Archive | November, 2011

Two VERY NEW Simpsons Episodes That Are Actually Worth Your Attention

30 Nov

I once spent a whole week in Virginia playing with guns and babies.  No one was injured.  I’m good at compartmentalizing, that’s my point.

I know it’s not easy for everyone to keep their passions separate.  It becomes even more challenging when you want to separate a passion from itself.  We all engage in this practice to one extent or another and the best example I can think of is Star Wars.  Right?  Somewhere out there, there’s a version of Star Wars that we love.  And I mean love.  But by this point in history, there are more bad Star Wars movies than good (remember, they released that computer animated Clone Wars in the theatre) and even the good trilogy has been altered to the point that they too are essentially not worth watching.

We don’t have to pretend the prequels don’t exist.  We acknowledge that they’re there and they’re meant for someone else.  The fact that those stains are on the record don’t make it impossible to have fun watching Luke get his ass handed to him by an ice wampa.  We compartmentalize.  “This” is the Star Wars I love, “that” is the Star Wars I hate.

Being a fan of The Simpsons requires this to such a high degree it’s staggering.  The show has been on for 23 years and to say that the quality has been spotty for over a decade would be generous.  Yes, there are occasionally pretty decent episodes that have popped up in the last 5 or 6 years, and we can all agree that the movie wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as we were all expecting.  Even still, no one should be expected to watch and enjoy every single episode of the series.  But, my friends, I just saw to episodes FROM THIS VERY YEAR that I rather enjoyed.

The first is called ‘The Food Wife’ (s. 23, ep. 5) and features guest voices Tim and Eric.  The second is called ‘The Book Job’ (s. 23, ep. 6) and features Neil Gaiman.  Both are available on Hulu, but only for a few more weeks.  ‘The Food Wife’ is actually a rather simple story about Marge and the kids bonding over something and Homer’s resultant jealousy.  ‘The Book Job’ is a play on heist movies and has a lot of fun at the expense of fantasy novels.  I don’t really want to give too much away about either episode, but rather urge you to watch them.  We spend so much time forcing modern Simpsons into the “ignore” box, it’s easy to miss gems like these.

Also, that couch gag that John K. did is fucking rad as shit.  The episode that it ran in front of (“Replaceable You”) is typical later-day Simpsons dreck, but you owe it to yourself to check out the couch gag (the crazy stuff stars about about 0:50):

Note: I just realized that between ragging on The Simpsons, ripping apart Terra Nova, noting the dumbing-down of Bones and dismissing Star Wars, I’m directing an awful lot of ire toward Fox.  No matter what else 20th Century Fox does, you have to remember that they have a pretty good history of putting cool shows on TV.  And if you consider FX’s programming as well, it’s hard to take a hardline fuck-Fox stance.  Remember Firefly?  The only reason that exists at all is because they put it on TV in the first place.

Anyway, check out those Simpsons.

The Burden of Proof Falls on Me

29 Nov

I gave up Terra Nova last week.  I made sort of a big stink about it to boot.  But some of my friends did not believe that I would be able to pull myself away from the program.  It is this disbelief that made me question my resolve.  So I decided to hold myself accountable for all my actions tonight while the show was on.  Yes, I could On-Demand it or catch it on Hulu in a few days, but I’ve watched all previous episodes live as they aired.  8:00PM – 9:00PM Mondays were Terra Nova time, but not tonight.

First off I synchronized this white clock with the clock on the cable box.  You can plainly see they both read 8:01.

Since I was already on the floor, I decided to turn my attention to my frequently disorganized media collection.  Media should be arranged by type and then alphabetically within (except for comics, which are arranged chronologically – duh).  I ran into a little problem:

Before I could make a proper decision, the timer went off in the kitchen and I went down to the laundry room in the basement of my building and collected my clothes from the drier.

When I finally got back up stairs, the scum on my teeth from the Thai takeout we had ordered earlier that evening started feeling extra scummy.  You know how it is.  Sometimes you have to really fucking brush before you feel right.  Here I am, really giving it hell:

My teeth sufficiently clean, but my shirt sufficiently soiled, I decided to give myself a break from all of this tiddying up and take in a beer and a book on the porch.

Reconnecting with one side of my education always makes me wish to reconnect with the other.  After a little dense reading, I set the Korg 88-key keyboard to ‘harpsichord’ and struggled my way through a few classics.

All this time I keep hearing “you’re making a mess” or “that sounds terrible” or “looking kind of fatty.”  I hear this not only from my girlfriend – who lives with me – but from my neighbors across the alley, so I finish the beer and go outside to jump a little rope.  At least I can hope to affect the fatty thing.

Oh shit!  My laundry!  Most of it is fairly wrinkly by now, but I work in the back office of a plant place, so ain’t nobody gonna care what my clothes look like.  Still, I should get folding.

And then, as the hour reached 9, I opened another beer and stared longingly at a toy dinosaur.  I don’t think I need to explain that action.

So that’s it.  My whereabouts from 8:00PM PST to 9:00PM PST.  And none of it spent watching Terra Nova.  I am so much happier for it.

Incidentally, does anyone know how to get tooth paste out of a black shirt?

 

 

Walking Dead – 407 – Pretty Much Dead Already

28 Nov

I own the first three seasons of Bones on DVD.  I bought them with basically zero knowledge of the show.  I think I just wanted a slightly different procedural show to watch  when there was nothing else to do.  For much of the first three seasons, Bones adequately scratched that itch.  The characters are fun and quirky without being annoying, the chemistry between the leads is solid and there’s enough fun science and pseudo-science to keep a body entertained.  Where the series surprised me was in its occasional extreme moral ambiguity.  There’s an episode early in the first season where a death row serial killer alludes to the fact that there’s another body out there that the police haven’t found.  Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) are compelled to find the body even though it means reopening the case against said confessed killer and effectively delaying his execution.  They feel shitty about it.  Sure, they help some family find closure, but they also buy this killer more time to live.  The episode itself plays the moral and emotional consequences in a really mature and interesting way, certainly more interesting that I was expecting from my fun cop show.

