I recently swore off comic book films. They're not grounded in reality and often don't follow the conventions of film, tv etc. Physics? Psh. Who needs physics. Realism? PAH.
But I thought there may be hope for the 90s Spiderman cartoon. I watched this in my teens and loved it. So a few weeks ago, the GF and I downloaded it and began working through it.
I quickly reached the conclusion that it's not very good. This may well be because of Sam fucking Rami. Since those awful spiderman films it's hard to ignore bits where Aunt May guilt trips Peter or Peter starts going randomly emo for no aparant reason.
My biggest problem was a bit of a revelation for me, though. I've come to the conclusion that Spiderman is a really shit superhero.
Austin Powers had a lot to do with this. Specifically this famous exchange from International Man of Mystery:
Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism.
[guard starts dipping mechanism]
Dr. Evil: Close the tank!
Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!
Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
Scott Evil: I have a gun, in my room, you give me five seconds, I'll get it, I'll come back down here, BOOM, I'll blow their brains out!
Dr. Evil: Scott, you just don't get it, do ya? You don't.
Why is this relevant to Spiderman? Because he keeps getting captured. His captors always strap a bomb to his arm, want to hold him to ransom, try to reveal his identity or something that leads to him escaping in a really contrived fashion. Why does this keep happening? Because fake peril is a great way of concealing the fact that Spidey can't really do anything.
Let's run through Spiderman's powers quickly:
1)Spiderman can stick to walls.
This is.... fairly useful. I suppose. I can't really see many real world applications. The creators seem to be aware of this as well and have to create a load of flying villains and fights on rooftops to compensate.
2) Spiderman can shoot webs from his wrists.
This used to swing around the city. In much the same way as a normal person would use... a car. It's also used to tie up bandits. I suppose that's... sort of useful but most other superheros don't appear to need to do this. Admittedly, the webbing is often used to stop falling debris and things, which is the one instance where it does something that couldn't also be done by a normal person.
3) Spiderman is hyper agile
Know who else is hyper agile? Gymnasts and martial artists. Spiderman's hyper agility is never really portrayed as anything other than being really gymnastic. Although he tends to do a lot of pretentious flipping all over the place.
4) Spiderman can sense danger
This is a tricky one because it *could* be a game breaking power because depending on how you define "danger" it allows you to sense villains, bullets speeding towards you, people who don't like you etc. etc. The problem is sensing danger can't actually happen so it's not a power based in the real world. As a result of this, the writers of Spiderman pretty much make up what the Spider Sense can and can't detect as they go along. There's one bit where Venom blocks his Spider Sense because the Venom symbiote has bonded with Spidey previously. It doesn't block Spidey's ability to see him so why is it affecting this other sense?
Basically the only things the Spider Sense is ever used for is to notice when he's about to be shot at or a missile is about to explode nearby or something. In other words, this potentially game breaking power could be replaced by the Keeping An Eye On Your Surroundings power.
So, to sum up. Spiderman never really does anything useful that couldn't be done by a talented gymnast/martial artist other than catch falling debris with his webs.
Now.
As a direct result of this, all the normal people in New York are... kind of scaled down, competance wise. The villains always capture Spider Man rather than killing him (which they always have ample oppertunity to do.) Also, buildings always fall on people who never run or dive for cover, they always just look up at the building falling on them with a blank look on their face.
Mostly, though, no-one ever does anything in the Spiderman universe other than Spider Man and the villains. No civilians ever push a mate out of the way when they're about to be crushed by a building. No-one else ever tries to tackle the Shocker (because if they did, they'd win. The Shocker is a monumentally terrible villain) no-one does... anything.
This was all sparked, by the way, by watching bits and pieces of Daredevil, who everyone knows is a terrible superhero. He's blind! He's so blind he can see! He has magical seeing powers! Oh, and he can... use sonar. I suppose. Which is sort of useful... I suppose.
Marvel superheroes are just shit, aren't they...
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
House Series 6
Or: How To Re-Establish The Status Quo In Three Easy Steps
House and I have a troubled history. I've blogged about it previously, saying how it had jumped the shark. Before I kept this blog, I thought this had happened once before, as well, after the Tritter subplot where it turned out House had faked his detoxing.
What has always pissed me off about house is this: Nothing good ever happens. Or, if it does, it never stays good. Or if it does, it's completely forgotten about. Take Cuddy's baby. Yes, it's technically a shallow ploy to add drama to a tired character but it's presented as a 100% positive event. It is then never really touched on. It gets mentioned occasionally but usually as a comparison to how awful life is.
Anyway, I watched series 5 - I hated the bit in the middle, and everything revolving around the relationship between Foreman and 13, which is definitely the most unrealistic relationship I've come across in a TV show. Those two personality types aren't opposites but they are about as unlikely to hook up as me and Jeb Bush.
But whatever, series 6 started off incredibly well, maybe the show is going to change.
Series 6 started with an epic two parter where House is institutionalised. A shrink essentially cures him over an hour and a half of screen time in a series of alternately touching and heart breaking bits of television.
Things started to go slightly wrong in the third episode. There, House is desperate to keep his mind occupied so his leg ceases to hurt. He tries various things out over the course of the series but eventually, he cheats and solves a diagnostic problem over the internets. His shrink then tells him to go back to diagnostic medicine as this is the only thing that will cure him.
There are too many things that annoy me about that to chronicle so I'll pick just one: House is now a rational human being who cares more about happiness than anything else, right? So he should cut his fucking leg off. It's very, very simple. This option has been floated to him several times before, it's well established that this would instantly end his pain. Ignoring this option shows that the writers really don't want to move the series on, they just want to keep doing the same old shit.
So whatever, the new team leave (which was probably a good thing, given how Taub was a remarkably boring character and the 13/foreman thing was only getting less believable as time went on) and in episode 5... Well, House just reverts. He's back to his old pointless games of hacking into someones email to cancel a plane flight so they'll reconsider whether to stay in the country or not.
No other show would have characters do something that fucking stupid. It's ridiculous, but in House, that's the only way to communicate effectively because people who share their feelings (like Wilson) are considered weak, ineffective and more flawed than the people they're trying to fix.
Episode 5 ends with a montage of broken hearts, long poignant shots of character either lying to cover up a mistake or missing their spouse/partner. The show where nothing good ever happens ever is back. And I'm out.
Again.
House and I have a troubled history. I've blogged about it previously, saying how it had jumped the shark. Before I kept this blog, I thought this had happened once before, as well, after the Tritter subplot where it turned out House had faked his detoxing.
What has always pissed me off about house is this: Nothing good ever happens. Or, if it does, it never stays good. Or if it does, it's completely forgotten about. Take Cuddy's baby. Yes, it's technically a shallow ploy to add drama to a tired character but it's presented as a 100% positive event. It is then never really touched on. It gets mentioned occasionally but usually as a comparison to how awful life is.
Anyway, I watched series 5 - I hated the bit in the middle, and everything revolving around the relationship between Foreman and 13, which is definitely the most unrealistic relationship I've come across in a TV show. Those two personality types aren't opposites but they are about as unlikely to hook up as me and Jeb Bush.
But whatever, series 6 started off incredibly well, maybe the show is going to change.
Series 6 started with an epic two parter where House is institutionalised. A shrink essentially cures him over an hour and a half of screen time in a series of alternately touching and heart breaking bits of television.
Things started to go slightly wrong in the third episode. There, House is desperate to keep his mind occupied so his leg ceases to hurt. He tries various things out over the course of the series but eventually, he cheats and solves a diagnostic problem over the internets. His shrink then tells him to go back to diagnostic medicine as this is the only thing that will cure him.
There are too many things that annoy me about that to chronicle so I'll pick just one: House is now a rational human being who cares more about happiness than anything else, right? So he should cut his fucking leg off. It's very, very simple. This option has been floated to him several times before, it's well established that this would instantly end his pain. Ignoring this option shows that the writers really don't want to move the series on, they just want to keep doing the same old shit.
So whatever, the new team leave (which was probably a good thing, given how Taub was a remarkably boring character and the 13/foreman thing was only getting less believable as time went on) and in episode 5... Well, House just reverts. He's back to his old pointless games of hacking into someones email to cancel a plane flight so they'll reconsider whether to stay in the country or not.
No other show would have characters do something that fucking stupid. It's ridiculous, but in House, that's the only way to communicate effectively because people who share their feelings (like Wilson) are considered weak, ineffective and more flawed than the people they're trying to fix.
Episode 5 ends with a montage of broken hearts, long poignant shots of character either lying to cover up a mistake or missing their spouse/partner. The show where nothing good ever happens ever is back. And I'm out.
Again.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Star Trek is shit
So I used to be a massive fan of Star Trek. Not the original series, I'm not a moron, but TNG, Voyager and DS9 were all on my watch list, when I was still living with my parents. They had Sky TV.
Anyway, now I'm older and slightly less cynical about the world, I thought I'd return to these series and see if they're any good on the re-watch.
Sadly, no. None of them are.
Voyager is easily the best of the main three. It's hard to say whether I dislike DS9 or TNG more... I think I have to say DS9 because I still have a nostalgic soft spot for TNG which makes me more sympathetic to it's flaws.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. What could have caused me to turn against Star Trek: The Next Generation...
It's important to point out which episodes I watched, as well. I watched the first two episodes ever (Encounter at Farpoint) and, supposedly, the best episodes ever, the borg ones (Best of Both Worlds).
So, what did I hate?
1) There aren't any characters.
This is the big one. In any decent show, you can pick any character and say a good number of things off the top of your head about his character. Take Parker from leverage. We know she's loyal, slightly psychotic, has a childish sense of humor, has no real understanding of relationships and somewhat paranoid.
Contrast this with TNG. Whilst Riker, Picard and (in the Borg eps) commander Shelby have *some* characterization... the rest of them really don't. What, for example, can you say about Geordi LaForge's character, other than the fact that he's blind?
2) If there were characters, you couldn't tell them apart.
In the Borg episodes, all the characters ever did was state facts. "The Borg are approaching." "Shields have dropped to 29%." "If we re-routed power through the deflector dish..." Any character could say any of those things and it wouldn't make any difference.
