Thoughts about TV I've seen lately
Sweety and I are now watching more shows per week than any time since the kids were born. It's almost a relief that one of them is ending. Here are my thoughts on the current seasons of...
Heroes turned into a big meh for me last season. We're still watching it, I think largely because it features two Asian men who are neither hoodlums nor corporate villains, and this makes Sweety happy. This season's plot is better (although it's similar enough to a recentish comics event that I keep expecting Captain America to die), but it still has some problems. The main one is that after spending an entire season trying to save Claire Bennet, they're now trying to make her interesting, and actor Hayden Panettiere is simply not up to the task. This season, she's doing ANGRY, with the occasional fallback to cutesy. The writers aren't doing so hot, either. C'mon, folks. Joss Whedon writes perfectly credible teenage girls and decent romance dialogue. Why can't y'all? Or why can't we just send her to college and concentrate on somebody else?
The more pleasing Monday entry is Castle. Sweety says, "I bet the pitch for this said 'half Murder, She Wrote and half Moonlighting'." Sweety is a very smart man. Instead of Angela Lansbury, we get Nathan Fillion playing Richard Castle, a jerky but funny writer of mystery potboilers. I have never before really liked Nathan Fillion. I first saw him when Whedon did the "sorry about Firefly, how about I horribly miscast you in a weird villain role in one of my other shows?" thing. Until recently, I thought of Fillion as a younger Bill Pullman: forgettably handsome and unforgivably dull. In Castle, though, he's funny. Stana Katic (who coincidentally, had a small, thankless role on early Heroes as Wireless) plays sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued detective Kate Becket, whom I adore. They have fantastic chemistry. I was a little worried from the first episode that it would be a "smart, rule-breaking guy constantly schools smart, rule-abiding woman about how to do her job--and wins her heart!" kind of show. This week's episode made things look less that way. And furthermore, the production values are high; everything from the lighting of the writer's daughter's eyes to the timing of the sound effects is beautifully executed. (The contrast between Molly Quinn, in a small but sweet role as the more-mature-than-dad teenager, and Hayden Panettiere in the far-too-big role as the one-note Claire Bennet is quite marked.) The dialogue--not just between the principals, but between smaller characters as well--is quirky and funny. I'm holding back a little because I'm afraid this show may yet disappoint me, but right now I'm enjoying it a lot. I laugh at this show, which I don't at pretty much anything else we watch. I read a scathing fan review that insists that the main problem is that Nathan Fillion should be playing Captain America right now, which is pretty funny, because he's Canadian. So the laughs just keep coming.
Lost. Oh, gods, what are they doing? Aside from finding new ways to get new people onto the island, of course. Also, I must laugh at the ethnic casting: Indian guy playing an Iraqi named Said, Moroccan/French guy named Said playing a probable Latino named Caesar. I feel that Lost is starting to pick up again, but I really can't say why I have that impression. When I think about Lost, it all dissolves into a farrago of good-looking, bratty people named after philosophers and physicists.
We are watching Dollhouse. I'm not coming away from it with much yet. I really want to like it, and I want to see if Tahmoh Penikett can play more than one character. I'm just not sure about it yet. The last time I gave up on a Whedon show (Angel), I watched it later and really liked it. But I'm starting to get a little tired of the usual Whedon characters. Topher is Andrew, Echo is Faith (this may be Eliza Dushku's fault), and on and on. That said, I adore Harry Lennix and am grateful to get to watch him every week.
I'm a little anxious about the end of Battlestar Galactica. I'm pleased that it's not likely to really, really suck before it ends, but that's about all I can say. I have no idea how they're going to pull this off. If I have to watch webisodes to figure it out, I'll be pretty ticked off.
So, right now I'm enjoying the mystery show the most. I think this means I'm getting old.
Heroes turned into a big meh for me last season. We're still watching it, I think largely because it features two Asian men who are neither hoodlums nor corporate villains, and this makes Sweety happy. This season's plot is better (although it's similar enough to a recentish comics event that I keep expecting Captain America to die), but it still has some problems. The main one is that after spending an entire season trying to save Claire Bennet, they're now trying to make her interesting, and actor Hayden Panettiere is simply not up to the task. This season, she's doing ANGRY, with the occasional fallback to cutesy. The writers aren't doing so hot, either. C'mon, folks. Joss Whedon writes perfectly credible teenage girls and decent romance dialogue. Why can't y'all? Or why can't we just send her to college and concentrate on somebody else?
The more pleasing Monday entry is Castle. Sweety says, "I bet the pitch for this said 'half Murder, She Wrote and half Moonlighting'." Sweety is a very smart man. Instead of Angela Lansbury, we get Nathan Fillion playing Richard Castle, a jerky but funny writer of mystery potboilers. I have never before really liked Nathan Fillion. I first saw him when Whedon did the "sorry about Firefly, how about I horribly miscast you in a weird villain role in one of my other shows?" thing. Until recently, I thought of Fillion as a younger Bill Pullman: forgettably handsome and unforgivably dull. In Castle, though, he's funny. Stana Katic (who coincidentally, had a small, thankless role on early Heroes as Wireless) plays sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued detective Kate Becket, whom I adore. They have fantastic chemistry. I was a little worried from the first episode that it would be a "smart, rule-breaking guy constantly schools smart, rule-abiding woman about how to do her job--and wins her heart!" kind of show. This week's episode made things look less that way. And furthermore, the production values are high; everything from the lighting of the writer's daughter's eyes to the timing of the sound effects is beautifully executed. (The contrast between Molly Quinn, in a small but sweet role as the more-mature-than-dad teenager, and Hayden Panettiere in the far-too-big role as the one-note Claire Bennet is quite marked.) The dialogue--not just between the principals, but between smaller characters as well--is quirky and funny. I'm holding back a little because I'm afraid this show may yet disappoint me, but right now I'm enjoying it a lot. I laugh at this show, which I don't at pretty much anything else we watch. I read a scathing fan review that insists that the main problem is that Nathan Fillion should be playing Captain America right now, which is pretty funny, because he's Canadian. So the laughs just keep coming.
Lost. Oh, gods, what are they doing? Aside from finding new ways to get new people onto the island, of course. Also, I must laugh at the ethnic casting: Indian guy playing an Iraqi named Said, Moroccan/French guy named Said playing a probable Latino named Caesar. I feel that Lost is starting to pick up again, but I really can't say why I have that impression. When I think about Lost, it all dissolves into a farrago of good-looking, bratty people named after philosophers and physicists.
We are watching Dollhouse. I'm not coming away from it with much yet. I really want to like it, and I want to see if Tahmoh Penikett can play more than one character. I'm just not sure about it yet. The last time I gave up on a Whedon show (Angel), I watched it later and really liked it. But I'm starting to get a little tired of the usual Whedon characters. Topher is Andrew, Echo is Faith (this may be Eliza Dushku's fault), and on and on. That said, I adore Harry Lennix and am grateful to get to watch him every week.
I'm a little anxious about the end of Battlestar Galactica. I'm pleased that it's not likely to really, really suck before it ends, but that's about all I can say. I have no idea how they're going to pull this off. If I have to watch webisodes to figure it out, I'll be pretty ticked off.
So, right now I'm enjoying the mystery show the most. I think this means I'm getting old.