The Lost Boys - The Trilogy

It’s clear that my writing ability has taken a bit of a hit, as lately it’s been harder for me to write pieces like this.

 

To wit, this is the third time I’ve started this essay/review, and I’m still not sure I’ve nailed it.  But I’ll leave that for you to decide.

 

The Lost Boys

 

Let’s just get this out of the way – The Lost Boys is a classic of 80s horror cinema, and perhaps of horror cinema, period.  Sit down and watch it today, and you can see the DNA of all the self-referential horror that came after it.

 

Unlike, say, The Walking Dead, which seems to exist in a world where no one has ever heard of zombies, in The Lost Boys, people have heard of, fear, loathe, and actually know how to fight vampires, more or less.  And as you watch it roll by, you can see things like Scream and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a few other progeny as a gleam in the movie’s eye.

 

If you’ve never seen it, here’s the setup:

 

A mom and two brothers move to an odd little town in California, where they crash with their eccentric grandfather.  The older brother accidentally falls in with a group of vampires, and is half-turned into one.  His younger brother and his new frenemies, the Frog Brothers, try to help the younger brother locate and kill the master vampire, which will allow the older brother to revert to human.

 

It falls into a weird crack, in a sense, because it was a horror comedy.  Bits were scary, and bits were funny, and in the middle of it there was even some actual drama, as the mom tries to figure out just what is going on with her son.

 

Most horror comedies don’t really work all that well, as they can’t quite get the mix between horror and comedy to come out.  Either the funny undercuts the suspense, or the horror just kind of takes hold and there’s no more funny to be found.

 

But The Lost Boys doesn’t have that problem, and the reasons are many.  It’s an impressive cast, for one:

 

Jason Patric - He never got to major stardom, but he was certainly a known and reasonably respected entity.

Corey Haim  - A sad end to his life, but a solid acting career that went for maybe ten years.

Dianne Wiest - Academy Award nominated.

Barnard Hughes - Not a huge name, but if you look through his credits, he was around just about forever, and did quality work.

Edward Herrmann - Still well-liked and well-respected.

Kiefer Sutherland  - Aside from some personal issues, he's had a long and well-respected career.

Jami Gertz  - Still around, still acting, still pretty well-liked.

Corey Feldman  - Had some years of rough road (and seems to be headed back that way) but at the time, he was coming off several years of really respected kid acting.  (Check out his work in Stand By Me, if you’ve never seen it.)

 

Then there’s the script, which in addition to catching that rare balance I mentioned gets some other things very much right.  The characters are well drawn.  The “jokes” are rarely jokey, or dopey one-liners that you used in find in action movies in the 80s.  Instead they sprout out of character.

 

Watching it 25 years down the pike, there are a couple of flaws.  The female characters are, for the most part, pretty inert.  They have little moments of mom-ness style protection, but none of them ever pick up a weapon and fight back, and in a post-Buffy world that doesn’t quite work.

 

The other issue is that the fashions are, at times, so comically 80s-esque that today they feel like a parody of the 80s.

 

But overall?  This is one of those movies that keeps getting released on VHS and DVD and Blu Ray and will probably eventually be released in a version you can attach to your brain stem, and it deserves it.

 

The Lost Boys: The Tribe

 

This one, on the other hand…

 

Okay, let’s go ahead and get this out of the way – people HATE this movie.  I mean really, actively, hate it.

 

But let’s back up and examine, for a moment, what the movie is.

 

By… uh… looking at another movie.

 

Okay, let us consider the movie Terminator.  A great movie, made for little money, and it still works all these years later.  Terminator 2 is also a straight-up classic.  A flawless film that anyone who enjoys action and/or sci-fi will almost certainly love.

 

And then there’s Terminator 3.

 

Here’s the truth: Terminator 3 is not a bad movie.  It’s well written and well-directed, and the cast is a solid plus.  The movie works, and if 1 and 2 didn’t exist, it would be a well-respected flick that bounces around on cable from time to time.

 

But compared to 1 and 2?  It’s a retread with an exceptionally good ending.

 

Now.  I am not going to say that The Lost Boys:  The Tribe, is anywhere near that good.  Terminator 3 had a massive budget, really talented actors, and a returning actor who was, at the time, still a big star.

 

Tribe, on the other hand, has… Corey Feldman.  And Kiefer Sutherland’s brother, who has a really strange accent for reasons I don’t understand.