But that was kind of before the show got its major network stream-lining.  We’re eventually introduced to Bones’ estranged brother and father (to humanize a character that’s maybe ‘too weird’ for prime time), the lab gets a sexy young boss and characters start hooking up.  The biggest casualty in this stream-lining was the aforementioned moral ambiguity.  One arc involves Bones having to testify against her father in a murder trial.  Bones’ dad is a piece of shit – he abandoned her when she was little, he’s only reappeared to use her and he actually did commit the murder he is on trial for.  But Bones decides to throw her expert testimony and get her dad off the hook.  It’s played like she made the absolute right choice because she did right by her dad – never mind that it betrays everything we know about the character’s sense of duty and justice.  It was in that moment that Bones started to lose me.  I fundamentally disagreed with the oblique morality that the show was presenting.

There were a few times tonight that I feared Walking Dead came dangerously close to a similar situation.  I agree with Shane.  Like 100%.  Keeping the dead in the barn isn’t the moral high ground, killing them and letting go of the people you’ve already lost is.  And it seems to me that the show is trying to make Shane look like an element of chaos – a destabilizing force that makes immoral choices based on some selfish primal impulses.  I thought the show and I were on the same page about shooting Otis – an unfortunate turn of events, but either one of them was going to die or both of them were going to die.  Shane did the math and made the right decision.  It may have been a hard decision, but because he made it, he saved his own life and Carl’s.

So when Dale starts to give shit about “the man that he’s become,” I just want to slap Dale across the face.  But The Walking Dead keeps pushing Dale’ perspective as though it’s totally reasonable – even though we’ve been to the CDC and heard from Dr. Truman’s Friend that zombies are DEAD and have no hope of returning to their former selves.  Obviously, Hershel also thinks they can save the dead – it’s sort of the crux of his character at the moment – and I feel like the series is presenting this perspective as much more reasonable than the alternative.

I’m backing off on this now because I think The Walking Dead does a fine enough job maintaining a little editorial distance from this issue, letting the characters debate it rather than overtly telling the audience what to think.  Also, watching Shane’s righteous fury unfold in the final minutes only to be interrupted by the reveal of Sophia’s fate was fucking great.  It’s exactly the kind of reveal that hits on a story-level and an emotional-level simultaneously while being genuinely surprising and upsetting.

There was other shit in this episode, but the last 15 minutes or so kind of overshadow that.  As far as cliffhangers go (remember, we’re not back until February), this one holds a lot of promise.  The group now has no reason to stay (save for Lori’s pregnancy, which is still largely secret), but with Hershel’s rules tossed into the wind, it seems like there’s also no reason to leave.  I’d like to see our guys return to an urban environment, just because that’s exciting to me.  Where would you like to see our rag-tag group of survivors go next?

Before this write-up series takes a hiatus, I would like to invite you back next week.  I’m gonna watch that Bike Girl Zombie web series on AMCTV.com – it’s made up of six ‘mini-sodes’ (I’d like to have that term stricken from the record), so next week I’ll talk about all of them.

Nightwing 1-3

25 Nov

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Nigtwing while Drew is hosting the discussion of Green Lantern Corps.

Patrick: I never read a Nightwing title before the new 52.  Much like my experience with Batgirl, I knew Nightwing from his various appearances in other comics I was reading anyway or other Batman media.  Nightwing – for those that don’t know – is Dick Grayson and was the original Robin.  I may not have known that much about Nightwing, but I know Dick Grayson – he’s sort of been the go-to Robin when depicting the dynamic duo on screen.  Dick’s origin story and Bruce Wayne’s origin story share one huge commonality – that of losing both parents at a young age at the hand of a petty criminal.  But while this loss drives Bruce to obsessively reform the city and take impossible revenge, Dick’s reaction to the loss has always been a bit more mysterious.  Does he fight crime to right some cosmic wrong?  It’s always been hard to nail down what exactly Dick fights for.  By this point in his run, he’s been Robin, Nightwing, Batman, and now he’s Nightwing.  I suspect that he fights crime because that’s basically the only life he knows anymore.
That is, until his old life creeps back into Gotham City.  In issue 1 of the new series, Haly’s Circus returns to town.  Dick hasn’t been back to see the circus, or any of the friends he made when the Flying Graysons toured with them, since his parents were killed.  He’s swept up in those warm feelings of nostalgia when he sees his old friends again, particularly foxy redhead Raya.  She invites Dick to show off some of his old acrobatics skills and he obliges, but has to consciously tone down his prowess.  For all they know, he’s been sitting on his ass the last 5 years, not flipping around Gotham fighting crime.  But fight crime he must! Dick is attacked by an masked assassin named Saiko on his way home that very evening.  Not content to keep his best assets hidden, Dick dons the Nightwing costume and engages the assassin in combat.  They duke it out but Saiko escapes.  Confused, but basically none the worse for wear, Dick heads home only to have his peaceful night interrupted by the aforementioned fox redhead.  Raya takes him on a private jet to Atlantic City where Dick meets with Mr. Haly, the dying owner of the eponymous circus.  Haly knows that, not only is he in failing health, but someone is trying to kill him.  Cue Saiko!  The assassin manages to kill Mr. Haly, but not before Haly wills the circus to Dick.  Also, that private plane ride?  Sex with the redhead.  When he returns to Gotham, Dick finds that the circus folk aren’t nearly so welcoming anymore.  Haly’s son blames Dick for his father’s death and refuses to recognize his authority as owner of the circus (not that Dick is eager to claim this right).  At the funeral, Dick and Raya revisit some of their past Raya reveals that one of their former cohort hires contract killers for a living in Chicago.  Dick goes looking for a lead, but ultimately comes back empty handed.

That’s a fairly dense block of text up there.  When trying to gather my thoughts on Nightwing, I realized that an awful lot had transpired in these three issues.  Most of the action revolved around characters and institutions that are brand new to me.  The fact that I feel like I have a solid grasp on all of these moving pieces, as well as a pretty good idea of who all these people are three action-packed issues in bodes well.  Batman is running a detective story at present, but Nightwing is a thriller.  The storytelling isn’t revolutionary, but it is efficient and competent.  What’s more, I think Kyle Higgins is getting to the heart of some issues that are unique to Dick Grayson.

