Seasons change and so do I
I've been wanting to write a bit about this fall's Yanqui tv season for a while now, but it keeps changing -- both the landscape of what's on, and my feelings about the new (and old) shows. So, maybe I will tackle the new ones first (one of which is already off the air). Warning: Long-ass post ahead.
Heroes Dude. Watching the love for this series spread across my flist has been the best part of the fall. I adore this show, and not in a fun-wasting-time sort of way. I love everything about it -- the use of common superhero tropes, the familiarity of the powers often put into the unfamiliar type of character (indestructibility in the form of a cheerleader? Brill), the sense of humor it has about the story it's building on, the comic-book "stay-tuned" yowzer endings... it's perfect. I've seen grumbling from people about cliches and less than stellar writing, which I find especially funny coming from SGA and Supernatural fans (hello, pot? Meet black kettle...), but for me, those are the things that make the series work -- we've seen a lot of this before in different ways, but that's exactly what's going to pull us in.
I love all the characters, even sizzling hottie Mohinder when he's being a dick, as he has these past two weeks (Mohinder! Time to get back in the taxi and ride it to a clue!). I have always loved Adrian Pasdar and I love what he does with Nathan's shark-white-teeth smile, his hilarious reactions to people (when he gave Peter the thumbs up after Peter hit him, I laughed out loud, and his "I can see where that would be a problem" to Hiro was just... priceless). I'm so curious to see what he's going to do now that others have seen him fly. Even Peter's emo boy thing doesn't bother me; Isaac is hot in a very unwashed pouty kind of way; Hiro and Ando are beyond, BEYOND, adorable and is it wrong that I thought Ninja!Future!Hiro was kinda cool? I even don't totally hate Nikki, though I usually would, though she's married to the world's worst actor, who showed up at the very end of this week's ep, and who played Forrest in Buffy Season 4 -- my god, that man cannot act to save his life. I dread seeing him again. But I'm sure it'll be made up with Claire, who is just incredible, what a great find, and my darling Greg Grunberg as Matt, who is not the brightest bulb in the box, that's for sure (he's a COP? And he picks up a gun like that in a public place? And doesn't have his badge on him so he can stop people from freaking out?). Him seducing his wife by reading her thoughts didn't bother me at all, I guess because I always wanted my exes to be able to just read my thoughts and know when to talk to me or leave me alone. Really -- I was completely frustrated by the fact that they expected me to tell them what I wanted. I was like, "Can't you just *know* when I want company and when I don't? Why do I have to *tell* you?" So he'd be the perfect man for me.
This was the show I had the least expectations for, and it is turning into the first full-fledged new fandom for me since... well, Angel left the air. I didn't think anything would ever make me feel that anticipation again the way the Jossverse shows did, but this one does. Now if the creators could just stop dissing genre fans...
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip This was the show I actually had the highest expectations for, OTOH, and when my TiVo has failed to catch it for whatever reason, I just don't even notice. Hate, hate, hate Aaron Sorkin. I always have, and now I know that I always will, despite wanting to give him a chance again. The only reason The American President is one of my favorite movie is because he only wrote it -- a man who actually knows how people act and interact, Rob Reiner, and who understands women, was the one who made the movie. Watching Sorkin's shows causes me physical pain -- I wouldn't mind the "nobody talks like that" banter and dialog if it actually made any point other than to show the smug superiority of the writer, if it ever once felt organic to the characters. But it never does.
I gave SportsNight a chance once when Sandy and Merry dragged me into their hotel room at a con and showed me about four or five eps, but the dithering, ditzing, endless whininess of Felicity Huffman's character made me cringe, and alas, I could not join them in their fandom. I adore Matthrew Perry, but... everything else about this show is wasted -- funny guys like D.L. Hughley, a beautiful actress like Sara Paulson reduced to these endless Christian platitudes... gah. GAH! ANd then they did the worst possible cliche story last week ever, and I was literally throwing pillows at the tv and screaming "Oh My God I cannot believe you did that." The cooler than thou reporter who teaches everyone little lessons about themselves and learns lessons herself and brings everyone's true stories out even though they don't want to talk to her, and a waste of the talented Christine Lahti with a bad 'do... at that point, they lost me forever, despite Matthew. The smugness and cooler than thou, it burns.
