BSG finale spoilers
In the Futurama episode Godfellas, Bender is catapulted into space, to drift alone. His body ends up supporting a little civilization of creatures, but everything he does goes wrong. When he interferes too much it causes trouble, because he is too powerful and damages whatever he touches: creating wind power with his breath, for example, blows a villagers into space. When he does nothing things get worse -- the civilization debates how best to worship him and devolve into nuclear war. In the end he meets a star system and this is the scene (the quality of this clip is not fantastic, as it is a camera in front of a TV but it is exactly the clip I wanted):
In my blog on the Battlestar Galactica Finale there was a final stray anonymous comment, that came three weeks after the conversation ended, probably by someone who was just looking up reactions to a finale he may have watched a bit late. He said "Why the fuck did any of you even watch this show? It obviously had religious/spiritual overtones through the whole series. I guess some people just want to have shit to complain about when they blog."
That last bit may be true, but what is not right is that "religious/spiritual overtones" means that the show can just explain EVERYTHING with a deus ex machina at the end.
What is shocking about putting the Futurama scene together with the Battlestar Galactica finale is that Futurama is actually doing a pretty good job of suggesting how to think about the role of God in the Universe in which we live every day, in our LIVES. Battlestar Galactica -- a show most of us got together and decided to call "smart television," -- failed to translate Futurama's lesson into the much smaller realm of the TELEVISION SCRIPT. For a while there "god" in Battlestar Galactica had the light touch Futurama says he should -- you really aren't sure he is doing anything at all, especially in a show with advanced technology: the Six that only Baltar can see could be, as the show points out, caused by a chip in his head or even a tumor; the clues to earth could have been left by the earlier civilization. But in the end the show was just like Bender, using too much force to interfere in the little world, blowing our characters around like little toys into the void of space where they would just vanish, like Starbuck, who was CLEARLY an ANGEL for all of season 4.
Showing posts with label BSG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BSG. Show all posts
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
How Should BSG Have Ended?
Brad suggested I put this up after we had a conversation along these lines, and many people since have said to me "Well, what did you want?" Now we are not all screenwriters, but it might be interesting to get some notes toward what we all wanted and did not get.
For me, I think a key question all along has been Does Humanity Deserve to Survive. A good portion of the show had been blurring humanity and the cylons by putting them on the same footing (removing resurrection technology, having them fight with each other, ignoring the super-strength, ditching the sleeper agent thing where it seemed like they could be remote controlled -- ultimately the point of finding out someone was a cylon was you were finding out someone was a traitor, but since that was not the case for the final five it again seemed like a bit of a fake out to have them be cylons at all). So the real question was Does Everyone Deserve to Survive? Once you put that question in play for so long, I think you deny the possibility of some wonderfully happy ending, since if they do deserve to survive it is going to be a close call whether the should have (or why ask the question?). So for me I needed to see a significant number of folks just not make it -- the finale could not even give Helo a heroic death-- and those that did should not be walking though a green and pleasant land. They should be ok, but it should feel like life, not heaven. In fact I think I really could have gone for an ending in which someone made the call to just push everyone into the black hole, because the universe would be better without them, and maybe Hera escapes somehow, the last potential of two doomed civilizations. Maybe like some combination of Batman's resurrection in Final Crisis and Superman's story her little rocket lands on a caveman planet, guided by some less heavy handed version of the device that got everyone to Earth -- except now that I write that it makes no sense, because that radioactive planet needs to be the real Earth and not a fake-out. Brad said that he would have wanted the final five to suddenly "switch on" and do something monstrous, activate the cylon "plan" we have been hearing about in the intro to every episode since season one, and which seemed to have been just dropped. Maybe there was some reason why they needed to wait so long, and even have people accept them as Cylons (and let other cylons on board and paint the ship with cylon goo) before the last phase would begin.
I do not exactly have it worked out. One of the reasons it is so hard to think of a proper ending is that the writers really write themselves into a corner, which is why the God stuff came so heavy at the end -- it is the only way out of the box they were in. I have no idea what to do with Kara. She can't be like the Six that only Baltar can see -- Kara was different because she found her body and questioned what she was. But then I can't think of what she COULD be given how the show handled her. Some people suggested that she was a hybrid, the child of the never seen Daniel Cylon and someone, but I am not sure how that would work out.
Here is how the show should have ended: it should have been cancelled after season three so we could all complain that it was one of the great shows that died before it could have reached what surely would have been an amazing conclusion, like Firefly.
For me, I think a key question all along has been Does Humanity Deserve to Survive. A good portion of the show had been blurring humanity and the cylons by putting them on the same footing (removing resurrection technology, having them fight with each other, ignoring the super-strength, ditching the sleeper agent thing where it seemed like they could be remote controlled -- ultimately the point of finding out someone was a cylon was you were finding out someone was a traitor, but since that was not the case for the final five it again seemed like a bit of a fake out to have them be cylons at all). So the real question was Does Everyone Deserve to Survive? Once you put that question in play for so long, I think you deny the possibility of some wonderfully happy ending, since if they do deserve to survive it is going to be a close call whether the should have (or why ask the question?). So for me I needed to see a significant number of folks just not make it -- the finale could not even give Helo a heroic death-- and those that did should not be walking though a green and pleasant land. They should be ok, but it should feel like life, not heaven. In fact I think I really could have gone for an ending in which someone made the call to just push everyone into the black hole, because the universe would be better without them, and maybe Hera escapes somehow, the last potential of two doomed civilizations. Maybe like some combination of Batman's resurrection in Final Crisis and Superman's story her little rocket lands on a caveman planet, guided by some less heavy handed version of the device that got everyone to Earth -- except now that I write that it makes no sense, because that radioactive planet needs to be the real Earth and not a fake-out. Brad said that he would have wanted the final five to suddenly "switch on" and do something monstrous, activate the cylon "plan" we have been hearing about in the intro to every episode since season one, and which seemed to have been just dropped. Maybe there was some reason why they needed to wait so long, and even have people accept them as Cylons (and let other cylons on board and paint the ship with cylon goo) before the last phase would begin.
I do not exactly have it worked out. One of the reasons it is so hard to think of a proper ending is that the writers really write themselves into a corner, which is why the God stuff came so heavy at the end -- it is the only way out of the box they were in. I have no idea what to do with Kara. She can't be like the Six that only Baltar can see -- Kara was different because she found her body and questioned what she was. But then I can't think of what she COULD be given how the show handled her. Some people suggested that she was a hybrid, the child of the never seen Daniel Cylon and someone, but I am not sure how that would work out.
Here is how the show should have ended: it should have been cancelled after season three so we could all complain that it was one of the great shows that died before it could have reached what surely would have been an amazing conclusion, like Firefly.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
The BSG Finale
BSG. The finale was a contrived sentimental load of horse manure. It reminded me of nothing more than the end of Kafka: The Musical in the pilot of Home Movies, in which God says, in a booming, cheery, patronizing voice "Hello Franz Kafka! My name is God! I think you're going to like it here!" BSG has always been good at avoiding typical sci-fi junk such as fetishizing the technology. In retrospect the acting was the thing that made this show great. The acting was good for the finale but it was overshadowed by the decision to avoid sci-fi endings, such as the black hole as a time travel gateway, by going into sentimental melodrama, and relying on gestures toward divinity to justify lazy plotting. Things that were atrocious:
The planet shown at the end of season 3, the one where you could see North America, turns out to be different from the planet Kara found, the one that turned out to be radioactive. Removing all hope from your story for ten episodes is a serious thing to do and it needs to not be a fake out.
