New and Old TV, and also some other stuff

I am catching up on my io9 reading this evening and have some things to say about TV.

First off, I was pissed that The 4400 was canceled. It was good, I was invested, and now I have no answers to the greater questions. So I guess it's cool that they're putting books out now, but why did they have to start with something early on in the series? Does this mean it will become a serial that never dies? Will I get my answers, and after how many books (if at all)? Grrr...

Secondly, ZOMG Dr. Horrible's first episode is out today!!! I imagine everyone is going fucking crazy for it, because I cannot get through to the website and have been unable to watch yet. This may get it's own post after I've watched it, but do read the i09 link for the Joss Whedon quote. I'm really excited that he's trying something new in part to see what other ways Hollywood can do business. Last year's writer's strike really proved how limited artists/ writers/ etc. are in how they can reach us consumers of pop culture. Others have certainly done this, but perhaps not on this scale, at least when unaffiliated with a major studio.

Weirdly, I was just talking about the movie Battlefield Earth over the weekend. It is supposed to be that level of God-awful that makes it unintentionally hilarious, as the clip amply demonstrates. I'd like to watch under the influence with friends sometime this year.

Yay! More people joining together to circumvent established bureaucracies for better products, this product a freaking ROCKETSHIP. Seriously, government regulation seems to exist just to bolster established corporate power, and we need more endeavors like this, public efforts attempting to prove that there are better ways to do what needs to be done. I know many people would say that it's not necessary to go to space but I'm a sci-fi lover who's always dug the space program, and every time I hear the argument "that money could be so much better spent elsewhere" I think of corporate wealthfare and wonder why said critics don't focus on that. Plus I hear from my science geek housemate that in terms of physics, the cutting edge breakthroughs happen in one of two places: NASA or weapons research. Which would you prefer we pour money into? And in which place do you think the breakthroughs that could lead to significant medical/ environmental/ scientific advancement will be public vs private? (I honestly don't know here and can't find anything on google, but my understanding has been that our government funds private weapons companies for this shit rather than our own agencies, so the private companies get the patents for their own profit rather than the greater good - hooray for runaway, state-funded "capitalism" and "let the market decide" my ass!)

Yeah, dudes, The Middleman is totally fun and good. I haven't managed to catch each episode, but the ones I've seen have been everything the post says - funny as hell, and a great mix of camp and realistically flawed (albeit quirky) characters. In last night's episode (minor spoiler) there were trout zombies. Not fish zombies, human zombies who wanted trout. I so wish I could find a clip of a physically restrained zombie groaning "troooouuuut," but I cannot so you will have to make do with this PSA instead:


I can't believe how much I'm enjoying that show, and I have to say that ABC Family is an interesting network. I always thought of it as this family-oriented station that was willing to show relatively dirty Whose Line is it Anyway reruns, but bizarrely followed them up with the 700 Club. A few years ago, though, they put out a bunch of pretty good female-centered TV movies that I was shocked to enjoy. Yes, they were fluffy entertainment (wait, I love fluffy entertainment, why am I apologizing?), but the Christian Network moralizing I expected didn't really happen. The one I remember best was See Jane Date, starring Charisma Carpenter from Buffy fame, and I remember loving how all the women drank and the she was sometimes hungover without it being turned into a Big Problem. Plus, this was Charisma Carpenter post childbirth. I really appreciated seeing a former super-skinny actress with just a little heft, and how refreshing it was that weight-loss or guilt or body issues in general did not seem to factor into the plot. It was mindless entertainment, but the characters were surprisingly realistic and the movie avoided playing into standard female tropes in a lot of important ways.

Cross-posted.