Tuesday, November 3, 2009

We Bring You Love: V - Reviewed! Plus: Smallville, Heroes, and MORE!

- After a weekend of Halloween fun, it's back to reality. And it's November. Wow, how time flies. And yet, it's currently about 80 degrees here in Burbank, so it may as well be August. Anyways, I had a lot of fun getting dressed up in my Tallahassee-esque zombie-hunter gear for the annual Halloween bash in Pasadena. A good time as always, although I think it's definitely time to retire the name "Page-O-Ween," at least when it comes to this particular party. Gone are the days when the crowd was largely comprised of NBC Pages old and new. Still, a ton of people getting together in crazy costumes to party Halloween-style? A good time is pretty much guaranteed, regardless of who shows up. The weirdest thing that happened to me on Halloween though? So I got home from the party, park my car outside my apartment ... and as soon as I begin walking to the back door, a POLICE CAR pulls up beside me! The policeman rolls down his window and begins questioning me - "did I live here?", "where was I going?", "was that my parking space?". Are you kidding me? This is one of those things that would ONLY happen to me. Granted, I was carrying a toy sword and toy rifle with me. But both were obviously fakes (the rifle was powder-blue!). And I was wearing a T-shirt that said "Zombie Emergency Response Team" and a goofy-looking tarp hat. There is no way this cop could actually take me seriously as a possible menace, right? Well, I suppose I am so naturally badass that he assumed I was lookin' for trouble. But still. It's funny though because the first thing I said was "don't worry, it's a toy gun." It actually would have been funny if he further questioned me. Lucky for him, I did not stay in character, or I might have channeled Woody Harrelson and told him to "nut up or shut up." Anyways, who knows why these things happen to me, but they do. Dammit all.

- Also, I haven't really mentioned that this past Friday marked the likely end of my twice-weekly physical therapy sessions for my ankle. I've been going for PT every Tuesday and Friday for the last couple of months, as I've talked about every so often here on the blog. Of course, many of you will remember the "incident" from several weeks back, in which I strained my leg at PT and could barely walk for a couple of days, including my birthday! Mostly though, the PT has actually been kind of nice. It got me thinking about my leg and my ankle and about how to walk and sit in ways that don't strain them as much. And it got me doing stretches and actively working to make my ankle feel better. Most of all, it was pretty relaxing. The staff at the PT place was ultra-friendly, and it was funny because for a while I was having this twice-a-week break from work where I could be active, relax, chat with some cool people, etc. And the thing is, I would come back to work feeling refreshed and loosened-up. It just goes to show - sitting complacently at a desk all day is NOT good. Whoever came up with the idea of recess for elementary school kids had the right idea - that mid-day break is really a pretty amazing thing. It's why I think the people who don't leave their desk all day will eventually just snap and go insane. But anyways, now that my physical therapy is complete (I think), I am feeling a lot better than when I started and my ankle feels a bit stronger. I'd still say it feels only about 85% "normal," but that last 15% is something that will be a much longer-term process. But yeah, it's been a good run with PT -- it's definitely helped me to re-focus a bit and think more about how I do things (walking, sitting, stretching, eating, etc.) on a daily basis. That said, I am ready to stop thinking about my ankle for a bit and eager to play some basketball, tennis, and just kick some ass in general. Yep, you heard me, prospective opponents - I'm callin' you out.


TV STUFF:

- Okay, so let's talk about V. I saw this pilot over the summer, and while it didn't blow me away, it was one of the few "big" shows amongst all the new medical dramas and teen soaps and family sitcoms, so it still managed to stand out. I mean, look, V has it's flaws, but I still really want to support it. And honestly, I'm happy that it did well in the ratings last night as well. I want to see TV continue to support big-budget, movie-like programs. And I want some new series to prove that the success of shows like 24 and Lost was not a fluke. V's pilot is not in the same league as Lost's, but it has a lot of upside, to borrow a term from the sports world. The pilot packed in A LOT of story, and my hope is that now that the initial setup is out of the way, the show can breathe a bit and really find some solid creative momentum. Of course, that might be somewhat harder to do with only four episodes before a long hiatus ... but still, I feel like there is a lot of potential here.

The other thing with V is that the show is pretty campy. And I don't think that that's necessarilly a bad thing. Flash Forward feels like a show that takes itself too seriously despite a pretty out-there premise. The tone for V feels more appropriate given its subject matter. It's more over-the-top, more melodramatic, more comic book-ish than Flash Forward. It's more Smallville than X-Files. My concern is whether the cast is up to the task of pulling this kind of thing off. To me, the current king of sci-fi awesomeness is clearly FRINGE. And V doesn't quite seem to have the characters to match up to the likes of Olivia Dunham or Walter Bishop. But there are some talented cast members (Scott Wolf, Elizabeth Mitchell, Morena Baccarin, Morris Chestnut), so again, there is potential.

The biggest problem with the V pilot might be the pacing. It felt too rushed overall, and the quick pace meant that the epic premise didn't quite get the sense of "bigness" that it probably deserved. But again, the upside to this is that we've gotten all of the stuff about the V's arrival over and done with very quickly. Now the show can quickly move on.

