By Chris Rywalt – April 17, 2008, 4:22 PM
A friend of mine, Dorian, likes to keep me around because I know a lot of weird stuff and he likes learning about weird stuff. For example, his wife mentioned that he was trying to grow apple trees from seeds — why I can’t imagine, except he’s a health nut and he wants to grow his own organic food in his backyard. (The fact that his backyard is in New Jersey, ground zero for the Industrial Revolution in America, and therefore probably as contaminated as Chernobyl, doesn’t seem to bother him.) So he wanted to grow his own apple tree from seeds, but he didn’t know — and I could tell him — that apple trees don’t breed true. In other words, you can’t get a tree that bears edible fruit from the seeds of an edible apple. Not to mention that, if the apple is a hybrid variety, the fruit is sterile anyway. So your chances of getting a tree aren’t very good, and if you do get a tree, they’re hard to care for, and finally, the tree probably won’t yield good fruit. Apple trees are propagated through cutting and grafting.
Yes, Dorian loves having someone around who can tell him these things. Why can I do this? Um, I read a lot.
After I told him about the apples last Saturday, he suddenly asked me, “Have you heard of James Burke?”
Of course I have. James Burke is the guy who made Connections, one of the greatest science shows of all time. I even had Connections 2 on video until one day when I realized I didn’t own a VCR any more, so I donated it to my local library.
Dorian said he’d like the Connections series (of which there are three) on DVD to watch while he rides his exercise bike. He can’t use videotapes because his VCR isn’t on the TV in front of the bike, and neither is his computer. So he needs DVDs, but apparently the sets are out of print or something. So I downloaded 1 and 2 to burn him some copies.
I put on the first episode to make sure the download was okay. I was surprised to discover that Burke introduces the series from the plaza between the World Trade Center towers. Whoa. Very unsettling to see everything intact like that, especially since I was just thinking the other day that I still can’t quite grasp the shape of the streets downtown; I can still picture the World Trade so clearly.
Then I burned the DVD with the first three episodes. When it was done, I threw it in my DVD player to test it, and it seemed okay. Then I skipped ahead to the third episode, and scanned ahead at random, to make sure the audio was in sync (I’ve had that problem before). The show picked up with Burke in a field opening a suitcase and explaining that it was a suitcase nuclear weapon which could be set off in downtown Anywhere and what a nightmare that is.
Yeesh. I didn’t remember that James Burke was so frigging upbeat. First he films at the World Trade Center, then he tells us we’re all going to be nuked.
And that was back in 1978.
By Jason Snell – April 10, 2008, 12:13 PM
As seen on CNN today:
Of course, because of this week’s Idol Gives Back spectacular (which I didn’t watch, preferring the excitement of a taut baseball game), American Idol won’t actually be down to seven contestants until tonight, a rare Thursday elimination show.
Which reveals that CNN’s home page, or at least the part that promotes corporate publishing sibling Entertainment Weekly’s American Idol coverage, is automated. And every Thursday, up pops a link — decremented by one, there’s a good computer — to the latest outing.
I guess I assumed that the home page of a news website would be edited by humans. But perhaps I’m just a 20th Century guy at heart.
By Nathan Alderman – April 8, 2008, 8:54 PM
You have to learn one important lesson at some point, if you’re a geek like me, lest you risk becoming the sort of sweaty, beer-gutted miscreant found haunting second-tier comic book conventions in a ratty Green Lantern t-shirt, debating the relative power levels of Superman and the Hulk with pathological fervor. You have to learn that there is stuff out there based on things you like, but it’s not made for you — and that’s perfectly fine.
Comic book fan that I am, I was mildly appalled when the Teen Titans cartoon show came out a few years back — not because I was any big fan of the comic book series on which it was based, but because it seemed so silly and juvenile compared to the more all-ages Justice League Unlimited airing at the time. But the more I watched the show, the more I realized that it wasn’t bad. It was just designed for people much younger than me. And in that light, it was actually a really good show, stylish and big-hearted and filled with gentle, un-preachy lessons that kids might actually use.
The Sarah Jane Adventures is similar — a spinoff of the more family-oriented Doctor Who, soon to join its older sibling on the SciFi Channel, that’s unabashedly aimed at younger viewers. (How fantastic is it, by the way, that the same middle-budget British sci-fi institution can spawn both the decidedly R-rated Torchwood and this very PG bit of fun?) Adults who insist on watching it should expect a lot more silliness, considerably less menace, and a higher quotient of fart jokes. Still, based on the pilot and the first episode, The Sarah Jane Adventures is well worth watching, especially as a family. Beneath all the kid-friendly fun, there’s a rather sweet and almost haunting exploration of the ways that kids and adults aren’t so different.
