My Zombie Has Two Genres

During Superb Owl Sunday I was talking to someone about the Walking Dead, because I'm not going to waste my time dealing with sports. He was criticizing it for a number of reasons. Some of it was arguable on a purely on a stylistic level, he claimed that he thought a zombie series that never solved the problem of zombies was too bleak and unrelenting. While I think that's off the mark I can understand where that feeling comes from. Content wise I think the show is on the inspiring side but the tone is bleak.

His other complaint is what threw me, though. He said that for him it failed as a horror show. Here's the rundown:

• It has zombies and therefore is a horror show
• He is not afraid of zombies and therefore doesn't find the show frightening
• It is a horror show that is not scary and therefore fails as entertainment

The impasse that we became stuck on was that he was seeing it only through the lens of the horror genre. While I suppose it wouldn't be unfair to call it a horror show I never thought of it that way. The tropes in it don't follow the horror genre. Generally the point of horror is to elicit emotional negative reactions from the audience. When done in a more refined manner we tend to think of things as classic thrillers (these bring out the reaction of tension, stress, anxiety), and as they become more graphic they are thought of more as horror (shock, disgust, cringing at empathetic pain). American Horror Story, while obsessed with delivering disturbingly saccharine endings, does aim to elicit disgust during the early part of their seasons. But The Walking Dead doesn't really go for the horror side of things. Sure, the thriller emotions are there, but the use of zombies and gore is actually in service to world building and not emotional manipulation. Like all good zombie movies it leaves that to the humans to do.

Am I arguing that Walking Dead isn't horror at all? I would. The show (and the comic, for that matter) doesn't try to evoke the negative emotional reactions that horror as a genre aims to. Instead it employs massive world building and a wide cast of characters to analyze human complexity and create parallels between this abstracted alternate reality and our own. Social issues are parsed through the lens of this world in order to avoid preaching while still dissecting human values. And all of these tropes actually indicate that The Walking Dead functions more like...

Science fiction!

Yup, if you want to know whether the show has zombies then it does. If that is all you want to know then there you go. But if you want to know what features of genre storytelling it uses then the horror label will do nothing to inform you. It's more like science fiction.

The mistake is understandable. A number of other shows have done the "technically one genre but fulfilling another". Battlestar Galactica is the first one that springs to mind. It's a fantasy show but people always forget that and then get mad when mystical aspects have a real effect on the world. People forget because it fulfills the genre functions of science fiction. Lost was on its way to be a technically science fiction show on the road to fulfilling the world-building explorations for the sake of exploration, as well as rising to the call, of the fantasy genre until it broke down in the writer's room. M*A*S*H* subverted the sit-com into a character study. This one is clear to such a degree that the laugh-track is actually optional on the DVD audio menu (and I wait for the day this is done for Sports Night as well).

End result? That maybe there certain genre stories need a genre label and a subtext label. In this case the horror label actually stopped someone from getting into The Walking Dead. To be fair, he's not much of a science fiction fan so a subtext label wouldn't have won over another Walking Dead-head, but the reason behind the avoidance is still problematic. He didn't keep on with the show because it failed as a horror show. That's kind of OK since it isn't trying to be a good horror show. The only reason it's a problem to fail at something it's not trying to be is because of that genre label. And I do think genre labels are important. I won't say that I like the majority of science fiction out there it is still safe to say that I'm a science fiction fan. There's something about the fulfillment of the genre that clicks with me, and that's also why subtextual science fiction shows also work for me.

Maybe we need to add meta-genres the same way we do sub genres. Instead of Steampunk or Urban Fantasy we should have "by way of" after a title. Horror by way of science fiction. Labels are important. Labels are words and cutting out words from storytelling will get you nothing but interpretative dance. But maybe as our genre stories are getting more complex we also should think about putting more nuance in their labels.

Bad mojo on TV

Last night I did two things pertaining to TVs shows revolving around magic.

1. I gave up watching Grimm.

I have the last 9 or so episodes sitting on my hard drive and have never felt the slightest urge to sit down and catch up. That pretty much my new kiss of death for a show. If I'm in the mood to watch TV, see over 7 episodes of something that's unwatched and still feel like I have to options I give up. That's how Once Upon A Time bit the dust and it is how Grimm went.

2. I rewatched the (unaired, not picked up) pilot for 17th Precinct.

 It's a cop show (bear with me) set in a world where science and the enlightenment never happened because magic works so it was never needed. Instead of using fossil fuels and electricity buildings are networked with fire and plant life. The show is created by the guy that did the new Battlestar Galactica. The cast is pretty much the same people too. And all that was ever made was the pilot which was not picked up.

And it's really good. In one episode it establishes some good characters, some passable ones with potential, a great concept, an overarching conspiracy and some fantastic world building. Aside from the magic there are bits and pieces that hint at how alien their culture really is. While their version of technology is the pinnacle of environmentally friendly their system of justice is shockingly brutal. Sexuality and how the body is regarded is a lot more fluid. And of course there are the touches of religion that will be in any show Ronald D. Moore works on.

This is all done, mind you, in a single episode. It's not a wonder it didn't get picked up. Dense shows tend to get treated gingerly since they have trouble getting a large audience. So I'm not going to say "Why didn't this get picked up?!" What's depressing is that it didn't and a number of mediocre magic shows did. For a while the vogue in genre shows was dark, character driven science fiction. That seems to have ended with a whimper, the official date of death probably being the finale of Lost. Now that fantasy and fairy tales are saturating the market 17th Precinct  would have added a great depth to the genre. Watching it again reminded me that it's not a shock it didn't get a time slot, though it is a shame.

Time Travel Made Easy

I recently started 11/22/63 by Stephen King. The plot is a man is presented with a door that leads back in time and he goes through it in order to stop JFK from being assassinated. I’ll leave the critique of King for another time, but one thing that stood out to me was that he spends about 10-15 pages explaining the concept of “travel back in time to change the future” by way of "watershed event" and "butterfly effect". While the process of making those changes can be complicated and convoluted the idea that things in the past will affect the future is a pretty simple one. It’s no different than something in the present changing the future.

And then I realized that King actually puts a lot into this book to explain in unnecessarily long passages the most basic concepts of science fiction, concepts that should easily be picked up through the story. The huge data dump in the beginning of the novel shouldn’t be needed. And then I realized that King has made the same mistake that a lot of people make. He thinks time travel is complicated.

Time travel is simple.

