Welcome to Fantasy Friday! Every week, you are invited to write and post something having to do with fantasy, science fiction, etc., right here in the comments. At 5 p.m. PST today, if we’ve got at least ten participants, we’ll choose the day’s most entertaining or thought-provoking contributor and PayPal them $10 on the spot.
This week, we’re taking inspiration from Conan O’Brien and his colleagues who’ve been refusing to shave as long as they have to go on TV while the Writer’s Guild strike remains unresolved — thus our usual “blog for a beer” contest has become “blog for a beard!” Post something that has something to do with genre television. Raves? Rants? Ideas? Or if — the gods forbid! — your favorite show never recovers from the strike, how would YOU wrap up its storylines? The winner, in addition to their cash prize, will get a beard Photoshopped onto their portrait by our crack graphics team.
Although, last I check he shaved his beard off- at least he was beardless when he got into the fight with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, heh.
And what if you already have a beard? Can I blog to be shaven? How about my wife? Can I blog to have you photoshop a beard onto her face? (I’m sure she’ll kill me for that one).
Anyway- I’m sick of television right now anyway. Most of the SF shows are starting to bore the hell out of me. The only two I liked are now wading around in their own murky story lines, getting less interesting with each mystery they introduce. Hey! It’s a new season of lost! Time to introduce a whole slew of new characters (the rescuers) and then open up their mysteries and never finish any of the story lines we started!
Loose threads are cool, but that’s just lazy man. Bad writer! No cookie for you!
I hear the writer’s strike is ending this weekend, so you guys are getting off pretty darn easy.
Sigh. I miss Pushing Daisies. If only because the writers didn’t do the dudley do-right thing of having the guy with the magic finger going around saving people all the time.
And because they cast Molly Shannon as a psychotic candy-store owner and Paul Reubens as a subterranean super-sniffer.
Can’t the networks hold a contest and have fans start writing scripts and submitting them?
The only fantasy/sci fi show I watch is Heroes and it’s always a mixed bag. I’m baffled how writers who can produce the lovably dorky Hiro Nakamura, the deliciously dark Sylar, and the “I have no idea if he’s a good guy or not” Noah Bennet, can really think Peter Petrelli is a good character. Milo Ventimiglia’s second rate Keanu Reeves style acting aside, giving a character any power he wants and always making him “the only one who can save us” just gets OLD.
Remember how the Matrix movies sucked once Neo was all powerful? Well we’re in the second season of Peter Saves the World, and it’s time for a change. My suggestion? Kill him off already. Oh wait, Peter can’t die.
Brilliant.
Where would one post it? Here?
Recently, I saw that Eragon movie was playing on television. It brought back memories… memories of sitting there stiffly in my soft theater seat, a bucket of buttery popcorn in hand, unable to eat or drink because I was so horrified at the state of cinema. The rip-off plot… the cringe-inducing lines… the pathetic attempts at imitating Tolkien… and yet, the worst thing–the thing I cannot, nor ever will be able to, get over–was the fact that some people enjoyed it. The screenwriters were so incompetent that they created something even worse than the book, which was atrocious enough in itself! If this is what Hollywood comes up with, then I hope the writer’s strike lasts forever.
What ever happened to Joan of Arcadia? I absolutley loved that show. Hey, it made grown men cry with its artsy, sensitive, fondling of all things sacred and spiritual. But in the end, it too “jumped the shark”. Who came up with the hair-brained idea that Joan needed a Satan? Aren’t the circumstances of life, love, and dealing with God challenging enough without introducing that bad actor who later shows up in Prison Break? After the Satan episode I had to turn my head away from the crucifixion of another genre story. And don’t even get me going on Lost, which is so aptly titled because the writers had no idea, have no idea, and remain without an idea of where their story is going.
Yeah, I have a beard too, but I’m sure these folks at Fantasy have some mad Photoshop skills and turn us into a member of ZZ Top (or a Gandalf lookalike). Doubt not the Editors!
Anyway, I have to say that I don’t get much out of a lot of genre TV. I mean, Heroes? That was never all that cool. And SF TV makes me tear out my eyes — it’s decades behind written SF, and even a little behind cinema SF sometimes.
Worst genre TV ever? Remember Earth2? That was just… ugh! I mean, for the early 90s, it was way below par. At the time I didn’t realize it, of course. I bemoaned its cancellation loudly. But when I rewatched some of it more recently, it was just… embarrassingly bad. Oh, wait, but there was also Vampire: The Masquerade, or whatever the TV show based on that RPG was called. Man, that was just… ugh. Still, I think Earth2 might have been the worst for me…
Wait, no, that’s the worst Western genre TV I’ve seen. There was a Korean show that was, like, horrendous. There were these three women, all in black, and it wasn’t really clear whether they were witches or vampires, but they kind of just, hung around their house, chatting, attacking visitors, cackling wickedly, and cooking. (Well, in the episode I saw.) The crazy thing was, they were supposedly scared of sunlight, but they were in this apartment with big windows and it was shot in the daytime. (I suppose shooting at night costs more, but…) It was horrible. One of the few times I was glad to be unable to follow the dialog.
But the cancellations aren’t always so judicious as they were with Earth2 or Vampire: The Whatever: I also have to say that I found Carnivale and Dead Like Me outstanding: they were the kinds of shows that did genre on TV in a way that works, which may be why they only last two seasons each.
It makes me think that some years from now, genre TV might actually lead the way in using the Net as a means of original broadcast, and not just as a way of distributing their show after TV broadcast. After all, it’s only a matter of time until production costs for something that look like your average TV drama are so low that it’ll be practicable to do away with studios, the way so many bands could if they really wanted to (and how many already have done). Stuff like that BBC show Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (which is pure genre/satire brilliance) or Life on Mars (which, again, was cool, and didn’t need alien suits or sophisticated special effects). That kind of thing will be very doable, then.
So that’s when I expect an explosion of genre TV. When it’s not on TV anymore. And a lot of what’s on offer will suck, but some will be outstanding, the kind of thing that could never get on TV itself.
As for Lost, I don’t see why everyone’s so down on it. Maybe it’s because, living in Korea, I’m disconnected from a lot of the hype and not quite at the same pace as everyone out there in the West? I have a friend here who watches the seasons as marathons when they first come out on DVD (here: Season 3 just came out) and says he is certain that experiencing the show that way, instead of episode by episode, is one reason he still really enjoys it.
I should add that I don’t actually have a TV in my home, only in my office. (Though my fiancée has a little DMB thingie to watch her Korean sitcoms on.) It’s great because it’s more effort to watch something recent — you have to actually go and download “get” it, and the effort means you’re consciously seeking something out, and not just turning on the box and sitting down in front of it.