Post contains slight spoilers on Dead Like Me and Tru Calling, be warned.

With the arrival of the new Dead Like Me movie, I got inspired and got the first season boxed set (The movie wasn’t that great, sad to say that) and started watching while working. Now, remember how I talked about how Tru Calling explored the premise of the show with a nice organized pattern, starting from the typical case and slowly expanding the question and starting to question it. Well, Dead Like Me does pretty much the opposite. The first assignment George gets as a grim reaper, she puts into question, trying to save the little girl. And in the second episode she tries to see what happens if she doesn’t do anything. These are things that in Tru Calling were explored a lot later (the other question would have gotten answered on the second season had the series continued, the other sort was explored in the episode Last Good Day through Jack). Dead Like Me does the learning curve to its premise by questioning it from the very start. And (movie spoilers ahead, skip to next paragraph if you don’t want to know) in the DLM movie, we eventually get to the point where the questioning of it all ends, sort of. As George gets promoted to a middle-management job previously held by Rube (at least that’s the way I read the ending) and will have to stand as an example to the other reapers from now on, thinking the one thing she could when the post-it notes rain from the sky: “I am so fucked”

If we’re honest, the core of Tru Calling is exploring the Calling mythos. Tru, her mother, Jack, Tru’s father, their place in the grand universal scheme of what it is all about. It approaches the system from the outside, giving the characters new puzzles and angles to solve and when you thing you have it all figured out, it throws you a curve ball. And the episodes are about the save. Each episode is really about these outside characters we catch only a glimpse of. The central characters’ issues are pretty much always explored through the characters in the episode who are doing the Calling.

In Dead Like Me, it’s the other way around. The people who get Reaped are very rarely hugely important. The way the reapers handle their jobs is usually a side point about the episode, something they do while dealing with their personal problems. There is no grand mythos to speak of. Sure we see what happens when a grim reaper takes a day off or who is the boss of all Gravelings or how one gets turned into such. And of course there are close calls to getting to the scene and trying to figure out what’s about to happen. But they’re only there to provide a backset to everything else that happens – How the human interactions between the undead, the living and the soon-to-be-dead work. What’s important here is the fact George’s sister is stealing toilet seats to grieve for her loss.

I’d love to see an episode of each show done in the other’s style. Seeing Tru do some menial morgue work and really struggling with the whole “Do I want to do this for the rest of my life”, not do homework and getting then Called, followed by her waltzing through the rewind day like it’s her routine and then share some heartwarmingly universal moments with Harrison and Davis. Or a grand-conspirational upper management playing their little grim reapers to their plans, and we’d discover there being another division of grim reapers that have an agenda that might be totally different from just saving souls. The saving of souls becoming tediously difficult when the reaping is done in a convention of people called “John Smith” and then realizing that the person who got saved didn’t have a soul at all. What does it all mean? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!

Ok, got a bit carried away there.

But the two are really a good example of how to take a high-concept idea and then steer it to totally different directions. By making a simple choice of what’s core of the show. Is it the lives of the core characters or is it the concept. Dead Like Me takes the high-concept core and uses it to paint a very vivid and real (if you can use the word when speaking of grim reapers) picture of the people it affects. I would say this makes Tru Calling a bit more easier to follow if you regularry miss episodes, but makes Dead Like Me easier to get more emotionally attached to. The fact that DLM is probably one of the wittiest shows ever written doesn’t hurt.

According to the show’s blog, we’re getting more human antics from the best scifi/horror/drama/urban fantasy whatnot show from BBC. The penultimate episode was a very by-the-book cliffhanger and I have a bad feeling the season finale for season one might be awesomely action packed (in contrast of being about what matters the most). But I wait to be pleasantly surprised.

Mean while, I started collecting the soundtrack of the show as spotify playlists over on a page of it’s own. Missing quite a lot of stuff and I had to resort to covers on some songs as the originals weren’t available on spotify.

Over on TED, J.J. Abrams talks of boxes and Tom’s nose

Really nice stuff, and shows how good he must be doing his sales pitches. The stuff everyone who ever has done a scenario based on a movie or a TV-series really needs to be listening is the brief stint where he talks about the best scene in Jaws.