Oops. I’ve let out the secret. But truly, the basics of time travel really aren’t that difficult. Sure, you can wind the narrative around obfuscation and overlapping trips, like in the wonderfully infuriating Primer, but the basics are always easy to grasp. Any storyteller that pretends otherwise is either trying to seem overly clever for dealing with it, doesn’t get it themselves, or thinks their audience is pretty dim. So here’s the breakdown.

The bottom most level of time travel is moving from one point in time to another but not in the usual way. We all deal with regular time travel which is into the future at the speed of one second every second. In H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine we get a really nice visual of someone sitting in a chair and watching time rewind as well as fast forward. The rate is changed. There are also instantaneous jumps in time travel fiction. That would be like Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Time Bandits… the list goes on quite a bit. Even King’s 11/22/63 has this. Step through a door and you’re decades in the past. Fast as that.

Where it gets a little more complicated is what kind of time the character is travel through. But don’t worry, it’s still a much simpler concept than most people expect. A lot of time different versions of time are rationalized or justified with technobable but that’s like putting fancy clothes on a mannequin. The model underneath is almost always eerily simple and usually one of three choices. With mannequins it’s man, woman or child. With time I’ve named the three fundamental forms solid, liquid and gas.

• Solid – Time is completely unchanging. If you go back in time and do something then you were there before and that action has already happened. Time travel is a closed loop. There is no free will, everything is predetermined. Or at least determined the first time events occur.
• If you travel back and step on an early amphibian then that animal had already died in the past.
• Examples
• Time Traveler’s Wife
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure - Since they come back to the present and nothing noticeable has changed we know that it is either a solid or liquid timeline. Small details, like their time loop escape from the jail cell seems to suggest a solid timeline.
• Liquid – Events can be changed but small changes will get passed over. You can visit and things won’t change but if you make a large change then it will affect the future.
• If you travel back and step on an early amphibian then another will end up evolving to eventually fill a similar role in history.
• Examples
• Quantum Leap
• Back to the Future
• Gas – Every little thing a future visitor does in the past will have consequences in the future. This is the scenario where the butterfly effect is often brought up.
• If you travel back and step on an early amphibian then perhaps you will return to a future of intelligent sea life. Or there will be no life at all.
• Examples
• A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury
• Time and Punishment, the Simpsons parody of the above short story
• Uncertain
• Doctor Who - The very definition of inconsistency for the sake of a story. This universe seems to vacillate between 
• Primer - Evidently a malleable timeline though the range is so short it's impossible to tell the extent of changes to the future.
• Star Trek
• Solid or liquid. The novelization of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the one with the whales) suggests a solid universe as the employee Scott gives the formula for transparent aluminium to is the historically credited inventor.
  HOWEVER! The new Star Trek begins with an event that branches the timeline so the new Trek movies take place in a changeable timeline. Since the crew still gets together I'm going to call it as liquid.

And that is the basic gist of time travel. Once you figure out the material of time then the events should just fit into the template. Of course, some fictional universe will change their physics. The Terminator universe is notorious for this. The first movie is a solid (possibly). Kyle Reese seems to always be John Connor’s father. His trip back and sleeping the Sara Connor is part of repeating events. Terminator 2 seems to be a liquid universe since large changes are made (blowing up Cyberdyne) and that gets things changed in the future (avoiding the robot uprising). Terminator 3 tries to pretend they are the same form of time and end up with a soft solid, something like rubber. Events can be pulled and bent but the main points are always there. The war always starts, the robots always revolt. The TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles can actually be somewhere along the liquid/gas rules. Small changes in the past are seen to make small changes in the future. Since the timeline isn’t very long long it’s impossible to tell how soft their version of time is, but changes can be made.

That's your time travel cheat sheet. The type of time that a story deals with is infinitely more important with the mechanism. Travel may be achieved by a magical trinket, a medical condition or a machine but as long as you know the timeline is solid then it's not that confusing.  A writer can justify time travel with as convoluted a device as they want. Primer uses a mysterious effect of cold temperature physics. Planet of the Apes used relativistic effects in a fast moving space capsule. Back to the Future has a car with little to no technical explanation. And while each of those mechanisms helps with building atmosphere and style it's not necessary to understand the inventions to still understand the world. Do not let talk of quantum physics or dozens of pages detailing the definition of "watershed event" or "butterfly effect" scare you. Just see what time does and it'll all work out in the end.

Or go horribly wrong and destroy the world you know.

• The "Not Actually Time Travel" bonus list
• Terra Nova and Michael Crichton's Timeline - Both of these are actually alternate universes. While stories like Back to the Future play with branching timelines these two stories involve parallel earths that already exist and just run next to ours. Calling these time travel is like saying that going to Canada puts you 10 years in the USA's past. While it may look similar it's not true.
• A Christmas Carol - This is more akin to astral viewing. The "travel" is hazy and even the future  vision is yet to happen so it's not much of a trip.

TV that I watch

It seems a bit weird to start writing again and make it all about television but since I haven't been writing I have been watching a lot of tv and reading a lot of books. That means I'm going to have reviews to toss out. And rather than giving these my usual +5 to -5 rating I’ll be judging them by current watchability:

LOVING IT

SOLID

GOOD ENOUGH

HANGING ON

NEARLY DONE WITH IT

QUIT

PS These are shows that are currently airing. I held back on things that are between seasons or between partial season or whatever the hell the networks do with their shows.

• Monday
• How I Met Your Mother – NEARLY DONE WITH IT
• Not happy with this once clever show. For the full story take a look here.
  
• House - SOLID
• Most of the people I know who used to watch this have given up. I am honestly enjoying what they’ve done with the character of House recently. I thought that the stint in prison was really good and I like that one of the members of his new team is pushing him right back. I’m a little confused as to why Chase is still around. He’s had the longest residency I’ve seen and after his divorce they really haven’t done anything with him. He’s just – there.
• Adventure Time with Finn and Jake – LOVING IT
• Adventure time! A post-apocalyptic cartoon about the last human and his adopted brother, a shape shifting dog.
  This show is amazing. The music is great, the animation is adorable and the humor funny and bizarre. I’m pretty sure this is one of those shows where you immediately love it or hate it. So far I only know of people who love it or have not seen it. Check out an episode.
• Terra Nova – GOOD ENOUGH
• It’s OK. To be frank, it’s Avatar painted with Jurassic Park. It’s derivative, the special effects range from passable to cringe inducing, and some of the characters feel like they are trying to fight against developing so they can continue playing generic tropes (all the kids come to mind). Why am I watching this? It’s fairly entertaining and it’s science fiction.
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Todd and the Book of Pure Evil – LOVING IT
• A metal loving high school kid uses the Book of Pure Evil to become more metal and get the girl he lusts after. He nearly kills everyone at his school. His plucky one-armed friend and the girl stop him but the book flies away. It does that. They band together to find the book. Oh, and did I mention that the girl’s father mysteriously vanished while investigating this book? Because he did and it’s totally mysterious. But I’m pretty sure the evil guidance councilor had something to do with that. Because he’s evil.I am so in love with this show, though I’m still just in season 1. It’s like Buffy and Evil Dead 2 and Middle Man had a beautiful, bloody, foul mouthed three way baby. The only thing I’m not crazy about is that it’s a half hour show so each plot is wrapped after 22 minutes instead of 40-something. I suppose that’s a trade off. While some episodes seem too short it also means I’ve made it through an entire season and not a single episode has dragged.
• American Horror Story – SOLID
• Re-titled Ghost Fucking
  This show is so cheese it’s wonderful. My wife flat out likes the show a lot. I don’t know if I can make that claim but I do find it highly entertaining. The “name that horror reference”, which was so distracting early on, has dropped to a much more tolerable level. A lot of camera angles and soundtrack cues are lifted directly from horror films so at the very least it’s an impressive meta-analysis of the horror genre.
  
