Tin Man: Like a giant bowl full of WTF
So, y'know, I was pretty predisposed to liking this mini. Re-telling The Wizard of Oz as 1930's pulp sci-fi? Right on. Alan Cumming? Word. Zoey Deschanel? Double word. Pretty, pretty design work? Sign me up.
But - but...oh, Sci-fi. Just when I was happy to remember you as the people who brought me Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, you had to remind me you're also the people who created Frankenfish.
I'll give them credit: there were a lot of good *ideas* hanging around. The pulp aesthetic I very much liked and that undercurrent of "Something's rotten in Denmark" adds a nice, creepy veneer to it all. And the costume and set designs were, again, really quite good.
Problem was, lots of ideas, no commitment to any of them. Like starting from pulp and swerving sloppily into high fantasy. Like the characters doing REALLY DUMB THINGS because the plot tells them to do it ("You say the bad guy is looking for this emerald but doesn't know where it is? We should immediately look for it because I'm sure she won't follow us at all, even though this one guy who appeared out of nowhere to 'help' us is acting kind of sketchy!"). And you got the feeling they wanted to go a lot darker with the material - perhaps more akin to the novel of Wicked - but were told nobody would want to see that and pulled back at the last minute. The whole production feels like it was written by committee and as a result, has no clear voice at all.
It's really a shame because the characters had the potential to be so awesome and the plot structure lends itself well to short-form television. And I ended up watching the whole thing because I kept waiting for it to get better, but it just didn't.
Sadly, I'd still probably read Cain/DG if someone wrote it.
Well, at least I get more Life tonight. That makes me a happy panda.
But - but...oh, Sci-fi. Just when I was happy to remember you as the people who brought me Farscape and Battlestar Galactica, you had to remind me you're also the people who created Frankenfish.
I'll give them credit: there were a lot of good *ideas* hanging around. The pulp aesthetic I very much liked and that undercurrent of "Something's rotten in Denmark" adds a nice, creepy veneer to it all. And the costume and set designs were, again, really quite good.
Problem was, lots of ideas, no commitment to any of them. Like starting from pulp and swerving sloppily into high fantasy. Like the characters doing REALLY DUMB THINGS because the plot tells them to do it ("You say the bad guy is looking for this emerald but doesn't know where it is? We should immediately look for it because I'm sure she won't follow us at all, even though this one guy who appeared out of nowhere to 'help' us is acting kind of sketchy!"). And you got the feeling they wanted to go a lot darker with the material - perhaps more akin to the novel of Wicked - but were told nobody would want to see that and pulled back at the last minute. The whole production feels like it was written by committee and as a result, has no clear voice at all.
It's really a shame because the characters had the potential to be so awesome and the plot structure lends itself well to short-form television. And I ended up watching the whole thing because I kept waiting for it to get better, but it just didn't.
Sadly, I'd still probably read Cain/DG if someone wrote it.
Well, at least I get more Life tonight. That makes me a happy panda.