we’ll give ourselves new names, identities erased

As promised, my final thoughts on The Prisoner. Short Version (Spoiler Free): The ending was better than the original ending (which isn’t hard), but the interstitial episodes were worse than the original interstitial episodes (which also is not hard). Final verdict: decent. Longer Version (Contains Spoilers): Well. When I wrote about the problem of genius [...]

I lose a dream when I don’t sleep; I’m slumbering

A man wakes up on a desert plateau. The staccato pops of automatic fire draw his attention; looking over a ridge, he sees an old man in an outmoded jacket tumbling down a hill. He picks the old man up and carries him out of the sun. The old man dies; the younger man buries [...]

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, then [...]

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 [...]

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 stories that [...]

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, then [...]

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, unless the actors [...]

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 two [...]

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 [...]