 

But the movie is competently directed by P.J. Pesce, who has done a few direct to video movies and some good TV work. 

 

And when it comes down to it, this movie was one of those things that was going to come out, no matter what.  Warner Brothers wanted a sequel, and they wanted it cheap and they wanted it done by a certain date, so quality was not really of the utmost importance.

 

And it’s mostly a retread.  A brother and sister come to town to stay with their aunt, and they encounter, yep, vampires.  The sister becomes a half-vampire, and the brother turns to one half of the former Frog brothers team (Edgar, Alan is MIA) for help.

 

The big difference here is that it takes longer for everyone to accept that there are really vampires, and when they put together a plan to beat them… they try it, and it works.  In contrast to the original movie, wherein they kept failing.

 

My suspicion is that if people saw this first, without the original Lost Boys, it’d be one of those movies that’s watched and forgotten, but not really loved or hated.  (With the possible exception of a water balloon gag that comes off so perfectly I laughed in delight for almost a full minute.)

 

I’d say if you’re curious, it’s worth a look, but go in with very low expectations, and be aware that you’re looking at a sketchy photocopy of a near-perfect original.

 

The Lost Boys: The Thirst

 

Thirst, on the other hand, got nicer reviews, and watching it, it’s easy to see why.  Whereas the second movie was basically the first one done over again, this one at least shoots off and tries hard to go its own way.

 

And honestly, it mostly works.  Edgar is still on his own, but Alan is around, though he’s been half-turned into a vampire.  Edgar is given an opportunity (or so it seems) to kill the Alpha vampire, thereby allowing Alan to revert back to his human state.

 

There are other subplots, and more importantly, this movie adopts a bit of a team-building atmosphere, as Edgar adds more people to his caravan of vampire hunters. 

 

Which is to say, we could have gotten the same movie a third time, and instead we started to head somewhere.

 

More importantly, there are actual surprises to be had in the flick.  There are a few cases of concealed identity.  And when you find out the big bad’s plans, it isn’t a very good one, but if you squint it makes just enough sense to pass in an action movie.

 

And finally, the movie works overtime to try to tie itself to the first flick.  Footage is pulled from the original movie, and little ideas (mainly based around a Batman comic) from that first flick infiltrate this one and try to give it some depth.

 

Roughly two-thirds of the way through the movie, I remarked to my wife, “It’s not exactly good, but it has a certain charm…”  and really, that sums it up pretty succinctly.  I suspect that hardcore fans of the original don’t like this movie much, but…

 

Here’s a quick metaphor.

 

Back in the day, there were two Halloween movies, and then a third that had nothing to do with the series, and then a fourth…

 

And the fourth should really be terrible.  It was written at the last minute, just before a writer’s strike, and there’s really no reason that the movie should be passable, let alone good.

 

And yet, it’s a pretty good entry, complete with a solid closing scene that wraps up the story, but provides an open-ended option for future entries.

 

It shouldn’t work, but it does.

 

And Thirst is much the same.  If you go in with reasonable expectations, you can (and should, really) enjoy yourself.

 

Am I hoping for a fourth?  Or, as has been hinted at, a TV series?

 

Eh…

 

Truthfully, it’s not the worst idea, but anything they do with likely feel like a retread.  There’s a hint at the end of the movie that they might try to take on werewolves next, and in a movie context, I think that wanders too far off the central spine of the series.

 

And honestly, if they went the TV show route, it would likely come off as a lesser version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or, more likely, Supernatural.

 

I think it’s time to just let it rest.

Maybe Too Much Mike Doughty

I feel like I’ve spent a lot of this year talking about Mike Doughty.  Whether he’s a good human being has come into question.  Whether his last few albums were decent has come into question.

 

And really, I’ve given more of my headspace to the guy than anyone who isn’t at least a personal acquaintance deserves.

 

Yet I’ve spent the better part of the last month listening to Mike pretty much all the time I’m listening to music.

 

Why is that?  I’m not sure, but it brings to mind the first time my parents made Cajun chicken.

 

I was in college, as I recall, and for years my parents had been in a pretty firm rut as to what they were going to make, week in and week out.

 

Like most parents I know, they had probably a dozen recipes that were cycled and recycled.  When your cooking and eating time is limited, that’s just what you do – sit down and make what you know how to make as fast as you can make it.

 

And then one day, they decided to make Cajun chicken sandwiches.

