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TV TV TV TV
Well, my summer's finally over, so I think it's time to talk a little about the TV shows that I've seen in the past few months. I have rather strong opinions on many of them, so here goes.
1 - Prison Break:
I LOVE this show. But with a few caveats.
For one, the prison break, in first season, was a well-structured masterpiece. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I'm a rather chill television watcher, most of the time. In fact, I have a lame and annoying tendency to lose interest during really intense parts of movies and tv shows, pause, go for a walk, and forget to come back. Not with Prison Break. This is the first and only show where I've literally screamed at the television screen.
Caveat: The conspiracy, during first season, was dumb. Let's be honest here, kids. The Big, Mysterious Company was annoying from the get-go. For one, it was way too easy to take care of extra plot threads. "LOL company assassin kills every1!" - anyhow, that conspiracy kept breaking reality for me, and I couldn't understand why the show entertained it. I mean. Do Secret Service agents really go around randomly killing American civilians who might know something about a coverup that may or may not have happened and won't matter in a few weeks anyway?
The choice of making Michael a little crazy (low latent inhibition) was one that I loved. They made a main character who is literally unhinged and has a brain that works differently from the audience's an actual, sympathetic dude. (Really, really sympathetic, judging by all the bottom!Michael fics out there.)
T-Bag was deliciously evil from the beginning. He's a character it's easy to loathe - but if the show threatened to drop his character, I would probably scream at the TV some more. He's way too much fun.
Lincoln is a hunk. That's basically it. He doesn't act, really. But he doesn't have to, Michael does it for him.
Sara Tancredi was excellent from the get-go. Usually, when there's a pretty female with father issues on a show, who inevitably becomes the main character's love interest, she sucks a lot. It's a tendency I don't like in shows. Prison Break, I'd say, did it well, and it's all on the acting strength of Sarah Wayne Callies.
Second season, Alexander Mahone entered and I was sold like soldity sold sold. And thus immediately began writing fanfiction. And got a huge crush on him. I don't even know; Fichtner is only a little younger than my parents, but I would hit that SO HARD. Not to mention how smart he is and crazy and his and Michael's braintwintasticness, and that was when I had to get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vibishan into the show. Right then.
And now I'm back to the conspiracy. In third season, the Company literally took over the show. The compulsions of the main characters, their goals, their circumstances - everything was under the Company's control. The conspiracy actually swallowed up this entire season. BAD PLAN, guys. In doing this, you make the conspiracy so big that the main characters can't beat it. That means that your show settles into a state of helplessness and frustration, because while there might be peril and prison escaping, no real progress is being made. And that was why, in my opinion, third season fell flat.
Fourth season, though, broke out of that and became a cracktastic combination of Alias and Ocean's 11. No longer having to deal with "prison" or "breaking", the show is now just pure, delicious drugs. You'll notice, though, that the second the Company was no longer in control of the main characters, the show became four billion times better.
2 - Invasion
Oh, Invasion. The pilot had such promise. The four-parent three-child family unit had such promise. Tom and his evilosity had such promise. Sadly, in the style of Ron Moore, the evil conspiracy of aliens had a Plan, much as the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica had a Plan. As in, the only people more confused than the audience as to what the hell was going on must have been the writers.
At first, Tom knew exactly what he was doing. He found and 'helped' new hybrids all the time; he transformed his own wife, and kept a careful eye on her. He was totally in control.
And then - wait, he actually cares about his family? Well, okay.
He thinks everyone is just survivors? What?
Oh wait, here we are, he's sending weapons to a group of aliens, YEAH, he's def. evil.
....hang on, but he's working hard to protect his family?
And then the final twist of "but Tom didn't KNOW that Szura was going to actually use the weapons!!!1!one!!"
Yeah, okay. Tom is portrayed as clearly smart enough to put two and two together. If there's an alien training camp, and they want weapons, and he HIMSELF sends the problem cases there (such as Derek and Christina), then Tom obviously knows something's up. So in pleading ignorance he's either lying (which he's not) or he's being completely controlled by a bundle of alien instincts so hardwired that they bypass his brain entirely. Not a bad scenario, just one that could have been done much better and much clearly if the show weren't so obsessed with the 'ooooooooooo!!' factor and keeping the audience in the dark.
