(This was originally a tweet, before I realized I have a blog again.  If you can imagine all of the below in 140 characters, good for you.)

If FlashForward wants to be the next Lost (which, according to them, they don’t, but c’mon… who wouldn’t?), they need to stop and recognize what makes Lost so successful.  It’s not just mysteries, it’s great writing and above-average acting.  FlashForward has great potential, but they should make the characters a tad more in-touch with reality and tone down on the cheese-o-rama, like having the main guy get upset with his wife for being with another man in the future?  That’s just not believable.

“Hey bro, you ever realize it might be you that fucks up?”

But with Brannon Braga as executive producer, being in-touch and avoiding cheese-o-rama is difficult… this is the guy who created Star Trek: Voyager, which officially out-cheesed the cheesiest Star Trek joke.  (It’s ironic that Voyager happens to be my favorite of the Star Treks, but it’s not necessarily because of the stories, rather the characters–which Braga did not create–were so human.)

As of right now it’s feeling like it’s going to go the Heroes route.  I think I’ll give it another week or two to find out for sure.

For the past few weeks I’ve stuck with the “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” line and avoided talking much about Lost.  Don’t get me wrong–it hasn’t been horrible or even bad, and I will watch it until the end no matter what, it’s just been kind of a disappointment for me.  I’ve said before it’s because I have high standards for it and once the standards are set it’s extremely difficult to lower them.

Here are a few things about Wednesday’s episode, “The Variable,” that are kind of indicative of the problems I’ve been having with the show all together this season.  Obviously, you should consider this a spoiler warning, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a clip of Michael Emerson on Jimmy Fallon.  I feel bad for the guy because he’s typecast as creepy and probably will be for the rest of his life.  I saw an interview once where the interviewer kept saying, “God, you’re so creepy!” thinking he was trying to be creepy but he wasn’t, and he looked really hurt.  I think he could be the next Christopher Walken.

I just got the latest Star Trek book, a Voyager novel named “Full Circle.”  It picks up after the Destiny trilogy left off for the Voyager crew.  Anyway, when I opened it up the first thing I saw was this:

I hold The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TSCC) to a much lower standard than shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost.  In other words, TSCC, in my eyes, has a lot more leeway when it comes to getting away with silly stuff and the occasional cheesy bit.  It has from the beginning, just because it has an admittedly cheesy premise to begin with.  But, last Friday’s episode upped the bar, and while I’m still not ready to compare it to BSG and seasons 1-4 of Lost, I think cancelling the show would be a huge mistake.

With no news, fans are left speculating about the fate of the show.  I really have no guesses.  Ratings have been in the toilet, despite a few weeks of increases.  If it were not for the Terminator movie coming out next month, I’d say that I’m 100% sure we won’t be getting a third season.  I think the movie is the only thing saving it at this point.  So I’m 50/50.  I’d like to say that, if I were an executive, I’d give TSCC a few more episodes next fall just to see if the movie sparked any interest.  But I’m not an executive, and they tend to make stupid decisions, so I really have no idea.

Anyway, it was good to see the creators of the show were not ignoring the 50/50 fate, and crafted an episode that serves as a pretty good end to the entire series.  Actually, not pretty good – this ending was awesome.  I can’t believe it was only one hour.

My favorite scene would be obvious if you’ve been following these blogs since day one (I need to dig those up to see what has happened and if anything I said is relevant)—John and Cameron’s sex scene.  Okay, so they didn’t have sex, but damn.  Damn.

Damn.

Cameron taking off her clothes and telling John to get on top of her.  Then, handing him a knife so he can cut her open and feel her insides to see if there were any leaks… how tense was THAT?!  John lingering over her face and getting closer and closer with the soft lighting and then, after a moment of silence, Cameron says:  “John, we should go.”

Damn.

Damn.  Damn.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Hogan, who played (sucks that that’s past tense) Colonel Tigh in Battlestar Galactica, will be at the Motor City Comic Con this May.  I’ve gone the past few years but decided a while back I won’t be going this year because I have no budget for it.

But when I got the flier in the mail with his picture on it I was torn.  BSG is by far my favorite show and Tigh was a big part of it.  Then I realized I’d have no idea what to say to Micahel Hogan, and would feel silly doing my usual routine of autograph and picture.

I realize it’s because Colonel Tigh is so REAL.  In fact, I think meeting the actor who played him would diminish everything for me.  That’s a sign of a great actor, because you really get so lost in the character the real person ceases to exist.

It’s tragic… those that are best at their art become completely invisible.

NERD ALERT.  I spend time on the Star Trek message boards (who doesn’t, amIright?)  This guy who was into Photoshop was making all kinds of photos, mostly putting different actors heads into Star Trek pictures.  I wish I remembered his name because I can’t find him now.  Anyway, he was taking requests so I couldn’t help myself.

Lots of good people in the Top this year.

I think the final three should look like this:

(1) Adam Lambert
(2) Alison Iraheta
(3) Matt Giraud

Pretty much the coolest thing I’ve heard in a while.

Bear McCreary (composer of Battlestar Galactica and all around favorite) just announced he’s scoring a new video game from Capcom.  He has some music samples on his blog, one of which is an 8-bit version as a throwback to games like Mega Man.