Supposedly, you've got a good script if you can remove the character names from the dialogue and still tell who's saying what lines. Star Trek does not have a good script.
3) They never shut up about the prime directive
Seriously, they don't.
4) A good third of the run time consists of reaction shots
They have an action, cut to (in TNG) Riker, Geordi, Worf, Picard, Crusher, Troi, Wesley, Data, Riker again, then change the scene. It wouldn't be so bad if the characters expressions were interesting but they all look like they're either concerned, concentrating or constipated.
5) The battles, when they do happen, are very dull
"Fire phasers" then a shot of a ship firing the phasers. This isn't exactly nail biting stuff.
I could go on but this is the problem - you can criticize just about everything in every series of Star Trek. This often isn't a problem. Often a show is terrible in many ways but it has a certain charisma or soul that keeps it alive for the viewer. Star Trek is not one of these shows.
Sadly.
Anyway, now I'm older and slightly less cynical about the world, I thought I'd return to these series and see if they're any good on the re-watch.
Sadly, no. None of them are.
Voyager is easily the best of the main three. It's hard to say whether I dislike DS9 or TNG more... I think I have to say DS9 because I still have a nostalgic soft spot for TNG which makes me more sympathetic to it's flaws.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. What could have caused me to turn against Star Trek: The Next Generation...
It's important to point out which episodes I watched, as well. I watched the first two episodes ever (Encounter at Farpoint) and, supposedly, the best episodes ever, the borg ones (Best of Both Worlds).
So, what did I hate?
1) There aren't any characters.
This is the big one. In any decent show, you can pick any character and say a good number of things off the top of your head about his character. Take Parker from leverage. We know she's loyal, slightly psychotic, has a childish sense of humor, has no real understanding of relationships and somewhat paranoid.
Contrast this with TNG. Whilst Riker, Picard and (in the Borg eps) commander Shelby have *some* characterization... the rest of them really don't. What, for example, can you say about Geordi LaForge's character, other than the fact that he's blind?
2) If there were characters, you couldn't tell them apart.
In the Borg episodes, all the characters ever did was state facts. "The Borg are approaching." "Shields have dropped to 29%." "If we re-routed power through the deflector dish..." Any character could say any of those things and it wouldn't make any difference.
Supposedly, you've got a good script if you can remove the character names from the dialogue and still tell who's saying what lines. Star Trek does not have a good script.
3) They never shut up about the prime directive
Seriously, they don't.
4) A good third of the run time consists of reaction shots
They have an action, cut to (in TNG) Riker, Geordi, Worf, Picard, Crusher, Troi, Wesley, Data, Riker again, then change the scene. It wouldn't be so bad if the characters expressions were interesting but they all look like they're either concerned, concentrating or constipated.
5) The battles, when they do happen, are very dull
"Fire phasers" then a shot of a ship firing the phasers. This isn't exactly nail biting stuff.
I could go on but this is the problem - you can criticize just about everything in every series of Star Trek. This often isn't a problem. Often a show is terrible in many ways but it has a certain charisma or soul that keeps it alive for the viewer. Star Trek is not one of these shows.
Sadly.
Leverage II
I just got some good news. Leverage, one of my favourite shows, has been renewed for a second series.
This is especially good news as, whilst the second series hasn't been quite as strong as the first, it's had more top quality episodes. The Hunt For The Truth and Two Live Gang episodes were especially brilliant. However, for the last two episodes, we've had no new episode. What the hell? We're three episodes away from the end of the series, here. Has the show been canceled? Are they pulling an Arrested Development with the Scheduling?
No, no. Apparently not. Apparently:
They're taking the piss aren't they?
I've blogged about the Americans and their stupid fucking TV scheduling before but this is getting fucking ridiculous. Partly because this is a 13 episode series, so there's no reason to have a gap, partly because they're airing the two parts of the series in summer and winter respectively, so referring to series 2 as a "season" is monumentally inaccurate and partly because you've only got *three* fucking episodes left.
Can you not just *run* the fucking series, guys? Can you not play these bullshit network games? Has anyone sat down to consider that if the Americans ran their series in a sensible way, maybe more people would be able to work out when they're on, more people would watch and fewer good shows would get canceled?
I don't like much British TV (with the exception of our comedies) but at least we broadcast our series' one after the other.
This is especially good news as, whilst the second series hasn't been quite as strong as the first, it's had more top quality episodes. The Hunt For The Truth and Two Live Gang episodes were especially brilliant. However, for the last two episodes, we've had no new episode. What the hell? We're three episodes away from the end of the series, here. Has the show been canceled? Are they pulling an Arrested Development with the Scheduling?
No, no. Apparently not. Apparently:
"...the summer season finale airs on September 9, and returns in the winter to finish out its second season."
They're taking the piss aren't they?
I've blogged about the Americans and their stupid fucking TV scheduling before but this is getting fucking ridiculous. Partly because this is a 13 episode series, so there's no reason to have a gap, partly because they're airing the two parts of the series in summer and winter respectively, so referring to series 2 as a "season" is monumentally inaccurate and partly because you've only got *three* fucking episodes left.
Can you not just *run* the fucking series, guys? Can you not play these bullshit network games? Has anyone sat down to consider that if the Americans ran their series in a sensible way, maybe more people would be able to work out when they're on, more people would watch and fewer good shows would get canceled?
I don't like much British TV (with the exception of our comedies) but at least we broadcast our series' one after the other.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Great Game/TV sequels
Film sequels? FILM SEQUELS? Who fucking cares. Films are the past. Games and Television are where it's at now.
With that in mind... GAME AND TV SEQUELS! GREAT ONES!
I'm still quite asleep, that's why I'm talking like this.
Anyway. What game and TV sequels are both awesome and improve significantly on the original?
Games:
1) Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Granted, no-one played Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption except me but that shouldn't take away from Bloodlines' achievements... it's one of the best games ever made and improves on the original in every way.
2) Call of Duty 4
The fact that this game is fantastic is secondary to the fact that it's the only Call of Duty game that's worth playing.
3) Half Life 2: Episode 2
Now, I hated Half Life 2. The plot was completely absent, there was far too much scripting and Valve appeared to have forgotten how to set up a decent fire fight. All of these factors were sorted for Episode 2 after the frankly disastrous Episode 1
4) Dawn of War 2
Dawn of War was a fantastic strategy game because it wasn't about building as many squads as you could and then rushing the enemy. Dawn of War 2 improved on this by limiting you to four squads and adding RPG elements. As far as sheer naked improvement over a previous installment goes, this is the victor hands down.
5) Red Alert 3
Now, I know I've just said I hate build and rush strategy games... and I do... but Red Alert 3 isn't about the actual gameplay- it's about the sheer stupidity of the story, the units and the atmosphere. They all make up for the shocking gameplay in spades.
6) Hitman: Blood Money
This is also known as The Only Hitman Game Worth Playing. Seriously, the others are drab, dull and single note. Blood Money is vibrant, imaginative and hilarious.
7) Tie Fighter
Yay! A retro one! Tie Fighter improved on X-Wing by having you play as The Empire and getting to kill rebels, which is what all of us wanted in the first place. It merely helped that the gameplay, plot and characters were vastly improved over X-Wing
That's pretty much it as far as I know. Hopefully we'll get a few more later this year, though. We've got:
Assassins Creed 2
Which should be almost identical to the first game but minus the annoying bits
Call of Duty 6
I'm really hoping this one will be good but it may well not be, given how stellar #4 was.
Left 4 Dead 2
Is going to be fucking epic :D
TV:
1) Battlestar Galactica Series 2 & 3
This one has to be in here. Series 2 was twice as good as series 1 and Series 3 was twice as good as series 2. Series 4 was slightly weaker but had some absolutely fantastic story arcs such as the rebellion.
2) Gilmore Girls Series 3
Okay, okay, fucking bear with me. Gilmore Girls is froth but it's intelligent froth. It's one of the best feel good shows ever made, mainly thanks to Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel who ooze charisma. And other things. Dirty things. Anyway, Series 1 & 2 are good but it's series 3 where things really come together.
3) House Series 4
House is comfort television. It's exactly the same every week and that's one of it's strengths. It all changes in series 4, though, when the cast gets shaken up significantly, introducing a load of great new sub plots and characters.
Honourable Mention:
Doctor Who series 3
This is only an honourable mention because, whilst it is very good, Series 1 of the New Who was so fucking good and Series 3 had more than a few dodgy episodes, it couldn't quite beat it's younger self. How very Doctor Who.
With that in mind... GAME AND TV SEQUELS! GREAT ONES!
I'm still quite asleep, that's why I'm talking like this.
Anyway. What game and TV sequels are both awesome and improve significantly on the original?
Games:
1) Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
Granted, no-one played Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption except me but that shouldn't take away from Bloodlines' achievements... it's one of the best games ever made and improves on the original in every way.
2) Call of Duty 4
The fact that this game is fantastic is secondary to the fact that it's the only Call of Duty game that's worth playing.
3) Half Life 2: Episode 2
Now, I hated Half Life 2. The plot was completely absent, there was far too much scripting and Valve appeared to have forgotten how to set up a decent fire fight. All of these factors were sorted for Episode 2 after the frankly disastrous Episode 1
4) Dawn of War 2
Dawn of War was a fantastic strategy game because it wasn't about building as many squads as you could and then rushing the enemy. Dawn of War 2 improved on this by limiting you to four squads and adding RPG elements. As far as sheer naked improvement over a previous installment goes, this is the victor hands down.
5) Red Alert 3
Now, I know I've just said I hate build and rush strategy games... and I do... but Red Alert 3 isn't about the actual gameplay- it's about the sheer stupidity of the story, the units and the atmosphere. They all make up for the shocking gameplay in spades.
6) Hitman: Blood Money
This is also known as The Only Hitman Game Worth Playing. Seriously, the others are drab, dull and single note. Blood Money is vibrant, imaginative and hilarious.
