Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Octuplets' Mom Gets New Tattoo
'Heroes' season finale
Below are three clips from Monday's "Heroes" season finale, which aired last night on NBC.
Now I have to say that I was rather pleased with the way things were tied up last night. The show had been moving rather slow and last season was just as slow as molasses going down hill in the winter time. In my opinion, the show has had some good moments and started off with a BANG, but that was always my problem with "Heroes" -- not that that it was always unrelentingly bad (OK, it was pretty bad for long stretches last fall), but that the good bits were interspersed with so much not-good stuff. The storytelling started to seem so random and overstuffed at times.
Anyway, I watched last week's "Get to Know the Softer Side of Sylar" episode (it was actually called "I Am Sylar"). The good news: The show has pared back the number of stories it tries to tell in each episode, and the writers are certainly working furiously to give some kind of emotional heft to the characters' motivations. The bad news: That episode in particular was quite sloooow-paced.
I've now finished the finale and I'm glad to say that it is about time that we start to see consequences for these people using their powers so often. In the Marvel or DC Universes when an a super hero or mutant uses abilities there normally is a weakness to go along with them and in last week's episode and the finale we saw those. Sylar seems to be fractured as a person now that he has this morphing ability and is loosing himself. Hiro has begun to have nose bleeds when stopping time and Suresh explains to Hiro that he cannot use his powers as their bodies cannot take the constant strains.
I give KUDOS for the writing team for FINALLY showing this side of a Hero using their powers. Angela seeing Matt Parkman saving Nathan but that turning out to be that he actually saved him by wiping Sylar's mind blank and implanting Nathan's memories was right out of the Marvel Universe. Add to that the final scene in the next Chapter: Redemption's beginning where Nathan/Sylar adjust the time on the clock at the end, showing us that while he (Sylar) has been wiped, his core ability still exists was outstanding storytelling! Will we see Sylar again? I think so...
Now for just a random thought, the main thought that occurred to me during both of the final two episodes? Man, that is one terrible wig that they have put on Hayden Panettiere's head.
Anyway, enough from me. What have you thought about this season of "Heroes"? Have you stuck with it? Why? If you haven't kept watching, will you tune in when the show returns in the fall? Share your thoughts in comments if you care to.
'Harper's Island': You can resurrect Saturday night TV!
At first I was bummed. When a network shifts a show to Saturday nights it's typically a no-confidence vote, and so it seemed with Harper's Island. The CBS slasher series, which moves to Saturdays starting May 2, promises to kill off at least one of the members of a posh wedding party every week—at least as long as it doesn't get killed off first. That would be sad because not only is Harper's a fun throwback to old-school thrillers, it's produced by (among others) Dan Shotz and Karim Zreik, who produced Jericho. Like Jericho, Harper's is now in danger of becoming a cult show that faces a long, slow death.
But a move to Saturday night may not be a death knell—especially if viewers follow. There's absolutely no reason Saturday night TV can't be great again. The Golden Girls and The Love Boat were top-10 hits on Saturday night, and Fantasy Island and CHiPS were top 20. And there are (okay, a scant few) indications that networks are paying attention to Saturdays again: NASCAR is a weekend mainstay on Fox and CBS aired Streisand: Live in Concert this past Saturday. Plus, if no one's watching TV on Saturdays, how is Saturday Night Live still popular?
This may, in fact, be the perfect moment to raise Saturday nights from the dead. With the recession raging and Americans nesting, there may be no better place to be on the weekend than at home. And you may have noticed that networks actually pay attention to ratings, especially in recessions, especially in areas where they didn't realize they might actually be able to make a buck or two. So watch Harper's Island, and NASCAR, and reruns of Southland (which really is quite an excellent show that also needs your love), and show network execs that you'll be happy to stay home on Saturdays for their programming…provided there's something decent to watch.
Fox drops Obama, but is that a big deal?