  More recently in this season it has come into its own as a standalone horror story. It took a while for the mythology of the house to get rolling, and while there are still a few hiccups in their world building (what exactly is the rule about ghosts leaving the property?) overall it is really rolling.
• Thursday
• Big Bang Theory – QUIT
• Much like Leverage this is another show I didn’t choose to stop watching. The references are nerd-catnip and some of the performances are really good (though Howard is beyond done). But when it comes down to it this show is basic sitcom. The references usually don’t actually show much more understanding of a geek subject than Wikipedia and the show never tries to rise above the standard sitcom format. I guess I just felt like it wasn’t offering anything more than what I get from my real friends.
• Bones – HANGING ON
• It seems that wherever I tune in another show has decided to infect the cast with a little bundle of ratings. I could be wrong but wasn’t the addition of a baby to a show usually a kiss of death? Perhaps that was just for children characters and baby’s don’t actually count. Whatever the old rule was it is clear that babies are now in vogue. I was actually interested to see what would happen with Angela and Hodgins' baby. It’s Bones’ pregnancy that I’m annoyed with. Her gimmick was being so logical as to alienate people. Now it seems that they’re just playing that against the “hormones hormones hormones” of pregnancy to make Bones comedic and possibly insane. The writers couldn’t find another way to get Bones and Booth together? I’m still watching the show but I will admit that the episodes tend to sit unwatched for longer periods of time.
• Person of Interest – HANGING ON
• I officially dropped this show but then went back to it. Not because I read that it was doing something good and I wanted to see. Only because it’s produced by JJ Abrams and every time I give up on it out of boredom I get the sneaking suspicion that, since it’s an Abrams show, it has some sort of big picture that it will get to. I have now admitted to myself that I will follow the first season but if no long term plot peeks its head out by then I’m probably going to call it quits.
• Mentalist – between SOLID and HANGING ON. Hanging on and a half?
• This show is definitely in the “OK, not great” zone. Last season: “Yay they took care of Red John. Boo, they didn’t solve anything with Red John.” The show has become a string of competently written one-off crime stories. The bad thing is that the series is now just treading water from week to week. The good thing is at least it’s with characters I still like.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – LOVING IT
• If this show were simply a weekly monologue of Danny Devito shouting the word “who-er” for half an hour I would recommend it. What’s even better is that this show is so much more than that. While things this season haven’t touched on the greatness of The Nightman Cometh it has still been some of the best comedy on television.
• Friday
• QI – LOVING IT
• Quite Interesting – a very funny trivia panel discussion hosted by our lord and savior, Stephen Fry.
  Delightful as always. I now am usually a week behind because I’ve since switched over to the QI XL format.
• Supernatural – SOLID
• This season hasn’t been great. They wrote off Cas and I miss him in the show far more than I expected. Plot wise it felt like these villains had no aim and when it did come out I immediately recognized it as the exact same idea that the Alliance used in the movie Serenity. Exactly the same. And some of the writing has come across as a little lazy.
  
  Despite all of that this show is still good enough to get me watching each week. The brothers Winchester are still good enough characters to hold the show together on their relationship alone, which is what they’ve been doing. Hopefully the writers will start to bring Dean to a boil, as he’s been simmering all season and something needs to happen to trigger him.
• Grimm – HANGING ON
• This one is just hanging on. I’m not sure if it’s sticking around on its own merits or strictly because it is better than Once Upon A Time. That said, the main character and his sidekick are boring. The sidekick is slightly comically slightly awkward. The main character, who’s name I can’t even recall, is beyond bland. He came prepackaged with an interesting lineage of creature hunters called Grimms but it seems that was enough for the writers. The touch on him trying to do research every so often but really he’s just there because there is a conspiracy that involves his somewhat more interesting family. The only reason to watch is the big bad wolf character. The show really should have been about him, perhaps with a Grimm sidekick trying to find his place in the world. Now that I think about it, that would have been a much better narrative frame.
  
  And speaking of framing, it seems odd that every police case this guy has investigated since he learned monsters exist has revolved around monsters. So how the hell did he solve a single crime before? Did he just spend his career until now putting innocent humans away? That’d be an interesting show.
• Saturday
• Would You Rather –
• This show hasn’t actually premiered yet but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s the classic game where you are presented with two unwanted options and need to choose one. What looks really fun is that it’s hosted by Graham Norton and the guests look really good. Examples? In the first two episodes they have Cyndi Lauper and Stanley Tucci.
• Sunday
• Misfits – LOVING IT
• A crazy ice storm hits London and lots of people find they now have super powers. This show follows a group of juvenile offenders so they aren’t exactly heroes.
  
  So we’re now into the third season and this show is still brilliant. They’ve taken some risks, like switching out everyone’s powers, and they’ve hit some hurdles, such as fan favourite Nathan leaving the show. It’s still good. Really good. The Hitler episode was miles above when Doctor Who pathetically tackled that gimmick and some of the things they are doing with gender is really interesting. They handle pretty intense issues with thought rather than disgust and fear. And while it’s often funny and definitely British this show is not No Heroics. And it’s certainly not Heroes. Maybe if you took the quality of Heroes’ first season, removed a lot of the borrowed storylines from Marvel and DC and made the characters less mopey. So not really Heroes at all I suppose.
• Penn and Teller’s Fool Us – LOVING IT
• A number of magicians go on stage in front of Penn and Teller. They perform a single trick. If Penn and Teller cannot figure out how it’s done they win a slot opening for Penn and Teller in their Las Vegas show.EDIT Just noticed that this show is between seasons so don't look for new ones just yet.
  This show might not have the gravitas of Bullshit! or even Tell a Lie but this show brings me joy. Flat out joy.
  