Smith Yeah, okay, first casualty of the season. I'm not totally sure why. But reading Ray Liotta's comments in EW this past week, it sounds like they were flying a little too much by the seat of their pants, and hadn't carefully planned the structure of the heists as well as possible. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what I did get to see, and I really think Simon Baker's hottie sociopath and Johnnie Lee Miller's hottie hothead were totally married and could have been a great slash couple. It was stylish and beautifully filmed, and Liotta and Virgina Madsen, whom I adore, had great chemsitry, but they never had the chance to work out the implausibilities, or let us really see who these characters were. I wish it had been different; this was one I could have enjoyed. And everyone on this show was just hot. Eye candy is not a bad thing!
The Nine I missed the first episode of this, unfortunately, and it's been hard to get a feel for how much we already knew going into the second ep, but I do really like the series. Tim Daly is always fun (Oh, Eyes, how do I miss you, let me count the ways), and it's great to see my old Seattle roomie's pal John Billingsley get a chance to shine without alien makeup. I really want to see how the story unfolds, and I loved the fact that the doctor tried to kill one of the gunmen, but I'm not sure, given its ratings, the investment will pay off, and I fear I will be disappointed yet again by a serialized drama and never see the end.
Six Degrees Okay, yeah, everything about this is designed to turn me off. But I had to watch anyway, because Michael K. Williams, Omar on the Wire, was in some eps, so I watched. It is every bit as hateful as I feared. Everyone is icky and annoying and irritating in that privileged yuppie living in NYC way, and I can't stand it. The only time it's going on the TiVo is when MKW is listed.
Jericho and Ugly Betty Oh boy, I wanted to watch Jericho (Skeeter! My darling! Oh, Miracles, how I miss you), but the TiVo caught Bones or something else instead, and now I've missed all the eps... I need to put this ahead on the season pass, but I can't stand not watching shows from the very beginning. I'm an early adopter! If anyone has them on disc, I would love to work out a way to get them... And Ugly Betty sounds like it's right up my alley, but it's on opposite Earl, and I didn't catch the beginning. I've seen bits and pieces and it looks wonderful, but I may have to catch up with it on DVD later, I guess.
Dexter Since this is on Showtime, which no one I know gets, we have to wait for copies, and I've only seen the first ep, but I'm hooked. Completely. I normally hate serial killer shows, particularly when they try to make them seem sexy or cool -- you know what? They're not. They are always sociopathic losers who start out by killing animals. I hate the way fiction and film have tried to make them cooler than anything else out there. So what they do on Dexter, to start out with the fact that he's a sociopathic loser who has no ability to connect to anyone else, and then give him a job where that's actually a plus, and then have him focus his pathology on killers themselves, is simply brilliant. I love how hard he tries to pretend, even though his facade slips, that he is a regular person -- bringing donuts, having lunch. And how self-absorbed the others are that they don't even see when the act falters. And I love that one person does recognize how creepy Dexter is, and it puzzles Dexter so that he's the only one who does. I can't wait to see more (looks at Jo).
Standoff I knew I'd forget something. I was able to watch only a few eps of this -- everything was on opposite VM, including this and The Unit, which is awful, but I love because Max Martini OMGSOHOT -- before VM came back on, and I see they are moving it now to earlier in the evening. It's not bad. But it's not good, either. When I first read about it, I saw the name Ron Livingston (Nixon in Band of Brothers), and that was all she wrote. I was there. And then I read that he was having an affair with a co-worker, and they mentioned Gina Torres in the cast list, and I nearly fainted -- the idea of my woobie Ron knocking boots with hottest woman on the planet Gina Torres? TO DIE FOR. But it turned out to be some generic white chick, and while the banter is fine, the hostage negotiations are totally standard typical, and when I can watch, it's just really only to see Ron.
Returning shows:
Battlestar Galactica OK, I was about ready to give up after end of last season. A while ago, someone on my flist asked what we would most like to see on the new season of BSG -- I didn't answer, but I would have said, if I hadn't been worried about looking like such a pansy-ass, was hope. They had pretty much destroyed whatever feeling like there was any hope of human survival, and the nuke on Cloud 9 had just... wiped me out emotionally. I don't have words for how hard that was for me to handle. This has all been strange to me because I've always loved the dark stuff. But with all the painful things in my life the past two years, and being so invested in these characters, I wasn't sure how I could keep watching, but the first three eps have left me just... breathless. It was everything I could have hoped for -- great tragedy, great drama, loss balanced with hope and gain, characters forced into some kind of reckoning with themselves and their roles in the universe... I just loved it.