7) Tie Fighter
Yay! A retro one! Tie Fighter improved on X-Wing by having you play as The Empire and getting to kill rebels, which is what all of us wanted in the first place. It merely helped that the gameplay, plot and characters were vastly improved over X-Wing
That's pretty much it as far as I know. Hopefully we'll get a few more later this year, though. We've got:
Assassins Creed 2
Which should be almost identical to the first game but minus the annoying bits
Call of Duty 6
I'm really hoping this one will be good but it may well not be, given how stellar #4 was.
Left 4 Dead 2
Is going to be fucking epic :D
TV:
1) Battlestar Galactica Series 2 & 3
This one has to be in here. Series 2 was twice as good as series 1 and Series 3 was twice as good as series 2. Series 4 was slightly weaker but had some absolutely fantastic story arcs such as the rebellion.
2) Gilmore Girls Series 3
Okay, okay, fucking bear with me. Gilmore Girls is froth but it's intelligent froth. It's one of the best feel good shows ever made, mainly thanks to Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel who ooze charisma. And other things. Dirty things. Anyway, Series 1 & 2 are good but it's series 3 where things really come together.
3) House Series 4
House is comfort television. It's exactly the same every week and that's one of it's strengths. It all changes in series 4, though, when the cast gets shaken up significantly, introducing a load of great new sub plots and characters.
Honourable Mention:
Doctor Who series 3
This is only an honourable mention because, whilst it is very good, Series 1 of the New Who was so fucking good and Series 3 had more than a few dodgy episodes, it couldn't quite beat it's younger self. How very Doctor Who.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Two Bullshit Sci Fi Stock Devices
Sci Fi is often the most inventive and interesting genre out there. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its fair share of lazy writing, though. What do the lazy writers do? They fall back on these:
1) Evil organisations that execute their own employees
Now, I'm not saying that no company has ever killed an employee of theirs but this device is never about realism. This device is used by extremely lazy writers as a way of saying: Look! Look! This company is evil! They're killing their employees! Bastards!
The thing is, it's usually totally pointless. It's always done when an employee has "served their purpose" or "seen something they shouldn't have". If an employee has served their purpose, get them to do something else. It's no wonder a company has to keep hiring assassins if they bump them off after every successful job. And if they've seen something they shouldn't have... good for them. These are Sci Fi films, remember? It's not as if they can ever go to the press or the police in these films...
Worst Offenders:
Prototype Scientists try to save a mans life, he wakes up and escapes. Solders ask scientists a few questions and then kill them. Those scientists probably had some useful information, you know. Now you'll have to spend days going through their research and working out where they were in their projects.
Cube 2 A covert operative goes through hell to retrieve some data from the ultimate hiding place - another reality. How is she thanked? With a bullet to the back of her head. She is probably the most talented individual in your company, guys. At least try her out at marketing or something first...
Are there any examples of this actually working?
Not in Sci Fi, as far as I know... Leverage had an episode called The Mile High Job which played with this concept very nicely though.
2) Ultimate Stop Anything Force Fields
What happens when a force need to invade a planet? They need to stop the populace defending themselves. Clever shows like Battlestar Galactica have the enemy infiltrate the humans for years in advance, learning about them and planning precisely where and when to strike.
Lazy shows have the enemies invent a force field that will stop any weapon in the world, including nuclear bombs.
Now, I can cope with the idea of a force field but what's important to remember is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If a nuclear bomb explodes on your fancy alien hull I don't care if you've got a fancy force field, you're still being sent flying a few miles in the opposite direction.
Worst Offenders:
The War Of The Worlds Remakes, Independence Day etc. etc. etc.: This is especially bad in War Of The Worlds. They hit the aliens with missiles, rockets, bombs... the damn things don't even flinch. That's not how physics works, guys.
Are there any examples of this actually working?
Oddly, yes. The Christopher Eccleston series of Doctor Who gave their ultimate death machines, the Daleks, a stop anything force field. It's different for two reasons, though. Firstly, bullets fired at this force field are not stopped in their tracks, they are slowly absorbed... the implication being the daleks are using the power and momentum of these bullets to power their own systems. Secondly, if you and several buddies concentrate your fire on one small are, you can break through the force field and do some real damage.
Granted, in series 2, 3 and 4 of the same show this rather clever sci fi device get's unceremoniously stomped on by Russel T Davies, one of the all time great Lazy Writers but it was good whilst it lasted.
1) Evil organisations that execute their own employees
Now, I'm not saying that no company has ever killed an employee of theirs but this device is never about realism. This device is used by extremely lazy writers as a way of saying: Look! Look! This company is evil! They're killing their employees! Bastards!
The thing is, it's usually totally pointless. It's always done when an employee has "served their purpose" or "seen something they shouldn't have". If an employee has served their purpose, get them to do something else. It's no wonder a company has to keep hiring assassins if they bump them off after every successful job. And if they've seen something they shouldn't have... good for them. These are Sci Fi films, remember? It's not as if they can ever go to the press or the police in these films...
Worst Offenders:
Prototype Scientists try to save a mans life, he wakes up and escapes. Solders ask scientists a few questions and then kill them. Those scientists probably had some useful information, you know. Now you'll have to spend days going through their research and working out where they were in their projects.
Cube 2 A covert operative goes through hell to retrieve some data from the ultimate hiding place - another reality. How is she thanked? With a bullet to the back of her head. She is probably the most talented individual in your company, guys. At least try her out at marketing or something first...
Are there any examples of this actually working?
Not in Sci Fi, as far as I know... Leverage had an episode called The Mile High Job which played with this concept very nicely though.
2) Ultimate Stop Anything Force Fields
What happens when a force need to invade a planet? They need to stop the populace defending themselves. Clever shows like Battlestar Galactica have the enemy infiltrate the humans for years in advance, learning about them and planning precisely where and when to strike.
Lazy shows have the enemies invent a force field that will stop any weapon in the world, including nuclear bombs.
Now, I can cope with the idea of a force field but what's important to remember is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If a nuclear bomb explodes on your fancy alien hull I don't care if you've got a fancy force field, you're still being sent flying a few miles in the opposite direction.
Worst Offenders:
The War Of The Worlds Remakes, Independence Day etc. etc. etc.: This is especially bad in War Of The Worlds. They hit the aliens with missiles, rockets, bombs... the damn things don't even flinch. That's not how physics works, guys.
Are there any examples of this actually working?
Oddly, yes. The Christopher Eccleston series of Doctor Who gave their ultimate death machines, the Daleks, a stop anything force field. It's different for two reasons, though. Firstly, bullets fired at this force field are not stopped in their tracks, they are slowly absorbed... the implication being the daleks are using the power and momentum of these bullets to power their own systems. Secondly, if you and several buddies concentrate your fire on one small are, you can break through the force field and do some real damage.
Granted, in series 2, 3 and 4 of the same show this rather clever sci fi device get's unceremoniously stomped on by Russel T Davies, one of the all time great Lazy Writers but it was good whilst it lasted.
Friday, 24 April 2009
TV shows I would kill to be on
Some shows are great to watch because they're entertaining, thrilling, moving, whatever. Some shows are great to watch because you think: "wow, I'd love to be doing that right now..." For me, these shows are:
Mythbusters
Mythbusters is a fantastic show. They take a myth or a piece of received wisdom and, in the most direct and down to earth way possible, test it. They're not perfect but they are brilliant at creating scenarios that test hypotheses that are understandable by Joe Average.
Pros:
I would get to blow things up.
I would get to be all sciency.
I would get to hang around with Kari Byron, who is hot.
I would get to build things.
I would get to be very silly on camera.
Cons:
I have no robotics/engineering/electronics skills at all - partly because of my dyslexia but mostly because I'm extremely lazy. This may be a problem in a show where they build all their own test rigs. I don't think I could actually contribute anything.
Overall Awesomeness:
9/10
You get to build stuff and then break it whilst educating people. It's fun and has a point. Brilliant, I just don't have the skills to do it.
Top Gear
Top Gear was one of my absolute favourite shows for a long time - mainly because they road tested cars I could actually buy like the Ford Focus, the Smart Roadster & the Skoda Octavia. It's gone a bit down hill in recent years but it'd still be brilliant fun to be on.
Pros:
I would get to drive loads of cars.
I would get to powerslide & four wheel drift in a safe environment
That would be my entire job.
Cons:
I would have to talk to Jeremy Clarkson.
I'd have to put up with the producers pathetic attempts at humour.
I'd be terrified I'd break all the 200k supercars.
Battlestar Galactica:
Battlestar Galactica is the single best show I've ever seen. It's action packed, complex and hugely intelligent. I would love to be in it, not as one of the main characters - they're all sewn up perfectly by the actors they all ready have but as a Marine or a random Viper Pilot.
Pros:
I would be a part of the most important television show ever created
I'd get to play with props
I'd get to hang around with Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff & Tricia Helfer.
I'm actually fairly good at physical stuff - I'm a blue belt in Ju Jitsu, I'm in shape and climb at weekends. I could wrestle with centurions and get killed in a heroic manner or something.
Cons:
The series has ended so there's not really much anyone can do about getting on it.
You'd probably get cock blocked by Helo, who is awesome in every way and probably has all the girls fawning after him constantly.
Overall Awesomeness:
10/10
Come on, it's Battlestar. As fun as the other shows are, they've got nothing on Battlestar. And you'd get to shoot blanks out of a plastic gun. WIN!
Mythbusters
Mythbusters is a fantastic show. They take a myth or a piece of received wisdom and, in the most direct and down to earth way possible, test it. They're not perfect but they are brilliant at creating scenarios that test hypotheses that are understandable by Joe Average.
Pros:
I would get to blow things up.
I would get to be all sciency.
I would get to hang around with Kari Byron, who is hot.
I would get to build things.
I would get to be very silly on camera.
Cons:
I have no robotics/engineering/electronics skills at all - partly because of my dyslexia but mostly because I'm extremely lazy. This may be a problem in a show where they build all their own test rigs. I don't think I could actually contribute anything.
Overall Awesomeness:
9/10
You get to build stuff and then break it whilst educating people. It's fun and has a point. Brilliant, I just don't have the skills to do it.
