Final Pushing Daisies Episode

Okay, so, for over two months now I’ve had three Saturdays marked on my calendar to remind me about the Pushing Daisies episodes, the last three episodes of season 2 and, for all forseeable realities, the last three episodes of the series (not counting the comic books that DC is going to put out which will be AWESOME! If those comics aren’t awesome HEADS WILL ROLL! Given what I’ve heard of the subject matter, that may happen anyway, but I digress…)

For the past fortnight, ABC hated me. It didn’t come in at all. It would be perfect through the end of whatever show was on before it, and then someone somewhere would push the “make the signal grainy, scrambled and impossible to watch” button. How I hate that button, and the predictability of when it gets used (the button gets turned off for commercials, at least three-fourths of the time.)

Tonight, though? I was lucky. Sure, I had a two-episode gap in my knowledge of season 2 now, but the signal was clear.

In news that may discourage some people, I thought the actual plot and banter of the show was a bit lackluster. I know! This is me we’re talkin’ about, and it’s the last episode of a show I love and would move Heaven and Earth to bring back. The episode was still much better than almost anything else on television…but still, it didn’t seem quite as snappy. Even the vague snippets I caught the previous two weeks before I gave up on the impossible signal made me cackle a bit. This episode had me grin at a few points, but none of the expected cackling.

The last ten, maybe five, minutes of the show, though, were designed to pull the heartstrings of the fans. My theory is that some hasty rewrites were called in when it was revealed that it was the last episode of the series. I could be wrong about that, they may have known all along about that (or I may be wrong in that they didn’t know but didn’t decide to change the script anyway.) Either way, however, the ending was a nice capper for the series, including (spoiler alert) a quick multi-vista cross-pan of many of the more memorable locales from earlier in the show (among them, the windmill reserve, the church, the lighthouse and others).

Back to the plot difficulties…I think my primary problem with the plot was the ease of development. This may have had something to do with the ineptness of the villain of the week, which by the villain’s own admission was the sole reason for why he wasn’t suspected initially. I don’t have any difficulty believing that the plot progressed as it did considering that character’s, er, character, but I wish that the Emerson Codd and the Pie Makers (that would be an awesome band name) had been challenged a bit more thoroughly. (Also, as a final nitpicky thing, I do kinda wish that there had been fewer fade-outs punctuated by the image of the shark bite, but that’s more of an aesthetic thing than an actual problem.)

Having said that, it was wonderful seeing you on the air again Pushing Daisies, even if this will be your farewell performance. I was always happy to see the episodes, even this one. You are, for me, one of the greatest shows ever.

And if we need a silver lining to this? I maintain that your show never jumped the shark.

Thanks again for everything Pushing Daisies, and I sincerely hope that I’ll get to see you again on TV someday. ‘Till then, see you in the funny papers.

Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #200

SPOILERS AHEAD!  Just figured I’d get that out of the way.  Don’t come cryin’ to me if you want to read this without bein’ surprised.  It’s been out a week now, anyway, the grace period is over.

I’ve been a long time fan of Sonic’s comic. I can’t realistically say that I’ve been reading it from the beginning, my first issue was #6. Still, for a run of 16 years and 8 months, only missing the first half year seems like getting in pretty much on the gruond floor.  And while I’ve missed an issue here or there (largely during that period between the death of Dr. Robotnik and the rise of Dr. Eggman), I’ve been one of the most loyal readers.  After all, can you honestly say that Batman never had a bad storyline here and there?

Anyway, sticking with the comic through its good times and bad, I was all set for issue 200 to be a “bad.”  Why?  No real reason, just jaded comic reader cynicism.  Marvel and DC have been dropping the ball for me lately, and while they’ve had some outstanding stories, the general climate just seems like one of confusion, angst and overblown plots.

But my friends, I must tell you: Sonic the Hedgehog’s 200th issue did not disappoint me.  There were so many ways that this comic could have gone wrong, and it overcame each of them.

