Category: TV

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TV

The Biggest Mystery of Westworld

Somehow I’ve watched 5 episodes of Westworld.

I say ‘somehow’ not because I think it’s bad – though I don’t think it’s as good as some people seem to, it’s got good production values, some great actors but only so-so writing – but because after watching a couple of episodes I realised it was a ‘Mystery Box’ show.

What’s a ‘Mystery Box’? Here’s someone talking about the concept. I remember the first time I watched that and realised, “So Abrams is in love with the idea of setting up stuff and not explaining it, whereas I want to know“. I stopped watching Lost not long after.

To be clear then, I hate Mystery Box shows. I want the thing that makes me want to keep watching to be how the next bit of story turns out, what happens to my favourite characters, and not what is the secret of the thing that we glimpsed when the shadowy character said the vague thing about the possible location of the thing that will lead to…

But none of that is what this post is really about.

Because after watching five episodes there’s a bigger mystery to me that who the Man in Black is, or what’s special about Delores, who Arnold was and what he tried to do, what Dr. Ford is up to, what “the game” is, where the map leads…

No the biggest mystery is more fundamental and potentially more detrimental to my enjoyment of the show.

Let me explain: in Westworld there are very realistic human-looking robots (‘hosts’) populating a theme park where rich people can go and live out a Western-themed fantasy. Which means a lot of killing and fucking. At least in terms of their interaction with the hosts. Also there are behind-the-scenes technicians who repair, de-brief and interact with the ‘hosts’ in a more clinical manner. And since the hosts are not human the WW staff treat them in a glib manner – slicing them open and performing ‘surgery’ (repairs), abruptly switching them off, or turning off their emotions in order to analyse them. And when this occurs the hosts are naked because… well because titillation and ratings I assume.

Actually there was one attempt at an on-screen explanation for the need for nakedness. A tech had draped a cloth over one host and Dr Ford angrily removes it reminding the guy that hosts are not human. So in order to reinforce the non-human nature of the hosts they need to be naked because when we see someone naked, say sitting talking to a fully clothed person interrogating them, we immediately think cold mechanical machine not a vulnerable human being with flaws and a need for/right to dignity don’t we?

OK I’m getting side-tracked about the nakedness. But I’m supposed to be talking about mystery and the nakedness is not a mystery. It’s dumb but no mystery – see again ratings and titillation.

No the biggest mystery in Westworld is the way the real humans interact with each other. Which is normally. They have friends, colleagues, lovers, enemies and they behave toward them in perfectly ordinary ways according to the nature of the relationship and their emotional state.

Why is that a mystery? Well because they spend a lot of time treating human-looking objects as objects. They treat them callously, indifferently, cruelly. They use them for sexual pleasure. They kill and rape them for fun. And all this is justified* because they’re not human. But justified or not surely it has an effect? There must be some emotional bleed through?

Surely such behaviour towards these things that look, act, feel as human as you are would eventually degrade your attitudes toward other actual human beings? You’d start to find yourself behaving more carelessly and callously toward the people in your life. Or if not you’d at least start to feel a disconnect between the two. In the case of the techs in particular you would have to compartmentalise so much, build up such cognitive dissonance that it would have to come out in some form.

And yet, so far, five episodes in, I don’t see it. Maybe it’s coming but it seems they’re more concerned with spinning the various clue threads than showing us the emotional consequences of having proxy humans to hurt.

Why we haven’t seen it, well to me at least, that’s the mystery.

 

(*Maybe. I’m guessing the show will want to explore this idea. It’s already made it pretty clear that there’s going to be an arc of hosts becoming fully self-aware, which will lead to questions of whether or not they are ‘real’ people. And whether therefore the humans have responsibilities toward them. That’s OK, it’s been done before, a lot, but it’s OK.)

Categories
Buffy Rewatch TV

Some More Thoughts

I’ve watched another three episodes of season 7 of Buffy. But I still feel like I’m not really committed.

Here’s why:

It’s not having the impact it should. I never put S7 at the top of my personal list of Buffy seasons but it wasn’t bottom either. And I defended it against those who thought it had lost the former glory. But watching these first 4 eps I’m struck by how not amazing they are. Not even sure they’re that good. They’re OK.

I think a lot of what I enjoyed about them before came from being immersed in the show and being a fan. So there are lines or character moments that you like because it’s such a Xander thing to say, or Anya’s being Anya. The throw-away funny lines aren’t quite as funny somehow.