So, me and good old Spikey over there were talking about how my blog posts tend to be there for a very small audience, because I talk about the slight intersect of RPGs and Television, and rarely about anything else. I came up with the idea of trying to open up the reasons for this a bit, but it came out a bit dull on the first try, so tonight’s solution:

This should help a bit. Notes in italic are written on the morning after.

So, Alvan, television and role playing games, 101. As one might see from the odd blog posts I write, both are a big part of my daily thought process. To be honest, I don’t actively play RPGs these days. It’s almost more likely for me to have a month when I don’t play a single game than one when I do. On the other hand, I still maintain my healthy interest in TV-shows, watching the essentials daily and sometimes popping to the non-essentials in nice big rounds (season at a time, DVD rental these days is awesome). But let’s take a look back in time.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I convinced my mother to buy me the Finnish edition of RuneQuest after seeing the Dungeons and Dragons Red Box in my best friend’s bookshelf. Now, to a toddler like me (I was something like 10 back then), the mechanics of the game were way too hard to understand. My best friend managed to play a couple of D&D sessions with me, but he never got RuneQuest. Neither did I, but kept returning to the book, trying to figure out what the deal with it was. I made simpler versions of the rules and had a couple of games, but to be honest, I spent most of the time just reading the book. By “simpler versions of the rules” I mean something like “let’s roll these dice and if we roll something like X or lower, then we succeed, okay?”, not something that was really thought out – as said, this was when I was very very young.

Years passed, monkeys found monoliths and discovered fire and death. Somewhere around this point I met a lot of the people who are still part of the gaming group I still consider I belong to. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons became the game of choice (and in case you’re wondering: I still don’t understand some of RuneQuest’s rules, and have stopped trying 15 years ago), as we knew how to read English (I blame the computer games and old-school Batman TV series for that). So, back when I was something like 14, the RPGs we were playing were pretty much about a group of good guys (the players’ characters) fighting the bad guys (who were about as 2-dimensional as they get). And the biggest thing that was considered a story twist was that the game master poured a surprising monster or two at the end, or an ally turned out to be a traitor.

At some point, humans escaped the Garden of Eden and the games started getting more mature with the players. There was the Vampire: The Masquerade era when the games moved to a story-focused and more serious direction. Story-focused meant that it was pretty much the game master telling a story where the players were allowed to listen. And serious meant that things were cool. On the outside. The worst of this era was probably symbolized by a legendary game called “Varastoalue”, where the players were so desperate to affect the story (which was bad) they actively tried to kill own their characters.. and failing. All while the Game Master’s “story” went on. With cool ninja bodyguards and whatever else that was supposed to be awesome, but in reality just dreadful. As manatic comments below, Varastoalue wasn’t a full-fledged, planned adventure. But to be honest, not many games back then were. Lots of improvised one-shots that tended to be nearly as awful as Varastoalue. It just has a symbolic value that shines over the other games of the era because of the sheer absurdity of the things that happened in it.

And so eventually mankind blossomed, built pyramids and cathedrals, and we got pissed at it all – the railroaded games, the superficial cool (that wasn’t cool) and the gaming. I think we actually stopped playing for a good while at some point. When we came back the games started to change, something a bit different. (there’s a 10 years or so leap somewhere here in time). And after being so pissed at how things had worked, we started questioning the fun of the games we were playing.

And with the questioning of the games and gaming, we started looking for answers in the other things that we had been comfortable with. In my case, it was television and popular culture in general. To give another example before moving on – one of us has moved towards exploring the games through linguistics and history.

Now, to emphasize the point of loving TV series, here’s a photo I took earlier when cleaning my DVD cabinet (yeah, here only to show off, also, sorry about the quality, cameraphone + bad lights = not a good combo):

Bonus points if you recognize them all. Hint, my Whedons aren't there. And someone's got my Life on Mars season 1...

Whoa, pretentious much, well – I guess when you have taken a photo of the collection, you need to post it somewhere.

