Supernatural considered kick-ass
“You’re sorry you started Armageddon?”
Ok, I still have a metric crapton of tv episodes sitting on my server, waiting for me to grab enough time to watch them. I’ve watched some of them, some are still in the pipeline. Some observations follow.
Supernatural continues to kick ass. Seriously. Sure, the first season was a bit hit and miss, and based on a “monster of the week” idea… but the writers soon realized that they had something a lot cooler in their hands and started working on a bigger plot, using the (somewhat unexpected) talents of the lead actors. Last season (the 4th) was… pretty awesome, not to mince words. This new 5th season looks to be just as good.
Last season they had angels. And not some wimpy “play harps on clouds” versions. No, the “smite it from orbit with extreme prejudice” kind. The kind that’s not interested in justice, or anything “good” (necessarily). This season, they have… well, something worse. Much worse.
From a “sort of fun” show, this has risen to be one of my current favorites (from what’s currently active). Muchos recommended. Supernatural is the best “World of Darkness” version on TV, without being “WoD” in any licensed sense.
Apart from that, my “worth watching” list now includes Stargate Universe. I’ve always liked the Stargate series… it’s good entertainment, and does not take itself too seriously. This new series seems to be better than “Stargate Atlantis”, at least. The characters are interesting, and the setup is pretty cool… if not totally original. It’s a mishmash of Star Trek Voyager and Stargate… but unlike Voyager, the script is (at least so far) not written by drunk baboons and the acting is at least decent. The three-part series pilot was pretty cool, waiting to see where this one goes.
Suprisingly, Fringe has taken off and become quite fascinating. I almost gave up on it… sure, it had some nice moments, but it was just so corny and filled with pseudo-science and technobabble. The background “metaplot” was pretty cool, though, what little of it we saw. This second season, they seem to have dumped most of the crap and concentrated on the big plot. And it works. At best, it reaches the level of X-Files (before it turned into crap). Not sure where this one will go, but I’ll be watching. For now, at least.
A side “hooray” must also be given to Burn Notice. It (also) seems to have found its stride, and is damn funny and entertaining. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, which always helps.
Other that that, nothing has impressed much so far. On the other hand, I have lots of stuff still on the waiting list: Dexter seasons 3 and 4, Californication seasons 2 and 3, True Blood season 2. I expect most of those (at least) to rock. […]
Juhannus
…was fun. We didn’t really intend to hold a party as such, but that’s kinda sorta what happened. Lots of people came over, tons of food was grilled and eaten, and large quantities of alcohol were imbibed. The weather didn’t really cooperate, but sauna compensated pretty well.
The thing where you notice you’re getting a bit older is that it takes you longer and longer to recover from aforementioned large quantities of alcohol. Our whole household spent Saturday in lizard mode, and I didn’t see much vigorous activity on Sunday either. That’s not a complaint, it was very pleasant to just lie around in the sun and read; when it got too hot I went inside and watched some TV show episodes on the computer. At some point we were wondering if we needed to go buy groceries for Sunday… and then when we raided the fridge, we discovered we still have huge piles of leftover food there. So we cooked a meal of sausages plus steaks, along with a bacon-vegetable hash thingy. Oh, and some grilled corn. Yum. Life is good.
Managed to finish watching Dexter season two (good) and started watching Chuck season one (no-brains-required spy comedy, not-bad entertainment). Also noticed that Burn Notice season three has started, the first few episodes were very enjoyable. I was a bit so-so on this show during season one, but it really grew on me during the second season. It’s still not in the “fantastic!” category, but it is good fun and seems to have found its stride.
“You know spies. A bunch of bitchy little girls.” […]
Californication & other TV
No, you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
And if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
– Rolling Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
I still have tons of tv episodes sitting on disk, waiting for me to get time to watch them, but yesterday I finally got around to watching the final episodes of one of my favorite new shows, Californication. Final verdict: made me laugh out loud, made me cringe, made me care for the characters. I’m glad this is apparently being picked up for a second season; I’ll be watching.
David Duchovny plays Hank Moody, a novelist with sex and drug addictions (and a writer’s block) who is struggling to raise his daughter part-time, while trying to cope with life without (and with) his ex-girlfriend. The dialogue is brilliant, there’s a lot of very explicit sex and various recreational drugs, and in general the series doesn’t hold back much – it starts off with Hank getting head from a nun (with the Rolling Stones playing in the background), and goes off at 90 mph from there. It’s no wonder that many conservative groups have condemned the series and mounted some protests against it. Family-friendly fare this is not.