By the end of the show, Mariel was just annoying me. The way she dicked back and forth with her identity, never making a decision, always stuck in this paralyzed agony got a little old. She was a very passive character, and hardly ever took action unless someone kicked her into it. I found that kind of depressing.
Larkin. Oh, Larkin. It's not your fault; they made you the pretty girl wife of the show.
Russell seemed to me a character caught in between characterizations, too. The show kept insisting, in dialogue, that Russell only cared about his family. Wanted to make sure his family was okay. Was willing to ignore stuff happing in Homestead as long as he could keep his family safe. But then the show seemed to really want a hero as a main character. Russell never took action either. He had to be forced into everything. And he never admitted that the hybrids weren't fish. Guys. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH FISH. FISH DO NOT CREATE ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU AND KILL THE OLD ONE.
The kids were back-and-forth too. Kira's always starving for love; her father's, Lewis', Derek's. Jesse was a Teenage Boy, and characterized as such. There really wasn't much there. Similarly, Rose was the Little Girl, who, at the beginning of the show, seemed pretty certain that Mariel wasn't as she seemed, and, as time went on, abandoned that preternatural sense more and more.
Dave was the most coherent character in the entire show. And I love him for it.
If this show had continued, it would be a whole lot of melodrama, intercut with bits of William Fichtner being badass/in emotional turmoil/manipulating people. That, y'know, might have actually made it worth it.
3 - Numb3rs
This show actually isn't that good, so I don't have much to say about it. The family moments are touching, yes, and the characters are at least coherent (if not-really-characters-as-such, in the case of the other FBI agents, who could probably be replaced with FBI Agent #1 and FBI Agent #2 and still be about the same). Charlie can be adorable; their father can, on occasion, seriously steal an episode. Anita might be interesting, if she didn't sound like she was speaking a foreign language she didn't know every time she talked about math.
And thus we touch on the problem.
The math in this show is explained like every audience member is four years old. And okay, so most American audiences wouldn't immediately comprehend stuff that they're talking about. The problem is that they use the math wrong. The stuff they do with it is, for the most part, just not possible, and I never paused and checked, but I'm willing to bet that the equations scratched on the screen mean absolutely nothing.
And finally, the FBI are EVERYWHERE in this show. The FBI do not investigate ALL CRIMES in Los Angeles. They have to be invited in by local authorities in many cases, unless there's a matter that involves national security or crosses state boundaries. So when the FBI are always investigating the exciting crime of the moment, I start to get a little suspicious.
Sure, reality can take a beating to put drama in the foreground. But honestly, I'm not sure I'm willing to suspend this much belief for a show that, in the end, is only really a mediocre crime show with an interesting twist.
4 - Criminal Minds
I love this show. I remember watching it back when it came on the air, when I was still in high school, and my parents kinda being weirded out and disgusted at the serial crimes. So I had to stop watching, lest they think I was a serial killer in the making.
But I came back to it this summer, and I love it. Episode-by-episode, it doesn't seem like it's all that special; mostly, if you see it standalone, your focus is on the crime, and that makes it much like any other crime show. If you watch it all, though, something rather curious happens. In the beginning, the characters start out mostly generic FBI agents with some distinguishing characteristics (she's a tough chick, he's a soon-to-be father, he's black, he's really smart), they develop, over the course of time, into actual characters.
Most crime dramas, when they have episodes tailored to a certain character, feel a little unsatisfying to me. In CSI, I never really empathized with Grissom, even when the episodes were about him; Warrick and Nick, despite bits of characterization tacked on for color, never came alive for me. That was why I dabbled in fic for the show and never got into it. They weren't real people, for me. The same goes for Without a Trace, though WaT, in my opinion, got much closer. But, in trying to make the characters real people, they devolved, somehow, into one-night stands and pregnancies, and hospitalizations, and Personal Battles. It didn't work for me.
On the other hand, in Criminal Minds, it seems like every case is a little bit personal, for the members of the group. Instead of the character drama either hinging on or being entirely separate from the cases, it kinda feels more well-rounded. Like, the cases are part of these characters, they make them who they are, and you can feel their struggle to perhaps try to have a life outside the cases, for once. Like the television show, in their lives, the cases are central. And everything else is peripheral.