Now, what was I saying. Yeah. (the port’s good btw, you should try it someday) I’ve grown with television series. Mostly the geeky stuff you’d expect – Star Treks, Babylon 5s, Batman (the old series), the works. But also other things – Love Boat, Knight Rider, MacGyver, Twin Peaks… Hmm, I guess those are the geeky stuff too. Lovejoy, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Bergerac, The Darling Buds of May and other quality Brit drama. So, anyways, the main point – watched lot of TV, and TV started affecting the way I viewed my games.

And while movies and books are great when you’re talking about a singular story structure that’s maybe played in one session as a RPG, television series (in my mind) provide a way better analogue to story structure of a game that gets split into sections. Sure, it’s not perfect, but quite many problems that come up with TV series also apply to games. And thus I blog. About the problems of television series, and try to create the analogues to RPGs the best I can when they arise.

Now, as said, I don’t actually play that many games these days. I have returned to the phase I was when I had RuneQuest. I try to keep up with the trends of the games and still buy the books that I find interesting, but most of the time, I just read them and think about how they might work. Most of the game design I tend to do these days is when I’ve watched TV. And try to see what’s good, what’s bad and what can be learned from it.

So. The best I can come up with for parting words now that the Niepoort has been working wonderfully are: When you’re reading these blog posts of mine you will hear me talk of role playing games. And if you’re someone who is not familiar with them, there might be some preconceptions that might make you want to just ignore the posts. When that happens, please try to think less of the stereotype (that I might somewhat fit, granted) of sad grown up men in their parents’ basement, rolling dice and talking about Sir Ben Dover saving the fair elf princess from the vile Dragon of Omfgawesomeness of +5. And maybe think about the text more in terms of writing and thinking of television drama – should make the reading experience a bit more balanced and maybe a little less sad. And most of the time it might even make sense.

I’ll take another look at this tomorrow and see if there is any sense in what I’ve written. Now it’s time to go rest and hope I feel better in the morning. Yeah, wasn’t half as bad as I had imagined. I can live with this. As someone commented on IRC – it’s a “this is why we can’t have nice things” sort of a history. Whatever that means.

Oh boy, I really went for the very bottom just now and saw some unexpected light there. Not necessarily as bottom, as you’d expect for example a burnout drugaddict buried beneath a continent do, but more roots level bottom. No, I have still not gone the Fear and Loathing route either. I’m just talking about a particularly excellent bad film. Following me? Don’t touch anything.

I watched Airport 1975. I loved it for all the wrong reasons, but I’m sure it’s all right. See, everyone knows the classic, legendary gag-festival of a movie, Airplane!. Guess what movie it parodied? Yees, you’re now following me. Airport started a string of aviation disaster films, basically setting the basis for a genre of its own. It was a success as far as I know (haven’t checked this, but I just seem to recall etc.), and sported quite a few sequels and tag-along movies copying the concept. Of course, such boom always waters down quickly, and no exceptions were offered here. Final nail on the coffin full of disaster corpses came from the movie Airplane! that meticulously took the very same elements, same shots, same characters, same structure, same bloody hell everything and then calmly and carefully shredded it all into pieces and took a long and equally meticulous piss on everything, without stopping for breath just like this insanely long sentence. Of course, it sported a sequel that sort of sucked, so it’s nice to see it really respected and picked up on the originals in that sense, too.

Having never before seen this original father-of-all, I did have gained levels on disaster movies of later eras and I’ve been a diehard fan of Airplane! ever since I was conceived. It really has been a grand part of the grand scheme of things that define me. Now, after almost memorizing that wonderful, graverobbing, gratuitous, disrespectful black awesome sheep of Hollywood, I saw the daddy and it was just like watching the parody that murdered it. Bewildered, I was.

I honestly don’t know which one I was judging, as I was only marveling at the level of parody, shot by shot. They did take different paths at the moment of disaster, and only then I managed to see it standing on its own feet. Wobbly feet with no toes by todays standards, but entertaining nonetheless. Golden stuff, both on “oh haha this is awesome” level and “oh wow I’m really so tainted” revelations. See, it kind of blames you: You’re laughing at the serious old guy because all you’ve seen of him was through a clown mocking him, and then you notice he doesn’t want to be laughed at, then you notice yourself laughing at both, get torn apart, stop caring, and that’s the point of zen right there. It’s a process that cleanses and prepares you for the death that happened to the movie long before you never saw it happen. Instant level-up right there.

