The Rabbit Hole

Forgot to mention in my post about Once Upon a Time: Still not a Fables TV Show, but this show is like playing the "Hey, I know you from somewhere..." game every week. And, maddeningly for me, I cannot figure out where I know people from. Because they're even so obscure, I haven't seen them in much. One of the guys bugging me the most turns out to have played the boyfriend/ex of the lead on Covert Affairs, itself a show that I cannot figure out how come I've seen as much of it as I have. (Oh, wait, I remember now: the blind guy was hot.) That's on top of the LOST cast reunions and the random Bucky Barnes cameos.

Perhaps the one that blind-sided me the most, however, is the straight-laced nice-guy playing Jiminy Cricket is HOLY FUCKING GOD KAIDEN ALENKO!?!?! I knew I recognized that oddly gruff voice, but it weirds me right the fuck out to see him acting. At least he's more handsome than Kaiden?

( There are no spoilers here, just some musings on what I got from the show over its run. )

As touching as the finale was, I'm not really all that sad for LOST to be over. I mean, I'll miss the fun of watching it, of being constantly on the edge of going crazy trying to work things out, and I think I'll never love some of the actors in it in anything else they do. But the show itself needs to retire, gracefully--something I think the finale will help. It's not LOST's fault that it got over-exposed in its last season, that it was so popular that there were, I shit thee not, about five covers on Entertainment Weekly alone devoted to tales of the last days and episodes of LOST. They worked hard to build their audience, to respect their creation as much as exploit it, and they deserve some measure of popularity. If pop culture is a waste zone in this depressed time, it makes sense that LOST would be everywhere.

Doesn't mean I'm unreasonable when I say I'm tired of it, though. I'm happy to geek out about the finale with folks for a while, but I'm most looking forward to that point, in a month or so, when the distractions of summer and what-not put LOST on the back burner indefinitely. I can only hope that what people learn about this show is not that it needs to be extended (no spin-offs, please), copied (Flash Forward has shown how poorly the imitations are received), or prolonged in the pop cultural memory. I hope, instead, what they see is a show that thrived on trusting its audience to follow it and benefitted from breaking the mold, not re-inventing it. If the most studios learn from LOST is to grant creators of popular shows the ability to call the show off when it needs to be done, I'll be happy.

So long, LOST. It's been a long, strange road, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

(Note: there may be spoilers in comments!)

You have Mick Jagger et al. to thank for this next bit of over-thought, over-involved meta. I guess that it is not for no reason that Don McLean called the man Satan.

I think I got a little too weighty for this otherwise mostly silly journal with that last meta. Let's go happier on this one. It has to with Supernatural. Specifically, the meat suits. All of this was inspired by one lyric: "I'm a man of wealth and taste."

( Spoilers for the first ep of season five. )

Of course, we're only one episode in, so all of that might be moot by tomorrow, and I will then be griping about how obvious it all was. For now, HAIL SATAN.

One meta lead to another as I was thinking about how "Sympathy for the Devil" this show is not: vessels.

( I never thought I'd have this much to say about this show. Ever. )

Long story short? It's waaaaaaaay too early in the goddamned season to start thinking so hard about this stuff. What I find most interesting in all this mind-dumping is that I thought the season premiere was rather lackluster for the most part. It was only in going back over it, sparked by a very silly sort of song sung about a fictional devil by the real musical one, that any of this had an impact on me. Curiouser and curiouser.

...another thousand movies I've watched. No, not really. Since I can't possibly capture your attention or wow any of you with my books-read-this-year total, time to do my annual recap of media I've consumed in 2008.

There seems to be a cap fast approaching, as I saw only three more movies in 2008 than I did in 2007. Television, however, fell off dramatically (25 seasons this past year versus 46 in 2007), and frankly, I'm astonished. I've been exercising regularly while watching episodes of television since July. I suppose the caveat there is that since I've been forcing myself not to watch shows when not exercising, I haven't been breezing through entire series of shows in a weekend. (::coughcoughDoctorWhocough::)

My recs and trends beneath the cut!

( Movie magic )

( Boob Tubing )

( I said I wouldn't write about books. Naturally, I wrote THE MOST about them. )

And that's the year that was.

I forgive TWoP for spoiling me (some more) for the ending of last season of LOST. I even forgive the forum posters for spoiling me about a character on True Blood.

Why? Because the TARDIS won for "Best Performance by an Inanimate Object."

Yeah, after all the shit with the way last season of Doctor Who ended, I'd say so. At that point, she was the only character with any class left.

(Funny note: the runner up was the Metallicar from Supernatural. I have never not found that a hilarious name.)

It translated this: Echo DeMille, un facteur ordinaire, découvre qu'il a un surprenant pouvoir, cela fait de lui une cible into this...

"Echo DeMille, an ordinary factor, discovers qu' it has one surprising to be able, that made of him a target."

My French is made of fail now that it's eight years out of use and one language intervening, and I could still have done that better. I just couldn't get "une cible." From context, I was thinking it was "a problem," except that "cela fait de lui" is "has made (of) him." It could be "has made trouble for him," but the grammar wasn't there. Well, now I know. It's "target."

But, yeah, I didn't assume the translator would be able to compensate for the not-French English bastardization that is "un surprenant pouvoir."

Oh, and all this has to do with Heroes for those few of you who, after last season, are still interested. I haven't bothered to look and see if it's up on the normal site yet, but some French site has the first webisode that's bridging seasons two and three.