 

This sounds complex, but it’s actually a pretty simple process.  Thaw some chicken breasts, chop up some onions and red peppers.  Pan-fry the whole mess in butter and Cajun seasoning.  Cut two large slices of bread and shove the mixture between them.

 

Like most of the best food in the world, it isn’t elegant, but it’s the kind of thing that makes you keep eating just because it tastes so good when it hits your mouth.

 

The meal was so good, and so relatively simple, that they replicated it the next day.  I should clarify: there were no leftovers.  They simply made an all-new batch of food.

 

As far as I know this has never happened before or since.

 

And that’s where I’m at with Mike.  Something about him is making me need to revisit the experience of listening to his music.

 

Earlier this year, I pulled out his albums again, and I discovered that while I had let his newer music pass me by, I was just loving his older stuff.  Haughty Melodic is a tremendous record (of which I’ll say more in a moment) and Skittish/Rockity Roll is a fantastic little collection that demonstrates just what you can do with a lo-fi setup and some free time.

 

But I felt like I was missing something, and his new collection of old Soul Coughing songs really brought that home for me.  Fully two-thirds of the songs on that record were remakes of tunes I wasn’t familiar with. 

 

And while the critics had warned me away from his newer records, I just thought it was time to find out for myself.

 

Ultimately, it came down to a question of cash, and looking into these lost artifacts was cheap.  Three of his newer albums were available at my local library.  And I only required two more Soul Coughing albums, both of which could be acquired for seventy-five cents each online.

 

Duly stacked up, I started trying to put together a handle that I could put on all this music.

 

I considered doing individual reviews for all of them, but in the end, I’m not sure I need to.  I have some very specific thoughts about each album, but I don’t know that I need 500 or a 1000 words to detail them.

 

So here they are in order.  With a caveat that I skipped over most/all of his live records, and also Golden Delicious, a studio album I couldn’t pick up cheap or free.

 

But I suspect I will soon.  And here is, more or less, why:

 

Soul Coughing: Ruby Vroom

 

A lot of the time even if I don’t really like something, I can see why other people might. 

 

But when it comes to Ruby Vroom, I’m genuinely uncertain how these boys got themselves a record contract.

 

Well… okay, I guess I can see how they might have gotten onto a small label, the kind of place that puts out spoken word records, or poetry, or jazz.  What blows my mind is that this group, and this record, got themselves onto a Warner Brothers label and got their music out the door.

 

I’m not saying that the record is bad, per se.  But unlike their later records, there’s no handle to grab onto.  There are no catchy songs that might serve as singles.  There’s a lot of talking that isn’t quite rapping.  There are a lot of samples that kind of work in the context of the song, but sometimes don’t (though that’s clearly deliberate).

 

It might be one of the most off-putting records put out by a major label since Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention snuck Freak Out! into the world.

 

I think there’s catchy stuff there, and the band really gets to demonstrate their chops on the record but… I have a hard time believing they got it into records stores, and I’m even more amazed they were able to release a follow-up.

 

Soul Coughing: Irresistible Bliss

 

In contrast, Bliss opens up with Super Bon Bon, which, while still kind of weird, at least sounds like the kind of thing that could be a single.

 

And it was.

 

That’s the thing about Bliss, really.  While some of it is forgettable, this time around the band appears to want you to hear their record.  There are easy songs to listen to here, and even the stuff that just appears to be flat out oddball poetry (White Girl, for example) is at least somewhat catchy underneath. 

 

You can follow along and not get a headache.

 

It’s not a pop record, exactly, but it does give up a few of those spoonfuls of sugar that help the rest of the medicine go down.

 

Soul Coughing: El Oso

 

I once heard Soul Coughing described as one of pop music’s most interesting dead ends.

 

I would have agreed with him, I think, if these records had been released in the opposite order.  Ruby Vroom, to be honest, feels like a dead end.  A concept that goes about as far as you can take it, jamming jazz and funk and poetry together.

 

You could do more of it, but you can’t really do it “better” than it was done there.

 

To be honest, had the group stayed in that lane, I suspect I wouldn’t be writing about them now.

 

But instead, as the records went on, they wandered out of that dead end and pulled into a much more regular lane.  If Ruby Vroom was a series of crazy sonic experiments, El Oso is a pop record with occasional nods back at their oddball roots.

 

Consider: There are three songs on the record that could be, and to some extent were, hit singles.  Circles, St Louise is Listening, and Rolling might sound a little off-kilter from what you hear on the radio, but put up against other big hits of the day, and you don’t really have to squint to see how they could butt up next to one another.