After so much conflict among the fleet, everyone universally agrees to get rid of all the technology and live among, and breed with, cavemen. In a show that values realism Earth appears in the most idyllic verdant green fields. Essentially all the characters reach heaven, where they happily forgo all their earlier conflicts to live in a green and pleasant earth. This is not even the same show anymore.
Kara was an Angel the whole fourth season, who disappears in a field when Lee turns away for a moment in the most absurd cliche. The Baltar that appeared only to Six and the Six that appeared only to Baltar turned out to be Angels that like Kara, were working for God to lead humanity to their new home. A key reveal -- when both Six and Baltar can see their Angels together -- was handled like a screwball comedy moment that had no connection to the show around it -- or anything before. "God" is the answer to any questions you may have had. To our mere mortal eyes it may appear to be lazy plotting that an asteroid bumps a ship with dead Racetrack and Skulls inside causing their bodies to shift in such a way as to launch the nukes at the Cylon colony at the exact moment our heroes leave -- so as to wipe out the bad guys without it being anyones decision. But it is just God's plan. It was also God's plan to have the Bob Dylan song contain the co-ordinates to the real earth. If you "assign" numbers to the notes, as Kara did, isn't that arbitrary -- how for example do you decide which note gets to be "one"? But it doesn't matter because her assignation was guided by God. Why did Kara lead them to the wrong earth first? Because that was how God wanted it. The worst thing the finale did was to resolve all the ambiguity of the show into an absurdly happy ending where gesturing toward god resolves every ambiguity and conflict and coincidence.
And the show ends by updating to modern Earth, New York City, for a robot montage. Will the cycle that our characters tried to break be broken. Well dear viewer -- the choice lies in your hands! Be kind to you robots! or Maybe don't make them in the first place. Idiotic. Suddenly this complex ambiguous drama where where the line between good and bad is constantly redrawn now wants to deliver a MORAL MESSAGE? AT me? Was the idea to ditch the tech pointless since we ended up building robots anyway? Also Hera's significance was that she was the "Mitochondrial Eve." This is deeply dumb. The show could not even let Helo die -- everyone gets a happy ending, even the centurions. The ending was basically "suddenly, by divine grace, peace washes over everyone." This is how a child ends a story.
The show was also padded with flashbacks that, in an interview with the creators, turned out to just be backstory from the show bible about the characters that they never got to use. So they were basically a pointless info-dump -- use it or loose it, I guess was the philosophy.
The only parts of the finale I enjoyed was the robots beating on each other, Al from Quantum Leap shooting himself, and the fact that Tyrol's wife's death came back into play when you thought it would all be forgotten about. The Baltar becoming a farmer was ok -- the moment was well handled. I guess I can see that all the roles he has had -- scientist, politician, jailed revolutionary communist, Jesus, Bin Laden -- have all been him trying to avoid this one true calling. I guess. He just does not feel like a character that makes much sense. And what was the point of Adama giving his cult guns a few episodes back?
There may be more to think about. This is a first reaction. Perhaps because of the way the show has been in the past we can imagine the characters will still have conflicts -- Ellen and Tigh surely don't live happily ever after since they are pretty dysfunctional. But the show does suggest that they do. Perhaps an ambiguously identified god is the right ending for a show with so much moral ambiguity -- but to me it just feels like all the ambiguity was pushed onto this higher, ineffable, level so our characters could be happy. Perhaps the fact that we do not know if the cycle has been broken or not is a good ending -- but the semi-direct address -- the aim to go SEE! this is RELEVANT! this is about YOU -- feels ridiculous to me.
I have to give this an F. Seriously. LOST, I am looking at you to be taking notes on how NOT to end a show.
[UPDATE: I talk about the objection that the show has always been about religious stuff in the comments. ]
The planet shown at the end of season 3, the one where you could see North America, turns out to be different from the planet Kara found, the one that turned out to be radioactive. Removing all hope from your story for ten episodes is a serious thing to do and it needs to not be a fake out.
After so much conflict among the fleet, everyone universally agrees to get rid of all the technology and live among, and breed with, cavemen. In a show that values realism Earth appears in the most idyllic verdant green fields. Essentially all the characters reach heaven, where they happily forgo all their earlier conflicts to live in a green and pleasant earth. This is not even the same show anymore.
Kara was an Angel the whole fourth season, who disappears in a field when Lee turns away for a moment in the most absurd cliche. The Baltar that appeared only to Six and the Six that appeared only to Baltar turned out to be Angels that like Kara, were working for God to lead humanity to their new home. A key reveal -- when both Six and Baltar can see their Angels together -- was handled like a screwball comedy moment that had no connection to the show around it -- or anything before. "God" is the answer to any questions you may have had. To our mere mortal eyes it may appear to be lazy plotting that an asteroid bumps a ship with dead Racetrack and Skulls inside causing their bodies to shift in such a way as to launch the nukes at the Cylon colony at the exact moment our heroes leave -- so as to wipe out the bad guys without it being anyones decision. But it is just God's plan. It was also God's plan to have the Bob Dylan song contain the co-ordinates to the real earth. If you "assign" numbers to the notes, as Kara did, isn't that arbitrary -- how for example do you decide which note gets to be "one"? But it doesn't matter because her assignation was guided by God. Why did Kara lead them to the wrong earth first? Because that was how God wanted it. The worst thing the finale did was to resolve all the ambiguity of the show into an absurdly happy ending where gesturing toward god resolves every ambiguity and conflict and coincidence.
And the show ends by updating to modern Earth, New York City, for a robot montage. Will the cycle that our characters tried to break be broken. Well dear viewer -- the choice lies in your hands! Be kind to you robots! or Maybe don't make them in the first place. Idiotic. Suddenly this complex ambiguous drama where where the line between good and bad is constantly redrawn now wants to deliver a MORAL MESSAGE? AT me? Was the idea to ditch the tech pointless since we ended up building robots anyway? Also Hera's significance was that she was the "Mitochondrial Eve." This is deeply dumb. The show could not even let Helo die -- everyone gets a happy ending, even the centurions. The ending was basically "suddenly, by divine grace, peace washes over everyone." This is how a child ends a story.
The show was also padded with flashbacks that, in an interview with the creators, turned out to just be backstory from the show bible about the characters that they never got to use. So they were basically a pointless info-dump -- use it or loose it, I guess was the philosophy.
The only parts of the finale I enjoyed was the robots beating on each other, Al from Quantum Leap shooting himself, and the fact that Tyrol's wife's death came back into play when you thought it would all be forgotten about. The Baltar becoming a farmer was ok -- the moment was well handled. I guess I can see that all the roles he has had -- scientist, politician, jailed revolutionary communist, Jesus, Bin Laden -- have all been him trying to avoid this one true calling. I guess. He just does not feel like a character that makes much sense. And what was the point of Adama giving his cult guns a few episodes back?
There may be more to think about. This is a first reaction. Perhaps because of the way the show has been in the past we can imagine the characters will still have conflicts -- Ellen and Tigh surely don't live happily ever after since they are pretty dysfunctional. But the show does suggest that they do. Perhaps an ambiguously identified god is the right ending for a show with so much moral ambiguity -- but to me it just feels like all the ambiguity was pushed onto this higher, ineffable, level so our characters could be happy. Perhaps the fact that we do not know if the cycle has been broken or not is a good ending -- but the semi-direct address -- the aim to go SEE! this is RELEVANT! this is about YOU -- feels ridiculous to me.
I have to give this an F. Seriously. LOST, I am looking at you to be taking notes on how NOT to end a show.
