I’m quite enjo­ying just sit­ting at my com­pu­ter lis­te­ning to music, so rather than do nothing pro­duc­tive I have deci­ded to make another blog entry. I have no idea why at the start of each diary-esque entry I must jus­tify myself. Maybe I should take an intros­pec­tive look at the real me ins­tead; give the ol’ cogs a tweak and come out bet­ter on the other side.

Lost

Sea­son one of Lost pre­mie­red on chan­nel 4 over the sum­mer. My hec­tic sche­dule and pro­found wis­dom led me to miss the first four terres­trially aired epi­so­des. I saw clips and heard quo­tes invol­ving beasts, an island and a guy named Jack; I wrote it off as a Lord of the Flies mimic. When I found all my hou­se­ma­tes gathe­red on the sofas in the dark, faces like those of man­ne­quins as they sat wide eyed in front of our old 14″ watching epi­sode six I rea­li­sed that this was not neces­sa­rily the tame US import we so often receive. Through the won­ders of the inter­net I acqui­red the older epi­so­des and pla­yed catch up.  This new show was actually inte­res­ting, ori­gi­nal and enter­tai­ning, not to men­tion an adeptly named cha­rac­ter based upon the great “Tabula Rasa” phi­lo­sopher John Locke. Flashing cre­dits also revea­led to me some mem­ber of the old Buffy team wor­king on the pro­ject which essen­tially roo­ted some sort of faith in this show.

In my house of 7 we all have highly varied and diverse tas­tes, we like dif­fe­rent music, films and sty­les and it is very rare to find something we all equally enjoy (aside from faji­tas); Lost is one of those rare things. Each of us seems to draw dif­fe­rent ins­pi­ra­tions and plea­sure from the ongoing ins­tal­ments and our opi­nions dif­fer dra­ma­ti­cally as to our favou­rite inci­dents and whether or not an epi­sode cons­ti­tu­tes as good. The absur­dity of having a simi­lar tele­vi­sion line-up for six months and having to watch a show con­sis­tently for half of a year has esca­ped the Ame­ri­can audien­ces. The mere thought of wai­ting a mas­sive twenty weeks until the sea­son finale filled our house with terror—our atten­tion spans would drift, we would stray away and good heaven’s, we may (all) have to pay for a TV license. Thus we came to a collec­tive deci­sion: I must down­load all the epi­so­des imme­dia­tely and watch them as soon as we can. Once again the inter­net has come through for us, yet orga­ni­sing 7 peo­ple to all be in the same place at once when term has star­ted and we all have sig­ni­fi­cant res­pon­si­bi­li­ties and other plans pro­ves extre­mely dif­fi­cult. Alas we have only tra­ver­sed up to “In Trans­la­tion”, epi­sode 17. But we’ll get there, oh yes we will and then we can move onto sea­son 2 and start the pro­cess all over.

Vero­nica Mars

Ah yes, the other great Ame­ri­can tele­vi­sion show I have grown addic­ted to. This time it is without the sup­port of my hou­se­ma­tes or terres­trial tele­vi­sion. This show was for­cibly inser­ted into my face via the V-mars goons at Something Awful who felt it their need to adver­tise through ava­tars and ban­ners. The intri­gue finally got to me at the end of August and I asked the inter­net ever so nicely to kindly place a copy of UPN’s pilot epi­sode into My Docu­ments; and that it did. Thanks Inter­net. Vero­nica Mars is one of those shows you can casually watch 10 epi­so­des of without having to stop for water, and after a week I had prac­ti­cally finished. Who killed Lilly Kane? Who attac­ked Vero­nica at that party? Why is Logan such an asshole and how does he still manage to be so awe­some? All of these could be essay tit­les for media stu­dies stu­dents who have cho­sen to do something highly prac­ti­cal and aca­de­mic with their time.  They also per­tain to the most bri­lliant and evol­ving story­line of this great genre brea­king teen adven­ture. The blurb for Vero­nica Mars makes it sound so incon­gruous that when desc­ri­bed to peo­ple it acti­vely turns them away: “A teen girl inves­ti­ga­tes school mys­te­ries and deals with being a high school out­cast while loo­king for clues as to the mur­de­rer of her for­mer best friend in a ste­reoty­pi­cal Cali­for­nian poor vs. rich sunshine city.” Yet the cha­rac­ters you would ordi­na­rily expect to be woo­den cut-outs: the bully, the drop out, the boy­friend, the father and the bitches all break the boun­da­ries of tra­di­tio­nal teen sit­coms, they have issues and they have back­ground sto­ries that aren’t sto­len from a soap opera brains­tor­ming ses­sion.

Herein lies my true Buffy repla­ce­ment: it makes my laugh, it makes me cry and it is ori­gi­nal. I can only hope that sea­son 2 lives up to the ever gro­wing inter­net fan­dom that is sprea­ding con­sis­tently through word of mouth. UPN does not adver­tise this show, it had a poor slot in last years sche­dule and in the UK it is only just star­ting to air on cable only Living TV yet somehow the sea­son 2 pre­miere which was pitched in direct com­pe­ti­tion with sea­son 2 of Lost still mana­ged to draw in over 3.3 million vie­wers: UPN’s highest ever (appa­rently).

So that’s that, after going for a year without tele­vi­sion two new fan­tas­tic shows have just drop­ped into my lap.

The makers of Look Around You have been com­mis­sio­ned by the BBC to pro­duce a Depen­da­ble Video Dis­cus (‘DVD’) of the series.

This is the first time this pro­cess has been applied to the mar­ket place and the tech­no­logy is somewhat in its infancy, hence each ‘DVD’ mea­su­res appro­xi­ma­tely 70 inches in dia­me­ter and weighs around 600 kilo­gram­mes. Howe­ver it is hoped that, within time, each dis­cus will be small enough and light enough to be carried by two men.