Raya levels the following criticism: “You look forward instead of back, Dick.  It’s who you are.”  Raya’s read on this is 100% correct, and it seems to be the pivot point around which this incarnation of Nightwing spins.  I think it’s keenly observed that the character has a past that he rarely lets define him, except where convenient.  In the opening pages, Dick rattles off his caped past and even casually mentions his acrobat training, but all only to say that he’s powerful and able to handle anything that Gotham City may throw his way.  He may not be running away from his past, but it is hard for Dick to embrace it.  There are a number of spreads that include panels that appear to be lifted from another book, pasted haphazardly on the page, as though in a scrapbook.  I originally found this affect kind of annoying – it’s always set off my a green or blue frame and, especially on my computer or phone, made the action tricky to follow.  But once I landed on this idea of photo albums and Dick’s relationship with his past, I went back through the issues and enjoyed the technique.

Another thing I think the art is accomplishing very well is acting.  Dick flashes so many smirks and each one conveys a slightly different meaning.  Also, Haly’s grieving son had some really expressive moments.  Eddy Barrows really catches a wide range of emotions in his faces and I think it serves the dialog and the action really really well.  There are a few layouts that have weird panels – one in the shape of the bat signal toward the end of issue #2 comes to mind – but by and large the art is really working for me.

I was going to lay into Saiko as sort of an uninteresting villain, but that may be a bit premature.  Batman, Nightwing and Batgirl are all featuring new villains – all of which are killers.  But Batman’s Talon is tied up in the history of Gotham and is therefore thematically linked with the rest of the book.  Batgirl’s Mirror perhaps too directly relates to Barb’s survivor’s guilt.  But Saiko?  At this point in the series, he’s little more than a hired thug is a neat costume (the costume is neat – props there).  That Saiko’s strings are being pulled by ***SPOILER*** Haly’s son is sort of interesting and ties to the idea that Dick cannot escape his past, no matter how far away it feels, but I think we need a little more time with the characters to get a real sense of the psychology behind it.  I am hopeful Higgins will not disappoint.

I don’t want to complain about the following too much, because it’s not really effecting my ability to enjoy the title.  Due to the reboot/not-reboot, the timeline is a little messy.  As a function of ignoring some Batman-history and embracing other Batman-history, it appears that fewer than 5 years have passed since Dick’s glory days at the circus, but also enough time has past for Dick to go through all of these transformations (Robin to Nightwing, Nightwing to Batman, Batman to Nightwing).  A lot of the DC stable have this implied problem, but Nightwing makes a specific point in the first three issues to state that the old continuity is simultaneously true and untrue.  Did you pick up on this Drew?  I’ve seen that criticism made of the Hawk and Dove, and at the time I thought “GET OVER IT NERD” but now I’m having a hard time getting over it.  Nerd.

But I am digging Dick’s solo adventure.  It’s a little strange that Batgirl #3 featured Nightwing and Nightwing #4 seems like it will feature Batgirl.  Both characters are wrestling with their pasts and they both sorta operate out of shitty apartments in Gotham City.  Plus, there’s all that shared history, all that flipping-through-the-city flirting.  I had guessed from his appearance in Batman #1 that Dick would be a greater presence in that series, but I’m starting to really like the idea that Batgirl and Nightwing can act as companion pieces.  I’ll raise a glass to the on-going adventures of Dick and Babs.

Drew: I have to admit, I also got juked pretty hard by Dick’s appearances in Batman 1 and 2.  I thought for sure the evidence that pointed to Dick in Batman’s John Doe murder was related to Saiko’s claim that “Dick Grayson is the fiercest killer in all of Gotham,” but now his motives don’t aren’t as clear.  I’m not convinced that Haly hired Saiko (the reveal at the end of issue 3 makes it seem like he actually has no control over whether or not Saiko kills Dick), but I have no idea what that last scene didmean, or what any of this has to do with the secret Haly Sr. alluded to as he was dying.  I think there is a bit of a detective story going on here, it’s just that Dick is more of an action hero than a sleuth.

Like you, I’m more familiar with Dick as Robin than as Nightwing, but I think this is a great time to be getting into the character.  He abandoned the Robin mantle largely because he didn’t want to become Bruce, and after actually having been Batman, he’s returned to Nightwing, the life he’s made for himself.  Of course, embracing who he is means embracing his past, both his crime-fighting and circus family sides, even if it’s hard for him.  I’m not sure I agree that he fights crime because he has no choice — his taking up of the Nightwing mantle twice over and his struggles as Batman (I just picked up Grant Morrison’s Batman and Robin volumes 1 and 2) suggests that he still has tastes and affinities within the realm of crimefighting — but you’re right in assessing this title as largely being about a young man dealing with his past, and how that past effects his identity.  These are pretty deep themes for a superhero comic, ones that resonate all the more with me given that my blog is more or less devoted to examining the same themes in my own life.  I talked a lot about theme in [last week's write up of Batman], and how those themes tied into the concept of Batman as a timeless character, but I may actually be more fond of the more personal themes being explored here.

I like your read on those weirdly framed panels, but I’m not sure the points where those happen are significant memories for Dick.  It’s used kind of indiscriminately (and not at all in the third issue), and seems to me more of a way to kind of have (double) splash pages without giving up whole pages, but it really feels like there should be a compelling narrative reason for these weird layouts.  Unfortunately, I’m not as convinced as you that there is one.

