TV Tyrant

Fringe: Blowing minds since … always

May 9th, 2011 | by | fringe, science fiction, season finale

May
09

I didn’t really expect Fringe to become my No. 1 show.

The first season finale, however, put it there, and with the end of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, it’s been cemented at the top. (Supernatural and Doctor Who are extremely acceptable seconds, though.)

Friday night’s third season finale has made my brain hurt, in the same glorious tradition of the Lost “flash-forward” finale. Just when you think you kind of sort of know what’s going on, Peter flashes out of existence and the Observers are all tilting their heads like cats and telling September how he was right.

But there’s this: If Peter never existed, how were the two universes brought together? If Peter never existed, why did Walter go Over There in the first place? If Peter never existed, why does my brain hurt so much and who is this Polivia everyone’s been kvelling about all season?

I wouldn’t be stuck on the paradox of Peter’s nonexistence if Walter hadn’t made such a big deal about how he couldn’t not send the machine back because of the paradox it created. It may just be that Walter was wrong – that Walter didn’t have to send the machine back in time (by the way, the fact that Walter, Astrid and Ella were the First People? LOVE THAT.), but did because he thought he had to.

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Sci-Fi Cred: Restored!

February 8th, 2011 | by | battlestar galactica, doctor who, science fiction, torchwood, tv shows

Feb
08

I have been living a bit of a lie, and I am ready to admit to it. As much as a sci-fi nerd I cop to being, I always had to just smile and nod along whenever the subject of Doctor Who and Torchwood came up.  Nervous that my cover would be blown, I employed the usual tactics: smiling; ‘uh-huh-ing’; laughing when every one else did. Well no more, my friends. No more. How about a nice big HOORAY! for Netflix.

Yes, as usual, I am late to the party. People have been raving about Netflix for ages now. My old roommate used to have it and we watched all kinds of stuff because of their wonderful DVDs being delivered right into our hot little hands. But now. Now! I have Netflix with the streaming, instant play option, and I am so very, very happy.

Once I finish up with Doctor Who (I am speeding through season three as we speak), I will make my way over to Babylon 5. That is if I get the idea of a BSG rewatch outta my head. :)

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Supernatural: The Truth (Sort Of…)

November 2nd, 2010 | by | science fiction, supernatural, the cw, tv shows

Nov
02

First off, let me gripe about the promo monkeys over at The CW who spoiled next weeks episode by revealing what is actually up with our darling Sammy. I will not say what it is here as I know some of you avoid promos like the plague, and some of you watch online where you don’t get the promos, but SERIOUSLY The CW? Gah!

There have been many shows through the years that employ the truth-tellin’ scenario we see in this weeks episode, and it almost always results in hilarity. I must admit that I laughed right out loud at Bobby’s confessions about pedicures and his TV watching habits. Was it a convenience, seeing as our Handsome Hero Dean needed some truthiness? You bet it was, but let me tell you, if they were to drag this whole What’s-Up-With-Sammy scenario out for the entire season, I may have had to jump out my window, so I am glad for any trick that will get us to the bottom of Sam’s UN-Sammyness as quickly as possible.

Once again, we get to see a great range from Dean. Sorrow over his Lisa break-up, impishness when he figures out the truth curse is now on him, and all the pain he has tangled up with his lovely brother. I am sure there are plenty of SamGirls who were really pissed that Dean beat the ever lovin’ snot out of his little brother. It was pretty brutal, but I totally understood all the anger and fear and confusion taking over and coming out all over darling Sammy. Veritas was right, those two boys have got allllll kinds of issues.

Next week, more Castiel (Yay!!), more Bobby (woohoo!), and hopefully a good explanation of what is going on with Sammy (which The CW already spoiled for me… arg!).

PS – I am participating in the National Novel Writing Month this November, so please excuse me if my posts are late and/or brief. There’s a 50,000 word piece of awesomeness I am working on this month!! :)

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Supernatural: It Takes Two

October 5th, 2010 | by | new season, new shows, science fiction, supernatural, tv shows

Oct
05

I was nervous about the newly run-by-Sera-Gamble Supernatural. Not because I don’t have confidence in her, I surely do, but because after five years of Kripke!, who knew if anyone else could do it? So far, I think she has done a fine job.

Episode one: No one is surprized (except for Dean, I suppose), that Sammy is back and out killing him some monsters. The real surprize is the resurrection of Grandpa Winchester, the lovely and buff Mitch Pileggi. So, we have two reanimated Winchesters, and a slew of cousins off fighting monsters, as a good family should, when the genie from season two(?) offspring decide to come after Dean.

Whatever. The episode is all set-up for the season, so I wasn’t expecting anything too awesome. New season, new show runner, new season arc, blah blah blah. At least we got a glamor shot of Metallicar, the savior of the world!