Top Gear
Top Gear was one of my absolute favourite shows for a long time - mainly because they road tested cars I could actually buy like the Ford Focus, the Smart Roadster & the Skoda Octavia. It's gone a bit down hill in recent years but it'd still be brilliant fun to be on.
Pros:
I would get to drive loads of cars.
I would get to powerslide & four wheel drift in a safe environment
That would be my entire job.
Cons:
I would have to talk to Jeremy Clarkson.
I'd have to put up with the producers pathetic attempts at humour.
I'd be terrified I'd break all the 200k supercars.
Overall Awesomeness:
5/10
Whilst driving cars in a variety of silly ways all day would be awesome, I think Clarkson and the idiot producers would make it get very old very quickly.
Battlestar Galactica:
Battlestar Galactica is the single best show I've ever seen. It's action packed, complex and hugely intelligent. I would love to be in it, not as one of the main characters - they're all sewn up perfectly by the actors they all ready have but as a Marine or a random Viper Pilot.
Pros:
I would be a part of the most important television show ever created
I'd get to play with props
I'd get to hang around with Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff & Tricia Helfer.
I'm actually fairly good at physical stuff - I'm a blue belt in Ju Jitsu, I'm in shape and climb at weekends. I could wrestle with centurions and get killed in a heroic manner or something.
Cons:
The series has ended so there's not really much anyone can do about getting on it.
You'd probably get cock blocked by Helo, who is awesome in every way and probably has all the girls fawning after him constantly.
Overall Awesomeness:
10/10
Come on, it's Battlestar. As fun as the other shows are, they've got nothing on Battlestar. And you'd get to shoot blanks out of a plastic gun. WIN!
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Leverage
I actually promised myself I'd stop watching American TV recently... this isn't due to some latent racism on my part, it's just that Battlestar is now over, Supernatural is perilously close to jumping the shark and the 44 minute format of American TV shows is antithetical to one of my other passions: Anime.
The problem with anime is: When you're used to 44 minute programmes like Battlestar, it feels really, really odd to go back to 22 minute episodes. My plan was to purge my system of 44 minute shows, reset and sink myself into the delicious pool of anime for a bit.
This plan has to be put on hold for a bit, though, as I've discovered another show that is really worth watching.
Leverage is basically Oceans 11: The TV Show but in stead of stealing entirely for the money, they're moral thieves. In one episode, for example, they steal money for a veterans hospital whilst at the same time exposing the independent contractor that caused a bunch of veterans to be injured in the first place.
It's all handled very well- there's a good amount of humour but there is some gravity to the situations as well.
What impresses me, though, is how they've kept things feeling new. In one episode, a horse trainer has gone into business with an investor. The horses don't do as well as they should have done so the investor has the stable burned down, with the horses in it, to recoup the insurance and start again. The team are brought in by the trainer who wants to make sure the investor never, ever works with horses again.
It also has a pretty good cast. One of the cast members (I'm told) was in Angel, there's also a guy who was in 2 eps of Supernatural. Badger is in it (HOORAY FOR BADGER!) and Jane from Coupling is one of the main characters. The cast gels really well and the acting is always pretty damn solid.
Overall, it's pretty damn good. It's kind of like House - it's very solid, very well done but it's not going to change the world.
The problem with anime is: When you're used to 44 minute programmes like Battlestar, it feels really, really odd to go back to 22 minute episodes. My plan was to purge my system of 44 minute shows, reset and sink myself into the delicious pool of anime for a bit.
This plan has to be put on hold for a bit, though, as I've discovered another show that is really worth watching.
Leverage is basically Oceans 11: The TV Show but in stead of stealing entirely for the money, they're moral thieves. In one episode, for example, they steal money for a veterans hospital whilst at the same time exposing the independent contractor that caused a bunch of veterans to be injured in the first place.
It's all handled very well- there's a good amount of humour but there is some gravity to the situations as well.
What impresses me, though, is how they've kept things feeling new. In one episode, a horse trainer has gone into business with an investor. The horses don't do as well as they should have done so the investor has the stable burned down, with the horses in it, to recoup the insurance and start again. The team are brought in by the trainer who wants to make sure the investor never, ever works with horses again.
It also has a pretty good cast. One of the cast members (I'm told) was in Angel, there's also a guy who was in 2 eps of Supernatural. Badger is in it (HOORAY FOR BADGER!) and Jane from Coupling is one of the main characters. The cast gels really well and the acting is always pretty damn solid.
Overall, it's pretty damn good. It's kind of like House - it's very solid, very well done but it's not going to change the world.
Monday, 13 April 2009
Red Dwarf: Back To Earth
It's about two thirty in the morning and I should really be in bed but fuck it, I've just finished watching the new Red Dwarf three prater and I want to have a little online ponder about it.
Firstly, where do I stand on the rest of the Red Dwarf Legacy?
Well, I think it's Sci Fi first and comedy second. Yes, there are brilliant comedy episodes (Legion, for one) but for me, the strength of the show has always been in the incredibly imaginative situations they dream up for the characters.
I even quite like Series 8 - easily the weakest in the run, ignoring series 1 & 2 which I don't like at all. It wasn't funny in the least but it had some quite interesting ideas, such as the Cassandra episode.
Anyway, the rest of this is going to contain some pretty severe spoilers for Back To Earth so don't read if you care about that sort of thing.
Episode 1:
Things start fairly oddly - there's no laugh track for one. I find this a bit of a welcome relief - I don't like laugh tracks in comedy as it tends to unsubtly highlight jokes the creators thought we may miss.
Also, Kochanski is dead & Lister is in mourning. That's quite a good way to start, and sets the tone for the rest of the show...
If I had to use one word to describe these three episodes it would be Mature... The cast look considerably older than they did previously (it's set nine years after series 8) and the whole thing feels much more grounded in reality than it did previously.
There are still jokes - and some good ones at that. I laughed out loud several times in each episode, which is cool.
So anyway. Episode 1 is the funny episode. It's all set up, set up, set up. At the end, they create a dimensional portal and end up back on earth.
Episode 2:
Episode 2 reveals that they have been transported to an earth where they are characters in a TV show.
Now.
No matter what you think of this particular device (I happen to rather like it, as it's much better than several of the available alternatives) it is something that Stranger Than Fiction and Supernatural have all ready covered.
Far, far too much of this episode is spent making quite lazy self referential jokes about red dwarf fanboys. I was getting ready to write the whole thing off (despite a particularly good scene on a bus and the best joke in the series - the final destination joke) but then I saw episode 3.
Episode 3:
Episode 3 is where things start getting weird. They meet the real life Craig Charles, which is all in the vein of episode 2 but then they meet, and kill, their creator. They are free of the show, they can do what they want.
Then, they realise (I forget how) that it must be a fantasy- the squid they hunted in episode 1 must have been a despair squid. But how? I thought it would have been really cool if this squid caused bliss instead of despair and it turned out I was right.
They return to Red Dwarf and Lister has quite a touching moment with an imaginary Kochanski.
So. Where does that leave us?
Of the three episodes, the first one was funny, the second one was half worth watching (specifically the last half) and the third episode is pretty good.
Let me just clarify, though, when I say "good" I mean Chuck good, not Battlestar Galactica good. It's perfectly watchable tv. If you go in expecting the best thing since whatever, you'll be very, very fucking disappointed. I was fully expecting it to be shite and was pleasantly surprised.
I think the main reason why I ended up liking it is- it's very different to the old Dwarf series. It feels more mature, as I said earlier. It feels like they're doing worthwhile things with the characters.
Most importantly, I hope they make more. I think with the show in its current format, they could do some really fun and interesting stuff with it. It looked also pretty damn cheap to make so hopefully they can do it.
All in all, thank you Dave. The Channel Dave. You've provided us with a worthy resurrection of a classic TV show and proven that small companies can provide decent entertainment for the masses. Good on you.
Firstly, where do I stand on the rest of the Red Dwarf Legacy?
Well, I think it's Sci Fi first and comedy second. Yes, there are brilliant comedy episodes (Legion, for one) but for me, the strength of the show has always been in the incredibly imaginative situations they dream up for the characters.
I even quite like Series 8 - easily the weakest in the run, ignoring series 1 & 2 which I don't like at all. It wasn't funny in the least but it had some quite interesting ideas, such as the Cassandra episode.
Anyway, the rest of this is going to contain some pretty severe spoilers for Back To Earth so don't read if you care about that sort of thing.
Episode 1:
Things start fairly oddly - there's no laugh track for one. I find this a bit of a welcome relief - I don't like laugh tracks in comedy as it tends to unsubtly highlight jokes the creators thought we may miss.
Also, Kochanski is dead & Lister is in mourning. That's quite a good way to start, and sets the tone for the rest of the show...
If I had to use one word to describe these three episodes it would be Mature... The cast look considerably older than they did previously (it's set nine years after series 8) and the whole thing feels much more grounded in reality than it did previously.
There are still jokes - and some good ones at that. I laughed out loud several times in each episode, which is cool.
So anyway. Episode 1 is the funny episode. It's all set up, set up, set up. At the end, they create a dimensional portal and end up back on earth.
Episode 2:
Episode 2 reveals that they have been transported to an earth where they are characters in a TV show.
Now.
No matter what you think of this particular device (I happen to rather like it, as it's much better than several of the available alternatives) it is something that Stranger Than Fiction and Supernatural have all ready covered.
Far, far too much of this episode is spent making quite lazy self referential jokes about red dwarf fanboys. I was getting ready to write the whole thing off (despite a particularly good scene on a bus and the best joke in the series - the final destination joke) but then I saw episode 3.
Episode 3:
Episode 3 is where things start getting weird. They meet the real life Craig Charles, which is all in the vein of episode 2 but then they meet, and kill, their creator. They are free of the show, they can do what they want.
Then, they realise (I forget how) that it must be a fantasy- the squid they hunted in episode 1 must have been a despair squid. But how? I thought it would have been really cool if this squid caused bliss instead of despair and it turned out I was right.
They return to Red Dwarf and Lister has quite a touching moment with an imaginary Kochanski.
So. Where does that leave us?
