My own self

The world is no longer a romantic place. Some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win, Ally McBeal.

- John Cage

Before the summer, I reviewed the first two seasons of Ally McBeal, and then took a break from the show. When I returned to it this autumn, however, I found that I'd missed it more than I realised. Something about this show just gets to me on an emotional level.

The acting is good - much of it downright great - and the heavy use of music is both engaging and obvious without feeling intrusive. As people who know me well will attest, I'm a sucker for a good musical, and a horde of episodes of this show are closet-musicals dying to be let out. The season three finale is even named Ally McBeal: The musical, Almost.

I'm sure this point alone threw a lot of you off, but don't worry, with the exception of that episode, people don't really burst into song here. There's the odd exception, sure, but for the most part, what they burst into is dancing. And good gods, I love their dancing. There is something so beautiful to this group of tight-knit friends who'll spontaneously start dancing to the song existing only in their minds. I'm not ashamed - though perhaps slightly embarrassed - to admit that many of these little dancing-scenes moved me to tears just from the sheer joy expressed on screen. There's something special about that.

The quote I opened with definitely describes the main character, but it also goes for the show - perhaps even more so. Those who've seen Kelley's Boston Legal knows he's an ace at combining the ridiculously silly with the heart-warmingly poignant and beautiful, and Ally McBeal is just as good at it. But where Boston Legal is a soap box for grand political statements, McBeal combines its warmth with personal stories. The little everyday neurosis, the tiny social dramas blown out of proportions, the soap without the box, if you would.

With all this emotion, it is perhaps no surprise the show is frequently hysterically funny - and frequently also rather sad. Reality is a constant threat hovering around the walls of the offices of Cage & Fish, and sometimes, even this crazy group of rich lawyers have to deal with tragedies pushed on them from the outside. Sometimes reality even catches up with them internally, and those are perhaps the saddest scenes of all.

While most characters on this show leave a mark, some must be mentioned by name. Flockhart's McBeal is an obvious start - the show is very much about her. You basically have to go watch House to find a show more clearly centered on its protagonist. And yet, as the show progresses, we get entire episodes were she basically doesn't even appear, symptomatic of what this really is - an ensemble show in disguise. I mentioned McBeal rather thoroughly in my previous post, however, and I also covered my other favourites - the characters of Ling, Nelle and more than anyone else the incredibly awesome John Cage and Richard Fish. I'll thus skip over them and mention some other characters that also left a mark.

Most missed, perhaps, of those who remain, is Robert Downey Jr.'s Larry Paul of season 4. [SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN SEASON 4 OR 5] His departure from the show is still hurting both Ally and the viewer a full season later - that's a product of good writing, absolutely, but it also says something about how incredibly strong Downey Jr's performance was. Heck, I still walk around wishing there was just one more episode for him to potentially come back in, and the show's been over since 2002.

Also, Elaine Vassal. Frequently annoying, even more frequently amusing, and always, always sympathetic, she's the character I realise I most frequently under-appreciate when I talk about this show. She provides a grounding in reality and a broad highway straight into crazy at the same time, and in both cases, it is a much more simple, straightforward - in my eyes, admirable - view of life than the title character ever manages. Good going, Jane Krakowski.

Finally - ruthlessly skipping over all those who also deserve mention - Hayden Panettiere's appearance in the final season as a ten year old. Where did she throw these acting skills away before she started starring on Heroes? Someone should find them for her. Anyway, I rarely find child actors to be more than passable at best, and usually they're downright annoying. Not here. I wouldn't say I loved the character, but it was a character it would have been very easy to hate, and I didn't at all.

As usual, I've ended up talking mostly about characters - I guess it's clear what I care about in a show. But plots are hardly irrelevant. Without spoiling anything, what I said initially about reality is very much the case in all of these three seasons. Simplified, season three deals with reality's increasing grip on the internal mechanisms of the group. Season four looks at reality's hold on Ally herself, and both her and other central characters' personal lives, especially romantically. Season five finishes off with the final pounding of the barbarians of the real on the gates of Cage & Fish, and the eventual, unavoidable outcome.

Some of the classical weaknesses of Kelley's shows, such as the tendency to completely shift around the casts with little to no explanations between seasons, only really occurs between season 4 and 5, and even there, most of it is pretty minor and easily explained. The show is smart, it's funny, it's engaging, and it's going to stand proudly at the front of my DVD-shelf - alphabetical ordering really speaks in Ally's favour. Most importantly, this show, for all its crazy fantasies, obsessive characters, self-centred drama and soapy plot-points, this show is human. So very human. Maybe not like most human experience actually is, but by Jove, the way it should be.

With a song in your heart every single day; and a spontaneous group-dance in the unisex.

Looking backwards, many of the saddest times in my life turn out to be the happiest.

So I must be happy now. Yeah. This is gonna be good.

Why else would I be crying?

It has been pointed out to me - quite needlessly, but also flatteringly, and accordingly I don't mind at all - that there's been a sad amount of updates in this weblog of mine these last few weeks. Months. And what there has been, I'll usually reply with mindful self-deprecation, has been little amusing quotes. No posts of substance.

My posts of attempted substance have usually centred, with some few exceptions, on TV-reviews. I have no capacity this autumn to do many of those. Nor do I have the time to do book-reviews (heck, I don't even have the time to read non-curricular books), comic-reviews, movie-reviews... or, for that matter, the odd nonsense and musings on fanciful topics. I'm in the middle of putting an (unwanted) end to this university education of mine with an attempt to do twice the amount of courses you're intended to. I'm simultaneously digging through the bureaucracies of two countries, trying to figure out the whys and hows of next year without getting anything fatefully wrong. And, people, I still watch all that TV I don't take the time to review.

But tonight, I found myself with the urge to post, as it were, and so I'll do a composite post of what I am, have been, and will be watching this autumn. Some of it's started, some of it's already over, and some of it won't come around for quite a number of weeks yet. So please, come with me down the rabbit hole of much too much American television.


The story so far
As the summer was ending, and my Kings-abstinences were finally starting to subside, a lovely show named Easy Money was also waving its last goodbye. Having only ever gotten to finish eight episodes, this excellent little drama about a family of loan-sharks only managed to get four of them on the air last autumn. When the network finally started dumping the remaining four at the end of the summer nearly a year later, I was delirious to revisit the Buffkins and their morally ambiguous lives. Four weeks later, I was once again left hanging, all the more bitter this time for the certain knowledge there will never be more.

