' with regards to law enforcement. The Wire is far subtler and more philosophical with it's themes, which are presented with a sophistication far beyond that of any other TV show I've seen, even in our current golden age of good TV.
Ten years ago television was the 'idiot box', the lowest form of entertainment. As a kid I was always puzzled by the far greater artistic merit attributed to film, when I perceived them both as moving pictures and could see no reason that one should be greatly different to the other. In a sense I was right. There's no reason that television should not be a medium for intelligent and enlightening story telling, but the fact remains that, with rare exceptions, no one was using it as such for a very long time. Certain shows (Buffy, The Sopranos) turned that around and now series' with long running, complex narratives are common place. Sadly this little renaissance comes at a time when broadcast television' lifespan is coming to an end, with the internet's Sword of Damocles poised delicately over its head. This era will no doubt be viewed in retrospect with a lot of nostalgia when we're all stuck watching the puerile offspring of lonelygirl on youtube or it's successor, and when we do so The Wire will no doubt be one of the touchstone examples used.
There are two halves to the first season of The Wire. In one we follow the fortunes of D'Angelo Barksdale, a rising player in his family's drug trafficking business, and his associates. In the other we watch the police investigation tasked with bringing down the gang's kingpin, D'Angelo's uncle Avon. Despite the dedication of the officers carrying out the investigation the authorities within the police department have little patience for the 'waste of resources' so our main protagonist, detective Jimmy McNulte, balances his time maintaining covert surveillance on the drug dealers while playing politics with his superiors who are constantly pushing to shut the operation down.
On the plot level there's a lot going on, and while I have always been in the habit of watching Lost, 24 and even Buffy with one eye on the TV and the other on the internet, it's impossible to keep track of what's going on in The Wire without devoting most of your attention to the show, with it's fast paced, jargon laden dialogue and, refreshingly, it's willingness not to spell everything out for the viewer. Even a show like Lost, which has a reputation for keeping people guessing, deals out its mysteries methodically. The viewer of Lost is not meant to actually figure anything out for themselves, all will be explained (if it's going to be) by an explicit, revelatory scene or line of dialogue. The Wire, in contrast, keeps a lot of things, particularly the less important details, implied and unstated. The closing montage of the season is particularly good. Without any dialogue the point of the show is made clear, you can put as many criminals in prison as you care to, but without changing the social situation there's always going to be someone at every level of the organisation ready to step into place and carry on doing the same old thing. Sure, individuals lives and careers have been shaken up or destroyed (and one or two have even been improved), but the faceless institutions of the police force and the drug gangs remain trapped and unchanged in their perpetual war; a war which neither has any real interest in winning.
It's a downer but a great one to watch. The show lacks the gritty realness of The Shield, but makes up for it with artificial but snappy and entertaining dialogue and a plot that is never predictable. More than once I was on the edge of my seat, genuinely concerned for the fate of a sympathetic character (and they're found in both sides of the series' conflict) because the show unfolds like a novel, where plot is paramount, rather than a TV show, where a character's sudden death is more likely to occur because of the actor's contract negotiations than any dramatic reasoning.
To start with my opinion of this show was that it was good, but not as good as The Shield, but the elegant and genuinely unpredictable denouement of the season brought it all together so well that I'll happily concede that the common consensus is correct and this really is one of the best (can't say the best, that's Buffy) things ever screened on TV.
After watching (and loving) the first season of The Shield, I was more or less obligated to tune into the similar (and even more critically lauded) The Wire. The two shows have strong similarities, both are gritty cop shows set in poor, crime ridden neighbourhoods (The Shield is set in a bad part of L.A., while The Wire takes place in Baltimore, a choice of setting that behoves the creators to make the slightly unusual choice of having an almost entirely black cast). However despite starting from similar places the shows have vastly different approaches to the genre. The Shield poses, explicitly and didactically, questions about concrete issues, mainly the attitude of 'the ends justify the means' with regards to law enforcement. The Wire is far subtler and more philosophical with it's themes, which are presented with a sophistication far beyond that of any other TV show I've seen, even in our current golden age of good TV.
Ten years ago television was the 'idiot box', the lowest form of entertainment. As a kid I was always puzzled by the far greater artistic merit attributed to film, when I perceived them both as moving pictures and could see no reason that one should be greatly different to the other. In a sense I was right. There's no reason that television should not be a medium for intelligent and enlightening story telling, but the fact remains that, with rare exceptions, no one was using it as such for a very long time. Certain shows (Buffy, The Sopranos) turned that around and now series' with long running, complex narratives are common place. Sadly this little renaissance comes at a time when broadcast television' lifespan is coming to an end, with the internet's Sword of Damocles poised delicately over its head. This era will no doubt be viewed in retrospect with a lot of nostalgia when we're all stuck watching the puerile offspring of lonelygirl on youtube or it's successor, and when we do so The Wire will no doubt be one of the touchstone examples used.
There are two halves to the first season of The Wire. In one we follow the fortunes of D'Angelo Barksdale, a rising player in his family's drug trafficking business, and his associates. In the other we watch the police investigation tasked with bringing down the gang's kingpin, D'Angelo's uncle Avon. Despite the dedication of the officers carrying out the investigation the authorities within the police department have little patience for the 'waste of resources' so our main protagonist, detective Jimmy McNulte, balances his time maintaining covert surveillance on the drug dealers while playing politics with his superiors who are constantly pushing to shut the operation down.
On the plot level there's a lot going on, and while I have always been in the habit of watching Lost, 24 and even Buffy with one eye on the TV and the other on the internet, it's impossible to keep track of what's going on in The Wire without devoting most of your attention to the show, with it's fast paced, jargon laden dialogue and, refreshingly, it's willingness not to spell everything out for the viewer. Even a show like Lost, which has a reputation for keeping people guessing, deals out its mysteries methodically. The viewer of Lost is not meant to actually figure anything out for themselves, all will be explained (if it's going to be) by an explicit, revelatory scene or line of dialogue. The Wire, in contrast, keeps a lot of things, particularly the less important details, implied and unstated. The closing montage of the season is particularly good. Without any dialogue the point of the show is made clear, you can put as many criminals in prison as you care to, but without changing the social situation there's always going to be someone at every level of the organisation ready to step into place and carry on doing the same old thing. Sure, individuals lives and careers have been shaken up or destroyed (and one or two have even been improved), but the faceless institutions of the police force and the drug gangs remain trapped and unchanged in their perpetual war; a war which neither has any real interest in winning.
It's a downer but a great one to watch. The show lacks the gritty realness of The Shield, but makes up for it with artificial but snappy and entertaining dialogue and a plot that is never predictable. More than once I was on the edge of my seat, genuinely concerned for the fate of a sympathetic character (and they're found in both sides of the series' conflict) because the show unfolds like a novel, where plot is paramount, rather than a TV show, where a character's sudden death is more likely to occur because of the actor's contract negotiations than any dramatic reasoning.
To start with my opinion of this show was that it was good, but not as good as The Shield, but the elegant and genuinely unpredictable denouement of the season brought it all together so well that I'll happily concede that the common consensus is correct and this really is one of the best (can't say the best, that's Buffy) things ever screened on TV.
