Fall TV

Hello there!  Been a while! 

I'm actually behind on a lot of my favorite shows.  I'm two episodes behind each on Chuck and Glee, and at least three behind on Lie to Me.  But I have been keeping up with some shows, so click through for my thoughts on them so far.  (Spoilers for Fringe, Supernatural, Rubicon, The Vampire Diaries).

Update

I'm so behind!  And I have so much to say about the big fall premieres!  For a rundown of what's been keeping me away, please see this post at my other blog.  I promise I'll have some fun TV talk up soon!

Two great tastes that would not taste great together

Just let this one slip through your fingers, Kripke.

 So.  Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural, is apparently in talks to write-produce a television series based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels.  (I'm going to go ahead and assume that if you're reading this, you've read the Sandman series.  If you haven't... go do that.  Now.)

Since I love Sandman and I love Supernatural, you'd think I'd be giddy over this.  And yet... not so much.  I'd love to see Morpheus and the rest of the Endless interpreted for television – provided of course that the show was picked up by an HBO or Showtime where 2/3 of the content wouldn't have to be cut to appease the FCC – but I don't feel like Kripke is the man for the job.  They're just two different animals.  And sure, maybe Kripke has a range for which I'm not giving him credit, but since the Winchester saga is his greatest credit to date it's sort of all we have as a gauge.  And I just don't think it's a good fit.

Sandman is a complex epic dealing with gods and myths from several pantheons and a lot of sensitive subject matter – everything from drug use to rape to religion to insanity to infanticide and everything in between.  You could argue that Supernatural deals with a lot of these same issues, but that's exactly where my problem lies, because Supernatural deals with its issues in much less mature ways.  There's a well-known trope among fans about what happens to female characters on the show (the short version is they don't last long), things that start as serious moral issues (like killing a possessed human to kill the demon lurking inside) are later ignored for expedience, and let's just say Sam's whole demon blood addiction storyline wasn't exactly After-School Special material.  There's a pretty big rift between the way these two universes handle the source material – both approaches work in their own environment, but they really shouldn't mix.  I mean... can you honestly picture a version of Sandman where the female characters are reduced to mother figures or sexual conquests and the male lead cracks wise all the time?  I love Dean Winchester like woah, but... no. 

Kripke has referenced a lot of Gaiman's work in Supernatural.  He's obviously a fan.  But being a fan isn't all one needs to make a faithful representation.  Just look at season 5's "Hammer of the Gods," which seemed influenced by Gaiman's novel American Gods.  I say "seemed" because in Kripke's version Baldur was British, Ganesh was black, Kali was a helpless damsel in distress who needed rescuing by humans, and Odin was just a grumpy old man with two eyes.  They used some of the most well-known gods out there and they still got it wrong.  So what is a Kripke representation of Bast going to look like? 

Seriously.  Watch that episode and tell me if this is the guy you want handling a multi-arc story weaving together mythologies from all over the world and incorporating fictional anthropomorphic versions of abstract ideas.  The depth just isn't there.  You'd wind up with something like this tragic movie script in which the Corinthian steals Morpheus' ruby to bend the world to the whim or serial killers or something and Morpheus and Rose Walker make out to save the world.  No really.

Maybe the biggest red flag for me is that Gaiman isn't on board with this potential TV adaptation.  That leaves the door open for tomfoolery like that movie script, or like Kripke giving all the Endless daddy issues, or like Death wielding a shotgun and driving a 70s muscle car.  My faith in a decent Sandman TV series hangs on the approval of the story's creator and someone at the helm who I feel is up to handling the themes and subject matter with the grace and maturity of the graphic novels.  And to me, Kripke just isn't that guy. 

But I still love Dean Winchester.

Getting LOST all over again!

It's sort of a shame that Lost ended before I started this blog, because I'm one of those fans who used to rush to the computer right after every episode and commiserate online with the rest of the obsessed, picking apart every detail of every episode and searching the 'net for hidden clues and references.  Lost ranks right next to The X Files and Twin Peaks as one of my favorite shoes of all time – clearly I love the weird mindbender shows. 