1) Confusing Plot: There are a lot of confusing plots out there in comics these days.  Take Final Crisis for instance: I personally enjoyed the “big picture” of Final Crisis and left it more or less satisfied, but you can’t deny that the main story felt incomplete and bizarre, like you were missing something (you were probably missing the many various tie-in issues that “weren’t necessary” but nonetheless helped to tie everything together.  Basically: either buy everything, or be willing to reread the central story a few times just to be sure that you’re clear on what’s going on.)  Sonic’s story the past half year or so has been remarkably clear and free of obstruction.  And there’s been a few things that could’ve brought abuot confusion: the invasion of Mobius by Moebius, Snively’s mysterious IM buddy (more on that later), Sally’s effective court martial at the hands of a former snubbed reserve Freedom Fighter, etc.  But the plot progression has been very lucid.  A new reader could have picked up just about any issue and understood roughly what was happening, and not because the plots were too simple, but because the plots were well presented.

2) Lousy Reveal: For a while now, Snively has been plotting behind Robotnik’s back regarding the arrival of a “new power” that he’s been expecting.  Now, I want to go on record here and say that I was all but positive that it was going to be the Iron Queen.  She wasn’t a huge villain during her relatively short earlier appearances, but I was sure it would be her because she’s the only notable villain from the comic who wasn’t an easily dealt with robot (Croctobot comes to mind), an easily dealt with flunky (any of Mammoth Mogul’s henchpeople or a certain Weasel come to mind), or an alien who wouldn’t be on Mobius.  Now, the cynic in me was half expecting her arrival to be the focal point of the issue, which would have robbed us of the Sonic/Robotnik fight they’ve been building to (and the majority of the action in this issue was a Final Boss Fight translated from game-format to comic format, and translated well if I may say so.)  The cynic in me was also expecting that instead of the Iron Queen it would’ve been either a completely new villain (which would’ve been stupid for a dramatic reveal like we’ve been building to) or an old villain who didn’t make sense (admit it, did anyone else have a fear that E.V.E. might have returned?  She would make an awesome villain, but there’d be no way to justify her return to Mobius, her return to evil, or her return to a state where Sonic would have a chance against her.)  Again, this dramatic reveal was well played and worth the wait.

3) Replay Mode: it didn’t occur to me until I was reading the issue, but one easy way that this could’ve gone wrong would have been if they’d just rehashed the basics of the fight from Sonic #50.  It is a good thing that they didn’t: this was an all new fight with all new stakes.  This wasn’t a fight for the freedom of Mobius (as Sonic put it, Dr. Robotnik barely had any control over the planet as he had to constantly struggle for it, a huge change from his near-total grasp over everything in the pre issue 50 days).  Plus in the end, Robotnik’s life wasn’t on the line.  Rather, his sanity was.  Seeing Robotnik’s mental break when he lost his big fight against Sonic was almost tragic, and it was clear that Sonic didn’t feel good about it.  He wanted Robotnik to be the stereotypical bad guy and say, “Grrr, you’ll rue the day you were born, hedgehog!  I’ll get you next time!  Next Tiiiiime!”  Instead, he witnessed the complete shattering of Robotnik’s mental faculties, self-respect and pride.  Sonic’s never really had a bad guy mentally fall apart on him like that, and I appreciated the genuine concern that Sonic had for someone who would have just as soon seen him dead.

Those are the big three ways that the issue could have gone wrong.  And it didn’t go wrong in any of those three ways.  Now, there were a few things that I thought could have been handled better, I should mention those to be fair…

First of all, why did Sonic and Sally leave Snively to “tend to” his uncle?  I could see Sonic doing that, but Sally?  She’s a tactical genius, and especially when armed with Nicole she doesn’t often make such huge military gaffes.  I mean, yes, it was clear that their primary enemy was vanquished.  Yes, the emotions of that time must have been overwhelming.  But why didn’t they cart Robotnik and Snively off in that fancy car of Rotor’s to face trial in Knothole?  Even if Robotnik wasn’t a threat, Snively has demonstrated many times (three, at the very least, and five if you count SatAM) that when Robotnik’s gone he’s more than willing to step up and fight the Freedom Fighters himself.  I suppose you could argue that his brief time spent with the Freedom Fighters might have earned him some trustable cred with them, but come on!  And not one of the Freedom Fighters questioned this?