…but it is very human, in a way that reminds me of Six Feet Under (another series that also managed to… disturb some conservative elements). Now, this is very different fare from Six Feet Under, and to be honest in the beginning I felt this show might be using the sex & drugs thing a bit too much of an exploitative device. I changed my mind, though, there is very much a point and the whole thing works. Hank is, to quote his daughter, a “tragically flawed person”, but he’s also sympathetic. He’s trying, sometimes, though he fucks up more often than he gets it right. There’s also a very definitive Spider Jerusalem vibe there, during Hank’s stint as a blogger for a magazine. Both characters rant “I hate it here!”, but can’t help caring for some people round them, can’t help also being decent human beings when the mood strikes them.
This is billed as a comedy, and yes, it had me laughing out loud in many places – but it’s comedy in the same sense that Six Feet Under was a comedy. The humor is pretty dark and bizarre, at times.
Anyway, I can recommend this to anyone who isn’t too conservative. People with too much of a prudish outlook will probably just fixate on the sex & drugs thing, and ignore what the series is actually about… which would be a shame. This is good stuff.
About other stuff, let’s see… Moonlight is another new series I like, though it seems that so far I’m the only one who likes it (sort of like Supernatural, in that regard). It’s a modern-day vampire story, and while it doesn’t break any new ground in any regard, the story and characters are interesting. This could well be a WoD story (again, like Supernatural). The pilot is very mediocre but the series picks up pace fast – don’t give up right away, watch the first 3-4 episodes or so. It’s not a wonderful show, but it’s pretty good; I like it and will probably continue watching if it gets picked up for another season.
Supernatural itself enters season three, but I’ve only seen the first episode of that so far so can’t comment much, other than to say it seems to follow the style of the previous seasons. Good WoD/Hunter -flavored monster hunt romp, with uneven episode quality (some excellent ones in there, some pretty poor ones). I keep watching.
Heroes season two is still in the “to watch” pile, as is the second season of Rome, season two of Dexter and other known-to-be-good stuff. Pushing Daisies gave a good (and weird) impression based on the pilot, but too early to tell yet. Stargate Atlantis continues to be lightweight brain candy, not too good but watchable on the side. Desperate Housewives, now in season four, is also brain candy but a lot better and quite a lot of fun. Nip/Tuck continues to mainly go for the cheap shocks, I’m not sure why I still watch it; it’s not all that good – though I do have to admit the self-deprecating tv-show plot in the latest season is good fun.
As for the “avoid” list: Bionic Woman is pretty crap (no big surprise there), watched the first 5 episodes then gave up. Not sure why I bothered in the first place, maybe because some rare tv remakes turn out to be good. This wasn’t one of those. […]
It's alive!
…sortof.
Back at work, feeling mostly ok bar the runny nose and a small cough. Someone reorganized some of the cubicle walls and shelves while I was away, and somehow the tiny change has made this small office much nicer and more full of light. Me likes. That and the nice weather outside combine to make me feel pretty positive this morning (despite that damn runny nose).
Didn’t get much constructive done on Sunday and Monday, but did manage to read a bit (the new Exalted sourcebook White and Black Treatise was surprisingly good) and watched a ton of TV stuff that had been piling up on my hard drive. Dexter, recommended to me by many people, was very good – I wasn’t totally sold initially, but it grabbed me quite fast. Haven’t read the books it’s based on (Darkly Dreaming Dexter and others), but the character of Dexter, portrayed brilliantly by Michael C. Hall from Six Feet Under, is what drives the show: a forensics analyst who is also a serial killer. And he’s the good guy here. Pretty twisted, lots of dark humor, and an interesting plot… recommended. Not for the squeamish, though.
Besides Dexter, I watched the latest episodes of Heroes, Veronica Mars, 24, Desperate Housewives, Supernatural and others. All good stuff, and just the kind of light entertainment you need when you’re home sick.
On a less positive note, my computer has been acting up lately. For a while now it has refused to shut down properly (I have to use the hard power switch at the back) – that one I attribute to the new DVD drive, I think my BIOS doesn’t like it for some reason. On Sunday, however, the whole USB interface started acting up and my mouse and keyboard started either locking up or rebooting at random intervals. This happened on both Windows and Linux, and seemed to be related to heat and CPU activity, the machine had been on for quite a long time at that point. Playing EVE was quite impossible, after about 5 minutes the mouse would always lock up. Hmph. The whole thing is old by current standards, could very well be that I’d need to replace my motherboard and CPU with something less antique. The bad thing is that I would also need to replace my hard drive, memory and probably some other stuff too… we’ll see. […]