 

Heck, the year ended with Cher’s Believe at the top of the charts.  A little sonic flutter-pop was to be expected, and Soul Coughing delivered.

 

Skittish/Rockity Roll

 

Although these weren’t actually released together until later in their existence, I think it’s worth lumping them the way they’re lumped now.

 

They were, in a sense, meant to be anti-Soul Coughing songs, in particular Skittish, which is mostly just Mike and a guitar.

 

What the songs reveal is mostly, in my estimation, what Soul Coughing eventually revealed.  Mike has a gift for a twisty-turn melody that bounces above his underlying simple chord structures.

 

What does that mean?  Well, I’ll come back to it.  Suffice to say that a lot of critics complain that all his songs sound the same after a while, and in a lot of cases, the critics are correct.

 

It’s been said that Johnny Cash only knew three chords and that all his songs only had six notes in them, and maybe that’s true.  But Cash released almost two hundred records in his lifetime, and 50 of them were made up of fresh material.

 

Which is to say, you can do a lot with a little.

 

Of course, on the other side of things, there are stories of Mike starting to play a song, people cheering, and Mike stopping and going, “Wait, this is a new song.”

 

So limitations have their issues as well.

 

But still, this seems to go in the direction Soul Coughing was going.  Even though there is still some obtuseness, this stuff feels more like songs.  You don’t have to create your own handle, it’s there for you when you turn the record on.

 

Haughty Melodic

 

Someday, Mike Doughty will be deceased, and people will mention Soul Coughing and Haughty Melodic in their opening paragraphs.

 

This is not to say that what came after was bad, in my estimation.  But Haughty is one of those rare records with no real flaws.  You might find things you don’t like, yes, but those are personal and not based on the actual material presented.

 

Or, as I said about Ruby Vroom – I can appreciate something without liking it.  And I love Haughty.  And I think people that don’t can at least acknowledge that it does what it wants to do very, very well.

 

It gets that entire mixture right.  Mike’s playing is often simple, but the arrangements, so key to the success of Soul Coughing, are even more sublime here.  Listen to Busting of a Starbucks as performed by Mike, and it’s a two-chord song with a chunka-chunka strum.

 

But on this record, there’s cello.  And banjo.  And a bunch of other little things popping up, surprising you, carrying you along on sonic waves of excellence.

 

His lyrics are also first-rate, nailing little emotions of life with clever wordplay and surprising vulnerability.  It all comes together in songs like “Your Misfortune,” which flat-out states that I, yes, me, I am your friend no matter what the world does to you.

 

Songs like that are a little nothing, and yet they are everything.

 

Sad Man, Happy Man

 

People didn’t much care for Golden Delicious, the album that came before this one.  I have no real feelings about it myself, except that it bothered me a bit to learn that Mike had recycled 27 Jennifers off of Rockity Roll.

 

And by all accounts, it was the best song to be found on the record.

 

Sad removed all the band and fiddling around that I enjoyed so much on Haughty and broke it down to Mike, a cellist, and a drum machine.

 

It’s a short record, a little over 30 minutes, and even the cover has an odd handmade feel.  I’m not sure what he was going for, but it feels like he tried to pull a Beck.

 

Because you remember the old days, when Beck had a major label deal, but was also able to put out his teeny-tiny oddball records on other labels?

 

This feels like that. A funky and weird little return to Skittish days.

 

Critics didn’t really dig on the record, and while I get why they didn’t, it felt okay to me.

 

But what it really reminded me of were the days when Prince wanted out of his record contract.

 

In the midst of all that kerfuffle, Prince put out a record called Chaos and Disorder, and it felt like what it was – cobbled together scraps which only true fans would want and everyone else would shrug at.

 

And shrug they did, and Prince was allowed to go on his way.

 

As did Mike.

 

Am I right about this?  Did he revisit his weird little avenue so he could be a free agent again, now that he was just famous enough to not need a label, and perhaps more importantly, not need to share his money with a label?

 

I wonder.

 

Yes and Also Yes

 

I think Yes was the first record where Mike really tried to split the difference between the two Mikes in question.

 

After all, he was a free agent now, and he could do whatever he wanted.  And what it sounds like is, he wanted to make some money.

 

I’m not saying this record is a cash grab, but it does feature something you couldn’t really find on the album before it – attempts at a hit song.