Then the beginning of the autumn proper was marked by the exit of True Blood's second season, which impressed me by being a good step above its predecessor. While I'm still not crazy about the show, it has solidified itself as a show in the upper end of the middle-tier of shows I deem good enough to bother with. Back when I first saw the pilot, I'd honestly not expected it to ever creep up to the midle-tier at all. So congratulations to Alan Ball and company. May your days be many and conveniently clouded.

Finally, Mad Men started back up. And while at first, I was still feeling like before about the show (everything is exquisite beyond belief except the dramatical confrontations and pay-offs), I have by now, especially in light of the most recent episode, started thinking that woah, the show might even be starting to do the big pay-offs right. While I can't claim to watch them all, I have to say, Mad Men is very likely to be the best made show in current American TV. If it is actually starting to improve in the one area I felt it was lacking, the sky's the limit.

Apocalypse, nowish
Boom. Mid-september hit, and so did premieres. Dexter, starting next week, and How I Met Your Mother, already on into its autumn roll, are both stockpile-shows that I'll catch up with come late December, but they're far from alone. New shows and returning shows, September's been a rich month for TV. Almost too rich - they're raining down on me so fast I ended up quoting an Angel-episode just to find a title for this section of the post.

In chronological order, as it were, this month of fresh TV started with Glee. I saw and liked the pilot this spring, and despite its dreary high-school premise, my fondness for musicals combined with the show's great humour is quickly bringing it up among my favourites this fall.

Another newcomer was Community, a half hour sitcom about a lawyer whose college diploma has been discovered as a fake and who ends up having to attend a crappy community college or face disbarment. So far, the two episodes have entertained and shown promise, but the great jokes, while there, are still too far between for a show that tries to be an outright comedy. For a drama, this show'd be hilarious, but for a sitcom, I feel it is a bit lacking. Still, when it's good, it's good, and I'll likely end up following it all fall in the hopes it will get better yet.

On the same day as Community leaped into the fray, Fringe came back with its second season. Crime procedurals don't really enthuse me much, no matter how much the try to disguise themselves as science fiction. But with a couple of really charming characters in a really distinct and unique father-son-relationship combined with an admittedly flawless execution of the plots-of-the-week, the show remains good enough to be worth the bother. With a little luck, the show will trap itself in its own mythos like Lost did, only quicker and with less obvious fillers on the road there. Not among my favourites this autumn, but given my standing investment of an entire season, I'm more willing to follow it further than I otherwise would be. Odds are that by Christmas, I'll have committed to this one for good, even if its basic structure is rather underwhelming.

Then followed another new sitcom, Bored to Death. With only one episode under its belt as of yet, this laid-back HBO comedy centres on a young author stuck with a writer's block on his work with his second novel. He turns to weed and white wine for inspiration, and his addiction eventually makes his girlfriend leave him. In desperation, he starts an impromptu career as an unlicensed private investigator. Yet another show I'm not sold on, but again one that seems to hold some promise. In particular the main character's best friend, a kid comic book artist trapped in a man's body, was hilarious. The show can also boast Ted Danson as a regular, which helps with the draw. Depending on how overwhelmed my TV-plate gets, this one might get the boot, but for now, I'm sticking with it out of curiosity.

Third and last of the new sitcoms I've tried this month is Accidentally on Purpose, where Jenna Elfman stars as a movie critic in her late thirties who gets pregnant on a one-night stand with a much, much younger man. The show was consistently funny - more so than Bored to Death or Community - but had less charm and identity. The pilot felt like it could have been an episode from any given sitcom of the last ten years, albeit a well-written one. However, one should not ever judge a show by its pilot, and once again, I'll be back for at least one more.

House M.D. is also back this month, and true to form, Hugh Laurie's magnificent as the title character. With the exception of a small Robert Sean Leonard-cameo, the remaining regular cast is absent in the double-episode season premiere. While I don't mind the regular cast at all, this is extremely good - because it also means that the premiere doesn't follow the show's regular episode formula. By the sixth season, the medical procedural with the House-twist has gotten incredibly old, and the only reason I'm still watching is because House himself is so compelling. The show, then, is by far at its best when it breaks this formula, and for two blessed hours including commercial breaks, it did so here. Stellar job, people. I can only hope and pray it'll retain a fragment of the awesome when it returns to predictable form next week.

On the very same day, Heroes returned, joining Fringe as the bottom of my barrel of expectations. Interestingly, my low expectations combined with a quite decent episode and Robert bloody Knepper made me quite happy with the premiere. If they keep going in this direction, the season could at least measure up to "volume 4" (the second half of season 3), which was rather decent too. In all honestly - anything that avoids the utter miserable crap that was "volume 3" will be appreciated. I'd even take the aimless-feeling season 2 again if we could avoid that. The trick to enjoying this show seems to be low expectations and accepting that Hiro simply will never die no matter how many stupid things he does, and I'm getting there. At least on the former half of that sentence. And as I said, the premiere was very decent indeed. Downright good in some aspects. I'm finding myself strangely up for more.

The third component to my barrel-bottom is traditionally Smallville which, despite its gradual improvement over the last four seasons (it has started season NINE now, if you can believe that), can never really shake my old, first-four-seasons' worth of "good LORD, this show's bad"-impressions. Admittedly, those first four seasons also had some really awesome nuggets of pure gold sprinkled in, usually involving Lex and Lionel Luthor. With both those characters gone by season 9, it is odd to see how the show can have improved so much on its average episode, and at the same time also never really reach the heights of those stellar masterpieces here and there that originally committed me to the show. Even so, all my prejudices aside, there is nothing to do but admit hands down that by now, for the most part, Smallville is a downright good show. And with the addition of the charming Callum Blue to the cast this season, I might almost forget how much I miss Lex and Lionel. Almost.

Final among the September Arrivals is also the one I've been looking forward to the most. In fact, I just watched it in the middle of writing this post. Dollhouse. An unabashed Joss Whedon-fan I might be, but the first five episodes of season 1 were really nothing special at all. Luckily, the show improved vastly starting with episode 6, and the thirteenth episode was nothing short of epic. This season premiere had a lot to live up to, and in my book, it did. Keeping everything that was good about episodes 6-12 alive and building it to new heights was exactly what I expected and wanted from this premiere, and it was exactly what I got. That, and razor sharp dialogue, great emotional moments, and wonderful characters. I even got an episode plot that wasn't standalone so much as it was a season plot cleverly disguised as a standalone. And Jamie Bamber being awesome and British and mean. And Amy Acker and Fran Kranz blowing my emotional equilibrium with every single scene. And Alexis Denishof as a Republican politician on a righteous rampage. And a hundred other, awesome little things. And beyond it all, looming in the horizon, chillingly conspicuous in its absence of overt reference, was episode thirteen and the both sad and scary taint it puts on every single little plot-development. As last season ended, I was hopeful about the show. As the thirteenth episode got out with the DVD, I got quite enthusiastic. Now, I'm sold for good. This show will be my favourite this autumn, I'm almost sure of it. Now let's just hope that episode 2 won't let down my soaring expectations.

