What Ivy has been watching...
...because I know you're all interested.
I finally finished Andromeda. I've now seen every episode and never have to watch anything from the last three seasons again. The finale alone is one of the worst pieces of television ever created. I'd heard rumors about it. Since the show's premise is that Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo) is trapped on the event horizon of a blackhole at a critical moment in history and emerges three hundred years later to find that civilization has fallen and the galaxy has been in chaos for the last three centuries, I'd heard that in the finale they'd hit the reset button: Dylan managed to go back and time and prevent the fall. This would have been bad enough. It would have erased the entire continuity of the show and made most of the characters never exist, though I expected some sort of montage where we saw how their lives would have been better, or something sappy like that. If the finale had done this, it would have been annoying, but it would have at least addressed the main themes of the show: Dylan's survivor's guilt and his desire to re-form the Commonwealth.
This is not what they did. The two-part episode was mostly flashback montage sequences done in sepia tones. A little sappy, OK, but these montages did not have a point. They were random clips from just the last season. No logic to them at all. No references to previous character arcs. Heck, no reference to previous cast members. This was interspersed with people having serious conversations along the lines of: "Is this the end?" "Yes, this is the end." "I feel things are ending." "This may be the end." etc. Oh yes, and they blow up Earth so that people can look stricken for five seconds and then forget all about it.
It gets to ten minutes to the end of the show. I'm expecting some kind of final group moment-I've seen plenty of finales where the plot sucked, but they all at least gave the characters each a moment to say goodbye to the audience. No such luck. There is a big special effect shot-it looks something like a red blobby light disappearing into a white blobby light. And then we have five minutes of every one saying "It's over!" And then Kevin Sorbo stands on the command deck of the ship, says "Yes!" and pumps his fist in the air. Aaaaand curtain.
Just to give a little bit of background on the show, the red blobby thing was the villain they've been fighting for five years. It's called the Abyss. In Andromeda's typical high-handed pseudo-philosophical approach, the Abyss is supposed to be the origin of all evil in the universe. This is partly Robert Hewitt Wolfe's fault-he created the thing before he was booted off the show. His interpretation was a little pretentious, but kind of interesting. After he left, the Abyss was pretty much just the big bad. Imagine the First on Buffy, except as a special effect instead of a frightening villain.
So, to summarize, in the finale of Andromeda, the manifestation of all evil is destroyed by a blob of white light. The end. What?
I also got up to season 5 of Xena. These I unfortunately own (they were cheap! I'm weak, I admit it). In the first episode of season 5, Xena and Gabrielle die by crucifixion. Yeah, you see where this is going. First Gabrielle goes to Hell, which is a fake looking cave with five demons. Then Xena goes to Heaven, which is a fake looking cave with five angels. Then Xena goes to Hell and rescues Gabrielle, but Xena stays in Hell, and then Xena leads the armies of darkness (see above, five demons) on an assault against Heaven (see above, five angels in a crappy cave). There follows a lot of bad CG. You know those special features on Lord of the Rings DVDs where they show you the stages of CG rendering and there's always one stage where Golum is just a block-y conglomeration of simple shapes with no texture or shading? That's where the money ran out on Xena.
And let me not forget the best part. All the angels and demons have wings. These are giant frame constructions that they're wearing in a harness, similar in construction to ones I've seen on cos-players at I-Con. They sort of stick out behind the actors, slowly tipping them backwards, and whack into the set and the other actors.
Now, Xena has always been a cheesy show. That's part of its appeal. But this looks like some highschool production. It's truly horrifying. Especially since they figured they could get away with fifteen minutes of angels and demons fighting, as shown by bad CG and actors with wings strapped to their backs being jerked around on wires to simulate flying.
The truly sad part was that there were two or three really good story points buried in this shit, which just makes it all the more likely that I'll watch the rest of the season. Oh, Xena. You have jumped the shark.
Lately I've been watching ER season 6, my favorite season for the shallow reasons that it's in this season that Dr. Carter gets stabbed and addicted to drugs, and it's the first appearance of Luka Kovac, my favoritest doctor ever. But I tell ya, you watch a few episodes of this back to back, and the story-telling tricks become so obvious. They had maybe enough material for this show for one season. By the time you get to season 6 you just have to sit back and wonder-why can't any of these doctors get their shit together? Why is everything such a big production? God, I hope my doctors aren't all drama queens. It's always the same thing: the hectic surgery in the ER where the surgeon hesitates but makes the right decision. The long monologue about feelings with tears in the eyes. As soon as a patient shows up and a doctor says it's probably nothing you know they're probably going to die. Or kill themselves. Or kill one of the doctors. Can't these people handle anything?