 

Read his notes on the record, for example, and you’ll find that Drive Into the Un, which is catchy as all get-out, was meant for a Twilight Soundtrack (though it didn’t make it).  Na Na Nothing has “single” written all over it, and yeah, you can find it on YouTube complete with video.

 

By the time you hit the back half of the record, well, there some more silly and some more experiments (including a song sung in German, for whatever reason) But it’s clear he’s splitting a deliberate difference here.

 

Unfortunately, I doubt Mike pleased all that many folks with this particular album.  It’s not busy enough to be Haughty and it’s not simple enough to be Skittish, and much of the criticism fell on Mike for not writing “songs.”

 

Which is too bad, really.  Of the later albums, this is easily my favorite.  And if he kept producing records like this, I think I’d be all right with it.

 

The Flip is Another Honey

 

It’s strange to think that Mike has now released two albums of cover versions, but that’s what the Soul Coughing record was, and that’s what this record is too.

 

That worries me, really, because Mike really is on his own now.  There’s no big money backing him, and that means everything he puts out from here on in is on his own dime and his own time.

 

And while I am more or less okay with his little sonic experiments, records like this make me suspect that Mike takes a long time to fill up the songwriting gas tank.

 

And I don’t think he has that kind of time anymore.

 

There’s nothing wrong with the record, and I guess I give the guy props for mostly playing a deep cuts game.  People cover Cheap Trick, yes, but Mike does so twice here, and never once grabs I Want You to Want Me.  He also gloms onto John Denver and does a serviceable job, and then he takes Sunshine and raps over it and…

 

And it’s all fine, really.

 

He even digs up a couple of other songs I just plain didn’t expect.  Randy Newman’s Mankind is nicely served by Mike’s gravelly throat.  And Ta Douleur is a song I’m pretty sure I would never have encountered if I wasn’t a fan of Mike’s.

 

And then there’s Send in the Clowns, which features no singing.  And I like Mike, but I don’t think anyone would argue that his guitar playing is why they buy his stuff.

 

But like the Soul Coughing record, it’s good but doesn’t give us more Mike.  Some songs are better than the originals, and some are worse, but most are just the same.

 

Just this morning, I pulled out Haughty Melodic again for the second or third time this year, and I queued it up and let it go and, yeah, if I was ever going to make a case for Mike, it’s right there.

 

I said before that Mike takes a while to fill the tank, but more than that, what I think Mike needs is some time to himself.  He needs to plink and plunk and create and then invite someone in and collaborate them.  He doesn’t need someone to do what he dictates, he needs something to push against.

 

And I hope he gets it… right around 2015.

In Which I Am Obtuse About What's Up

I’m pretty certain at this point people are wondering what, if anything, is going on in my writing world.

 

I’ve been creating versions of this post for months now, on and off, always with a slightly modified answer.

 

I’ve tried both short versions and long versions, and here, I guess, is the shortest possible version:

 

I don’t know.

 

Here’s the longer version:

 

I’m being obtuse not because I want to be obtuse, but because a lot of the things I could talk about aren’t necessarily mine to share.

 

That is, I suppose, the life of a semi-public figure.  If I was George RR Martin or Neil Gaiman, you’d already know what was going on, and all I would really have to share was my take on it.  (Or, alternately, I suppose I could provide a plea for privacy during this time.  But knowing me, I probably wouldn’t.)

 

But let’s give the short version of the obtuse, shall we?

 

In Neil Gaiman’s book Make Good Art (which is more of a speech, but never mind) he says that sometimes things interfere with making art.  He specifically cites death, and if I recall correctly the death of a father, because he had just gone through that when he wrote the speech.

 

The death of his father put a halt to Neil’s writing for a while, and keep in mind, that’s all he does.  I’m not downplaying his loss in any way, mind you.  What I’m saying is, he didn’t have to get up, take care of the needs of his young child, go to work for eight hours a day, and then attempt to create a work of fiction.

 

All he had to do with sit down and create.  And he didn’t, for a while.

 

So here’s what’s been up with me for the last twelve months:

 

One family member lost a job.  Another one was in a hospital for a few days.  A very good friend (as in, this person was supposed to take care of my children if I died) passed away, and the funeral fell on my birthday, which is not my friend’s fault, but this throws you for mortality loops you don’t want to know about.  Another good friend (one who performed my wedding ceremony after travelling nine hours to do so) literally passed away today after a bout with cancer.

 

I wrote more here, which I’ve now deleted, because I think this is enough for anyone to cope with in a given year.

