Category: TV
The Adventures of Pete and Pete opening credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY_3uxzkoV4
Direct beam comms #2
TV
How ironic is it that the most interesting character in the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is a murdering American Nazi family-man dealing with an insurgency and a family medical crisis played by Rufus Sewell? And that’s not to knock anyone else on High Castle — that’s just that Sewell’s character of John Smith is the best thing in a good series!
I’ve been thinking about the TV series Babylon 5 lately and there’s a reason for that. I’ve been going through my old comic collection and pulling aside issues that have some meaning to me — the first comic book I ever remember paying my own money for, ones with amazing story and art, ones that I had to seek out… — and at the same time was pulling non-comic things out of my long boxes. Some of what I moved were a few issues of a short-lived magazine called sci-fi Invasion! by Wizard from late 1990s. Looking through those magazines what was top of mind back then was Star Wars because of the then upcoming prequels, The X-Files, Star Trek and Babylon 5.
What’s interesting is that there’s a new Star Wars movie and TV series out now, a new The X-Files series that starts in a few weeks and a new Star Trek movie next year and talk of a new Trek TV series too. But as for Babylon 5, that one’s mostly forgotten.
Well, kind’a forgotten. There are DVD sets for the series but that’s about it. Babylon 5 isn’t available in hi-def nor for purchase or streaming online and as far as I’m aware isn’t playing on syndication anywhere. Which is totally odd in a time where sci-fi is king and there’s this 110 episode series that’s just sitting out there somewhere that many fans of the genera are unaware of.
Even when Babylon 5 was new it was second-fiddle to the Star Trek series that were also airing at the same time. Where I lived new episodes Babylon 5 aired Sunday mornings at 8AM. Babylon 5 wasn’t so much as appointment TV as it was a syndicated series local stations could use to plug holes in their schedules, of which our local station must’ve had one Sunday mornings when I was usually sleeping in.
It wasn’t until TNT bought and started reairing the series weekday afternoons, and a more reasonable hour to a college student, that I was finally able to see all the Babylon 5 episodes.
Babylon 5 was good. Like Star Trek it took a season for the series to find its legs but once it did it was enjoyable. Even if many of the themes, storylines and character types are essentially pulled straight from The Lord of the Rings novels.
Regardless, it does make me wonder why Babylon 5 just went away as it were. After TNT reaired the series once or twice and tried rebooting it through a series of TV movies, Babylon 5 in the late ‘90s essentially was gone seemingly for good from TV screens.
Maybe the series was shot on video and can’t easily be converted to hi-def, or maybe it’s something to do with the special effects or who owns the rights to the show is why it’s only ever really been available on DVD? My feeling is that someday someone’s going to see this gem sitting in their vaults and either decide to reair it to great acclaim or reboot it ala classic and modern Doctor Who.
It’s only a matter of time.
Alternate Christmas flicks
Let’s say that you’re tired of the traditional Christmas movies that pop-up on TV every year — I’m lookin’ at you A Christmas Story — and want to switch things up a bit. Here’s a group of movies that all takes place at Christmas-time, but aren’t necessarily Christmas related.
Prometheus (2012): The crew of the spaceship Prometheus arrive at a far off distant planet on December 21, 2093 where they spend the holiday season fighting aliens creatures out to destroy humanity.
Go (1999): In Go, several different stories from soap-opera actors to young 20-somethings selling ecstasy to a trip to Las Vegas all collide during the holiday season.
Batman Returns (1992): This will probably be the only Batman film in history that takes place in a snowy Gotham City during Christmas.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) & Iron Man 3 (2013): Writer/director Shane Black sure must have a thing for Christmas since two of his movies both takes place at that time.
Die Hard (1988): A movie that still holds up nearly 30 years later, Die Hard takes place over one night at a corporate Christmas party gone bad.
Comics
Silver Surfer Epic Collection: Freedom collects many of the early Silver Surfer appearances in the early ’80s, from a story from the Epic Illustrated an a John Byrne one-shot to 14 issues of the Silver Surfer comic released in the late ’80s which started my obsession with this awesome cosmic character.
Movies
I recently discovered the wonderful movie What We Do in the Shadows by Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords and Taika Waititi. This movie follows a documentary crew as they film a group of vampires based in Wellington, New Zealand. Think The Office crossed with Interview with a Vampire and that’s what What We Do in the Shadows is. Instead of following the usual vampire tropes, this film instead focuses on vampire “flatmates” who are all several hundred years old and must navigate the Wellington night scene, where they’ve got to be invited into clubs to look for their next meal, and are perplexed by modern conveniences like TV and the internet.
“Yeah some of our clothes are from victims. You might bite someone and then, you think, ‘Oooh, those are some nice pants!’.”
On the Horizon
I’m thinking of writing a column on what exactly Doc Brown knew in the Back to the Future movies which would come out sometime next year but haven’t quite cracked it yet.
The best TV series of 2015
The best TV show of the year is AMC’s excellent Better Call Saul.
Better Call Saul
I was never much a fan of Breaking Bad, of which Saul is a prequel to, so how is it that I liked Better Call Saul so much? To be sure, Saul and Bad are two shows that while related are very different in tone. Bad was much more about what happens to people when things going wrong while Saul is a character study of how Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) went from an earnest, abet mostly unsuccessful, lawyer to become Bad’s Saul Goodman who’s involved in organized crime, drugs and murder.