As such, when the episodes came along that delved into one character or another in a more personal way, the impact was much harder, and the actors were much better prepared to deal with it. More than that, the drama was the kind of drama that only Criminal Minds could do. I mean, Numb3rs couldn't really have a wife divorce an FBI agent husband because he's devoting so much of himself into the psychology of catching criminals - they could, it would fit within their universe, but it doesn't have the message of fusion of family life and crime-solving that Numb3rs trademarks so well. CSI couldn't have one of their agents shot because a criminal playing mind games with the team felt like the team 'broke the rules' - again, it could happen within the universe, but CSI episodes hinge on a trick of forensic investigation, not on psychological drama. Criminal Minds episodes are tailored to Criminal Minds, which is a neat trick in a cop show.
Finally, I love all the characters. All of them. 100%. JJ annoyed me at first, because she seemed just a pretty girl, and there was no reason to like her, but then she became an entity separate but part of the team. She's *not* a profiler, and it gives her a unique perspective, and that perspective is utilized, not ignored.
Hotch isn't FBI Team Leader #4. He's a roleplayer. He can shift gears from husband to FBI agent to fast-talking angry disillusioned man (re: the episode he gave Spencer a gun to shoot a hostage taker) on a dime. There are absolutely no flaws in his performance. Except, when the chips are down, he's there to lead the team and take down the bad guys. It's what he believes in. And when his wife won't tolerate that anymore, then she leaves.
Morgan proved he had a Deeply-Fucked-Up background without devolving into angst. Impressive? REALLY FUCKING IMPRESSIVE. Also, I love the way he banters with -
Garcia. So adorable. So goddamn adorable. And impractical. The stuff she does with computers isn't actually possible. But it's charming.
Elle was good. Tough, and when she went around the bend it was believable, if annoying.
But I like Emily better. Her absolute steadiness (that freaked JJ out so much when Reid was kidnapped), and her hate of politics, make her a real person to me.
Reid kinda looks like a skeleton. He had the hardest time growing on me, but even he has.
I just. I love this show. Unlike Alias, or some other shows I could mention, though they deal with some really horrible stuff, the overall tone is upbeat. There's always a moment near the end of the episode where everything becomes worth it. And I'd watch that forever.
At least one more of these to follow, when I'm finished packing.
1 - Prison Break:
I LOVE this show. But with a few caveats.
For one, the prison break, in first season, was a well-structured masterpiece. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I'm a rather chill television watcher, most of the time. In fact, I have a lame and annoying tendency to lose interest during really intense parts of movies and tv shows, pause, go for a walk, and forget to come back. Not with Prison Break. This is the first and only show where I've literally screamed at the television screen.
Caveat: The conspiracy, during first season, was dumb. Let's be honest here, kids. The Big, Mysterious Company was annoying from the get-go. For one, it was way too easy to take care of extra plot threads. "LOL company assassin kills every1!" - anyhow, that conspiracy kept breaking reality for me, and I couldn't understand why the show entertained it. I mean. Do Secret Service agents really go around randomly killing American civilians who might know something about a coverup that may or may not have happened and won't matter in a few weeks anyway?
The choice of making Michael a little crazy (low latent inhibition) was one that I loved. They made a main character who is literally unhinged and has a brain that works differently from the audience's an actual, sympathetic dude. (Really, really sympathetic, judging by all the bottom!Michael fics out there.)
T-Bag was deliciously evil from the beginning. He's a character it's easy to loathe - but if the show threatened to drop his character, I would probably scream at the TV some more. He's way too much fun.
Lincoln is a hunk. That's basically it. He doesn't act, really. But he doesn't have to, Michael does it for him.
Sara Tancredi was excellent from the get-go. Usually, when there's a pretty female with father issues on a show, who inevitably becomes the main character's love interest, she sucks a lot. It's a tendency I don't like in shows. Prison Break, I'd say, did it well, and it's all on the acting strength of Sarah Wayne Callies.