  They are going on stage to trick two amazing magicians so you know that they are going to be bringing their best. Not only that but a lot of these tricks are different enough that they contain an illusion or method Penn and Teller might not know. In addition to some jaw dropping skill you also get the wonderment of P&T when they don’t solve it. When they figure it out there’s a comfortable and friendly nod of understanding but what I love is a trick so good that not only do I not have the slightest clue but neither do the experts. They are impressed. They are mystified. Sometimes it may be a trick I think I know and it turns out that it’s not done in the standard way. And it’s amazing.
  
  Magic tricks can fulfill on two levels: 1) a show of skill and 2) mystery. Penn and Teller’s Fool Us usually delivers on one of these and sometimes both. It’s in those moments, when I can rewind, watch in slow motion and the only thing I can discern is that I don’t know what’s right in front of me, that this show brings actual wonderment. And I love it for that.
• Walking Dead – SOLID to LOVING IT
• The end of this season was the kick in the pants it needed. Recently things have slowed down and it hasn’t been great for the show. They’ve been staying at the same farm for most of the season, they’ve been looking for an unimportant stock character for even longer than that, and the show has been light on zombie kills. Well, until the massacre for the mid season finale. Finally, the little girl search is over, Hershel’s farm has come to fruition, Shane has completely lost it. It’s fun again.
  
  I admit, earlier on this season I was skeptical. I could feel the shift in writing, the lack of Frank Darabont, and the lower budget. The mid-season finale was a killer and I hope it means they’ve found their footing. At the very least they won’t be looking for Sophia anymore.
• Once Upon A Time – QUIT
• I just officially gave up on this one. I don’t buy Jennifer Morrison as a bounty hunter; she was tougher when she was a doctor on House. The kid that this whole concept hinges on is crap. He has no personality of his own and isn’t a terribly good actor. The whole thing reeks of one of those ABC miniseries that has been dragged out far past its welcome.
• Leverage – between HANGING ON and QUIT. Quit and a half
• I didn’t make a choice to stop watching this, I simply stopped caring enough to catch missed episodes sometime last season. Every now and then there will be a stand out fantastic episode, and the guest stars are usually a treat, but the show itself just didn’t hold up enough to keep me engaged. This is towards the top of my “Frak, there’s nothing on. What should I catch up on now that all TV is on mid-season hiatus?” list so I may come back to it. It never got bad while I was watching, just stopped being good enough.

How I left How I Met Your Mother

I used to really enjoy How I Met Your Mother. The way my TV habits go I usually have one sitcom that I watch mixed in with the rest of my shows. It also seems to go that I just sort of let them go rather than riding them out until the end. I skipped the last two and half seasons of Scrubs, I stopped following Big Bang Theory about a halfway through last season and now I think How I Met Your Mother may be cut.

With Scrubs the format changed and it became pointless. There was nothing left to care about. Big Bang Theory stalled more than anything. Leaving that show wasn't a conscious choice so much as actually putting 24 minutes aside each week to catch up just seemed like more work than the show was worth. HIMYM is a different story. Recently I've just been finding the show downright offensive.

I will admit that over the years the show has taken some easy low brow jokes, mostly with gender. I usually consider that sort of broad writing as the sitcom version of suspension of disbelief. Overall it's been funny and smart, at times even clever, with an amazing eye for continuity in their timeline. Periodically the show has suffered from repeating plot lines but I suppose that happens when your show is centered around an event that keeps getting pushed further into the future with each new season ordered. And then Lily got pregnant. I know that Lily and Marshall have always planned to have a kid but I did groan when it first happened.

Adding a child to a sitcom is often a step away from demanding your show be cancelled. But I went with it. I've invested a lot of time in these characters and the writers have proved themselves so far. But they started to mangle that plot pretty early on. In The Slutty Pumpkin Returns we have half the episode devoted to demonstrating how being pregnant makes Lily too stupid to function. They have carefully shown that she and Marshall disagree with where the best place to raise children is, with Lily strongly in favor of urban rearing. Suddenly she is pregnant and a moron, handing out wine to trick or treaters and loving the suburbs. She's hormonal and therefore too stupid to function. Disaster Averted (the episode revolving around hurricane Irene) started to pull apart at their carefully constructed timeline. It also ends with a groan inducing moment putting Robin and Barney back together to an extent, a plot that's been thoroughly explored and completely closed off.

From this point on it seems like the writers wanted to see how far down they could bring the show down with each subsequent scene. The next episode treads water with the Barney/Robin storyline by not providing any sort of closure on a plot that shouldn't be happening. We've seen them together. We know it's terrible and they don't work. As for thinking that perhaps Barney has grown as a person in his efforts to establish a monogamous relationship it should be noted that he has now managed to completely destroy the integrity of his one monogamous relationship. Meanwhile, over with Lily, Marshall and Ted, we see that they are going to a concert. Their plot seems muddled. It starts with Lily insisting that Marshall can't do certain fun things anymore (like "eat a sandwich"\smoke pot) since he's a future parent. It ends with Marshall panicking because he doesn't have time for fun things anymore while stoned and then not wanting to do the things he used to enjoy (like the concert) once sober. When Lily finds out Marshall didn't listen to her about smoking weed she really doesn't seem to care. Her reaction is to demand nachos. At this point I'd prefer nachos to what's going on as well. There's a mixed message that doing fun things takes all your time away but being responsible removes your desire to do fun things, and as a parent one should not try to have fun to begin with, but really in the end no one cares.

The Rebound Girl is really the last straw. The short version is: Barney now claims to have been thinking about becoming a parent when this has never been true until this moment. Ted is now no longer interested in finding love but rather just wants a child. This seems antithetical to the entire point of the show. Lily was told that impulse moving to the suburbs was a symptom of pregnancy brain a few weeks ago but when she repeats the same idea this week it is now taken seriously even though this is contrary to her character up until the last few episodes. And Robin is pregnant. That plot should be really short as she is pregnant with someone she knows she is not compatible with as is also explicitly childfree. If she has changed her mind then what the hell was the point of not having her end up with Ted? Suddenly this show is making me A) feel like I've wasted my time and B) very angry.

The series now seems like an amalgam or rehashed plots, reversed character development and incredibly cheap jokes about gender in general and pregnant women in particular. I will be honest and admit that I'm not dropping the ax just yet. I'm annoyed and beyond disappointed but I've seen some interviews with the writers and show runners that say they have a specific set of developments they are working toward. I'll probably give them one or two weeks to get the show back on track before I take off for good. It's also worth noting that whenever a work needs to be explicitly explained by the writer in a way that is completely outside of the story it is a blaring alarm that the story is being told poorly.

