Tag Archives: Smallville

The Second Season of V Disproves My Theory That V Couldn’t Get Any Worse

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I discovered the other day that the television show V actually came out with a second season. Somehow, I missed it when it aired, but as I had seen the first season and was really interested in seeing how it played out in the second season, I went out and bought the season of DVDs. You see, I should probably explain that my fascination with V is not because I think it’s a great show, but because I watched the first season and kept saying to myself: “How can a show have such great acting talent, an obviously decent budget and still manage to suck so badly?” I mean, the star of the show is one of the main characters from the GREAT television series LOST. And then there are people in the show that come from some of the greatest that science fiction has ever offered. There was a guy from Firefly (the pilot on the show), the star of Earth: Final Conflict (a strange show that is oddly A LOT like V’s premise of an alien race showing up, promising great things but having a hidden agenda), an actress who was one of the recurring characters on The Office, the secondary female star being also from Firefly and Stargate SG1 (she played the prostitute on Firefly and the Ori human leader in Stargate SG1), the hot girl who played Supergirl on Smallville, and so many other actors that I was constantly saying, “hey, I recognize that guy/woman!” Yet, with all of that talent, they still managed to produce one of the most ho hum shows I’d ever seen.

So, I thought that the second season really couldn’t get much worse. Well, I was wrong. What started out as a “oh no, the aliens are really evil but only one FBI agent knows about it” has now turned into a show where I find myself going, “who cares?” almost every time a big event occurs in an episode. The aliens are diabolical, yet the rag tag team of rebels is at some times brilliant (beyond belief), the greatest Spetznaz operatives the world has ever known, completely stupid and clueless, overly obvious to the point of where I keep thinking, Okay, we have the stupidest aliens in history because they can’t figure out that the guys working against them are always present whenever things go bad, and filled with so many dorky coincidences that I’m sometimes embarrassed to be watching.

Spoiler alert: The end of this season got even worse than I ever imagined it would be. The aliens became so powerful, and so evil that it actually hit a point where I thought, wow, there’s no way the humans are going to win this one. Everyone is paranoid, and the good guys are losing their way and their battles, and I thought, okay, wow, this is going to finally start getting really good to where the main characters are really going to have to doing some serious crap to win this battle. And THEN: a secret organization of military organizations made up of every nation in the world comes to the rescue of the main hero, telling her that she’s no longer alone in her battle, that this organization of super army has been tracking the evil aliens, JUST IN CASE they might be evil, and now they’re ready to work with her, because they now realize she’s actually on their side.

Really? That’s the October surprise you have for your viewers? When things get really bad, SHIELD is going to appear out of nowhere and help the Avengers now that they’ve lost all of their powers, even though we never hinted SHIELD existed in the first place? How about a superduper weapon that they’ve been building in the Antarctic wastes, just in case something like this should ever happen? Or perhaps a Death Star? Or should we just find a hot shot pilot who has never flown a battle before to fly a sortie against the alien horde and shoot his blaster at a two meter hole that will somehow blow up all of the alien ships together? I mean, we’re doing stupid crap. Why not?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to Season 3, so we can see what “great” entertainment they have to offer next time around. I’m hoping the hero finds an alien motorcycle and jumps over the alien space shark that is threatening humanity.

We Seem to be Running Out of Good Television Shows

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Recently, I was looking for a good television show to watch on dvd. That’s kind of how I roll these days, watching dvd television series rather than original programming when it actually airs. What I’ve discovered is that everytime I watch a series that’s currently on, they cancel it. It doesn’t matter what it is, or how good it is, it happens to me all of the time. I mean, everyone has their complaint about the demise of Firefly, which was a great show for its time, but every other show under the sun as well gets canceled by today’s television networks. I started watching Star Trek Enterprise. Canceled. Watched The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Canceled. Jericho. Gone. Jeremiah. Gone before I even knew it. It seems no matter what I watch, it gets canceled.

I guess I could watch stupid shows like Two and a Half Men, but as much as I enjoy poking out my eyes with a spork, I just can’t watch that kind of garbage. An example is the sister show of that garbage one I just mentioned, Big Bang Theory. I bought the first three seasons of it for a pretty good deal at Best Buy, mainly because colleagues at work kept telling how funny it was. I think I chuckled every four episodes, and I finished watching the third season last night. Was not very impressed. It was like someone heard that geeks were funny, didn’t know anything about geeks and then wrote an entire series around what he “thought” geeks might be like if they were actually funny. Throw in a bunch of comic book references and various Star Wars/Star Trek-isms, and that’s pretty much the show. Oh, of course, you have to throw in a few hot females to exacerbate the whole idea that “geeks can’t get hot women” and then we’ve pretty much finished the triad of doom. Like I said, it had its moments of interesting jokes, but overall I keep wondering what happened to that last few weeks of my life. If I went with the premise of the show, it wouldn’t make a difference because geeks don’t have any worthwhile lives anyway, but let’s just say I’m not buyiing their nulled hypothesis.