I finally finished Andromeda. I've now seen every episode and never have to watch anything from the last three seasons again. The finale alone is one of the worst pieces of television ever created. I'd heard rumors about it. Since the show's premise is that Dylan Hunt (Kevin Sorbo) is trapped on the event horizon of a blackhole at a critical moment in history and emerges three hundred years later to find that civilization has fallen and the galaxy has been in chaos for the last three centuries, I'd heard that in the finale they'd hit the reset button: Dylan managed to go back and time and prevent the fall. This would have been bad enough. It would have erased the entire continuity of the show and made most of the characters never exist, though I expected some sort of montage where we saw how their lives would have been better, or something sappy like that. If the finale had done this, it would have been annoying, but it would have at least addressed the main themes of the show: Dylan's survivor's guilt and his desire to re-form the Commonwealth.
This is not what they did. The two-part episode was mostly flashback montage sequences done in sepia tones. A little sappy, OK, but these montages did not have a point. They were random clips from just the last season. No logic to them at all. No references to previous character arcs. Heck, no reference to previous cast members. This was interspersed with people having serious conversations along the lines of: "Is this the end?" "Yes, this is the end." "I feel things are ending." "This may be the end." etc. Oh yes, and they blow up Earth so that people can look stricken for five seconds and then forget all about it.
It gets to ten minutes to the end of the show. I'm expecting some kind of final group moment-I've seen plenty of finales where the plot sucked, but they all at least gave the characters each a moment to say goodbye to the audience. No such luck. There is a big special effect shot-it looks something like a red blobby light disappearing into a white blobby light. And then we have five minutes of every one saying "It's over!" And then Kevin Sorbo stands on the command deck of the ship, says "Yes!" and pumps his fist in the air. Aaaaand curtain.
Just to give a little bit of background on the show, the red blobby thing was the villain they've been fighting for five years. It's called the Abyss. In Andromeda's typical high-handed pseudo-philosophical approach, the Abyss is supposed to be the origin of all evil in the universe. This is partly Robert Hewitt Wolfe's fault-he created the thing before he was booted off the show. His interpretation was a little pretentious, but kind of interesting. After he left, the Abyss was pretty much just the big bad. Imagine the First on Buffy, except as a special effect instead of a frightening villain.
So, to summarize, in the finale of Andromeda, the manifestation of all evil is destroyed by a blob of white light. The end. What?
I also got up to season 5 of Xena. These I unfortunately own (they were cheap! I'm weak, I admit it). In the first episode of season 5, Xena and Gabrielle die by crucifixion. Yeah, you see where this is going. First Gabrielle goes to Hell, which is a fake looking cave with five demons. Then Xena goes to Heaven, which is a fake looking cave with five angels. Then Xena goes to Hell and rescues Gabrielle, but Xena stays in Hell, and then Xena leads the armies of darkness (see above, five demons) on an assault against Heaven (see above, five angels in a crappy cave). There follows a lot of bad CG. You know those special features on Lord of the Rings DVDs where they show you the stages of CG rendering and there's always one stage where Golum is just a block-y conglomeration of simple shapes with no texture or shading? That's where the money ran out on Xena.
And let me not forget the best part. All the angels and demons have wings. These are giant frame constructions that they're wearing in a harness, similar in construction to ones I've seen on cos-players at I-Con. They sort of stick out behind the actors, slowly tipping them backwards, and whack into the set and the other actors.
Now, Xena has always been a cheesy show. That's part of its appeal. But this looks like some highschool production. It's truly horrifying. Especially since they figured they could get away with fifteen minutes of angels and demons fighting, as shown by bad CG and actors with wings strapped to their backs being jerked around on wires to simulate flying.
The truly sad part was that there were two or three really good story points buried in this shit, which just makes it all the more likely that I'll watch the rest of the season. Oh, Xena. You have jumped the shark.
Lately I've been watching ER season 6, my favorite season for the shallow reasons that it's in this season that Dr. Carter gets stabbed and addicted to drugs, and it's the first appearance of Luka Kovac, my favoritest doctor ever. But I tell ya, you watch a few episodes of this back to back, and the story-telling tricks become so obvious. They had maybe enough material for this show for one season. By the time you get to season 6 you just have to sit back and wonder-why can't any of these doctors get their shit together? Why is everything such a big production? God, I hope my doctors aren't all drama queens. It's always the same thing: the hectic surgery in the ER where the surgeon hesitates but makes the right decision. The long monologue about feelings with tears in the eyes. As soon as a patient shows up and a doctor says it's probably nothing you know they're probably going to die. Or kill themselves. Or kill one of the doctors. Can't these people handle anything?