My other problem with this episode was that Sonic and Robotnik both phrased things a bit awkwardly.  This is admittedly a problem for continuity buffs like me, but it needs pointing out.  Robotnik and Sonic were both acting like they were lifelong rivals during that fight, but that’s not the case.  This is the “new” Dr. Robotnik who came from an alternate dimension after conquering his own zone.  And Sonic and Robotnik both know this.  Why treat each other like the same hero and villain that they used to know when it’s been shown over and over that there are significant differences?  This might have been acceptible if that issue hadn’t come up once during the last hundred issues or so, but Sonic brought it up during the very last storyline when he begged Zonic the Zone Cop to come and arrest Eggman for a zone hopping violation.  It’s in the recent memory of the readers, so why not change the dialogue to reflect it?

Those two minor annoyances aside, it was a fine, fine issue.  I want to thank everyone who worked on this issue (nice seeing your covers as always, Spaz), and everyone who’s worked on the previous 199.  And then I want to thank everyone who worked on the issues 0-3 of the Sonic miniseries before the regular title started.  And everyone who worked on the 48 page specials, the Knuckles series, the various Knuckles mini-series, Sonic Universe, the Tails mini-series and the Princess Sally mini-series.  You all rock (oh, and for the record: you new editors are great and all, but Scott and Paul will always be The Editors in my mind.  Yes, even though they weren’t the first to fill the position.)

Anyway, there’s a lot of arguing and complaining between the various factions of Sonic fans.  And I’m sure there were some people out there who read the issue and didn’t like it.  But for what it’s worth, I’ve been a very satisfied customer.  And I can’t wait for the day six years and four months from now when Sonic’s comic officially becomes the longest comic of the Modern comic era.

Thanks again, everyone.  Keep it way past cool, and peace out!

-John

PS-I need to get a letter into Sonic Grams one of these days.

Better Off Ted

Okay, I should say something about Better Off Ted. I’ve seen two episodes now. The first episode I watched it and said that I wanted to enjoy it, but for some reason…for some reason I just wasn’t liking what I was seeing.

It had all the elements that I like. It had all the snarky dialogue, it had well presented ideas, and it even had a huge, gigantic Mad Scientist theme that I’m always in favor of. So why wasn’t I liking it?

At this second episode I think I figured it out. This is a show that has everything I like. It’s like someone took Pushing Daisies, Scrubs and Portal and stuck ‘em in a blender.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Hard to say. The two episodes I’ve seen both followed a pretty basic plot of “Here’s something that management did that caused wackiness, and here’s how we solved the problem” formula. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a show that’s more about dialogue than actual plot. The characters are all flatter than I like, but between the fact that this is the show’s first season and the fact that it’s set up in a cold, business environment designed to make flat personalities a joke might make this unavoidable.

I think the best thing I can say about the show is that I can’t find fault with it. It’s got okay acting, okay dialogue and okay ideas. Every once in a while it comes off as feeling like a lame Saturday Night Live sketch, but those times when it comes off as a good SNL sketch instead make it okay.

So I plan on watching this more when there’s nothing else on. It didn’t necessarily dissapoint. And hey, maybe in time it’ll become as good as Scrubs or Pushing Daisies. That’d be nice.

…but I still say that they need to bring back Pushing Daisies.