Lost, what a long, strange trip it's been. Too bad the destination was a bust.

I can only assume that the writers worked themselves into a corner that they ultimately couldn't get out of and did what Sawyer would do: con their way out. The whole “Lost is a metaphor for purgatory” was postulated by the fans back in the first season and was explicitly denied by the writers. So what happens? They half get off the island and then that half turns out to be purgatory. So in essence the island doesn't matter.

OK, it matters a little but in a show that features its location as a character the island should matter more than just a little. Let's get some things out there.

• The sideways flashes during last season take place far down the line when everyone is dead.
  
  We know this because Jack's dad, Christian Shepard (frakking really?) knows all and tells us so. We also know that Hurley becomes the new Jacob and has since died so this could actually be taking place thousands of years after the crash of flight 815.

• The island is not part of the afterlife.
  
  Once again, we know this because our good Christian Shepard tells us so. He tells Jack that the reason these people have to meet again in death is that the most important part of their lives are with each other. Since it's impossible to have the most important part of your life occur after your death....

What's wrong with all of this? Let's just agree to accept the Christian/Mormon afterlife that Lost throws at us in the final moments of the series. The first thing that struck me is that there are a good number of characters who Desmond didn't even bother “activating” with their memories. Where's Miles? Captain Frank Lapidus? I understand why Richard Alpert isn't there, as his afterlife is probably with the others, but this core cast is the only set of people who deserve to move on? And how can people like Ana Lucia not be ready when the mechanics of their afterlife bar them from growing through self awareness unless specifically activated by someone else? If Ana Lucia isn't ready then Desmond needed to help her become ready. And is Lost saying that without romantic love your life is incomplete and you can't move on? It also bothers me that Jack spent years of his life trying to be a good father, loving his son, and finds out at the end of the show that his son isn't real and doesn't have a soul and will never meet him in heaven. And speaking of rejection, wasn't Sayid in love with someone else when the show started and wasn't he desperate to get her back even though she was dead and wasn't she NOT Shannon? Why isn't she the one Sayid finds in purgatory and who is she going to love for all eternity? Pretty callous, god.

Those are just nitpicks about the way the Lost afterlife works and aren't the crux of why this finale fails. The big issue is that the sideways flashes were death. Why is that a problem? Lost established itself with odd storytelling about this mysterious island. It was partially character based but since so many of those characters come and go (I read that over 75% of the cast died within the show) the series is anchored in this island. It really was the unspoken character. Then this last episode comes along and explains in soft-focus, drawn out detail what happens to some of the characters and ignores the island completely. It is the same as publishing a book that is a murder mystery up until the last chapter and tacking on the final chapter of a romance novel for “closure”; it doesn't work for either part of the story. What the writers of Lost have done was slowly get the viewers emotionally involved in the mysteries of this strange tropical location and then tell everyone “But that's really not the point. Love is”. While love played an important factor in many of the character relationships we already knew that because we saw that love develop on the island. Love and the island aren't mutually exclusive so whay was any explanation about the island cut in order to show viewers the same romances blossom once more in yellow tinted montage bursts?

All of this goes beyond the science-fiction to fantasy problem that I've written about before. The island never stopped being science-fiction and the purgatory epilogue that was fantasy. That's fine. What is problematic is that nothing pertaining to understanding the island really mattered. That's 5 years out of a 6 year show wasted. The Dharma experiments? Doesn't matter. Whidmore and his life long quest? Frak it. Whidmore and his last minute experiments with Desmond and electromagnetism? Forget about that. Anything about the time traveling? Doesn't make any difference later so don't worry about it. The subplot about babies not being able to be birthed on the island, Walt's mystical powers, Charlie's psychotic episodes like when he kidnapped and baptized Aaron? There are countless little questions that we're left with. I'm not saying everything needed to be spelled out in the end but beyond that we're all told that none of it makes any difference. Those problems, those mysteries, those first 5 seasons of the show aren't important.

I don't mind not having everything spelled out in the end. I'd rather a show err on the side of unexplained rather than giving half-assed excuses. I think lack of explanation is the one smart thing about the end of Battlestar Galactica. My favorite show is The Prisoner. Lost, especially early Lost, borrowed a lot from The Prisoner like setting as extension of identity, knowing one's self as dramatic conflict, subjective versus objective narrative to blur the reality of a show. I don't mind not knowing everything. I don't mind when characters lie if it's part of their character. Obfuscation in a show can be very rewarding. But with Lost the entire concept turned out to be a lie. And not in the manner of a twist. A twist is an exercise in irony where the assumed subject specifically turns out to not be the true subject of interest. With Lost's limbo ending, well, that could be tacked on to literally any show at any moment. It's a completely stand alone idea and negates all earlier elements of a story. Really. Take any TV show that you've been interested in. Then replace the finale and any closure it established with “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven”. It's such a self contained concept that it really can be tacked on as a preassembled ending to any story.

I don't even think it's worth the effort of analyzing the show now that it's over. Play back the finale without the side-flashes and it's pretty straight forward. Watch all the side-flashes in a row after that and even the afterlife twist is easy to understand. Other than the unanswered island mysteries there isn't much about the finale that is unclear. The mysteries of the island, well, you just have to let those go. We know that everyone (eventually) dies. We know that the afterlife is fundamentally in line with Christian mythology, with a heaven, hell and purgatory. More specifically we know that it's pretty close to Mormon where you take the knowledge you gained in life and use it to build your own afterlife world which you share with the soul mate that is meant for you. We know that the island isn't part of the afterlife because of the reason addressed in the above bullet points. On a technical level it is true that “then they all died and fell in love and went to heaven” is an ending. What's left to discus? From the characters' perspective I suppose that once their soul passes to heaven with their soul mate, all those pesky questions about science and time travel and free will (Faraday and his mother show us that there is no free will anyway) don't really matter much anymore.

Lost has always been, foremost, an experiment in storytelling. With Lost, the way the story was told was always more important than the story. Were there good parts to it? Absolutely. It had enough good parts to keep people watching for 6 seasons and the first season is flat out brilliant. It's just disappointing to complete this show's run only to find out that the entire plot wasn't just secondary but arbitrary. So in the end Lost was interesting storytelling, a mediocre story. But I think “interesting” is the biggest compliment that I can give the show.

Did "Lost" just jump the shark?

