I’ve just about had it with Fringe.
If it weren’t for the fact that this Thursday’s episode, “Jacksonville,” promises to shed major light on the series’ overall William Bell/dual dimension plotline, I think I’d be done with it completely.
What’s the bee in my bonnet? Two things about the show are driving me absolutely bananas:
First, there’s the fact that Dr. Walter Bishop was apparently intimately involved in every experimental research project ever conducted and is the world’s top expert in dozens of disparate scientific fields.
This is despite the fact that he’d spent the 17 years prior to the start of the show in a mental institution. In the real world, scientific knowledge reportedly doubles somewhere between every five and ten years. In the world of Fringe, not so much.
I understand how he would be privy to knowledge about the show’s central mystery, since he and William Bell were the one’s responsible for creating it. But does his previous research have to be the driving force behind virtually every mystery the show confronts? When did the man sleep?!
But mostly what’s driving me crazy about the show is that its science is just so unbelievably bad.
Here’s the thing: I am far from a science “purist.” I always tuned out the blowhards who criticized the science of Star Trek, since they clearly didn’t understand that, first and foremost, the show existed to entertain. Clearly, it also tried to provoke thought about issues both scientific and social, but I actually think it was (mostly) a good thing that they never let themselves get too bogged down in science, because it made the show accessible to a broad audience.
But in spite of all of Star Trek’s inaccuracies and inconsistencies, I believe they at least gave the science some thought. And the visionaries behind Star Trek clearly had a deep love of both science and the future — which is precisely why so many scientists claim to have been inspired by it.
By contrast, it’s clear that the producers of Fringe don’t give a f*** about science.
I understand that the gimmick of the show is that it deals with the paranormal which, by definition, stretches the boundaries of science. But they clearly want to highlight the simplest, most attention-getting (and most dumbed-down) “scientific” phenomena possible — and they don’t give a whit about actual science.
Consider:
- In “What Lies Below,” the January 21st episode, Walter confronts a preposterous “thinking” virus that infects his son, Peter, but in less than an hour, despite having no lab and very little equipment, he’s able to isolate the virus and concoct an antidote out of horseradish from a refrigerator — horseradish! — that immediately works on everyone infected.
In “Of Human Action,” the November 12th episode, a researcher is conducting an experiment that would allow pilots to control planes with their brains, and when his son takes the “enhancement” drugs, it gives him the ability to psychically control other people — because, you know, the human brain is just “another kind of computer.” Fortunately, Walter is able to prevent the mind-control by creating special headphones (!!!) for the FBI agents to wear.
- In “Unearthed,” the January 11th episode (an unaired episode from the first season), a dying girl is “possessed” by an evil man who just happens to be dying at the same time. His spiritual energy didn’t dissipate due to, um, previous “heavy radiation exposure” while in a Russian sub, and he “jumped ship” to the dying girl.
- Despite the fact that the structure of DNA wasn’t even identified until 1953, in “The Bishop Revival,” the January 28th episode, it turns out that the Nazis (and Walter Bishop’s father, working as a spy) had developed an air-born toxin that attacked specific genes and could immediately kill anyone who had them.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
It’s like their not even trying — not even bothering with the fig leaf of Star Trek’s techno-babble to cover the nakedness of their pseudo-science.
Basically, Gilligan’s Island took science more seriously when they had the Professor making a car out of bamboo and coconut shells!
Hey, whatever. So there’s no love or deep affection for science on Fringe. So they’re even cheapening it — cynically flashing science’s most attention-getting elements, like dancers flashing body parts in some bawdy burlesque show, acting without nuance or elegance. They’re not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last.
But Fringe is not Gilligan’s Island. It pretends to be serious speculative fiction.
Basically, they’re making it impossible for me to enjoy the show. My knowledge of science is limited at best — hey, I was a social sciences studies major! But increasingly, I find my eyes rolling out of my head by the stupid and sloppily-conceived premises of most of their episodes.
Thursday’s episode better be spectacular. Because if it isn’t, I am so outta here.
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Unfortunately, Gabrielle is guided along the beginning of her path by a guru named Aiden, who is actually a demon who feeds off the goodness of the people who come to his island paradise. As his victims sink deeper into a meditative state, they turn into blue stone and he absorbs their essence.
their souls are reincarnated, they always find each other. They learn about the concept of karma, and how everything you do in this life affects what happens in future lives.
can’t ever fight back?
At this point the show was at a creative peak. As could only happen on Xena, the writers took the simple art of mehndi, the beautiful body art made with henna, and gave it into a supernatural element, thus showcasing a real element of Indian culture with a truly Xena-twist. Cliche images like flying carpets were incorporated into the story as props in action sequences. And though the number of gods in the Indian pantheon is literally in the hundreds, these episodes allowed us to glimpse a few, when so rarely are Indian gods even acknowledged in most fantasy stories.
I know a lot of people have busied themselves haterizing on Dollhouse, but I’m here to take a stand.
As for the season-long story arc that we’ve come to expect from Whedon (a tactic he used on both Buffy and Angel), I believe he was trying something different. With Dollhouse there was no season-long storyline, but rather a series-long storyline. Each season didn’t contain a Big Bad — the corporation responsible for the Dollhouses was the nemesis, and the vanquishing of that foe meant the end of the series.
Nope. The show obviously uses the political language of the day — a character directly, without coding, says that the aliens can offer “universal health care” — but that’s because television dialogue always reflects the language of the present culture. V doesn’t strike any eerie realistic chords with its political rhetoric anymore than The West Wing did.