Yes, it looks bad. Fox announced yesterday that it would not carry Barack Obama's prime-time press conference on Wednesday, opting to air Lie to Me instead. Now, it is rare for a network to tell a president "no,” but before we accuse Fox of political bias, greed, or abandoning civic responsibility, we should take a look at the record on presidential interruptions -- for all networks. In that light, Fox’s decision seems a lot less menacing.
For one thing, Obama is not the first president snubbed by Fox. The network didn’t air a 2001 speech by Pres. Bush, then took the same tack three years later, joining all networks in declining to air Bush’s May 2004 speech on Iraq. What aired instead? Fear Factor...on NBC. Plus, if we’re really getting specific, Fox didn’t air two of the 2000 presidential debates, and ABC was the only network that didn’t air then-candidate Obama’s campaign infomercial.
So is it just the almighty dollar, then? Is Fox putting the Tim Roth procedural, Lie to Me(currently trying to attract sweeps dollars even though its ratings are trending downward), ahead of the civic good? Perhaps. But a Fox insider points out that the network typically comes in dead last in the ratings when it airs presidential interruptions (even coming in behind FoxNews most of the time), largely because Fox has no internal news division. There’s no Katie Couric or Brian Williams offering analysis or talking to pundits -- which is why most viewers turn to ABC, NBC, CBS, or the cable news outlets whenever the president invades primetime. And let’s face it, this president seems to enjoy interrupting our favorite shows, having already had three previous addresses/press conferences (and pre-empting Lie to Me before).
But we are in a recession. And two wars. And now we’re all freaked about swine flu. So yes, it would be nice if all the networks carried the president’s press conference. It would also be nice if we all watched, but that doesn’t happen either. Unless and until all of us would rather hear what’s going on with the nation than watch Lie to Me, maybe we should cut Fox just a bit of slack.
"Obsession" wins big at the box office
Why Are Movie Stalkers Always So ... Female?
What a hallowed genre Obsessed is a member of! Right up there with such psycho stalker greats as Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction, and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. Why the persistence of this cinematic archetype? Why don't we ever see psychotic male stalkers beyond Sleeping with the Enemy? Where's Fatal Attraction where a man is screaming, begging not to be ignored?
My theory has always been that we see these stories played out again and again because they're somewhat of a male fantasy. Think about Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction, Obsessed, or even the real B-movie variations like Swimfan, The Temp,and The Crush. There's something very flattering and erotic about a woman who can't get enough of you -- a plot point exploited pretty heavily in Play Misty andFatal Attraction, since both male protagonists really set their stalkers off by ... sleeping with them. If Fatal Dan and Misty Dave had just taken Alex and Evelyn out for a nice dinner and a movie, no sex, would any butcher knives have been wielded? I guess so, given the chaste plotline of Obsessed: just flirting is enough to drive Ali Larter over the edge.
If a man stalks a woman, the stories are based less around sex than pure fear. (As in Fear, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Wahlberg!) Sleeping with the Enemyis about abuse and possession, not about being unable to get enough of Julia Roberts. I think there's also a puritanical element at work -- the female heroine must be abused to be sympathetic. If she was sexually free, she would be asking to be stalked because she had slept with the wrong guy. She should be more choosy, and not succumb to a one night stand.
Obviously there are several gender stereotypes and sexual attitudes at work in the "psycho stalker" genre. If we had more female filmmakers, would we see Fatal Attraction remade with a male stalker, and female protagonist? Would it have the same hint of the erotic, the suggestion of obsessive desire? My gut says that it's just not a conceit that a woman would want to explore, that they find stalkers more frightening or annoying than flattering. But I realize that's really a very sexist assumption, as I know men too who have been stalked, and they found it to be frightening and annoying. Obsession isn't sexy or flattering no matter what the gender dynamic is.
Maybe the entire sub-genre just needs to go the way of the dodo as it's just not flattering to either gender, or a genre that's full of surprises. I mean ... "violent devotion," as a central plot point, doesn't exactly lend itself to pleasant surprises or happy endings, does it?
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