Tomorrow, tomorrow
So is that all? Oh no. Oh no no no, is it ever not. Next month comes Star Wars: The Clone Wars back with its second season, a digitally animated show that in the latter half of season 1 quite surprised me with its (for Star Wars) rather complex stories and ethical dilemmas. I find myself almost embarrassingly excited to see if season 2 will make it even better. Also new in science fiction franchises next month will be Stargate: Universe, the Stargate-series' try at doing a Trek'y show with a darker frame than the predecessors in the vast SG-continuity. While I'm not a big fan of the old two, I've seen every single episode, which amounts to an ungodly amount of hours. There is no way I'm not following that continuity to its end now. Also? Robert Carlyle! So yeah. But still, my expectations are rather low, and checking this out is almost more of a duty I have to my standing previously mentioned ungodly commitment of time to this universe than it is any real interest.

Also in October is the final piece in the Battlestar Galactica-puzzle, as The Plan is released on DVD a good many months before it'll apparently air on Syfy. Seeing as I'm obviously a huge fan, and also wasn't as disappointed by the show's ending as many others were, I'm quite besides myself with anticipation for this promised answer to (hopefully all) remaining little nagging questions.

Finally, Legend of the Seeker will start back up towards the end of the autumn. Can't say I'm at all excited. I love the books, for all their flaws, but season 1 was as big a departure from those books as Quack Pack is from The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck. Entertaining in its own, cheesy, blatantly Xena-esque style and way, but not at all what I was wanting. Nor really a show quite suited for my tastes. Still, there is very little by the way of fantasy shows on air, and I sort of feel I should take what I can get. There's also the undeniable fact that season 1's very best episodes were in many ways rather good, even if the season as a whole was an insufferable cheesefest. So I might end up caving to my completism and deciding to follow this show yet another few steps further. We shall see.


-------

There. My autumn in TV-shows. I'm sure some additional surprises will turn up along the way in one form or another. Of shows airing this autumn, I should probably also check out Entourage, but with the six season head-start it has, that's severely unlikely to happen. Of other old shows, I'm coupling the new stuff with my first ever rewatch of Ally McBeal, where I'm currently mid-way in the penultimate season, and my first structured watch-through of the eminent Batman: the Animated Series. I've recently finished its spin-off Justice League: Unlimited as well as the British The Office, the miniseries State of Play, and a rewatch of the brilliant West Wing, so if you're interested in hearing what I think of any of these things, you should give a shout-out in the comments as I like mentioned probably won't find the time and energy to write proper reviews. (There should be some of West Wing already, though, if you're up to doing a little search).


Hopefully, there's one person out there who actually bothered to read all this. If not, well, that's another hour of my life wasted, I suppose. Cheers! And thanks for reading.

People fake a lot of human interactions, but I feel like I fake them all, and I fake them very well. That’s my burden, I guess.

Many people have recommended me this show based on a book called Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsey, but I believe main credit for pushing me past the "will try it out sometime"-block and into the "trying it out now"-zone should be handed to Amras Elensar more than anyone else. By funny coincidence, the day before my scheduled watch of the pilot episode, Shirgaal reviewed it as well, a very positive one that would probably have tipped me over had I not decided to watch it already.

I was strongly skeptical at first mainly due to my lack of interest in and the downright unpleasantness of seeing a lot of explicit violence on screen. Oddly, the show didn't have much of it, and most of what there was happened in the first few episodes. Sure, they don't shy away from it, but they usually cut away from the worse acts of violence, just showing the lead-up and, of course, the results, but even the latter category got a little less horridly vivid as the show progressed. I applaud. No need to speculate, right.

The show, you see, is not at all about the violence. It's about the lack of feeling anything that drives the character(s) to it. The main and title character Dexter Morgan is not just the centre building block of the show, he is its epitome, its foundation and walls both, its carrying pillar, its axis mundi. A quote from Jane Espenson's blog springs to mind - "A House without a House at its centre cannot stand" - nor could a Dexter without a Dexter. With that, as on House, comes a myriad of strengths and weaknesses.

This is, to me, the first of show's two main issues keeping me from unequivocally loving it to, if you'll pardon a quite tasteless pun (and of course you will, you're reading my weblog after all and shouldn't be expecting any better), bits. See, I'm an ensemble cast man. I grew up loving Animals of Farthing Wood and Sinbad the Sailor. I got sold on serialized television in my teens through shows like Friends, Angel, Buffy, Judging Amy and Babylon 5. My present-day top favourite TV-shows are to a one marked by a big family of protagonists, each able to carry an episode on their own if they need to - and they're usually given the chance, too.

That's why a show like Dexter or House M.D. have hard times really climbing the ladder of my list of excellent shows. When this much time and energy is spent on the title character, making him look interesting and give him issues to deal with, the other characters have to suffer, and what's left is only degrees of how much So believe me when I tell you - it's still an excellent show, and you should try it out.

The other issue I have with the show is simply one of genre and premise - it's not really for me. I don't mean I don't enjoy it, I do, but I can never enjoy it as much as I would if this took place in Narnia rather than Miami. It's a mental block, a genre preference, a silly boy's silly tastes, call it what you will, but to me, any premise of a story set in present day in the real world will necessarily be less interesting than something that's not. That need not bother the reader though, and I will not bring that up again in this review. Just keep in mind that this is an additional reason for me to be less-than-excited with the show that's colouring what I think of it.

So, what IS this show? Well, without spoiling much beyond the pilot, it's a show following Dexter, a man shaped by a horrid and suppressed childhood trauma and a freakishly intelligent, hard, caring and morally free-thinking adoptive father into a trained killer. He has no emotions, having only the urge to kill, but he channels his need to do so into carefully planned out and just as carefully executed entrapments and killings of other serial killers on the Code his adoptive father taught him. Simultaneously, he was trained to blend in as a normal person, faking emotions, faking human relations, faking affection and attachment. And he's damned good at it, too, just about everybody loves Dexter. But Dexter, sadly, loves no-one.

Or at least, that's how the season starts out. Dexter is living an emotionless life in the forensics of the Miami police by day, being almost a prodigy at analysing dead bodies and blood splatters. By night he is killing off the scum of the Earth, and feeling good about it too. Then comes along the Ice Truck Killer, an, in Dexter's eyes, true artist of murder, and Dexter gets caught up in his game.

