Monday, January 12, 2009

About this weekend

Quickly about the rest of 24's first night... meh. Glad I stopped the minute-by-minute commentary because eventually it would've started droning on about "goddammit, why am I still watching this series?" I'll watch tonight's installments and make my decision about continuing to record the show. There had better be some more thrilling cliffhangers. The ratings were middling, and without knowing the effect having House as a lead-in will have on 24, come February it and Heroes will likely be neck-and-neck in the demo (though 24 will likely have the viewer advantage, I am guessing).

Anyway / also... Legend of the Seeker.

The 100-ish pages about Denna, the Mord'Sith (basically the fantasy-world combination of a dominatrix and a professional torturer) was the only truly original and entertaining part of Wizard's First Rule. So I was super-excited that the title of the episode was Denna. But oh my was that an arch performance. Great costuming job, though. However, I seem to remember the description of the pain-inducing instrument (the Agiel) as being a stick that was about foot long and a finger thick. So I got a hefty guffaw when the Agiel prop looked, well, much more like a sex toy than a long, thin, horrifyingly painful instrument of torture and death. Maybe it's just me?

But having Craig Horner shirtless, sweaty, and hanging from the ceiling for much of the episode was appreciated. See, I'm very easily amused when it comes ot campy fantasy series.

And, oy, we're something like 8 episodes into the series and they've already introduced something called "the breath of life" (I don't recall this from the book, but it has been a while and I didn't read past the first in the series)... which basically eliminates death provided you get "the breath of life" shortly after you die. Good lord, we've learned nothing from Heroes' second season. NOTHING! Anyway, Denna was brought back to life at the end of the episode, unbeknownst to our heroes, so I guess the show wanted a recurring villain. She's no Callisto... but I guess she'll do?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As far as I've seen even the most ardent S6 haters are loving it. Maybe you're just having a bad day! Heh!!!

Travis Yanan said...

I think it was a combination of expecting unrealistically amazing things and starting to watch it after midnight. I have an open mind about tonight... but maintain that my initial reaction to last night was "underwhelmed."

Anonymous said...

So did you like the 2-4? I'm curious. I think you are an objective poster on mediaweek and thought I'd check out your link and see what your thoughts were. Was kind of surprised by the 'eh-ness' you felt. LOL!

Personally I'm pretty excited about this season and the slow pace, rollout of the story. It has the feel of the earlier seasons and the element of thriller/intrigue that has been missing and which I love.

No spoilers here but I've also heard that the post-strike episodes take the show to a whole new level. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what that means. :)

(Btw, I'll try and post a name this go around - will see if I know what I'm doing) :D