[UPDATE: I talk about the objection that the show has always been about religious stuff in the comments. ]
Saturday, March 07, 2009
TV This Week: LOST, BSG, 24, Dollhouse
LOST. This is the third episode of LOST in a row that has been really good, and the rare LOST episode that is basically really happy too: Sawyer and Juliet find love, Juliet delivers a healthy baby, and those left behind find work and safety -- I feel like there has not been a feel good episode of LOST since Hurley wanted to fix that truck. The best part of the episode was Sawyer's conversation with Alpert. For years now these mysterious Others have known EVERYTHING. They walk up to our characters with detailed files on their entire life and all of them go "How can you possibly know that." For the first time here the tables are completely turned, as Alpert is amazed that Saywer knows about the bomb and the disappearing man who claimed to be the leader of the Others in 1954. (With the time travel stuff it seems pretty clear that the Others got those super accurate files from the castaways themselves 30 years before flight 815 went down). Like The Constant this episode had a really solid emotional core: Sawyer telling Horace that 3 years is enough to get over someone and then confronting him with Kate at the end was just good storytelling. I am a little troubled by some things: I did not like that we saw the statue from the back, because it suggests the front might be some kind of reveal -- and I cannot imagine how lame it would be if the face of the statue turned out out to be someone we know. And just as I was confused about the need to lie the whole "we have to get back to the island to save everyone" is feeling pretty thin right now since the castaways are not in the kind of perpetual hell we heard they needed saving from, AND we had to crash a whole other set of passengers to get back to these five people. And what happened to Rose and Benard and the other 815ers, if there are any left after the flaming arrow attack. Maybe that reveal is coming -- they all became others or something -- but no one seems even a little interested. I keep coming back to the fact that on the plane Ben said of the other nameless passengers "Who cares?" Which on some level is totally how I feel, which makes me complicit with him. Oh, and I adore the ticking bomb of the purge of the Dharma initiative.
BSG. All that remains is the two part season finale -- as little as 80 minutes of BSG or is one double sized? In any case looking back over season 4 I have to say I have lost a lot of faith in this show. The acting and character moments are so often great, and it was dramatic for them to lose Earth as a goal, but now it feels a lot like I am on that ship with the characters, all of whom seem to be waiting around for the series finale. Not having a goal sucks a lot of the forward drive out of a show, and just as the humans lost earth the Cylon "plan" that was appears at the front of all the opening credits seems to be non-existent. It seems like the final things the writers needed in place for the end was that Anders can jump the ship (thanks to the cylon goo, which failed to save the ship -- so this was its only purpose in the narrative) and the idea that Starbuck is the resurrection and the life, and also the harbinger of death. I remember when she crashed into that vortex and came out the other side with a new ship, reborn from her own death. Please tell me the fleet is not going to crash into something and be reborn with a new Battlestar Galactica on a clean healthy Earth. I am not sure what this show needs to end, but I feel like it is going to be something sudden now, like when 6 said "oh, and there is this resurrection hub, lets blow that up." A lot is riding on how this show sticks the landing.
24. The AV Club said about this episode "Probably the best way to view tonight's double-header 24, covering the hours from six to eight pm, is as a low-budget '80's action movie, something that Canon might've put together with Chuck Norris in the lead. It's not that surprising, and the story falls apart if you think about it much at all, but the shooting, yelling, and teeth-gritted seriousness do have a certain charm." Though I will agree that the debates over torture, so painfully loaded and illustrated, are pretty bad I thought this had a lot of charm. 24 has always been some kind republican fever dream about all the things they say threaten America happening, and all their suggestions for dealing with it working. People object to this on principle, and I certainly do not agree with the conservative party on these points, but I love how shamelessly 24 embraces it, and thinks that thought all the way to the end. This episode was STUNNING in that regard. A dozen African men, all very dark skinned, assault the white house and take down the whole thing in less than a hour; and as they kill random people a secret service men ALL the faces are white, and many are women. Even with Obama in the White House, this is the vision of terror they come up with. Amazing and ridiculous. The only thing that should happen in season 8 is Jack Bauer establishes himself as a "benevolent" dictator. You have to admire the sheer commitment to the concept here. This show is as American as pointless wars and SUVs.
Dollhouse -- I have the last two to talk about, but I have a more generally sense of what bothers me about this show. It was invented over lunch between Whedon and Dushku. I imagine that as the idea developed they must have said to themselves that this show was super-resonant: these beautiful men and women who are hired to become other people, but maybe the lose sight of who they are in the process, and forget where they came from -- and maybe the people that manufacture their identities and keep them happy do not have their best interests at heart. This is a show that seemed to have universal appeal over lunch in LA because EVERYONE THEY KNOW is involved in something like this: actors and actresses, producers, PR people, agents and so on. For the rest of us -- not so resonant themes. Mostly it is hard for me to get over the Saturday afternoon adventure series sheen over the whole thing -- as my friend Alex said, maybe this show would be better if they had not spent so much money on the set. Ultimately, the premise still bothers me as I cannot see how a place like the Dollhouse can be justified for reasons other than theme, but the Alpha plot has me interested and I am hoping that will kick into high gear with episode six.
BSG. All that remains is the two part season finale -- as little as 80 minutes of BSG or is one double sized? In any case looking back over season 4 I have to say I have lost a lot of faith in this show. The acting and character moments are so often great, and it was dramatic for them to lose Earth as a goal, but now it feels a lot like I am on that ship with the characters, all of whom seem to be waiting around for the series finale. Not having a goal sucks a lot of the forward drive out of a show, and just as the humans lost earth the Cylon "plan" that was appears at the front of all the opening credits seems to be non-existent. It seems like the final things the writers needed in place for the end was that Anders can jump the ship (thanks to the cylon goo, which failed to save the ship -- so this was its only purpose in the narrative) and the idea that Starbuck is the resurrection and the life, and also the harbinger of death. I remember when she crashed into that vortex and came out the other side with a new ship, reborn from her own death. Please tell me the fleet is not going to crash into something and be reborn with a new Battlestar Galactica on a clean healthy Earth. I am not sure what this show needs to end, but I feel like it is going to be something sudden now, like when 6 said "oh, and there is this resurrection hub, lets blow that up." A lot is riding on how this show sticks the landing.
24. The AV Club said about this episode "Probably the best way to view tonight's double-header 24, covering the hours from six to eight pm, is as a low-budget '80's action movie, something that Canon might've put together with Chuck Norris in the lead. It's not that surprising, and the story falls apart if you think about it much at all, but the shooting, yelling, and teeth-gritted seriousness do have a certain charm." Though I will agree that the debates over torture, so painfully loaded and illustrated, are pretty bad I thought this had a lot of charm. 24 has always been some kind republican fever dream about all the things they say threaten America happening, and all their suggestions for dealing with it working. People object to this on principle, and I certainly do not agree with the conservative party on these points, but I love how shamelessly 24 embraces it, and thinks that thought all the way to the end. This episode was STUNNING in that regard. A dozen African men, all very dark skinned, assault the white house and take down the whole thing in less than a hour; and as they kill random people a secret service men ALL the faces are white, and many are women. Even with Obama in the White House, this is the vision of terror they come up with. Amazing and ridiculous. The only thing that should happen in season 8 is Jack Bauer establishes himself as a "benevolent" dictator. You have to admire the sheer commitment to the concept here. This show is as American as pointless wars and SUVs.