Episode two: Muuuuch better!! With all the exposition out of the way, I think I see where we are headed this season. Sera Gamble had said that they were gonna go back to hunting, and monsters, and so far we have gotten souped up versions of old monsters we thought we knew. I am hoping this trend continues. The Alpha shape-shifter freaked me right out, and that is how I like my Supernatural. A nice dash of silly Dean/Sammy & baby shape-shifter riding shotgun made me giggle. Plus, as much as I was annoyed that Lisa and kiddo seemed to be kind of shoe-horned into Deans conscience, I have really enjoyed her character these first two episodes. Could a strong, loving and understanding woman for Dean be the influence of our new show runner? Very possible.

And, of course, Grandpa Winchester ain’t necessarily what he seems to be, and I predict we will lose at least one Winchester cousin an episode until we are back down to our lovely duo. Fine with me, because next week? Castiel!!

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What I Watched This Summer

October 4th, 2010 | by | cbs, eureka, nbc, science fiction, tv shows, warehouse 13

Oct
04

Contrary to rumors, I did not spend my summer hiding in the corner waiting for The Winchesters to return (but I can’t wait to comment on this new season). Along with the usual baseball obsession – Go Yankees!! – I enjoyed some really fun shows this summer, both new and old, and found myself looking forward to the continuation of them next year.

Big Brother – Let’s get this out of the way: I LOVE Big Brother. Always have, always will. It is cheezy and full of worthless people and consumes a ridiculous amount of time and space on my DVR, but I can count on it to amuse me to no end all freakin’ summer long. I don’t care what you think of me, the day CBS and Julie Chen finally abandon this show, summer will never be the same.

Eureka – One of my favorite summertime shows. This year they took what had become a bit of a tired series and rebooted it with what could have been a terrible time travel trope. The characters were reinvigorated, and we got to see an out-of-time James Callis as the villian-ish villian. Plenty of kookiness erupted in town, and a lot of was tied into the time travel event, which I thought was clever. Just when I thought I would be coasting through this series, I was entertained all summer long.

Warehouse 13 – Summer has a nice group of cheery sci-fi shows going on and this one has become one of my favorites. By the middle of the season I thought it had really found it’s footing, and was just plain funny. Pete and Myka have a great brother/sister relationship going (Hooray! for no will they/won’t they angst), and they have found a nice vibe for Claudia and Artie. Leena still feel superfluous, but maybe they have a plan. Excellent season ending cliffhanger, BTW.

Haven – I had a hard time getting into this one. It felt cheap (but don’t most things SyFy?) and a total rip-off of X-Files, but it really ended up growing on me. Sure, some of the mysteries caused by ‘The Troubles’ were ridiculous, but the characters sucked me right in. This one is still running, so I have no idea what’s next, but I am looking forward to getting to that last week episode on my DVR. Incidentally, this is one of those shows I would have never given time to if it wasn’t for OnDemand. I was able to catch up on a gloomy weekend and set the DVR to record the rest of the series. Does anyone watch television shows live anymore?

Royal Pains, White Collar, Dexter & Californication – I know, weird group. Royal Pains and White Collar I put together because they are silly little shows on USA that I find amusing, with actors that are charming and cute and that’s about all I gotta say about that. Dexter… well, y’all know about Dexter. This spring I finally joined Netflix, and was able to see season 2 of Dexter on Netflix Instant Play (saw season 1 on CBS back in the dark days of the writer’s strike). Best.Invention.Ever. I would have plowed through seasons 3 & 4 as well, but stupid ol’ Showtime doesn’t have them on OnDemand or InstantPlay, so I’m gonna have to wait on that. Showtime did the same trick with Californication, getting me all excited about season 1 and rekindling my Duchovny love, and then not letting me OnDemand anything else. That’s fine, I had a lot of Yankee games to watch anyway.

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Eureka tries time travel

July 11th, 2010 | by | eureka, science fiction, season premiere

Jul
11

I truly love this little town in the middle of nowhere in Oregon; I have since the first episode.

Mar 16, 2010 - New York, New York, USA - Actress SALLI RICHARDSON WHITFIELD and Actor COLIN FERGUSON at the 2010 Syfy Upfront Party held at The Museum of Modern Art New York. © Red Carpet Pictures

Eureka’s one of those scifi shows firmly grounded in science and reality (of sorts). It seems like the kind of place you just might get if you gathered the finest scientific minds of their generation and put them all in one place with, more or less, unlimited resources.

It was obvious from the very first episode that Allison and Carter were going to get together, sooner or later. And in Season 2 when they got married and Allison got pregnant, it seemed they weren’t going to tease us with the Sam and Diane scenario for years.

Then, in order to save the town, the timeline, everything, Carter and Henry had to lose their loves to save it all, well, I was willing to go along with it. I was even willing to deal with the detour that was Nathan Stark, as he obviously loved Allison and they did, after all, have a child together.

So when Carter and Tess broke up at the end of Season 3 and Allison had had proper time to grieve, it seemed it was time.

Then, Season 4 had a fabulous opener that did a variety of things:
• gave us insight into the creation of Eureka
• gave us James Callis doing one helluvan American accent
• gave us a time travel paradox
• gave us Allison and Carter kissin’ and lovin’ and Jo kicking some SERIOUS ass.