Of the three episodes, the first one was funny, the second one was half worth watching (specifically the last half) and the third episode is pretty good.
Let me just clarify, though, when I say "good" I mean Chuck good, not Battlestar Galactica good. It's perfectly watchable tv. If you go in expecting the best thing since whatever, you'll be very, very fucking disappointed. I was fully expecting it to be shite and was pleasantly surprised.
I think the main reason why I ended up liking it is- it's very different to the old Dwarf series. It feels more mature, as I said earlier. It feels like they're doing worthwhile things with the characters.
Most importantly, I hope they make more. I think with the show in its current format, they could do some really fun and interesting stuff with it. It looked also pretty damn cheap to make so hopefully they can do it.
All in all, thank you Dave. The Channel Dave. You've provided us with a worthy resurrection of a classic TV show and proven that small companies can provide decent entertainment for the masses. Good on you.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Doctor Who: The Planet of the Dead
I approached this Doctor Who special with appropriate caution. Russel T Davies has never, ever done a good Doctor Who special. He's done good single episodes, of course, but he usually lets the sense of occasion go to his head and ends up with giant transformers stomping Victorian London.
This time round, though, the special is not just written by Davies, it's also written by Gareth Roberts who wrote The Unicorn & The Wasp and The Shakespeare Code. These weren't good episodes but they were witty and quite well thought out.
Roberts' writing clearly compliments Russels because this special is... quite good.
It opens with a very exciting sequence which blows away the stodge of usual doctor who openings. We're not forced to sit through five minutes of a companion squabbling with their family, we're straight in with the action. The doctor appears and he offers Michelle Ryan (who is very good, as usual) an easter egg - the one nod to the festival this special marks.
Then the plot kicks in, a london bus gets dumped on another planet and things carry on as they normally do in Doctor Who.
What's quite nice about this special is - a lot of time has clearly been devoted to Michell Ryan's character. She's not a tiresome everyman (thankfully) and she brings up a lot of questions that an attentive watcher will be asking - as well as several that they wouldn't have thought of. This is fantastic - it keeps the writing ahead of the audience and means that when the plot holes start opening (as they usually do with Davies' scripts) we don't really mind because they have successfully missed so many on the way.
It is an episode with a fair few problems though. The main one is the traditional Russel T. Davies camp factor. The ending is packed full of cheese - applauding soldiers, a badly written classical score marking the triumphant return, and more than a few corny lines of dialogue.
The creature design is half brilliant, half terrible. Thankfully, the terrible bits don't intrude much.
The main problem, though, is the length. This episode is 60 minutes, rather than the more traditional 45 and boy does the ending drag because of it. Up until the finale, everything moves at a real pace. So much gets done - there's action, jokes, fun bits of characterisation... but then everything slows down to a crawl for no real reason.
So yes. As far as Doctor Who episodes go, it's definitely ahead of stuff like The Impossible Planet - mainly because there are precisely no Deus Ex Machina's... It's not as good as the stellar episodes like Blink, Gridlock etc. etc. but it's as good as episodes like 42, Father's Day etc.
This time round, though, the special is not just written by Davies, it's also written by Gareth Roberts who wrote The Unicorn & The Wasp and The Shakespeare Code. These weren't good episodes but they were witty and quite well thought out.
Roberts' writing clearly compliments Russels because this special is... quite good.
It opens with a very exciting sequence which blows away the stodge of usual doctor who openings. We're not forced to sit through five minutes of a companion squabbling with their family, we're straight in with the action. The doctor appears and he offers Michelle Ryan (who is very good, as usual) an easter egg - the one nod to the festival this special marks.
Then the plot kicks in, a london bus gets dumped on another planet and things carry on as they normally do in Doctor Who.
What's quite nice about this special is - a lot of time has clearly been devoted to Michell Ryan's character. She's not a tiresome everyman (thankfully) and she brings up a lot of questions that an attentive watcher will be asking - as well as several that they wouldn't have thought of. This is fantastic - it keeps the writing ahead of the audience and means that when the plot holes start opening (as they usually do with Davies' scripts) we don't really mind because they have successfully missed so many on the way.
It is an episode with a fair few problems though. The main one is the traditional Russel T. Davies camp factor. The ending is packed full of cheese - applauding soldiers, a badly written classical score marking the triumphant return, and more than a few corny lines of dialogue.
The creature design is half brilliant, half terrible. Thankfully, the terrible bits don't intrude much.
The main problem, though, is the length. This episode is 60 minutes, rather than the more traditional 45 and boy does the ending drag because of it. Up until the finale, everything moves at a real pace. So much gets done - there's action, jokes, fun bits of characterisation... but then everything slows down to a crawl for no real reason.
So yes. As far as Doctor Who episodes go, it's definitely ahead of stuff like The Impossible Planet - mainly because there are precisely no Deus Ex Machina's... It's not as good as the stellar episodes like Blink, Gridlock etc. etc. but it's as good as episodes like 42, Father's Day etc.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Turning to ash in my mouth
So I've had two pretty severe disappointments in about half an hour and what is the Internet if not a place to vent so here we go.
Disappointment #1: Chuck
So Chuck has never exactly been BSG but at it's best it was a fun show with an appealing sense of humor and more knowledge about the genre it fit into than I am accustomed to from TV shows.
Things haven't been quite right recently, though. The show has been more concerned about its over arching plot than ever before. This would be okay were it not for the fact that it stolidly refuses to change the setting.
Having an over arching plot would be great if I believed for a second the story might actually move on as a result of it but no. Chuck will always work at the Buy More, he will never actually go out with Sarah and he will never get rid of Morgan. I know this because the makers of the show own that Buy More location so it doesn't make financial sense to move the show on so they don't need it any more. Never mind that that fucking location is slowly draining the life blood from the show, please, that only affects people who watch the fucking thing.
Things came to a head when watching the latest episode where Chuck tries to track down Orion and gets attacked by a predator drone. There are three things badly wrong with this episode (or at least the 20 minutes I watched before I couldn't take any more)
A) They've got a budget now. Oh dear. They can make CGI planes fly over whatever town this is set in now. That's never a good thing. Only once can I equate an increase in budget to an increase in quality and that was with Battlestar Galactica and anyone who's watched it knows that show follows very special rules.
B) The constant moaning of the CIA and NSA that Chuck isn't doing what they told him to do or is doing stuff they didn't know about is getting very annoying. This ties into what I was saying earlier about the series never moving on. The CIA doesn't employ Chuck. As far as I know they never even pay him for constantly putting his life in danger. It was okay to never address this question when the series was a bit of breezy fun but now they're trying to get all Story Arc on us, they can't get away with it any more.
They'd also have much more of a right to complain if it wasn't really obvious that they don't give a shit about Chuck or his situation.
C) The chemistry between the characters is just gone. Jeff and Lester are no longer charming, they're just dicks. Morgan isn't fun, he's annoying and Sarah isn't sweet, she's a mindless tool working for idiots.
Disappointment #2: Call of Duty 5: World at War
I'm unemployed at the moment so I badly need stuff to do. I've completed CoD 4, played more Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2 than can be good for me and so on. I acquired CoD 5, though, because I've heard that it's a tolerable if uninspired shooter.
It's not, it's fucking awful.
It's like a really bad mod for CoD 4. The weapons are meh, the levels feel much more linear than they ever did in CoD 4, it's derivative, the story feels more racist than anything else and the whole thing just feels cynical.
There's not a whole lot more I can say about this. If anyone told you it was good, they were lying. Either because they work for Activision or they feel stupid after spending £30 on the same Medal of Honour/Call of Duty stuff that's been being released for the last eight years.
Disappointment #1: Chuck
So Chuck has never exactly been BSG but at it's best it was a fun show with an appealing sense of humor and more knowledge about the genre it fit into than I am accustomed to from TV shows.
Things haven't been quite right recently, though. The show has been more concerned about its over arching plot than ever before. This would be okay were it not for the fact that it stolidly refuses to change the setting.
Having an over arching plot would be great if I believed for a second the story might actually move on as a result of it but no. Chuck will always work at the Buy More, he will never actually go out with Sarah and he will never get rid of Morgan. I know this because the makers of the show own that Buy More location so it doesn't make financial sense to move the show on so they don't need it any more. Never mind that that fucking location is slowly draining the life blood from the show, please, that only affects people who watch the fucking thing.
Things came to a head when watching the latest episode where Chuck tries to track down Orion and gets attacked by a predator drone. There are three things badly wrong with this episode (or at least the 20 minutes I watched before I couldn't take any more)
A) They've got a budget now. Oh dear. They can make CGI planes fly over whatever town this is set in now. That's never a good thing. Only once can I equate an increase in budget to an increase in quality and that was with Battlestar Galactica and anyone who's watched it knows that show follows very special rules.
B) The constant moaning of the CIA and NSA that Chuck isn't doing what they told him to do or is doing stuff they didn't know about is getting very annoying. This ties into what I was saying earlier about the series never moving on. The CIA doesn't employ Chuck. As far as I know they never even pay him for constantly putting his life in danger. It was okay to never address this question when the series was a bit of breezy fun but now they're trying to get all Story Arc on us, they can't get away with it any more.
They'd also have much more of a right to complain if it wasn't really obvious that they don't give a shit about Chuck or his situation.
C) The chemistry between the characters is just gone. Jeff and Lester are no longer charming, they're just dicks. Morgan isn't fun, he's annoying and Sarah isn't sweet, she's a mindless tool working for idiots.
Disappointment #2: Call of Duty 5: World at War
I'm unemployed at the moment so I badly need stuff to do. I've completed CoD 4, played more Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2 than can be good for me and so on. I acquired CoD 5, though, because I've heard that it's a tolerable if uninspired shooter.
It's not, it's fucking awful.
It's like a really bad mod for CoD 4. The weapons are meh, the levels feel much more linear than they ever did in CoD 4, it's derivative, the story feels more racist than anything else and the whole thing just feels cynical.