I’m with you on the weirdness of only five years having passed.  I imagine Bruce’s training regiment for Robins wouldn’t allow for Dick to have been Robin long enough to decide to leave, become Nightwing, take over as Batman, and return to Nightwing, let alone have trained four Robins in that time (granted, Damian didn’t need as much training, but that’s still like a Robin a year.  There’s essentially no timeline wherein a kid sidekick could take over for his mentor in five years.  Even if Dick is 20 currently (and I feel he must be a good deal older than that), he would have been 15 when Bruce took him in.  Bogus.
Like you, I’m finding myself thinking about this title along with Batgirl, mostly for the way their going about characterizing their leads.  Babs is a little more developed as a character, but I’d say the level of characterization is comparable, if that makes any sense.  Dick’s voice isn’t coming through as strongly as Babs’, but I’m recognizing this as Dick Grayson; he’s an incredibly skilled acrobat, he has a penchant for talking while fighting, and a predeliction for redheads.  When this is tied in with the (age appropriate?) themes of identity and its relation to the past, the result is a striking pallate for developing Dick as a human being.  I’ll raise my glass to exploring that.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Justice League of America, Batman, Batman & Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Woman, Action Comics

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Impossible Expectations for Skyward Sword

24 Nov

And here it is: Thanksgiving.  The day that we launch the holiday season and prepare our bodies for a month of gorging and our souls for massive ennui.  Nostalgia is a harsh mistress and the holidays bring it out in just about everyone.  This is the first Thanksgiving that I won’t be eating at my aunt’s table at her house in Downers Grove, Illinois.  I think my girlfriend, her parents and myself, have a delightful day ahead of us, but there’s a nagging voice, low in the back of my head, that keeps insisting “this isn’t the same as it used to be.”  But this is a known entity; holiday depression is common.  We all need to remember the Christmases where our hearts exploded with joy from just looking at the tree.  I’d like to get at something much more specific – an event that has me diving back through a pool of surprisingly deep pool of meaningful and varied memories.

I am referring, of course, to the release of the new Legend of Zelda game.

Oh, I have all the usual childhood memories of playing all the great old titles in this series.  This includes more than their fair share of youthful afternoons spent on the series’ undisputed champions – A Link to the Past and The Ocarina of Time.  If you’ve held Super Nintendo or N64 controllers, you have these same memories.  They are lovely memories, make no mistake.  But now when I look back at the Zelda series, I am most moved by my experience with Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

I was in college when Wind Waker came out and while I picked up a copy, I could never squeeze it into my schedule.  I didn’t really have the time to commit to a game like that then.  However, this changed the year I worked as a Residence Hall Director.  Not only did have I have time to play games, I needed something to do in my apartment while I waited there with my door open.  See, this was my policy at the time – stay at home with the door open and wait for people to come to me.  It was largely effective, but it became an unqualified success when I picked up a Wii.  I would come home and find people playing Wii Tennis or Wario Ware or whatever.

It was this feeling of community that accompanied my play-throughs of both WW and TP.  I don’t think I played a second of either of those games by myself.  Mind you, these are STRICTLY single-player games.  It turns out that Zelda games are mostly about remembering what you’ve done and deciding what to do next.  This is where a room full of college students comes in handy.  So every time I picked up a new item, five or six voices popped up with suggestions for how and where I could use it.  For the first time ever, I made it through a Zelda game without become totally stuck (with the exception of TP – there’s a puzzle where you have to put a bomb in a cannon, but if you’ve up-grading to bombchus, the bombs won’t go in the way they’re supposed to).  We were a team.  And we kicked ass.  To me, these games aren’t about Link defeating Gannon and saving the world, they’re about spending time with Art, Drew, Andy, Susan, Chelsea, Willie, Finn, Ian, April, Cheeps, Nora, Shauna, Kat, Celeste and probably a dozen other people that rotated in and out of that room.  I don’t know that I have the heart to embark down a new title without these people.

The game is getting some stellar reviews.  Some are calling it the best in the series.  Others back down and call it the best since [insert either Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time, depending].  Unless the game comes with paid time off and plane tickets for a dozen of my closest long-lost friends, I’m not sure it can compete with my experience of Twilight Princess or Wind Waker.  It sorta pains me to say it, but I might skip out on this one.  I don’t really want to go into a dungeon without Art reminding me to fill up on health potions.  I don’t want to pick up a hook shot and not have Willie there to remind me of the three places we already saw where I can use it.  I don’t want to come to a fork in the road and not have Chelsea there to remind me which way is faster.

A new Zelda game – possibly the best Zelda game yet.  I just don’t think it’s for me.

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Terra Nova – Vs.

21 Nov

Terra Nova vs. what?  Doesn’t matter what it is, I’m putting my money on that other thing.

These characters are constantly saying things that don’t make sense.  “They quidded, so I pro quo’d.”  That’s not clever, it’s stupid.  Josh being the mature one in a conversation with his father?  Not fucking likely. Also, stupid.   Jim making a crack about Malcom’s hairline?  Retarded.  And not likely.  And stupid.  And retarded again.

I’m writing this as I watch the show.  Last week I tried a little satire – pretending the themes of the series warranted the scrutiny I would apply to series like Breaking Bad or Walking Dead.  It still wasn’t fun to write about.  In fact, the most fun I’ve had with this series was making up the rules to this game.  Al’s going to win, by the way.  Maybe this says more about me than it does about the series.  But I know that my girlfriend is leaving for the grocery store right now (25 minutes into the episode) and I’m staying here to watch this garbage.  I am exceedingly jealous of her.  And I say that despite the fact that I’m standing up to get a beer.

I get back to my seat when Malcom, Taylor and the Shannons are investigating the dead body together.  Taylor is obviously responsible for the corpse in this week’s shit-mystery, and as the character starts to swing his nuts around a little in order to intimidate the other characters, the music swells.  But there is nothing sinister about this scene, nothing scary, nothing mysterious.  It is immediately obvious what’s going on and whatever tension the scene was going for flatlines before the act break.  Traditionally, the drama spikes before an act break.  But spikes of drama, waxing and waning intensity, character development, coherent stories – all of these things are absent from Terra Nova even on its best nights.

Jesus Christ, there’s also this awful B-plot about the Harvest Festival play, wherein Zoe plays the part of Commander Taylor.  Oh and the production is being directed by Maddy because there aren’t any people living here except those that we see every week.  The Festival itself is an excellent example of one of TN’s biggest stumbling points – the series has no sense of the culture of these people.  Hell, the culture of 2148 could be fascinating in its own right; you would think that the evolution of this culture as it was relocated could likewise be fascinating.  Instead, there’s nothing.  There are doctors, soldiers, a cop, and 3 kids.  That’s it.  No one does anything.  There are no stakes and nothing matters.  Not even survival is an issue.  Fuck, comfort isn’t an issue.  These guys exist to dick around from day to day and it’s impossible to get lost in the details of their day-to-day life because no one on the show has the faintest fucking clue what those details would be.