I still hate the cylons, and I'm still frustrated by this "and they have a plan" when they so very clearly DO NOT and they are stupid, stupid, stupid, in their plans for revenge and forced conversion, and even making a Baltar vid, I still hate him very much, but I loved his scene with Gaeta in the recent ep, realizing that it wasn't just all about him, for once. But the end of the second Exodus ep... oh, man. That was everything, EVERYTHING, I could want in a TV show right there -- Laura's conversation with Tory that it was bigger than them, that it was life; and then Adama shaving off his moustache, a sign that he was moving back into full military mode, to lead again, that the world had shifted once more... That scene brought me to tears, as he pulled down his jacket and looked admiringly at his crew, back and going about their business. Edward James Olmos is the most amazing actor. Both he and MM blow me away every time. The fandom seems to be all about the hot young things, but I'll take my middle-aged heroes any time.
Veronica Mars I'm flummoxed by this season. I don't know how I feel yet, completely, but... it doesn't feel like my show. Part of it is that we've hardly seen V and Wallace together. Some of it is that Keith and Veronica almost seem to live in different worlds (and I am all about the dad and daughter thing). And I still don't feel like the relationship with Veronica and Logan is working. But all that aside... something's weird. And I don't know what.
Gilmore Girls Wow, they have so lost me. If this is why I'm not catching Jericho, then... yeah, things need to change. Or maybe it's Bones that's preventing Jericho (no, I can't do the watch and record different things since my setup got changed). I hate the way they machined this Luke and Lorelai story -- it was so engineered, it was pathetic. And I don't hate Christopher, but I also don't think he's right for her as a partner. And could I possibly care less about Rory? No. Emily's shrillness has been dialled down for humor, but I don't expect that to last. No, I think they've lost me.
Bones I really do love this series, mostly because I like how alien and odd Temperance is, how not-human she registers all the time, and I love David Boreanaz, and he's just wonderful playing off her, reminding her and teasing her about how alien she is. "Just once, do what people do." I love Dave, period, but he's in great shape, looks wonderful, has perfect comic timing... the cases are boring, the main characters make me so happy, and I will keep watching.
The Wire I'm a little behind on this season, but this is the first time I've even been able to see it in something close to real time that I'm not complaining about waiting a few weeks to get discs from a friend. And how could they possibly have pulled it off? To make it even more compelling with such focus on the elections, all those annoying politicians, with the unit disabled, with everyone spread to the wind, and focusing on kids in school... how did they manage to make that all even more compelling? ANd the evil, soulless Marlo with his cold dead shark eyes, the terrifying Chris and Snoop... That they could make this so compelling blows me away yet again. The. Best. Show. on. Television. Ever.
Numb3rs Okay, it's like a little vial of crack for me, that's all. I don't like Don's close cropped hair, but I'm glad Charlie's is shorter. I think Larry and Meghan's romance is cute. The season opener was fantastic, but the rest of the eps so far have been so-so. But it's my crack. Don is angsty and cute, Charlie is trying to grow up, Alan worries... what more could I want.
Prison Break Still stupid. Still really, really boring. Still drawn out beyond interest. But crazy, unstable, sexy William Fichtner means I don't care. I just FF to the Fichtner parts and all is good.
ETA, MI-5/Spooks I can't even remember which season number we're on now, but I caught up with all the new eps on the marathon Saturday and all I can say is... Holy cow. I don't know if that was the season ender ep they closed with, but my freaking god... the stories are so topical and they make you really understand the anxiety and desperation of the current world situation. I really didn't expect them to kill off Fiona, but Christ, if they kill off Adam, I think I'll lose it (they can't leave that poor kid parentless!). I hadn't expected I could like him so much when he took over from my woobie Tom, world's worst spy, but he's grown on me considerably. And Ruth has been through hell, poor girl. I worship her. I don't know what Harry has up his sleeve, but please oh please, pull it out NOW.
