Finales
Only two weeks left until my summer trip. It's only now hitting me just now much stuff I have left to do. Hotel for Tokyo, shinkansen tickets, pay my rent up for the next month, start some semblance of packing.... At least I get to be spared the "OMG I'M GOING TO PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN!!!" part of the prep this time. And the "OMG I DON'T HAVE A HOTEL FOR COMIC CON!!!" freak-out. The more stress gets knocked off the list, the better.
This time around, I'm getting to San Diego on a Monday evening. So I'll actually get a few days to see the city before Comic Con starts. So, um.... What's worth seeing in San Diego? All I can think of is the zoo. Remind me to add "check San Diego's wikitravel page" to my to-do list.
Finally caught up on most of the season finales. Brief thoughts:
HEROES
I put this off for like, three months. Or to be precise, I put the last four episodes off for three months. I could blame it on watching the Olympics, or being busy, or being lazy, but I don't need to. It was because I saw the trailers for "Pass/Fail", and it just seemed like a repeat of everything I hated about the season 3 finale. Just in case you've forgotten my opinion on that:
So yeah. Every time I thought about sitting down to watch the episodes, I asked myself, "Do you REALLY want to sit through another hour of Sylar/Claire?" It took a long time for a "HELL NO" to turn into an "Eeh, I'll turn it on in the background while I work on my carnival poster." Once I'd gagged my way through more creep-tastic Sylar/Claire crap, the last three episodes went down a lot easier.
But anyway. Finale. It seems like a moot point to talk about the finale, seeing as the show's been cancelled.
To be fair, I didn't HATE the last three episodes. Or the season as a whole, really. I've said it before: if this season had been season 2, I would have been much more willing to jump on board with it. Even at its worst, it wasn't as bad as the boredom of season 2, or the utter mess of season 3. I liked some of the new characters, even when they were mishandled. There were moments and mini-arcs I liked. There were things that could have made for interesting plotlines and character arcs, if they hadn't had two crappy season's worth of plot baggage and retcon weighing them down. This show's done worse. If season 3 was the absolute nadir of the plot-hole it dug itself into, season 4 at least made SOME progress towards digging itself out, even if it was just a few carny-powered scoops of dirt being shoved aside.
Still, by the end, I was just....tired. Tired of retcon. Tired of watching characters get saddled with dead end plotlines. Tired of having to ignore the fuckups of past season to make any sense of things. Tired of talented actors being tied to a show that can't be bothered to give half of them any screentime. Tired of wasted potential. Tired of being disappointed. Tired of missing that sense of wonder, curiosity, suspense, emotional inestment, and all those things that make good shows worth watching from week to week. And just tired of trying to care.
Closure is nice. A mini-series or TV movie wouldn't go astray, I suppose. But considering I felt relieved rather than sad when the cancellation news came out, I don't think I'd be broken up if it was left as-is.
Thanks for the ride, Heroes. Despite everything, I definitely got more good than bad out of the whole thing. I met a lot of fun people in the fandom, had some good times, and I'm grateful for that.
SUPERNATURAL
I wish I'd watched the finale sooner, so I could have seen the fandom fallout first-hand. The wank must have been EPIC.
I actually enjoyed the second-last episode more than the actual finale. It was the perfect example of everyone on Team Free Will at their best, even when the world was dishing out its worst. Dean going to stop Death, Sam and Bobby and Castiel stopping the plague and saving people, and even Crowley (LOL) getting something to do before he buggered off. I'm a sucker for cool incarnations of Death, and the horseman didn't disappoint. It's rare to get a character that doesn't need to show off to be so utterly, believably, frighteningly menacing. Death managed that with about two sentences. While eating pizza. Awesome.
The actual finale? Meh. Explain to me why there wasn't a two-parter. Most of the other major SPN finales have been two-parters, or at least two episodes that tied directly into each other. Maybe it would have worked if it felt like there was a big climactic showdown going on, but it didn't really have that, either. Just one short confrontation with Lucifer, Sam getting bodyjacked, a bit of angsting around for most of the episode, and then another small showdown.
Not that every finale NEEDS to go out on a giant epic battle. I'm normally not one to complain when they focus on character stuff rather than pouring the budget into huge messy battle scenes. I suppose it's appropriate to boil things down to those conflicts between the characters, rather than resorting to throwing in a giant Heaven-vs-Hell death match in the background to make things feel dramatic. But was there really not enough storyline left to pad out a two-parter? It somehow managed to feel like everything was rushed towards the end, AND feel like the whole episode was just a lot of meandering to get everyone to the graveyard.