Second season, Alexander Mahone entered and I was sold like soldity sold sold. And thus immediately began writing fanfiction. And got a huge crush on him. I don't even know; Fichtner is only a little younger than my parents, but I would hit that SO HARD. Not to mention how smart he is and crazy and his and Michael's braintwintasticness, and that was when I had to get
vibishan into the show. Right then.And now I'm back to the conspiracy. In third season, the Company literally took over the show. The compulsions of the main characters, their goals, their circumstances - everything was under the Company's control. The conspiracy actually swallowed up this entire season. BAD PLAN, guys. In doing this, you make the conspiracy so big that the main characters can't beat it. That means that your show settles into a state of helplessness and frustration, because while there might be peril and prison escaping, no real progress is being made. And that was why, in my opinion, third season fell flat.
Fourth season, though, broke out of that and became a cracktastic combination of Alias and Ocean's 11. No longer having to deal with "prison" or "breaking", the show is now just pure, delicious drugs. You'll notice, though, that the second the Company was no longer in control of the main characters, the show became four billion times better.
2 - Invasion
Oh, Invasion. The pilot had such promise. The four-parent three-child family unit had such promise. Tom and his evilosity had such promise. Sadly, in the style of Ron Moore, the evil conspiracy of aliens had a Plan, much as the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica had a Plan. As in, the only people more confused than the audience as to what the hell was going on must have been the writers.
At first, Tom knew exactly what he was doing. He found and 'helped' new hybrids all the time; he transformed his own wife, and kept a careful eye on her. He was totally in control.
And then - wait, he actually cares about his family? Well, okay.
He thinks everyone is just survivors? What?
Oh wait, here we are, he's sending weapons to a group of aliens, YEAH, he's def. evil.
....hang on, but he's working hard to protect his family?
And then the final twist of "but Tom didn't KNOW that Szura was going to actually use the weapons!!!1!one!!"
Yeah, okay. Tom is portrayed as clearly smart enough to put two and two together. If there's an alien training camp, and they want weapons, and he HIMSELF sends the problem cases there (such as Derek and Christina), then Tom obviously knows something's up. So in pleading ignorance he's either lying (which he's not) or he's being completely controlled by a bundle of alien instincts so hardwired that they bypass his brain entirely. Not a bad scenario, just one that could have been done much better and much clearly if the show weren't so obsessed with the 'ooooooooooo!!' factor and keeping the audience in the dark.
By the end of the show, Mariel was just annoying me. The way she dicked back and forth with her identity, never making a decision, always stuck in this paralyzed agony got a little old. She was a very passive character, and hardly ever took action unless someone kicked her into it. I found that kind of depressing.
Larkin. Oh, Larkin. It's not your fault; they made you the pretty girl wife of the show.
Russell seemed to me a character caught in between characterizations, too. The show kept insisting, in dialogue, that Russell only cared about his family. Wanted to make sure his family was okay. Was willing to ignore stuff happing in Homestead as long as he could keep his family safe. But then the show seemed to really want a hero as a main character. Russell never took action either. He had to be forced into everything. And he never admitted that the hybrids weren't fish. Guys. THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH FISH. FISH DO NOT CREATE ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU AND KILL THE OLD ONE.
The kids were back-and-forth too. Kira's always starving for love; her father's, Lewis', Derek's. Jesse was a Teenage Boy, and characterized as such. There really wasn't much there. Similarly, Rose was the Little Girl, who, at the beginning of the show, seemed pretty certain that Mariel wasn't as she seemed, and, as time went on, abandoned that preternatural sense more and more.
Dave was the most coherent character in the entire show. And I love him for it.
If this show had continued, it would be a whole lot of melodrama, intercut with bits of William Fichtner being badass/in emotional turmoil/manipulating people. That, y'know, might have actually made it worth it.
3 - Numb3rs
This show actually isn't that good, so I don't have much to say about it. The family moments are touching, yes, and the characters are at least coherent (if not-really-characters-as-such, in the case of the other FBI agents, who could probably be replaced with FBI Agent #1 and FBI Agent #2 and still be about the same). Charlie can be adorable; their father can, on occasion, seriously steal an episode. Anita might be interesting, if she didn't sound like she was speaking a foreign language she didn't know every time she talked about math.
And thus we touch on the problem.
The math in this show is explained like every audience member is four years old. And okay, so most American audiences wouldn't immediately comprehend stuff that they're talking about. The problem is that they use the math wrong. The stuff they do with it is, for the most part, just not possible, and I never paused and checked, but I'm willing to bet that the equations scratched on the screen mean absolutely nothing.