Which leaves me searching through the Netflix queue hoping to find something, ANYTHING, to watch. I was in Best Buy the other day (when I bought the dvds for Big Bang Theory), and I noticed that Felicia Day‘s 4th Season of The Guild was out on dvd. I kind of wish I would have bought it then, but it was only 82 minutes, and I had been planning to spend a lot more time with a show. Should have bought it then. In case you’re not aware, Day’s series is a brilliant commentary of how actually to do geek humor, as it really gets it right and tells it from the perspective of people who ARE the geeks, in this case a guild of online gamers who have no other lives but the game. It’s completely believable and funny. An interesting ironic point is that one of the recurring characters (who showed up in the third season) is Wil Wheaton, the man who played Wesley Crusher when he was growing into adulthood. What makes it ironic is that he’s also a recurring character in Big Bang Theory, and I’ll go out on a limb and say that the few times he was in the show (as Sheldon’s arch enemy because he once showed up the main star of the series for a comic book convention signing) were the few times where I actually found myself enjoyiing the show. In those occurrences, Wheaton played essentially himself as a crass asshole of a person who may or may not actually be a lot like the actor himself, which surprisingly is not offputting, even though you would think it would be.

Unfortunately, I find myself unable to really find any great shows on television anymore. I sat down and watched on Netflix streaming the three seasons of Kyle XY, which was so much like so many other shows it was attempting to steal ideas from, like Roswell, the X-Files and even Buffy. So, until I find something decent, I’m kind of stuck waiting for Smallville to run out its final season before I’m left with nothing but these four empty walls of nothiness where my stuffed animals and I will finally realize we have very little to say to each other and lots of times to say it.

Smallville–Supergirl episode misses mark on its target demographic

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First off, the latest episode of Smallville was interesting. The emphasis of the episode was that Clark needs to prove himself, or something like that, and that only Kara, his cousin is capable of doing so, so she reveals herself as Supergirl (not the name she uses) and pretty much has herself targeted instead of the future Superman.

Some immediate comments: It was great seeing the actress who plays Kara back again. It’s also kind of cool that they touched on the fact that Clark still can’t fly, and for a second he did…right before crashing down and burning. Oh well. Baby steps.

The problem with the episode is more in what they were trying to do than it what they did. There’s always been a freakish element to the show that I think is inherent in the people who develop the show. A couple of times they’ve gone with the whole leather aspect of the superhero costumed characters just cause it was kind of hot and innovative. Not to mention that all of the actors/actresses are hot as well, so it makes sense that they take advantage of their best attributes.

Last season, they went the fetish route with an attempt to create a false superhero identity for Lois Lane, in that her character was named Stilleto, and she dressed in black leather, in a sort of catwomanish costume with black stilletos. It was pretty obvious that they were going the full nines in attempting to make her fetishy hot. And they succeeded. They even threw in a few S&M jokes as well to even out the look.

This episode they went the full monty, so to speak. The main villain for the episode was followed to an S&M bar by Lois, who then dresses up as a dominatrix so she can get into a scene with the guy and then blackmail him into giving up his vendetta for the Blur (Superman/Clark). There was the obligatory scene where Lois walks through the dungeon atmosphere and people are doing all sorts of freakish things while pounding music is playing in the background. Then she puts the guy in handcuffs, pours hot wax on his chest and then elicits two hot women who help her take photos of the guy in bondage. Then she uses the photos to ruin the guy’s credibility.

Okay, here’s the complaint I have. First off, if they’re interested in appealing to the fetish crowd, which is the only reason you do in your face bondage sorts of scenes in a network television show, well, you’re going to get that crowd interested in your show. You’re not going to get the Bible thumping crowd, so you have already decided on your audience appeal. Well, then your next move should not be to try to discredit that same crowd by showing that once you reveal the photos, you’ve discredited your character. In other words, you can’t show the scenes, expect to excite your audience and then turn around and tell your audience that it’s not acceptable behavior. If you do, you’ve basically pissed off every potential audience member you could ever hope to attract. The Bible thumpers are going to hate you for going all fetishy, and the fetish crowd is going to hate you for going all moralistic and anti-fetish. Basically, you lose on all counts.

The whole CW thing lately has been to be as innovative, fetishy and sexually-aware as possible, and that’s great. But if you’re going to do it, go all the way. I don’t mean show nudity or go nuts with the sexual content, but at least show that if your emphasis is to show it, don’t ridicule it as well.

Having hung with that crowd for some time now, I find the ridicule from mainstream television to be really counter-productive because it’s been no secret that a lot of creative types are into all sorts of interesting persuasions (or lifestyles). As such, they find themselves having to sneak it into mainstream material and then pretending that it’s just innovative but vanilla at the same time. Well, it’s not. And unfortunately, they’re never going to convince the mainstream people who hate them that they should embrace them, so either go all the way with it and be proud, or don’t do it. Save it for people and innovators who are willing to take a risk and a chance with the idea. Otherwise, you force it right back into the closet again, because if the people who really believe in it aren’t willing to back it up, then who will?