Friday, October 05, 2007
I Can't Do This Anymore
24 Season 6
I think I've finally gotten a handle on the politics of 24's writers. By and large they're liberals, there's handwringing aplenty to be found in the early parts of this year's storyline about the erosion of civil liberties and the injustice of racial profiling, but they sure ain't the kind of limp wristed, pussified bleeding hearts who wouldn't take to a suspected terrorist with a hammer and a length of electrical cord if it could stop a nuclear bomb going off! Despite the often unpleasant fascination of the show with torture, earlier seasons delivered a lot of good, somewhat realistic action and a compelling plot. However after five years they seemed to have drained their small reservoir of decent ideas and season six contains little good to offset the offensively authoratarian concept behind the show.
Last year ended on a cliffhanger as our hero Jack Bauer was being shipped off to a Chinese prison. This season begins as Jack is released after two years of torture. His haggard, haunted appearance gave me hope that they had found something interesting to do with a character who had became a disturbingly fascist caricature of an action hero, and in an early scene Jack is unable to go through with the torture of a terrorist (despite the literal nuclear bomb ticking away at every ad break), turning away and saying “I can't do this anymore...” Sadly this promising direction is quickly discarded (the writers are quite open about the fact that they make the story up as they go along) and before long Jack is unhesitatingly putting the thumbscrews on to his own brother. The torture scenes are thankfully fewer in this season, between the 'torture your own brother with your dad watching' scene in this series and the 'torture your own girlfriend' scene in the last one the writers have pretty much exhausted the possibilities for pushing that envelope. Unless maybe next year Jack ends up having to torture himself.
As usual the main storyline is padded out with plenty of lame romantic and personal subplots which go nowhere and stretch believability. (Yeah, don't worry about the fact that downtown L.A. just got nuked, now is the perfect time to discuss your marital problems!) At least no one had a baby this time. Why they continue to include this crap is beyond me. Even fans of the show loathe it.
Sadly the primary plotline is not much better this year. They've done the 'swarthy terrorist with a nuke in a suitcase' angle a few times now and it's getting tired. (My suggestion for next year is Tim McVeigh style domestic terrorists. Maybe make them Christian fundies as well. That ought to push a few buttons!) The international intrigue towards the end of the season made for an improvement, but it still lacked in the execution. Frankly this season was actually quite boring to watch.
As I watched the show I noted down a list of specific good and bad things that I noticed. There turned out to be quite a few of them and I'm lazy so I've just put them into a pair of bullet pointed lists. Beware of spoilers:
Bad things:
And yet despite all that bullshit, I have a disturbing feeling that I will watch it again next year...
I think I've finally gotten a handle on the politics of 24's writers. By and large they're liberals, there's handwringing aplenty to be found in the early parts of this year's storyline about the erosion of civil liberties and the injustice of racial profiling, but they sure ain't the kind of limp wristed, pussified bleeding hearts who wouldn't take to a suspected terrorist with a hammer and a length of electrical cord if it could stop a nuclear bomb going off! Despite the often unpleasant fascination of the show with torture, earlier seasons delivered a lot of good, somewhat realistic action and a compelling plot. However after five years they seemed to have drained their small reservoir of decent ideas and season six contains little good to offset the offensively authoratarian concept behind the show.
Last year ended on a cliffhanger as our hero Jack Bauer was being shipped off to a Chinese prison. This season begins as Jack is released after two years of torture. His haggard, haunted appearance gave me hope that they had found something interesting to do with a character who had became a disturbingly fascist caricature of an action hero, and in an early scene Jack is unable to go through with the torture of a terrorist (despite the literal nuclear bomb ticking away at every ad break), turning away and saying “I can't do this anymore...” Sadly this promising direction is quickly discarded (the writers are quite open about the fact that they make the story up as they go along) and before long Jack is unhesitatingly putting the thumbscrews on to his own brother. The torture scenes are thankfully fewer in this season, between the 'torture your own brother with your dad watching' scene in this series and the 'torture your own girlfriend' scene in the last one the writers have pretty much exhausted the possibilities for pushing that envelope. Unless maybe next year Jack ends up having to torture himself.
As usual the main storyline is padded out with plenty of lame romantic and personal subplots which go nowhere and stretch believability. (Yeah, don't worry about the fact that downtown L.A. just got nuked, now is the perfect time to discuss your marital problems!) At least no one had a baby this time. Why they continue to include this crap is beyond me. Even fans of the show loathe it.
Sadly the primary plotline is not much better this year. They've done the 'swarthy terrorist with a nuke in a suitcase' angle a few times now and it's getting tired. (My suggestion for next year is Tim McVeigh style domestic terrorists. Maybe make them Christian fundies as well. That ought to push a few buttons!) The international intrigue towards the end of the season made for an improvement, but it still lacked in the execution. Frankly this season was actually quite boring to watch.
As I watched the show I noted down a list of specific good and bad things that I noticed. There turned out to be quite a few of them and I'm lazy so I've just put them into a pair of bullet pointed lists. Beware of spoilers:
Bad things:
- They can't be bothered with a scene of Jack explaining to everyone how he escaped from the terrorists but this is supposed to be in real time so when he shows up everyone just says “Oh hey Jack, good to see you escaped certain death”. It seems more than a little cavalier after the tearful goodbyes when they sent him off to die.
- It's going to be hard to top this season next year in the death and destruction stakes, considering that four episodes in they nuke L.A.
- Jack pronounces nuclear 'noocular'.
- “Send them back to CTU, they'll be safe there.” Yeah right, over the last six years the only place less safe has been standing next to the president.
- America would never elect a president so bad at reciting dramatic speeches.
- They've more or less stopped caring about the real-time gimmick that originally was such a big deal about this show. The only time I noticed it this year was when I realised that two characters must have been fucking for forty minutes.
- I'm always a little disappointed at the lack of motivations in the terrorists. They're always one dimensional 'We hate America! Bwahahahaha!' types. A little more detail could make things so much more interesting.
- Funny how an explosion will knock over a bad guy ten minutes away but not a CTU agent just round the corner.
- If I was as unhelpful and obstructive at my work as the people at the counter terrorist unit are I'd be fired within a week.
- The country that the terrorists come from is never named (leading to stupid things like the President saying “Get me the ambassador for Assad's country”). I think we can safely assume they came from Dukkadukkastan.
- The terrorists' plan relies on the US president being a fucking idiot and lashing out at Middle Eastern countries more or less at random. Plot twists pulled straight from today's headlines!
- Poor Jack. No sooner does he defeat the terrorist boss in hand to hand combat and retrieves the nuclear bombs, but he barely has time to make a sigh of relief before the Chinese bad guy rings up and informs him that they've kidnapped his girlfriend.
- Jack becomes a suicide bomber!
- Jack is the only person alive who can overhear cellphone conversations.
- Obligatory computer nerd angst: The autistic guy who can hack into anything. Uh, I don't think that's how computers or autism work...
- The writers seem to have a bit of a virgin/whore complex. Every woman who has sex on the show invariably turns out to be evil.