I still don't know quite what to make of webisodes. My last experience with them was for the season two-three bridge of Battlestar Galactica. Those were painfully extraneous. They didn't add anything we couldn't infer from actions taken/words spoken in the season premiere, and they only spent time on characters that weren't really long for the series. It's interesting to learn more about the characters, but these were deleted scenes that should have just come out with the season DVDs, not something that truly tantalized for a new season.

With the Heroes webisode, it seems to want to set up a separate story from the show (sorta like the direct-to-DVD release of the adventures of the techie guys in the background of Get Smart, which I kinda loved for its adorableness). Which is really the better way to go, I think. Bringing the main characters into the side plots that won't (most likely, and shouldn't) be addressed in the main series is just a chore. Because there's no way I'm going to pay attention to Johnny Come Lately to Superpowers when, say, Nathan Petrelli is there to gawk at. (To say nothing of Sylar.)

The only problem with this approach is that if it's not necessary to understanding the series and it doesn't have some creepy conspiracy/mystery angle (a la the web stuff for LOST), not watching it doesn't have any consequences for someone who watches the show. There's a good chance, then, that people just won't. (I plan on reviewing this series for Pink Raygun, so I'm keeping track. Hopefully, they won't all require me to experiment with the remnants of my French.)

I don't do the year-in-review memes so much. This is more my own tally of new-to-me pieces of entertainment consumed.

I see that I managed to outdo myself on the number of movies seen this year versus last year. I've seen 50% more movies in 2007 than I did in 2006 (120 versus 81). 120! Crazy! Television seasons completed, despite there being fewer arcs of Doctor Who viewed and rented, increased almost as much (46 to 33). I didn't quite manage to double the number of books read in 2007 as I'd resolved to do for New Year's 2006, but I came within shouting distance of it. Had I not been entertaining a baby by myself for much of the vacation that was not otherwise devoted to a wedding, I might have made it.

Not that anyone cares about that, nosir. Here are so recommendations based on what I read/saw and enjoyed (or didn't!) in 2007.

( Cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut... )

LOST has an end-date.

Forget that giving them a guaranteed three more seasons is extremely generous given the way the show's been not performing for most of its second and third seasons. This is actually a brilliant idea.

Because this is exactly what I like about the way serials are done in other genres, mediums, and (thank you BBC!) countries. There's more you can do when you have the end in sight to set it up and get yourself there without wasting time. For a show like 24, obviously you can do that season-by-season because the plot specifically binds characters in a set time. The action and the seasonal closure of it offset and obscure the fact that this is an endless drama (although not lately, from what I've heard). Having the end game planned means no convoluted who's-really-spying-on-whom shit like Alias devolved into. Means no impossible it's-aliens-except-where-it's-the-government-but-everyone's-really-crazy-anyway X-Files muck.

I think every pitch session to networks should include the span of the show as part of it. Sitcoms obviously bend this rule, but for serialized dramas? Having a distinct, discreet package should be more attractive to studios, not less. Yes, you lose the sure thing if it's a hit and you want to keep it going forever, but on the other hand, if it's a hit and you know you've got three-four seasons max to it, think of how much you can blackmail advertisers for. Imagine if the LOST guys had stated their optimal seasons-long deadline as six years two-three years ago when they pitched it. By the time it was the hot thing of the season, advertisers would probably have paid Super Bowl-worthy prices for ad time. When they were then told (on the down low, of course; deniability is key) that such ad space would be a limited thing, maaaaaaan, the monies! The monies!

But really, I like this for the necessary improvements to pacing that it would require of television shows. Fewer wasted episodes or filler with the way that specific plot developments could be then fixed into the schedule and then the rest built around them. This would make flexibility difficult, but that's what these stupid-ass, useless hiatuses are good for, right?

Okay y'all, for reals, can we please see 300 this weekend? I am unfortunately busy Saturday night, but I would be available tomorrow night or Sunday afternoon (or early enough on Saturday afternoon).

So, vote for y'alls availability, and I'll figure out when we go. All showtimes are at the 34th Street AMC/Loews 'cause the tickets is cheaper.

[Poll #947173]

*

Last night, I popped in Ultraviolet (the Brit TV show about vampires, not the terrible movie with Milla Jovavich) and feiran made some wry comment about how quickly I get obsessed with things. darkling1, bless him, said, "But it's only six hours long! That's not long enough for anyone to get obsessed with anything!" feiran gave him the pitious look of, "You don't know Trinity very well, do you?"

To be fair, I am not obsessed with the show, though I do like it. The advantage of it being so short and having just the one series is that there is a definite pace, with timely reveals and well-positioned points that move the story along. It's something that, if the creators of LOST, say, had actually had in mind since starting the show (as opposed to clearly making shit up as they went along) would have made for better television. Might be a bit boring for the writers, as they can't deviate or get too clever with the plot, but it makes for more solid a viewing experience, and that's what I want, thanks.

And, okay, yeah, it's not exactly hard work to look at Jack Davenport either, but I swear that's not it. I really do like the way it's been set up so as not to make the team we should be sympathizing with all that sympathetic. I've got two more episodes to go, and I'm half afraid they're going to try for a twist-like ending, seeing as they know they've only got the six episodes total and they need to end dramatically. Mostly, I'm terrified that the stupid love interest girl is gonna get Jack Davenport, when his much cuter, much smarter, much better dressed, much more everything better ex is running around somewhat more clued in to his doings and much cooler about it than love-interest waffling wallflower girl. Ah well, don't spoil me!

LOST. Otherwise known as "This is so not the time for that"--The Show.

Goodbye. Have fun on hiatus. I'm going to go throw up now, finally, since I've been on the verge all day.