The Good, The Bad, and The Interesting

So, after immersing myself in a world of hilarity and pathos, I decided my next adventure in the land of "TV Shows I Should Have Started Watching A Long Time Ago" would be...Heroes.



No, I didn't suddenly take leave of my senses. I had heard all the reasons to not watch. I mean, I was working at EW when the story ran that explained everything that was wrong with the show. And everyone I talked to said, "Nonono, that way lies badness. There is no happy ending there." But, being one of those people who has to figure these things out for herself, I decided to take the plunge anyway and catch it on Netflix's instant whatever. Also, I would be lying if I said half my reason for watching the show wasn't just to see Zachary Quinto in action. (What? He was really great in Star Trek, okay? It's not just because he's incredibly attractive.) I did promise myself I'd stop after the first season.

(For those who care, my promises apparently mean nothing, as I promptly rushed through the rest of the series as fast as the episodes could load. Definitely a mistake.)

After I got over my initial, brutal disappointment that Quinto wasn't in the first seven effing episodes of the first season, I immediately knew why I hadn't started watching the show before: It was absurdly addictive. And it somehow didn't feel like a complete retread of X-Men. I'm not altogether sure how the showrunners accomplished that, but, y'know, props. Anyone who can get me to zip through an entire season in a 36-hour period deserves that much, at least.

I did have a few problems with the first season (and many, many more with the subsequent ones), but they mostly followed from the show simply having too many storylines going; and worse, the characters in those storylines were boring, and had really poorly defined powers. (Seriously, can anyone tell me what the fuck Niki's power was, other than...being a multiple personality? Super strength with that one personality? Whaaaaat. Ever. Also, Greg Grunberg, I love you, but you need to smack some bitches over there for making you really irrelevant most of the time. Get Jaybrams to write you into another pilot or something.)

On the whole, though, I was enthralled for all 23 episodes. While some of the credit goes to the pretty riveting Bennett family saga and my inexplicable love for first-season Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar, you are also delightful to look at), I have to lay the rest at the feet of my new favorite TV serial killer: Sylar. (Sorry, Dex.)

Sylar is literally the only reason I'll continue watching this shell of a good show next season. Well, the hope of Sylar. God knows what the fuck is going on, with that third season finale. Again, I love Adrian Pasdar, but not at the expense of Quinto.

The funny thing is that Sylar shouldn't be an interesting character at this point -- but he is. He's had several chances at redemption and fucked all of them up -- purposefully, for the most part. He's pretty much just pure evil, and pure evil gets old rather quickly. But the way Quinto plays it is just... delicious. The spark in those alternately soulful/less eyes when he's stalking his prey is magnetic; I could watch him glare at people all day. (Seriously. I thought David Boreanaz had the Evil Glare down as Angelus, but Quinto just brings it to a whole 'nother level. Maybe it's the amazing eyebrows?) And you can still see the tiny part of him that made that noose after his first kill, and how deep he buries it. You can see the part of that spark that's built on ambition and the need to be special.

Clearly, I'm not a serial killer. I don't really have that capacity in me. But on a fundamental level, I understand Sylar because I've felt that way every day of my life. I know I'm not alone, too; everyone wants to be special. But people like the fictional Gabriel Gray and I, we have this crushing need to be superlative. Not just special: the special-est. His struggle to balance that hunger with the reality that there comes a point when you really just can't be any better...That's one of the oldest human struggles. Remember Cain and Abel? Abel didn't die because of some serpent's curse. He died because God named him superior to his brother. That ate Cain up inside--how could God want fruit and vegetables instead of fresh lamb?--until finally a lightbulb went off over his head and fratricide was born.

It could also be that seeing Sylar get the shit kicked out of him is always good for a laugh. Seriously. It's somehow very cathartic and funny whenever someone stabs him in the face, because he screams in an immensely satisfying way and then glares and starts with the bloodletting. (Incidentally, I love that Sylar wears Converse a lot of the time. Like, he may be a serial killer, but damnit if he doesn't love his Chucks. Is he secretly a hipster? I know he was supposed to have grown up in Queens, but maybe his murderous rampages come from having spent too much time in Williamsburg? He did kill that guy in the Ramones shirt...)

So! In conclusion! Fixing Heroes is pretty easy: Less characters and repetition, more Quinto and Sylar. Boom. You are welcome.

How I Met Battlestar Galactica

There's no denying the fact that the last...six months or so of my life have been somewhat less than awesome. In fact, the I've spent vast majority of that time either in a state of complete mania and panic or catatonia. I always knew adult life posed its own unique challenges, but this has all seemed a bit excessive. I fucking get it, Universe.