- They blew some guy's face off just so he could come back next season with an eyepatch.
Good things:
- The chick who plays Nadia is hot.
- That's it.
And yet despite all that bullshit, I have a disturbing feeling that I will watch it again next year...
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
It's The Assman!
Seinfeld Season 6
The exceptionally observant, obsessive compulsive and preternaturally gifted among you may have noticed that I've skipped ahead a season with these. There's no particular reason, that's just the way it worked out. This is a hard post to write because I watched these over a period of more than a year and it's hard to remember the first ones, but here we go anyway.
Season six finds Seinfeld in the full bloom of its success, but I must say it's a little weaker than the earlier seasons. Still, even slightly below average Seinfeld is pretty damn funny and there are plenty of moments to be found here that have gone down in TV history, to name a few, the introduction of J. Peterman, eating a chocolate bar with a knife and fork and of course “You know, I don't know the exact pronunciation but I believe it's Menage A Trois.”
And of course Seinfeld is always worthwhile for the perverse enjoyment of watching the unbelievably obnoxious main characters. I was struck this time around by just how nasty and selfish Jerry, George and Elaine act. I can't name a single act of kindness or generosity that any of them perform over the shows entire nine years. The contrast of course is Kramer, who despite being a total fucking headcase is a genuinely kindhearted spirit. Of course it's not in vogue to say anything nice about Michael Richards nowadays, ever since his racist tirade was immortalised on youtube (link NSFW due to offensive language), but I find that I'm still a big fan of the guy. My impression is that rather than giving voice to a heretofore suppressed bigoted streak, he was going for some kind of Lenny Bruce type thing (NSFW for the same reasons...), and trying to get comedy from the outrageous offensiveness. Perhaps so outrageous that he didn't think anyone would take it seriously. The sad way he says “There's still those words... those words...” as he walks off stage in the clip marks a poignant end to what was the career of a uniquely brilliant comedian.
The exceptionally observant, obsessive compulsive and preternaturally gifted among you may have noticed that I've skipped ahead a season with these. There's no particular reason, that's just the way it worked out. This is a hard post to write because I watched these over a period of more than a year and it's hard to remember the first ones, but here we go anyway.
Season six finds Seinfeld in the full bloom of its success, but I must say it's a little weaker than the earlier seasons. Still, even slightly below average Seinfeld is pretty damn funny and there are plenty of moments to be found here that have gone down in TV history, to name a few, the introduction of J. Peterman, eating a chocolate bar with a knife and fork and of course “You know, I don't know the exact pronunciation but I believe it's Menage A Trois.”
And of course Seinfeld is always worthwhile for the perverse enjoyment of watching the unbelievably obnoxious main characters. I was struck this time around by just how nasty and selfish Jerry, George and Elaine act. I can't name a single act of kindness or generosity that any of them perform over the shows entire nine years. The contrast of course is Kramer, who despite being a total fucking headcase is a genuinely kindhearted spirit. Of course it's not in vogue to say anything nice about Michael Richards nowadays, ever since his racist tirade was immortalised on youtube (link NSFW due to offensive language), but I find that I'm still a big fan of the guy. My impression is that rather than giving voice to a heretofore suppressed bigoted streak, he was going for some kind of Lenny Bruce type thing (NSFW for the same reasons...), and trying to get comedy from the outrageous offensiveness. Perhaps so outrageous that he didn't think anyone would take it seriously. The sad way he says “There's still those words... those words...” as he walks off stage in the clip marks a poignant end to what was the career of a uniquely brilliant comedian.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Because He Gets Results You Stupid Chief!
The Shield Season 1
I know I'm really late to the party with this one. The Shield is almost about to (or perhaps already has, I've been keeping myself in the dark about it to protect myself from spoilers) finish its sixth season, whereas I've only just cottoned on to it by way of the breathless anticipation echoing around certain internets of what was supposed to be its grand finale (the sixth season was intended to be the last but it was granted another at the last minute).
In broad terms The Shield is a plain old cop show. It's set in a seedy suburb of inner L.A. and follows the police department responsible for keeping some kind of order in the middle of rampant drug use and gang warfare. The focus is on a small group of about half a dozen main characters, all of whom are conceived with originality and skilfully acted. Of these Vic Mackey, leader of the anti-gang strike force, is central to the show as a crafty and charismatic man who does a good job keeping the peace but whose methods range from the corrupt to the outright abominable. Countering him is the district captain Aceveda, who appears to be the straight and narrow foil to Vic and his dubious attitude to policework but who gradually reveals more shades of grey on his soul as the season wears on.
While the morality of the show ultimately seems to come down against Mackey and his techniques it does show his perspective well and poses a genuine moral question. The corrupt cops of the strike team do honestly want what's best for the community, and if thuggery, planting evidence and even murder are necessary to catch the crims then to hell with those bureaucrats and their red tape! If they get results, isn't that what matters? The actor behind Mackey, Michael Chiklis, does a great portrayal of a man who honestly believes he is in the right even as his means grow more and more morally untenable, not only in the way he justifies his actions but also in how his cheerful, easy going nature persuades his fellow police, some of whom have a few more moral qualms about pocketing confiscated cocaine in order to put their kids through college, to go along with his schemes.
Most of the time when recommending a good TV show it's customary to note that 'you have to watch until the thirty-eighth episode before things really hit their stride' but that is by no means the case here. The first episode is easily one of the finest hours of TV I've ever seen, introducing the characters just to the bare degree necessary and launching straight into a instantly engaging setup for the rest of the show, culminating in a tour de force scene where Mackey commits a heinous crime that will haunt him for the next thirteen episodes and beyond.
Later on in the season more and more drama is added, to the point where a lesser group of writers would sink into a morass of mediocrity under the weight of it, but these guys take the tired old soap opera clichés, from repressed homosexuality to a kid with autism, and make them work. None of the later episodes recapture the intensity and sheer mainlined dramatic goodness of the first episode but the whole season is top notch.
Coming soon, season one of The Wire, which I'm told is even better.
I know I'm really late to the party with this one. The Shield is almost about to (or perhaps already has, I've been keeping myself in the dark about it to protect myself from spoilers) finish its sixth season, whereas I've only just cottoned on to it by way of the breathless anticipation echoing around certain internets of what was supposed to be its grand finale (the sixth season was intended to be the last but it was granted another at the last minute).
In broad terms The Shield is a plain old cop show. It's set in a seedy suburb of inner L.A. and follows the police department responsible for keeping some kind of order in the middle of rampant drug use and gang warfare. The focus is on a small group of about half a dozen main characters, all of whom are conceived with originality and skilfully acted. Of these Vic Mackey, leader of the anti-gang strike force, is central to the show as a crafty and charismatic man who does a good job keeping the peace but whose methods range from the corrupt to the outright abominable. Countering him is the district captain Aceveda, who appears to be the straight and narrow foil to Vic and his dubious attitude to policework but who gradually reveals more shades of grey on his soul as the season wears on.