There's not a whole lot more I can say about this. If anyone told you it was good, they were lying. Either because they work for Activision or they feel stupid after spending £30 on the same Medal of Honour/Call of Duty stuff that's been being released for the last eight years.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
American TV Scheduling
I do like to gripe about American Television. This is partly because there is so much of it out there so there's ample material but mostly because despite having many gems, a lot of it is the worst bullshit ever considered legitimate by the mass populace this side of Star Wars.
I should point out at this point that one of my two FAVOURITE SHOWS EVARR is the new Battlestar Galactica which is very firmly American, despite having more than a few Brits and Canadians on the cast.
Anyway, there are two things that really annoy me about all American Television and both of those are to do with their scheduling.
1) Their insistence on calling their runs "seasons"
Now, in Britain, we call things "series" which makes a kind of sense. Americans call theirs Seasons, though, and that bugs the hell out of my inner English student. Pointing your gaze at this page:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/season
will reveal that the word season is defined as being a period or time of year. This is all very well for some American shows, specifically the short ones like Dexter but for Battlestar, Chuck & the other ones worth watching, their 22 episodes are nearly always spread out over about six months. That is not a fucking season, that's half a year.
I do get the reason for this, by the way, it's so they can gather feedback on the first half of their... whatever you want to call it and finish filming their second half based on this.
But if that's the case, why the hell not just call them two separate series. That's what they essentially are anyway.
This shouldn't really bother me because when Battlestar breaks in October to come back in March the next year, it's still annoying whether it's being advertised as a Christmas Break or a gap between series... my point is merely that calling them different series would add some basic honesty to the process.
2) Their shows don't run week by week
Now here, In Britain, we usually have six episodes of a TV show. You may think this is short. Whatever, that's not what I'm worried about. The point is that we get one episode per week. Right? Now, In America, for some reason best explained by someone who knows whatever fucking sporting event or national holiday is happening on that day, will occasionally not air an episode for up to four weeks at a time. Mid series. I was getting in to that, you bastards.
Occasionally, a show like Chuck will have a week off. Why? Well... because.
Probably the most ridiculous example of this is Supernatural that had it's mid series break, aired five episodes and then had another month's break for "sweeps". I don't know much about whatever Sweeps is but I do know it's where a show frantically tries to be popular to avoid cancellation. If you'll forgive the extremely tasteless analogy, it's like in the concentration camps where the guards would come through and execute the workers who weren't healthy enough to continue - all the people who didn't want to die would cut themselves and smear a small amount of blood on their faces to give themselves more colour.
I've forgotten where I was going with that, I'm just a bit depressed by how horrible concentration camps were.
As bad as things are in the world now, we don't have concentration camps.
In Europe.
Elsewhere, they do.
I should really become a proper political activist. Is there anyone out there who can teach me how to make bombs? Comments below, please.
I should point out at this point that one of my two FAVOURITE SHOWS EVARR is the new Battlestar Galactica which is very firmly American, despite having more than a few Brits and Canadians on the cast.
Anyway, there are two things that really annoy me about all American Television and both of those are to do with their scheduling.
1) Their insistence on calling their runs "seasons"
Now, in Britain, we call things "series" which makes a kind of sense. Americans call theirs Seasons, though, and that bugs the hell out of my inner English student. Pointing your gaze at this page:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/season
will reveal that the word season is defined as being a period or time of year. This is all very well for some American shows, specifically the short ones like Dexter but for Battlestar, Chuck & the other ones worth watching, their 22 episodes are nearly always spread out over about six months. That is not a fucking season, that's half a year.
I do get the reason for this, by the way, it's so they can gather feedback on the first half of their... whatever you want to call it and finish filming their second half based on this.
But if that's the case, why the hell not just call them two separate series. That's what they essentially are anyway.
This shouldn't really bother me because when Battlestar breaks in October to come back in March the next year, it's still annoying whether it's being advertised as a Christmas Break or a gap between series... my point is merely that calling them different series would add some basic honesty to the process.
2) Their shows don't run week by week
Now here, In Britain, we usually have six episodes of a TV show. You may think this is short. Whatever, that's not what I'm worried about. The point is that we get one episode per week. Right? Now, In America, for some reason best explained by someone who knows whatever fucking sporting event or national holiday is happening on that day, will occasionally not air an episode for up to four weeks at a time. Mid series. I was getting in to that, you bastards.
Occasionally, a show like Chuck will have a week off. Why? Well... because.
Probably the most ridiculous example of this is Supernatural that had it's mid series break, aired five episodes and then had another month's break for "sweeps". I don't know much about whatever Sweeps is but I do know it's where a show frantically tries to be popular to avoid cancellation. If you'll forgive the extremely tasteless analogy, it's like in the concentration camps where the guards would come through and execute the workers who weren't healthy enough to continue - all the people who didn't want to die would cut themselves and smear a small amount of blood on their faces to give themselves more colour.
I've forgotten where I was going with that, I'm just a bit depressed by how horrible concentration camps were.
As bad as things are in the world now, we don't have concentration camps.
In Europe.
Elsewhere, they do.
I should really become a proper political activist. Is there anyone out there who can teach me how to make bombs? Comments below, please.
Friday, 20 February 2009
Things americans shouldn't be allowed to make tv/films about
Our American bretheren have some very, very skilled writers amongst them. The writers of Battlestar Galactica are so fantastic I don't need to provide any further examples.
There are certain topics, however, that no American can possibly write about without spewing out insufferable trash.
1) Communism
Now, it's pretty well established in Britain at least that Communism is not, in itself, incredibly evil. Stalin was a cunt, yes, but communism industrialised Russia and deposed a brutal leadership. It is certian, though, that the Cold War was just an exercise in posturing between two countries with huge egos. The Americans still believe that they were fighting a rightous war against an evil oppressor
(worst offendor: Indiana Jones 4)
2) Christmas
Okay, America is a really christian country, I get it, but every bloody show has a christmas episode these days. Chuck had one which was fairly pointless, this I don't mind. What I mind is when 30 Rock, one of the more witty and self aware shows on television drops all its sobriety and cynicism anjavascript:void(0)d makes a cheese heavy 22 minute plattitude fest where every character, no matter how cynical, must learn THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS.
(worst offendor: scrubs - series 1)
3) Babies
See my abortion post earlier for a more expansive view on this but put simply: It's okay for soap operas like Everwood to be overtly sentimental about babies but in EVERY bloody American show the main characters are always obsessed with squirting out pointless additions to the human race. Many people think that having kids is the most important thing you can do in your life. Many, many people disagree. Stop it.
(worst offendor: 30 Rock)
To be continued.
Oh, and just to prove that I'm not being racist, here are the things British People shouldn't be allowed to write about:
1) Gangsters
2) Gangsters
3) Gangsters
4) The French
There are certain topics, however, that no American can possibly write about without spewing out insufferable trash.
1) Communism
Now, it's pretty well established in Britain at least that Communism is not, in itself, incredibly evil. Stalin was a cunt, yes, but communism industrialised Russia and deposed a brutal leadership. It is certian, though, that the Cold War was just an exercise in posturing between two countries with huge egos. The Americans still believe that they were fighting a rightous war against an evil oppressor
(worst offendor: Indiana Jones 4)
2) Christmas
Okay, America is a really christian country, I get it, but every bloody show has a christmas episode these days. Chuck had one which was fairly pointless, this I don't mind. What I mind is when 30 Rock, one of the more witty and self aware shows on television drops all its sobriety and cynicism anjavascript:void(0)d makes a cheese heavy 22 minute plattitude fest where every character, no matter how cynical, must learn THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS.
(worst offendor: scrubs - series 1)
3) Babies
See my abortion post earlier for a more expansive view on this but put simply: It's okay for soap operas like Everwood to be overtly sentimental about babies but in EVERY bloody American show the main characters are always obsessed with squirting out pointless additions to the human race. Many people think that having kids is the most important thing you can do in your life. Many, many people disagree. Stop it.
(worst offendor: 30 Rock)
To be continued.
Oh, and just to prove that I'm not being racist, here are the things British People shouldn't be allowed to write about:
1) Gangsters
2) Gangsters
3) Gangsters
4) The French
Monday, 16 February 2009
Poirot vs Miss Marple
I love detective stories. I always have. When I was young, my brother used to race windsurfers and whilst my family were there supporting him, I'd always be in the car with an Agatha Christie novel.
Yes, fuck you Sir Arthur Conan Dolye fans. Agatha Christie is the best mystery writer and I'll tell you why. In every single Sherlock Holmes book, he explains why the antagonist killed someone or stole something or slept in baby bears bed or whatever. The antagonist then breaks down and confesses despite the fact that there's NO CUNTING EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM and that if they'd just not said anything they'd still be free to this day.
CSI use a very similar trick, incidentally.
That's not my biggest problem with Holmes, either. My biggest problem is he always takes a few pieces of information and constructs a huge picture out of them. It's bullshit. One piece of information can mean so many things you can't possibly do that.
Anyway, the whole Poirot vs Miss Marple thing is a debate precisely no-one has had and for good reason, because the very best murder mystery thing every written is And Then There Were None, which has precisely neither of them in it.
Never mind.
So who would win in a fight between Poirot and Marple?
Well Poirot is younger... he could probably punch harder than Marple... The thing is, though- Poirot is a peacock... he is honourable and chivalrous. The great thing about Miss Marple - especially when played by Geraldine McEwan is that she's really quite sinister. I get the feeling that if she ever couldn't prove a crime, she'd wait until the murderer was asleep and insert a knitting needle into their carotid artery.
So, to answer that question, Marple would probably win because she'd piss Poirot off, Poirot would punch her, she'd fall over and break her leg. Six months later when she could walk again, she'd slip into Poirot's room when he was asleep and kill him.
The reason why I'm on Marple's side, by the way (you could so have argued that "who would beat who" thing the other way) is: She admits when she doesn't have enough evidence. She sets out to trap people into admitting their crimes.
No other detective I know of does that.
My reasons are a bit spurious here: I like Marple because she's as lame as every other detective but at least she admits she's being lame...
It's true, though. Other detectives claim to be geniuses and make up these really conveluted plots (what's that mental illness when you see connections between seperate events?) and are magically right. Marple has some reality to her.
That's what I think anyway.