Anyway. The actual ending? Pretty much what I was expecting. Sam saves the world by going to hell. Dean gets a very empty victory, and just has to deal. Castiel goes back to heaven to be the new sheriff in town. Thought the angel-expody part was lame, but that made up for it.
Haven't read any spoilers yet, but I'm expecting next season to deal with the fallout. You can't just end a war and everything to go back to normal. Or not to have to deal with all the new threats that will rise up to fill the void. Fables is doing a similar storyline right now, and I'm interested to see where SPN takes it.
FRINGE
Am I the only one who thought the finale was....kind of lame?
I've gotten to like Fringe quite a bit. It took a while to get good back in season 1, but once they dropped the plotline about Olivia's boyfriend and stopped trying to be X-Files Lite, the show really came into its own. Season 2 has been pretty consistently good. The plotlines have been developed very gradually. The characters usually come first in all the tangled webs of conspiracy plotlines and monsters-of-the-week. I've been liking the whole Walter-Peter arc a lot. And hey, musical episode (sort of). After all the build-up in the last two seasons, I was looking forward to what happened when they finally visited the Other World.
Turns out the Other World is pretty much the Mirror Mirror universe from Star Trek mixed with a lot of action movie cliches, painful attempts at being "badass", and everyone sporting some very bad wigs and more black leather than a Matrix fetish shop. It felt like I'd stepped into a completely different show. Which is appropriate, I suppose, but not in a good way. Not to mention the Olivia/Peter thing just seemed completely ridiculous. I didn't know whether to WTF or laugh at the over-wrought "~OMG I NEEEEEED U PETER!~" moment. It pretty much had the opposite problem of SPN's finale. SPN went small, and ended up feeling kind of rushed and underwhelming. Fringe went big, but missed the mark by being such a departure from the normal tone of the show.
Good things: the scenes between Peter and his alt-mom. Seeing the contrast between Walter and Walternate. Walter and Bell. The "frozen" breach areas. The creepy final scene. (Saw it coming a mile away the second we saw Fauxlivia's tattoo, but whatever. If it makes for a good story, go for it.) All in all...kind of an awkward finale. But looking forward to next season.
This time around, I'm getting to San Diego on a Monday evening. So I'll actually get a few days to see the city before Comic Con starts. So, um.... What's worth seeing in San Diego? All I can think of is the zoo. Remind me to add "check San Diego's wikitravel page" to my to-do list.
Finally caught up on most of the season finales. Brief thoughts:
HEROES
I put this off for like, three months. Or to be precise, I put the last four episodes off for three months. I could blame it on watching the Olympics, or being busy, or being lazy, but I don't need to. It was because I saw the trailers for "Pass/Fail", and it just seemed like a repeat of everything I hated about the season 3 finale. Just in case you've forgotten my opinion on that:
So yeah. Every time I thought about sitting down to watch the episodes, I asked myself, "Do you REALLY want to sit through another hour of Sylar/Claire?" It took a long time for a "HELL NO" to turn into an "Eeh, I'll turn it on in the background while I work on my carnival poster." Once I'd gagged my way through more creep-tastic Sylar/Claire crap, the last three episodes went down a lot easier.
But anyway. Finale. It seems like a moot point to talk about the finale, seeing as the show's been cancelled.
To be fair, I didn't HATE the last three episodes. Or the season as a whole, really. I've said it before: if this season had been season 2, I would have been much more willing to jump on board with it. Even at its worst, it wasn't as bad as the boredom of season 2, or the utter mess of season 3. I liked some of the new characters, even when they were mishandled. There were moments and mini-arcs I liked. There were things that could have made for interesting plotlines and character arcs, if they hadn't had two crappy season's worth of plot baggage and retcon weighing them down. This show's done worse. If season 3 was the absolute nadir of the plot-hole it dug itself into, season 4 at least made SOME progress towards digging itself out, even if it was just a few carny-powered scoops of dirt being shoved aside.