I know I have high expectations for television series.  But when I adjust those expectations (as I usually do for network dramas), I can find some enjoyment in Once Upon a Time or Pan Am or Grimm.  There is no curve generous enough to bump Terra Nova up to a passing grade.  It is safe in the worst way imaginable.  The worst trainwrecks on TV in the last couple years were at the very least ambitious.  Heroes failed because it tried to do too many things.  Oh it had other flaws too, obviously.  Acting, pacing, shitty-pretentious scoring.  But whatever else Heroes fucked up, it boldly tried to tell a comic book style story with over a dozen characters.  It failed in this endeavor.

Terra Nova is not even trying.  The fourth act tonight consists of a Commander Taylor flashback that ANSWERS ALL YOUR QUESTIONS.  Problem is that viewers don’t give a shit anymore.  The gist of the revelation is that Taylor’s son Lucas has been working on a way to move back and forth between the future and the past so he can get precious Terra Nova resources to 2148 and give the future a shot at rebuilding.  To facilitate this, Lucas brings Taylor’s mentor back from the future to take over as leader of the camp.  Taylor reacts poorly, killing his mentor and exiling his son.  TWO THINGS make this revelation terrible.  (that’s two things beyong “the audience doesn’t care any more.”)  First, is that we basically already intuited this information already because the series always winks at the camera and makes DAMN SURE you didn’t miss all those great secrets they have!  Wow, what fun!  Second, it doesn’t make sense.  Why would Taylor not want the future to stand a fighting chance in with Terra Nova resources?  And further, why would Jim be moved by this desire?

Aggressively shitty, the show has beaten me.  I used to watch Dragon Ball Z as a kid – that’s how high my tolerance for crap is – but this is it.  I’m not awarding points for tonight’s outing, but rest assured it would have been mostly medical and navigation.  I’m calling the game.  Congratulations Al, as I forecast earlier, you’ve won.  Email me your address and I’ll send you your trophy, but know this: you will then have a Terra Nova trophy.  You will have to live with that for the rest of your life.  If you’d rather, I could write you a dirty sonnet instead.

This is me, coming out with my hands up.

Walking Dead – 406 – Secrets

20 Nov

Secrets…

Anything I type after that clip is going to be a major disappointment.

Maggie, I’d like to take this opportunity to address you directly.  Yes, you, the cute farmer’s daughter.  Hi.  Patrick Ehlers, I’m a fan of the show.  First, I want to congratulate you on hooking up with Glenn.  A quick survey of available fuck-buddies reveals that you absolutely 100% made the right choice.  So it’s kinda confusing to me the way you treat him, but I’m just going to write that off as male writers defaulting to writing women as crazy, or hysterical, or driven by hormones, or just plain irrational.  I don’t like it, but I recognize it when I see it.  That’s not what I want to talk about.  Maggie, I think you’re right to call Glenn out on referring to those people in the barn as “walkers.”  It’s insensitive, it’s vague, and it sounds silly.  We all know they’re zombies.  Zombies.  Zombies.

If anyone was reading that aloud and looking in a mirror, I apologize.  Anyone that was reading quietly not in front of a mirror, may I suggest standing in front of the mirror (preferably with the lights off) and saying “zombies” three times.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.  No, zombies won’t appear and ruin your slumber party.  Saying the word “zombie” is just the method I utilize to determine that I am not in a zombie movie – obviously if you were in a zombie movie, you wouldn’t know anything about zombies and you certainly wouldn’t be familiar with that term.  So go ahead.  Say it a few times, and then relax; you’re safe.  At least from zombies.  You can say “vampire” all you want, you’re still going to have to keep a glove a garlic and some silver bullets handy.

Hershel is getting on my nerves.  And I get that he’s meant to be an old man stuck in his ways, but his constant cock-blocking is venturing away from cautious and in to vindictive.  He doesn’t really appear to be motivated by anything expect being stuck in his ways.  Does he want the safety of his people?  It is hard to say – even his own people acknowledge that, with Otis gone, their defenses are impossibly poor.  I don’t know – he’s just not working for me.  In particular, the scene in which the two friendly old men square off was dull and sort of an exercise in people saying shit that didn’t matter.  Same can be said of the Shane/Dale conversation, for that matter.  And the comment element there is Dale, so maybe my problem is with him.  As noted in the comments, this show is at its worst when it spits out exposition.  It is at its very worst when it spits out characters’ feelings, as demonstrated by Dale suggesting that Shane get in his shiny new Subaru (love) and drive away.

Andrea’s working to regain some cred with the camp bad-asses.  Doesn’t take much more than an apology to Daryl (met with a casual threat?) to undo any damage cause by that accidental shooting.  Grazing really.  But Shane’s going to be a tougher nut to crack.  He’s taken her on as the new shooting prodigy in the camp and graduated her to the advanced class.  Advanced class takes the form of moving targets and mild verbal abuse because of course it would.  But Andrea proves none too responsive to this style of instruction no matter how hard Shane verbally abuses her.  So he gets creative.  He takes Andrea to the ‘burbs, claiming they are following a lead on Sophia.  Naturally, all they find are zombies and Andrea puts her shooting skills to practice with actual zombies.  Invigorated with her successes in the field of zombie-murder, Andrea jumps Shane’s bones on the way home.  In true bad-ass form, she doesn’t flirt or approach with little kisses; she grabs a fistful of dick and cuts the shit.

Last thing I wanna touch on – Rick and Lori.  I am glad that they resolved whatever kind of lingering “Lori fucked Shane but didn’t tell Rick about it” drama that’s been limply brewing since the second episode.  And to this show’s credit, it proved to be a non-issue.  Rick sorta already knew and whatever: he was dead, right?  But the real meat of their conversation was about the baby.  It ended up being a slightly more politically charged version of the conversation they had about Carl earlier in the season.  Look, Walking Dead, I agree with you – it’s a choice a woman should be allowed to make.  Choice choice choice.  Say that in the mirror as many times as you want, you’re still stuck doing write-ups on Terra Nova because you thought it’d be fun to play a fantasy game with it.  How could you possible know it was going to be so bad?  And how could Lori know that her husband was going to be so cool with everything?  In my case, I could have read the signals: Brannon Bagga’s work on TV sucks and advance word was the dinosaurs looked bad and it was a family show.  And Lori?  I guess Glenn was telling her to talk to her husband about it.

