It's clearly been too long since I posted rampantly about television series, hasn't it? What, I must have gone all of
two weeks without babbling about TV stuff. Okay, so I flailed mightily about
The Departed and polled endlessly about
Grindhouse (which I haven't reviewed! In a word?
FUCKING AWESOME OMGWHYHAVEN'TYOUSEEN IT YET!?!), but not about
TV. That's
different.Anyway, I've just completed the last bit of
Spooks to be had (period, not just
commercially, heh heh) and it makes me very sad. Because British TV is so incestuous. Not like literally, just that there are only about a hundred actors at all over there, so some get reused. And the bloom comes off the proverbial rose (no pun intended) when you see Pete Tyler as a Christo-fascist terrorist.
( Other less-than-amusing revelations (spoilers!) )Wonder when the next season's out in the UK?
In other TV news, I've gotten pretty fascinated with
Prison Break. It's simply the most
ridiculous show ever, and yet? Compelling, dramatic, and completely acceptable all around. Well, okay, I shouldn't say that. Dominic Purcell continues to be a meaty stand-in for a real person as he is in every role; as the brother with the break-out plan, Wentworth Miller wins the emoting contest with Purcell only because he has
two faces as opposed to just the one (Miller can have a blank face and a smirk face--
ooooh, that's called
ACTING! It's a good thing he's pretty); and everyone in the show is so unbelievably stupid.
At least that last foible ensures that the two sides facing off are, realistically, at a stalemate. Because only the dumbest conspiracy goons would think framing a man for murder and letting the state execute him is a better idea than a) letting an overeager cop shoot him when he's caught with the murder weapon, b) killing him Jack Ruby-style during one of his many, many
many transfers to and from court, or c) getting him shanked in prison. It took like eight episodes before anyone thought of that last one as a possibility and it really was the second thing I thought of after b), and I'm not part of a high-powered, government-sponsored conspiracy cabal (OR AM I!?!?!)
Then you have the "heroes." Wentworth Miller is supposed to be so smart that he has this perfectly planned out prison escape that will not be derailed no matter who he meets (or pisses off) in prison and which cannot be thwarted by, say, his maybe being sent to a different prison at the outset; someone shanking
him; or his brother getting a stay of execution that would pretty much make the sacrifice of getting his ass thrown in jail irrelevant. How can you be so clever that you can break out of prison by learning security key-card systems and electrical engineering but can't take a surveillance tape to an audio expert to find out that the thing was doctored? The bad guys are so
dumb, there's no way they should have been able to send a patsy to
traffic court, let alone death row. And our "hero" seems to be really good at getting people killed (potentially and in actuality), so it's kinda of like 5-0 (he hasn't saved his brother
yet and the brother can't be said to
be saved until he's in a non-extradition treaty country) bad guys at this point.
On the other hand, the side characters are actually pretty awesome. The guard with the hard-on for Wentworth Miller (get in line, dude; and
man...most unrealistic aspect ever? No one has ever tried to rape his ass; then again, this is on network TV, not HBO) is smart, and I share his opinion that the hero's smugness is cause enough to be eternally pissed at the guy (no matter how cute he is, hrmph!). And, of course, you have Peter Stormare who is fucking creepy
and is not even the scariest mo-fo on this show! That honor would belong to the guy playing T-Bag. For a network show, his obvious pedophilic tendencies are very brazen. And such a sense of humor despite that. I don't
like the character, but damned if he isn't the most interesting thing moving through the screen at any given time. Last, but not least, I'm really loving Stacey Keach as a
nice guy warden. I've never seen him play anything but a hardass. Different, in the good way.
My feelings about the show can be summarized by the following exclamations, which I must make at least twice every episode:
(about the doctor and the hero) "Just fucking do each other already."
(about T-Bag) ::shudder::
(about the conspirators) "It's a good thing no one believes the law can help them, or you guys would be so boned."
(about the wrongfully convicted heroes) "There's no way in hell that would work" or "You've got to be shitting me."
(about the crew who
aren't wrongfully convicted heroes) "Doesn't letting out murderers and thieves kind of tip the zero-sum game of harm being done pretty fucking firmly into the
more side of the scale than if you let the
one guy die?"
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arcane_the_sage to celebrate his reverse teenage birthday, which was lovely. Wish I'd done better by his gift, alas, but dinner was fun and Resident Evil: Extinction was as good as it needed to be for me to enjoy it. Which is to say that I've seen everything in it done better in another movie, but I still had fun. Ali Larter was foxy as fuck, too, even as her character was pretty useless. The movies bear as much resemblence to the games at this point as your average Uwe Boll movie. Fortunately, the acting and production values are better (the acting not by much, though).