I can hear his style in this… I can’t identify it, because I’m not musically inclined, but if you try really hard it almost sounds like you might be getting ready to play Battlestar Galactica on the original Nintendo.

I think if that were to happen I might spontaneously combust.

I’ve been critical of Lost this year and I don’t think I’ve been able to really articulate why.  I love science fiction, and am usually all over time travel stories, but am having a very hard time with it playing such a large part of this show.

I had a much better time in the first few seasons when we were all speculating, wondering if time travel really was the answer, and it blew my mind when Daniel launched that rocket from the boat to the island and found that it was 31 minutes out of sync with the rest of the world.  That was intriguing just enough… I really wasn’t looking to go back and forth 40-50 years at a time.

It’s kind of like table salt.  You put on the right amount, things taste delicious.  You open the top of the shaker and pour it on, suddenly the food is gross and unappealing.

Well, here we are.  With a heaping mound of salt on my delicious steak.  There’s not a whole lot I can do.  That’s the way the story is developing so I’m trying my best to just accept it.  Except Lost has always been an intelligent show, with writers who weren’t afraid to write intelligently, and not for the lowest common denominator of the audience—you know, those who consider Heroes good television.

So I am angered and disappointed that they’ve decided to incorporate such a clichéd story development in the show.

What would happen if you traveled into the past and killed your own grandfather?

No one knows, that’s the first question that comes to mind when you talk about time travel.  There are more time travel stories that revolve around that concept than anything else.  And now, that includes Lost.

It’s not a grandfather, literally, but it’s the same scenario.  If Sayid goes into the past and kills Ben, who is largely responsible for all of them getting thrown around the timeline anyway, and therefore Ben does not exist in the future—how can Sayid go back in time to kill Ben in the first place?

There are three classic answers here.  Number one says that he can’t.  I thought they were hinting at this when Michael’s gun wouldn’t fire back in season four.  Fate just wouldn’t let it happen.

Number two is “alternate timelines.”  Also known as “Heroes.”  Also known as “the cheesiest of the cheese of Star Trek, and why people make fun of it.”  Similar to “it was all a dream.”

Number three is that it was predetermined.  In other words, there is no such thing as free-will, and you were always meant to go back and time and kill your grandfather (or Sayid killing Ben).

The producers of Lost have given us clues that I’m still applying to the show, such as (1) the universe has a way of course correcting, and (2) there are no alternate timelines.

So, this rules out #2 (no alternate timelines).  And it has a way of combining #1 and #3 into something very obvious, which is that young Ben just won’t die.  We’ll see him in a hospital bed and that’ll be it.  He’ll be healed up nicely by mid-April.

In fact, I’m 100% sure that Ben won’t die.  Which might be completely obvious, and maybe I’m explaining things that are already very clear to everyone except me… but if we’re 100% sure that Ben won’t die, what’s the point of having him shot in the first place?  Usually when characters get shot it’s so that we can wonder about their fate and if they’re going to pull through or not.

I get the impression here that the writers want us to not only wonder that, but are trying too hard to get us to ask but what does that all mean and how is it even possible?!? If they didn’t want us wondering and asking those things, they wouldn’t have made it the cliff hanger.  The problem is that, if the writers are playing by their own rules, the outcome is 100% clear and it’s not even fun to think about.

As long as I’m being Negative Nancy I’ll also point out that I’m getting a little overdosed on the gimmick of them focusing on a character before we know who it is.  This happened twice in the last episode.  Early on, we see a fat man rush into a hotel room and shuffle around for about 30 seconds before it’s revealed that Sayid is about to kill him.  Then, when they go to the man in the tent—who Sawyer identifies as “Our You”—the camera holds on his face for about 2 seconds too long when he comes out of the tent.

Bottom line:  I don’t like being force fed mounds of table salt.

Let’s see what happens next week, I suppose.

What did you all think?

Bear McCreary posted his musical recap blog of BSG’s last episode, and it’s great.

Not that anybody read the entirety of my BSG review but I need to make a correction:  the song that plays at the end is not a revamped version of “Passacaglia,” but rather a more heavy version of “Shape of Things to Come,” a theme played in Season One (and which you can listen to above.)

BUT, according to his blog, the bass-line of “Passacaglia” was used so I’m only half-wrong.

…as pointed out on Peter David’s blog.

…the bird in Lee’s apartment.

I actually took the bird to be symbolic of the voyage he was about to undergo, particularly in terms of how it was juxtaposed with Starbuck. Consider Noah’s ark, in which birds were his avatars to determine if the disaster was over. Galactica was, in many ways, a retelling of Noah’s ark, a handful of humans surviving disaster, and Starbuck was the equivalent of the dove who flew out from the ark and returned with an olive branch.

PAD

Obviously if you haven’t seen the last episode of Battlestar Galactica, this entry isn’t for you.

I’ve watched it three times now, and it hasn’t gotten old yet.  While I could have done without the flashbacks (some of them were awkward and forced—like the scene where Boomer “owed” the old man), I appreciated what they were trying to do and some of them, like Adama’s puke and Roslin kicking out the younger man, shed more light on who these people really are and what kind of decisions they made to get them where they ended up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Except that Mitochondrial Eve is real, and it’s very fitting that the man responsible for getting her where she was was named Adama.

And the series finale of Lost just had the bar raised.  I’m not sure any show could out-do this.

Nothing but the rain…