Ummm, our Internet access has been down, let's say, for the last several, umm, days. Yeah, that's it. So I haven't been able to blog. Yup, that's my story. Here's some catch-up:
I'm sorta kinda almost liking Moonlight these days, even though I wince (and winge) during every episode. Someone on my online lists pointed out that it is a romance -- and reframing it from "adventure/horror/Buffy rip-off" to "romance" changes my expectations in the right direction. It is still really badly written, and I can't decide if the lead, Alex O'Laughlin, is a barely passable actor, or quite capable but not good enough to overcome the writing. I rather like Sophia Myles. In any case, the show has become kind of a guilty pleasure for me, and I even find myself looking forward to Friday night television. (Blood Ties is on Fridays, too -- unfortunately, because when the two vampire shows are seen side by side, Moonlight fares quite badly.)
Heroes is the opposite: I don't feel guilty, and I don't find it a pleasure. There have been only two semi-good moments this season -- an episode a couple of weeks ago, and the end of this most recent one. It really feels like they are trying too hard. Last season featured at least four winsome, whimsical heroes -- primarily Hiro and Peter, but Mohinder and Matt as well -- all Righteous men trying to do their best. When things went wrong it was due to events beyond their control, and they would struggle to make it Right. This season their stories are dark or boring, all of them are making mistakes (and rather obvious mistakes), and so far they aren't working very hard to fix things. I don't want any of them to "win" -- and they are the good guys, not the baddies, like Sylar and others. Hard to believe that I'm writing that Heroes is too dark and too ambiguous -- I'm usually all for the Dark and Ambiguous.
Chuck has that winsome hero, as does Pushing Daisies, although the former settles for rather ho-hum plots and the latter is frantically weird. I still recommend them, however. Chuck is now up to three references to Zork; the most recent even gave the sense that the writer had played the game. I'll watch every episode in exchange for that acknowledgment of true nerdiness.
The hero of Life, on the other hand, is decidedly not winsome, but the show has superior Dark and Ambiguous. Apparently it's getting low ratings and may be cancelled. I won't recommend it, because a deep underlying story arc is building, and you might get hooked just before the plug is pulled -- and out of the goodness of my heart I want to save you that angst.
Continuing further out on the spectrum of non-winsome, but watchable, heroes, I watched the pilot episode of the critically well-reviewed Mad Men, a cable show that just finished its first season. (AMC is re-airing the episodes, out of order for mysterious reasons.) Mad Men is a drama about advertising executives on Madison Avenue in the late 50's or early 60's. Like Saving Grace, the episode I saw had a numinous quality about it, exquisitely photographed and written, accurately capturing the feel of the times. It's one of those shows where no one is sympathetic, and it made me very glad to be a woman a generation later. For Whedon fans, Vincent Kartheiser (who played Angel's son Conner) and Christina Hendrix (who played the devilish Saffron on Firefly) both have major roles in the show.
In any case, it will all end soon, when the writer's strike takes effect. (It has started, but the shows have been preparing, several episodes of all are already filmed.) Maybe Moonlight will get better with no writers!
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