 

And all of this happened atop my day job.  So unlike Neil Gaiman, who just has to get up and make art, and have his assistant handle the rest of his day to day stuff, well, I have to get up, feed my kiddo, make sure she’s ready for school, go to work, get the wee one, come home, take care of the little one, which involves food and homework and various other things, and then, after all that, I can either read or maybe watch an hour of TV or work on a book.

 

Only by then, there’s no fuel left in the tank.

 

How bad did it get?  There were nights that we put the kid to bed, and my wife would fall asleep, and I would eat an Oreo and have a small glass of milk just to give the end of the day a little bump of happy, and then I would give up and we would go to bed.

 

We were both so physically and psychically exhausted that watching thirty minutes of television was beyond us.

 

Just going through the process of editing the Blood Calling books again was often more than I was capable of, and all that should have required was me reading the books again and making sure they still said what I wanted them to say, post-editing.

 

Probably the hardest part about all of this is that all these items would overlap each other, pushing my family from month to month to month of psychic damage. 

 

So if we got a week off from thinking about what had just happened, and then what was coming, and I actually opened up a manuscript and started reading it, thinking about writing some more… inevitably, something else would hit and all my ambition would be drained again.

 

The problem, of course, becomes one of apathy and rust.  After several months of being barely able to churn out blog posts about the TV I often wasn’t watching, trying to write about people I made up in my brain has gotten harder and harder.

 

I started two manuscripts over the last year – a modern fairy tale story, and a continuation of the Blood Calling books, and both of them have just flat-out stalled.  I simply haven’t had the time or the energy to keep the creation flowing.

 

If you follow my Facebook page, then you may already know that that only thing I’ve done in the last year is write a single short story.  That took me two weeks, and the labor of coughing up those few thousand words was agonizing.

 

But I will say this: It felt good to do it.

 

As I type this, it’s the 9th of October, which puts us about 22 days from Nation Novel Writing Month.

 

I seriously doubt that I’ll get much accomplished in the next three weeks.  I’m going to try to find at least one more anthology to send a short story to, and then to produce that story.

 

And then my hope is that also, during those next three weeks, I can reread the novel fragments I’ve already written.

 

My plan is that I can sit down in November and try to launch myself off of my already-started story, and even if I don’t finish all 50,000 words worth of writing, I can at least find my way forward to writing something.

 

What will happen then?  Good question.

 

I’m a firm believer that an indie writer can, given the right set of skills and a whopping pile of luck, become and remain a full-time author.

 

But I’m not sure if I can do it.  My skills have proven pretty minimal, and honestly, the best thing that ever happened to me writing-wise was that Red Iris Books plucked me from total obscurity to semi-obscurity.

 

Maybe it’s just because I’m tired all the time, but seeing as how I can barely find the time to create, I’m about 99% sure that I can’t get up the energy to figure out where or how to promote.

 

So… I’m not sure what’s going to happen on that score.

 

For now, know that, yeah, I’m trying to put out more books for y’all to read, and if you’ve supported me through buying, or reading, or sharing via social media, I think you’re swell.

 

But as for what comes next?  And when?  That’s a bit of a mystery…

 

 

What I'm Watching: Fall Falls

And so fall fell, and with it, the beginning of the new TV season.

 

I think I said it before, but it truly bears repeating – this is the first year in a long time that my wife and I didn’t lose any TV shows.  In years past, we’d lose a handful, and maybe gain one or two.

 

But this year, only two shows ended – Spartacus, and Being Human.

 

Both went out well, and I’ll miss them, but altogether they only put out 16 hours of programming, which doesn’t even cover one regular US season of TV. 

 

So in the past, we’ve always been behind, and racing to keep up with the DVR.

 

And this year is about to get so much worse.

 

So.  Where to start?  Let’s lop off the end of the summer, first:

 

Sherlock:

 

Sherlock chose to use its second series to roll through the three most famous Holmes stories, and to be honest the season as a whole didn’t work for me as well as the first did.

 

I enjoyed the first two episodes well enough, but they made some choices that didn’t work for me all that well.

 

The first episode took place over the course of a year, which drained much of the suspense out of the story.  People standing around not being threatened isn’t all that interesting.  On the bright side, it had a fun, surprising ending, which somewhat saved it.

 

The second episode just didn’t work all that well, perhaps because it felt a bit Scooby Doo in execution.  There was good stuff there, there always is, but it was mostly just okay.