Dollhouse -- I have the last two to talk about, but I have a more generally sense of what bothers me about this show. It was invented over lunch between Whedon and Dushku. I imagine that as the idea developed they must have said to themselves that this show was super-resonant: these beautiful men and women who are hired to become other people, but maybe the lose sight of who they are in the process, and forget where they came from -- and maybe the people that manufacture their identities and keep them happy do not have their best interests at heart. This is a show that seemed to have universal appeal over lunch in LA because EVERYONE THEY KNOW is involved in something like this: actors and actresses, producers, PR people, agents and so on. For the rest of us -- not so resonant themes. Mostly it is hard for me to get over the Saturday afternoon adventure series sheen over the whole thing -- as my friend Alex said, maybe this show would be better if they had not spent so much money on the set. Ultimately, the premise still bothers me as I cannot see how a place like the Dollhouse can be justified for reasons other than theme, but the Alpha plot has me interested and I am hoping that will kick into high gear with episode six.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
TV This Week: LOST, BSG, 24, Dollhouse
[I usually put this up on Friday afternoons, which is dumb since both Dollhouse and BSG are on Friday nights -- I end up reviewing BSG six days after I watched it, and by the time people read it they have already seen the episode past the one I reviewed. That said, I still have not seen Dollhouse, but I do not like that show (although I will watch the first six).]
LOST 5.7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham. Last week I said Lost finally got its groove back, which is to say I felt the show generally returned to the quality level I thought it should have. This episode was better than that -- this will probably join my list of favorite Lost episodes along with The Constant and the opening of season two, for that scene between Ben and Locke alone, and the opening and closing beats -- "I remember dying" and "that's the man who killed me" -- were spot on. Locke visits everyone and just bluntly tells them they should go back and they refuse -- that is not the most interesting thing in the world but it is not supposed to be. Locke is a believer in destiny, he believes he is the instrument by which the island will get these people back -- and he is right -- but his having no effect only serves to make him feel like he is not special, as Jack tells him. It moves him closer to suicide which is figured as being the natural result of his sense of destiny taken away, but it also the destiny that was foretold for him. It is great how it works on two levels like that. The cold open was also good -- last week I said this would return us to some of the things that made season one great but everything would movie faster, and indeed it does as the new folks have already found a Dharma station. And you have to love Frank for landing that plan on the runway from season 3. That was a nice understated call back to him being an awesome pilot, and the bit in season four when Miles says "where did you crash the helicopter" and Miles says "what do you mean? I landed it safely right over there." It is weird to think that there are as many episodes left in the fifth season of Lost now as there were of BSG total in January. Shorter seasons was an awesome idea.
BSG: Deadlock (4.5.6) AND Someone to Watch Over Me (4.5.7). The miscarriage of Six's baby was one of the dumbest things I have seen on TV in a while -- I do not watch Mexican soap operas but I imagine that they have scenes where the split second the husband wavers in his love for his pregnant wife she looses the baby, because they have literalized the idea that babies need love to survive. Love and procreation for the robots have always been a thing on this show from season one when Helo and whats-her-8 had sex on that planet they got stranded on. And it makes sense because you have to explain why the robots don't just make rape camps or something like that facility that Kara found -- you want the stories to have a human side. But the miscarriage was just painfully literal, and it also felt like -- as with the Chief's baby -- the writers found themselves in a corner and just wanted to get the hell out -- Tigh knocks up Six is a great story beat but they do not actually want to follow up on it in a show where the Cylons and Humans need each other. Not to mention that actual love between Tigh and Six was not very well established -- it just sort of arose suddenly. That said, the interactions between the Final Five Cylon family were awesome, and Ellen's horror at the quasi incest Tigh committed and her manipulation of him and six was amazing and we handled by all the actors. It was especially important because it felt like when Ellen came back she was this super-scientist and not Ellen anymore. But the best part of the episode was dealing with how much Tigh loves Bill, including realizing that Liam is derived from William (Bill) which was something I never noticed before. THe scene between them at the end when Tigh tells him they lost the baby - that is what BSG has always been about -- powerful acting and surprisingly moving scenes. I have not seen love between two older men handled so well since Jed and Leo on West Wing. I have been reading a book that argues that female homosocial relationships are on a continuum with female homosexual relationships but that between men there is this massive break in that continuum. This episode was a counter-example to that thesis I think. Oh, and I said this in my twitter feed but I am saying it again here: Baltar has no character arc, he just plays this unconnected roles at the whims of the writers: Judas, scientist, president, communist dissident, Jesus, Bin Ladin. I do not know who he is at all at this point.
The more recent episode promised to tell us about the secret of Kara and the trial, for treason, of Boomer. I thought the former looked interesting while the second looked dumb but I had that backwards. This show always reminds us that the mythology comes second. The Kara plot seems straightforward -- It is pretty easy to tell that dude is a ghost or whatever from the moment you see him, and it seems like we are heading into something like Kara is the daughter of that deleted artist Cylon (#7) or something. I am glad to see the music coming back, and I should not have expected to see big reveals about her here. The Boomer plot on the other hand was the best kind of film noir -- the snake in the grass woman who worms her way in, convinces this guy who loves her to kill for her and break her out, at which point she has sex with someone else's husband while the wife is forced to watch tied up and bleeding, then steals her baby and leaves while fucking up where they live and in the end the guy confronts the empty illusion that caused him to betray everyone. That was straight up awesome. This show seems a little wonky in these final episodes but that might just be because the show has failed to tell me about a drive toward a final goal -- if I did not know there were only three episodes left I would assume we were very much still in the middle of things, perhaps at the very beginning of the last season. So a lot of my odd feelings will ride on how well they stick the landing.
Dollhouse (1.2) I am sticking with this for six episodes, whatever happens. This episode was better but still not great. Whedon learned from Lost the value of a flashback, and the Alpha material was great and scary. But the second that guy took out his bow I said "He just wants to hunt The Most Dangerous Game of All" and I was totally right. Ironically the thing that bothers me most about the show is that I do not buy Dushku as the dumb doll in the house -- the acting there just seems off, like a kid pretending to be dumb, rather than like a kid, which is what it should be I think.
24. 24 got better this week. It is still dumb, but at least knows where you expect it to go (they loose the only lead to a mole in the building) and go somewhere else -- conspiracy over, Dubaku, genuinely in love with the girl, out of the picture. Of course we have more obvious terrorism coming but you have to admire at least the speed of this episode.
LOST 5.7: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham. Last week I said Lost finally got its groove back, which is to say I felt the show generally returned to the quality level I thought it should have. This episode was better than that -- this will probably join my list of favorite Lost episodes along with The Constant and the opening of season two, for that scene between Ben and Locke alone, and the opening and closing beats -- "I remember dying" and "that's the man who killed me" -- were spot on. Locke visits everyone and just bluntly tells them they should go back and they refuse -- that is not the most interesting thing in the world but it is not supposed to be. Locke is a believer in destiny, he believes he is the instrument by which the island will get these people back -- and he is right -- but his having no effect only serves to make him feel like he is not special, as Jack tells him. It moves him closer to suicide which is figured as being the natural result of his sense of destiny taken away, but it also the destiny that was foretold for him. It is great how it works on two levels like that. The cold open was also good -- last week I said this would return us to some of the things that made season one great but everything would movie faster, and indeed it does as the new folks have already found a Dharma station. And you have to love Frank for landing that plan on the runway from season 3. That was a nice understated call back to him being an awesome pilot, and the bit in season four when Miles says "where did you crash the helicopter" and Miles says "what do you mean? I landed it safely right over there." It is weird to think that there are as many episodes left in the fifth season of Lost now as there were of BSG total in January. Shorter seasons was an awesome idea.