Still, by the end, I was just....tired. Tired of retcon. Tired of watching characters get saddled with dead end plotlines. Tired of having to ignore the fuckups of past season to make any sense of things. Tired of talented actors being tied to a show that can't be bothered to give half of them any screentime. Tired of wasted potential. Tired of being disappointed. Tired of missing that sense of wonder, curiosity, suspense, emotional inestment, and all those things that make good shows worth watching from week to week. And just tired of trying to care.
Closure is nice. A mini-series or TV movie wouldn't go astray, I suppose. But considering I felt relieved rather than sad when the cancellation news came out, I don't think I'd be broken up if it was left as-is.
Thanks for the ride, Heroes. Despite everything, I definitely got more good than bad out of the whole thing. I met a lot of fun people in the fandom, had some good times, and I'm grateful for that.
SUPERNATURAL
I wish I'd watched the finale sooner, so I could have seen the fandom fallout first-hand. The wank must have been EPIC.
I actually enjoyed the second-last episode more than the actual finale. It was the perfect example of everyone on Team Free Will at their best, even when the world was dishing out its worst. Dean going to stop Death, Sam and Bobby and Castiel stopping the plague and saving people, and even Crowley (LOL) getting something to do before he buggered off. I'm a sucker for cool incarnations of Death, and the horseman didn't disappoint. It's rare to get a character that doesn't need to show off to be so utterly, believably, frighteningly menacing. Death managed that with about two sentences. While eating pizza. Awesome.
The actual finale? Meh. Explain to me why there wasn't a two-parter. Most of the other major SPN finales have been two-parters, or at least two episodes that tied directly into each other. Maybe it would have worked if it felt like there was a big climactic showdown going on, but it didn't really have that, either. Just one short confrontation with Lucifer, Sam getting bodyjacked, a bit of angsting around for most of the episode, and then another small showdown.
Not that every finale NEEDS to go out on a giant epic battle. I'm normally not one to complain when they focus on character stuff rather than pouring the budget into huge messy battle scenes. I suppose it's appropriate to boil things down to those conflicts between the characters, rather than resorting to throwing in a giant Heaven-vs-Hell death match in the background to make things feel dramatic. But was there really not enough storyline left to pad out a two-parter? It somehow managed to feel like everything was rushed towards the end, AND feel like the whole episode was just a lot of meandering to get everyone to the graveyard.
Anyway. The actual ending? Pretty much what I was expecting. Sam saves the world by going to hell. Dean gets a very empty victory, and just has to deal. Castiel goes back to heaven to be the new sheriff in town. Thought the angel-expody part was lame, but that made up for it.
Haven't read any spoilers yet, but I'm expecting next season to deal with the fallout. You can't just end a war and everything to go back to normal. Or not to have to deal with all the new threats that will rise up to fill the void. Fables is doing a similar storyline right now, and I'm interested to see where SPN takes it.
FRINGE
Am I the only one who thought the finale was....kind of lame?
I've gotten to like Fringe quite a bit. It took a while to get good back in season 1, but once they dropped the plotline about Olivia's boyfriend and stopped trying to be X-Files Lite, the show really came into its own. Season 2 has been pretty consistently good. The plotlines have been developed very gradually. The characters usually come first in all the tangled webs of conspiracy plotlines and monsters-of-the-week. I've been liking the whole Walter-Peter arc a lot. And hey, musical episode (sort of). After all the build-up in the last two seasons, I was looking forward to what happened when they finally visited the Other World.
Turns out the Other World is pretty much the Mirror Mirror universe from Star Trek mixed with a lot of action movie cliches, painful attempts at being "badass", and everyone sporting some very bad wigs and more black leather than a Matrix fetish shop. It felt like I'd stepped into a completely different show. Which is appropriate, I suppose, but not in a good way. Not to mention the Olivia/Peter thing just seemed completely ridiculous. I didn't know whether to WTF or laugh at the over-wrought "~OMG I NEEEEEED U PETER!~" moment. It pretty much had the opposite problem of SPN's finale. SPN went small, and ended up feeling kind of rushed and underwhelming. Fringe went big, but missed the mark by being such a departure from the normal tone of the show.
Good things: the scenes between Peter and his alt-mom. Seeing the contrast between Walter and Walternate. Walter and Bell. The "frozen" breach areas. The creepy final scene. (Saw it coming a mile away the second we saw Fauxlivia's tattoo, but whatever. If it makes for a good story, go for it.) All in all...kind of an awkward finale. But looking forward to next season.