Legends of Zork: a New Take on Quendor

Ok, so, on April Fool’s day I was told that for the past few months now, Activision had been setting up a new online Zork game, and that it was launching that day. And I laughed and laughed and even though I knew it was the setup for an April Fool’s Day joke, I had to follow their link.

Wow, it wasn’t a joke.

Okay, set the mood here: for over ten years now I’ve been looking for Activision to acknowledge their best franchise. And while I wanted a new game, any new game, I was expecting something I could, you know, buy in stores and play without an internet connection (no offense, but the team play for ZGI never seemed to make much sense to me. Then again, I never tried it.)

However, for much of the past ten years, I’ve been a fan of something called Legend of the Green Dragon (I play at the Central server at http://www.lotgd.net if you’re interested.) When I first saw the splash page for this Legends of Zork game, I said to myself “Oh, wow, someone modded Legend of the Green Dragon to be a Zork game.” Then I saw the Activision reminder on the bottom and decided that someone must have made a very *official* version of Legend of the Green Dragon.

Now that I’ve played a bit, I can honestly say that it’s definitely not Legend of the Green Dragon. You go into areas and fight things, collecting experience and money (Zorkmids, naturally) but that’s about where the similarities end.

A few friends of mine have expressed disappointment in the game, and I can understand that. The fighting of monsters is automatic: if you find something, you fight to the end, regardless of who the winner is. I can certainly understand the frustration there. I, however, enjoy the change. One of my major qualms with Legend of the Green Dragon is that there isn’t often a way to streamline the “look for something to kill” process unless you go to other servers (and when I *do* go to other servers, I’m almost overwhelmed by how much there is. It starts to feel like homework rather than a game.)

So the fighting style is good, in my opinion, but not necessarily gonna be for everyone.

And another word on fighting: I made a mistake by not considering weapon/armor quality and skill points. I’m not a huge RPG player, so using these things always seems a bit foreign to how I approach scenarios. But I’ve just hit level 7, and I’m realizing that hey, the monsters are getting tougher as well. Save up for big guns when you play this folks (and sometimes those guns are literal), and be prepared to use them.

In terms of gameplay, do not expect a text adventure. It isn’t a text adventure, no matter what it looks like (or you could argue that it’s a text adventure in the same way that LotGD is a text adventure: read everything, but point and click.) If you have to compare it to a previous Zork game, Beyond Zork is the way to go: you encounter a lot of monsters (some of which are brand new, but most of which are from the previous games), and you find treasure which you can sell for Zorkmids.

Now, admittedly: I might’ve preferred an actual MMORPG. A Zork based MMORPG would’ve been a lot of fun, but honestly? It wouldn’t survive against WoW. I say this as someone who’s never played WoW and never plans on it: Zork’s unique style of adventure, horror, and comedy would either seem like a ripoff of WoW, or something unnecessary to your diehard MMORPG fan. While I’d love (and would certainly pay for) an MMORPG set in the Zork universe, I don’t quite think that the time is right.

Back to this game, though: stylistically, the game gets a lot of stuff right on the nose. The art style is good (though not necessarily Zorkish) but the writing style gets a lot of the Zorkian sounds right. Lots of bars, fobs, wits, and dos in the names.

Anyway, after my second day playing it (my home computer can’t handle it, I’m afraid), I have to say that I love it. I hope this game sticks around, and I’ll love to see it improve over time (maybe they’ll make the autofight be optional.)

Dollplay ARG Stumbles From The Start

Dollplay, the ARG (or “participation drama” as they’re calling it) for Joss Whedon’s new TV show Dollhouse, failed from the first step for me.

At first I was excited.  I really liked Dollhouse’s first episode.  I tend to really like Joss Whedon stuff.  And I really, really like ARGs.  So what went wrong?  The very first freakin’ introductory paragraph, that’s what.

I can’t get it to load for me now, perhaps it knows my IP address.  But when I first went to the ARG’s website, do you know what it said?  Roughly, it told me that I was about to enter an ARG and that I should pretend it was real, and that everything on the website after that point would be “in game.”