BSG: Deadlock (4.5.6) AND Someone to Watch Over Me (4.5.7). The miscarriage of Six's baby was one of the dumbest things I have seen on TV in a while -- I do not watch Mexican soap operas but I imagine that they have scenes where the split second the husband wavers in his love for his pregnant wife she looses the baby, because they have literalized the idea that babies need love to survive. Love and procreation for the robots have always been a thing on this show from season one when Helo and whats-her-8 had sex on that planet they got stranded on. And it makes sense because you have to explain why the robots don't just make rape camps or something like that facility that Kara found -- you want the stories to have a human side. But the miscarriage was just painfully literal, and it also felt like -- as with the Chief's baby -- the writers found themselves in a corner and just wanted to get the hell out -- Tigh knocks up Six is a great story beat but they do not actually want to follow up on it in a show where the Cylons and Humans need each other. Not to mention that actual love between Tigh and Six was not very well established -- it just sort of arose suddenly. That said, the interactions between the Final Five Cylon family were awesome, and Ellen's horror at the quasi incest Tigh committed and her manipulation of him and six was amazing and we handled by all the actors. It was especially important because it felt like when Ellen came back she was this super-scientist and not Ellen anymore. But the best part of the episode was dealing with how much Tigh loves Bill, including realizing that Liam is derived from William (Bill) which was something I never noticed before. THe scene between them at the end when Tigh tells him they lost the baby - that is what BSG has always been about -- powerful acting and surprisingly moving scenes. I have not seen love between two older men handled so well since Jed and Leo on West Wing. I have been reading a book that argues that female homosocial relationships are on a continuum with female homosexual relationships but that between men there is this massive break in that continuum. This episode was a counter-example to that thesis I think. Oh, and I said this in my twitter feed but I am saying it again here: Baltar has no character arc, he just plays this unconnected roles at the whims of the writers: Judas, scientist, president, communist dissident, Jesus, Bin Ladin. I do not know who he is at all at this point.
The more recent episode promised to tell us about the secret of Kara and the trial, for treason, of Boomer. I thought the former looked interesting while the second looked dumb but I had that backwards. This show always reminds us that the mythology comes second. The Kara plot seems straightforward -- It is pretty easy to tell that dude is a ghost or whatever from the moment you see him, and it seems like we are heading into something like Kara is the daughter of that deleted artist Cylon (#7) or something. I am glad to see the music coming back, and I should not have expected to see big reveals about her here. The Boomer plot on the other hand was the best kind of film noir -- the snake in the grass woman who worms her way in, convinces this guy who loves her to kill for her and break her out, at which point she has sex with someone else's husband while the wife is forced to watch tied up and bleeding, then steals her baby and leaves while fucking up where they live and in the end the guy confronts the empty illusion that caused him to betray everyone. That was straight up awesome. This show seems a little wonky in these final episodes but that might just be because the show has failed to tell me about a drive toward a final goal -- if I did not know there were only three episodes left I would assume we were very much still in the middle of things, perhaps at the very beginning of the last season. So a lot of my odd feelings will ride on how well they stick the landing.
Dollhouse (1.2) I am sticking with this for six episodes, whatever happens. This episode was better but still not great. Whedon learned from Lost the value of a flashback, and the Alpha material was great and scary. But the second that guy took out his bow I said "He just wants to hunt The Most Dangerous Game of All" and I was totally right. Ironically the thing that bothers me most about the show is that I do not buy Dushku as the dumb doll in the house -- the acting there just seems off, like a kid pretending to be dumb, rather than like a kid, which is what it should be I think.
24. 24 got better this week. It is still dumb, but at least knows where you expect it to go (they loose the only lead to a mole in the building) and go somewhere else -- conspiracy over, Dubaku, genuinely in love with the girl, out of the picture. Of course we have more obvious terrorism coming but you have to admire at least the speed of this episode.
Friday, February 20, 2009
TV this week: LOST, BSG, 24
LOST. Finally, Lost gets its groove back, and in the most obvious way possible -- a return to what made it good in the first place. People crashed on a mysterious island where they do not know what is going on (why is Jin in a Dharma suit? What year is it?), Each person has a mysterious past (Why did Kate change her mind? How did Locke end up dead? What made Hurley return and why did he bring a guitar, why was Sayid in handcuffs and why was he being taken to Guam, why is Ben beaten and bloody, and who is the stewardess and the arab guy on the plane?). We will learn about the island and these people's past together -- alternating in many episodes, I imagine, between the past in LA and the present on the island. Except this time around we ALREADY care about these characters because we are in the middle of the story, and I expect answers will come faster this time than they did in season one. I had originally been annoyed that they were going to get back so quickly -- I thought the story would be "Season 5: the story of how they got back and what happened while they were gone" with the last shot being of them arriving again, followed by "Season Six: what they had to do when they arrived." This is better though. Of special interest in this episode is the deeply weird structural game being played with the characters -- Locke is the new Christian Shepard (the guy in the coffin, same shoes), Hurley is the new Charlie (the guy with the guitar), Sayid is the new Kate (escorted in handcuffs), Ben is the new Locke (physically damaged), and KATE (here is my theory) is the new CLAIRE -- I am betting she got pregnant when she slept with Jack before the left, as that will also play into the long term story about how the island kills pregnant women. Plus there is a weird little symmetry -- the actor who plays the Arab guy, his real name is Said, and he played a torturer in the wonderful and underrated Three Kings, so I guess he is the new Said. I also adore the look of anything Dharma builds -- that hatch in LA is fantastic, and Ben saying "My mother taught me" and "who cares?" made my day. The "Who cares" line, about the other passengers, was especially good because it tells you about him as a character, while also making us complicit with him -- we DON'T care about them because we know they are incidental characters. Anyway, it is VERY good to have LOST back.
BSG. The question this week is did you mind the fact that BSG broke the famous rule of Show, Don't Tell? I highly recommend Neil's reading of this week's BSG, which I thought was well put -- the show is really just messing with us, and as someone who loved the end of the Sopranos I am totally fine with it. The four episodes of personal conflict followed by one massive mythology info-dump serves to remind the audience -- and the audience always needs reminding -- that we are here for stories about people first and long term mysteries second. Though I am sensitive to the complaint that this week's episode was a little to Black Box Theatre, all the exposition was framed by a major conflict where the person talking was threatened with death, and regardless of what you want to say about the theoretical problems, I was on the edge of my seat wanting to hear more. And in the end the show did a great job setting up Brother Cavil as this Miltonic villain of the rest of the show. But the show was not error free: that Anders memories was triggered by a bullet seems ridiculously contrived
and I have to admit that, just as I did when it turned out Earth was all Cylons, my primary reaction to the news was more confused than impressed because I cannot keep all the history straight in my head.
24. Foolishness. There is one season of 24 and every season just remakes the template. Here -- the mole and the regular citizen who agrees to go along with a bad guy for Jack and it all goes wrong -- and that was already done THIS SEASON.
BSG. The question this week is did you mind the fact that BSG broke the famous rule of Show, Don't Tell? I highly recommend Neil's reading of this week's BSG, which I thought was well put -- the show is really just messing with us, and as someone who loved the end of the Sopranos I am totally fine with it. The four episodes of personal conflict followed by one massive mythology info-dump serves to remind the audience -- and the audience always needs reminding -- that we are here for stories about people first and long term mysteries second. Though I am sensitive to the complaint that this week's episode was a little to Black Box Theatre, all the exposition was framed by a major conflict where the person talking was threatened with death, and regardless of what you want to say about the theoretical problems, I was on the edge of my seat wanting to hear more. And in the end the show did a great job setting up Brother Cavil as this Miltonic villain of the rest of the show. But the show was not error free: that Anders memories was triggered by a bullet seems ridiculously contrived
and I have to admit that, just as I did when it turned out Earth was all Cylons, my primary reaction to the news was more confused than impressed because I cannot keep all the history straight in my head.
