I’ve been bummed out pretty hardcore the last few weeks, I won’t deny it. When I get in the dumps it’s hard for me to do much of anything, and I tend to just sit on my futon and smoke a lot of pot. Again, won’t deny it. You guys are my loyal readers, you deserve a real explanation for why I vanished for a few weeks. That’s not cool, and I hate to do it, but sometimes I get down and things overwhelm me and I just sort of…..freak out. I could promise it won’t happen again, but I’m not sure I can keep it. This is my favorite outlet for anything, to be honest, I love to write. I love it when I get to talk about my passions, and I love to know that other people are reading and enjoying what I have to say. It makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something, and that’s just plain awesome.
So what am I down about? Work, women, money, all the usual problems you’d expect from a twenty-four year old guy. Unfortunately, while I can accept that my problems are standard, I also face the distinct issue of being a depressive. I spend about half the time taking happy pills to balance myself out, and the other half of the time not taking them and telling myself that they don’t work and to not waste time or money. However, the majority of the time I thank God that my problem is only depression, as there are quite a few extreme bi-polar cases in my family and I’d hate to be one of them.
The usual response to my admitting problems is to tell me that I should go and do something about them, fix them. Easier said than done, but I’m still trying. I’m working things out right now so that I can go back to school starting in June, hoping that the change of pace and sense of direction will help to eliminate the funk that I’m in. Maybe the new environment and the new people will do well for me. One can only hope, right?
So now that I’ve blabbed some private details, what do you say I stop boring the piss out of you guys and talk about something fun?
This week is not going to be about comics. I know, I know, shock and awe, I mean, I write a comic book column on a comic book section of a site. Do my job right and all of that. But lately my mind keeps wrapping around a few select things.
- Dollhouse
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- Reaper
- Chuck
Does anyone see the pattern between those four titles? Two Fox shows, a CW one, and an NBC one. Three are on their second season, one is on the first. All are amongst my favorite shows, and are at the top of my DVR prioritizer. And all are on the verge of being officially canceled. I think that’s pretty freaking lame, if you ask me.
Dollhouse is a new show, a mid-season debut from Fox that came on when Terminator moved to Fridays. It’s the most recent brain child of Joss Whedon, and it’s about an organization that programs people to do what they (or their customers) want. Dolls, or actives, are people who have had their minds completely wiped; they live in a low stimulus environment where they have no stress or worry, just the occasional treatment. The treatment is when a new mind is put over their blank ones, giving the Dolls a personality, or job skills, or the ability to kill someone in an entertaining manner, pretty much whatever is needed for the situation. What this means, however, is that there’s little to no point in allowing yourself to become attached to the personality of any of the Dolls, since, well, it won’t be back.
Oddly enough, having watched every episode to date, the weakest character is the main one, Eliza Dushku’s Echo. Not to say that Echo is weak, rather Caroline, her true self, is horribly uninteresting. She’s a good girl, she’s a bad girl, she’s determined, she’s head strong, and……alright, let’s be honest, she tried to help animals and got her boyfriend killed, and then she decided to become a doll. Yay for Caroline! Now what’s Sierra up to?
That’s a recurring theme for me while watching the show. When it comes to the Dolls I’m intrigued by Sierra, Victor, and November; the supporting characters. Not to mention that when their past lives have been revealed they’ve helped make the characters feel more human, as opposed to Echo being Superwoman. I dunno, it might just be that I get irked watching one character do the uber-badass bit in every episode. Personal problems and all of that.
The non-Dolls also have their moments, and I have to say it, I love Topher. The geeky little jerk that programs the Dolls and does all the tech related stuff, and he’s my favorite character on the show. He’s a constant source of comic relief, a much needed one at that, and he’s just so damn likable. Not to say that the rest of the cast isn’t, but Topher is the only one truly deserving of a separate mention. He’s one of the reasons I watch the show every week!
Unfortunately, right now Dollhouse is sitting in a spot that Joss Whedon is used to seeing his shows in, where it could very well be canceled as the season ends, or a stroke of luck could come through and renew it. The network is placing it at a fifty percent chance of coming back, but fans aren’t expecting to see it again. Most Whedon shows tend to die like this, cult favorites that never catch on with the masses. Not every show is a Buffy or an Angel, most are just Firefly.
Now what else do we have? Oh yeah, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. When it first debuted I expected a Terminator of the week formula where every week John, Sarah, and Cameron would fight a bad guy, narrowly survive, wash, rinse, repeat. A real yawn fest where you can miss an episode and not miss anything, but hey, at least it was going to be an extra hour of TV to watch.
Then I saw it, and I was hooked immediately. A linear progressing story that encompassed the entire first season, where the plot built and deepened with every episode. Exactly the kind of thing I watch TV for, an actual story. And to top it off, in order to start the show they opened by saying that Terminator 3 never happened, which is an easy way to score brownie points with me as I hated that movie with a passion.
There was some inspired casting as well, as Lena Headey (while by no means is she Linda Hamilton) is able to put a very human face on her tough as nails character, and gives us a Sarah that we can love as well as respect, as opposed to the traditional “She’s bad ass and don’t fuck with her!” that you’d expect from a character like Sarah Connor. Lena makes Sarah feel like a real and true woman and mother, someone who is doing everything she can solely for the sake of her son. Not to save the future, to save John. And she does so in a way that Linda Hamilton could most likely never accomplish.
Thomas Dekker is John Connor during his teenage years, and while my first thought was “Claire’s gay friend from Heroes? LAME!” he quickly won me over. John isn’t a kid, no matter what his age is, he’s lived more years in his short life then most have in full life times. He’s had his life challenged so many times over his brief life that he’s callous and cold, but he still maintains hope for some variety of a normal life, even if he knows that he will never have one. The show might be called the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but it’s hard to take away from the character of John Connor, of whom the entire Terminator universe is centered. Dekker does an amazing job, and even manages to let his John break down into just your average teenager on more than one occasion, rather than the cold and calculating soldier that saves humanity in the future.
Of course, every Terminator related project needs a Terminator, so we got Summer Glau as Cameron, a Terminator sent back by John Connor to defend his younger self. Cameron is creepy, I’m not going to lie. Sometimes she’s overly human, sometimes she’s colder the ice, sometimes you think she and John are going to fuck, and other times you think she’s going to go rogue and kill him. And yet Summer does a bang up job with all of this, and manages to take the cold and emotionless piece of metal and turn her into an endearing character.
But you know who completely stole the show? Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese. When I saw the way they were handling time travel in the first season I kept expecting to see a version of John’s father, Kyle Reese, show up, but when we were handed Kyle’s brother Derek the show took a positive turn. Derek was a soldier in the future who had come back to try and change the past to change the future. He was cold, he was effective, he didn’t take shit from anyone. Yet he grew into the role of “Uncle Derek”, just as we were given glances into the future through his memories. Unfortunately, that gave us Jessie and Riley, but that’s forgivable for the sheer awesome that was Derek Reese.
The show ended on a cliffhanger that promised to redefine the Terminator franchise as we know it, but slumping ratings in the Friday night slot of death, and a new movie that has a VERY different continuity then theTV show have put it on a potential cut list. With any luck we’ve not yet seen the end of this great show, but if we have, then at least we have two great seasons to remember it by.
That’s going to be it for this week, but come back soon for the next edition of the Standard, featuring Chuck, Reaper, and the Heroes season finale. Then soon after that we I recap the last month in comics.
And then back to our regular scheduled programming.
Thanks for putting up with me, my loyal and awesome readers, you guys make it all worthwhile.
The Gold Standard
