and when you said I scared you, well I guess you scared me too

The final three.
THE PROM
Fun. Angel comes to a painful but logical realization – that it’s unfair to tie a beautiful young girl down to a moping immortal. So he breaks up with her (at an inconvenient time, but is there ever a good one?). Buffy spends an appropriate amount of time heartbroken, [...]

don’t bring tomorrow to justify tonight

I haven’t forgot Buffy, don’t worry. But with the mid-season finale of Burn Notice and the season premiere of Mad Men and the final days of Kings and discovering old episodes of I Spy on Hulu, well, I had a lot more interesting TV to watch.
DOPPELGANGLAND
Whedon never misses an opportunity to indulge in fan [...]

he’s in the place, but I get no joy

Mad Men S3 Premiere (SPOILER-FREE): A gentle easing back in to America’s favorite ad agency. Aside from certain exciting developments in the lives of Messrs. Cosgrove and Campbell, no real plot developments here. But I’m okay with that (which is perhaps an inconvenient bit of hypocrisy, considering how much distaste I directed at [...]

I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord

This past Saturday ended NBC’s noble experiment, Kings, the modern day, alternate universe retelling of the Biblical story of King David. My amazement that such a wild concept could ever get aired, NBC soon shared with me – the show barely got 4 episodes out before losing its original timeslot, then going on hiatus, [...]

and all the vampires walking through the valley

I’ve been watching the final season of The Shield in concert with the third season of Buffy. This makes for an interesting mix of tastes, like brushing your teeth, then sipping a glass of orange juice. For one thing, almost everyone on The Shield acts more naturally. I prefer naturalism over melodrama, [...]

the victims have been bled

I’ve struggled for a while on what exactly bothers me about Joss Whedon’s writing style. Realizing that Whedon cut his teeth as a writer for Roseanne clinched it for me: every scene he writes feels like either a sitcom or a soap opera.
His characters take awkward pauses between each sentence – pauses which make [...]

a highly critical review of the first 1:30 of NBC’s Supertrain

(Why only the first minute-thirty of Supertrain, NBC’s notoriously poor 1979 television drama about a luxury train and the lives of its passengers? Because you’re busy people, for one thing – you don’t have time to waste on an entire two hour pilot when you can dispose of a 30-year-old show in less than [...]

you see the face on the TV screen, coming at you every sunday

When I called the Internet out last week, asking for the one season of Buffy I had to watch, I took a little flak for the following comment:
“Oh, but you really have to watch these episodes from Season X-1 in order to get Season X.” If that’s true, then Whedon fails as a writer and [...]

when you’re a boy, you can wear a uniform

Valkyrie: Diverting but not moving. A Bryan Singer film about a plot to kill Hitler, starring Tom Cruise, should keep me on the edge of my seat for its entire run. But right when Col. Stauffenberg (Cruise) implemented the plan to isolate Berlin from the SS, I got a text inviting me out [...]

wreckx n effect is in effect but I’m the wrecker

A pre-birthday media blow:
Mass Effect: I can’t get over the feeling that I’m playing this game wrong. Part of this feeling arises from the fact that Mass Effect has no tutorial to speak of, throwing you into the action with limited instruction but deep backstory. But most of this feeling arises from the [...]