24. Foolishness. There is one season of 24 and every season just remakes the template. Here -- the mole and the regular citizen who agrees to go along with a bad guy for Jack and it all goes wrong -- and that was already done THIS SEASON.
Friday, February 13, 2009
LOST, BSG, 24 this week
24. This show is dumb and I am not reviewing it anymore, especially as Sara talked about it yesterday. Don't get me wrong: I am still going to watch it. The scene where the FBI agent has the baby was pretty good, as she looks really conflicted about what she is going to do next -- but at the end of the day this is just a guilty pleasure and kind of beneath comment. Except, as Sara pointed out, I CANNOT BELIEVE Dubaku left the side of the kidnaped first gentleman while threatening the president of the United States to deal with some nonsense with his waitress girlfriend.
BSG. Though I am partly sympathetic to complaints that this show had ten episodes to go and spent three of them going around in a circle, I really liked the mutiny plot, and liked especially that it had nothing to do with the mythology. The acting on this show is always superb and that, to my mind, lets them get away with lots -- Roslin yelling at at the crew of BSG saying she is coming for them was pretty well awesome. The deaths of Zarek and Gaeda were great and the fact that this was so close to the end adds the sense that anybody could die at any time -- a plot like this really takes advantage of the structure of the series.
LOST. I am going to continue to complain here, but it should be understood that my complaints should be read in the context of the fact that there is really nothing this show could do to prevent me from seeing it all the way to the end -- only 29 episodes to go until the end of the series, if you can believe it. This episode had some good moments, especially involving Locke in the well. But I need a clearer sense of the goals -- it was very weird when Ben brought some of the group to Mrs Hawking and she basically said that this was not enough people but let's get started anyway. I mean probably while she is getting ready Ben will have to get the remaining three, but it did not feel right as the ending beat since so much had been put on getting them all back and the same time. I was interested in the Rousseau plot, but it did not tell us more than we already knew from Rousseau's narration when we first met her. And Charlotte's death felt forced -- like she had a story in season 4, then the writers strike hit, so she just blurted out all this stuff and promptly died. To make matters worse, it looks like the island skipping around is going to get stabilized sooner rather than later -- I assumed it would take all season for the Oceanic Six to get back to the island, but now it looks like it might only be a few episodes. I really wanted to see more where the time skips would take us -- though this last is not quite fair as it might survive in some other form in the back half of this season. And I still do not have any idea what they are all supposed to do when they get there -- and I just want one clue. This is where I could use an old fashioned flash-forward to build my interest.
BSG. Though I am partly sympathetic to complaints that this show had ten episodes to go and spent three of them going around in a circle, I really liked the mutiny plot, and liked especially that it had nothing to do with the mythology. The acting on this show is always superb and that, to my mind, lets them get away with lots -- Roslin yelling at at the crew of BSG saying she is coming for them was pretty well awesome. The deaths of Zarek and Gaeda were great and the fact that this was so close to the end adds the sense that anybody could die at any time -- a plot like this really takes advantage of the structure of the series.
LOST. I am going to continue to complain here, but it should be understood that my complaints should be read in the context of the fact that there is really nothing this show could do to prevent me from seeing it all the way to the end -- only 29 episodes to go until the end of the series, if you can believe it. This episode had some good moments, especially involving Locke in the well. But I need a clearer sense of the goals -- it was very weird when Ben brought some of the group to Mrs Hawking and she basically said that this was not enough people but let's get started anyway. I mean probably while she is getting ready Ben will have to get the remaining three, but it did not feel right as the ending beat since so much had been put on getting them all back and the same time. I was interested in the Rousseau plot, but it did not tell us more than we already knew from Rousseau's narration when we first met her. And Charlotte's death felt forced -- like she had a story in season 4, then the writers strike hit, so she just blurted out all this stuff and promptly died. To make matters worse, it looks like the island skipping around is going to get stabilized sooner rather than later -- I assumed it would take all season for the Oceanic Six to get back to the island, but now it looks like it might only be a few episodes. I really wanted to see more where the time skips would take us -- though this last is not quite fair as it might survive in some other form in the back half of this season. And I still do not have any idea what they are all supposed to do when they get there -- and I just want one clue. This is where I could use an old fashioned flash-forward to build my interest.
Friday, February 06, 2009
TV and Comics This Week (LOST, BSG, 24)
BSG. This mutiny plot is clearly going to last at least one more episode, which means that the remaining 6 episodes -- 4 hours -- are going to have to 1. feature the final showdown between our guys and the bad Cylons led by Al from Quantum Leap, 2. find a home for everybody, and 3. explain a very complex mythology involving Ellen Tigh, Starbuck, "the secret of the opera house" and how the Cylons lived on earth 2000 years ago even though they are also with us now. Thats a lot to get done, but at least every moment should be exciting. For right now I am really enjoying the fact that BSG is committed to telling stories about people, even though everyone wants the big mythology addressed. The mutiny is being handled well and it is nice to see Starbuck with something heroic to do -- nice bit of gender reversal with her shooting the guy who had Lee at knife point. It was also nice seeing Adama fighting side by side with Tigh and just generally being active. The show does a good job of knowing everything feels more important and anything can change and anyone can die with only 7 episodes to go.
LOST. I still basically love Lost but right now watching Deadwood on DVD and the final BSG episodes have kind of eclipsed it. I am not as into the show as I used to be, even now that we are 25% of the way through the season, for no reason I can exactly describe. I remain a little detached. I will continue to say that I am baffled as to why it was necessary to lie to the world to keep the people on the island safe. Brad pointed out that the thing with Aaron and the lawyer seemed like a bit of a waste of time, and I agree. Most of the off island stuff does not really have my attention yet. I still adore the group on the island and I love the device of flashing to some other time to learn the history of the island and shake everything up on the drop of a dime -- I love that maybe the Indian plan crashed on the island in the FUTURE for example. With a jungle island, you could even make it the far future without too much set design. That said, it was hardly a surprise the Rousseau plot would make a return -- the actress playing the young Rousseau by the way is breathtakingly beautiful and has been in hardly anything -- though I was surprised by the return of Jin. Not impressed exactly, but genuinely surprised. It gives Sun a reason to return. I am not sure I needed such a long shot of Sawyer seeing Aaron be born, except for thematic reasons. I like the show, and look forward to new episodes without being exactly impressed by anything other than structural decisions thus far into season five. The nosebleed thing does not seem like enough of a problem at this point for one thing.
24. This show has always been pretty dumb and a lot of the time that was part of its charm. But our big bad -- who just killed hundreds of people -- getting away from a paramilitary team by taking a bus and then seeing his waitress girlfriend who he promised to have dinner with later today even though he has tons of secret president threatening terrorism to do is kind of a whole other level of dumb. Like Jack Tripper dumb. Like I should seriously stop watching this show but I probably won't because I am an idiot dumb. Can you imagine -- there must have been a moment that 24 could not have shown in which Dubaku is waiting for the bus to arrive with a bunch of old DC ladies. Having to sneak out of dinner to be a terrorist without his girlfriend noticing -- that's gonna be some shenanigans.