The cast is good for a title-character-focused show. Dexter's sister is lacking a little bit in charisma, but I honestly feel that's mostly because her character is an off-putting combination of insecure and overly sure of herself, and not through any fault of the actress'. The policemen in Dexter's life are all interesting enough, the exception maybe being a character I grew quite the distaste for, the local lieutenant. Thankfully she has a superior officer who is a far more classy brand of jackass (reminding me every so slightly of the awesome Rawls of The Wire) and knows how to put her into her place, which produced some of my favourite non-Dexter scenes of the show.

There are only two truly fascinating characters beyond Dexter himself, though - the Ice Truck Killer, and Dexter's girlfriend, Rita. A long-time victim of spousal abuse and single mum to two, Dexter chooses to spend time with Rita because she is damaged and, in a way, empty like him. The awkwardness and tentative steps of their relationship is beautiful and my by far favourite aspect of the show.

The show is heavy on the season mystery while following smaller episode-by-episode plots as well, much like Veronica Mars used to be, but in that comparison, the mystery is a little less captivating and more predictable than Veronica's was despite (or because) getting more attention during the entire season's run. It's still very good, though, and the show as a whole is incredibly addictive.




Now follows the spoilery part of the review, those who haven't seen the season yet and think they will at some point should skip to the last paragraph.

As the season progresses the Ice Truck Killer keeps attempting to undermine Harry's Code in Dexter's head, keeps trying to open up his suppressed memories to reveal, among other things, his adoptive father's somewhat less than truthful behaviour with regards to Dexter's childhood.

Rudy/Brian was very interesting. The problem was, of course, that I felt pretty confident that he was the Ice Truck Killer the second the character came on scene. You could tell that the man in the white coat was a character actor, and not just some random guy, and that was really enough. It's a sad fact, but, dramatically, they HAVE to make the killer into someone that's already introduced on the show to make the reveal exciting enough, and he was the only character who not only grew from a background-character with two lines into one with as much screentime as any other supporting actor, but who was clearly not cast by a nobody-actor.

When they started heaping on hints on him in addition, I actually started thinking he might not be the guy after all, but an intentional mislead. So that the Big Mystery Of The Season really only ever had one real candidate among the cast was saddening. The character himself, though, was awesome, as was the actor. I have to admit that while I obviously realized he had some connection to Dexter’s childhood, once I saw how young he was (and thus he couldn't possibly have been the killer of Dexter's mum) I stopped thinking about that and thus didn’t see his being Dexter’s brother coming until just a short while before it was revealed. So at least they got me a little there.

As loose ends go, the season didn't really leave many except obvious start-ups for season 2, but I do wonder a lot on Brian's need to kill their biological father. It felt as though there was something there that should've been revealed but never was, which bugs me.

The unblocking of Dexter's memories also leading him to feel a little again, thus starting to care for his sister beyond Harry's Code just as Harry's authority was broken down enough in his head for him to consider breaking it, was a very nice and ironic twist. Brian would probably have succeeded in his scheme had he confronted Dexter with Harry's lies without also unblocking his memories - he would've lost faith in his father's Code without regaining some sense of emotion.

This also lead to a very nice - and long in the coming - turn in Dexter's relationship with Rita, as he is genuinely starting to need company in his life. The season finale is very, very good.




On the whole, the season is a beautifully crafted story with very good visuals and at times very funny little mental remarks from Dexter, and my only real complaint isn't truly valid - as it is that I don't think this particular story could be told much better, but that I think they could have made a story more suited to my tastes in stead. As it stands, it is a very successful and almost equally daring piece of work. The only thing I've seen that's remotely similar to this is the very excellent and thoroughly canceled The Inside, but even that wasn't quite as dark as the mere premise of this show. I might not have heard of James Manos Jr. before (Wikipedia claims he's been involved on The Sopranos and The Shield though), but he's made what's easily one of the best made shows I've ever seen, and certainly one of the more addictive ones. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to the second season - which I will of course be watching right away.

"How long has he been dead?"
"Five hours."
"Question him."

This show was exactly as I expected: Well-made, intricate, cursed with an overabundance of standalone episodes, containing some quite interesting characters, and based on a main plot and premise that is unable to escape the feeling of "haven't I seen this ten times before?" Fringe is another attempt - this one by Lost's J. J. Abrams and two guys who used to work on Hercules and Xena - at the age old "let's do the sci-fi show as a cop-show as well, that'll make it more mainstream"-shtick that's been floating around since The X-files, and as such attempts to, it's pretty well done. That is, though, not saying too much.

To not focus on all the negative right away, I should mention that I absolutely love two of the characters; the brilliant but confused Dr. Walter Bishop and his prodigal jack-of-all-trades son Peter, who between them probably have an IQ higher than Lex Luthor. John Noble and Joshua Jackson bring these awesomely entertaining characters and their complex relationship with each other out and alive in quite impressive performances. They are lucky, though, as their characters are both well thought-out and well written. Some kudos should thus also be given to the three actors rounding out the main cast (Lance Reddick, Kirk Acevedo and Anna Torv), including the main character Olivia Dunham, because they at times actually seem interesting in spite of the writing passing them off as cliches and dreadful bores.

As I seem to have stumbled into the negative again, why don't we look at the structure of the show? Fringe's main problem in my eyes is its slow-paced standalone episode set up. While I understand the need for attracting new viewers through this formula, they endanger themselves of losing old ones. I know several people who stopped three or four episodes in, and had I myself not been a student with a summer vacation to fill, I probably would not have finished this show either. The only season plot of any real interest - predictably enough closely tied to both the Bishop's - was dreadfully apparent after only four episodes, and the hints just kept on flowing. Now, I'm all for foreshadowing, but when the summer finale's big reveal is the same plot-twist I figured out before Christmas, they're not doing it right. It's a very good plot-twist, having vast potential both for emotional character-stuff, and further plot-progression, and it should not have been wasted by spreading it out so slowly that by the time it happened, there was no shock-factor at all left.

The show's science-stuff is very variable. I'm a humanities type of guy, so when I spot obvious scientific impossibilities in the mumbo-jumbo they have Dr. Bishop spew out, that means they are too far-fetched. If you're going to explain everything with pseudo-science, honestly, you need better explanations than what Fringe often offers. However, sometimes it is not too obvious that their theories are all complete ridiculous bullshit, and those times, the show works splendidly - though it is still laughably ridiculous that anyone, regardless of intelligence, would have vast experience in as many thoroughly different fields as Walter Bishop repeatedly demonstrates. I can overlook that, though, in the interest of storytelling convenience. (Also, it makes Walter even more awesome).