Yes, fuck you Sir Arthur Conan Dolye fans. Agatha Christie is the best mystery writer and I'll tell you why. In every single Sherlock Holmes book, he explains why the antagonist killed someone or stole something or slept in baby bears bed or whatever. The antagonist then breaks down and confesses despite the fact that there's NO CUNTING EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM and that if they'd just not said anything they'd still be free to this day.
CSI use a very similar trick, incidentally.
That's not my biggest problem with Holmes, either. My biggest problem is he always takes a few pieces of information and constructs a huge picture out of them. It's bullshit. One piece of information can mean so many things you can't possibly do that.
Anyway, the whole Poirot vs Miss Marple thing is a debate precisely no-one has had and for good reason, because the very best murder mystery thing every written is And Then There Were None, which has precisely neither of them in it.
Never mind.
So who would win in a fight between Poirot and Marple?
Well Poirot is younger... he could probably punch harder than Marple... The thing is, though- Poirot is a peacock... he is honourable and chivalrous. The great thing about Miss Marple - especially when played by Geraldine McEwan is that she's really quite sinister. I get the feeling that if she ever couldn't prove a crime, she'd wait until the murderer was asleep and insert a knitting needle into their carotid artery.
So, to answer that question, Marple would probably win because she'd piss Poirot off, Poirot would punch her, she'd fall over and break her leg. Six months later when she could walk again, she'd slip into Poirot's room when he was asleep and kill him.
The reason why I'm on Marple's side, by the way (you could so have argued that "who would beat who" thing the other way) is: She admits when she doesn't have enough evidence. She sets out to trap people into admitting their crimes.
No other detective I know of does that.
My reasons are a bit spurious here: I like Marple because she's as lame as every other detective but at least she admits she's being lame...
It's true, though. Other detectives claim to be geniuses and make up these really conveluted plots (what's that mental illness when you see connections between seperate events?) and are magically right. Marple has some reality to her.
That's what I think anyway.
Futurama: Into The Wild Green Yonder
Into the Wild Green Yonder is the 4th and (hopefully) final entry in the series of Futurama films. So far my reactions to them have been:
1) Bender’s Big Score: Rubbish.
2) The Beast with a Billion Backs: Shit
3) Bender’s Game: Meh
So you can imagine I wasn’t exactly in awe when I saw a copy of Yonder had escaped onto the tubes…
Anyway, I’ll keep this one short. As this is the 4th film you’ll either want to watch it or not. I’ll bullet point my observations…
• Yonder is funny. Not particularly funny but it’s better than the Simpsons film. Unspurisngly.
• The guest star this time round is Penn Jilette. Oh well.
• Two of the requisite four stories are terrible, two are okay.
• It does that usual Bad American Television trick of having a semi political story and then copping out at the end with a resolution that re-establishes the status quo.
• It ends on what they probably thought was a really uplifting note. My reaction was: Is that it?
As I write this, one thing is obvious to me. Yonder wasn’t bad but there was so little to it, I’ve got very little to say about it. Other than a few stand out (for good or bad) moments, I can barely remember what happens in the damn thing. Which is odd for an hour and a half of television which I watched three days ago…
So, to sum up, it’s not worth watching unless you really, really, really need to know what the creators think should happen next to the Futurama crew but they can’t end this in any way that’s more moving or poignant than the ending of The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings so the whole exercise was really rather pointless.
1) Bender’s Big Score: Rubbish.
2) The Beast with a Billion Backs: Shit
3) Bender’s Game: Meh
So you can imagine I wasn’t exactly in awe when I saw a copy of Yonder had escaped onto the tubes…
Anyway, I’ll keep this one short. As this is the 4th film you’ll either want to watch it or not. I’ll bullet point my observations…
• Yonder is funny. Not particularly funny but it’s better than the Simpsons film. Unspurisngly.
• The guest star this time round is Penn Jilette. Oh well.
• Two of the requisite four stories are terrible, two are okay.
• It does that usual Bad American Television trick of having a semi political story and then copping out at the end with a resolution that re-establishes the status quo.
• It ends on what they probably thought was a really uplifting note. My reaction was: Is that it?
As I write this, one thing is obvious to me. Yonder wasn’t bad but there was so little to it, I’ve got very little to say about it. Other than a few stand out (for good or bad) moments, I can barely remember what happens in the damn thing. Which is odd for an hour and a half of television which I watched three days ago…
So, to sum up, it’s not worth watching unless you really, really, really need to know what the creators think should happen next to the Futurama crew but they can’t end this in any way that’s more moving or poignant than the ending of The Devils Hands Are Idle Playthings so the whole exercise was really rather pointless.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
South Park can fuck off
So I watched an episode of South Park called Go, God, Go. In it, Richard Dawkins teaches evolution to the children and is then convinced that religion is evil and should be wiped out. Fair enough, that's basically his attitude in real life.
Cartman is then transported into the future where religion no longer exists but scientists still appear to be raging war on each other - all shouting "SCIENCE damn you!" and so on. Basically, it's saying that science is religion with a lab coat.
Now, this is a really twatty episode. It's not funny, unless you count Mr Garrison shitting into his hand and throwing it at Richard Dawkins funny, which you may do if you're 12. What it is, is massively pretentious.
Now, I get that the episode is supposed to be about extremism being wrong (particularly Dawkins attitude to religion)- what I have a problem with is the episode says that if atheists are extreme enough to try and rid the world of religion, they will abandon everything they believe in.
If I could turn this around slightly, this is like having an episode where religious people want to wipe out atheists and 500 years later, they've abandoned everything they've believed in and have become atheists. It just doesn't make any sense.
I really don't like the idea that people agree with the sentiment that if scientists disagree vehemently enough with religion, they'll abandon questioning their motives, conclusions and methods. That they'll abandon everything that makes them scientists. This argument would be okay if they were rival factions in, for example, animal farm where one side would become obsessed with truth and freedom, liberate itself and then begin terrorising itself. I can cope with that because an entire society goes through this change.
This isn't the case with the south park episode because you can't have an entire society made up of scientists. The idea that scientists would worship something to the point of abandoning everything that has made them what they are is just fucking stupid.
The possibility exists that none of the people depicted in the future are in fact scientists, and that they just worship something called science and are new religious nuts. In that case, what is the episode criticising? Religion. Just religion.
I should point out at this point that if you wanted to criticise extremism amongst scientists, there's loads of ways to do it. Just one is to go into the somewhat dubious methods some use to get results in under funded areas- the company I work for sells a documentary about an eastern European scientist who drilled into his patients skulls and attached electrodes to their brains in order to try and cure blindness. It didn't work. His, I suppose you could call them victims, still can't see and now have plugs in the sides of their skull that don't fit properly and leak brain fluid.
THAT's extreme science, and it would be a much more valid thing to criticise than the massive false syllogism that science + hatred of religion = religion.
The problem with the current incarnation of South Park is... it used to be mildly topical farce. Episodes like the Ladder To Heaven touched on topical issues but spent most of their time trying to be funny. Now, they appear to have abandoned the humour in favour of high level satire.
The problem is- satire is hard. Really, really hard. The list of shows that have pulled it off is very short. Yes Minister managed it, Jennifer Government managed it. South Park doesn't manage it.
I've got a final point on this subject. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are obsessed with going after targets no-one else goes after. In Team America World Police, they refused to criticise George Bush because everyone was doing that. Now, that's fair enough but that attitude can really get you into trouble. It can lead you to criticise things that you really don't have the skill to criticise.
Matt & Trey need to realise that they're not massively intelligent political commentators, they're overgrown schoolboys with a large animation budget. That's fine and has allowed them to produce some really good television. They're tried satire, it really hasn't worked. Can we have the old show back please?
Cartman is then transported into the future where religion no longer exists but scientists still appear to be raging war on each other - all shouting "SCIENCE damn you!" and so on. Basically, it's saying that science is religion with a lab coat.
Now, this is a really twatty episode. It's not funny, unless you count Mr Garrison shitting into his hand and throwing it at Richard Dawkins funny, which you may do if you're 12. What it is, is massively pretentious.
Now, I get that the episode is supposed to be about extremism being wrong (particularly Dawkins attitude to religion)- what I have a problem with is the episode says that if atheists are extreme enough to try and rid the world of religion, they will abandon everything they believe in.
If I could turn this around slightly, this is like having an episode where religious people want to wipe out atheists and 500 years later, they've abandoned everything they've believed in and have become atheists. It just doesn't make any sense.
I really don't like the idea that people agree with the sentiment that if scientists disagree vehemently enough with religion, they'll abandon questioning their motives, conclusions and methods. That they'll abandon everything that makes them scientists. This argument would be okay if they were rival factions in, for example, animal farm where one side would become obsessed with truth and freedom, liberate itself and then begin terrorising itself. I can cope with that because an entire society goes through this change.
This isn't the case with the south park episode because you can't have an entire society made up of scientists. The idea that scientists would worship something to the point of abandoning everything that has made them what they are is just fucking stupid.
The possibility exists that none of the people depicted in the future are in fact scientists, and that they just worship something called science and are new religious nuts. In that case, what is the episode criticising? Religion. Just religion.
I should point out at this point that if you wanted to criticise extremism amongst scientists, there's loads of ways to do it. Just one is to go into the somewhat dubious methods some use to get results in under funded areas- the company I work for sells a documentary about an eastern European scientist who drilled into his patients skulls and attached electrodes to their brains in order to try and cure blindness. It didn't work. His, I suppose you could call them victims, still can't see and now have plugs in the sides of their skull that don't fit properly and leak brain fluid.
THAT's extreme science, and it would be a much more valid thing to criticise than the massive false syllogism that science + hatred of religion = religion.
The problem with the current incarnation of South Park is... it used to be mildly topical farce. Episodes like the Ladder To Heaven touched on topical issues but spent most of their time trying to be funny. Now, they appear to have abandoned the humour in favour of high level satire.
The problem is- satire is hard. Really, really hard. The list of shows that have pulled it off is very short. Yes Minister managed it, Jennifer Government managed it. South Park doesn't manage it.
