Spring Break

There was not one day, from the third week of January until the second week of May, when all four of us were well.  That's my excuse.  Now, back to the good stuff.

February Interlude

Snow days, sick kids, disability flare-up, no time.

Coming in March, I hope: comments on Being Human versions 1 and 2, and V. 

Superheroes R Us: Human Target and The Cape

Let's not quibble over whether these shows are actually science fiction or fantasy.  They both spring from a comic book tradition, and that makes them speculative enough for me.  So. . .

Human Target is the wittiest, funniest show about ex-assassins you will ever see.  Each episode, Christopher Chance and his team save someone from being assassinated, in an action-packed plot with as many gunfights, heists, explosions, and clever deceptions as a person could want. But what makes this show shine is the banter between the characters and the great comic acting.  Jackie Earl Haley (as Guerro) manages to be creepy and hilarious at the same time, and Chi McBride (as Winston) does fed up and funny like no one else. Luckily, these talented character actors have intelligent, sparkling dialogue to work with.  Catch this undervalued show before it disappears! 

I haven't been able to bring myself to watch the third episode of The Cape.  There were moments when the first two episodes were watchable: action sequences when no one was talking; times the dialogue got so bad the characters themselves successfully made fun of it; opportunities to gaze at Summer Glau.  But I spent most of the time groaning at the awful writing and discussing pacing problems with my husband.  If this script had been submitted to my writer's group, it would have had "awkward, awkward" scribbled all over the dialogue. As for pacing, the pilot tried to do an entire superhero origin story, something that took eight years on Smallville, and two hours in Spiderman and other superhero action films.  Cramming that many stages and concepts into forty minutes ironically made the pilot slow, in the same way that flipping through a book is more boring than actually reading a chapter.  And did no one notice that the first scene with the circus performers was completely inconsistent with the characters as they were later established?  Personally, I don't have time for a show this bad, but feel free to comment if it gets better!

Special Specials

Thank you, Doctor Who and BBC, for giving Syfy the idea of producing Christmas specials for summer shows.  FYI, though, Syfy: A Christmas special, i.e. an episode of an off-season show made to air around Christmastime, doesn't necessary have to be about The Meaning of Christmas.  The Doctor Who specials are rarely about The Meaning of Christmas; they just have, you know, exploding ornaments and such. 

This isn't some kind of Jewish-viewer bah humbug sentiment; I grew up loving Christmas TV, and still have my favorites.  No, it's just that watching Pete and Myka of Warehouse 13 try to save a guy who almost dies because he plans to work on Christmas is, you know, painful.  The narrative attempts to pound The Meaning of Christmas into our heads through repeated hammer blows. . . .all without mentioning religion, of course. The other plot of the Warehouse 13 special, the one in which Claudia reunites Artie with his estranged father, is hilariously written and brilliantly executed by Saul Rubinek (Artie) and Judd Hirsh (his dad).  Because it involves authentic emotions, rather than grinding a Christmas axe, that plot is touching as well as funny.

The Euereka Christmas Special suffers from some of the same problems, though not to the same degree.  I enjoyed the main plot of this one; I laughed when the characters were supposed to be funny; I even appreciated the depiction of Santa as a brilliant physicist, and the way the storytelling frame (Jack is telling the story to a group of kids) left it up to the viewers whether or not they wanted to believe.  (We English majors call that genre "The fantastic" -- the literature that invites the reader to hesitate between two possible interpretations of the story, one supernatural and the other not).  If only Alison hadn't gone on quite so long about the Meaning of Christmas, I would have been perfectly happy with this episode.

Does it bother you Christians out there the way TV shows such as this push The Commercially Viable Meaning of Christmas, i.e. the one that has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus?  Or if the Meaning involves family togetherness, as well as presents and food, is that enough?

Sanctuary: Get Well Soon

In the past seasons, Sanctuary has been rather like a sick friend: sweet, likeable, but not the most exciting company.  Some of its ailments are incurable (Amanda Tapping's obviously fake English accent), but some others seem to be improving (the overly simple 'capture the monster-of-the-week' plots). 

The season began with the conclusion of the best episode yet, one that combined Sanctuary politics and an evil plan to use a powerful abnormal.  Our heroes had to rescue, rather than capture, the monster-of-the-week, and said monster turned out to be incredibly interesting for a change -- she was both a giant spider and the beautiful Kali, a goddess of creation and destruction.  The episode was fast-paced and complex enough to hold my attention. 

The episodes since then have not quite hit the high of that big-budget cliffhanger, but they have been satisfying nonetheless.  Questions have been raised: Who are the powerful abnormals Will saw with Kali in his vision?  Who are the invisible abnormals who also want to know?  Who arranged the death of Big Guy's friend?  These mysteries, and the clues the characters will find, add a second layer of complexity that simply wasn't present in the previous seasons.  All of the episode plots except one have connected in some way to this larger story, and the one that didn't, "The Bank Job" was original, suspenseful and funny enough to keep me riveted anyway (our characters pretended to hold up a bank!). 