The ‘DVD’ pla­yer is often limi­ted by regio­nal set­tings. The unit pic­tu­red above will work only in Lincolnshire.

Each ‘DVD’, manu­fac­tu­red from rein­for­ced lead, con­tains all the expe­ri­men­tal data, both aural and visual, from the popu­lar science series, Look Around You.

Further­more, each dis­cus con­tains a num­ber of addi­tio­nal fea­tu­res — a dou­ble length 20 minute module, Cal­cium; the pro­gramme makers’ com­men­tary; the full length pop video to the smash hit pop song ‘Little Mouse’ and edu­ca­tio­nal and infor­ma­tive pages from Ceefax.

In short, it’s everything the modern science stu­dent could hope for.

Look Around You

An old Angel fea­ture I once wrote:
Angel Sea­son 4 has finished. Well if you are Ame­ri­can or you down­load it off the net it has.

My conc­lu­sion? Bri­lliant. Not an artis­tic show, far from it in fact, nothing to the stan­dard of the movies I enjoy, but as a TV Show aimed at teens goes, it comes out pretty darn good.

I have long been a follo­wer of the Buffy Series — follo­wing it “as I have grown”. Only recently have I follo­wed the Angel series as well (sea­sons 3 & 4).

Series Four Synop­sis:
Angel res­cued from Ocean, Cor­de­lia comes back form above.
Lorne is saved from LA and then a big beasty demon shows up.
Ange­llus arri­ves, Faith comes along and things all get pretty messy.
That’s all Im saying, I don’t really like to give any spoilers.

I have just watched 4x22 Home, the last of the series. And I am rather impa­tiently wai­ting for the start of Sea­son 5 in the autumn… which looks like it could be mighty mar­ve­lous. Series Fina­les can often be pretty pants (Dark Angel :cough:) and having seen 4x21 and the events that had occu­rred I pretty much thought, “What Now” and was sure the final epi­sode would be a cop out. I was wrong (which is rare), the epi­sode was great, truly sho­wing how the cha­rac­ters have been deve­lo­ped and what lies in store for them in the future.
Angel as a whole is witty with some fan­tas­tic story­li­nes, often not fea­si­ble, but still fan­tas­tic. Any sci-fi fan should enjoy watching this after they have got­ten to know the regu­lars pretty well.

Angel: “How are you fee­ling?“
Faith: “Like I did mush­rooms and got eaten by a bear.”

“After three years of living in Sunny­dale, figh­ting along side his girl­friend Buffy, Angel moves to Los Ange­les to tell the tale of a vam­pire with a soul, see­king redemp­tion after many years of killing inno­cents. Aided by a few old friends and new, Angel must con­ti­nue to fight the dark for­ces that Los Ange­les has to offer. Only then, will he be for­gi­ven for all the pain he has cau­sed and some­day become human.

Spin the bottle (4x06) Epi­sode Review:
Gunn: “Oh, good. Sym­bols on the floor. That always goes well.”

I loved this epi­sode so much that I didn’t even mind that it was part two of “Tabula Rasa.” I have no objec­tion to something being done again if it’s done this well. Retur­ning all of the cha­rac­ters to their tee­nage per­so­nas was ins­pi­red. Trust Joss Whe­don to think of such a thing.

It was great seeing smart-ass Cor­de­lia back in the saddle again; couldn’t we keep her this way? She must have been six­teen or youn­ger, because Cor­de­lia met Angel at six­teen and she didn’t know him here. (Did you notice that the first thing Cor­de­lia said when she saw Angel was “Hello, salty good­ness?” That was the same thing Cor­de­lia said when she saw Angel for the first time back on BtVS.)

It made per­fect sense, Wes figu­ring out (erro­neously) that they were being tes­ted a la Buffy’s eigh­teenth birth­day. Ale­xis Deni­sof pro­bably had a ball retur­ning to his old cha­rac­te­ri­za­tion of Wes­ley as prissy, clumsy head boy watcher-in-training (or as Cor­de­lia called him, “head cheese.”) I just loved the acci­den­tal emer­gence of his con­cea­led, um, wea­pons in particular.

One of my abso­lute favo­rite sce­nes was when Wes­ley was duct-taping Lorne to the lobby sofa. Gunn: “I say we cut his head off.” Wes­ley: “Thank you very much, Marie Antoi­nette.” Gunn: “What you call me?” Cor­de­lia: “Hey, hey, you two wanna pause the homoe­ro­tic buddy cop ses­sion long enough to explain this? Woo­den sta­kes? A guy with horns?”

Even Fred and Gunn were con­sis­tently delight­ful here, with Fred trying to score weed, tal­king about alien abduc­tions and govern­ment cons­pi­ra­cies, and Gunn back in his first year dis­trust­ful vampire-hunter per­sona. (It was also touching and sad in the begin­ning when grown-up Gunn was tal­king about just being the muscle. Gunn is afraid of losing Fred to Wes­ley, and I’m star­ting to think he might be right.)

Angel’s Liam was very young and uncer­tain, pro­bably from before he began rebe­lling against his father. I thought Angel being una­ble to make him­self speak with an Irish accent was a total hoot. That morphing scene in the bath­room where he figu­red out he was the vam­pire they were all hun­ting was also pri­ce­less, and I loved the fake-out with the cross. (Although I thought the way Fred ran the cross over her­self like a metal detec­tor was even funnier.)

Wes­ley: “As far as evil plans go, it doesn’t suck.”

Lorne: “Do we fight sna­kes?” Angel: “Only if they’re giant. Or demons. Or giant demons.”