the wee tv review

What’s up? Oh, that’s easy. Nothing is up. Lots are going down.

Bones. Oh, Bones is staying. Probably. It’s grown repetitive, it’s formulaic, and it’s jumped the shark about three times now, which is amazing. Look at that motorcycle! …but I like it. Sure doesn’t hurt to have an attractive male lead, but I like the show. I confess, the female lead is also incredibly compelling. She’s autistic, basically. I know exactly what she feels, if “feels” is the right word, and good lord she plays the role perfectly.

Watching Firefly…

…which is, in my opinion, the best TV show ever, by a large margin. It’s got a fine cast (including attractive members of both sexes), intricate plots, excellent special-effects, a plan and a background and mystery and occasional nudity. I mean, what’s not to like? Except the brevity of the series, which was canceled after a season.  Such a WTF. Firefly was such a brilliant piece of art. I’ll even sit through the opening theme and music and, for most shows, that’s the part most worth being able to fast-forward past.

It’s just a charming piece of work. I’ll watch Bones or Heroes or Eureka (and what’s the deal with all these one-word titles, anyway?) but, I’m hard-put not to spend half the show groaning at the blatant errors and implausibilities, and the episodes tend to be one-shots: fun the first time, and that’s it.

Firefly just doesn’t trigger those reflexes. It’s not perfect, by any means, but I’m willing to give it a season pass on its goofs. Sadly, that’s all it needs. It’s done, that’s all she wrote.

The horror. The horror.

Actors: they’re acting. And the smoking thing.

A basic truth, isn’t it? Actors are playing a part. Probably, it really shouldn’t matter, but I find myself really disenchanted from a show when it turns out that the actor is a complete asshole or, perhaps he’s playing a genius on TV but turns out to need to buy a vowel to fill in the word “d_h”. I’m not going to name any names. Enjoy your fantasies.

My hideous vices: Legend of the Seeker

I hear tell that this television series was actually based on a popular run of books. Hard to imagine. I haven’t heard of the books, much less read them, so I can’t tell you whether they’ve been done an intolerable injustice by the video production. It’s about one of the most terrible things I’ve seen, derivative to the point of outright plagiarism, entirely anachronistic, and dumb as a box full of mute songbirds.

Why do I watch it? Oh, that’s simple. Craig Horner, aka “Richard Cypher” <wince>. The show is horrible. He’s fucking gorgeous, and the producers know enough to get him out of his shirt on a regular basis.

Sex sells. It’s especially important if you’re working with a show that is clearly a disaster from start to finish, which covers almost everything ever broadcast as a television series.

advertising tricks: dilated pupils

It’s a sexual signal. It can do a lot to make someone look more attractive. Time was, girls used belladonna (a toxic plant whose name means “beautiful lady”) to dilate their pupils.

I saw it in a commercial, a moment ago. The marvel of modern color cameras that let you film under low lighting conditions.

Be careful out there. Examine what you see. Analyze it.

The insidious nature of advertising, Mark II

Some time back, I was warning about the dangers of mind control because, well, I was fairly good at it, once. Made me feel filthy. You can’t really afford to have a conscience if you’re into bending other peoples’ realities. I don’t play those games any more. But, I know damned well that my amateur talents must have been thoroughly upstaged by people who don’t give a fuck.

That’s a hypothesis which doesn’t seem to bear out that much in the real world, though. I’ve been watching some TV, recently, and the commercials are just comical schlock. I mean, totally inept. You’d suspect they were designed by government committees. They’re more likely to make you loathe the companies that air them than to buy their products, even if the ads give you the slightest idea of what the products do, which is apparently not first, second, or third on the minds of the ad men.

Eureka – I Can’t Believe It’s Not SF

…well, ok, let’s be serious. It’s another of the oh-so-popular modern shows that pretend to be science fiction, without actually involving anything that isn’t an affront to science. What is it with these guys? They think a cheap paint job with a couple of fancy tech terms is all it takes? Seems they’re all built by ad men, who are so used to screwing around with bullshit words that they think that’s the whole of the show. Cheap bullshit.

The intro show for Eureka comes up with a major man-made disaster. Someone’s created tachyons, which don’t obey the laws of physics, thereby causing the universe to start unraveling.

Hello? Dumb shits! Last I looked, tachyons had not been shown to exist, but they’re posited as existing naturally in massive quantities… according to what we know of the laws of physics. The trick with trying to find one is, they have minimal interaction with normal matter. You might just as well have made your mcguffin the creation of the pygmy marmoset which, as we all know, would certainly cause the end of the world.

Slip-sliding away

Was just watching an episode of Sliders because, as you always find with TV… no matter how many channels you have, even if you have a massive library such as hulu available… well, pretty much all of it is awful, and you find yourself in the dregs soon enough.

Sliders actually opens with a rather promising and charming pilot episode. Parallel universes, brave new worlds. It all slides downhill so quickly it’s just not remotely funny, though. It jumps immediately into really bad politics based on toy histories that aren’t remotely plausible.

…which is the kind of thing you can still find yourself watching, in this fantastical future of 2008, in the lean holiday period when it seems that most of the Internet is simply vacant. Let’s get on with 2009, already.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

Because you need it. http://www.hulu.com/watch/28343/dr-horribles-sing-along-blog

You’re welcome.

Bizarre fads in pseudo science fiction

I’ve been reviewing a variety of recent TV shows of a pseudo-science fiction nature, lately. They like to pretend to a scientific background, although they’re all mystical gibberish. They can be moderately entertaining… although… the whole idea of the genera is outstandingly icky. PSF has been popular for decades, though, and certainly hasn’t been waning.