So last night's episode of Lost... It was interesting. Well, was. The more I think about it the more it simply doesn't work. I understand that when you have a show with devoted fans and years of build up to a finale you're going to run into problems pleasing people with your story. Look at Battlestar Galactica. But Lost is different. It is its own special case in a lot of ways. The manner in which the world-building was done is, well, unique. Lost spent seasons building up mysteries with barely any reveals. And that's why this episode doesn't work.

The fans came to Lost for the mysteries. It was a puzzle and really drew the viewer in. You'd watch and try to work out what the hidden black light map meant in the hatch. You'd wonder about the polar bear. You'd try to figure out why Walt had magic powers or Locke couldn't die. But then they announced the final season and things started to get answered. And the answers were mundane. I don't think Walt was ever really explained. The polar bear was part of an experiment. Alpert didn't know as much as people thought. The mysteries of the show turned out not to be that interesting. Instead, the focus went from “what's going on with the island” to “we have to protect/leave the island”. No one cared about the why and because of that gave up a lot of motivation.

So in last night's episode we get a whole lot of back story on Jacob and The Man In Black (the baby that no one bothered to name). They're brothers. New information but not shocking. Same age, same period of time on the island... and it's simply not a big deal. Their mother? Some random woman. We learn that they were raised by a white woman (good thing they don't look remotely like their mother of darker coloring). The immortality thing? She did “something”. And apparently that “something” was a lot more effective than the “thing” she did so they couldn't hurt each other. Something else we learned is that this whole struggle to keep safe/escape the island is really nothing more than Jacob having nothing else to do and The Man In Black having a desire to go “home”, somewhere he's never been or heard of. That seems like pretty weak motivation on both their parts to keep pushing them for centuries. In fact, the thing that Jacob is protecting has been changed from “the island” to “the special light in the island”. While this may have some metaphysical value it has no story value as of yet. That's not a reveal or an explanation; it's just a diversion. “You were looking here. Now look here!” and nothing is told to us about it. The only thing of any consequence that was show was Jacob killed TMIB. Great! We see how he used to be angry and violent while TMIB was impetuous but more even tempered. Other than that one fact this episode was weak reveals and constant runaround. At the very end we see that the non-mother and TMIB are Adam and Eve. At this point is it even important to know that? We have multiple universes, a time traveling island and immortals locked in an eternal struggle. We need to have every small mystery explained? We don't need to know everything so make sure what we do learn is important!

I was also a little put off that the flashback pointed to a lot of things being magic. The island has the spark of life within it. TMIB was suddenly turned into the smoke monster after his death by floating through this spark. Up until now we've had a the strangeness based on science-fiction: Desmond has some effect when it comes to electromagnetic fields, the core of the island was held in check with computers and magnetic machinery, Faraday worked out the mathematics of the time travel effect for frak's sake! Hell, even the smoke monster is held at bay with electronic pylons. Suddenly we have sparks of life, “things” done to create immortality, bodily transformations. The most science-fiction consistent point in the episode was when TMIB explained he was going to install a wheel inside the spark of life “with a system” he and his people worked out. A system? We get magnetic fields, quantum theory, branching universes, genetic research and suddenly it comes down to the spark of life and a wooden “system”? I always say it's important to know which side of the sci-fi/fantasy line you're on. Lost started out in a place where it could have been anything. Science-fiction, fantasy, religious afterlife, mental psychosis. I do realize that recently there have been a number of characters using fantasy buzzwords but these people were mainly getting it from Jacob and TMIB. If they want to turn on some fantasy aspects then at least weave it into the established sci-fi. Battlestar Galactica had mythology and gods from the get-go. Star Wars is based on the Force. 9 (with Elijah wood) starts with machines that can transfers parts of the soul. Focusing on time travel and quantum physics has, over the seasons, dug Lost itself deeper and deeper into science-fiction territory. It's too late to switch sides without loosing a lot of good will from followers.

So, what wasn't explained? How the two are immortal, exactly what's important about this life light, why does the spark of life make time travel possible... It's not that these weren't really touched on but rather that they were poorly explained elements in the story. Lost used to be impressive because, even if they were making it up as they were going along the details of different stories weaving together into something larger was impressive and fulfilling. This felt like filler and that's a problem since it was most of the origin story of the two eternal characters who seem to be the point of the show. If TMIB is immortal, invulnerable and can fly why doesn't he swim/fly from the island? He has the time. Is Jacob really destroying hundreds of lives just because the woman that killed his mother told him that this light was important? If the spark of life is extinguished everywhere if something happens to that cave of light then why is everyone fine in the alternate world where the island sank? I could understand it if the writers created a world that was falling apart due to issues brought about on the island but it just seems like the script is what's crumbling. If this whole thing has just been a Cain and Abel/Jacob and Esau retelling with the island used as a MacGuffin I will be royally pissed.

LOLHeroes - Episode 3

This season is shaping up to be a mess. First of all, Sylar/Nathan kissed Mrs. Patrelli on the cheek so she should be completely aware of his fake identity. Then we find out that Matt's invisible Sylar has one goal: to be anoying. Really. That's his official goal. And now we're following a synesthete? That's not a crazy mutation, it's a perfectly accepted neurological disorder. What don't we toss in an insomniac who's power is that he doesn't sleep a lot. Or maybe a hemophile who had the ability to bleed a lot. What the fuck?

And that's all I have to say about that.

What are your thoughts? Think this season is an improvement, on par as past seasons or worse? And what bothers you most about the Heroes universe?

LOLHeroes - Season 4 premier

After a bit of a rocky end to last season LOLHeroes is back. I tried to stay away. I really did. However, the demand for somethinggood to come out of what was NBCs flagship was too great so I returned to my torrents, keyboard and image editing program. What follows is all I could salvage of the premier of season 4. The episode wasn't terrible but it was certainly not good. It feels like the writers are simple rebooting season 1 all over again. Peter is back in his medical field, Sylar is getting a new set of parental issues, Claire is trying to balance school and abilities... the list goes on. But this time there's a creepy carnival.

I will not be happy unless there is a truly evil clown.

And now

We've had this plot before. They ran with it for a whole 2 episodes before they killed off DL. Want to take bets on how long Peter sticks with it?

Oh god! He's inside my lungs!

Speaking of... what happened to Molly and Mohinder? Oh, and Micah and everyone else from down south? Remember that chick who learned from TV as well as her grandmother Uhura? They all used to be regulars.

She and her emo friend had a perfectly goofy and servicable plan to see if it was a suicide. What does Claire do? Jumps out the window. Not only will this out you in your new school but you'll get new blood all over the chalk outline. And how long do they leave that outline on the ground, anyway?

