Even MOAR Television:
I think it's kind of funny, I think it's kind of sad, the way this show keeps splitting up the great actors, the good actors, and the merely okay actors into their own plotlines. Thus making it incredibly easy to fast forward through a third of the show if you're short on time.
Greg and Tom are the magnificent bastards of this show. It's like they split up the characteristics of the magnificent bastard between the two for extra hoyay potential. In tonight's episode, we learn that Greg had a family which abandoned him, which has caused his Extraordinary Emo Damage. The two of them get firebombed and then have a domestic over adopting a little girl.
Second, is Abby, a character who is merely okay. She has a decent actress, but is still unfortunately, written DUMB. (Although the trailer for next week suggests that her son is in fact, alive, despite ridiculous odds. Making her kind of dumb even more the 'dumb of the magical truth-sensing heart' kind.) In this one, she runs into that Health and Human Services woman from the pilot, and we learn that the Secretary's inability to manage her docket in exactly the sort of crisis that you really want your CDC person to be able to handle is actually a Character Flaw and not just For Great Plot. For she is no better at managing a group of survivors, even when they have the cushiest facility in the goddamn world, than she was at keeping the United Kingdom from dying dead from a virus.
Apparently Dumbass thinks Laura Roslin is the way to run a personal fiefdom, except that no one on this show is actually a Cylon and so summarily capping strangers for stealing bandaids is probably not a good idea.
Meanwhile, in the McMansion of Characters No One Cares About: they build a chicken coop or something.
Also, we learn that in the Sekrit Facility of Doom, that character what looks like Mohinder from Heroes is also Gaius Baltar and responsible for the death of the human race. Only That Other Guy What Knows The Score knows the score and keeps him alive to work on a vaccine, raising my slim hope that they're merely misguided evil and not complete evil. Also, they close the plot hole by explaining that less than 1% of the world survived the virus, which makes math happy.
Next, the first NGE Rebuild film, which I downloaded several months ago, around the time I convinced rosmar that this was the anime what would convince her anime was a bit alright. (Gendo Ikari, you magnificent bastard!)
Pretty excellent reboot of the series, I thought. I haven't seen the first episodes in a long time, despite the fact I own them on DVD. (In platinum collection, no less!)
I watched this in a fansub despite myself, because it seems like they're never going to get around to releasing a proper dub. This movie has been out for a year! Oh well. I just find it interesting because one suspects that besides making Gainax a fuckton more money, the real purpose of this film is to streamline the byzantine level plot for Western audiences in preparation for an eventual Western live action film.
Points of interest: the pyramid angel (6th Angel) is VERY SCARY in this one, and not because of the drill. CGI enhanced graphics make the whole thing a lot more fluid and disturbing. Ironically, the bit where the fourth angel grows a nuclear mutant head is somehow LESS disturbing than it used to be.
The series also jumps the gun at three interesting junctions: one, the EVAs are made explicitly humanish from very early on. For some reason I remember that not coming until a point much later in the series. (Doesn't a bit of Unit 01's armor get ripped off, revealing brown human skin?) Luckily, they decided to add in extra creep about the EVAs being human by having Shinji run computer practice in a giant ripped out spinal column with mutated beating heart. Excellent.
Two: To encourage Shinji to fight, Misato brings him down to Central Dogma to see Lilith and that their job is to protect her from the angels! Rather early, but okay. Creepily interesting, there are little dangly bodies from the lower half of Lilith. I guess they harvest those bodies to make new Reis, rather than cloning her in vats this time?
Three: OMGWTFBBQSAUCE Kawaou on the MOON.
Things I thought merely okay: they have a budget now, so they can show things like Shinji's walkabout through the anonymous city. (Before, he kind of... rides a train for twenty minutes to annoying locust noises.) It helps a little bit, but if I were making this film for Americans, I'd probably add some backstory where we see that Shinji's been training for EVA all his life and that's why he's so depersonalized, since it's still pretty ridiculous that his Dad basically scoops him up from nowhere, plops him in the most expensive weapon ever made and expects him to fight Angelic Evil from Beyond. Also: he's still whiny as fuck. The end.
Things that were not okay: NO GODDAMN 'FLY ME TO THE MOON' AT THE END CREDIT. NOT OKAY, NOT OKAY. THAT IS TRADITION, GAINAX.
It's an extra special episode with Charlie Brooker interviewing just about every luminary in British Telly Screenwriting. Russell T. Davies comes off worse in the bits about characterization, where it seems kind of clear to me that he doesn't spend too much time actually thinking about it. I thought the best spoken were Tony Jordan of Eastenders and Life on Mars fame, and Graham Lineham of The IT Crowd. (Also, it has Paul Abbot!)
Anyway, I would recommend this episode for anyone who ever dreamed of writing television, because unlike most episodes of Screenwipe, this one gives you the warm fuzzies.