And I do think that there was some really fun payoff in the last ten or fifteen minutes of the pilot. I remember watching this over the summer not really knowing what to expect. For the first two-thirds of the pilot, it felt like pretty standard sci-fi fare - yet another riff on the classic Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man." The aliens have landed, and they say they want to help us, but they might just want to destroy us. But the last ten minutes of V were so fun, and reassuring, because they show that this will be a series that isn't afraid to go balls-to-the-wall. This isn't just a show about political allegory or the same-old character stuff we've seen on Lost, Heroes, Flash Forward, and a million other "big-cast-of-characters-deals-with-world-changing-event" type of shows. Because unlike other sci-fi series, V features evil lizard-aliens who want to kill humans. That's why to me the money-shot of the whole pilot is when Elizabeth Mitchell hits her FBI partner over the head with a crowbar, opening up his fake-human shell and exposing his ultra-creepy reptillian mug. That's the moment where you know that V isn't messing around. So yeah, there's still all the allusions to real-life politics and whatnot, but at the end of the day, it's comforting that V is at its heart "fun" sci-fi, with good guys, bad guys, and lizard aliens. Despite some of the pilot's pacing and character issues, I'm happy to stick with the show. At the least, you have to give it credit for being fun and ambitious. Let's just say I won't be spray-painting V symbols in an alleyway just yet, but I will gladly sign up for the V recruitment drive. Especially if Laura "Supergirl" Vandervoort is there to greet me every week.

My Grade: B+


- Speaking of SMALLVILLE, Friday's episode was a definite improvement over the last couple of weeks, although it was still somewhat iffy overall. I mean, first off, the DC fanboy in me enjoyed seeing not one but two comic book staples debut - one being intrepid Daily Planet gossip columnist Cat Grant, the other being Green Arrow sidekick Mia Deardon, aka Speedy. Mia's introduction in particular was pretty well-handled, and I like that they didn't shy away from her origin as an underaged prostitute-turned-vigilante-protege. Of course, notably absent was any mention of the HIV virus, which the character lives with in the comics (also in the comics: Mia is seventeen whereas Oliver Queen is forty-something - oh well!). But yeah, the Mia stuff was pretty good, but, the biggest improvement to me in this episode was the Lois-Clark relationship stuff. Even though the episode ended with a long-awaited kiss between Lois and Clark, the majority episode had them acting out the kind of friendly-rivalry relationship that has made Clark Kent and Lois Lane an all-time classic fictional couple. No more of this gazing into each other's eyes and pining for one another crap, in this one, there was a lot more nuance and intelligence (well, as much as Smallville can have those things). Meanwhile, the stuff with Tess Mercer and Zod was semi-interesting - at the least, it seems like they are actually going somewhere now with the whole Zod storyline. Hopefully, next week's ep makes some much-needed sense of all this Zod stuff, and explains how this version reconciles with the previous, more experienced version of Zod we've seen on the show. For now though, this one was, if nothing else, pretty solid.

My Grade: B

- While I'm on a superhero kick, here's a stunner for ya' -- I watched HEROES on Monday, for the first time in years. What can I say - I was intrigued by the idea of a time-travel episode that revisted some of the big plot threads from Season 1, and also, I guess, just nostalgic for a time when Heroes seemed like it could really be the next big thing. This was one of those things though where seeing an episode so tied to the show's past made you realize the current shortcomings. For one thing, I was immediately struck by the episode's central character, Hiro. I mean, it was actually a running joke in this episode how everyone expected this version of "Future-Hiro" to be the badass from Season 1 with the sword and deep voice. And you know what? So did we, the audience. The fact that Season 4 Hiro is even goofier and dorkier than his Season 1 self is testament to how little momentum Heroes has really had. I mean look at Lost. Look at Season 4 Locke or Sawyer or Jack compared to their Season 1 selves. And yeah, Heroes is a different kind of a show, and yet, Heroes was supposed to be ALL ABOUT these ordinary characters growing to accept their new abilities and coming to terms with their unique destinies. Has that happened yet? By this point they should have formed a Justice League-esque super-team and been out there actively trying to change the world, or something. So yes, in some respects this felt like a Season 1 episode, but the fact that a Season 4 episode felt so Season 1-ish was, in this case, exactly NOT what we should be seeing out of Heroes at this juncture. The one thing that made me really happy in this episode? Seeing the awesome Robert Knepper of Prison Break fame again. On the other hand, seeing him also made me sad that he was in this role and not playing T-Bag, very similar to how I felt sad seeing Kristen Bell on Heroes rather than as Veronica Mars. Man, it's just insane how much potential the concept of Heroes STILL has. It's amazing to me that after four seasons it has yet to take things to that next level and just employ real, balls-to-the-wall storytelling - storytelling that feels like it's getting you from Point A to Point B, with a definitive endgame in sight. In the end, this felt like a sort-of-decent episode of Heroes, but it wasn't the game-changer that I personally needed to convince me that I should once again invest my time into the show.

My Grade: C+

Alright - I'm out for now. Stay tuned for a lot more throughout the week.


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