 

But the last episode?  Wherein Sherlock and Moriarty went straight-up head-to-head?

 

A total monster of a ‘sode.  The writing, the acting, the clues, the head games, just an absolute monster.  And now I finally get why people are begging for series three of Sherlock.

 

I’m cool.  I can wait.  Mostly.

 

But man, I don’t know that they can ever top that one.  It might be better to stop…

 

Under the Dome:

 

Oy.

 

As the show wore on, I did a little research.  Outside of a couple of cartoons, Steven Spielberg (who produced Dome) shows inevitably tank, often dying in their first or second season, and always dying before they hit episode 50.

 

With the sheer talent behind the wheel of this show, from the pedal-to-the-floor novel to the producers to Brian K Vaughn, who has produced and created a handful of amazing comic books and wrote some of the best episodes of Lost (which I guess isn’t saying much…).

 

And…

 

And I guess somewhere along the line, everything just fell apart.

 

I’ve been trying to put my finger on what’s wrong with the show, and man, it’s hard.  The acting is mostly good, though it’s hard to tell because the characters are too often forced to do things that don’t make any sense.

 

Joe, for example, seems to have been instructed to tell the audience what we’re seeing, just in case we happened to be staring at the floor during the episode.

 

And people who are supposed to hate one another keeping hanging out with each other, but are unable to decide if they experience chemistry with each other despite various kinds of abuse.

 

And… at one point, there’s a clock with a small hand between the 4 and the 5 and the big hand on the 12, indicating that it’s 4:60, I guess.

 

In a lot of ways I feel compelled to watch, because it seems like there’s a good show in there somewhere.  But as we ended the first season, I’m not sure where that “good” could be.

 

Here’s hoping they learn something between season 1 and 2.  Like the fact that 4:60 is not an actual time.

 

Lost:

 

I’ve done this one up in essay form before, but my wife and I decided to tackle the show again in an effort to get to the end.

 

Ultimately, we shoved around way through the end of season four, and two episodes into season five.

 

And here was my wife’s summary.  “All these people are annoying me.”  Yep.

 

Agents of SHIELD:

 

I already tackled this one a bit, but two episodes in it appears that Joss Whedon has rebooted Firefly with a few new characters and some swapped-out traits.

 

Much to my surprise, the first couple of ‘sodes weren’t runaway hits, rating-wise, and it’s obvious that the Marvel people are sinking some serious cash into the show.

 

Is the show good?  Yes.  But like most new things, it’s finding its footing and the problem is, the decision-makers are watching it right now.  A slight dip in ratings could easily be a reason for the money folks to pull the plug or, alternately, slow the trickle from the money hose.

 

Will it happen?  Excellent question.  Truth is, The Avengers made a billion dollars, and I was pretty sure that Agents was going to smash the competition.

 

Turns out, it’s just holding its own.  We’ll see if that’s enough.

 

Modern Family

 

Family won the best comedy Emmy again.  This put critics, and a few armchair critics, into a bit of an uproar.

 

But frankly, the show was funny, and the show remains funny.  It’s losing steam, as most shows do as they reach their fifth season, and kids age, and you have to come up with reasons to keep them around, and with three major families they’re burning through storylines at a remarkable clip and…

 

I don’t care.

 

The writing is sharp, the characters, and the actors playing them, continue to employ remarkable and impeccable timing, and if the show doesn’t always display the same old spark of genius, it’s still funny.

 

And funny counts.

 

The Big Bang Theory:

 

See Modern Family.  It’s funny.  Jim Parsons will never find another character that he can embody so perfectly.  And, end of the day, it’s a joke machine that works.

 

Glee:

 

I have to admit, I pity Cory Monteith, who has caused so much more controversy in death than he did in life.

 

Just last night, I caught a headline screaming that his death was accidental, and not a suicide.

 

This week, Glee will memorialize his death.

 

Meanwhile, people are, and were, up in arms over the fact that he had a special portion of the Emmys dedicated to him.  Never mind that he never won one.  Never mind that he was never nominated.

 

Unstated was, “Who is this guy, who is on this mediocre show that used to be good, and why do we care about a junkie anyway?”

 

Look, here are the facts: Cory had drug problems for something like half his life.  Like much of the cast of Glee, he went from being a relative nobody to being a central role on a massive hit of a TV show.

 

And then everyone got to watch while the TV show crumbled around him.  And he went from being a famous guy with a hit to dying as a famous junkie on a show whose fortunes were taking a massive turn for the worse.