While the morality of the show ultimately seems to come down against Mackey and his techniques it does show his perspective well and poses a genuine moral question. The corrupt cops of the strike team do honestly want what's best for the community, and if thuggery, planting evidence and even murder are necessary to catch the crims then to hell with those bureaucrats and their red tape! If they get results, isn't that what matters? The actor behind Mackey, Michael Chiklis, does a great portrayal of a man who honestly believes he is in the right even as his means grow more and more morally untenable, not only in the way he justifies his actions but also in how his cheerful, easy going nature persuades his fellow police, some of whom have a few more moral qualms about pocketing confiscated cocaine in order to put their kids through college, to go along with his schemes.
Most of the time when recommending a good TV show it's customary to note that 'you have to watch until the thirty-eighth episode before things really hit their stride' but that is by no means the case here. The first episode is easily one of the finest hours of TV I've ever seen, introducing the characters just to the bare degree necessary and launching straight into a instantly engaging setup for the rest of the show, culminating in a tour de force scene where Mackey commits a heinous crime that will haunt him for the next thirteen episodes and beyond.
Later on in the season more and more drama is added, to the point where a lesser group of writers would sink into a morass of mediocrity under the weight of it, but these guys take the tired old soap opera clichés, from repressed homosexuality to a kid with autism, and make them work. None of the later episodes recapture the intensity and sheer mainlined dramatic goodness of the first episode but the whole season is top notch.
Coming soon, season one of The Wire, which I'm told is even better.
Friday, July 06, 2007
What This Country Really Needs, Right Now, Is A Doctor
Doctor Who – 2007 Season
The last two seasons of Doctor Who have turned out far better than I had dared hope, so the latest one was immediately put on the 'must watch' list as soon as it began airing. The first episode delivered quite satisfactorily. While the story was not terribly original (the Doctor faces off against a couple of breeds of malevolent aliens in modern day London (OK, a section of modern day London that has been transported to the moon)) it was done with the wit and flair that the new series has become known for and does a nice job of introducing the Doctor to his new companion, who turns out to be an improvement on Billie Piper if only because every time she appears on screen I don't think “Why d'ya have to play that song so loud?” “Because we want to! Because we want to!”
However much to my dismay the season quickly deteriorated after that, most episodes were based around ideas that were largely derivative of others from earlier seasons. This would not necessarily be a disaster, and the actors playing the Doctor and his new friend Martha do their best to put a bit of pep into things, but the dialogue and the plots are simply uninspired, far below the standard set to date.
A pair of two part episodes are the worst of the bunch. The Daleks are reintroduced, to no one's great surprise, but the writers aren't able to think of anything interesting to do with them. It must be hard when the Daleks have come up with one mindblowingly evil scheme a year for forty something years to keep finding new and interesting works of evil. They must be getting a bit tired, I wouldn't mind if the writers gave them a break next year.
In a later two parter, The Doctor erases his memory and assumes a human identity in order to hide from a group of aliens. This storyline exists only to foreshadow a plot point to be introduced later and delved to nauseating depths of sentimentality. At this point I was almost ready to give up on the show, and I would have confidently declared it worse than Torchwood. However the writers managed to engineer a total reversal of my opinion in the last four episodes. The disappointing two parters were followed up by the fantastic 'Blink', which revisits a lighthearted theme explored in an episode from last season ('Love and Monsters'): obsessive fandom. It also features the second best bad guys of the season; a breed of aliens that appear as statues and can only move when they're not being observed. It's an original idea and it leads to some really great effects.
The season ends with a fantastic three part storyline, featuring another of the Doctor's old enemies who has not yet reappeared in the new series. I'll spoiler protect things here, but if you're familiar with the show then you probably won't find it hard to guess who it is:
WATCH OUT! SPOILERS! Highlight to view:
The Master returns and gets elected as Prime Minister of Britain. In this incarnation he's a jovial, fun loving psychopath and his carefree attitude makes him the perfect foil for The Doctor. The actor who plays him is fucking hilarious. I'll never think of this scene without laughing:
SPOILERS OVER.
This final story arc is completely inspired, and redeems the entire shitty season. Here's hoping next year's will be of a higher overall standard.
The last two seasons of Doctor Who have turned out far better than I had dared hope, so the latest one was immediately put on the 'must watch' list as soon as it began airing. The first episode delivered quite satisfactorily. While the story was not terribly original (the Doctor faces off against a couple of breeds of malevolent aliens in modern day London (OK, a section of modern day London that has been transported to the moon)) it was done with the wit and flair that the new series has become known for and does a nice job of introducing the Doctor to his new companion, who turns out to be an improvement on Billie Piper if only because every time she appears on screen I don't think “Why d'ya have to play that song so loud?” “Because we want to! Because we want to!”
However much to my dismay the season quickly deteriorated after that, most episodes were based around ideas that were largely derivative of others from earlier seasons. This would not necessarily be a disaster, and the actors playing the Doctor and his new friend Martha do their best to put a bit of pep into things, but the dialogue and the plots are simply uninspired, far below the standard set to date.
A pair of two part episodes are the worst of the bunch. The Daleks are reintroduced, to no one's great surprise, but the writers aren't able to think of anything interesting to do with them. It must be hard when the Daleks have come up with one mindblowingly evil scheme a year for forty something years to keep finding new and interesting works of evil. They must be getting a bit tired, I wouldn't mind if the writers gave them a break next year.
In a later two parter, The Doctor erases his memory and assumes a human identity in order to hide from a group of aliens. This storyline exists only to foreshadow a plot point to be introduced later and delved to nauseating depths of sentimentality. At this point I was almost ready to give up on the show, and I would have confidently declared it worse than Torchwood. However the writers managed to engineer a total reversal of my opinion in the last four episodes. The disappointing two parters were followed up by the fantastic 'Blink', which revisits a lighthearted theme explored in an episode from last season ('Love and Monsters'): obsessive fandom. It also features the second best bad guys of the season; a breed of aliens that appear as statues and can only move when they're not being observed. It's an original idea and it leads to some really great effects.
The season ends with a fantastic three part storyline, featuring another of the Doctor's old enemies who has not yet reappeared in the new series. I'll spoiler protect things here, but if you're familiar with the show then you probably won't find it hard to guess who it is:
WATCH OUT! SPOILERS! Highlight to view:
The Master returns and gets elected as Prime Minister of Britain. In this incarnation he's a jovial, fun loving psychopath and his carefree attitude makes him the perfect foil for The Doctor. The actor who plays him is fucking hilarious. I'll never think of this scene without laughing:
SPOILERS OVER.
This final story arc is completely inspired, and redeems the entire shitty season. Here's hoping next year's will be of a higher overall standard.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Thank God We're Hot Chicks With Super Powers
And now, dear readers, it is time for the post I have been dreading having to write for almost a year now.
Buffy Season 7 - Part 2
Joss Whedon, what the fuck were you thinking? Unlike many, I loved Buffy right up until the end of the sixth season, yet even I wept silent tears of grief as I watched season seven. But before we get into that, lets start out by noting the things that were good about the episodes in this DVD collection. Sadly, this will be a short section.