Friday, January 30, 2009
TV and Comics This Week (Final Crisis, LOST, BSG, 24)
FInal Crisis 7. Grant Morrison has been pissing me off lately, with the messy art in Final Crisis 6, and the ambiguous (and I have argued not in a good way) chose-your-own-ending to Batman RIP. And as much as I love his earlier work, I do HATE fill in artists. People were always telling me that messy inconsistent artistic chaos was great because it matched the theme of the book -- intentionally in Invisibles, unintentionally in New X-Men. I don't deny that it matches thematically; I just deny that that particular way of expressing the theme leads to bad storytelling. People need to stop praising ambiguity and chaos as good things in and of themselves -- it is how it is handled by the writer that makes it work or fail, and I call FAIL on BATMAN RIP and the INVISIBLES. That said I LOVED Final Crisis 7 in all its ambiguous messy glory -- Morrison can stick hell of a landing, even on a messy book (New X-Men, Invisibles). Batman RIP promised a reveal of the Black Glove through a series of red herrings, then failed to deliver anything. Final Crisis 7 promised to celebrate the insanity of the multiverse and superhero comics generally and could not have delivered more thoroughly -- Supermen from the multiverse team up to use solar powers on a cosmic vampire, while the Green Lanterns show up to collectively stake the thing; the army of god arrives with them at the same time Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew show up -- and you realize this is what superhero comics do that nothing else can. I am amazed that Morrison was able to play with Obama joking that he was Superman by opening with the black president of the United States who was also the Superman of his world. Morrison will often talk about creating a new kind of storytelling mode, and sometimes this seems an empty boast, as it did when he described 52 as genuinely different. The most important thing about Final Crisis 7 is that is DOES seem like a new kind of way to tell a mainstream superhero story. I talked about Morrison's elliptical style in the first two issue of Final Crisis and said it was not fully figured out yet, but it seemed like a good idea -- he really figures it out here. The thing reads more like some crazy John Ashbery poem than anything else, and I absolutely love it. Every panel was fun even when I was not sure what was going on. (Did Hawkman die?)
LOST 5.3. I liked LOST this week, more than the first two episodes, though I am not sure how much I have to say about it. I really like the island skipping though time as a way to tell all those stories that have only been alluded to and I love how quickly we made it all the way back to 1954 to get a key detail -- Widmore was an Other in his youth. I am really excited to hear about the "Adam and Eve" bodies in the caves from season one (which, because of time travel could be characters we know), the Pirate Ship landing, Rousseau's crew, the Dharma people and the war between the Dharma people and the Others, and that four toed statue. I never saw Cane but I heard it was good -- in any case I am glad it got cancelled so that Richard can be in all the island flashbacks. And, at some point, will the end of in the future? Also that new girl Other is totally Faraday's Mom, who is totally Mrs Hawking -- check the hair and the first name and the timeframe.
BSG. Several people got upset because with only nine episodes to go they felt BSG should be going mythology episodes all the time, but BSG has always been about stories centered on people. Mary McDonnell owned the episode with here scene in the hallway arguing that her and Adama deserve a break. It was not perfect -- the opening scene with the Ultrasound had some nice camera work hanging on the image for a long time, but it was very strange to see Tigh and Six acting like a happy family so suddenly. Starbuck's cripple jokes were really lame and that scene lacked the acting chops it needed -- Starbuck needs something to DO. I am still on the fence about Gaeda as Ahab. The other complaint was Callie, who already morphed quickly into a shrew willing to kill her baby, now revealed as unfaithful as well. It had to happen. Clearly the writers decided on the final five late in the game -- and at no point during the first half of season 4 did anyone mention the fact that Callie's baby was a cylon human hybrid and thus as important as Hera. I figured that baby was going out the airlock with Callie, but this is how they wanted to keep Hera uniquely important. One detail that fails , however, is it made a lot more sense that Callie wanted to kill her baby when she planned to kill herself if she thought the baby was half cylon. Now she just seems really mean. A rare instance of poor plotting on the part of the writers gave her a very unfortunate -- and I am sure some will argue misogynistic -- character arc.
24. 24 was good and action packed this week -- better than it has been for a bit. But it is still pretty foolish. This show needs a new gimick.
LOST 5.3. I liked LOST this week, more than the first two episodes, though I am not sure how much I have to say about it. I really like the island skipping though time as a way to tell all those stories that have only been alluded to and I love how quickly we made it all the way back to 1954 to get a key detail -- Widmore was an Other in his youth. I am really excited to hear about the "Adam and Eve" bodies in the caves from season one (which, because of time travel could be characters we know), the Pirate Ship landing, Rousseau's crew, the Dharma people and the war between the Dharma people and the Others, and that four toed statue. I never saw Cane but I heard it was good -- in any case I am glad it got cancelled so that Richard can be in all the island flashbacks. And, at some point, will the end of in the future? Also that new girl Other is totally Faraday's Mom, who is totally Mrs Hawking -- check the hair and the first name and the timeframe.
BSG. Several people got upset because with only nine episodes to go they felt BSG should be going mythology episodes all the time, but BSG has always been about stories centered on people. Mary McDonnell owned the episode with here scene in the hallway arguing that her and Adama deserve a break. It was not perfect -- the opening scene with the Ultrasound had some nice camera work hanging on the image for a long time, but it was very strange to see Tigh and Six acting like a happy family so suddenly. Starbuck's cripple jokes were really lame and that scene lacked the acting chops it needed -- Starbuck needs something to DO. I am still on the fence about Gaeda as Ahab. The other complaint was Callie, who already morphed quickly into a shrew willing to kill her baby, now revealed as unfaithful as well. It had to happen. Clearly the writers decided on the final five late in the game -- and at no point during the first half of season 4 did anyone mention the fact that Callie's baby was a cylon human hybrid and thus as important as Hera. I figured that baby was going out the airlock with Callie, but this is how they wanted to keep Hera uniquely important. One detail that fails , however, is it made a lot more sense that Callie wanted to kill her baby when she planned to kill herself if she thought the baby was half cylon. Now she just seems really mean. A rare instance of poor plotting on the part of the writers gave her a very unfortunate -- and I am sure some will argue misogynistic -- character arc.
24. 24 was good and action packed this week -- better than it has been for a bit. But it is still pretty foolish. This show needs a new gimick.
Friday, January 23, 2009
24, BSG and LOST this week
24 Season 7 episodes 1-5. Sara is right -- after season one every season of 24 is essentially a remake: Bauer is the one man who can save America, willing to go outside the law and torture to save everyone, some pansy liberals are trying to slow us down, there is a mole, main guys are undercover and hated even though they are trying to do the right thing, hard decisions are made in the line of trying to keep your cover to get to the main target. Season Five was the best season of 24, the one that worked the best, and I think it is time to go at this concept another way maybe. Still watchable, but dumb -- this has the makings of a bad season so far. I wish Tony had been the bad guy for longer, or the whole time. That had more legs. Also one of 24s main problems is they kill off likable characters faster than they replace them -- I am not sold on any of these new people. The best part of the show was always the RETURN OF X, and they have very few characters that can do that. Plus they do not want to lose the audience who has maybe not seen all the earlier seasons.