Why Glee doesn't work

So Glee had its second/third premier or second episode of actual premier or whatever Fox is calling it. The first episode aired months ago and has been on TV again and on the internet all summer long. The show started up the actual season last night. And I’m still not impressed. Judging by the reaction of the internet I’m part of a select few. I know only of two others who are as not won over as I am.

But this is not without reason. There are many things about the show that I can specifically point to and say “This is what is bothering me”. So I’m going to go ahead and share those points. If there are any Glee fans reading this perhaps you can address some of my grievances.

• I’ll start with something small but important. The film is obviously filmed in widescreen. It is obviously cropped for standard broadcast. I know this because during episode two there were multiple times when the speaking character did not appear on screen, or appeared with only a partial face. There are other shows filmed in widescreen now that are also shown in that format for their standard definition broadcasts. Why this horrible chop job on Glee?
  
  I don’t even think it’s Pan And Scan. It appears that Fox simply framed the centre of the image and cut out the rest. So when someone is speaking and it appears that they aren’t even in the room it really makes watching a show difficult.
• While we’re on the subject of editing let’s talk about the sound. The dubbing and post-processing during the songs is so bad that it destroys the performances. How a show about singing can have the worst sound editing on television in recent history is beyond me. I understand that the songs are not going to be performed live. However, they don’t sound live. They sound like the person singing is:
• standing still. The performances are usually done while the characters are performing choreography so that makes the bad lip syncing all the more noticeable.
• in a recording studio. These kids are singing in auditoriums and small rehearsal rooms. There should be some sort of interaction between the acoustics of the room and their voices.
• mastered for an album. And not a live album. It has the quality of a highly polish, over produced studio album. I get that they’re trying to push the iTunes downloads but this is ridiculous.
• There are no dynamic characters on the show. They are all flat caricatures at best. Some of the regulars don’t actually get any lines or acting at all. Want to take a look? Sure. And I’ll call them by their roles as I don’t remember a single character name.
• Principal – money-obsessed administrator
• Cheerleading coach – Bitch. That’s really all there is to her. Her main goal in life, above that of coaching, seems to be to end the glee club. Why? Because they are taking away money from that pays for her cartoonish obsessions with details regarding the cheerleading team such as international dry-cleaning. I don’t get her as the villain of the story.
• Everyone in Glee Club
• Big black diva
• Type A obnoxious (aka Mini-Menzel)
• The Jock
• The homo – This is not a pejorative. His main trait is that he’s gay. The only other things you can tell about his character is how he looks. As a person… he’s just gay.
• Asian girl
• Wheelchair guy
  If there’s anything else we’re supposed to know about these kids it sure is not being conveyed through actual writing.
• Cute OCD teacher – Who is also annoyingly weak in regard to her one relationship which consists of doting on main character.
• Bitchy wife – The main character’s wife. She seems obsessed with money (then why marry a teacher?). She is obsessed with getting a large house. She often times forgets that she’s married and appears to believe she has a live in man-servant. There is nothing redeeming about her and I don’t understand how a shrew like that manages to keep someone in a relationship unless he’s
• A) being blackmailed
• B) completely whipped
• Main character – He seems to be completely whipped. He takes abuse from his wife, from students, from other teachers. His strongest moment came in episode two when he politely left after cheerleading coach finished her bitching monologue.
• The main character sucks. I assume he’s supposed to be the sympathetic character viewers identify with and follow through his journey. I don’t feel particularly sympathetic to him. The problem is he’s too pathetic. In regards to his wife he has three viable options in regard to his wife: murder, divorce, suicide. I know it’s a poorly written character when even if she was pregnant the most sympathetic choice would still be to leave her. And it’s been set up ever so obviously since the pilot that main character is supposed to leave bitchy wife for cute OCD teacher so why should I bother becoming invested in his current marriage at all?

So really that’s the entire show so far. I know it’s only two episodes in and I’m going to give it a few more tries (if only because the other people I hang out with on Wednesday nights want to) but so far I’m not impressed. The characters are all crap, the performances are good but that just means I’m interested in the soundtrack and not the show, the gay jokes are wearing thin already and the clever one-liners are not enough to keep me hooked.

TV to marathon

I recently posted about television shows I intend to watch for the first time. But how about some shows that are so good I want to watch them again, marathon style? I’ve got a bunch.

In fact, I have already started a marathon of Middle Man with my wife and a couple of friends. It is a glorious show that should not be in the grey floaty ether of cancelation/hiatus that it is. Based on a comic book, this show is pitch perfect. You know how some people complained that the film version of Watchmen was too close to the original as to offer nothing new? And how some people said the same of Sin City? Well, Middle Man is nearly like that, except the acting and the new stories add so much more to the franchise. The episodes taken from issues of the comic are almost panel for panel the same. Then there are completely original episodes that fit in seamlessly, making for a great adaptation. This is how it should be done. The back and forth is so good that the un-filmed final episode is being released as a comic! Plus the fact that Natalie Morales is really hot doesn’t hurt anything.

• The Prisoner – I can’t believe that I have friends that have not seen this show! The show that Joss Whedon called the best TV show ever made! And yes, it is that good. The production is dated but the craft and quality of this series are still oh so fresh. Gasp as Number 6 is drugged. Marvel as he fights to keep his identity. And furrow your brow as you try to figure out what’s really going on.
  
  On the surface it’s about a former secret agent. After he resigns he’s abducted and taken to the village where various agents of some unknown organization constantly subject him to psychological torture in order to find out his secret. If you want the original Lost then look no further. This is where it all started. And nothing is as it seems.
• Nowhere Man – An unofficial sister show/sequel, Nowhere Man is about a man who has a name (or does he…). Tom Veil is a photographer who comes back from a restaurant bathroom to find that no one from his life remembers him. Not only that, but a single photograph of his has been stolen. He runs off with the original negative.
  
  It’s the inverse of The Prisoner. In The Prisoner we have a man with no name trapped in a village. In Nowhere Man we have a man with a name running from the world.
  
• Arrested Development – Possibly the most clever American “sit-com” ever written. Perfect casting doesn’t hurt either. This is a show so good that, if you like to laugh, you should have already seen.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – I know it just ended but between the cancellation and the fact that the only living part of this franchise is now the McG trilogy – well, I just need some of the magic back. Ranking this in amongst the rest of the Terminator franchise, my wife places it at a close 2nd just after T2 while I put it as a close 1st, just above it. It is that good. And it undoes all of T3 while staying in continuity. This show starts slow but once it gets rolling has some of the best drama on TV at the time and best time travel I’ve seen written for TV ever.