There are a grand total of two decent episodes on these three discs. In 'Lies My Parents Told Me', much of the action is set in one of Spike's flashbacks as he relives the immediate aftermath of becoming a vampire. The writers take their obligatory (for this season) journey into stupidity by wedging in some dopey Oedipal nonsense behind his character, but the flashback is still great for two reasons. One, James Marsters is actually a decent actor (unlike many on this show) and makes the best of the lame material. And two, Drusilla. Specifically the line “You want to bring your mum wif us...?”
The other good episode is 'Storyteller', the obligatory redemption episode for Andrew, one of the villains from the previous season. Once again the writers do their best to ruin it by deciding for no good reason to waste time on a full series exposition for the first half of the episode, but they make up for it with a lot of good humour centred around Andrew's character, who was one of the few characters left in the show with some life left in them by this late stage in the tale. It also ends with the only truly successful redemption scene of Buffy's entire run, with Andrew tearfully admitting to Buffy that he murdered his friend (and tears of remorse being the only thing that can close the portal that the murder/sacrifice opened up. Nice. See Joss and co, you do still know how to do this stuff right! Sometimes.)
Lastly, they don't fuck up the season finale. It's nothing out of the ordinary, and is very predictable (best summed up by Television Without Pity's recap: “Anya dies. Spike dies. Buffy lives”), but at least it was competently executed, defying fandoms collective low expectations at the time it aired.
But argh... the badness! After six years of cheesy but consistent character and thematic development, it all goes out the window here. I never understood what the deal with Buffy's constant speechifying and the climactic scene where she is abandoned by all her friends was all about. Is she supposed to be in the right or in the wrong? My interpretation is that every character involved is an idiot. Buffy for refusing to admit her error in leading her young charges into a slaughter, and then proposing to do it again, and all the rest for casting their friend, leader and saviour out on the street when she's the only person likely to save them from the impending apocalypse.
The case for the prosecution may also list a general lack of unforced humour, haphazard plotting and worse than usual acting (curiously enough, Sarah Michelle Gellar does better than usual in this department. I suspect the sense of maturity that Buffy gives off in this season, like she's looking at the big picture and seeing further than the others comes from Gellar phoning it in because it's her last season, she's sick of this shit and she just doesn't give a fuck). The nadir of the series comes in the penultimate episode when Buffy faces off against Caleb, an evil Catholic priest imbued with the power of a god. He also happens to be misogyny incarnate, and to their credit the writers don't overdo this. They set up a very nice climactic battle in which Buffy (feminism incarnate), has a chance to kick his arse. But then what happens? Buffy gets knocked on her back, is about to bepenetrated killed by an axe, when Angel busts in and saves the day with a strong manly punch to the jaw, looking for all the world like a leading man from a 1930s movie. Sure, Buffy still gets to deliver the killing blow, but what the fuck?! The moral of the story is that the strongest woman in the world still always needs to be saved by a man? I'm certain that the writers (in this case Douglas Petrie and Jane Espenson) didn't intend that interpretation but Jesus... for fucks sake... don't you people ever think about these things before you write them down in a screenplay?!
The DVD extras are nothing super interesting, just the usual self congratulatory stuff. In the past Joss Whedon has been surprisingly open about admitting the flaws of his creations, but there's no hint here that he's even vaguely aware that people might not have been as happy with this effort as they were with earlier ones. There's also a curious collection of scenes from the wrap party, in which they interview every major actor and behind the scenes person from the show, with one notable exception (hint: it's the person the show is named after).
But lets not dwell too much on the fact that its last season was shit. As no doubt you have all realised by now, I honestly believe that Buffy was the best thing to ever be shown on TV, ever. I will acknowledge that it often vacillated erratically between nonsensical cartoon goofiness and overwrought melodrama, that a lot of the acting was pretty terrible and that for every well thought out, subtly drawn allegory there were two episodes where the conceit was bashed over the head of the viewer with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Despite all that, it was one of the wittiest shows of all time, and although the serious side of the show didn't always work as well, it more than made up for it with its limitless charm and constantly inventive originality.
Most importantly, it deserves respect for introducing complex and long running plots into the land of television, paving the way for Lost, Heroes, the new Doctor Who and the rest of the current crop of smart(er) TV, and most of all for being one of only a few pop culture phenomena to promote a 'girl power' message which was genuinely feminist, and not just chauvinism dressed up in a funny hat and glasses (did you hear the Spice Girls are doing a comeback tour?)
Lastly, a spot of good news. Early reports have it that the new Buffy comic series (season eight) is not too bad. I won't be getting it until it comes out as a collection but I'm very much looking forward to it. More good news. Angel is being resurrected in comic book form too!
Buffy Season 7 - Part 2
Joss Whedon, what the fuck were you thinking? Unlike many, I loved Buffy right up until the end of the sixth season, yet even I wept silent tears of grief as I watched season seven. But before we get into that, lets start out by noting the things that were good about the episodes in this DVD collection. Sadly, this will be a short section.
There are a grand total of two decent episodes on these three discs. In 'Lies My Parents Told Me', much of the action is set in one of Spike's flashbacks as he relives the immediate aftermath of becoming a vampire. The writers take their obligatory (for this season) journey into stupidity by wedging in some dopey Oedipal nonsense behind his character, but the flashback is still great for two reasons. One, James Marsters is actually a decent actor (unlike many on this show) and makes the best of the lame material. And two, Drusilla. Specifically the line “You want to bring your mum wif us...?”
The other good episode is 'Storyteller', the obligatory redemption episode for Andrew, one of the villains from the previous season. Once again the writers do their best to ruin it by deciding for no good reason to waste time on a full series exposition for the first half of the episode, but they make up for it with a lot of good humour centred around Andrew's character, who was one of the few characters left in the show with some life left in them by this late stage in the tale. It also ends with the only truly successful redemption scene of Buffy's entire run, with Andrew tearfully admitting to Buffy that he murdered his friend (and tears of remorse being the only thing that can close the portal that the murder/sacrifice opened up. Nice. See Joss and co, you do still know how to do this stuff right! Sometimes.)
Lastly, they don't fuck up the season finale. It's nothing out of the ordinary, and is very predictable (best summed up by Television Without Pity's recap: “Anya dies. Spike dies. Buffy lives”), but at least it was competently executed, defying fandoms collective low expectations at the time it aired.
But argh... the badness! After six years of cheesy but consistent character and thematic development, it all goes out the window here. I never understood what the deal with Buffy's constant speechifying and the climactic scene where she is abandoned by all her friends was all about. Is she supposed to be in the right or in the wrong? My interpretation is that every character involved is an idiot. Buffy for refusing to admit her error in leading her young charges into a slaughter, and then proposing to do it again, and all the rest for casting their friend, leader and saviour out on the street when she's the only person likely to save them from the impending apocalypse.