So here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I would go on and on about how there needed to be a movie version of Thundercats. I felt that the world as we know it would not be complete until Lion-O and the gang came to the screen in a full-blown, effects-laden mega-blockbuster, a la Jurassic Park or Independence Day.
A He-man film has been in the works for a while, although it seems stuck in development hell. (IMDB, however, has a listing for a film called Grayskull, and even a year of release — 2011. This will apparently have no connection to the Dolph Lundgren He-man film.) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was, for a time, rumored to be playing the lead. 
There was, however, one problem. And it got very ugly.
And when a certain subsection of fans saw this, they went ballistic.
In the extended version of The Two Towers, Merry and Pippin are about to be swallowed up by the wicked Old Man Willow when Treebeard, the Ent, arrives in the nick of time and saves them, saying to the beastly Willow, “Eat Earth…Dig Deep…Drink Water…Go to sleep.” This moment also occurred in the books, but rather than Treebeard, their savior was Tom Bombadil.
Incidentally, in the original script, Arwen was written into the battle at Helm’s Deep, arriving with Haldir’s troops. This allowed a brief reunion for her and Aragorn, before the film kicked into high gear with its awesome climax. I only wished they had kept this is in the film, because personally I would have loved to see Arwen and Aragorn fighting side by side, laying the smackdown on some Orcs. Alas, it was not meant to be, although they did film some of it. (Andif you have a keen eye and a few minutes to spare, you can catch a glimpse of footage of this in the bonus features on The Two Towers Extended Edition. You’re welcome.)
When I was a kid, the country went through a full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons hysteria, where the fantasy role-playing game was accused of everything from turning kids onto Satanism to encouraging them to kill themselves.
I started playing Dungeons & Dragons at age twelve, when my friend Tim asked for, and received, a “starter” box set of the game for Christmas.
But in the world of D&D, in the adventures we were concocting for each other, history came alive. And why wouldn’t it? We were literally living it! And like almost every virgin D&D player, I immediately embarked on my own extracurricular study of weaponry, of myths and fables, of medieval life — even castle-building.
Even better, by implicitly granting me the right to make my own ethical choices, and by having me role-play different choices and then forcing me to accept the consequences of my actions, I think the game made me a much more ethical person. It definitely made me a far more broad-minded one.
Finally, there’s math. I didn’t like that either as a kid — more memorization, natch. Truthfully, I still hate it, but when you spend countless hours adding up dice-rolls in your head, you’re suddenly a whiz — and when your character’s life is at stake, you pick up statistics pretty quickly too!
Okay, so maybe the Evil Dead movies aren’t really the best movies ever made. But they are sort of like my generation’s version of the Kennedy assassination: we all remember where we were on that bloody day we first saw Evil Dead.
The plot is simple: five college kids go on vacation and stay at a cabin the middle of the woods. They stumble upon an evil book, which in the sequels is referred to as The Necronomicon (a name borrowed from horror author H.P. Lovecraft), and, one by one, the kids become possessed. Something awful happens to one of the women, which is so grotesque I can’t bring myself to describe it here, but it’s something only a man would come up with, and if you’ve seen the film you know what I’m talking about. Characters turn into zombie/demons, and begin hacking away at each other.
The movie is, for the most part, a splatterfest, filled with blood and guts and gore, oh my. It is sick and twisted and a great deal of fun, and I highly recommend it. But if you’re squeamish like I am, you might want to skip the part where Cheryl is lured into the woods.
style of humor, going so far as hacking off his own demon-posessed hand and attaching a chainsaw in its place.
Filmed 12 years after the first film and with a greatly increased budget, the film is a wholly different animal than the first two. It takes place entirely in the medieval world, and Ash has become an almost superhumanly cocky caricature of a movie hero. Bruce Campbell chews the scenery with panache, and the wacky slapstick makes for a funny, silly time. There’s no attempt at the scares as with the first two — in fact, this film mostly resembles one of the sillier episodes of Xena. It also boasts one of the best endings in all of film, when Ash returns to the present, and must do battle with another Deadite. It’s the cheesiest of the cheese, but will bring a smile to pretty much anyone’s face with a shred of a sense of humor.
It was a miracle that David beat Goliath, right?
Lawrence, leading a ragtag, untrained band, most of whom had never fired a rifle, was about as much an underdog as a military opponent can get. But in fighting the “superior” Turk army, he broke virtually every accepted rule of combat — avoiding a direct attack on their stronghold, for example, and instead raiding the mostly unguarded rail line to Damascus that kept that massive army fed and armored.
I’ll be the one to finally say it: Supernatural, which wraps up its fourth season this Thursday night, is a great and wildly underrated show.
From the start, Supernatural was obviously a quality show. But it sure didn’t seem to be breaking any new ground: it was a buffed-off Buffy retread, or a TV knock-off of the recent movie trend of “auteur” horror, or maybe just another excuse for the CW to feature more pretty boys.
Most daring of all, the creators of Supernatural have created a primary dramatic conflict that has been dropped right in the middle of the show’s core: the relationship between Sam and Dean.
So what the hell is Star Trek anyway — sci-fi or fantasy?
5. Gods. Throughout the many series of Star Trek, the intrepid explorers have encountered beings of unimaginable power, sometimes verging on the omnipotent, most noticeably the Puckish being called Q. While the entities that make up the Q continuum are explained as being vastly more evolved or existing on a different plane, fact is they’re Roddenberrian versions of the Greek gods, with the same meddlesome, mischievous qualities that make the Greek myths so much fun. So suck it, Zeus!