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Revamping the Tyrant

June 29th, 2010 | by | 24, battlestar galactica, canceled, eureka, jack bauer, lost, science fiction, season finale, series finale, supernatural, warehouse 13

Jun
29

You probably noticed the site looks a little different today. I just upgraded to WordPress 3.0 and upgraded my theme and decided I wanted to get away from the old snow in the background I used to have, as it was rather harsh on the eyes anyway. I haven’t decided what background to go with yet, but it made no sense to reinstall that old background.

I’m not fond of this neon orange, so don’t worry – it’s not here to stay. :-)

I’ve been rather lax in updating the blog in the past month, as you’ve likely noticed.

The end of two of my all-time favorite shows – Lost and 24 – left me unsure about what I wanted to blog on next. June is a pretty crappy month for TV anymore and though I love Burn Notice and In Plain Sight, I just don’t have a lot to talk about. I’d gotten so used to the analysis of Lost and Battlestar and the mocking of or cheering on for 24 that I don’t really want to go back to the recap route.

Fortunately, Warehouse 13 and Eureka start up soon, and I think both will provide plenty of fodder for good TVT posts.

Erika is hiding in a corner, crying out of sheer joy that there will be more Jensen Ackles next season. Seriously, though, I didn’t think they could get another decent season out of Supernatural after the apocalypse this season, but that final scene last month convinced me otherwise.

I’m also watching some stuff via Netflix, so I might start blogging about that. And I still have Season 2 of Torchwood to plow through. But I don’t want TVT to become an archival TV blog. Or, wait – that might be kinda cool.

Anyway, as you can see, I’m trying to figure out the direction to go in. I love TV (well, certain TV shows anyhow) and I do enjoy writing about it. I appreciate all the discussions and comments and everything we’ve had here, and they will continue, I promise.

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V, the new chapter

November 27th, 2009 | by | science fiction, v

Nov
27

Once in a while, there’s a show I watch where I can’t be online when it’s on. I don’t want to miss anything; I want to concentrate.

v-imageLost, unsurprisingly, is chief among those shows. Battlestar Galactica was another. Fringe almost is like that. I get very absorbed and forget I’m online for most of the show. 24 would be like that, except I live-blog it over at Blogs4Bauer, so that’s an entirely different animal. But don’t do other stuff online while I’m watching 24, at least.

V has filled the void left by Battlestar in that sense (though I suspect Caprica will also be an online-free zone for me).

It doesn’t hurt that two of the main characters are refugees of two of my favorite shows: Elizabeth Mitchell, Juliet from Lost, and Joel Gretsch, Tom Baldwin from The 4400. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve seen the original V miniseries from the ’80s more times than I can even count. Possibly as many times as Star Wars. True story. Oh, and I mean the original miniseries, not the sequel miniseries, in which one of the half-alien babies looked like a puppet I could have made. And I suck at art projects.

This is V for a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world. The original V was very much informed by World War II, the Holocaust and a totalitarian Soviet Union. This V has in mind the divisions so prevalent in our world today. In the U.S., between left and right (and make no mistake, the Vs represent neither side, specifically), and worldwide, between the U.S. and Everyone Else. And c’mon, anyway, this show is produced in the U.S. for a U.S. audience, so the action’s going to take place here. Just like Doctor Who takes place in England and Wales.

I like how the spaceships give a nod to the miniseries, too. They bear more than a passing resemblance to the originals, while looking way cooler.

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More thoughts on Battlestar

August 14th, 2009 | by | battlestar galactica, science fiction, telemovie

Aug
14

A friend of mine finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica, thanks to his Netflix membership and wrote me to tell me how much he and his wife loved the ending – and asking me a couple of questions about the finale.

I think about the finale often, I’ll admit, and I haven’t erased it off my DVR yet, though I haven’t watched it more than twice. I’ve gone back and forth from loving it to being disappointed in the last few minutes of it.

Battlestar Galactica

But as I wrote back to my friend, whom I’ll call S., I realized it really was the perfect ending. It is what the show was about all along. Fate. Destiny. Faith. Whatever the personal belief of the viewers, this is what the show was about.

The belief in the one true god was a dividing line between human and cylon from the miniseries itself. Not the only thing that separated them, but it wouldn’t be the first time religion exacerbated a rift between two cultures.

As I wrote, I realized I was putting an awful lot of thought into my answers, so  I thought I’d share his questions and my answers here, too. I’d love to hear what others think.

• First, S. wondered why Cavil killed himself. His wife thought it was because he believed he’d be resurrected on the base ship, but he disagreed. “I thought there was no further opportunity for resurrection. That’s why he agreed to let Hera go, after he was promised that the Cylons would re-create resurrection.”

He’s right, in fact. There was no further opportunity for resurrection, at least not until the Cylons figured it out again, and that seemed highly unlikely.

Cavil killed himself, I believe, because he saw that his time was at an end. I think he killed himself almost BECAUSE there was no resurrection, rather than it spite of there being no resurrection.

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