The case for the prosecution may also list a general lack of unforced humour, haphazard plotting and worse than usual acting (curiously enough, Sarah Michelle Gellar does better than usual in this department. I suspect the sense of maturity that Buffy gives off in this season, like she's looking at the big picture and seeing further than the others comes from Gellar phoning it in because it's her last season, she's sick of this shit and she just doesn't give a fuck). The nadir of the series comes in the penultimate episode when Buffy faces off against Caleb, an evil Catholic priest imbued with the power of a god. He also happens to be misogyny incarnate, and to their credit the writers don't overdo this. They set up a very nice climactic battle in which Buffy (feminism incarnate), has a chance to kick his arse. But then what happens? Buffy gets knocked on her back, is about to be
The DVD extras are nothing super interesting, just the usual self congratulatory stuff. In the past Joss Whedon has been surprisingly open about admitting the flaws of his creations, but there's no hint here that he's even vaguely aware that people might not have been as happy with this effort as they were with earlier ones. There's also a curious collection of scenes from the wrap party, in which they interview every major actor and behind the scenes person from the show, with one notable exception (hint: it's the person the show is named after).
But lets not dwell too much on the fact that its last season was shit. As no doubt you have all realised by now, I honestly believe that Buffy was the best thing to ever be shown on TV, ever. I will acknowledge that it often vacillated erratically between nonsensical cartoon goofiness and overwrought melodrama, that a lot of the acting was pretty terrible and that for every well thought out, subtly drawn allegory there were two episodes where the conceit was bashed over the head of the viewer with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. Despite all that, it was one of the wittiest shows of all time, and although the serious side of the show didn't always work as well, it more than made up for it with its limitless charm and constantly inventive originality.
Most importantly, it deserves respect for introducing complex and long running plots into the land of television, paving the way for Lost, Heroes, the new Doctor Who and the rest of the current crop of smart(er) TV, and most of all for being one of only a few pop culture phenomena to promote a 'girl power' message which was genuinely feminist, and not just chauvinism dressed up in a funny hat and glasses (did you hear the Spice Girls are doing a comeback tour?)
Lastly, a spot of good news. Early reports have it that the new Buffy comic series (season eight) is not too bad. I won't be getting it until it comes out as a collection but I'm very much looking forward to it. More good news. Angel is being resurrected in comic book form too!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
Preaching to the Guy Who Ate the Choir
Angel Season 4 Part 2
My Angel rewatch has finally come to an end with season four (I did season five a couple of years back), even though it took me a whole year to get through this last collection.
As was the case with earlier seasons the plot was very well done. The writers tied up all of the numerous loose ends hanging around from three years of back story (leaving it to the final season to resolve the character arcs) and did it in an effective and elegant way. Yes, they did cheat a little (toward the end it is revealed that almost everything that has happened to the characters since Angel began was part of a plan by the Big Bad), but surprisingly enough it still all makes sense. I will also admit that the 'everyone loses their memory of all the bad stuff that's happened to them' twist at the end would be a horrifying cop out if I didn't know they were going to reverse it partway through the next season. Watching this show again now it seems that, with their long running, intertwined plots, Angel and Buffy were the forerunners to today's rash of 'smart' TV shows with elaborate plots, such as Lost and 24.
On the other hand I was not so impressed with the handling of the characters this time around. I don't believe that, at conception, any of them were intended to be taken this seriously, and putting them through their angsty, melodramatic paces never feels right. At the same time I don't think that the grim, miserable situations that the characters find themselves in are ever given the depth they require. Over the course of season three and four Angel's son Connor essentially becomes a damaged psychopath without conscience or anything to live for, finally becoming a servant of evil and when that doesn't work out trying to kill himself and take a building full of innocents (including his step mother slash ex-girlfriend) with him (evoking unpleasant parallels with the Virginia Tech massacre). This is a pretty disturbing and even frightening scenario so you'd expect Angel's final confrontation with his son to generate some decent dramatic heat, but in the season finale Angel does little more than put on his same old sad eyed 'suffering' face. However we may take comfort in the fact that they at least get a pretty cool fight scene.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this season wasn't funny enough. I watch these shows for the lulz dammit.
Angel was never as good as Buffy at it's best, but it was still well worth watching. The first season was certainly very goofy and rough around the edges, but had genuine charm. Later on it lost that charm but was still quite worthwhile for the story. The best season was undoubtedly the last one, in which they ditched a lot of the gloomy emotional baggage from the earlier seasons and reinstated the fun and humour that had gradually been lost over the years. And in the end, this is the lesson we learn from Angel the television show: a TV show about a crime fighting vampire doesn't really need a whole lot of drama and seriousness.
Season Five
Season Four Part 1
Season Three Part 2
Season Three Part 1
Season Two Part 2
Season Two Part 1
My Angel rewatch has finally come to an end with season four (I did season five a couple of years back), even though it took me a whole year to get through this last collection.
As was the case with earlier seasons the plot was very well done. The writers tied up all of the numerous loose ends hanging around from three years of back story (leaving it to the final season to resolve the character arcs) and did it in an effective and elegant way. Yes, they did cheat a little (toward the end it is revealed that almost everything that has happened to the characters since Angel began was part of a plan by the Big Bad), but surprisingly enough it still all makes sense. I will also admit that the 'everyone loses their memory of all the bad stuff that's happened to them' twist at the end would be a horrifying cop out if I didn't know they were going to reverse it partway through the next season. Watching this show again now it seems that, with their long running, intertwined plots, Angel and Buffy were the forerunners to today's rash of 'smart' TV shows with elaborate plots, such as Lost and 24.
On the other hand I was not so impressed with the handling of the characters this time around. I don't believe that, at conception, any of them were intended to be taken this seriously, and putting them through their angsty, melodramatic paces never feels right. At the same time I don't think that the grim, miserable situations that the characters find themselves in are ever given the depth they require. Over the course of season three and four Angel's son Connor essentially becomes a damaged psychopath without conscience or anything to live for, finally becoming a servant of evil and when that doesn't work out trying to kill himself and take a building full of innocents (including his step mother slash ex-girlfriend) with him (evoking unpleasant parallels with the Virginia Tech massacre). This is a pretty disturbing and even frightening scenario so you'd expect Angel's final confrontation with his son to generate some decent dramatic heat, but in the season finale Angel does little more than put on his same old sad eyed 'suffering' face. However we may take comfort in the fact that they at least get a pretty cool fight scene.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this season wasn't funny enough. I watch these shows for the lulz dammit.
Angel was never as good as Buffy at it's best, but it was still well worth watching. The first season was certainly very goofy and rough around the edges, but had genuine charm. Later on it lost that charm but was still quite worthwhile for the story. The best season was undoubtedly the last one, in which they ditched a lot of the gloomy emotional baggage from the earlier seasons and reinstated the fun and humour that had gradually been lost over the years. And in the end, this is the lesson we learn from Angel the television show: a TV show about a crime fighting vampire doesn't really need a whole lot of drama and seriousness.
Season Five
Season Four Part 1
Season Three Part 2
Season Three Part 1
Season Two Part 2
Season Two Part 1
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Lost Season 3
Like many I was very disappointed by the tedious wheelspinning of last year's Lost. However the final few episodes were really quite good and hooked me in enough to give it another chance. As it happened the first batch of episodes from season 3 stank so bad that they could smell it on Doctor Who. When the series went into hiatus following the sixth episode, I declared that I was through with the show and was never coming back.