Now my brain tries to tell me that a way to fix this is to re-watch earlier seasons. Maybe start at 6 or 5 or 4. So you build up that immersion again. Trouble is the further back you go the more well-worn they are. There are some – still I believe – truly great eps back there, but they’re also ones I’ve watch a lot. And if I really go back (to S1) I’m concerned I might trigger emotional memories of that time and to be honest… well my Buffy fandom was an escape from everything my life wasn’t at the time. I had run away from God and the church. I had no real friends (this was before Melissa). I was lonely.

Does that mean I’ll never re-visit the earlier seasons? Maybe. Maybe I will when even more time has passed.

Will I carry on with S7? I think so. For now. Ep 5 was a favourite when I first saw it. One of the few I watched a few times. It was also one with a lot of “fan service” in it. It’ll be interesting to see if it still has the same impact when my fanishness has waned.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch TV

Buffy and All that TV

I just watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it made me want to say things on the internet.

For some reason I decided to do that here rather than Twitter and/or Facebook (I don’t use G+ much any more BTW).

First observation – disturbing – is that even though I was watching a later episode (S7, E01, Lessons) I worked out than I am older now than Giles (OK Tony Head the actor) was then. When do I get to be all wise and stuff?

The second, and longer, thing was about why I watched it (and whether I’ll continue).

I watched it because last night I watched one of the Youtube listicle videos – “Ten times a character ruined a TV show” or something – and it brought up a few old series I’d watched but never finished and Buffy. And even though I watched all of Buffy it feels like it belongs in this category as well because, well I read a tweet today where someone talked about having watched every episode so many times.

Well, I feel like I somehow let myself down as a fan because I haven’t re-watched the later seasons as much as the earlier ones. To be fair even though I watched the earlier ones a lot, I haven’t re-watched them in a long time. (Used to be I’d get drunk and end up watching favourite episodes, but that tends not to happen these days)

There are for example, large numbers of season 7 episodes I’ve only watched once. I know! The shame.

But then I began thinking.

Suppose you didn’t have much of a life, never really went out. You go to work, eat, sleep and do the minimum chores necessary to staying alive and you spend the rest of your time watching TV and movies, maybe read the occasional book*. Suppose you are happy with this state of affairs and not railing against the dying of the light to make a change before it’s too late. Even then you find you only have so much time. And we live in a golden age of TV so we’re told. And whether that’s really true, it’s certainly true that I have heard of many ‘good’ series I’d like to check out, and more are on the horizon (just watched a trailer for HBO’s West World show).

So even in this restricted, shut-in existence, there’s so much to spend my eyeball leisure time on. Do I really want to go back and watch Lost to the end? Am I up for spending the next few weeks re-watching Buffy from the beginning because my OCD-ish tendencies tell me I can’t just break in later?

Maybe. Maybe not. OK, almost certainly not in the case of Lost. I think/hope I’ve let that one go.

My current mode of TV watching is to binge watch. Usually on Netflix or other streaming service. So it sort of fits this pattern, and yet…

It is about letting go. Realising there’s more to life, heck more to TV, than being a completist.

But maybe I will “binge” on S7 Buffy so I can say I’ve watched all those eps at least twice. Or maybe I’ll skip the boring ones in the middle.

It’s funny, before I wrote this I looked back at the last few entries. Because it’s my blog and I haven’t written in it in a while. And one of the things that came out was the way I felt my love of reading rejuvenated by letting go of some of my obsessive tendencies re: reading.

I guess this is the same.

*if this sounds familiar it basically was my life until recently, and it has only got slightly more interesting since.

Categories
reviews TV

Mid-Flight Engine Maintenance for Dummies

This is not a review. But if it were it would a review of Episode 1 of Series 4 of Being Human[1], “Eve of the War” and you’d be well-advised not to read on if you’ve not seen it.

Consider yourself so advised.

However as I said this is not a review. It’s a musing on how we got from here:

to here:

How, and why the how matters and whether I’ll be watching Episode 2 of Series 4.

Actually let’s first go back to here[2]:

Long long ago, all the way back in 2008 I saw the original pilot of Being Human. It was pretty clear that that’s what it was too – one of those one-offs that they make and show to guage whether it’s worth making a series. It was also clear that it had something. Not just that it was a show with vampires and werewolves when the world was going crazy over Twilight. It had a certain tone.