Had I not seen Airplane! before, this would have been dire, campy and only mildly entertaining on 70′s pulp values. Good in its own field, but the kind you have to scrape the bottom to get a good taste in your mouth afterwards. Prepared for the blow by a teacher that throws genre curveballs at you, you end up watching it a bit like some teaching experiment or a spotting test, putting you in a state of mind that lets you pick it apart and enjoy the pieces. Too big mouthfuls and it sticks in your throat, finely chopped and it’s like fine caviar mixed with Red Bull. Completely unnecessary and completely win-win.

If you’re a huge fan of movies that are ultimately parodies of some defining movies of the genre, make sure you see the originals. You’ll see the parodies with completely new eyes. Yes, most people do that already and yes, the parodies often are excellent on their own, but to really appreciate them on some deeper, illogical and somehow violated levels, you have to know their ancestors. I just have this nagging spider-sense that’s telling me most people haven’t seen Airport 1975, although they’ve seen Airplane!.

Oh, and as I mentioned Airplane! The Sequel, I must also readily recommend Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land, aka Starflight One. It’s simple concept – take a virgin hypersonic airplane that skims the edge of atmosphere at ridiculous speed, take the usual lineup of basic characters and required tensions and love interests and whatnot, insert said characters in plane, insert disaster event, have said plane stuck in space full of screaming characters, get NASA shove some space shuttles to save the bugger, have people, go nuts, et cetera. It’s really the fat and icky bacteria that makes cream so good.

So, chatting with Spikey….

Alvan: I’m watching heroes again. I can only assume this is what it feels like to poke yourself in the eye with needles. And the first season was so good…

Spikey: Yeah, I think it flunked when they stopped delivering things they had teased us about for so long when the seasons turned. At least it didn’t work the way I expected. Now there’s nothing there but soap.

Alvan: I wish there was even soap.

Spikey: Says the guy who doesn’t bathe.

I can’t emphasize how much I love Leverage. A heist series that goes from one heist to another, not sticking around with big boring plot lines. Instead it builds a lovely thematic canvas from the characters through what the continuity is built. It’s a wonderful example how an old-school show that has one or two plots per episode can still hit the viewer in this age of Lost-alikes that won’t forgive if you’re missing five minutes of the show. The two-parter season finale just started this week and will reach a conclusion next week, so it’s safe to talk about things they’ve been building this season.

And to be honest, the real gem of the show are the characters. A true rogues gallery – the Mastermind, the Socialite, the Brawler, the Computer Kid and the Thief. The Mastermind is an old insurance agent, who has moved from “White Knight to Black King”, selects the “jobs” the group performs and cordinates the effort. The Socialite is an old opponent of his, a con-woman extraordinaire who can sell any personality she decides to, to anyone she’s chosen as her mark (except the Mastermind, of course). The Brawler’s true to his description, capable of taking down anyone he comes across in hand-to-hand combat. The Computer Kid hacks cellphones, CIA databases and security systems with no problems at all. And the Thief is held back by no acrobatic feat or a lock that she comes across. A perfectly balanced and diverse group for any sort of a heist. Just like they should be.

But they’re built as flawed, each one. The Mastermind is an alcoholic and hell-bent on the death of his son. The Socialite is in love with the Mastermind and let’s her delusions of being a great actress on stage as well as off it take the better of her if the opportunity arises. The Brawler has a dark past where bad things have happened. The Computer Kid loves things like Star Wars and internet. And the Thief is something of an Aspie. What is done well about these flaws is that they’re not overplayed.