I've got a final point on this subject. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are obsessed with going after targets no-one else goes after. In Team America World Police, they refused to criticise George Bush because everyone was doing that. Now, that's fair enough but that attitude can really get you into trouble. It can lead you to criticise things that you really don't have the skill to criticise.
Matt & Trey need to realise that they're not massively intelligent political commentators, they're overgrown schoolboys with a large animation budget. That's fine and has allowed them to produce some really good television. They're tried satire, it really hasn't worked. Can we have the old show back please?
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Abortion in Film & Television
There is a problem in depictions of pregnancy in films & television.
I want you to think about something for me. Take any film or television show where a woman has become unexpectedly pregnant. The two stages to this are:
1) Does she abort the foetus
2) Is she comfortable with this action
Now, I’m a man and therefore don’t know what it’s like to have a semi living being inside me. I am fairly confident, though, that there are a lot of women out there who get accidentally pregnant and just don’t want the damn thing.
Now, if you’re like me, you’ll be having considerable trouble thinking of any film or TV series where a woman has had an abortion. I’ve seen plenty of phantom pregnancies and miscarriages which are lame cop-outs for writers to avoid writing about difficult subjects.
After some considerable thought, I realised I could only think of one instance in all the television and film that I’ve seen – an episode of Battlestar Galactica in the latter half of series 2 where a woman flees her religious family in order to have her foetus aborted. We never see her reaction afterwards, only the political fallout.
Now, there can only be one reason for this: Film and television does not want to be seen as encouraging abortion.
Why the hell not?
Abortion is the single most important women’s right available, in my opinion. Deciding what to do with your body and whether or not you want to be stuck with looking after an annoying brat for the next 18 years is kind of important.
I don’t want to point the finger at religion because religion gets a lot of shit for stuff that’s not really their fault but in this instance, I think it really has to take the blame.
I can’t imagine a scenario arising in Friends, 30 Rock, Dexter, Supernatural or Family Guy (to pick four popular shows at random) where a woman aborts a foetus and is liberated by the decision because the right wing media would crucify the show and they’d probably get fined by the media regulatory board.
I really hate this bullshit attitude- the attitude that all life is sacred. It’s not. To reduce this to flippancy, Hitler’s life was definitely not sacred. I think we all wish that Hitler had been aborted as a foetus. Doesn’t that kind of prove that abortion can sometimes be a good thing?
Well, not really because it weakens the argument. The abortion debate is not one of Preserving Life vs The Right to Chose because only an idiot would favour one and not the other.
Nethertheless, the media consistently comes down on the side of preserving unborn so called life. Whether this attitude is right or not is genuinely up for debate but it would be really nice to see the other side of the argument every once in a while.
I want you to think about something for me. Take any film or television show where a woman has become unexpectedly pregnant. The two stages to this are:
1) Does she abort the foetus
2) Is she comfortable with this action
Now, I’m a man and therefore don’t know what it’s like to have a semi living being inside me. I am fairly confident, though, that there are a lot of women out there who get accidentally pregnant and just don’t want the damn thing.
Now, if you’re like me, you’ll be having considerable trouble thinking of any film or TV series where a woman has had an abortion. I’ve seen plenty of phantom pregnancies and miscarriages which are lame cop-outs for writers to avoid writing about difficult subjects.
After some considerable thought, I realised I could only think of one instance in all the television and film that I’ve seen – an episode of Battlestar Galactica in the latter half of series 2 where a woman flees her religious family in order to have her foetus aborted. We never see her reaction afterwards, only the political fallout.
Now, there can only be one reason for this: Film and television does not want to be seen as encouraging abortion.
Why the hell not?
Abortion is the single most important women’s right available, in my opinion. Deciding what to do with your body and whether or not you want to be stuck with looking after an annoying brat for the next 18 years is kind of important.
I don’t want to point the finger at religion because religion gets a lot of shit for stuff that’s not really their fault but in this instance, I think it really has to take the blame.
I can’t imagine a scenario arising in Friends, 30 Rock, Dexter, Supernatural or Family Guy (to pick four popular shows at random) where a woman aborts a foetus and is liberated by the decision because the right wing media would crucify the show and they’d probably get fined by the media regulatory board.
I really hate this bullshit attitude- the attitude that all life is sacred. It’s not. To reduce this to flippancy, Hitler’s life was definitely not sacred. I think we all wish that Hitler had been aborted as a foetus. Doesn’t that kind of prove that abortion can sometimes be a good thing?
Well, not really because it weakens the argument. The abortion debate is not one of Preserving Life vs The Right to Chose because only an idiot would favour one and not the other.
Nethertheless, the media consistently comes down on the side of preserving unborn so called life. Whether this attitude is right or not is genuinely up for debate but it would be really nice to see the other side of the argument every once in a while.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
House M.D.
So I've been enjoying House M.D. rather a lot for the last few series. It's not a show without it's problems but up until recently the biggest one was that it was essentially the same show every week.
I quite liked that, though. Watching something where you know exactly what you're going to get is rather comforting. It was solid television. It wasn't Battlestar or Supernatural, it was Chuck. It was 30 Rock. It was solid amusing fair for people who want to wind down at the end of a day.
Things began to change in series 4 when they bought in a host of new characters. Usually this is the kiss of death for any show but, in this instance, it injected new life into proceedings. Especially thanks to the inclusion of Kal Pen (Kumar from Harold & Kumar).
Late last year, series 5 started and things weren't quite right from the get go. Now the new actors were settled into their roles, the show seemed more formulaic than ever. House has always been a show that'd fed from the angst of its characters but turning Wilson emo just to have him revert to his previous character four episodes later is somewhat bizarre. Arbitrary tragedies started attaching themselves to characters only to be completely discarded the next episode. Taub's feud with his ex-wife has evaporated completely, 13's Huntington’s is a constant source of tearful glances over slow guitar music and a promising sub plot involving Kutner's back story was resolved after one episode and never mentioned again.
It also doesn't help that the new characters started to merge with the old ones. There's an episode where 13 trusts everyone implicitly. This isn't just out of character, it's in someone else’s- Cameron. Taub is quickly becoming a crap version of Chase as well, leaving the only actually original character being Kutner.
These are minor irritations and wouldn't ruin the show were it not for two problems.
Firstly, the reliance on crap psychology is getting really annoying. House has always relied on the Sherlock Holmes logic of "I have noticed this one thing about you- that means THIS, THIS and THIS are true" and he's never wrong. This has never quite rung true but recently, the justifications for such idiocy just haven't been there. It doesn't help that the other characters seem to be participating in these idiotic logical fallacies as well. The king of these bizarre leaps of logic came in the last episode I saw before I gave up on the show in disgust- Series 5 Episode 13 - Big Baby.
In it, Foreman and 13 have hooked up (I'll get to that in a minute) and House immediately notices this. How? Because they disagreed in a differential diagnosis. Please note that previously he has known that Cameron and Chase have hooked up because they agreed during a differential. The logical extension of all of this is that everyone during every differential diagnosis everywhere is bumping pelvises like there's no tomorrow.
Problem number two is the aforementioned up hooking of 13 and Foreman. It's a match that doesn't make any damn sense. Combine this with Cuddy's recent acquisition of a baby and what do we have? New characters taking on traits of old characters, increasingly unlikely sets of characters forming relationships and unnecessary pregnancies. These are the marks of a show that's running out of ideas and is desperately trying to cling onto popularity.
Ladies and gentlemen, House M.D. has finally jumped the shark.
At least we got four decent series out of it, which is more than TV shows usually manage.
I quite liked that, though. Watching something where you know exactly what you're going to get is rather comforting. It was solid television. It wasn't Battlestar or Supernatural, it was Chuck. It was 30 Rock. It was solid amusing fair for people who want to wind down at the end of a day.
Things began to change in series 4 when they bought in a host of new characters. Usually this is the kiss of death for any show but, in this instance, it injected new life into proceedings. Especially thanks to the inclusion of Kal Pen (Kumar from Harold & Kumar).
Late last year, series 5 started and things weren't quite right from the get go. Now the new actors were settled into their roles, the show seemed more formulaic than ever. House has always been a show that'd fed from the angst of its characters but turning Wilson emo just to have him revert to his previous character four episodes later is somewhat bizarre. Arbitrary tragedies started attaching themselves to characters only to be completely discarded the next episode. Taub's feud with his ex-wife has evaporated completely, 13's Huntington’s is a constant source of tearful glances over slow guitar music and a promising sub plot involving Kutner's back story was resolved after one episode and never mentioned again.
It also doesn't help that the new characters started to merge with the old ones. There's an episode where 13 trusts everyone implicitly. This isn't just out of character, it's in someone else’s- Cameron. Taub is quickly becoming a crap version of Chase as well, leaving the only actually original character being Kutner.
These are minor irritations and wouldn't ruin the show were it not for two problems.
Firstly, the reliance on crap psychology is getting really annoying. House has always relied on the Sherlock Holmes logic of "I have noticed this one thing about you- that means THIS, THIS and THIS are true" and he's never wrong. This has never quite rung true but recently, the justifications for such idiocy just haven't been there. It doesn't help that the other characters seem to be participating in these idiotic logical fallacies as well. The king of these bizarre leaps of logic came in the last episode I saw before I gave up on the show in disgust- Series 5 Episode 13 - Big Baby.
In it, Foreman and 13 have hooked up (I'll get to that in a minute) and House immediately notices this. How? Because they disagreed in a differential diagnosis. Please note that previously he has known that Cameron and Chase have hooked up because they agreed during a differential. The logical extension of all of this is that everyone during every differential diagnosis everywhere is bumping pelvises like there's no tomorrow.
Problem number two is the aforementioned up hooking of 13 and Foreman. It's a match that doesn't make any damn sense. Combine this with Cuddy's recent acquisition of a baby and what do we have? New characters taking on traits of old characters, increasingly unlikely sets of characters forming relationships and unnecessary pregnancies. These are the marks of a show that's running out of ideas and is desperately trying to cling onto popularity.
Ladies and gentlemen, House M.D. has finally jumped the shark.
At least we got four decent series out of it, which is more than TV shows usually manage.
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