Battlestar Galactica's "A Great Notion." I usually hate stories that are unrelentingly grim, but this was so bleak I was laughing, as you would at black comedy or Beckett or gallows humor. Mostly I admired the fact that the writers were willing to take the idea of the 4.0 cliffhanger and spend a full episode dealing with the fallout. It was a good example of what Zizek calls the second death: you lose your civilization, but the full impact of that does not register until you lose the hope as well. (HIs example was of a woman whose husband dies -- she is actually handling it ok, until their beloved dog dies as well). One thing BSG does really well is COMMIT. The acting was superb -- apparently Olmos went around depressing everybody about how the show was not going to survive the upcoming writers strike, not because he believed it was true but to aid everyone in capturing a bleak mindset for their characters. He also ad libed the "main vein" line, which is stunning. I love this show -- it is not a guiltly pleasure, or even, I would argue a geeky one -- because it puts character and acting first, and in this regard has more in common with the Wire and Deadwood than Star Trek or Star Wars or Star Gate or Star Whatever. I found the advance of the mythology to be a little weak, which may be my fault -- they introduced major shifts in the status quo by revealing the fifth Cylon and discovering that the 13th colonies were organic Cylons, but, because I was a little in the dark on what the status quo was in the first place (I had to remind myself what the status of the 13th colony was in their minds -- quasi-Biblical myth?) some of the impact was lost. I think the writers wanted me to be stunned by the revelations, but I was more scratching my head.
LOST, Season 5, Episodes 1-2. Since the last season of Lost ended I have seen all of The Wire, the Sopranos, and most of Deadwood, and all of BSG. I think those shows are so good, the robbed me of some of my LOST enthusiasm. I enjoyed the start of Season 5 basically and it had some great moments -- "Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?" Hurly throwing a Hot Pocket at Ben, Hurley summarizing the events on the Island ("He had to push a button every 108 minutes or ... well I was never very clear on that"), the room in the basement of the church with the 70s computer at the Foucaults pendulum, Sun and Kate talking about Jin, Neil getting hit by a flaming arrow. The skipping record idea is a good one because it will allow us to get the history of the island -- maybe all the way back to the four toed statued by the end, and it promises to always give up something new, to shake things up constantly. But the dialogue in episode one was really bad -- especially with Halliwax in the cold open talking about time travel with the construction worker. "There are RULES" is weak sauce, especially since there sort of aren't and also because the rules are very much a writer's room problem that I would like to remain behind, but not IN, the actual dialogue. There were a lot of scenes of tension where you could not see someone's face but my group was calling out who it was correctly before they were revealed, even Anna Lucia. And I was not that invested in the emotional story of the lie because I was never super clear why they had to lie -- or how lying was supposed to protect the people back on the island from Widmore since the island moved. I thought the point about "Whatever Ben says, do the opposite" -- and they fact that it WORKED -- was dumb since the point of Ben's character is surely to anticipate that reaction and counter it -- say something that will make you do the opposite, make you think you are going against him, when doing the opposite is exactly what he wants. I was upset when he told the woman at the end he had lost Hurley -- sure he should have said "Hurly is locked up -- exactly where I want him [LOST logo; credits]." But my main problem with this season was that the goal seems wholly passive -- in order to save everyone on the island, the have to get to the island -- and then just stand there? No one has even raised the question of "and then what." Ben indicates they will never come back but what they are supposed to do there is very unclear -- and if I had more of a sense, or even a sense that any character cared about the question, I could care about them more.
By the way, since several viewers are unclear on this -- the old woman was Mrs Hawking from Desmond's time travelly flashback in Season 3 episode 8. I am also putting money on her being Daniel's mom.
UPDATE: I forgot something funny Brad said to me on the phone: "So if a person is standing next to a tent when they movie in time the tent disappears but their clothes stay and also if you give someone a compass then that goes with them?" This could be a complaint but this kind of pulpy silliness I have come to LOVE from Lost -- it is typified in the Constant, which I am starting to think is the quintessential Lost episode in the way it uses time travel sci fi to just tell a love story and does not get hung up on how it would actually work.
Battlestar Galactica's "A Great Notion." I usually hate stories that are unrelentingly grim, but this was so bleak I was laughing, as you would at black comedy or Beckett or gallows humor. Mostly I admired the fact that the writers were willing to take the idea of the 4.0 cliffhanger and spend a full episode dealing with the fallout. It was a good example of what Zizek calls the second death: you lose your civilization, but the full impact of that does not register until you lose the hope as well. (HIs example was of a woman whose husband dies -- she is actually handling it ok, until their beloved dog dies as well). One thing BSG does really well is COMMIT. The acting was superb -- apparently Olmos went around depressing everybody about how the show was not going to survive the upcoming writers strike, not because he believed it was true but to aid everyone in capturing a bleak mindset for their characters. He also ad libed the "main vein" line, which is stunning. I love this show -- it is not a guiltly pleasure, or even, I would argue a geeky one -- because it puts character and acting first, and in this regard has more in common with the Wire and Deadwood than Star Trek or Star Wars or Star Gate or Star Whatever. I found the advance of the mythology to be a little weak, which may be my fault -- they introduced major shifts in the status quo by revealing the fifth Cylon and discovering that the 13th colonies were organic Cylons, but, because I was a little in the dark on what the status quo was in the first place (I had to remind myself what the status of the 13th colony was in their minds -- quasi-Biblical myth?) some of the impact was lost. I think the writers wanted me to be stunned by the revelations, but I was more scratching my head.
LOST, Season 5, Episodes 1-2. Since the last season of Lost ended I have seen all of The Wire, the Sopranos, and most of Deadwood, and all of BSG. I think those shows are so good, the robbed me of some of my LOST enthusiasm. I enjoyed the start of Season 5 basically and it had some great moments -- "Why is there a dead Pakistani on my couch?" Hurly throwing a Hot Pocket at Ben, Hurley summarizing the events on the Island ("He had to push a button every 108 minutes or ... well I was never very clear on that"), the room in the basement of the church with the 70s computer at the Foucaults pendulum, Sun and Kate talking about Jin, Neil getting hit by a flaming arrow. The skipping record idea is a good one because it will allow us to get the history of the island -- maybe all the way back to the four toed statued by the end, and it promises to always give up something new, to shake things up constantly. But the dialogue in episode one was really bad -- especially with Halliwax in the cold open talking about time travel with the construction worker. "There are RULES" is weak sauce, especially since there sort of aren't and also because the rules are very much a writer's room problem that I would like to remain behind, but not IN, the actual dialogue. There were a lot of scenes of tension where you could not see someone's face but my group was calling out who it was correctly before they were revealed, even Anna Lucia. And I was not that invested in the emotional story of the lie because I was never super clear why they had to lie -- or how lying was supposed to protect the people back on the island from Widmore since the island moved. I thought the point about "Whatever Ben says, do the opposite" -- and they fact that it WORKED -- was dumb since the point of Ben's character is surely to anticipate that reaction and counter it -- say something that will make you do the opposite, make you think you are going against him, when doing the opposite is exactly what he wants. I was upset when he told the woman at the end he had lost Hurley -- sure he should have said "Hurly is locked up -- exactly where I want him [LOST logo; credits]." But my main problem with this season was that the goal seems wholly passive -- in order to save everyone on the island, the have to get to the island -- and then just stand there? No one has even raised the question of "and then what." Ben indicates they will never come back but what they are supposed to do there is very unclear -- and if I had more of a sense, or even a sense that any character cared about the question, I could care about them more.
By the way, since several viewers are unclear on this -- the old woman was Mrs Hawking from Desmond's time travelly flashback in Season 3 episode 8. I am also putting money on her being Daniel's mom.
UPDATE: I forgot something funny Brad said to me on the phone: "So if a person is standing next to a tent when they movie in time the tent disappears but their clothes stay and also if you give someone a compass then that goes with them?" This could be a complaint but this kind of pulpy silliness I have come to LOVE from Lost -- it is typified in the Constant, which I am starting to think is the quintessential Lost episode in the way it uses time travel sci fi to just tell a love story and does not get hung up on how it would actually work.
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