The original Being Human pilot opens on a shot of a naked man in the woods. He’s George, werewolf just returned to human form, but we don’t know that yet. The voice-over, a smooth, confident, ever so slightly world-weary voice, starts to wax lyrical about the nature of the human condition, how it’s essentially about being alone. It’s at once both modern and dark and has the potential for being creepy. Soon there’ll be jokes but the humour will somehow manage not to undercut the atmosphere. Later still we’ll meet bad guys who give the sense of being disturbing, efficient and most of all, not the same cliches we’ve seen hundreds of times before.[3]

What I’m saying is that it manages to pull off the same trick as Buffy the Vampire Slayer – mix pop culture and comedy and traditional horror tropes and real drama and somehow keep all these apparently contradictory things together. But it’s not Buffy, it has its own distinct tone, and that just makes me like it all the more.

So I wait patiently and sure enough the Beeb commissions a series. The vampire Mitchell is re-cast, as is the ghost Annie. We lose the gorgeous and talented Andrea Riseborough but we gain Aidan Turner also somewhat gorgeous and not lacking in talent. More significantly we lose Adrian Lester as Herrick the local big boss vampire, and gain Jason Watkins. Significant because Lester, who I really like, only gets to play the smooth sophisticated be-suited vampire leader that we have seen so often before.[4] Watkins however gets to play an entirely different character – the same position of leadership in the local night-stalker hierarchy but his cover, his point of contact with the human world, his day job – is as a mid-ranking policeman. He has a sense of charm and danger and purpose but he also feels at home drinking a cup of tea from a styrofoam cup in the hospital cafe – quite a contrast from Lester holding court in what looks like a subterranean wine bar.

As the series progresses there are good episodes and so-so ones. I start to feel that we’re losing some of whatever it was the pilot had. It doesn’t feel quite as unique as it did. One of its strong early themes is monsters trying to live as ‘ordinary’ humans and so it covers a lot of the same ground as Buffy did with the ‘I may be the Slayer but I’m also just a girl’ motif.

Nevertheless it remains a good watch. The thing it’s got, the thing that makes the humour and the horror work and that makes it more than just another supernatural genre show is characters and relationships.

Inevitably plot starts to take the foreground. Once you’ve established the characters and how they interact then they do need to do something. And they need to do supernatural stuff if they’re werewolves, vampires and ghosts otherwise you just have a soap with some odd characters, i.e. you just have a soap. So we not only have to have plot but plot and mythology.

Thus it is that after 3 series and just 22 episodes of a gentle slide from the heights of the pilot we end up here:

The story has reached a crisis point – as it often seems to do around the last episode of series funnily enough – and not only that but a character has been Killed Off. But the other three of our core four remain and we’ve gained an impressive new villain from a new class of super-vampire called the Old Ones. I’m a little nervous about whether this will work but it’s got potential.

That’s about where I was at when I sat down to watch “Eve of the War”.

And it’s… wow. And not really in a good way. Although… no, not really.

Now I know that they were coping with some real-world departures. I knew about Nina. I didn’t know about Wyndham but I get it. I certainly didn’t know about George. I’m guessing when it became apparent who was leaving and where they were now at someone got down on one knee and begged Russell Tovey to do at least one more episode.

What’s really impressive about “Eve” is how hard it works and how much it gets done. It ties up the loose ends from everyone leaving, sets up and executes a big self-sacrificial ending for George, introduces new baddies (new big bad who gets killed off, real new big bad who quips and understands the modern world and who’s clearly going to upload that video of werewolves changing to youtube next week) and new good guys (at least one of whom will become one of the regular gang) and it begins to lay down what looks very like the seasonal arc with lots of stuff about prophecies and a child destined to save humanity and flash-forwards to a future of John Connor style resistance movement against a Big Brother style vampire overlord regime . “Now that I say it all out loud,” I said to M. after watching it (she didn’t), “it sounds like a bit of a mess… which makes me all the more impressed I liked it as much as I did.”

But whereas I was nervous before about the slow move to plot and mythology and away from character and relationship, now I’m actively very worried. Because they had to throw gobs of plot and lashings of mythology[5] to make it work at all. But when you effectively re-cast all the major roles in a show except one in a single episode in series 4 – a point when it should be an established entity – it’s a bit like re-building an engine on your plane in mid-air – it’s hellish impressive it can be done at all but not a little terrifying as to the end result.

Or it would be if I cared more. As it is I will be tuning in next week, but only because I like to see a plane crash as much as the next guy.

But hey it’s got Mark Williams with a tea-towel on his head what more do you need?