I don’t know if the season was structured to reflect the break we’re about to get, but that might explain the odd storytelling tonight.  Most of the other episodes this season have done a nice job being self-contained stories while still building on the on-going series mythology.  This one felt a lot more like table-setting for the mid-season finale next week.  Usually after those kinds of episodes I’m all a twitter with the anticipation of whatever conflict boiling over.  Are we at a boil?  Can’t say that I’m feeling an urgent need for resolution.  Hell, I’m not even 100% clear on who all these farm people are.  Shouldn’t I have a clear view of who our heroes are struggling against?

And finally, a gripe.  An honest to goodness, unqualified gripe.  Pharmacy zombie – he look mostly CG to you?  I love Walking Dead’s practical special effects.  Some skillful make up always looks better than shoddy CGI (yes, another veiled jab at Terra Nova).  So, it was a little disappointing to see an uncompelling zombie character on this show.  The one thing I can always expect to get from this show is at least one grotesque staggering ghoul.  Is that so much to ask?

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Justice League 1-3

18 Nov

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Justice League, while Drew is hosting the discussion of Batman.

Patrick: At the end of the hardbound collection of the Flash: Rebirth mini-series that brought Barry Allen back as the Flash after a 23 year hiatus, there’s a nice little interview with Geoff Johns.  The interviewer tries to probe Johns for information on the story’s crazy science fiction elements and tries to tease out details about where all this is leading, but Johns remains singularly focused on one thing: the character of Barry Allen.  Johns’ preferred method of talking about Barry is describing his relationships Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and on and on.  It’s a singularly pointed fascination.  I wonder if he was already working on rebooting Justice League when he gave that interview, because if the new series is about anything, it’s about the relationships between these superheroes.

I mean that literally: “if the new series is about anything.”  So far, all that’s really happened in three issues is a swarm of demonic robots have descended upon Earth and started kidnapping random humans.  Beyond that, it’s a series of Batman-meets-Green-Lantern, they-both-meet-Superman, all-three-of-them-meet-The-Flash, etc. stories.  There is also an origin story for the Cyborg, but that’s got to be the weakest element of this run so far as it’s your basic 6 Million Dollar Man story.  I don’t have a sense of who Victor is, and beyond fatherly love and devotion, I don’t really have a sense of what drives his father to graft all this technology onto his dying son.  Luckily, this is this only origin story that is being attempted, as all the other characters appear to be established in their routines, this is just the first time they’ve joined forces.

The New 52 Justice League lacks a compelling narrative.  But I don’t necessarily mean that as a negative.  These first couple issues aren’t intended to be an exercise in subtly, but a fireworks display with all of DC’s best feet forward.  You can see this in the creative team behind the book: writer Geoff Johns is the current Creative Director at DC and artist Jim Lee is a DC mainstay and is credited for the design of the characters in the relaunch.  The first issue of Justice League was the first issue of anything from the New 52 was one of only two books released by DC on September 1 (the other being the final issue of Flashpoint – also written by Johns).  Each issue is huge (also, $3.99) and packed with big beautiful drawings of our heroes in action.  As a result, these books are sleek as hell and loaded with funny and interesting interactions between the characters.

The first couple issues take place “5 Years Ago” (whatever the hell that means), and I’ve read articles that suggest that we’ll only be “5 Years Ago” for the first story arc and then we’re hoping back to present day.  While I am enjoying the kinetic power of this series, I would be happy to see it slow down once it settles into present day.  It’s funny – I feel like I shouldn’t like this series as much as I do.  I’m sure part of what allows me to just have fun with it is that I’m reading other titles with most of these characters that move at a much more deliberate pace and explore their subject matter.  Take, for example, the two introduced in issue 3: Aquaman and Wonder Woman.  I’m sure a casual reader would have a much colder reaction to them appearing, but I am coming fresh off the Aquaman and Wonder Woman series, which have both been great and painted the characters as dynamic people with real human problems (even if neither of them are totally human) and not just robot murderers.  I’m also reading Action Comics, Green Lantern and Batman – and I’d like to be reading the Flash, but let’s pace ourselves, huh?  The point is, I have a good sense of who these people are in the world of the New 52 from reading their other books.  Justice League is like a bonus.

I don’t think I’d recommend that anyone read just Justice League.  But as a playground for all the heroes that are developing elsewhere around the DC Universe, I think it’s doing a good job of staying fun, fast and spectacular.  It’s really just page after page of icon heroes in impressively detailed costumes kicking ass, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Plus, every now and then you get a truly visually interesting piece like this one:

What do you think Drew?  It’s hard to fault a comic book for embracing style over substance – especially when there’s nothing glaringly terrible about the substance.  But this book is definitely more concerned with BEING AWESOME than anything else.  At the end of the day, I can say that it really is fun for me.  Is it fun for you?

Drew: It’s hard for me to say if I am having fun.  I think at this point my answer is a “no,” but I’m taking that to mostly mean “not yet.”  There are a few things that I like here, but it’s really bogged down by the group origin story.  I’ve come to be wary of origin stories, mostly because I see them as being overstuffed — in addition to the often complex origin tale, they’re also tasked with telling a compelling hero vs. villain story (which often means explaining the origin of the villain).  The story ends up serving neither of these plots particularly well, and leaves no room for the development and exploration of themes and characters that make superhero comics worth reading.  Origin stories can be successful, but usually by dropping the pretense of a big, scary villain in favor of smaller character moments and broader thematic development (Batman: Year One is the gold standard).  Unfortunately, Justice League isn’t going that route, and I’m not sure I understand why.