 

What does it mean for him?  It means he’s dead.  And while that doesn’t affect me personally, it had to hit his family, friends, and the people on the show hard.

 

What does it mean for the show?

 

I don’t know.

 

The ratings have been pretty weak these first couple of episodes, and to be honest, the show has been deserving of the slide.  Some storylines are being recycled, the writing isn’t nearly as funny, and despite dipping into the catalogue of the Beatles, the show has yet to create a great musical moment.

 

(And Sue’s character, who always alternated between too-blunt and funny and more-than-slightly crazy and not-funny?  They’ve pushed her into flat out racism at least once now, and… it’s gross.)

 

This week, they celebrate the death of Finn, the character played by Cory, and I suspect that ratings will spike for one night.  In a lot of ways, I wish they’d just put together a clip show of his best moments on the show.

 

And I’d close with what I think was his very best: His monologue at the end of season 3, when he’s sending Rachel away.

 

I don’t know what kind of actor Cory might have been if he had lived.  He might have spent the rest of his life trying to live up to the Finn salad days.  I could see him falling into a series of TV movies, aging through young dad and older dad roles, scraping out a solid, though perhaps unremarkable, career.

 

But we’ll never know.

 

As for Glee itself, well, I suspect that the ratings will continue to fall, and someone, somewhere, is getting chewed out as I type this for signing the show up for two years.

 

But maybe they’ll turn it around.  That we’ll get to see.

 

The Vampire Diaries:

 

I said before that fifth years are tough, but really, the problems with most shows start in year four.

 

And in the case of The Vampire Diaries, man, that was true.  There were good stories, yes, but the witch stuff got more iffy than usual (and it was already pretty iffy) and soulless Elena got tiresome after a while, and, and, and…

 

And, eh.  It was still fun, but it was less fun.

 

This season started big, with six or seven major storylines tossed violently into the mix, man if it didn’t revitalize the show.  It was fun, and funny, and there was little to no fat.  They just put down the throttle and went for it.

 

Can they maintain?  I doubt it.  Last year got bumpy, and stayed bumpy.  But I plan to enjoy this just as long as I can.

 

The Originals:

 

So The Vampire Diaries spun off some of their more interesting characters and… they did it badly.

 

Of course, we’re talking about a pilot episode, and from what I’m hearing the second episode is much better, but, and I gotta say this, I can’t figure out why they decided to do a second pilot that was basically the first pilot all over again.

 

I suppose people could use a refresher on what the show was about, but I am certain ZERO of their viewers were new to the premise of the show.  The people watching are Vampire Diaries fans.  There are not new people coming to this tale.

 

And yet, they pretended there were.

 

For now, I’m into it.  They’re attempting to work their twists and turns, and The Vampire Diaries took a while to shake out, and this one probably will, too.

 

But I seriously hope the process isn’t too painful.

 

Supernatural:

 

Now THAT is how you open a season.

 

Look, it’s season eight around here.  The boys have saved the world a lot.  This show is now one year past Buffy was when it went off the air, and they just flat out are repeating some plot ideas.

 

But there are variations to be had, jokes to be made, and, yeah, this show knows that anything it does from this point forward has to count.

 

Well done, everyone.  Now let’s roll on forward.

Agents of SHIELD = Firefly

Okay, I’m calling it:

 

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is basically Joss Whedon’s crack at Firefly 2.0.

 

He just took the characters, shook them up a bit to scramble the elements, and sent them on new missions.

 

Coulson / Mal – basically the same guy.  Kind of a goofy leader.  Only Whedon stripped the “River” medical mystery off of River and stuck it on Coulson.

 

Ward / Jayne – not a big leap here.  Ward is slightly smarter, I guess.  But he still kinda likes just punching stuff.

 

Kaylee / Sky – super competent technical female.

 

Fitz / Simone  – super-smart science guy with a little of Wash’s goofball charm.

 

Simmons / Inara – Only, you know, it’s Disney-owned, so “companions” are RIGHT OUT. 

 

Zoey / May – with a little of River’s fighting skill mixed in.  Follows “the boss” even though she doesn’t like it much at times.

 

I realize this leaves us with no Book equivalent, but then again, they actually stuck that actor on the show.  Plus, in a world where Thor exists, perhaps religious ponderings are a little too heady.

 

Firefly / Giant Plane.

 

Each week, they go on new adventures.

 

It’s all there, people.