[1]I’d say “(UK)” to distinguish it from the US version but since I said “Series” instead of “Season” and “4” instead of “1” or “2” you figured that out didn’t you?
[2]Since it was a pilot there aren’t really any promo stills of this episode floating around the web (or not that I found in 5mins of googling) and it’s very difficult to find a shot with all three characters in frame – which I guess makes sense. So I made this with my rudimentary graphics manipulation skills.
[3]OK with one exception perhaps. I’ll get to that.
[4]Yep he’s the one.
[5]including making up some dodgy new stuff to help the George story along – werewolf blood is poisonous to vampires, the werewolf curse heals what it harms in the transformatio and you can fool the curse with a paper moon.
Categories
reviews TV

A Fairy Tale of TV: Grimm and Once Upon A Time

So two of the new TV shows are based on a similar concept – fairy tale characters in the real world. I’ve watched the first two episodes of both Grimm and Once Upon A Time so here’s my thoughts.

Once Upon A Time

The premise of Once[1] is that Snow White and Prince Charming had a daughter but that during the birth the Wicked Queen cursed the entire kindgom so that they, and all the other characters, were exiled to our world. Not only that but they don’t remember who they are. They now all live in a small town in Maine called StoryBrooke[2] where “time has stopped” meaning that the characters haven’t and don’t age.

Meanwhile they did manage to “save” their new-born daughter by shoving her in a magical wardrobe at the last minute. This sent her through to this world too but since she was on her own and not part of the curse she grew up naturally. (How growing up alone, in a series of foster homes, rather than being in a frankly rather cosy looking little town with the benefit of eternal youth counts as being “saved” looks dubious, never mind).

She herself had a child which she gave up for adoption at the age of 18. Ten years later she’s working as a bail bondsperson and her son turns up on her doorstop. He’s carrying a book of stories and wants her to go back with him to StoryBrooke to break the spell. She plays the hardbitten, cynical city girl but she does at least take him home to his adopted mum who just happens to be the Wicked Queen aka the Mayor of StoryBrooke.

And thus the adventure begins.

I actually did enjoy quite a lot of Once. Jennifer Morrison in particular was good in the Emma Swan (Snow White’s daughter) role. I liked the real world sections most. However they inter-cut these with flashbacks to life in the fairy tale realm. To say these are played straight is an understatement. They are taken so seriously that it undermines any drama in the other sections. They do try to pull off the Buffy trick of playing the weird and wonderful as if it’s perfectly normal for those involved and showing how it feels. However it fails partly because the execution is too on the nose. There’s almost no (deliberate) humour.

Also, by the second episode the main storyline seemed to have developed into a showdown between the Birth Mother and the Adopted Mother (Foretold Breaker-of-Curse and Evil Queen). It suddenly hit me as these two powerful women were squaring off against each other that I was watching Dynasty with fairy tale trimmings and I found it hard to take seriously after that. Certainly not as seriously as they apparently want me to.

Grimm

I watched both Once episodes before watching Grimm and was left with a feeling that whilst intrigued there was something missing. I was also aware that Grimm had received slightly less favourable reviews (going off IMDB and AV Club ratings). So I was pleasantly surprised about 20mins into the pilot how engaged I was.

The set up is much more familiar. Basically the Brother Grimm were actually monster hunters and their stories were written as warnings. They have passed down a legacy of fighting these monsters – who look human most of the time through their descendants and the turn has now come of a young cop in Portland. He’s started seeing weird things when he looks too closely at certain people’s faces and then he gets called out on what looks like an animal attack but becomes clear is a murder. A young woman jogging through the forest in her red hoodie was torn apart by some sort of big bad w… you get the idea.

So in the same way that Angel and a bunch of other shows have done what is basically a police procedural with a supernatural twist, here the twist is fairy tale. But the twist isn’t really that much of a twist so far. Yes our hero has to learn about the various beasties, and he can use his “sight” ability to identify them but so far he’s dispatched them with good old fisticuffs and firearms. And in the first episode the killer happens to be a monster but it’s shot like he is a serial killer of the kind you’d see on Dexter. The fact that he ‘wolfs out’ briefly during the final fight doesn’t add a lot.

I think what I was reacting to in those first minutes of the pilot was how efficiently done the setting up was – following the victim, perky soundtrack, intriguing details, sudden surprise attack. However it soon settled into a familiar groove and whether it actually was clunky or I was just too used to it, it suffered from the fact that I could tick elements off a list. When the “good” wolf character turns up he lightens the mood with some self-aware, self-deprecating humour[3] but I immediately feel like he’s put there to be a source of exposition for our hero to pick up back story. Sure enough in episode two when a new monster appears on the scene, Nick (our lead) pops around to Eddie’s (good wolf) house for some playful banter and an info-dump on the new adversary’s MO.