The Mastermind is a functioning alcoholic, and like he says “the trick is not to get hung up on the alcoholic, but to celebrate the functioning part” – it is a flaw very much present, but in the end, it doesn’t make him a trembling mound of flesh, hovering over the latest bottle. His son is the ghost that pushes him forward. The Socialite’s relationship with the Mastermind and her obsession with her acting are things that make her quite sympathetic, distracting from the fact that anyone in her role must be a bit of a sociopath. The Brawler and The Computer Kid neither are socially incompetent, in fact both can be quite the charmers. The Brawler is a very warm character with surprising insight and intellect, the dark past just a thing that comes to haunt him sometimes, but he’s not trapped in it. And the Computer Kid. Well, it’s the age of the geek, baby. The fact you understand Star Wars or World of Warcraft doesn’t mean anymore that you can’t interact with the opposite sex. To be honest, the Computer Kid is probably the best Fast-Talker in the group, which is something the archetype would never normally be associated with. The socially awkward one is the Thief, but instead of a geek she’s displayed as eccentric and childlike, a very likable character. And with her overbearing focus in life being money and thieving instead of something we wouldn’t be interested in hearing about, it’s a very working angle on her.

To put it simply, each of the characters is one step away from being a dull stereotype. The show’s creators have pretty much taken the archetypes and given them an attribute or two that somehow humanizes them, instead building them with some that would make them look even more badass version of their base model. And then they’ve made sure that the quality isn’t too overbearing. And the formula works brilliantly. The characters come off as human. Food for thought for the next time you’re thinking of writing characters.

Brit Sci-Fi. The big flag-bearer for that these days is Doctor Who, naturally, with the spin-off Torchwood that will air this year over the pond on BBC: America “only short while after it airs in Britain”. Many of us older, classier folk will point to direction of Sapphire and Steel, and some of the more self-important people remind that Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes could be seen as Sci-Fi as well. And then there are the classic flying-in-space stuff. But I don’t really want to go into those, more to the couple of not-so-high-on-the-eye-candy ones the new Doctor Who has paved a road for.

And there is a good number of mention-worthy ones. Not maybe great in a Hollywood quality way, but if you’re willing to give them the benefit of doubt and have a healthy tolerance in your suspension of belief, they’re pretty watchable. At least in a campy way. Being Human, a story of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost, sharing an apartment and coping with their own problems, both supernatural and mundane. What makes it so great is the certain low-key feel it has. The ghost is just a regular girl, with no fancy special effects. The werewolf is a bit dorky-looking and the vampire. Well, the vampire actually manages to pull of quite a good vampiric feel, if he wasn’t so scruffy. But the things it does are subtle and in my mind, don’t try to force you a direction like many other shows do. There are no actual bad guys (ok, well, there are, but they’re just being human) and the label and line of being a monster is blurry and pushed to the background. The people in it look real and feel real. Just enough makeup to make them look nice on camera and clothes selection that doesn’t scream stage costumes, or even TV-costumes. The rough really brings out the humanity better. And in this show it works really well. Also, it doesn’t hurt that they actually seem to toss episodes online on the site that you can watch, even outside Britain (at least works fine here in Finland). And Edit: they took the episode offline from the page, which means it can’t be viewed in Finland anymore, which is a shame. Bad BBC3. Bad. No cookie.

The second show I wanted to mention, to contrast a bit on the rough bit is Demons, which ended last week. The rough in this one isn’t in the actors, in fact two of the four leads could be considered A-List actors on the Brit standards. It pops in when the writing comes in and the horrors of the universe are revealed to us. The fact that we’re supposed to be scared by people in dog masks dancing around is more than a bit far-fetched. And beyond the stage makeup, it’s like the writer was asked to take the basic premise of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and switch a few words around so that no-one notices. We have a British young guy, who comes from a long line of Smiters, who hunt the half-lifes (vampires and such). He is being guided by an American older guy. Whereas Being Human played things low-key, Demons is pompous and falls to the “cool is everything” traps where-ever it might find them. The characters are written with mystery and awesomeness and whatnot in them, and of course this means that the viewer doesn’t develop any sort of a bond to them. And when things turn to such that there should be an “OMG, can’t believe he/she did that” moment, it’s more like “Ok, he/she did that, who cares?” For something having such high profile actors, the show is, as someone put it “utter tosh”. It is best watched as a warning tale, nothing else.

