First there was
Battlestar Gallactica ... The most frustrating thing ever.
It’s the perfect story formula for me. It’s a ship based show [beautiful ships and visual effects], it’s in space and to top it all off, there is a flawed human race in jeopardy and a bunch of pretty fancy robots dying to kill them all and love them all at the same time. Perfect.
Question: How is it possible that I and other people I know never managed to get into it?
I tried several times and every time I just kind of dropped off. I will continue to try from time to time, but I just don’t know what else I can do. So I try to stay away, I try to not find out how the series ends, just in case I get into it, I’ll till have something to look forward to.
When I saw
The Plan, it took me 2 days to finish it. I couldn’t really get into it either and forced myself to watch because of my personal history behind the scenes, but in the end, I was just confused by the story and realized [while I was watching it] that I was missing all the subtleties of the story. The characters and relationships meant nothing to me. I subsequently heard from many sources that it wasn’t all that in the first place … I tend to believe it.
Caprica.
The sequel-prequel [or whatever people call it these days] I am taping religiously every week, but haven't really been watching regularly. I didn't really like the first episode. Too many teenagers, bad underworld/party orgy world, slow and segmented story ... I didn’t really understand how they were going to stretch this storyline for the duration of the series. I also noticed, once again, that even though we were told that there was no need to be familiar with
Battlestar Gallactica, it was obvious to me that I was missing some key points that re-connected with the events that would unfold in the next 58 years. That's annoying. Anyway, that's all in the past now, we are further in the season and even though I am behind in all my viewings, there is one positive … I liked the second episode a lot better than the first one. I mean, that robot is really something, it can even be hugged.
Ax Men.
Occasional the History Channel takes a break from Hitler, WWI and WWII to bring us some of the best, underrated shows ever.
Ax Men is one of those. Greeeaat show [in its own way of course]. I am not sure how I got hooked on it, but it’s really entertaining. It's about a bunch of sweaty men [nothing sexy about it], cutting wood in the forest. This season, they’re all hot [temperature wise] and miserable in the scorching sun of summer in Oregon or somewhere around there. It's very similar to
Deadliest Catch [where we just lost Captain Phil Harris - that was shocking to me] and
Ice Road Truckers.
The two best parts of
Ax Men so far this season:
- They occasionally reenact what could happen in the many dangerous situations. It’s a small animation where several men end up dead every time and it even includes some “death and destruction” sound effect. It’s just precious.
- The father and son team is back in action, in the swamps again. They decided to leave their home and drive their truck to the swamp to work for a water-logger. Here is the series of events that follow [In chronological order]:
-The truck breaks down on the freeway.
-Some guy tows then into town, the breaks fail and they run into the towing truck.
-Twice.
-The towing guy can’t believe they actually drove this piece of sh*t. They are forced to fly to the swamp … Late.
-Their new boss immediately takes them on his boat which later hits a log hidden in the water, almost capsizing the whole crew.
-They finally arrive at the location where the boss has stored the new boat [bought especially for the father and son pair]. Boat collision - first ding.
-The father tells his son to jump on the bank to tie the boat, the son falls in the water. It was a funny and amazingly cartoonish kind of fall.
All of this within the first 10 minutes of their return to the show. Amazing.
Fringe
I have a lot of friends who used to be fans of the
X-files and I can't get then to watch Fringe. I keep saying that it's the same thing, the same tension between the characters and the same story structure. It's fun to watch the 1 hour story on each episode and then get some hints at the bigger picture. It's a show that is just as frustrating as
Lost. Which is why I eventually stopped watching
Lost after 2 seasons. I just couldn't help it. I actually taped the whole 2nd season and watched all the episodes together and I was still not getting anything out of it. So, I slowly checked out and never went back. I might do it one day, hopefully the final season are going to give all the answers and I can watch the series all at once.
Anyway, Fringe is alright and if you can get past the
Dawson's Creek flashback, this series should be a short but fun ride. [ I say short because it's on the verge of getting canceled. I am not even sure it's going to make it for another season. We'll see.]
24 - Blah, blah, blah ... blah.
Alright, alright, I started watching the thing again ... And I can't stand it. I had to include this in the Seasonal Intrigues because I wanted to point out that the way I feel about David Caruso in
CSI:Miami is now equal to the way I feel about Kiefer Sutherland. I won't go into detail again, just go click
here for previous rants on the matter. The problem on
24 other than the obvious flaws in story line, action sequence and the overall boredom that seems to take over me when I watch an episode this season, yes, other than that, Jack Bower [aka K.S.] is breathing way too loud. And for the breathing to actually come through, I can only imagine how loud it must be on the set, the sound guys must be going nuts with this. It has made it impossible for me to watch the thing without rolling my eyes. I have been on a deadline so I have been listening/watching the show on my computer, in the background. I don't know how many episodes I can continue this for. We'll see.
That's it for the current seasonal intrigues of January and February 2010. The games are going to slow everything down of course but that's only going to make things more interesting when everything comes back to normal.
