Hey, kids… sorry for the long silence, for which I was thoroughly excoriated in an email from one of you netcrap-cravin’ Loyal Readers earlier today. To explain, I was out of town for a couple of days this weekend. Before that, I was preparing to go out of town. After that, I was recovering from being out of town. You get the idea.

I’m afraid I still don’t have too much to offer my poor audience this afternoon, but since some of you are apparently feeling abandoned — again, my apologies — here’s a neat-o self-portrait of what I would’ve looked like if I’d been an agency proofreader about 45 years ago:

Not too different, really, although I haven’t worn a tie in years. If I had to wear a tie to work, though, a skinny vintage one with a cool diamond design would be just the ticket.

I built this little amusement at MadMenYourself.com, a promotional site for the AMC television series Mad Men. I don’t have cable myself, so I’ve been unable to follow the show on any kind of regular basis, but I have caught a few episodes and, I have to admit, my day job is frighteningly similar to what you see on this series, just with less smoking and lunchtime drinking. Well, less smoking anyhow…

I found the link to the MadMen-izer via my friend Karen. If you go over there, make sure you have your speakers or headphones on so you can soak in the lounge-tastic background music…

So did anybody catch this week’s CSI? The murder-victim-of-the-week was an arrogant guy who’d produced a new version of a beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show called Astro Quest (any resemblance to an actual beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show with a similar name is purely intentional). Seems there were a lot of potential suspects because this guy’s “redux” was so poorly received by the fans of the original. Where the original had been “antiseptic,” “brightly lighted,” and populated by noble characters that “ordinary people couldn’t possibly live up to,” AQ Redux turned out to be dark and grungy-looking, with angsty, sweaty, deeply flawed, and horribly unlikable characters. The producer justified this as “more realistic,” but the fans who saw his preview reel in a convention setting responded by rioting.

Obviously, the writers of this episode have been thinking about the upcoming remake of Star Trek, but, in an in-joke I’m sure they thought was terribly clever, the fan who starts the riot by shouting “You suck!” was none other than Ron Moore, the executive producer and primary creative force behind the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. In other words, a guy who did in real life exactly what the fictional producer in the CSI episode had done. It was a cute moment for those in the know, but I find myself trying to decide just what was being said here. In other words, at whose expense was this joke made? Is Moore (or at least the writers of CSI) acknowledging that fans of older properties are justified in being unhappy with “gritty” remakes? Or were they slamming grumbly old-school types like myself as buffoons?

Honestly, I think you could make either argument. The episode does include a scene in which one of the regular characters explains to another why fans get upset when people tamper with the things that matter to them, but that same scene also features some dismissive remarks about that behavior. The episode itself closes on a rather sweet note, with an homage to a well-remembered scene from Star Trek, er, Astro Quest, and the CSI crew planning a marathon viewing of the classic show. So I guess you could see it as trying to present an even-handed view of the whole phenomenon, at least as far as is necessary to tell the weekly procedural story. But, while I acknowledge I’m probably too touchy about these things, I can’t help but feel like, yet again, the people like me — who prefer the “cheesy” and “campy” (god, I hate those adjectives!) originals to the slick-but-depressing modern versions — are being dissed.

You damn kids can keep your edgy shit. I assure you it will one day seem as archaic as the stuff where Starbuck is a guy and the captain’s shirt is weak around the shoulder seams. In the meantime, I think it’s really just a matter of taste. As far as I’m concerned, real life is edgy, gritty, and angsty enough. I prefer heroes I can aspire to over tragic, uncertain trainwrecks…

After three TV-oriented entries in a row, my loyal readers can be forgiven for thinking I’ve given up on any pretense of an actual life, but I want to mention that The Girlfriend and I have really been enjoying the new series Castle. It’s basically a throwback to the ’80s-vintage detective shows I grew up on, somewhat similar to Moonlighting, only without the smug self-awareness that so often came across as less clever than irritating.

Nathan Fillion of the late, lamented Firefly plays Rick Castle, a very successful writer of crime novels who, as the series begins, has just killed off the protagonist of his best-selling series in a fit of creative boredom. Chance brings him into contact with NYPD Detective Kate Beckett when she comes to him for consultation on a murder case that appears to have been inspired by one of his books. Inspired himself by Beckett, Castle pulls a few strings and becomes her unlikely (and unwilling, on her part) partner. Ostensibly tagging along on Beckett’s cases in the name of “research,” Castle naturally starts helping her solve bizarre murders by working out the “plot” of the mystery.

Honestly, the mysteries are probably the weakest aspect of Castle, but they always were on the classic detective shows I loved in the ’80s, too. Like Magnum or Simon & Simon, the real pleasure comes from watching the likable characters interact with one another. Fillion is perfectly cast as a flirtatious, wisecracking man-child, spoiled by fame and a seemingly bottomless bank account that allows him to pretty much get away with anything; as the show progresses, however, he’s started to demonstrate that there’s a good and even noble man lurking under the smart-ass exterior. Stana Katic as Beckett has been a little more difficult to like, a little tougher to see as anything but a straight man to Castle’s nonsense, but she’s starting to reveal some interesting depths as well, and she and Fillion have an enjoyable chemistry.