And finally, the FBI are EVERYWHERE in this show. The FBI do not investigate ALL CRIMES in Los Angeles. They have to be invited in by local authorities in many cases, unless there's a matter that involves national security or crosses state boundaries. So when the FBI are always investigating the exciting crime of the moment, I start to get a little suspicious.
Sure, reality can take a beating to put drama in the foreground. But honestly, I'm not sure I'm willing to suspend this much belief for a show that, in the end, is only really a mediocre crime show with an interesting twist.
4 - Criminal Minds
I love this show. I remember watching it back when it came on the air, when I was still in high school, and my parents kinda being weirded out and disgusted at the serial crimes. So I had to stop watching, lest they think I was a serial killer in the making.
But I came back to it this summer, and I love it. Episode-by-episode, it doesn't seem like it's all that special; mostly, if you see it standalone, your focus is on the crime, and that makes it much like any other crime show. If you watch it all, though, something rather curious happens. In the beginning, the characters start out mostly generic FBI agents with some distinguishing characteristics (she's a tough chick, he's a soon-to-be father, he's black, he's really smart), they develop, over the course of time, into actual characters.
Most crime dramas, when they have episodes tailored to a certain character, feel a little unsatisfying to me. In CSI, I never really empathized with Grissom, even when the episodes were about him; Warrick and Nick, despite bits of characterization tacked on for color, never came alive for me. That was why I dabbled in fic for the show and never got into it. They weren't real people, for me. The same goes for Without a Trace, though WaT, in my opinion, got much closer. But, in trying to make the characters real people, they devolved, somehow, into one-night stands and pregnancies, and hospitalizations, and Personal Battles. It didn't work for me.
On the other hand, in Criminal Minds, it seems like every case is a little bit personal, for the members of the group. Instead of the character drama either hinging on or being entirely separate from the cases, it kinda feels more well-rounded. Like, the cases are part of these characters, they make them who they are, and you can feel their struggle to perhaps try to have a life outside the cases, for once. Like the television show, in their lives, the cases are central. And everything else is peripheral.
As such, when the episodes came along that delved into one character or another in a more personal way, the impact was much harder, and the actors were much better prepared to deal with it. More than that, the drama was the kind of drama that only Criminal Minds could do. I mean, Numb3rs couldn't really have a wife divorce an FBI agent husband because he's devoting so much of himself into the psychology of catching criminals - they could, it would fit within their universe, but it doesn't have the message of fusion of family life and crime-solving that Numb3rs trademarks so well. CSI couldn't have one of their agents shot because a criminal playing mind games with the team felt like the team 'broke the rules' - again, it could happen within the universe, but CSI episodes hinge on a trick of forensic investigation, not on psychological drama. Criminal Minds episodes are tailored to Criminal Minds, which is a neat trick in a cop show.
Finally, I love all the characters. All of them. 100%. JJ annoyed me at first, because she seemed just a pretty girl, and there was no reason to like her, but then she became an entity separate but part of the team. She's *not* a profiler, and it gives her a unique perspective, and that perspective is utilized, not ignored.
Hotch isn't FBI Team Leader #4. He's a roleplayer. He can shift gears from husband to FBI agent to fast-talking angry disillusioned man (re: the episode he gave Spencer a gun to shoot a hostage taker) on a dime. There are absolutely no flaws in his performance. Except, when the chips are down, he's there to lead the team and take down the bad guys. It's what he believes in. And when his wife won't tolerate that anymore, then she leaves.
Morgan proved he had a Deeply-Fucked-Up background without devolving into angst. Impressive? REALLY FUCKING IMPRESSIVE. Also, I love the way he banters with -
Garcia. So adorable. So goddamn adorable. And impractical. The stuff she does with computers isn't actually possible. But it's charming.
Elle was good. Tough, and when she went around the bend it was believable, if annoying.
But I like Emily better. Her absolute steadiness (that freaked JJ out so much when Reid was kidnapped), and her hate of politics, make her a real person to me.
Reid kinda looks like a skeleton. He had the hardest time growing on me, but even he has.
I just. I love this show. Unlike Alias, or some other shows I could mention, though they deal with some really horrible stuff, the overall tone is upbeat. There's always a moment near the end of the episode where everything becomes worth it. And I'd watch that forever.
At least one more of these to follow, when I'm finished packing.