The nicest thing I can say about Grimm is that it’s very competently done and if you like procedurals this isn’t a bad one.

Which One Wins?

I knew watching these two shows that I really only have time in my life for one of them on an on-going basis, if that, and so part of the process was to decide which was better and which to commit to.

Well despite both being about as good in different ways, the answer is probably neither. I have enough anxiety about all the books, TV shows and movies I haven’t read or watched. I have bookshelves, kindles and hard disks full of the stuff, much of it destined to remain unseen by me. I’m not sure either of these passes the “I just gotta see it” test to make me want to make time for it.

Having said that I’m bailing on Grimm right away (good but too predictable) but I may watch another episode or two of Once to see if it picks up.

[1]I shall be referring to it as “Once” for brevity rather than OUAT which I have seen used elsewhere but is frankly ugly
[2]Yes really!
[3]David Greenwalt, one of the creators of Grimm, worked on both Buffy and Angel and it shows, albeit in a pale reflection kind of way.
Categories
movie TV

Buffy vs Edward

I don’t usually do this – partly because, like fan-fic, there are so many of these ‘mash-up’ videos that are mediocre at best – they’re fine but they’re not really my thing.

What sets this apart is that a) it’s really well done and b) it has a valid point to make. Actually more a). I’m slightly uneasy about jumping on-board a critique of Twilight when I’m not familiar with it – either in literary or movie form – but from what is said in the associated article, it does seem like it doesn’t compare too well with Buffy in the gender politics stakes.

Anyway, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]

Categories
reading TV writing

How to Improve as a Writer

“Just write every day, and read more often than you write”

*sigh*

I haven’t been very good at writing or reading lately. On the writing front I’ve only managed to edit a couple of stories and submit them to the Whittaker. That wasn’t my intent when joining it but at least it keeps me in the competition. If this is a temporary blip then I won’t have forfeit my place, if it isn’t then I’ll withdraw gracefully.

Having set aside The Crow Road I’ve not read any of Rum Doodle for the past couple of weeks. Thing is it’s a short book so I ought to be able to knock it on the head in a couple of hours. Might be an assignment for a rainy Bank Holiday weekend.

It’s not just reading and writing either. I haven’t watched a full length movie in ages. My MythTV box current has 80+ movies waiting to be watched. When I’m looking at the latest upcoming listings I’m choosing movies more often than other types of program to record. True this varies from “I really want to see that” to “might be worth a look” but none of them are getting a look right now.

It’s that whole short attention span thing. Must work on that.

*sigh*

Categories
reviews TV

Dollhouse Catch-up 1.02-1.04

You may have noticed I haven’t blogged about Dollhouse since the disappointing opening episode. That’s mostly because I lacked the enthusiasm to even watch the episodes never mind write about them. However I finally got around to it and the good news is the show is definitely improving.

So without further a do:

1.02 “Target”

"Run Joss, run!"
"Run Joss, run!"

Target is a variation on the old idea of someone hunting a human being. From other reviews and comments I’ve heard that this  references something called “The Most Dangerous Game” which may well be the first but is certainly not the only use of this idea.

It’s a bad habit but I found myself second-guessing the plot twists and wondered if this client had paid for the hunt (but was expected to avoid an outright kill). Instead the twist was that the hunter didn’t exist, he was an assumed identity. That fits with the overall Dollhouse theme but wasn’t quite as satisfying.

Target had a bit more of the Whedon-style dialogue – as expressed through Stephen DeKnight.

Overall it was a better episode that the first, and a decent-ish version of a well-worn idea, but nothing new or radical – 6/10.

1.03 Stage Fright

Anyone seen my career?
Anyone seen my career?

OK now it starts to get a bit more interesting. This time Echo is being a back-up singer (and closet bodyguard) for a pop diva who has a crazy fan out to get her. Not a scenario that attracts me on paper but it was well done. In particular I liked the feisty-ness of Eliza’s character in this one.

It also had a couple of plot twists I didn’t see coming. I liked the idea the Echo sees deeper into the assignment than her handlers had expected – that she need to protect Rayna from herself. This singles out Echo as something special.

The writers continue to have fun with the themes of the show with the dialogue about being “grown in a lab”. They also have a gentle dig at the fans with this:

Are you a fan Mr Dominic?

I’m sorry?

Rayna, do you like her music?

