Somewhere around a week ago I wrote this entry while in Conspiracy class. Now it finally goes up, when my iBook gets plugged into the net again.
I have heard great things about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show. Things working against it, in my book: It’s on the WB, I missed the first few seasons, and its totally implausible. Well, its on UPN, so I dunno if it switched or what, but my religion now allows me to watch it. I did miss the first few seasons, or perhaps many, but it might be recapped on Mighty Big TV, so I could catch up, plus it seems easy enough to follow thanks to all the flashback “previously on Buffy” things. So I’ve basically shown I know nothing of the history of this show. And of course the implausibility factor. You quickly realize when watching it that its not about being truthful or realistic, its about having fun.
All this introduction leads up to me announcing I’m in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Last night I had my TiVo record it because there was a special musical episode on that looked really cool. Well, it was. It was awesome. It was an hour ten of singing, dancing, and storylines. And they made fun of themselves a lot. And they (in general) really can sing (fairly well) without voice doubles. So this is an episode that I’m putting in my newly founded archives of wonderful TV, next to the season 2 finale of The West Wing. And, as much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid I might have another television show to watch. Which is bad, because it sucks up too much time. I now have West Wing, Farscape, The Pretender, The Daily Show, and Buffy. I have stopped with the monstrosity known as Enterprise after three episodes. I’m giving up The Outer Limits unless an episode looks particularly interesting. And The Invisible Man hasn’t been on in a while. So lets do some math. Farscape (4) + Pretender (5) + Daily Show (4) + Buffy (1), and that’s 14 shows a week. But the Daily Show is only half an hour, so make that 12 hours a week, which isn’t terrible, although its higher then I would generally like. But then count TiVo time, meaning that I can watch them whenever I want (like when I can’t fall asleep at 3 AM), and I can skip commercials, making an hour show about 45 minutes, and now it adds up to 528 minutes, or 8.8 hours. So I’m watching maybe 10 hour a week if you include the junk between, the commercials I don’t skip, etc. Cool. I feel good now, I’m not a TV-aholic. And all the shows are worthwhile and entertaining, so I don’t feel like I’m selling out. Now just wait until Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, etc. start back up. Sigh.
Set your Tivo to andromeda and catch all the episodes before they ruin it by baywatching it into Hercules this feburary. (Wolfe left [DS9 guy] and Sorbo is taking creative control =( )
What channel still shows The Pretender? I used to be addicted to that show (every Saturday, Pretender and Early Edition) until I accidentally missed a few third season episodes and lost all track of what was going on.
TNT (33 here) is rerunning The Pretender from the beginning, and then showing a couple made-for-TV movies afterwards. They look good.
Andromeda? Eh. I watched a bit of it, but was never incredibly impressed. Good concept. Yeah, I heard Wolfe was going and it was getting dumbed-down. Well, if they need more viewership, they have to drop the complicated back-story. Its crap, but most of the other Star Treks did it too to attract new viewers. Why is it always the good shows die? Oh yeah, because they have intricate plot and backstory, so there is attrition but no new people watching. Its certainly not easy to tune into Buffy five seasons late…
Farscape actually did this well, at the beginning of season 3 they had a 1-hour special "Farscape: Undressed" that gave a bunch of background and summary of the first two seasons, with the actors out of character commenting on the whole show and their experiences. It was kinda cool. I wish other shows would do that, give a bit of a refresher course at the start of each season. Might help.
Andromeda isn’t impressive unless you watch them in order and like 6 of them in a marathon or something. Then the depth of plot becomes apparent and you are addicted =). The same is true of DS9 (my favorite trek ever) and esp Babylon5. Babylon5 had some of the most intricate story arcs ever and as such suffered from lots of network bouncing. As I touched upon before, Crusade (a babylon5 sequel) was canceled because the creator JMS refused to turn the show in his words "sort of Baywatch meets wrestling in space." Now Sorbo is going to voluntarily turn Andromeda into Hercules in space. Yay
Well, Sorbo is just an actor, he does what he is told to do. 🙂 I have seen several of the beginning Andromeda episodes, but it just didn’t capture me enough. Perhaps cause I could never grasp how five people could run such a huge ship. And yeah, they had some kind of robot things. Whatever. But still, I think its pretty well done and I don’t fault you for liking it, just for some reason it isn’t my cup of tea. Maybe because of that crazy pink girl with (or now without?) the tail. But I agree on B5. With I had the time to devote to it.
Sorbo is actually executive producer and producer so he actually has a bit more power than JUST an actor. Like DS9, the first andromedas kinda sucked, watch a few of the ones where they are at war and its much more interesting =). I will try farscape out, but I think I’ll wait till someone I know gets the dvd set and i can watch them all in one day to really get the farscape experience =P