Well, that’s fine and dandy, thanks.  Except now it’s no longer an ARG.

An Alternate Reality Game (concatenated to ARG for brevity’s sake), is a game that can arguably be defined by two rules.  1) The game designers should not acknowledge that it is a game.  2) The game designers should not create a playing field.  Purists might insist on putting up rule 3) The game designers should not create a game.  I consider rule 3 to be something of a hair-splitting thing, though: even if you’re “just creating an experience”, I still classify that as a game.  But I can certainly see why someone might disagree with me depending on your definition of game.

Anyway, that first introductory paragraph broke the first two rules of what an ARG is.  Part of me wants to be bitter at the ARG.  Part of me wants to be bitter at executive meddling.  Part of me wants to be bitter at the laws of England.

Why England?  Because a few years ago, when Perplex City still had some life in it, a law regarding the treatment and definition of hoaxes was passed in England.  Due to the wording of the law, many ARG fans wondered if it would negatively impact the future of ARGs as the classical idea of what an ARG is would now be deemed a “hoax.”  Ever since then, whenever I see a promising ARG, I see it ruined by Microsoft logos or disclaimers in the screens.  It’s removed the mystery, the sense that maybe you made a wrong turn and are actually in over your head, and a definite flavor of fun.  Other fun can be had, of course, but the feeling that you were actually involved in a real-life drama was absent.  More to the point, even American based ARGs can be affected if the ARG’s puppetmasters want the game to be playable to much of an extent in other countries.

And while I’d hoped that this ARG would be promising (after all, if I were to, say, see Dollhouse logos everywhere, it would make sense in this ARG), the opening disclaimer both told me that it was a game, and also established the playing field as existing only on the website.

So it makes me sad.

Now, I’ve not had a chance to look at more than a few of the file histories and things on this website.  It could be that there’s a good ARG here (this is one of those times where my difficulties watching videos on the web will really, really hinder me).  However, whether from executive meddling, a concern over the laws across the pond, or other reasons that aren’t yet clear, Dollplay has, it seems, not granted a positive first impression.  Here’s hoping, though.  Here’s hoping.

Dollhouse

Well, the wait is over, and Joss Whedon fans have had just over a full hour now to digest the first episode of Mutant Enemy’s latest production, Doll House.  I’m a pretty solid Whedon fan, and I thought at first that I wouldn’t be able to watch it, but fortune smiled upon me and I was able to make the mad dash into my living room to flip the TV on.

My first thoughts concern Eliza Dushku.  Buffy and Angel fans will remember her as Faith, the rogue slayer, and when the episode first started we saw Dushku (did they call her Carolina in that opening?  Caroline?  I’m sure it wasn’t Coraline, I would’ve made note of it) playing what felt a whole lot like Faith.  I considered what a sci-fi show starring Faith would entail, and I got a very “Dark Angel”ish vibe off of it.  (One last note about that intro: “Have you ever tried to clean a slate?  You can still read what was on it before” simultaneously struck me as a really cool line, but also like the kind of line that people would never say in real life.  Make of that what you will.)

However, the rest of the episode quickly convinced me that we weren’t going to be seeing a show starring Faith or Max.  Instead, we meet Echo and the Dollhouse organization.

I enjoyed the episode, but I want to say that it struck me as being very different from Joss Whedon’s standard presentations.  He said once that all of his shows are about “created family.”  And while I can certainly see that as being a potential direction that the show might eventually head in, this first episode never gave a sense of  “these characters are your protagonists.”  Buffy had the core four of the Scoobies discussing why Buffy didn’t want to fight vampires but why she would.  Angel had the soon-to-be charter of Angel Investigations being fast-talked into setting up a proper business.  Firefly gave us a pull through of the whole ship which gave us almost all the characters (one who wouldn’t be a character, and one major player yet to be revealed.)