One of the interesting things about Buffy when it was on the air was that it was never scared to just “go there”. It never apologized for it, and it went on with life like everything was normal when they did go there, and they did go there enough times to cause people in those communities to really appreciate it. I think that’s what the CW wants to do, but they’re too frightened to do so. Instead, they keep sniping from the shadows, hidden in closets and hoping that people will think they’re innovative so that they can sneak out and wave their pistachio banners for everyone to see. But that’s never going to happen as long as they keep hiding in shadows.

Not the greatest episode, but there’s a lot of promise there for the future. Here’s hoping they continue to try to innovate without hiding behind their intentions.

LOST Goes Out As It Should…With Answers and a Sense of Purpose

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The finale for LOST was last night, and even though I’m not one to stay up that late these days, it was well worth the staying up. (spoiler warning for anyone reading further….) Right up to the last few minutes, I found myself thinking, wait, we’re about to go out with a nice ending, but I still don’t feel I have any answers. And then they sprung it. Just like that. And I was thinking, wow, that works. Sure, there was a lot of fighting against that thought, but in the end it really worked, and just like LOST, it waited until the last moment to just subtly explain what it’s all been about. That’s so much like LOST.

What I thought was so profound is that one of the obvious clues had been staring us in the face all along. We knew the character’s name from the start, but it was one of those shell games where you just never looked at that person’s name to realize how significant it really was. It took Kate actually just saying it out loud, in almost disbelief, for me to realize how this process of puzzle making was so well done in this show. The bizarre thing is we always knew the person’s name, but no one ever bothered to just say it out loud, all together. That one clue would have really been enough if we realized how significant it was all along. I mean, every character in the show had a significant name (well, most at least), including John Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Jacob, Faraday, and the list goes on.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever get another show like LOST ever again. We’ve lost some of the greatest written dramas on television over the last few years, including Battlestar Galactica, which like LOST took a few years to really get its groove.

I’ll admit it. I’m a big fan of good television, but unfortunately, there’s not a lot of good television to find. The big shows right now are a lot of reality TV stuff, like Dancing with the Stars. I can’t watch any of that. The few good dramas are few and very hard to find. Instead, we get really trashy television like Grey’s Anatomy. I really hate that show, even though I love Heigl, even though she’s slowly becoming an enigma on that show. But I hate the stupid premise of that show, and the few times I tried watching it in the beginning completely turned me off of it.

So what do we have left? Surprisingly, one of the more innovative shows became a victim of its own success. Actually, a few did. There was Heroes, which had a GREAT first season and then imploded on itself with the cardinal sin of television (it thought it was more important than it really was). This same cardinal sin is happening to a lot of early shows, like Fringe, FastForward and V. But they didn’t even allow themselves a chance to become important before they turned into jokes of themselves right off the start. Another show that had promise, just for the intriguing writing it was doing in the beginning was one you wouldn’t suspect, and that was Desperate Housewives. And then it turned really stupid, as if it only had to rely on its great first season to make it great by name alone. It’s difficult to watch, so I stopped.

Some of the other promising shows are on the Sci Fi channel, strangely named Syfy these days. Except they’re screwing up those as well. Stargate Universe has taken a great franchise and tried to become Battlestar Galactica, which it is not. Stargate was always light, fun and entertaining. Stargate Universe is boring, tedious and another one of those that sees itself as important without doing anything to become important. I think when they went to the “let’s put our heroes into an inescapable plot in one week and then have them just walk through the stargate unscathed WITHOUT AN EXPLANATION the next week” is what has finally destroyed the show. They keep trying, and every now and then there’s a glimmer of hope, but it’s close to being thrown on the “don’t watch” list.

However, in July a bunch of the good shows from Syfy are coming back, and that might be really interesting. Eureka, a weird, light show, is coming back. Warehouse 13 is also coming back during that time. I’m not sure when Caprica is coming back, but that’s also on the backburner of a lot of people for one of the better shows out there, even though it’s just a spinoff to Battlestar Galactica, told some decades before the events of BG erupt.

One of the other decent shows, especially decent over this last season, is Smallville, and it is going to be producing its 10th and final season, which has a lot of people going through pre-withdrawals. But this means we should finally get to see the Boy of Steel become the Man of Steel, which has always been the end game for this series. Sure, they could make a Superman TV series, but I just don’t think it would be as great as the premise for Smallville always was. The origin story is such a unique animal in fiction, and we already know how it’s supposed to turn out.

Which leaves the rest of us wondering what are we supposed to do now that LOST is gone? There are no other shows that can replace it. Sure, a lot of networks are going to try to duplicate it, but they will continue to fail because they so want people to think they have the next LOST, which is impossible to do when you are trying too hard. That was one of the beauties of LOST. It never came out and said it was great. It just was. It trodded on, telling its story as it wanted to tell it, and they didn’t fall back on stupid shark jumping tricks to keep the fans happy. But the fans were happy, and they kept viewing.

Shows just don’t do that these days. And that’s what we’ll probably miss the most.