I’m not sure being a fan has very much to do with that

Whedon has teased the fans about this kind of thing before – notably in Angel’s third season “Waiting in the Wings” or, I suppose, the whole of Buffy season six with the nerd trio. But it’s always affectionately done.

The reveal of Victor as an active was a surprise and I guess that’s going to be an ongoing issue with this show – who’s an active?

After watching this my thought was, it’s a very good episode of a certain kind of show – but is it the kind of show I like? Anyway still enjoyed it, Eliza can sing – 7/10.

1.04 Gray Hour

"...and there's absolutely no chance of bring back Tru Calling?"
"...and there's absolutely no chance of bringing back Tru Calling?"

With the frankly ridiculous opening of Echo as a midwife half-way up a mountain, the show neatly identifies a problem with the show’s core concept – why not just hire the best expert in a field you can find? The super-rich certainly have the money to do that and it’ll be cheaper, easier and probably safer than relying on what is fast turning out to be some fairly unreliable tech.

Anyway, best to leave that aside for now. If I can live with the stupid idea that the best approach to fighting a global vampire threat is a single girl in one small town then I can certainly live with this.

Plus, I’m never one to harp on these technical details if the story’s good and here it is.

Well it is for me anyway because I have a weakness for heist stories. I loved “The Shroud of Rahmon” which many will tell you is an awful Angel episode.

A different character, different story, but again we have a feisty Eliza – at least for the first half of the story.

The thing that I found myself thinking during this episode is that I wanted to know what happens next. That’s gotta be good right?

More good dialogue

This one is broken.

Look who’s talking

I liked the use of Sierra and seeing the same “imprint” being used with her as the active.

It seems that, like Lost did for a while, they’re developing a habit of using a music-over-montage at the end of the episode.

Anyway, love a good heist story and this was one – 8/10.

General Comments

There’s been a lot of discussion of how Echo being a different character every week causes a problem because you’re not following the same character every week. I don’t think this is such a problem because we get that from the other characters and the ongoing story.

The format reminds me a little of Quantum Leap and that was very successful, ran for years and years.

I wonder whether it’s partly a reaction to the criticism Whedon has had about his shows being too “arc-y” that this one has a “story-of-the-week” written into the very format of the show?

Maybe the problem, if there is one, is that the metaphor – which is basically about what being an actress is like – is not universal enough.

Anyway – the show’s picking up – getting better with each episode according to my personal scale. Just in time to get really good before it gets cancelled no doubt.

Categories
reviews TV

Dollhouse 1.01 – ‘Ghost’

Dollhouse Dollhouse is the new TV show from Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku. You may not have heard much about it, you certainly haven’t from this blog because I’ve been keeping a low profile. I’ve been deliberately ignoring hype and information for two reasons:

  1. I think I’ll enjoy it more with less pre-conceptions
  2. I think I’ll be less invested in it if it gets cancelled.

However it’s Joss Whedon and it’s the first new TV from him in a long time, virtually the first new anything. So I’d lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to it.

Unfortunately it’s not great. I mean it’s not great, not insanely fun and re-defining what you can do with the genre, it’s merely OK. At least that’s true of episode 1 – Ghost. I hope and pray (almost truthfully) that it will get better. All three of Joss’ previous TV series had merely ok eps, Angel and Buffy at least had some not good at all ones. So I’ve been trying to convince myself that it’s ok, that it can have a mediocre start and get better. I’m having a little trouble though because all his previous shows were better than this from ep 1. Even Firefly‘s “The Train Job” which was a re-tooled, and significantly less-good, pilot from the original two-hour Serenity – even that was better.

By now you’re probably thinking I hated it. I didn’t but let me put it this way. If you’d shown me this and I didn’t know it was from Joss I would never have thought he’d been involved. It had none of his humour or flair for dialogue. It pretty much just played it straight all the way through.

Unlike some other fans/reviewers I don’t see the concept – agents or ‘actives’ are programmed with personalities/skills, hired out and then have their minds wiped on return – as inherently a problem. I can see that it could mean there’s no chance for character development, that we’re watching Eliza play a different role each week and so it’s hard to care – but someone as smart as Joss will have thought of that.

I’m more worried that take away the Joss humour and edge and what you’re left with, on the evidence of Ghost, could be a ep of pretty much any lawyer/cop procedural – albeit with a scifi twist.

I’m writing this now, over a week after I watched it because I’m about to watch ep 2, “The Target“. I’ll report back soon as to whether it got any better.

Eliza wakes up

Almost forgot the most important part – 5/10