In this show?  I never got that sense of togetherness, and I think it was intentional.  I could tell who the main characters were, but they were clearly not a family.  They were coworkers, and in an organization such as Dollhouse it would make sense that familial relationships might not be a priority.

I also appreciate the fact that several characters repeatedly stressed that what was going on was criminal, and a variation on the line “we aren’t interested in justice” appeared at least twice.  It’s not a wacky-fun-lovin’ group, it’s a morally ambiguous (at best) and potentially evil (at worst) enterprise.

What we have here might be likened as the upside of Wolfram & Hart (keep in mind that I’ve only seen the first two seasons of Angel, and as such don’t know how very wrong later seasons might prove that comparison to be.)

Now, it’s altogether possible that the reason why this episode didn’t feel like your normal Joss Whedon Pilot is that it wasn’t the first episode created.  I believe that we’ll be seeing the original first episode next week.  Will it feel like a more standard Joss Whedon show then?  Possibly.  Would that be a good thing?  Possibly, but I’d argue no.

Of course, we’ve only got the first episode for a lengthy series (did they say the phrase “five years” at the beginning there?  A five year mission, boldly going into new TV conventions?)  Anything goes, and probably will.  However, this episode didn’t suffer from the weaknesses that so many pilot episodes suffer from, so I’m wondering what the show will be like months from now when I can look back at the pilot from an established status quo.

Coraline: Not the Book, But Still Worth a Watch

Coraline.  I liked it. But I will certainly understand it if I’m one of the only people who claims to enjoy it. The movie didn’t really follow traditional movie plot formats (or, more precisely, it didn’t follow movie plot formats the way that you would expect a movie to.) The plot was unfolding a bit like a mystery movie rather than the expected way that a horror, suspense or adventure movie would normally unfold. Honestly? I can see a kid leaving the movie thinking it was awesome, while an adult would leave the movie feeling that the first third of it was too slow and boring. The first third was the type of exposition that I remember really enjoying when I was younger but not appreciating as much in later years.

And speaking as a Neil Gaiman fan who read the original book, I can say that the movie does differ in plot from the book, but I do not believe that this difference detracted from the story too greatly.

The one bad thing I can say about the movie (unless you would take my dancing around the phrase “slow to start” above as a bad thing) is that the animation seemed off a bit at the start. I could tell at times that the animation was stop motion (which I knew going into it, of course, but still…) The difficulty I had was a weird one. The motion wasn’t “jerky”, but it certainly wasn’t “smooth.” Honestly, it looked like computer animation…but only if the computer animation had about half of the individual pictures that the movie is made up of removed. I can also say that the movie was in 3D (even down to having the glasses handed out with the ticket), but the movie didn’t need to be, I don’t think. The film would have been just fine if it had all been confined to the screen in front of me (and honestly, very little of the movie jumped off of that screen, and when it did it never came too close to me…then again, I wasn’t sitting in the center of the audience, so my vision might’ve been skewed? Perhaps.)

Regardless: I enjoyed it and felt that my time and money hadn’t been wasted. I doubt that I’ll be watching it again in the cinema, but I wouldn’t mind owning it when it comes out on DVD. For people who are planning on watching it: don’t expect it to be The Nightmare Before Christmas, or you will be dissapointed. Don’t expect it to be Corpse Bride, or you will be dissapointed. Heck, don’t expect it to be Beowulf, Stardust, or the book it was originally based upon, or you could also be dissapointed. Just sit back and let yourself enjoy it. Or don’t, it’s a free country.

PS-Oh, and I was also a little weirded out by the fact that the movie apparently takes place in the USA. While I suppose that might make sense from a marketing standpoint on paper, I think that the Harry Potter series has shown us that a movie can do well in America even if it’s based in Brittain. I don’t think that the Americanization hurt the movie, but I’m not convinced it helped either. Either way, though, it didn’t bug me too much.

