Oh boy. Discussing with Spikey about television is like trying to teach a monkey to ride a bicycle. In a way entertaining, but the amount of poo that gets flung is incredible.

Possibly based on a true story:

Spikey: You don’t really need to overanalyze The Event. They’re just going full speed ahead with all the conspiracy clichés out there and it’s fun. Fun for the evenings! For the whole family! AIEEE! BLACK HELICOPTERS! MOLES IN THE CTU! UFOS! FUCK! The characters are just irrelevant filling between all the awesome! This is my deep analysis of the series.

Me: *sigh* There aren’t any characters in the series I could care about. There aren’t any plots in the series I could care about. There’s absolutely nothing in it that makes it worth watching! It’s like if X-Files, Lost and Flashforward had a child and realized when looking at it that “Boys, I think we’re all closely related to each other, since this kid is a damn Deliverance freak.”

Spikey: But Deliverance was entertaining.

Me: No, not that kind of Deliverance freak, really. More like the kind you lock up in the potato cellar and hope it doesn’t figure out how to feed on the rats to keep itself alive too long.

Spikey: Ok, granted, it’s clear that the “others” in Event aren’t aliens but humans from the future, etc.

Me: No. It’s clear that NO ONE CARES who the “others” are.

Spikey: Well, ok, I accept that the effects were utter crap. The plane was flying too slow and the particle effects were made terribly. But there are plot twists!

Me: I’m still waiting for the two important plot twists: The one where I suddenly find a character in the show I like. And the one where there is a plot twist that gets me interested in the damn plot. The show is horrible!

Spikey: But with the ridiculousness, they could do any sort of jumping-the-shark tricks and it would fit the show.

Me: I’m assuming the writers are too busy writing their theories about the polar bears on the Lost forums to jump any sharks. Or write any decent plots. Here’s a pro tip for them: THE POLAR BEARS WERE ADDED JUST BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T MAKE ANY SENSE AT THE TIME!

Spikey: Well I t…

Me: OR they might be just drooling at old pictures of Gillian Anderson! It’s so clear that the addition of Sofia or whatever the redhead leader of the whatever they are, is a lame attempt to get us as viewers to return to those glory days of spending the evenings with a watermelon that had Scully’s face taped on it.

Spikey: Well, at least the plot has gone further in the first two episodes than it did in the first three seasons of Lost.

Me: Nope.

Spikey: Come on, I mean, nothing happe…

Me: In the two episodes of The Event, the single thing that has actually happened is that a plane crashed. That happened in the first episode of Lost.

Spikey: But … … There were other things. … Not many … But …

Spikey goes to get a beer, defeated. I reign supreme.

<Dilithium> ok guys, no googling, what are the 7 continents?
<negationix> pangea
<negationix> rest is modern humbug
<Alvan> finland and lots of our suburbia
<negationix> pangea and Finland and suburbs of Finland and pellucidar
<negationix> that’s 4
<ryuu> antartic makes 5
<ryuu> I’ve seen him, I know he exists
<Alvan> I think Pluto is one, now that it’s no-longer a planet
<negationix> makes sense
<negationix> I saw wikipedia article about pluto, “pluto, just a rock”
<negationix> and we all know continents are usually made of rock
<negationix> (except maybe antartic)
<ryuu> I think Abe Vigoda is one
<ryuu> no wait, that was incontinent
<Alvan> well, everything abe’s not must be a continent
<Alvan> so that’s 7
<negationix> yeah
<negationix> so that’s pangea, finland, finland’s suburbs, pellucidar, antartic, pluto and not abe vigoda
<Alvan> do we win a prize?

I love time-travel. Yet there’s something about the way Heroes handles it that bothers me. Today it struck me.

The time-travel of Heroes is watered down. Zap, someone goes to the future, omg, there’s danger. Then you just blomp* back and yodeloo* the danger away. And then there’s cake. Until the next horrible future is envisioned and then our heroes change it so that it never happens.

The only time I really remember there being some time-travel stuff going on that made my time-travel-fan-sense tingle was when the guy with the stupid face traveled to the future with a cute non-heroics girl and then left the girl there, and changed the future so that he couldn’t travel back to the girl because the timelines had gone all wibbley-wobbley. And that plot was never explored any further. I don’t think stupid face ever mentioned the cute girl ever after that.

*sigh*

* Blomp and yodeloo might not be real words, but they sure as hell describe well what’s going on.

On tonight’s “you sort of had to be there to get it”:

Alvan: Listen, all I’m saying is that clichés aren’t all bad

Spikey: Hear hear, people who are looking at things through a black and white filter, skin deep will go “Argh, another cliché! This ain’t original! It’s POOP!” And then I’ll be all horrified by their simplistic views and will have to fight with them about it.

Alvan: Clichés are Clichés because they’re things that have been proven to work.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: Of course, it boils down to how you use them. The situation and presentation.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: And there is nothing wrong with a guy wearing a dress.

Spikey: Providing one can stop the sniffage of glue on the correct date.

Alvan: So say we all.

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 fully endorse this and will join the effort of spreading the word about it. Not that I would be buying anything from Arkenstone after the job they did with the layout and general readability of the Finnish translation of PTA anyhow.

Oh boy. If there is one television show that proves the age-old truth of “no amount of superficial cool makes up for a lack of depth” true, it’s Heroes. It’s pretty easy to rate any Heroes episode by taking the number of important characters in the episode without powers (HRG doesn’t count, neither does “The Hunter”, who will turn out to be a) empowered or b) another HRG) and divide that by the number of important characters in the episode with powers. In the early episodes, for each of the main empowered character, there were at least one or two normal humans. These provided some way of exploring the powers. But then they started killing, empowering or just dismissing the non-”hero” characters, leaving us with SUPERPOWERED BEINGS DASHING OUT AT EACH OTHER WITH TEH ZOMG POWERS½!!!§!!11½! Or without powers. But still, boring. It’s gone from character drama to powers “drama”.

Sometimes  I wonder what is going with with the writers.