And the third one is one that’s running for the third year – Primeval. The new episodes were supposed to start on Valentine’s Day, but apparently they’ve delayed the launch somewhat. The show is utter rubbish, but in a good way. The premise is pretty much “People hunt prehistoric creatures in modern times” (or “Torchwood with Dinosaurs”). There is a good deal of time-travel involved, and (if you don’t want to get spoiled on the first season ending, skip to the end of this paragraph now) the first season ends up with the main character screwing up the time line and returning to an alternate version, which is an awesome stunt to pull. The second season toys with the idea even further, and frankly, can’t wait for the third to start.

You could say that the show’s Jumping the Shark a lot. They don’t really mind going the “this might bring us more viewers” route if they can. They geekify things and even included raptors to the show on the second season, because they just happen to be cool. But seriously speaking, they had the first panties shot of the cute female lead in the first episode, and that kept happening for the first season, so we’re not really talking about a show that’s trying to pull in viewers by being something written by Shakespeare. But unlike Demons, the show has that nice rough Brittish edge. No unnecessary flaire, just low-key dinosaur hunting. It’s a dreadful, dreadful show. But very a lovable one. The TvTropes page for the series is pretty much a shining praise for the sheer camp-ness.

Other recent shows worth mentioning are Survivors and Dead Set, that both deal with an outbreak and the handful of survivors from it. Both shows are above the quality of any of the stuff mentioned above, so I won’t “really” include them in the list.

Well, first episode of Dollhouse has now aired. I wouldn’t be a fanboy if I wasn’t excited. Sure, there were faults – things were way too clear cut for the Lost-age audience. I mean, everything about what was going on got underlined at least twice. But from what I’ve read, executive medling is somewhat to blame for that. The episode we saw wasn’t the original pilot. The original pilot episode will be aired later (next week?).

In case you’re still unfamiliar with the premise, the show is about persons (well non-persons, as they by default have their personalities erased) who get implanted with memories and skill sets and hired to do scenarios where those skills come in handy. The implanted personalities aren’t without flaws. As a character in the show says – “It’s a whole person. Achievement is balanced by fault, by a lack. Can’t have one without the other. Everyone who excells, is overcompensating.” Sound familiar as a roleplayer? That’s a point-buy system in a nutshell right there. To be good at something, you will have to play down on some other areas. If looked at from a certain angle, it’s about the same thing as a group of roleplayers who play a series of one-shot games. New problems to solve each time and new characters with appropriate abilities. But in the end, it’s the same people pulling the strings. Going to cool places, doing cool things. Being an expert. Being something that you’re not.

Another thing I just have to mention is the soundtrack. The sound of cymbals, bells and chimes echoes Ghost in the Shell on some levels and apparently I’m not the only person to think of using Lady GaGa’s Just Dance to background music on a situation where there is some personality uncertainity issues going on. The sound of the series is very distinctive, which is good, as it will hopefully build a strong subconscious connection with the show. From the creepy wind-chime like quality of the Dollhouse’s soundscape to the more controlled, rythmic sounds used when on the field. (edit/by the way: the other two songs I recognized on the show were The Duke Spirit – Into The Fold (the car chase scene) and Front Line Assembly – Civilization (the necklace scene))

I’ll probably have much more to say about this after a few episodes when the big picture gets opened a bit more.

P.S. Amy Acker’s hot. Even with scars and insecurities.

Well, we won’t be seeing Dollhouse on Finnish channels yet even if it airs now in the U.S., but it’s a great thing for the Nordics still. The Company P is producing/has been producing a game that runs alongside the series and allows another entry point to the world of the series. I’m personally interested in the production more from the TV side than the interactive game side – will be good to hear and see how Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku are able to pull it off again. Buffy ended over 5 years ago. And of course, the lottery of the situation will be if Fox pulls the plug after 6 episodes, deeming the series too expensive to produce compared to yet another reality show.

While Eliza is great with her physical side, I always liked the way she handled the more quiet scenes, the sincere ones. Mainly in Tru Calling, but I think she had a couple in Buffy as well. Beneath all that tough-girl bravado. And Joss hasn’t lost his touch. We all know this from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, which just rocked. Will be really good to see how it works out.

I know I will be keeping a close eye on the show, so expect more posts about this once it’s clear how the actual pilot turned out.