Reprising her role from both the original Who series and the new show, Elisabeth Sladen is Sarah Jane Smith, a former companion of the Doctor’s. Though she was unceremoniously dumped back in reality, Sarah Jane never gave up the good fight against monsters and aliens. In the new show, she’s the enigmatic next-door neighbor to a precocious 13-year-old girl named Maria (Yasmin Paige), who stumbles into Sarah Jane’s weird world of wonders and stubbornly refuses to leave. That turns out to be a good thing for both parties. Maria swiftly needs help in dealing with a sinister soda, Bubble Shock, whose omnipresent ads seem to have all her classmates enthralled. And Sarah Jane, much like her time-travelling mentor, is realizing that fighting secret invasions and impossible evils is a lot lonelier and emptier than it might seem. As they investigate the Bubble Shock factory and its extraterrestrial owners, Sarah Jane and Maria also meet a mysterious boy, Luke, (Tommy Knight) with a prodigious intellect and absolutely no knowledge of the real world.
Not exactly sophisticated stuff, true, but it’s fun. The kids aren’t Haley Joel Osment-caliber actors, but they give decent performances, and their characters are written with intelligence and sympathy. The pilot takes great pleasure in skewering Bubble Shock’s slick, predatory marketing tactics, and the way its young consumers shrug off any concerns about the drink by noting that the label says it’s “100% organic.” Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny in the Pierce Brosnan era of 007 films) makes a wonderfully icy villainess, the special effects walk that fine line between impressive and cheesy, and much of the humor is actually funny, if only in a way that your inner 11-year-old can fully enjoy. (The first episode of the regular series involves the return of Who’s zipper-headed, perpetually gassy Slitheen, made a bit less creepy and a bit more flatulent for younger viewers. Consider yourself warned.)
But the show really shines in the surprising amount of depth it lends to Sarah Jane herself. Sladen’s a warm and charismatic actress, and the writers give her a truly meaty role to play. Like her new young friends, Sarah Jane’s lonely and adrift, trying to figure out who she’s going to be as she gets older. In the first episode of the regular series, she has as much to learn about being Luke’s new adoptive mum as Luke does about fitting in at school. On American TV, it’s rare to see a middle-aged female character given such dimension. (Heck, it’s rare to see any female character acknowledge or act like they’re middle-aged.) As part of a kids’ show, it’s downright remarkable, and really quite touching. There’s also a subtle running joke about Maria’s newly divorced dad having something of a crush on Sarah Jane, which seems like a nice nod to Sladen’s days as a geek goddess on the original series.
I wish that a bizarre tangle of rights issues hadn’t kept sidekick K-9 from more than a cameo appearance. Honestly, is there any television series that couldn’tuse more of a smartass tin dog with a laser in his nose? Still, it’s a nice fix for Who fans eagerly awaiting the upcoming fourth season. Just be prepared to feel a little weird, and maybe a bit silly, if you’re watching it without any kids around.
The Sarah Jane Adventures premieres Friday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. ET on SciFi.
By Jason Snell – April 1, 2008, 1:00 AM
This year, the April Fool site was Radeeo.
By Monty Ashley – March 15, 2008, 1:25 PM
So The Wire has come to its finale. I can only hope that people will now stop telling me to watch it. I wonder what the new “best show I’m not watching” is.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m sure it was a fine show. But first of all, I’m just not that into cop shows. And second, years of being told “This is the best television show that has ever been on television in the history of television” has the wrong effect on me. I think people are trying to make me want to watch it when they say things like that, but what really happens is that I roll my eyes and privately declare that I’m never watching it. And then I decide to myself with no evidence that these people are probably just overexcited about the show because it’s on the air right now. I mean, I remember when people said The Sopranos was The Greatest Show Ever, and it pretty clearly had serious flaws. I never hear anyone make a substantive argument about why today’s Greatest Show Ever is better than Cheers or M*A*S*H or, um, Gunsmoke. Possibly that’s because nobody young enough to be able to operate an email account has ever seen an episode of Gunsmoke.
Anyway, my point is this: I got through the entire Wire era without seeing a single episode. And now it’s off the air, so people can stop telling me how great it is. I promise I’ll try to watch the next critically-acclaimed, low-rated show. Unless it’s on at the same time as something I actually enjoy.
By Jason Snell – March 4, 2008, 5:31 PM
Fox’s New Amsterdam has an intriguing premise, one that blends sci-fi with procedural. John Amsterdam, the show’s protagonist, is a New York City police detective. It’s the latest in a series of jobs that stretch back 350 years.
See, Amsterdam’s been made immortal, almost. Saving a Native American girl has granted him immortality until he meets his soul mate, at which point he’ll begin to age normally again. (Yes, in the pilot he meets her. And promptly has a heart attack.)
It’s your usual dark, gothic feel, the kind you got from Angel and (I suppose) you get from Moonlight, if you like that sort of thing. I could go either way, but New Amsterdam does it well, using Amsterdam’s four centuries of history as a way to make him a savant. He knows New York, trivia, various arcane professions, the way Dr. House knows medicine — because he’s been alive so long that he’s been really bored, and has drifted from job to job while living in New York, formerly known as… wait for it… New Amsterdam.
Fun stuff. Here’s the problem: this is a crime drama. And New Amsterdam has to live and die based on the crime stories it tells each week. And this is where the show fails. The crimes are boring and obvious. And it wastes the unique, clever approach of the show’s premise.
So, should you watch New Amsterdam? If you’re a fan of that dark, broody stuff, like Angel or Moonlight, you should give it a whirl. But be warned: you may not see crime plots this dull again, no matter how long you live.