The less said about CS: NY and Without a Trace and all the other I just watch because I watch, the better.
Heroes Dude. Watching the love for this series spread across my flist has been the best part of the fall. I adore this show, and not in a fun-wasting-time sort of way. I love everything about it -- the use of common superhero tropes, the familiarity of the powers often put into the unfamiliar type of character (indestructibility in the form of a cheerleader? Brill), the sense of humor it has about the story it's building on, the comic-book "stay-tuned" yowzer endings... it's perfect. I've seen grumbling from people about cliches and less than stellar writing, which I find especially funny coming from SGA and Supernatural fans (hello, pot? Meet black kettle...), but for me, those are the things that make the series work -- we've seen a lot of this before in different ways, but that's exactly what's going to pull us in.
I love all the characters, even sizzling hottie Mohinder when he's being a dick, as he has these past two weeks (Mohinder! Time to get back in the taxi and ride it to a clue!). I have always loved Adrian Pasdar and I love what he does with Nathan's shark-white-teeth smile, his hilarious reactions to people (when he gave Peter the thumbs up after Peter hit him, I laughed out loud, and his "I can see where that would be a problem" to Hiro was just... priceless). I'm so curious to see what he's going to do now that others have seen him fly. Even Peter's emo boy thing doesn't bother me; Isaac is hot in a very unwashed pouty kind of way; Hiro and Ando are beyond, BEYOND, adorable and is it wrong that I thought Ninja!Future!Hiro was kinda cool? I even don't totally hate Nikki, though I usually would, though she's married to the world's worst actor, who showed up at the very end of this week's ep, and who played Forrest in Buffy Season 4 -- my god, that man cannot act to save his life. I dread seeing him again. But I'm sure it'll be made up with Claire, who is just incredible, what a great find, and my darling Greg Grunberg as Matt, who is not the brightest bulb in the box, that's for sure (he's a COP? And he picks up a gun like that in a public place? And doesn't have his badge on him so he can stop people from freaking out?). Him seducing his wife by reading her thoughts didn't bother me at all, I guess because I always wanted my exes to be able to just read my thoughts and know when to talk to me or leave me alone. Really -- I was completely frustrated by the fact that they expected me to tell them what I wanted. I was like, "Can't you just *know* when I want company and when I don't? Why do I have to *tell* you?" So he'd be the perfect man for me.
This was the show I had the least expectations for, and it is turning into the first full-fledged new fandom for me since... well, Angel left the air. I didn't think anything would ever make me feel that anticipation again the way the Jossverse shows did, but this one does. Now if the creators could just stop dissing genre fans...
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip This was the show I actually had the highest expectations for, OTOH, and when my TiVo has failed to catch it for whatever reason, I just don't even notice. Hate, hate, hate Aaron Sorkin. I always have, and now I know that I always will, despite wanting to give him a chance again. The only reason The American President is one of my favorite movie is because he only wrote it -- a man who actually knows how people act and interact, Rob Reiner, and who understands women, was the one who made the movie. Watching Sorkin's shows causes me physical pain -- I wouldn't mind the "nobody talks like that" banter and dialog if it actually made any point other than to show the smug superiority of the writer, if it ever once felt organic to the characters. But it never does.
I gave SportsNight a chance once when Sandy and Merry dragged me into their hotel room at a con and showed me about four or five eps, but the dithering, ditzing, endless whininess of Felicity Huffman's character made me cringe, and alas, I could not join them in their fandom. I adore Matthrew Perry, but... everything else about this show is wasted -- funny guys like D.L. Hughley, a beautiful actress like Sara Paulson reduced to these endless Christian platitudes... gah. GAH! ANd then they did the worst possible cliche story last week ever, and I was literally throwing pillows at the tv and screaming "Oh My God I cannot believe you did that." The cooler than thou reporter who teaches everyone little lessons about themselves and learns lessons herself and brings everyone's true stories out even though they don't want to talk to her, and a waste of the talented Christine Lahti with a bad 'do... at that point, they lost me forever, despite Matthew. The smugness and cooler than thou, it burns.
