Rainy drippy Saturday
Oct. 30th, 2004 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatThe smell of cooking brownies fills my apt. Yep, I caved and made some more, (no, not from scratch, are you nuts! )and they are baking in my oven. Needed comfort food.
Hard week. Still sore from my tumble on Tuesday. Tired from work - or trying hard not to make any mistakes at work. Way I look at it? I survived my first month and a half. That's something. Healthcare benefits kicked in - ironic if they didn't considering I am working at a healthcare company. So saw some doctors for the requisite check-ups. Today's was the eye doc. Who requires a follow-up visit next week. (Dang it.) But outside of that, all is swell.
Finished my Farscape Marathon. That's right have now watched the entire series, including the four-hour miniseries. And what an interesting ride. I prefer the series to the mini-series by the way. Not that I didn't like the mini-series, I did, loved it. But, the series felt more character centric, less preachy/ideal driven. What is it about tv shows and their latter seasons? They all start getting preachy and "ideal" oriented towards the end, almost as if the writer has decided, wait I've established the characters, now it's "MESSAGE" time. I have a captive audience - time to tell them what I think, before I lose my chance! That said? I think Farscape was the most entertaining in this respect, not to mention most cohesive, and true to its characters. Can't say the same for other tv shows I'm afraid. BTVS? Sort of lost me in the second half of Season 7. Or rather it lost most of its characters. Never felt that way with Farscape, but then Farscape was only on for four years and wrapped up with a four-hour mini. Only other sci-fantasy show that comes close to this level plot-tight character centric - cohesive story-telling, may be Bablyon 5, which was meant to be a tele-novel. Both feel like watching novels for TV. At any rate, I recommend Farscape, with the following adivisories: 1)You have to get to episode 15 or 17 before it takes off. 2)The mini-series won't make much sense if you don't watch the series, trust me on this. It's not a movie you can watch separately from the series, the two are interconnected. 3)If you do not like alien makeup or puppetry and prefer straight, literal story-telling with few visual metaphors - you will probably hate this series. 4) It is morally dark in places and has graphic torture sequences - if you have issues with that or can't handle graphic violence or torture scenes? You may not be able to handle this show. These guys make Whedon and Minear look like wimps.
Hard week. Still sore from my tumble on Tuesday. Tired from work - or trying hard not to make any mistakes at work. Way I look at it? I survived my first month and a half. That's something. Healthcare benefits kicked in - ironic if they didn't considering I am working at a healthcare company. So saw some doctors for the requisite check-ups. Today's was the eye doc. Who requires a follow-up visit next week. (Dang it.) But outside of that, all is swell.
Finished my Farscape Marathon. That's right have now watched the entire series, including the four-hour miniseries. And what an interesting ride. I prefer the series to the mini-series by the way. Not that I didn't like the mini-series, I did, loved it. But, the series felt more character centric, less preachy/ideal driven. What is it about tv shows and their latter seasons? They all start getting preachy and "ideal" oriented towards the end, almost as if the writer has decided, wait I've established the characters, now it's "MESSAGE" time. I have a captive audience - time to tell them what I think, before I lose my chance! That said? I think Farscape was the most entertaining in this respect, not to mention most cohesive, and true to its characters. Can't say the same for other tv shows I'm afraid. BTVS? Sort of lost me in the second half of Season 7. Or rather it lost most of its characters. Never felt that way with Farscape, but then Farscape was only on for four years and wrapped up with a four-hour mini. Only other sci-fantasy show that comes close to this level plot-tight character centric - cohesive story-telling, may be Bablyon 5, which was meant to be a tele-novel. Both feel like watching novels for TV. At any rate, I recommend Farscape, with the following adivisories: 1)You have to get to episode 15 or 17 before it takes off. 2)The mini-series won't make much sense if you don't watch the series, trust me on this. It's not a movie you can watch separately from the series, the two are interconnected. 3)If you do not like alien makeup or puppetry and prefer straight, literal story-telling with few visual metaphors - you will probably hate this series. 4) It is morally dark in places and has graphic torture sequences - if you have issues with that or can't handle graphic violence or torture scenes? You may not be able to handle this show. These guys make Whedon and Minear look like wimps.
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Re: "These guys make Whedon and Minear look like wimps"
Date: 2004-10-31 07:14 am (UTC)Ah, have the last ten minutes of that one on tape - it came before the Farscape miniseries which I was taping. I keep fast-forwarding over it. My God, the last ten minutes reminded me of an old A-Team episode. Star-Gate is too similar to JAG for my tast.
Ohhh, yeah. I mean hell, at this point, they killed off four main characters (even if two were resurrected, well, no, one was resurrected and JohnPrime was sort of just left over) -- now that's risktaking.
I was blown away when they did that. Not too surprised with Crichton2, but for a while I couldn't guess which one would go. In most sci-fi that does the double routine, the double that goes is the least romantic one. Or CrichtonPrime. The romantic one is left.
Or they cop out completely and just combine the two - a la The Replacement. Here, we had two characters deal with the concept - which is the copy? Wait maybe neither was. It also allowed the show to be a comedy and a tragedy. The Crichton/Aeryn storyline was operatic and filled with emotional angst, while the Crichton/D'Argo storyline was zany humor and fun. Never seen anyone try that before.
I also really loved that the hero -- who was rather buff and masculine -- was the one getting his psyche crumpled like tinfoil, and taking all kinds of emotional risks and really getting shoved into some dark spaces -- and there were all kinds of strong, sexy women, too! I don't think even B5 had as many strong women -- outnumbering the male protags IIRC.
Ah yes. They actually put him in a dress in one episode. Also the women on the ship are in some respects stronger than he is. One of the few science fiction shows I've seen that had that many strong and differently shaped women. At one point we have an old woman, a young one, a short one, and a tall militaristic one. Also the one of the few sci-fi shows that had a female character I could identify with.
Odd considering it was written and created by men.
Andyeah, Stargate is safe in all kinds of ways -- emotionally, tv-episodically (reset button at the end of every ep, from what I can tell) that it's....just....dull. It's like basically they have their own fumfuh-fumfuh handwave wormhole, except it's under control of the military and all the leads are military as well (the one "civilian" acts like a soldier and so does the guy with the thing on his forehead). One thing I loved abt Farscape from the beginning was it didn't have that militaristic sf background -- well, you did have Aeryn and the Peacekeepers but the PK didn't become a huge driving part of the show til well in. It was this motley gang sort of rattling about the universe, always on the run, and always arguing. I loved that.
Yes, that's my problem with SG-1 as well. Militaristic shows do little for me - I admit. JAG and NCIS bore me as well. Don't find them interesting. Space Above and Beyond was okay for a while.
The nice thing about Farscape was the sense of fun, the desire to play with concepts and characters, to break rules. And the chaos. It was a gang of misfits dealing with the universe. Whedon was in a sense trying to do the same thing with Firefly but wasn't given enough time to pull it off.