So, with the collapse of my entire life plan (boyfriend, career, housing, financial whatever), and without any sort of employment in which to immerse myself, I naturally returned to my first, best method of coping: TV.

I love Friday Night Lights more than most people, and it really is very relatable, but for some reason it was more of a Band-Aid than actual healing tissue. (I'm talking about biological tissue here, not Kleenex.) Apparently my worldview was so thrown off-kilter I needed two radically different four-season-long shows to get it back on track. It took Battlestar Galactica to put my problems into context, but it was How I Met Your Mother that taught me how to solve them.

I started out with my beloved Battlestar Galactica. [SPOILER ALERT for the next paragraph, if you haven't watched the show all the way through.] The concept of having your home eradicated, your species' entire future in doubt, spoke to my melodramatic streak, and I adopted that feeling. I wallowed in it. And the episode after they discover "Earth" is nothing more than an irradiated cinder, that their reason for living was all just a lie (4x11, "Sometimes a Great Notion")...Well, a character's death was never more poignant for me than when Anastasia Dualla--a character I didn't even like, mind you--pulled out her gun after one last happy moment and put a bullet in her brain. She worked until they wouldn't let her; she loved until her heart gave out. She fought until she couldn't. And that was the feeling I was struggling with: Once your life is blown all to hell, and everything you've ever believed has been proven a lie, how do you go on? How do you find another reason? Are there any other reasons?

Again, I wallowed in these questions for a while. It was only natural. (Gossip Girl's funeral episode also contributed to this period of deconstruction. What happens when you're measured and found wanting, but you never get another chance to be measured? What happens when you're just not enough?)

I didn't intend to leave my existential crisis anytime soon, but thankfully the TV gods intervened and sent me the first three seasons of How I Met Your Mother on DVD. (Well, they sent my roommate the first three seasons. It amounts to the same thing.)

Of course, I blew through those three seasons (and SurftheChannel'd the fourth) in no time and loved every hilarious, sweet, realistic second. Granted, these characters are a good six to ten years older than me, but they're wrestling with the exact same issues as I am.

Logically, I knew the odds of staying together with the first person you ever dated, or keeping the first job you ever have, are astronomically small, but for some reason I always had this horrific sense of shame that accompanied thoughts of that not happening. HIMYM finally got it through my thick head that it is okay for you to be unlucky on the first try. That it does happen with some (Lily and Marshall), but that even those who seem really well-suited for each other don't make it (Ted and Robin). Oh, and [SPOILER ALERT if you haven't gotten through season three] that sometimes what you really wanted was in front of you all along (Barney and Robin, which, by the way, I am such a fucking fangirl 'shipper for them it is ridiculous: "But with you, the trouble doesn't seem so...troubling." God bless you, NPH).

The fourth season continued drilling those ideas into my head, but one of my favorite moments in the entire show came in the finale:

Ted: This is a disaster. How am I going to come back from this?
Lily: Okay, I'm just going to ask this. Do you really want to come back from this?
Ted: What's that supposed to mean?
Lily: Architecture is killing you, Ted. And it's killing us to watch it killing you. You're like that goat with the washcloth. You want it so bad, and every time the world tries to take it away from you, you keep grabbing it. But, you know what? It's just a washcloth. Why do you even want it?
Ted: Because I have to be an architect! That's the plan.
Lily: Screw the plan! [...] Look, you can't design your life like a building. It doesn't work that way; you just have to live it and it'll design itself.
Ted: So I should just do nothing?
Lily: No. Listen to what the world is telling you to do...And take the leap.

What my leap is remains to be seen, but at least I'm not holding on to that washcloth anymore.

On Eerie Similarities

So, back in October, while still in the delightful EW cocoon, I had an idea for a sort of JJ Abrams checklist. I noticed how ridiculously similar Fringe was to the rest of the Jaybrams oeuvre, pitched it, and got it. The list of similarities I came up with was pretty extensive, but of course, what with the limitations of print space, only a few categories saw the light of day. That box was my first byline in EW, so I remember it well. It looks stupid in its online form, but whatever.

Two minutes ago, I go to check out Television Without Pity (as you do). And I see...this.

I know, I know. It's not the exact same thing. TWoP's is focused on characters (and has more errors--Peter Bishop isn't actually an MIT grad, guys; his degree is fake), but...I still feel a little ripped off. It's almost like TWoP's slideshow is...Fringe...and my box is...Alias ZOMG SO META.

Anyway, I just thought I'd point that out.

On Egregious Advertorials

So, you think Ben Silverman will give this Adam Stotsky guy his own set of chimes? Maybe one of Silvertooth's cubs?