All in all, Fringe is a well-made cop-show with a conspiracy-theory standing in for a main plot and science-fiction with a touch of explicit horror scenes standing in for regular criminals. If this sounds interesting, the show's definitely for you. If it doesn't - if, indeed, it sounds unoriginal and trite to the point of yawning, like it does to me - you might want to steer away but for one thing. It's main redeeming feature - and it is indeed very redeeming - is the dialogue, performance and dynamic of the two Bishop-characters, which consistently offers both emotion, drama and humour of high quality. And, by the end of the show, to a less extent the main character Dunham as well, who in all fairness did get some decent character development throughout. I will check out season 2, but unless it improves strongly, this is one show I will not be too sad to have to let go once I'm no longer a full-time student with scores of sparetime.

How would you like a show where the Ice Truck Killer from Dexter was the protagonist, only instead of killing people he just wanted to control them?

If you're anything like me, you're currently drooling incontrollably, so you should find a towel to put over your keyboard for protection before you continue reading this review of Profit.

Revenge is pointless. It's a tool for the weak. And you're not weak. Not anymore.

- Jim Profit


Now this was a thoroughly pleasant surprise! And out of nowhere, too. Whilst surfing Wikipedia and IMDB for the further works of the writers of some of the best Angel-episodes, I decided to check out the resume of the show's co-creator David Greenwalt. Lo and behold, Angel was not the first show he co-created, as he in 1996 together with a John McNamara made the short-lived Fox-show Profit.

"Short-lived" all to often means "too good to appeal to a mainstream audience", so added to Greenwalt's name, my interest was already stirring. Then I see that the title character Jim Profit was played by Adrian Pasdar, who I knew fondly from his parts on Judging Amy and Heroes.

Some more checking, and it turns out the ever-eminent Keith Szarabajka (recently the growly copper in Dark Knight, fellow Whedon-fans will remember him as the morally ambigious Angel-villain Holtz) was another regular on the show.

Wikipedia described Profit as a forerunner of darker and more morally dubious TV-shows in general and protagonists in paticular, listing Nip/Tuck, Dexter and Mad Men as later successes in the same vain.

Alright, so I was sold. Now, I've never seen Nip/Tuck, largely because I suspect I'm much too tender for it, but I have seen the other two, and while the comparison to Mad Men in my opinion is way, way off, the comparison to Dexter, well, isn't. Profit, like the more recent Dexter, uses a psycopath and/or sociopath as its protagonist, making the viewer root for someone who at best is of dubious moral integrity and at worst is the personification of all that is evil. The difference is that where Dexter is obsessed with killing, Profit is obsessed with controlling. But beyond this main difference in premise and M.O., there are many similarities. They both narrate their respective shows, bringing the viewer into their world through them. Profit even addresses the camera directly in the beginning and end of every episode. Where Dexter had his cop dad teaching him to live out his needs and fit in with society, Profit has a drug-addict con-woman stepmother from whom he indubitably learned many a trick. (A stepmother who is also his long-time lover - the show is seriously depraved). The shows have a thoroughly different feel to them, though, and the supporting cast and the episode plots are vastly different between them, so if you've seen Dexter, there's not a big worry of Profit feeling as a rehash.

As mentioned, Profit is obsessed with controlling, making him a perfect fit for corporate America. Gaining a leg in the door on the top floor of what's basically the proto-Wolfram & Hart (the classic Big Scary Morally Bankrupt Supercompany for those who haven't seen Angel), Profit's mission in life is to control and protect this corporation who played an integral part of his childhood trauma.

In a mere nine episodes - only four of which originally aired - the mythology still has the time to build rather extensively, and you get to know many characters quite well. My favourite is probably Profit's hesitant accomplice Gail (Lisa Darr), a woman he originally blackmails into helping him, and then corrupts a little more with every episode. Her constant struggle between the benefits of helping Profit and the moral issues of performing the tasks he asks of her is all the more delightful in lieu of her gradual realisation that she's actually quite good at it - and that thus, she also partly enjoys it. But there are a myriad of interesting and fascinating characters to delve into on this show.

It's difficult, still being under the spell of fresh "ooh, this is so much fun!"-feelings but trying to write an objective review. The show isn't perfect, by any means. To bring the comparison with Dexter further, this show is ten years older, looks much less sleek, and is sometimes a little clunky. Especially its visuals of things done in computers are sometimes a little... overly corny. But, I mean, come on, it was made in 1996. Considering that, Profit was impressively ahead of the curve in more ways than one, and I for one have thoroughly enjoyed it. The ending, while not a proper nor probably even half-way intended one, still ended up tying together a lot of plot-threads, and for those interested in more, the creators have let on some plans of what would have happened in a second season that can be read on the show's Wikipedia-page.

I don't think I've ever discovered, seen, and reviewed an entire TV-show in two days before. But I did with this one. And while it is rather old, it is actually out on DVD-people, so go buy. Or catch it on Chiller, Wikipedia informs me they're currently airing the full series.

Just for anyone who might wonder, the show (click here for my post about its pilot), whilst miraculously still not formally cancelled, has been moved to this summer, where its piss-poor ratings will look a little less shitty next to exclusively reruns of more popular and far less interesting shows. Also for anyone who might wonder, every single episode that's aired before they moved it has delivered on the promise of the pilot. I watch ungodly amounts of American television, and of all the current shows, this is my favourite by far. (Even Pushing Daisies is a far cry behind, though I will admit that's probably due to it being less up my alley genre-wise than Kings). Of the six episodes aired so far, only the one failed to leave me completely overwhelmed, and even that one was a cut above most other shows I currently watch, especially now that Battlestar is done. I need to go to giants of Television Past to find suitable shows to compare Kings to, but I won't, as it will just crank your after this post unreasonably high expectations even higher than they already are. Suffice to say that if good dialogue, an interesting world, compelling acting and lots of delicious politics and intrigue with a very well done layer of the religious and spiritual sprinkled in sounds made for you - not to mention Ian Mc-bloody-Shane owning every television screen he has ever appeared on - Kings is a show you should go watch, and a show you should go watch now. Though of course you can't, because they booted it to mid-June. So catch it this summer, or get it on DVD once it is cancelled as these ambitious and impeccably well done shows always are. I implore you.

You probably should not read this if you've not seen the Battlestar Galactica finale yet. It's pretty vague, but still.

Read more...