So when those last few minutes of Lost were over and I knew that my weekly fixation was no more, I was a little bummed.  I enjoyed the ending and all, but I'll miss having that crazy, confusing show to mull over every week. 

But now I can put off my withdrawal just a little bit longer, thanks to Lost: The Complete Collection on DVD.

This set is SO. COOL.  I've had it for a week now and every time I play around with it I still find new neat little things.  Even without the actual DVDs (which are themselves packed with fun bonus features) it's worth hours of entertainment. 

First off, the DVDs include all six seasons as well as each season's individual bonus features.  And the packaging is much nicer than that of the previous DVDs:  the discs are easier to remove and replace, and the design of the disc jackets and accompanying episode guide are gorgeous. 

But that's not even the fun part.  The fun part is everything else!  If you don't want to know about easter eggs and hidden clues and such, stop reading here.  But if you do, follow me after the jump:

2010 Emmy Awards

I have a habit of watching awards shows even if they wind up boring and ridiculous.  I like seeing what everyone wears and seeing who wins, and I love hearing both the good and the bad acceptance speeches.  But I've long since stopped expecting most of the major awards shows to be very good – which is why I was pleasantly surprised at last night's Emmy Awards.  Jimmy Fallon made a great host!  Don't believe me?  Check out the opening number:



Glee was such a phenomenon this year that it was almost a no-brainer to use the cast for an opening song and dance number.  But adding Jon Hamm, Tina Fey, Betty White, Jorge Garcia (Hurley!), and Nina Dobrev (from The Vampire Diaries) was awesome.  (There's even a cameo from Tim Gunn!  And everything is better with a little Tim Gunn.)  The scripted bits were kept to a minimum and were actually funny, which was nice.  I liked the idea of dividing the show up into the separate categories (comedy, drama, reality, and... I forget the other two) too, even though the acoustic guitar intros Jimmy Fallon performed with stars in the audience were one of the weaker bits. 

But my biggest disappointment was the fact that Lost didn't win a single award.  I didn't really expect it to stop the Best Dramatic Series juggernaut of Mad Men, but you can't tell me that Terry O'Quinn didn't deserve to win Best Supporting Actor.  By the final season he was juggling three characters:  John Locke, the Man in Black masquerading as John Locke, and a different John Locke from a Sideways Universe.  He handled some of the series' most insane plotlines and gave them gravity.  He was alternately creepy, sympathetic, funny, and terrifying.  I admit  I don't watch Breaking Bad so maybe Aaron Paul is a genius.  But I still think Terry O'Quinn got robbed.  Oh well.  At least my favorite show got a cute song parody.

Gawker rounded up some of the best and worst moments from last night's show, and Entertainment Weekly made a list of memorable moments.  To see the nominees and winners, check out the Emmys official site.

Rubicon: the real mystery may be why I'm still watching.

Grant Test (Christopher Evan Welch), Will Travers (James Badge Dale),
Tanya MacGaffin (Lauren Hodges) and Miles Fiedler (Dallas Roberts) in Rubicon.

When I heard about AMC's Rubicon, I was excited.  The tagline is: "not every conspiracy is a theory."  For a devoted X Files fan like me (please just let's not even talk about the awful second movie) that right there was enough to check it out.  And the pilot was intriguing enough to draw me in for more.  But now, four episodes in, I'm starting to wonder if the real mystery is whether this show is worth the time.  Spoilers after the jump.

Inception!

Finally got to see Inception.  Somehow this time I forced myself to avoid spoilers, because I heard so much about this movie that I wanted to go in unpolluted.  I was worried it was going to be hard to follow because I'd read a lot about how confusing it is, but I actually had no problem following the plot even as it got more tangled and intricate.  Spoilers ahead...

"It's better to burn out than fade away..." The Supernatural season 5 finale.

Oh, Dean.  You deserved better than this. 

Yeah yeah, the Supernatural season finale was months ago.  Shut up.  I didn't bother saying anything about it then because it passed and I kind of went, "...so that just happened."  But I just re-watched my season 1-4 DVDs (crap summer TV means DVD re-watch time!) and realized just how bad that season finale really was in comparison.  Spoilers ahead...