(Seriously, though. "Today's consumer is sophisticated enough to pick up on these things"? What consumers have you been talking to? Because the last time I checked, there were a whole lot of stupid people running around in this world. People are, by and large, dumb. Take a look at the ratings for Two and a Half Men and compare them to those for 30 Rock, then talk about how "sophisticated" consumers are today.)

On Privileged Children

Okay. It is one thing to take a fictional world (i.e. Gossip Girl's UES; The O.C.'s...Orange County) and turn it into a reality series (MTV's Laguna Beach; and now, apparently, Bravo's NYC Prep). It is an entirely different thing to make your reality show the exact same thing as its fictional counterpart, which is precisely what they're doing on NYC Prep. No, seriously. Look at the bios.

(Side note: How stupid a name is that? You really couldn't come up with anything better, Bravo? I know The City was taken and all, but sheesh.)

My love for GG is well-documented. But this love mostly stems from the intricate plot threads that (...usually) weave together seamlessly, and from the well-developed characters. I mean, I'm starting to develop neutral feelings for Vanessa Abrams. Vanessa. Fucking. Abrams. And that is happening because the writers are making it happen. In real life, you don't often see those layers, and people don't generally change that much. The date-rapists don't evolve into caring monogamists over the course of just a few weeks; nice girls from Brooklyn don't throw yogurt at people's heads. (Okay, actually, that last one does happen in real life.)

So, the trouble you run into with a reality show--especially one where all your players are essentially ripoffs of characters on a drama--is that there is no reason to watch your show. Odds are these people are boring, and what drama they do have is probably not interesting enough to hold someone's attention for an entire half hour. So what you'll probably do is construct various situations for your cast which will be (marginally) more enthralling. However, they will not be nearly as well-written or engaging as the plotlines on the counterpart's show, so the audience will say, "Why am I not just re-watching season one of Gossip Girl?" and you will fail. (Hopefully.) Granted, it's not hard to top GG in the ratings, but still...What the fuck, Bravo?

Kings: For Whom the Chimes Toll

Well, NBC (SYLVERMAN!) has officially pulled Kings from Sunday nights. And replaced it with another hour of Dateline. Yeouch.

As though to pour a giant container of salt in this wound, NBC is going to run out the show's clock ("Hey, you got your football terminology in my TV commentary!") on Saturday nights, which is pretty cold. I wonder if Ben Silverman has a special dirge he plays on his chimes when he kills a show.

Granted, I didn't like Kings. Critics seemed to receive it well enough, but for me, it was all just too goddamn heavy-handed. Your protagonist's name is David Shepherd? And he's the son of Jess(i)e? And then he destroys a tank called the Goliath. OKAY. We. Get. It. At some point it stops being a Biblical allusion and turns into an overwrought Sunday school lesson. Also, apparently everyone loved Ian McShane's performance, but all I saw was some intense scenery-chewing.

(To be fair, I did like the "gay Crown Prince" plot, and not just because I love Sebastian Stan. It was a ten times more poignant than any other storyline on the show.)

So, what's next on the chopping block over at 30 Rock? My guess is Southland.

Hey, CW? Can you just mosey on over here for a sec? We need to talk.

Look, we all know you've had it pretty rough the last couple years, what with just being created and all. And it's not like you inherited any ratings giants (when Cuidado Con El Angel is outperforming your shows, you know you're in trouble). But I think it's high time you embraced your status as a niche network. A niche network for teens (and "grown-ups" like me who still have that adolescent mindset). Granted, the "revival" of 90210 is both a critical and ratings failure, but everyone seems to have high hopes for the Melrose Place revival, and Gossip Girl is truly transcendent.

However, like a couple other nets with shows that tend toward niche audiences (Fringe being the first one that comes to mind), you have fucked up intensely in your scheduling. I know things have been weird this year. February sweeps got moved, and you started your shows incredibly early.

I also know nets are panicking about having to have fresh programming all the time. So I get why you premiered your key shows so far ahead of everyone else. But for the love of God, stop fucking up the momentum of your shows.

There are shows with which you can get away with that sort of thing. But serial dramas? Momentum with those is meant to build up over the course of an entire season. This is why the first season of Veronica Mars was so fantastic--besides a few "mystery of the week" eps, everything built to this wonderful climax at the end of the season. But when you put Gossip Girl on hiatus for months at a time, then show three new eps, then put it on hiatus for another month before showing the last couple eps? That ruins the effect considerably. I can't believe I'm actually writing these words, but...Try taking a page out of Fox's book. (I know, I know.) Instead of dragging your shows out over a nine-month period, just run everything straight through. 22 episodes all at once.

Boom. You are welcome.