I think I was ten. Possibly eleven. The globalisation and centralisation and all that jazz that we people on the fringes of civilisation (i.e. "people who doesn't live in, or within an hour's drive from, cities") blame all our problems on hadn't gotten particularly far yet, and thus we still had a video rental shop in my hometown. (Technically we still do - there's one shelf of DVDs at the Narvesen and three at the local gas station - but I'm talking a proper one, with an entire shop filled with nothing but videos for rent) On a whim, I think, and probably because I loved the book, I had my dad check out the first VHS with episodes of an animated series simply marked as "The Jungle Book". It was Norwegian-dubbed - except for the opening credits, which were in English, and the title-text on screen, which was French. As I grew older and wiser and realised the animation-style was Japanese (but not so old we had The Mighty Internet to answer All Questions You Might Have About Anything) I remember this utter salad of languages and cultures peeking through confusing me a little.

Anyway, I obviously liked it. Why else would I be writing this post? And so, some nagging was applied, and my dad rented me the next installment next week. And so it went. It quickly turned into a contract of sorts - if I was good one week, I'd get to rent the next installment next week. I was usually good, seeing as I didn't have a backbone back then either, so I liked this arrangement.

All good things must come to an end. I don't recall if it was the shop running out of VHS'es or if they simply didn't translate more of them to Norwegian - or even if the shop went bankrupt already back then - but somewhere about halfway through the show, I ran out of videos to rent one way or another. Since then, I've been looking for them.

A couple of years later, I found one for sale somewhere. The second VHS-tape, annoyingly with three of the episodes I'd liked the least on it. I bought it, of course, it was better than nothing, and for that decision I will forever be grateful, because in hindsight, the main plot on that tape is probably among the best the show ever had. It didn't have Shere Khan, though, so twelve-year-old-me didn't particularly care for it...

It would take many years before I found the next one - yes, literally the next one, it was tape number three. I believe I might have been fifteen at the time. The shop, of course, also had tape number two, but no other ones. Gritting my teeth at the combined luck and misfortune, I bought it, only barely wrestling myself to not buy their copy of the second tape just to have a backup for my own - and joy! It was an awesome collection of three episodes among which two were among the favourites I could remember from when I was younger.

This was all I would have for almost a decade, despite looking for these tapes wherever I went. True, I did whilst still in my early teens stumble over some German-dubbed episodes I hadn't even seen before on some channel - possibly Nicelodeon - that my grandparents got on their satelite dish. But seeing as I didn't speak German, it only served to tease me further. Two years after high school, however, I was nearing twenty years of age and had just moved to Bergen some months before. A video rental right next to where I lived was finally paid a long-postponed visit - and lo! It had Jungle Book-VHS'es. Three of them.

Tapes 2, 3 and 4.

I mean, seriously, at this point I figured someone was having a costly laugh at my expense. At this rate, I'd find them all by my 254th birthday, at that point having re-found that blasted tape number two seventy-three-thousand times. Asking the guy behind the counter if they had any more and getting an expected no, I rented tape number four, and went home to watch it. It was nice and all, but hardly Awesome. Not comparable in quality to the two I already had, and that wasn't just my by then incredibly nostalgic committment to those two tapes talking - these were simply weaker episodes. Still, I was just so happy to have found ANYTHING. I considered re-renting it to bring it home to my parents where there'd be two VHS-players so I could copy it - anything to not lose the thing again. But then the video rental apparently finally realised that nobody had sold VHSes for four or five years, and put their stock of such out for sale.

Miracles do still occur, you see. They're slimy and hard to spot, but they do occur.


Joy upon joy, I now had three tapes. Of the, what, fifteen or so I remembered. I never stopped looking for them online, though, but couldn't find anything in either Norwegian or English. Finally, I found someone who'd put the very first two episodes with English dubs out on YouTube. But that was sadly it.

But then! Out of nowhere! Some silly shop in Italy, of all places, decided to start selling them with Italian AND English dubs on. I had to pay through the nose, but this last December, for my own 24th birthday, I got the entire show.

It's in English, and as all Norwegians my age with a pseudo-geeky bone in their bodies know, English dubbing is on the whole horribly, horribly inferior to Norwegian. They never dare to actually act their lines, these English voice actors, and the few times they do it's so overdone it just sounds out of place. So, sadly, it was not as enjoyable as the voices I grew up with would have been by far, rewatching this.

But that's one laugh I'll let the trickster gods of fate have, and happily. I got to rewatch the entire show this December. All the way to the end that I never saw before. Corny voice work can't take that away from me. (Even Fox can't take that away from me, and gods know they've probably tried.)

I seriously never thought I'd get to finish this show. While the Dream of finding them with Norwegian voice work will probably still go unrealised, this is as good a silver medal as it gets.

So, what did I think? It was alright. Some plotlines and characters are really deep, and the show does a surprisingly good job (just like I remembered!) at staying true to Kipling's original work whilst adding a score of characters and nuances, and removing some of the really dark stuff. The save-the-environment-vibe of the late eighties is impossible to escape in this show, though, and this is very annoying. Luckily, you don't notice it much in the episodes without humans in them, and those are by far the best ones anyway. The score, the drawings and the characters are the ones I grew up with, and that probably coloured my imagination more than any other single thing I've ever experienced. (That includes Disney and Tolkien. I know. Freaky.) The ending is thoroughly unsatisfactory, by the way, but that's just like Kipling's own ending. I get the whole journey-to-manhood-thing. But who can hear the story of Mowgli and not wish he'd stay in the jungle at the end? Bah.

I have it now. The only feeling of joyous nostalgic closure that's ever come remotely close to this was when Wesley chose the lie and Angel decided he kinda wanted to slay the dragon. And I only had to wait for that one for five years. This took almost fifteen.

Thank you, Italy.

I have it now.

Hustle is back, and so is Mickey Bricks, but Danny Blue, Stacie Monroe and Billy Bond are not. Still, while I missed them, having Mickey, Three Socks and Albert back more than make up for not seeing the three people who were the lower half of the character ladder anyway. Worse is that they're being replaced with two new guys - and you just know where this is going. A new Stacie and yet another Danny, right? Well, sort of. While Emma and Sean, the two new people, sort of fill Danny and Stacie's functions, they are very much new characters. Emma, because she's a lot more like Mickey than like any other character, and thus distinctly different from Stacie. Sean, because he's not a conman by trade unlike Bond and Blue. Still, the dynamic between the gang and Sean as the junior new guy feels overly done. I wish they'd find some new group dynamic to play at than "dazzle and tease the new guy", especially when this is the third character going through those motions now.