My favorite relationship on the show, however, is between Castle and his teenage daughter Alexis, played by newcomer Molly C. Quinn. Predictably, she’s characterized as the mature counterpoint to Castle’s childish behavior, but the two actors bounce off each other with such comfort and good timing that they appear to be a real father-daughter pair.

One final element that has endeared the show to me: each episode appears to contain a single geeky in-joke. So far, I’ve caught references to Highlander, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Land of the Lost, and I imagine there are probably others that I didn’t notice. I can only assume these are intended as Easter eggs for Fillion’s Firefly peeps, but whatever the reason for them, I like…

Castle is on ABC on Monday nights. Check your local listings, as they say. And let’s hope this show gets more of a chance than Firefly or Fillion’s last network series Drive, which was ignominiously canned by Fox — of course! — after only four episodes. Too bad, too, as I thought that one had potential…

I haven’t watched ER on any kind of regular basis for years. I started losing interest after Dr. Mark Greene — wonderfully played by Anthony Edwards of Top Gun fame — died of a brain tumor in Season Eight, leaving Noah Wyle’s Dr. John Carter as the only remnant of the show’s original cast. Nothing against any of the actors who rotated into County General as the old folks left, but I just never found any of the newer characters as compelling as the first group. Also, while the really over-the-top “event” episodes were still in the future (I think… it’s hard to recall quite what happened when, considering I haven’t seen many of these episodes in years), the show was already evolving toward sensationalistic (and frequently ridiculous) sweeps-week plotlines and a tangled soap-opera-esque preoccupation with who was hooking up with whom in between patients. (Honestly, was there any woman around that hospital that Luka didn’t have a go at? Maybe Kerri Weaver, but that’s only because she turned out to be a lesbian…)

And yet, I never did give up entirely on the show. I kept tuning in from time to time, even after I’d reached the point of not knowing the names of any of the characters anymore, and I was thinking of them only as “John Stamos,” “the Rock and Roll Kid,” “Red-head Dude with the Beard,” and “Cute Nurse with the Big Watchband.” Oh, and, of course, Neela, whose name stuck because I thought she was a babe. I guess I took the show for granted; I always knew that if I couldn’t think of anything better to occupy my attention on Thursday nights around 9 PM, well, there was always ER.

Continue Reading…

As you all know, I’m no fan of Ron Moore’s reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. I honestly did try to appreciate it on its own terms, but it just never hooked me and I gave up on it midway through the first season. Still, I have followed some of the online commentary about the show over the years, and I was curious today to see how things wrapped up in the series finale last Friday night.

Apparently, aspects of the conclusion left a lot of people scratching their heads. From what I gather, the show ended with the ragtag fugitive fleet arriving at Earth — our Earth — some 150,000 years ago, and discovering the place inhabited by spear-carrying hunter-gatherers. The weary colonials ultimately decide to abandon their ships and technology and blend in with the primitives on the planet below. Some of the comments I’m seeing out there question this, as well as Starbuck’s ultimate fate and the revelation of, for lack of a better word, “angels” who were overseeing, and perhaps guiding, everything. A recurring sentiment seems to be “what the hell was that all about?”

Well, this aging fan of the much-disparaged 1978 version of BSG is chuckling his head off right now, because these elements are all right out of the original series. Recall the opening prologue from the original: “There are those who believe that life here began out there… far across the universe with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Toltecs… or the Mayans… or the Egyptians…” By “going native,” Ron Moore’s colonials are simply living up to the “ancient astronaut” underpinnings of Glen Larson’s Galactica.

The angels and Starbuck turning out to be some kind of spirit-being who knows the way to Earth have their precedents in the original, as well. In the original-series episode, “The War of the Gods,” the Dirk Benedict version of Starbuck, along with Apollo and Sheba, encounter the Ship of Light and the highly advanced beings who dwell within it, angels, for lack of a better word, who declare that they are watching out for their “younger brothers and sisters.” They seem especially interested in Starbuck, and tell him that, “as you are, we once were; as we are, you may one day become.” When he and his companions return to the Galactica, they bring with them subliminal impressions of Earth’s location. Sounds to me like Ron Moore was perhaps a little more faithful to the original series than I — and the young fans of the new version who’ve always been so nasty about the old one — really understood.

Now, as I said, I didn’t watch the new BSG, so it’s possible I’m completely misinterpreting what I’ve been reading about the finale. But I gotta tell you, I’m feeling some degree of vindication right now. I think I’m going to celebrate by cracking open a bottle of fine ambrosia and seeing if I can rustle up some mushies…