Now that Sanctuary is feeling better, it also seems to be recovering a sense of humor.  It's especially funny when it pokes fun at itself, for example, when a hostage in"The Bank Job" says of Helen's British accent, "I knew it was fake!" or when Amanda Tapping (Helen) of Stargate fame insists that Henry's theory of aliens is ridiculous. I would like to see even more humor on the show; even monster-of-the-week was fun on Buffy, with Joss Whedon's snark enlivening the script. 

Sanctuary is still not as healthy as Syfy's best shows, Stargate and Battlestar Galactica, but I'd say the prognosis looks good.

Fringe: When Bad is Good

When is bad good?  When it creates suspense.  When it sparks action.  When it changes characters in drastic yet believable ways.  When it leads to dramatic irony.  In other words, when good writers know how to milk a plot where the bad guys are winning.  When it's happening on Fringe!

As Fringe opens this season, Olivia is a prisoner in the alternate dimension, reprogrammed to believe she is her own double.  The double is working against Peter, Walter, and the FBI in our dimension.  Oh, no!  Except, oh, yes!  Fringe has never been as exciting, as fast-paced, and as fun as it is this season.  Usually, the mood of a show plummets when the bad guys outwit the good guys at the end of successive episodes.  On Fringe this year, each defeat only increases the tension.

How do they do it?  Well, car chases help.  The first episode of the season, which involved Olivia running away from a mental facility on the other side, was the most dynamic I've seen on Fringe.  Even more importantly, the bad guys of Fringe, especially Olivia's double, are very engaging.  In fact, Olivia's double, though ruthless and much too unquestioningly loyal to the evil Walternate, is much more fun than our always melancholy, sometimes flat Olivia.  I'm hoping that after "being" her double for a while, our Olivia (who we are rooting for despite her woodenness) will retain some of that vivacity.  Dramatic irony -- the classical trick where the audience knows something the characters don't -- also helps.  We're too busy yelling angrily at Peter, "Can't you tell she's not your Olivia?" to feel depressed about the situation.

The episodes that take place in our dimension (and please understand that I am an episode behind, writing this) have not been quite as thrilling as the episodes taking place on the other side.  They have relied too much on the same old plot we've seen again and again in previous seasons: strange science kills people in a gruesome way, the team investigates, yadda yadda.  The episodes in the alternate universe, however, have broken free of this formula and provided twists and turns.  The mystery pulls us on:  What is Walternate's plan? 

To sum up: I began watching Fringe, though I sometimes found it boring, because my husband was watching it.  Now I'm asking him, "When are you going to have time to watch TV?  There's a Fringe in the DVR!"

Warehouse 13: Why I Just Can't Care

My husband really enjoys Warehouse 13, and is dying to see it renewed for another year.  I watch it with him, and have fun doing so, but somehow, I just don't care that much, about the characters or the future of the show.  And why is that, when the plots hums along, the magic involves tongue-in-cheek references to historical figures and events, Artie is lovable, Claudia is cool, and Mykha is amusingly neurotic? 

I think I found the answer today, while reading River Secrets, the third in Shannon Hale's Bayern YA Fantasy series.  On the page I was reading, the main character (Razo) remembered a character he used to love (Bettin) during the time of the first book.  Now, Razo was not a main character of the first book; he was decidedly secondary.  And yet, there was a girl he loved, who had no role in the book, but was named as part of the author's effort to round out Razo, and as a natural consequence of Hale's creation of a whole, three-dimensional, fully realized fantasy world. 

In contrast, the characters of Warehouse 13 seem to spring into existence the moment the cameras start rolling, and go back into stasis as soon as they stop.  There is little evidence that they have lives outside of their recorded adventures.  Sure, Claudia has a history (and is also probably the most engaging character of the four).  But Mykha has parents who appeared once, and Pete dated Kelly, and that's it for them.  It's inconceivable that we would learn about Kelly's family, as we hear of Razo's love in The Goose Girl.  The world of Warehouse 13 simply does not have that kind of depth.  The lack of tertiary characters isn't a problem -- it's a symptom, a sign.  The real problem is that the main characters, and the world they inhabit, seem two-dimensional.

Apply this litmus-test to Jack, the main character of Eureka, and see what you get: he has a daughter, Zoe, another main character; a sister, whose baby's father we also meet (a tertiary character!); an ex-wife, who has appeared on the show; an ex-girlfriend, Tess; and an A.I. house.  All of these characters have provided drama outside, and alongside, the mystery of the week.  All of them remind viewers, over and over, that Eureka exists inside a complete and complicated world. 

Some of Warehouse 13's difficulties stem from the fact that the "magical space" is simply too small.  Too few people are involved in the Warehouse, so, much of the agents' time is spent learning details of lives and places that will never be mentioned again.  On Eureka, every investigation takes place within the "magical space" of the town, so that every detail learned by the way adds to the complexity of the show's created world.  I honestly don't know how Warehouse 13 could be fixed; the sad truth is that some premises are inherently limited. 

So, Warehouse 13, if we don't see you next year:  It was fun.  It was good.  It just wasn't great.