Not so friendly new directions

I just finished watching Warehouse 13. I'm not going to talk much about the show because -- well, I'm just not.

But I am going to talk about one aspect of the show which I found disturbing. Very disturbing. Disturbing enough that even though I probably shouldn't say bad things on a public blog -- I have to.

This show is supposed to be part of the new "woman-friendly" direction for the SyFy channel. And yet --

One. The female agent is your typical professional woman in a television show or movie so she must be a tight-ass. Okay. The male agent is your typical catnip to hot naked chicks. Whatever. When they wind up working together, the male agent condescendingly tells the female to "unbunch her panties." Yup. He said that. And he's supposed to be irresistible to women -- because we LOVE it when guys say stuff like that to us? In professional situations?

Okay. They are trying to find a new audience and it's possible the sort of woman who used to hate the SciFi Channel does like to be condescended to. I wouldn't know. I used to love the SciFi Channel. Ah well.

But it gets worse. Much worse. Inexcusably worse...

Two. A young woman is viciously beaten by her boyfriend. The Warehouse 13 agents investigate the case and the male agent's first assumption is that the young woman must be a gold digger who knew exactly how to push her boyfriend's buttons so he'd beat her up and she could sue his family. Umm. Okaaay. That's so terrifyingly not female friendly. Do I need to explain why? I don't, right? I'll just move on...

Three. The young woman drops all charges against the abusive boyfriend and reunites with him while they are dressed in lily-white Romeo-and-Juliet outfits. They kiss. It's sweet. It's romantic...

NO IT ISN'T. The girlfriend does not know that her boyfriend is under the malicious influence of Renaissance headgear. As far as she knows, she's gettin' back together with the dude who beat her up. Because she lurves him. And we're supposed to be happy about this: Aww, ain't it sweet. They belong together.

No. No they don't. No! Stop.

It's almost not even worth going to four. Which is: lay off Lucretia Borgia already. Her daddy, the Pope, started marrying her off for political reasons when she was thirteen. She was hardly a scheming "cougar." She was even worse off than the girlfriend above.

Oy. I am bummed. I want The Sarah Connor Chronicles back. Sarah would have killed anybody who told her to unbunch her panties in a heartbeat. Boom. Dead. We would never even have gotten to two, three and four.

The comings and going of TV 2009-2010

Still too much to process... some pilots I've read; many I haven't read yet. But it is time to bid a fond farewell to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, now officially dead.

It was a classy show; I still can't figure out why it so completely failed to click. My Tivo will miss it next year (though my Tivo and I may have been part of the ratings problem.)

I apologize for the infrequent postings lately. After noting the slowdown in postings around the writer blogosphere and attributing it to an uptick in the job market, I went out and got a job myself. I didn't expect the call -- it was from a resume I sent in two years ago. But there's hope for that uptick; the person who interviewed me said she hadn't touched the pile of resumes in two years and was only now, finally, hiring. So there. Uptick away!

Catching up with my DVR

I've been traveling for a few weeks and my Tivo has gotten rather ahead of me. So here's a few notes as I catch up --

I'm enjoying Castle, mostly because the relationship works so well between the two leads. They need to be careful though: in the last few episodes the Castle character has come up with entirely too many brilliant (though a tad obvious -- the wife did it, duh) case-breaking observations that somehow never occurred to Beckett. They need to keep the relationship balanced. Yes, Fillion is the reason I started watching, but Fillion + Katic is the reason I keep watching. Beckett must remain equally smart or the show devolves into Castle Explains It All For You. Which doesn't sound nearly as much fun.

I've held off on reviewing Dollhouse. Partly because I didn't want to say bad things about a show put together by so many people whose past work I admire so much. But also partly because, though I didn't like it, I couldn't stop watching it. There was something there... but what?

I watched the "game-changing" episodes (6 and 7) with interest. But still, the show didn't quite click. We found out Echo's big secret past identity... and she was a whiny student activist. Yawn.

But I kept watching. And got rewarded for my patience with episode 9 ("Spy In The House Of Love"). Aside from the fact that Olivia Williams finally got the chance to remind us that she is a wonderful actress and not some ice-queen stereotype, this episode also changed my perception of the show.

I always assumed this would be a show about Echo trying to find her true identity. And when we found that identity -- so early on and so uncompellingly -- I was disappointed. But maybe that was the whole point -- to tell me that my assumption was WRONG. I'm not sure what the show is about, but maybe I'm not supposed to know yet. Keeping the audience guessing this far into a short season is playing a long, dangerous game -- particularly on Fox Friday nights -- but I've never liked shows that lay it all out for you in episode one and then keep repeating the formula for years. So count me in for the ride. Even if that means I'm getting hooked on another serialized show about to get yanked off the air and leave me hanging...

Speaking of which, Fox folks: please give Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles another season! Yes, things got a tad baroque this year, but man did they pull it together in that cliff-hanger of a season finale. I really, really, really want to see where they're going. That was some high-class genre acting, plotting and writing. As for the complaint that it's too "charactery" and not "actiony" enough: who's making that complaint? No one I know. And no one who loved character-heavy Terminator 2, one of my fave movies of all time. And not for the explosions.

That's all for now. More to come as I work through the backlog...

A minor peeve that's rapidly becoming a pet peeve

What's with all the television characters talking to ghosts and imaginary people lately? Does everyone in times of stress acquire a helpful dead dude (preferably someone from their past with guilty unfinished feelings attached) with whom to hash things out?

When I'm stuck on a page at three in the morning and the deadline looms ever closer, where's my helpful dead dude? Never seen him. Not once.

But I think "stuck on a page at three in the morning" may be the reason we're getting all these dead dudes in the first place. As in, "it's sooo hard to write a scene where my lead has no one to talk to... waah."

Suck it up, guys.

Think how much more exciting the last Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles would have been if Sarah had had to -- I don't know -- break down and confide in the guest-star doctor instead of some dude who was SO NOT Michael Biehn. Of course she wants to talk to her dead lover. And she really doesn't want to talk to the doctor she's holding at gunpoint. So if she HAD to talk to that doctor, which she kind of did anyway -- so why did we even need dead not-Michael Biehn?

I thought one of the things they were questioning on the show was how John Connor will get to be such a great leader of men if his mom's distrust of everyone keeps him so isolated. Wouldn't an episode where Sarah has to break through her lack of trust, and maybe find her trust rewarded, be interesting?

Some writer's dead dude wasn't doing their job at three in the morning on this one.