As for the series itself, the six episodes were quite something. The marks who recurred in the final episode were awesome, especially the angry guy, and really brought something to the show. I hope we'll see him again in series 6. The same goes for the always stellar Tim McInnerny, who anyone should know from Blackadder if nothing else, who gave us a very memorable elitist judge as the main mark in one of the episodes. Mostly, this is more of the same, but with Bricks back in the driver's seat. And let's face it, if you check out the fifth series, it is probably because more of the same is quite fine with you indeed.

It certainly is with me. Come on, BBC, pump out a sixth series as soon as possible. I'm waiting.

Can you spell "quirky"? It seems to be Bryan Fuller's favourite. The man has recently gotten tons of attention for being brought back on the way-past-limping Heroes where he has previously contributed by among other things penning the episode Company Man in the first season - the one episode of the entire show that I'd like to own on DVD. What's maybe gotten a little less attention is what he's been doing while he's been away from Heroes - and it is, unsurprisingly, a cute and quirky little show.

There is something about Fuller's shows that makes "cute and quirky little show" seem like a suitable description on all of them. Dead Like Me - which he created and then left after quarreling with the studio - is by far the weakest one of them (due to Fuller's absence, mayhaps?) but it, too, is decidedly quirky. Thinking back on it, in fact, it occurs to me that the pilot and base concept presented in it was much quirkier than the rest of the show ever was... Fuller is definitely a writer with a fascination for the odd and unexpected. The other (perhaps slightly more well-known?) show of his was Wonderfalls, which only got one shortened season, but where Fuller at least stayed on. And so, I must say, did the quirky. I'm no big fan of Dead Like Me, but I quite enjoy Wonderfalls. (And I LOVE Company Man, the memory of it being the only reason I'm still putting up with Heroes) My expectations, thus, to his third quirky little show were as mixed as they get. And I say "little" even though it was nominated for twelve and won three Emmy Awards. Because it's just so cute, you can't think of it as anything else. If this show had gotten ten seasons, it'd still be a cute and quirky little thing.

So what was this show? Well, as this post's title has long since given away, it was called Pushing Daisies, and its cancellation is what has brought Fuller back on Heroes. The second season is still ongoing, being on a Christmas hiatus before airing its final three episodes, but the first, stumped by the writer's strike, ended this spring, and I've recently caught up on it. While shorter than it should have been, I must say the season holds up well despite the premature ending.

The show's base concept is just as odd as on the other two shows: Ned, a pie-maker and part-time assisting private investigator, has a unique talent. When he touches someone, or something, that is dead, if comes back to life. If he touches it again, it dies, for good. And if he leaves it alive for more than a minute, something else in the vicinity of approximately the same strength of life-force dies in a poof of cosmic balancing. His part-time P.I.'ing is a result of this, as the eminent Emerson Cod, private eye, discovers Ned's talent, and makes use of him to have one-minute-interviews with murder-victims - thus easily catching killers and claiming rewards. The duo becomes a trio, however, when the murder-victim turns out to be Ned's childhood sweetheart, and he doesn't manage to bring himself to put her back out before her minute is up. The cast is rounded off with Olive Snook, Ned's employee at The Pie Hole who is head over heels in love with him, but unaware of his secret powers.

Now, with the other two shows, most of the oddness ended there. Not so with Pushing Daisies. The entire shape of the show is purposefully strange: filled with bright colours, a calm, British narrator's voice with an obsession of exact numbers and times, and taking place in a world that's an odd blend of the present day and the 1950's. Two inspirations strike me as very obvious - anything by Tim Burton, and Amélie. The show is borrowing heavily from both, in homages sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious. The strange thing, I'm not a big fan of neither Burton nor the somewhat too artsy Amélie, but I really, really liked this show. The blend of Fuller's quirky humour with the larger-than-life look and feel of the show makes for a lovely little fairy-tale land that feels both real and fantastic at the same time. Think of some of the intense, powerful scenes of Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring. Didn't those just make the fantastical seem awfully real? Pushing Daisies does just the opposite, making the real seem awfully fantastical. And I quite like it.

The characters are lovable, to a one. My personal favourite would no doubt be Mr. Cod, but every single character is amazing. The loving relationship that develops between Ned and his untouchable childhood sweetheart is possibly the sweetest romance I've ever seen depicted on screen - all the more so for their inability to ever touch each other. The cases of the week are usually quite interesting and always quite absurd. The dialogue is wonderful.

This is one of the strongest recent shows I've seen, and while it's not quite enough up my alley (no wizards, no dragons, no politics, no intrigue, and no Darth Vader!) to be a show I'll ever wholeheartedly love, if this is your thing, I can promise you that you'll do just that. And even if it's not, I cannot see how you can do anything but enjoy this colourful festivity of a TV-show. It's touching, funny, pretty, engaging and sometimes even sad. But most of all, it's a cute and quirky little thing created by Bryan Fuller.

Which is probably why it's so good.

I have a score of posts on my to-do-list, but is presently far too busy to get to a tenth of them. However, with TV-seasons wrapping up left and right, I figure I'll make an attempt at making the list slightly less long by finally posting a (short) post on the new HBO-series True Blood which wrapped up its first season a few weeks back.

What is True Blood? Well, it's Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, which I've not seen) and HBO's attempt at a fantasy-show, more specifically a vampire-show, based on a series of books by Charlaine Harris. It is also, I believe at least to some extent, one of their more successful efforts of getting a new drama to attract attention on the line of their all oh-so-canceled or finished successes Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos and The Wire. And while True Blood falls a couple of miles, leagues, countries and continents short of the immense quality contained in any of those shows, it did manage to appeal to me quite a bit.

Not at first, though. Oh no, so very much not at first. The pilot was an exercise in cheese of which I haven't seen the like since Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Buffy Vs. Dracula. and at least there it was done on purpose, with a wink and a nudge. The whole thing felt decidedly off whenever it got to the supernatural stuff, and it was very odd to feel the recognisable HBO realism and quality mixed with such an ineptitude at conveying the paranormal in an interesting or even convincing manner. I will not claim to know much about the previous work of the people behind this show, but I highly doubt any of them has ever done any fantasy or even science fiction before. The pilot's, and the following three episodes' or so, attempts at cool scenes and interesting fantastical elements were in many respects akin to watching somebody try to tell this awesome English pun they'd heard to someone who only speaks Russian. The language of telling a convincing fantasy tale was simply missing from the show.

However, much like a baby learning to walk, with every episode, they improved. The cheese gradually declined to an acceptable level, and the characters started feeling less off. Many of them still felt (or feel, for that matter) highly stupid or uninteresting, but at least they started feeling more like real people as the show progressed. The annoyingly high rate of occurrence of sex or almost-sex scenes declined accordingly, blissfully, but never disappeared. Yes, we get it, HBO, your shows can have people swearing and screwing like there's no tomorrow, but they don't have to spend half the episodes doing so just because.