However a chance comment from my sister convinced me to give it a try when the series restarted, and thank god I did. It continued to get better and better as the year wore on, and ended last week in a stunning climax that was brilliantly done even by the high standards of the last two season's cliffhangers.
Some people have been complaining that they're still introducing too many new mysteries, but by my counting there's only one major new one this year (Jacob), and they actually closed off a few of the minor ones towards the end too. They've now officially announced that there will be three more seasons before the show ends, so there's still plenty of time for them to wrap it all up nicely. Or fuck it up totally. Time will tell.
However a chance comment from my sister convinced me to give it a try when the series restarted, and thank god I did. It continued to get better and better as the year wore on, and ended last week in a stunning climax that was brilliantly done even by the high standards of the last two season's cliffhangers.
Some people have been complaining that they're still introducing too many new mysteries, but by my counting there's only one major new one this year (Jacob), and they actually closed off a few of the minor ones towards the end too. They've now officially announced that there will be three more seasons before the show ends, so there's still plenty of time for them to wrap it all up nicely. Or fuck it up totally. Time will tell.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
It's Just A Question Of How Much You Want It To Hurt
24 Season 5
I'm not entirely sure why I keep watching this show. In a lot of ways it's pretty stupid. There are only so many times in twenty four episodes you can think of new and exciting scenarios in which Jack Bauer has twenty minutes to save the president's dog from terrorists. Yet somehow it manages to deliver some good action and enough interesting plot twists for the better part of every episode, so it's worth sitting through the occasional scene where Keifer Sutherland emerges from the flames of a burning building while bombastic, patriotic music swells in the background to get to the good parts.
This has been one of the better seasons, with plenty of good twists and turns in the plot and a surprising ending. Not only does it end in a cliffhanger for the first time, it also doesn't reveal the true identities of the terrorist masterminds, who remain at large for more shenanigans next year.
The frustrating thing about the series is how although it deals with real political issues, namely terrorism and how to deal with it, it never actually offers any kind of insight to or commentary on these topics. This would be fine if they were merely offering a nonpartisan presentation of the imagined possibilities, but the writers actually seem to have little more in mind than smugly attempting to push the buttons of both liberals and conservatives.
I'd imagine the conservatives would have more to be offended by in this season. While the show seems to display a strong authoritarian bias (not an episode goes by without a terrorist suspect being tortured while being gleefully informed by Bauer that his civil rights are currently meaningless), it's hard to look past this year's mid season revelation that defined the story arc; that the terrorists are being directed by no less than the president of the USA as part of a plan to secure oil supplies.
As amusing as this was, and for all the schadenfreude gained from Gregory Itzen's performance as the president (sure he looks just like Nixon, but surely any resemblance between this gormless weakling suddenly thrust out of his depth and into a position of responsibility he is in no way suited for and any current US president you may think of is purely coincidental), the writing is just a bit too snide and it grates, even when it's reinforcing your own prejudices.
The character of Jack Bauer is similarly problematic. It's hard to empathise with his plight in being forced to torture his girlfriend when his fanatical willingness to do whatever it takes for the past four years incline the viewer to believe that he's secretly rather enjoying it.
But hey, you know I'll end up watching the next season all the same.
I'm not entirely sure why I keep watching this show. In a lot of ways it's pretty stupid. There are only so many times in twenty four episodes you can think of new and exciting scenarios in which Jack Bauer has twenty minutes to save the president's dog from terrorists. Yet somehow it manages to deliver some good action and enough interesting plot twists for the better part of every episode, so it's worth sitting through the occasional scene where Keifer Sutherland emerges from the flames of a burning building while bombastic, patriotic music swells in the background to get to the good parts.
This has been one of the better seasons, with plenty of good twists and turns in the plot and a surprising ending. Not only does it end in a cliffhanger for the first time, it also doesn't reveal the true identities of the terrorist masterminds, who remain at large for more shenanigans next year.
The frustrating thing about the series is how although it deals with real political issues, namely terrorism and how to deal with it, it never actually offers any kind of insight to or commentary on these topics. This would be fine if they were merely offering a nonpartisan presentation of the imagined possibilities, but the writers actually seem to have little more in mind than smugly attempting to push the buttons of both liberals and conservatives.
I'd imagine the conservatives would have more to be offended by in this season. While the show seems to display a strong authoritarian bias (not an episode goes by without a terrorist suspect being tortured while being gleefully informed by Bauer that his civil rights are currently meaningless), it's hard to look past this year's mid season revelation that defined the story arc; that the terrorists are being directed by no less than the president of the USA as part of a plan to secure oil supplies.
As amusing as this was, and for all the schadenfreude gained from Gregory Itzen's performance as the president (sure he looks just like Nixon, but surely any resemblance between this gormless weakling suddenly thrust out of his depth and into a position of responsibility he is in no way suited for and any current US president you may think of is purely coincidental), the writing is just a bit too snide and it grates, even when it's reinforcing your own prejudices.
The character of Jack Bauer is similarly problematic. It's hard to empathise with his plight in being forced to torture his girlfriend when his fanatical willingness to do whatever it takes for the past four years incline the viewer to believe that he's secretly rather enjoying it.
But hey, you know I'll end up watching the next season all the same.
Monday, February 12, 2007
My Food Is Problematic
Firefly
I sure took my time getting to it but I have finally been a good obsessive fanboy and bought Firefly on DVD. In brief Firefly is a sci-fi TV show by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy (and Angel). The show is broadly in the mould of similar shows like Star Trek; every week the characters fly their space ship somewhere new and find something interesting yet dangerous. The attributes that set this show apart are the setting (in which the outer reaches of human colonised space are very much like the American wild west of old, right down to the deserts, outlaws and train robberies), and of course Joss' distinctive writing style.
This was the third TV show that Joss helmed and he does a confident and assured job of introducing the characters, setting the scene for future story arcs and hinting at the backstories of the people and places involved. Sadly this is pretty much all he got to do as after only fourteen episodes the show was shitcanned by those notorious idiots at Fox. Fortunately the movie Serenity was made to finish up the story and resolve the most immediate loose ends of the plot, but it's a pity that the series itself never got to do much more than show it's potential.
It's just as well that the episodes that did get made are nothing short of great. The setting is very well thought out, and while unfortunately Joss never got to show and explain a lot of what was going on what we do see is pretty cool. The series' strong points are really exactly the things that were good about Buffy and Angel, done by Joss with the years of experience working on those programmes behind him and none of the overwrought emotional baggage that the other shows had accumulated. The humour is as brilliant as you'd expect, but unlike Buffy Firefly works well as a drama too. A lot of this can be attributed to vastly superior acting, which gives it a genuine emotional side that Buffy never really achieved, but I think savvier, less cheesy writing played a part too.
The characters are also one of the reasons this show is so great. Our major protagonist Mel (the spaceship's captain) is a wisecracking but haunted hero in the mould of Angel, but he's far more interesting than Angel ever was because (a) he's played by an actor who can act rings around David Boreanz, and (b) because his backstory is far more down to earth and relatable than 'I'm a 400 year old vampire who's killed thousands of people for pleasure'. At the other end of the spectrum we have River, a damaged young girl who provides loads of humour (in a similar vein to Delirium in Sandman), but who also evokes genuine sadness and pity with her pathetic brokenness. It's a shame we never got to see most of these characters make their way to their originally intended fates, but at least in the movie we get to see River's somewhat predictable, but still way cool, transformation into, well, Buffy...