“You’re the kind of lawyer guilty people hire.”
The thing with Better Call Saul is that it’s almost as like we’re witnessing a character who could’ve gone several different ways if certain circumstances were a bit different. After the events of the first season leave Saul a bitter and broken man, he vows that he’ll never again put anything ahead of making loads of money for himself. But it didn’t have to be that way. If just a few tiny things had gone differently for him Saul could’ve been a legitimate lawyer working at a legitimate firm.
Halt and Catch Fire
Halt and Catch Fire is a series watched by shockingly few people when compared to other series on AMC like The Walking Dead and the above mentioned Better Call Saul. However, I’ll be the first to say that while not many people might be watching Fire, that doesn’t mean that Fire isn’t a fine show.
The first season of Fire dealt with the creation of a new computer in early ‘80s Texas while the second shifted gears and turned the focus of the show to two of the characters played by Kerry Bishé and Mackenzie Davis who have created an online gaming system and community. That’s not to say that the two leads from the first season played by Lee Pace and Scoot McNairy are out of the picture. In the second season one has to deal with suddenly becoming wealthy after creating the computer from the first season and the other coming to terms with being self destructive both personally and career-wise.
If I could have one wish for Christmas it would be that more people watch Halt and Catch Fire which was thankfully picked up for a third season earlier this year.
Fargo
I didn’t watch the first season of Fargo when it originally aired. For whatever reason I couldn’t get into the first few episodes and gave up soon after. But last winter a friend watched the show, liked it a lot and told me I needed to check it out again. Which I’m glad I did since this time I was able to get into the show, like it a lot and now absolutely love the second season.
Much like with Better Call Saul, the second season of Fargo is a prequel to the first. Here, it’s the late ‘70s in places like Minnesota and North Dakota where the crime family the Gerhardts are contemplating a war with a Kansas City crime syndicate.
And mixed into all this is a missing Gerhardt family member, the couple who are responsible for his disappearance, a start trooper trying to solve a murder and stop the war and a wife with cancer…and UFOs too!
W/ Bob and David
This four episode Netflix series reunited comedians Bob Odenkirk and David cross of Mr. Show with Bob and David along with most of the same performers and writers of that show. And while the series could’ve easily been Odenkirk and Cross performing a “best of” Mr. Show, instead W/ Bob and David went to some hilarious, unexpected places.
The Americans
The Americans continued its strong run of storytelling into the third season of the show, this time the characters Phil and Liz Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) are ordered by their controllers in the Soviet Union to bring their American born daughter into the spy family fold. Except is this too much for a girl as American as apple pie to take?
The Knick
Much like with Halt and Catch Fire I don’t get the sense that many are watching The Knick. I feel as if The Knick were on HBO instead of Cinemax everyone would be talking about his little gem and watching it, but instead it’s a great hidden show about the perils of “modern” medicine at the turn of the last century.
Deutschland 83
A sort of German version of The Americans, Deutschland 83 follows an East German spy working inside the West German military and NATO in 1983 when there still was a Cold War and Germany was split into two countries.
Star Wars Rebels
I don’t care that Star Wars Rebels is a cartoon airing on Disney XD. All I care about is that it’s the best Star Wars movie or TV show since Return of the Jedi.
Babylon
Babylon was a weird/interesting mini-series that aired on Sundance Channel last winter. It was weird since Sundance never aired the first episode of this seven episode show. It was interesting since it followed the inner-workings of the London police department from the offers on the street to the PR operatives in the offices trying to keep the city from boiling over.
Manhattan
The second season of Manhattan on WGN continues to be a riveting look at what it took to create the first atomic bomb and the toll that creation took on the men and women tasked at making this “gadget.”
Community
Thank you Yahoo for giving us one more season of this brilliant show.
Direct beam comms #1
TV
The SyFy series The Expanse and Childhood’s End premier Monday night this week. The Expanse takes place several hundred years in the future where space travel is common but something found in the depths of space might spell doom for humanity while Childhood’s End is an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke book of the same name where seemingly benevolent aliens visit the Earth. And if sci-fi has taught me anything it’s that aliens are almost never as benevolent as they first appear!
I’ve already watched the first episode of The Expanse, SyFy released it early a few weeks ago. The show’s pretty good, it seems to be a cross between the aesthetic of, say, a Stargate and storytelling of Battlestar Galactica. Which means it’s slick, but with substance.
Movies
The third week of December marks the traditional start of Star Wars, where the fans line up in droves and wait hours to see a movie we’ll all be able to watch for ourselves at home in a few months.
Books
I recently picked up the art books The Art of John Bolton, The Fastner & Larson Gallery and The Art of Brom at a local used book store. I really like Bolton and Fastner & Larson’s styles, but was surprised just how much cheesecake art these two books contained. I’ve got nothing against cheesecake, but the sheer amount of scantily clad women in these books… wow! And I’ve been on the lookout for a Brom book for years now ever since my brother picked one up many moons ago where I fell in love with his art.
On the Horizon
Currently, I’m working on articles for “The best of the rest of 2015” which is due out January 1, one about The X-Files which should be out January 15 and Better Call Saul for February 5. I really need to start watching and reviewing the back half of Space: Above and Beyond in order to finish up my series since this is the dark, shut-in time of year, but I’ve been really lazy of late and haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.