Smith Yeah, okay, first casualty of the season. I'm not totally sure why. But reading Ray Liotta's comments in EW this past week, it sounds like they were flying a little too much by the seat of their pants, and hadn't carefully planned the structure of the heists as well as possible. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what I did get to see, and I really think Simon Baker's hottie sociopath and Johnnie Lee Miller's hottie hothead were totally married and could have been a great slash couple. It was stylish and beautifully filmed, and Liotta and Virgina Madsen, whom I adore, had great chemsitry, but they never had the chance to work out the implausibilities, or let us really see who these characters were. I wish it had been different; this was one I could have enjoyed. And everyone on this show was just hot. Eye candy is not a bad thing!
The Nine I missed the first episode of this, unfortunately, and it's been hard to get a feel for how much we already knew going into the second ep, but I do really like the series. Tim Daly is always fun (Oh, Eyes, how do I miss you, let me count the ways), and it's great to see my old Seattle roomie's pal John Billingsley get a chance to shine without alien makeup. I really want to see how the story unfolds, and I loved the fact that the doctor tried to kill one of the gunmen, but I'm not sure, given its ratings, the investment will pay off, and I fear I will be disappointed yet again by a serialized drama and never see the end.
Six Degrees Okay, yeah, everything about this is designed to turn me off. But I had to watch anyway, because Michael K. Williams, Omar on the Wire, was in some eps, so I watched. It is every bit as hateful as I feared. Everyone is icky and annoying and irritating in that privileged yuppie living in NYC way, and I can't stand it. The only time it's going on the TiVo is when MKW is listed.
Jericho and Ugly Betty Oh boy, I wanted to watch Jericho (Skeeter! My darling! Oh, Miracles, how I miss you), but the TiVo caught Bones or something else instead, and now I've missed all the eps... I need to put this ahead on the season pass, but I can't stand not watching shows from the very beginning. I'm an early adopter! If anyone has them on disc, I would love to work out a way to get them... And Ugly Betty sounds like it's right up my alley, but it's on opposite Earl, and I didn't catch the beginning. I've seen bits and pieces and it looks wonderful, but I may have to catch up with it on DVD later, I guess.
Dexter Since this is on Showtime, which no one I know gets, we have to wait for copies, and I've only seen the first ep, but I'm hooked. Completely. I normally hate serial killer shows, particularly when they try to make them seem sexy or cool -- you know what? They're not. They are always sociopathic losers who start out by killing animals. I hate the way fiction and film have tried to make them cooler than anything else out there. So what they do on Dexter, to start out with the fact that he's a sociopathic loser who has no ability to connect to anyone else, and then give him a job where that's actually a plus, and then have him focus his pathology on killers themselves, is simply brilliant. I love how hard he tries to pretend, even though his facade slips, that he is a regular person -- bringing donuts, having lunch. And how self-absorbed the others are that they don't even see when the act falters. And I love that one person does recognize how creepy Dexter is, and it puzzles Dexter so that he's the only one who does. I can't wait to see more (looks at Jo).
Standoff I knew I'd forget something. I was able to watch only a few eps of this -- everything was on opposite VM, including this and The Unit, which is awful, but I love because Max Martini OMGSOHOT -- before VM came back on, and I see they are moving it now to earlier in the evening. It's not bad. But it's not good, either. When I first read about it, I saw the name Ron Livingston (Nixon in Band of Brothers), and that was all she wrote. I was there. And then I read that he was having an affair with a co-worker, and they mentioned Gina Torres in the cast list, and I nearly fainted -- the idea of my woobie Ron knocking boots with hottest woman on the planet Gina Torres? TO DIE FOR. But it turned out to be some generic white chick, and while the banter is fine, the hostage negotiations are totally standard typical, and when I can watch, it's just really only to see Ron.
Returning shows:
Battlestar Galactica OK, I was about ready to give up after end of last season. A while ago, someone on my flist asked what we would most like to see on the new season of BSG -- I didn't answer, but I would have said, if I hadn't been worried about looking like such a pansy-ass, was hope. They had pretty much destroyed whatever feeling like there was any hope of human survival, and the nuke on Cloud 9 had just... wiped me out emotionally. I don't have words for how hard that was for me to handle. This has all been strange to me because I've always loved the dark stuff. But with all the painful things in my life the past two years, and being so invested in these characters, I wasn't sure how I could keep watching, but the first three eps have left me just... breathless. It was everything I could have hoped for -- great tragedy, great drama, loss balanced with hope and gain, characters forced into some kind of reckoning with themselves and their roles in the universe... I just loved it.