I sure took my time getting to it but I have finally been a good obsessive fanboy and bought Firefly on DVD. In brief Firefly is a sci-fi TV show by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy (and Angel). The show is broadly in the mould of similar shows like Star Trek; every week the characters fly their space ship somewhere new and find something interesting yet dangerous. The attributes that set this show apart are the setting (in which the outer reaches of human colonised space are very much like the American wild west of old, right down to the deserts, outlaws and train robberies), and of course Joss' distinctive writing style.
This was the third TV show that Joss helmed and he does a confident and assured job of introducing the characters, setting the scene for future story arcs and hinting at the backstories of the people and places involved. Sadly this is pretty much all he got to do as after only fourteen episodes the show was shitcanned by those notorious idiots at Fox. Fortunately the movie Serenity was made to finish up the story and resolve the most immediate loose ends of the plot, but it's a pity that the series itself never got to do much more than show it's potential.
It's just as well that the episodes that did get made are nothing short of great. The setting is very well thought out, and while unfortunately Joss never got to show and explain a lot of what was going on what we do see is pretty cool. The series' strong points are really exactly the things that were good about Buffy and Angel, done by Joss with the years of experience working on those programmes behind him and none of the overwrought emotional baggage that the other shows had accumulated. The humour is as brilliant as you'd expect, but unlike Buffy Firefly works well as a drama too. A lot of this can be attributed to vastly superior acting, which gives it a genuine emotional side that Buffy never really achieved, but I think savvier, less cheesy writing played a part too.
The characters are also one of the reasons this show is so great. Our major protagonist Mel (the spaceship's captain) is a wisecracking but haunted hero in the mould of Angel, but he's far more interesting than Angel ever was because (a) he's played by an actor who can act rings around David Boreanz, and (b) because his backstory is far more down to earth and relatable than 'I'm a 400 year old vampire who's killed thousands of people for pleasure'. At the other end of the spectrum we have River, a damaged young girl who provides loads of humour (in a similar vein to Delirium in Sandman), but who also evokes genuine sadness and pity with her pathetic brokenness. It's a shame we never got to see most of these characters make their way to their originally intended fates, but at least in the movie we get to see River's somewhat predictable, but still way cool, transformation into, well, Buffy...
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Torchwood
Torchwood is the more adult spin off show of the new Dr. Who series. It follows the adventures of a secret extra governmental agency in charge of protecting Earth from aliens, monsters and other bugaboos. For some inexplicable reason they are based in Cardiff.
The show inherits a lot of its parent's goofiness, even though it tries hard to take itself seriously. Combined with the underwhelming acting ability of the cast this results in a lot of cringe inducing moments. But for every episode that stinks, like the regrettable Fight Club tribute 'Combat' or the 'where the hell did all this shit come from' moments of the season finale, there's one that works quite well. The characters are fairly well thought out and whenever they focus on them rather than some absurd sci-fi monster of the week things work pretty well.
It will be interesting to see where it goes in its next season, as the writers seem to have weighty topics in mind for it. Life after death (or the lack of it) continually pops up, as well as the agents inability to relate to the mass of humanity that they are supposedly protecting, which increases as they have more and more experiences with things beyond the mundane world of normal people, and don't much like what they see.
Dr. Who remains, of course, far superior, goofiness and all.
The show inherits a lot of its parent's goofiness, even though it tries hard to take itself seriously. Combined with the underwhelming acting ability of the cast this results in a lot of cringe inducing moments. But for every episode that stinks, like the regrettable Fight Club tribute 'Combat' or the 'where the hell did all this shit come from' moments of the season finale, there's one that works quite well. The characters are fairly well thought out and whenever they focus on them rather than some absurd sci-fi monster of the week things work pretty well.
It will be interesting to see where it goes in its next season, as the writers seem to have weighty topics in mind for it. Life after death (or the lack of it) continually pops up, as well as the agents inability to relate to the mass of humanity that they are supposedly protecting, which increases as they have more and more experiences with things beyond the mundane world of normal people, and don't much like what they see.
Dr. Who remains, of course, far superior, goofiness and all.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Doing Your Mom And Trying To Kill Your Dad… There Should Be A Play.
Angel Season 4 Part 1
Yes I am still watching these, although at a very, very slow rate.
Angel was always a much darker show than Buffy but in its fourth season it became truly grim and the humour, while still present, started to become somewhat out of place. As in earlier seasons the plot is quite well done on the larger scale. The main storyline, in which L.A. is menaced by a seemingly invincible Satan-like demon is nicely intertwined with the dangling plot threads from the end of season 3, namely the arrival of Angel's teenage son, Cordelia's mysterious disappearance and Wesley's involvement with the show's perennial bad guys, the law firm Wolfram and Hart.
The grimness of the season is in part due to the hopeless nature of the heroes' battle against the big bad, who despite Angel and Co's best efforts persists in doing unpleasant bad guy type things such as blocking out the sun, making the sky rain fire and your standard general slaughter, but mostly the sad, depressing mood comes as the constant messing around with the main character's relationships done in the last season bears fruit, leaving the heroes mistrustful and resentful of one another. Lots of nice angsty character development ensues.
The highlight of the first half of the season comes at the end, when the heroes, out of desperation, are manipulated into transforming Angel into his evil alter ego Angelus. This cheerful, maverick psychopath is a smart addition to an already tense scenario and revives what was starting to become somewhat of a miserable, depressing plot arc. It's disappointing that we didn't see more of Angelus during the show's run because he's a great character. While I understand that the writers didn't want to overuse him, I think there still should have been more of him (other than in this season he only shows up in one episode in season one, and in flashbacks in season two), as his evil deeds are the basis for the whole backstory behind the show.
Despite the writer's numerous missteps this show continued to be worth watching, it's just a pity that the same could not be said for its parent.
P.S. Even though I'm a bit late with this news some of you may be interested to know that season eight of Buffy is in the works, as a comic series.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Dr Who
Finished watching the second series of the new Doctor Who the other day. I didn't like David Tennent as The Doctor as much as Christopher Eccleston in the previous series. He seemed somewhat smarmy and winked at the camera a bit too often, I preferred Eccleston's more alien, serious incarnation of the character. Still I love the show as much as ever, even if at times it can be over the top cheesy, but of course that is part of its charm. The first episode, 'New Earth' and a few of the others are a bit stupid, but they're more than compensated for by the highlights: 'The Satan Pit' (Dr Who versus Satan), 'Tooth and Claw' (Dr Who versus the wolf man and a team of ninja monks in Victorian England) and 'School Reunion' (Dr Who versus Giles from Buffy). The season finale is a bit goofy and predictable, but I guess it had to be done one of these days: Cybermen versus Daleks.
P.S. No one has sex inside the Tardis. Maybe next season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