Lot of negative, huh? Well, yes. But there are many things in this show worth the bother. There is, after all, a reason or two why I suffered through the initial cheese and discovered the improving curve.

First off, the premise is very interesting indeed. What if vampires suddenly went public with their existence due to a new artificial blood for drinking being invented that allowed them to co-exist peacefully with people? Well, do this, go a few months ahead in time, and make a zoom-in on a small Louisiana town and see how it plays out. And they're good with the realism of the reactions, too. Of course there'd be liberals fighting for vampire rights, religious organisations blaming them for everything bad, hundreds of people trying to be turned, thousands more developing severe vampire-fetishes, vampires-only-bars, and so on and so forth. This is all handled well, and while I would have much preferred a bigger picture-type show with focus on the politics and the worldwide nature of the vampires' self-outing, it is admittedly interesting to follow the development in one single small town.

Second, or third counting the realistic backdrop, it looks good. With the exception of most scenes with vampires baring their fangs, which usually just looks ridiculous, the show pulls off both mundane and unearthly with good visuals, no matter how cheesy the content.

Then there's the very clever idea of V, the new hit drug among humans, which gives you vampire senses and increased strength and potency during your high. It is, of course, made out of vampire blood, and highly illegal. Thus, there is not just vampires annoyed at their leaders' outing them waiting in the dark corners for human prey - there is also mortal junkies skulking about for vampires to kill for their next fix... Topsy-turvy, as it was, and a delightfully dynamic one at that.

And last, well, as I said, it gets better as it goes, this show.

The plots are interesting enough. Maybe too slow-moving for some, but on the most part this is a much faster-paced show than the other HBO-dramas I mentioned earlier, except for possibly Rome. The structure and functioning of the mythical world we see more and more of as the show goes on, or what little we learn of it, usually makes sense and feels interesting. Bonus-point for the old Viking sheriff who makes dry, un-subtitled remarks in Swedish. Makes me feel all kind of priviliged for understanding dialogue the intended primary American audience doesn't. Characters frequently do stupid things, but rarely do they act completely irrationally. And while the main plot might be a vampire-mortal-romance highly reminiscent of Buffy's second and third season (including the tweak of taking Buffy's temporary ability from the episode Earshot and giving it to the main character), well, as Whedon himself said recently, it's not like he's the first guy to think up a vampire-human-romance, and it's not like the story can't be told again in different but still interesting ways.

The acting - unlike the characters - is for the most part rather good. The vampire love interest, Bill, is a bit sullen and brooding, but it works for him (sound familiar?), and when required, the actor pulls off more emotional stuff well enough. Most others, if their scenes seem off, it's usually because of the cheese simply being too heavy to buy, not because of any faulting of the actors. Special mention to the local sheriff and the town police detective, a fine pair of investigators with an awesome dynamic between them.

The post is turning lengthy, and I'm turning short on time with my other things to do today. I will thus end this post by stating that vampires are not the only things lurking in the night in the True Blood world, they're just the only ones who've gone public about it. And as the first season went towards its end, there is quite a number of boogiemen and sprites popping out of the woodwork. What the second season holds, then, is hard to predict - but I'm genuinely interested in finding out.

Not at all my favourite show to have followed this autumn, but in the end not the weakest one by far, either.

They cancelled Easy Money. I watch TWELVE current TV shows every week, and they cancel the one I deem best of them after only having run for FOUR episodes.






Bloody. Bleeding. Bastard. Hell.

It's been alright but nothing stellar - much like I've come to expect from Heroes. Still, the tendency so far is that they have a lot of very good ideas and themes to put their cast through, but end up not always really hitting the targets on the actual execution. One of their better episodes lately just aired, however, and it was one of the better ones even if Mohinder, Claire, Peter and Hiro all acted like irrational morons and my second favourite character died.

Seriously, though - Hiro's always been an utter git making decisions and plans so infantile and stupid it makes the brain hurt to just think about them, but this season he's simply being so ridiculous that if he now was to actually get something right, I'd be outraged of how incredibly out of character that would be.


The weird thing is that Sylar, whom I've never liked, is flat out interesting this season. I find myself enjoying his scenes more than virtually any others. Making him so far the only character who the season has actually improved upon.

Planned? Planned?! You don’t plan sincerity! You gotta make it up on the spot.

- Denny Crane

I want it on the record that I've just been called "snidy-butt" by a person whose vote is worth 13000 times more than mine.

- Alan Shore

Yesterday was a big day! Why? Because I finally watched the one and only The Adventures of Sinbad-episode I missed back when Norwegian television-channel TV2 aired it in my early-and-still-able-to-take-even-the-super-corny-shows-for-awesome-as-long-as-they-were-fantasy-themed-teens! (Also, I didn't pay much attention to the actual English back then, apparently, because the show turns out to have been FILLED with deliciously horrid puns!) It was the season 1 finale, Rumina's Vengeance. I know for sure, because I taped every episode I watched and re-watched them at least twice each.

And oh-my-gods. It explained who this Scratch-guy was way better than his other two episodes. And much more importantly, it resurrected Torak! Torak! And then he survived the episode! And now I'm back in the horrid, horrid limbo-land of cancelled shows! All the litttle plot-threads they had going in season 1 that they largely ignored in season 2! Where did Rumina go, I used to wonder, blissfully ignorant I'd missed an episode until years later, and now suddenly I also have to ask where did Torak go?!

Still, huge day! Big childhood hole was filled. Wonderous. Too bad I couldn't see it back when I would've been able to look past all the corny stuff more easily and truly enjoy it. But still. Wow. Awesomeness by the bucketload, finally getting to see one such giant piece of an admittedly grossly unfinished puzzle.


Hooray!

"That must have been some trial in 1957. You and your father."
"We made quite a team. Two birds of a feather."
"What did he say when the verdict came back? Your father?"
"Oh, he hugged me. The usual. Proud papa. You know how it goes."
"I don’t actually. My father was never proud of me. It’s a terrible thing to be disapproved of by your own dad."
"I wouldn’t know."
"Well! You led a charmed life."
"Denny Crane."
"Ha."
(the conversation drifts off to other topics for a while. Suddenly, in the middle of it, Denny speaks up, softly)
"He disowned me...."
"Sorry?"
"My father. He disowned me."
(pause)
"Oh. Well, fathers. Screw'em."
"Damn right."
"I'm proud of you, Denny."
"For what?"
"I just am. I always am."

- Alan Shore and Denny Crane,
Boston Legal 3x18: Son of the Defender