I’m not getting anything out of the fact that these heroes are teaming up for the first time, and other than the constant surprise that Batman doesn’t have superpowers and the general underestimation of just how powerful Superman is (and their kind of boring penchant to fight first, ask questions later), this could just as easily not be an origin story.  I don’t know what we’re going to get out of seeing the Justice League’s origin, but I may have to reserve that judgement until the end of this first arc.  Right now, though, all of the characters seem to be suffering from sharing the stage — I would say that Flash is the only one yet to have anything resembling a personality — which might just be a symptom of a large ensemble cast.  Johns has reserved a little more introduction space for some of the (how should I say…) second-tier characters.  While Batman, Green Lantern, and Superman are mashed together in the first issue, followed quickly (ha!) by Flash in the second, much of the third issue is devoted to Wonder Woman on her own.  Based solely on the covers of the next two issues, it looks like they will be similarly devoted to introducing Aquaman and Cyborg, respectively.

While giving a good introduction to the team’s not-as-well understood heroes makes a lot of sense, it also gives short shrift to the heroes that drew me to the title in the first place.  I can’t think of a single moment in these first two issues where Batman, Superman, or Green Lantern said something that wouldn’t have made just as much sense being said by another character (aside from lines that address their specific powers, obviously).  That’s not a good sign, but I recognize that it’s still too early to complain that the character’s aren’t well-developed — heck, all three of these issues have taken place over the course of a few hours, so these characters haven’t had much of a chance to be themselves.  It’s not all bad; I think Flash’s comic relief is working, and Wonder Woman’s fish-out-of-water antics are a good take on the character, I just wish we were shown a little motivations behind the actions of the other characters.

I agree that the page you highlighted is stunning, but I really don’t think there’s anything else like it in the first three issues.  I’ve always been more impressed by Jim Lee’s clean, crisp images than the imagination of his layouts, and this title largely confirms that perception.  Don’t get me wrong — his art is vivid and often gorgeous, but his devotion to clarity often prevents him from embracing the abstract, which is necessary for the kind of image we’re using as an example, a tendency I find all the more frustrating now that I know he’s capable of producing images like the one above.

I anticipate this becoming a title that I really like, but I’m kind of twiddling my thumbs until the characters get their introductions out of the way.  I already know Batman doesn’t have powers and that Aquaman is half Atlantean, so I’m not particularly interested in hearing them explain it again, or to see that Green Lantern was kind of surprised when he learned this for the first time.  These are all things that have to happen before the story starts, and I’m anxious to get to that point.  I have faith that Johns is going somewhere good with this, but I’m finding the ride there a little bumpy.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Justice League of America, Batman, Batman & Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Woman, Action Comics

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Terra Nova – Proof

15 Nov

In Proof, Terra Nova explores the concept of the relationship between surrogate fathers and their surrogate children.  This is theme is most poingiant and finds the honest emotional meat at the heart of this matter for three reasons:

  • First, despite being a proud family show, Terra Nova does not explore the relationship between Jim – the actual father – and any of his three kids.  These would have been the most obvious father-child relationships to develop, so it’s fortunate that TN avoided that trap.
  • Second,  Commander Taylor fights off an ancestral komodo dragon to protect the young soldier he exiled a few weeks ago and asks him to spy on the Sixers in the hope that he can learn about what his estranged son is up to.  Clearly, this is a compelling father-son relationship that isn’t at all confused by implicit father-son relationship between commander and solider.
  • And third, at the end of the episode, after not saying anything about the relationship between Josh and Jim or Lucas and Taylor, Commander Taylor practically turns to the camera, winks and says “Fathers and sons” driving home the importance of this message in case the audience has failed to pick up on it.

Maddy does most of the emotional heavy-lifting this episode when she meets a long-time hero of her’s: Dr. Horton.  Maddy secures a position as his lab intern and slowly discovers that Dr. Horton is not who he appears to be.  The illusion of the father figure slowly melts away as Maddy conducts an investigation of her own that involves increasingly sophisticated forensic techniques to determine his true identity.  When she eventually consults the eye (that full-room google-computer from last week) and deduces that the real Dr. Horton was killed by his lab assistant (hands and face destroyed, no identification was possible) so the assistant could take his place on Terra Nova, Maddy is naturally devestated.  In one Oedipal move, she simultaneously discovers the death of her actual hero and determines the need to take out the man that had stolen his identity.  But Maddy’s steely resolve only allows her a moment of grief (indeed, most viewers might think that she was not feeling anything) and she goes about the task of exposing the false Dr. Horton.  While she puts her little sister in danger and is, herself, almost killed by a pre-historic spider in the process, Maddy nonetheless succeeds when her father (summoned by the family’s panic word: asparagus) comes out of nowhere and saves her.

Meanwhile, Josh is asked to steal medicine from the infirmary.  It turns out that the Sixers are sick and need the drug to treat those that have been afflicted with the illness.  But Josh, for all his rationalization, is only stealing the meds so he can solidify his deal with Meera to bring his girlfriend on the next pilgrimage.  The writers very subtly turn this into a parent-child dilema by having the characters repeatedly refer to this act of stealing medication as “stealing from Josh’s mom.”    Josh goes through with it, but eventually comes clean once he realizes that the stolen medication could be helping Terra Novans.  Just like his mother, Josh is first and foremost concerned with the health and well-being of everyone in their camp.

Which just leaves Taylor – Terra Nova’s unofficial father – wandering out in the wilderness.  He fishes, he tracks, he fights a dinosaur, we strikes up a secret deal with a killer to ensure they will have inside information on their enemies: just like your father used to when you were growing up.

Here are the awardable events as I see them:

EP – Proof
FISHING FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER fishing 2
Outpost 5 is just a couple of clicks from here navigation 1
picking shitty apples gathering 1
Taylor following the blood trail tracking 2
No one is going to know it’s your mom’s badge (that’s not how access cards work) computer hacking 2
treating the komodo dragon bite first aid 2
“you need authorization to use the DNA scanner” we all get a point for that one 1
Taylor fends off the komodo dragon melee weapon 2
Obvious SPOILER – Horton deception 2
one punch takes out the bad guy unarmed combat 1
interrogating the bar tender intimidation 1

And the current standings:

Total Character name Proof Previous Total
60 Doctor Doctor 4 56
57 C.S. Lewis 4 53
56 Turdball McStupid 8 48
53 Porkins 6 47
47 Balrog 6 41
45 Catherine 5 40
40 Shortround 8 32
31 Lady GaGa 2 29
29 Muldoon 5 24
25 Jeff 3 22

At times I feel bad for this little trifle of a game.  When one already has such a rich expressive canvass on which to view the emotionally resonant struggles between man and dinosaur, why do we even bother to gild the lily, crudely applying points to actions and decisions driven by well-developed characters and pervasive human themes of survival, acceptance and love?