I believe that's it, although it's still plenty to get through. If anyone wants to tag along for a show, let me know and a schedule shall be made.


Question of the post: What shows are so good that you keep going back to them?

TV to watch

A while back I did a big write up about new television shows that I was going to follow. This time around I want to talk about the exact opposite. Instead of new TV shows I am watching I’m going to discuss old TV shows I have yet to see.

I usually feel a little anxious to get back to my regularly scheduled programming during the summer hiatus and this year is no different. What is different is that I have a sweet home theatre PC ready to soak up and squeeze out any TV show my heart desires. Sure, I can watch Conan now that Hulu works with my remote but what about all the shows I hear about but simply have never gotten around to? I’m sure everyone has that pile of books that are “to be read”. Well, my TV is no different. And the project has already begun.

What I’ve started watching

• Spaced – Currently about 3 episodes in. At this time I like it but I still don’t see what all the huge fuss is about. It’s a solid Brit-Com and there’s a lot of talent in there but it doesn’t get nearly the laugh count of IT Crowd or Black Books.
• Battlestar Galactica – Finished the mini-series and am not starting the actual season one episodes. I was waiting for it to end so I could just watch it straight through. After Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled I had this huge gaping hole where sci-fi used to live. I tried to fill it by finishing Stargate and have now moved on to this.

Still to get to

• 30 Rock – OK, I’ll admit it. I’m biased against this show because it started in the same season as Studio 60 and I threw my lot in with Aaron Sorkin. I like Tina Fey. I hate Tracy Morgan. Let’s see what happens.
  P.S. I did see the first episode or two a while back and wasn’t that impressed. But it’s streaming on Netflix so it’s easily available and therefore gets a second third chance.
• Big Bang Theory – It sounded like a US version of the IT Crowd so I put it on low priority. Now the creator is speaking at TAM (The Amazing Meeting) and a bunch of people I know swear by it so season one is waiting to be shoved into my eye holes.
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Just never got around to this one. The commercials made it look “eh” and the fact that it was on FX didn’t do anything for it either. I now hear that not only is it hilarious but also the same guys want to do a sci-fi version.
• Supernatural – I have no excuse on this one. Jess, one of my nerd-barista-friends recommended this to me when it was in its first or second season and I just never bothered with it. Suddenly it’s getting write ups left and right at the end of this past season. Literate Buffy comparisons? Dark takes on power and good vs. evil? Looks like it’s time to drop my prejudice against Honky McPaleface (Dean from Gilmore Girls) and settle down with a mini-marathon.
• The Wire/Carnivàle/Deadwood – A triple threat recommendation from someone I work with. His tastes lean heavily towards the snobby, hyper-literate and avant-garde so of course I’ll trust him.
• Twin Peaks – How have I gone this long without seeing this show? I honestly have no idea. Fox Mulder in a dress, here I come!

And that’s what’s lined up on my television plate. There are little things like Party Down and other shows that I’ll try to get around to but this is my heavy hitter list. And next up I’ll be writing up a list of shows I have seen but deserve a marathon or re-watching. And anyone I know is invited to join me for those.

Question of the post: Any TV shows that aren’t on the list that I simply must see? Drop ‘em in the comments and I’ll let you know if I’ve seen them or not. If not then perhaps I’ll take your advice and add them to this list.

Journeyman, why?

So tonight was the last episode of Journeyman. And like many a sci-fi show that has heard its own death rattle they packed it with heartsting tugs and awesome reveals. Dan Vasser, you shall be missed.

Holy Heroes screen caps!

Since they seemed to do pretty well last time, here they are again!

Sorry for the large amounts of silence.  I've been busy and when I've been posting it's been elsewhere on the net.  I'll start crossposting so things won't slow down too much here.  Hope you liked this weeks.

Heroes S3E03 re-CAP

Just to get it out there, I'm really disappointed in how Heroes is going this season.  It's dragging a bit, it feels somewhat forced and halting and some of the characters seem like they should be done.  They don't need to be shown until they die.  Like the Jessica/Niki thing.  I get that Niki has super strength and Jessica can jump from body to body.  But you've danced around showing us that for over a season now.  Let it go.  You missed it.

And then there's the crying Madonna.

The writers have said that they don't want to open the field to crazy amounts of powers.  That's why they're already recycling two (healing and flying).  But if you're just going to ignore your own world to put someone who can bleed the black oil from X-Files mixed with the chlorine blood from X-Files then it's pretty obvious you have a special sub-plot already set up for them, continuity be damned!  Too bad I don't really give a crap about the twins.

Don't get me wrong.  I like the show.  I'm interested.  But it's time that they realize that they have a world with a style and a pattern of powers established.  You can't fuck with that after a season of exposition.  The amnesia thing is a little soap opera but it's necessary.  The writers know that with Peter and Sylar they've made uber-characters that are too powerful to function, so they find (sometimes) hokey ways of taking some power back later.

The real weakness in the world building is the comic.  All the comic is doing recently is establishing people's catch phrases a bit early (Robots and Aliens) or ruining the timing of a dramatic reveal (that illusion girl was a stereotypical greasy, fat and pimply goth chick).  Going back a bit father we find the Gittleman fiasco.  Bring in a major character with an odd power.  Then tie her into the series on TV.  then give her a huge sub-plot in the comic.  Then kill her off.  Wow, that was a lot based around her.  And do you know what made it into the show?  She shows up in one episode and then is never seen or referenced again.  Huge failing.  The comic was going to be a way to introduce characters, judge viewer response and then possibly bring them onto the show.  But now there's Heroes: Origins.  So drop the shitty comic!  The writing is bad, the tie-in is weak to non-existent and I think the only reason it's around is that they signed a multi-season deal with Nissan.

What did I love about this episode?  Other than the actual actors, I kinda like the Peter story.  And the fact that I don't want to sleep with him means that I don't hate his Irish girlfriend.  It's about time he got a little happiness, after the whole exploding and all.

Before I go into the caps I just want to steak out some theory:
Mohinder.  I think he is immune to all disease.  His sister was a mutant and we've never seen a situation with one sibling with a power and one without.  He was born to help her and his blood has anti-bodies to a disease that wouldn't affect him at all unless he has the gene mutation.  So it's pretty much stated he has a power.  And I think that's it.  Maybe it'll revealed when he meets the twins, she goes all weepy and he's fine.  Shocker!

And now for me episode re-CAP!  If this is popular I might make it a regular thing.

Painfully obvious movie reference 1.  Ha!





Painfully obvious movie reference 2.  Haha!
















Ok, that one is totally my reference.  But I've been thinking it since episode one this season.