I still hate the cylons, and I'm still frustrated by this "and they have a plan" when they so very clearly DO NOT and they are stupid, stupid, stupid, in their plans for revenge and forced conversion, and even making a Baltar vid, I still hate him very much, but I loved his scene with Gaeta in the recent ep, realizing that it wasn't just all about him, for once. But the end of the second Exodus ep... oh, man. That was everything, EVERYTHING, I could want in a TV show right there -- Laura's conversation with Tory that it was bigger than them, that it was life; and then Adama shaving off his moustache, a sign that he was moving back into full military mode, to lead again, that the world had shifted once more... That scene brought me to tears, as he pulled down his jacket and looked admiringly at his crew, back and going about their business. Edward James Olmos is the most amazing actor. Both he and MM blow me away every time. The fandom seems to be all about the hot young things, but I'll take my middle-aged heroes any time.
Veronica Mars I'm flummoxed by this season. I don't know how I feel yet, completely, but... it doesn't feel like my show. Part of it is that we've hardly seen V and Wallace together. Some of it is that Keith and Veronica almost seem to live in different worlds (and I am all about the dad and daughter thing). And I still don't feel like the relationship with Veronica and Logan is working. But all that aside... something's weird. And I don't know what.
Gilmore Girls Wow, they have so lost me. If this is why I'm not catching Jericho, then... yeah, things need to change. Or maybe it's Bones that's preventing Jericho (no, I can't do the watch and record different things since my setup got changed). I hate the way they machined this Luke and Lorelai story -- it was so engineered, it was pathetic. And I don't hate Christopher, but I also don't think he's right for her as a partner. And could I possibly care less about Rory? No. Emily's shrillness has been dialled down for humor, but I don't expect that to last. No, I think they've lost me.
Bones I really do love this series, mostly because I like how alien and odd Temperance is, how not-human she registers all the time, and I love David Boreanaz, and he's just wonderful playing off her, reminding her and teasing her about how alien she is. "Just once, do what people do." I love Dave, period, but he's in great shape, looks wonderful, has perfect comic timing... the cases are boring, the main characters make me so happy, and I will keep watching.
The Wire I'm a little behind on this season, but this is the first time I've even been able to see it in something close to real time that I'm not complaining about waiting a few weeks to get discs from a friend. And how could they possibly have pulled it off? To make it even more compelling with such focus on the elections, all those annoying politicians, with the unit disabled, with everyone spread to the wind, and focusing on kids in school... how did they manage to make that all even more compelling? ANd the evil, soulless Marlo with his cold dead shark eyes, the terrifying Chris and Snoop... That they could make this so compelling blows me away yet again. The. Best. Show. on. Television. Ever.
Numb3rs Okay, it's like a little vial of crack for me, that's all. I don't like Don's close cropped hair, but I'm glad Charlie's is shorter. I think Larry and Meghan's romance is cute. The season opener was fantastic, but the rest of the eps so far have been so-so. But it's my crack. Don is angsty and cute, Charlie is trying to grow up, Alan worries... what more could I want.
Prison Break Still stupid. Still really, really boring. Still drawn out beyond interest. But crazy, unstable, sexy William Fichtner means I don't care. I just FF to the Fichtner parts and all is good.
ETA, MI-5/Spooks I can't even remember which season number we're on now, but I caught up with all the new eps on the marathon Saturday and all I can say is... Holy cow. I don't know if that was the season ender ep they closed with, but my freaking god... the stories are so topical and they make you really understand the anxiety and desperation of the current world situation. I really didn't expect them to kill off Fiona, but Christ, if they kill off Adam, I think I'll lose it (they can't leave that poor kid parentless!). I hadn't expected I could like him so much when he took over from my woobie Tom, world's worst spy, but he's grown on me considerably. And Ruth has been through hell, poor girl. I worship her. I don't know what Harry has up his sleeve, but please oh please, pull it out NOW.
The less said about CS: NY and Without a Trace and all the other I just watch because I watch, the better.