Walking Dead – 405 – Chupacabra

13 Nov

Last week, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the soggyy-zombie storyline.  It was a quick little three-beat story about life on the farm after the zombie apocalypse.  I am certain that part of the reason I liked it so much was because it seemed very much like the mundane kind of activity that really would happen on a farm – an animal falls into the well and you have to get it out.  The stakes are low and the drama created by the problem is really just a single drop in the drama bucket that is Farm Livin’.

My dad grew up on a farm in Teresa, Wisconsin.  Going to visit that side of that family meant leaving our urban and suburban comforts behind and embracing a way of life that was basically foreign to us as little kids.  Everyone in the town exhaled those long northwoods vowels and every statement of fact was followed with the word “once” (I’m told it’s linguistically related to German, but who the hell knows?).  Downtown had three bars, one greasy-spoon diner and ice cream parlor.  If you were lucky, you could drive the 20 extra minutes to the highway and get a burger from the McDonalds in the gas station.  Though we were less than 90 minutes outside of Milwaukee, this place might has well have been another planet.    I didn’t understand it, I wasn’t comfortable with it, and most of the time I just plain didn’t like it.

But my little sister and I did like my dad’s farm stories.  When we were too young to reach for Tolkien and too old to reach for the Bernstein Bears, my dad would tell us stories about growing up on the farm.  For the life of me, I can only remember stray details now and no single narrative sticks out in my memory.  That’s partially because it was 25 years ago, but it’s mostly because the stories simply detailed unfamiliar rituals and alien chores.  He was explaining hundreds of steps in the process that was growing up on a working farm one step at a time.  Nothing really gelled and there was never any “a-ha!” moment of clarity.  The stories were messy, with impossible chronology and every now and then, a witch would appear (probably because I asked for a scary story).  And yet the impact these stories had on my little sister and is remarkable.

I explain all this because I am certain that I am liking this season of The Walking Dead better than I should.  I do believe that the show has improved it’s pacing quite a bit since the first year and now that it’s settled on a main cast, I’m really growing to care about these people.  But I can’t shake the feeling that I like this set of stories at Hershel’s farm for the same reason I like my dad’s stories.

Daryl going out into the woods alone on an easily spooked horse, falling into a ravine and coming back to the farm only to be almost-shot by Andrea doesn’t have much of a bearing on anything.  It’s just a series of events that transpired while everyone was going through their now-daily routines.  And yes, I see that from a dramatic perspective, it’s nice to get some time to explore Daryl’s insecurities and the only way we’re going to see him with his guard down is to bring back his brother – in whatever capacity.  I’m not totally moved by this, but I did like watching it happen.  Hallucinations are a tricky thing to depict on screen because they always Mean Something.  And I’m not sure this one really did.  Is Daryl going to turn on his friends because they’re “niggers and democrats?”  Definitely not.  While not revelatory, it grants us insight to one more piece of one more puzzle and we generally start to get an understanding for how this whole thing works.

Or doesn’t work.

The more “TV” moments of tonight’s episode involved Rick butting heads with the other strong males around him.  We had a brief exchange on this in the comments last week, but it warrants repeating: at what point did Rick become their leader?  I mean, they were doing fine for a good long time before Rick woke up and joined their camp.  Shane’s the leader, right?  I get that they all followed him to the CDC in Atlanta, but I thought they all sort of agreed it was an idea worth pursuing.  Rick doesn’t even appear to have a skillset that sets him apart from the rest of his team, but lately they’ve just been calling the man “leader.”  To compare to something like LOST (which dealt with this de facto leader problem often), Jack was the leader because his medical knowledge made immeasurably useful and his charisma made desperate people look to him for help.  Even someone like Ana Lucia was able to lead the Tailies because she was strong and authoritative – it didn’t work out as well for them, but her role in that group makes sense to me.  Rick on the other hand: he joined up late, he messed up the established family dynamics, he is not accessible, and beyond going after Sophia, I don’t see what he’s ever done to earn everyone’s respect and loyalty.  So when he and Shane get into an argument about what to do next and Shane’s all “hey, I’m not the leader, you are” I don’t really buy it.

Same goes with Rick and Hershel.  Rick says that his people look to him, but like, do they?  Obviously he has no skill at commanding them – look he tries when Daryl shows back up at the farm, but to no success.  We are obviously building to a Hershel’s-had-enough-of-your-bullshit-situation, so it’s important from a storytelling perspective that Rick cannot control his friends, I just don’t understand why any of them thought he every could.

And then there’s the kicker at the end – a trick Walking Dead has been leaning on this year.  A barn full of the undead.  Did something terrible happen here?  Oh, probably.  But in my imagination, zombie-barn isn’t anything sinister.  It’s just a the process by which those working on the farm addressed yet another daily task: one more drop in the bucket.

While writing this post, I was reminded of another one of my lame farm-based passions: Harvest Moon.  Like most simulation games, Harvest Moon basically asks you to do chores and HAVE FUN DOING THEM TOO.  I loved this game when I was 14.  I’ve been unable to get into any of the other games in the series, even when they branched out into more fantastical elements.  As I’ve been enjoying Walking Dead’s zombie-farm adventures, I’d love to see a Harvest Moon game set in a world where the dead have risen.  I don’t want to hack zombies up with a chainsaw or anything.  But finding a solution for the zombie in my well?  Herding a mass of zombies into the barn to keep them from harassing my cows?  Digging trenches and building building fences to keep the dead out?  Yesyesyeswhydoesthatsoundlikesomuchfuntome!

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