PPS-I went with a few friends, one of whom happened to be my sister, and she actually caught that a song in it was played by They Might Be Giants. I didn’t realize it until it was pointed out, but yes, it was certainly John’s voice singing it. And we watched for TMBG to be mentioned in the end credits to verify (I always love watching the end credits, and yeah, I know I’m in the vast minority there.) Nifty touch, in my opinion.

Dr. Horrible on DVD: Putting your Commentary to Music

Continuing my tradition of being slow on the uptake and among the last to review things, I figured that it wouldn’t be terrible to do a review of the DVD of Dr. Horrible.  For once I thought I was actually on the ball, but when I told a friend that I’d just ordered the DVD I was informed that he’d been reading reviews of it for a while now.  Those reviews, he said, announced that the disc was a bit cheap and non-commercial and that most of the money had gone to the box.

I have to tell you: I really didn’t notice it that it was a cheap DVD.  I didn’t at all.  If I hadn’t been told, I don’t think I would be even commenting on it right now.

One of the difficulties with Dr. Horrible’s transition to DVD, though, was sound quality.  A lot of the stuff that sounded wonderful on a computer speaker sounded less glamorous when given the full support of the speakers on my TV set.  The only other comment that I would make regarding Dr. Horrible’s switch to DVD regards the act breaks.  I really wish that rather than just saying “Act Two” and “Act Three” at the act breaks, it had actually gone through the full credit sequence each time like it does when you watch it online.  A part of that is because the nerd in my likes completeness.  The presentation nerd in me, though, wants it for a different reason: the act openers are when you familiarize yourself with Dr. Horrible’s theme music.  You’re given those three moments when you view the musical online to really get to feel that theme music and catch a glimpse of the sort of mood that Dr. Horrible wishes he could evoke in others.

Having viewed it thusly online, when that music begins playing near the end of Act Three at the homeless shelter, the viewer can really get the feeling that This Is His Moment.  The theme music playing then really establishes it as a moment of glory for him that has the potential to shape the rest of his life.  With the shortened act intros, I’m not so convinced that the new viewer will so readily get that feeling.  It’s a small nit for me to pick at, but there it is.

Now the biggest draw for this new DVD is, of course, the special features.  As the musical itself is available easily enough to online viewers (at least the online viewers in the States) the commentary and making of features and seeing the winners for the ELE Application Video contests really amount to the cost of the DVD that you’re holding.

The most advertised DVD feature, I think, would be the addition of “Commentary: The Musical!”  Now, setting things to musical that should not be set to musical is a long running gag, and whenever something new comes out that would be horrible to set to music you can bet that someone, somewhere has jokingly announced the musical version of it, sometimes even going so far as to rapidly improvise the first few bars of the song.

Every once in a while, someone follows through on such a concept, if only to drive home just what a bad idea it is.  “Commentary: The Musical!” is a bad idea, and the execution was similarly bad, which is where a great deal of the humor lies.  Its saving grace is that you have folks like Joss Whedon working on it, and Joss knows how to make a musical (to date, Spike’s “Let Me Rest In Peace” song from “Once More, With Feeling” is one of my favorite songs in TV show history.)  The musical follows all of the stereotypical Broadway tropes that you’d expect, and consists mostly of filler.

All in all, I would claim that “Commentary: The Musical!” is at least as good a special feature, if not better in many respects, than the full episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad that was included on the Bender’s Big Score DVD (yes, I’ve watched both of them.  Yes, I’m a nerd.)

All in all, Commentary: The Musical! is tolerable, but only because they also provide actual, non-musical commentary for you to listen to.  Call me old fashioned, but if you’re gonna do a special musical number for your commentary, you should also have a non-musical version as well.

Oh, and kudos to the ELE applicants.  Good quality work (my favorite was the second one, the orphan who controlled air.)  And the Dishonorable mention list was hilarious to watch, just at the sheer magnitude of villainous names.

Hugo Awards: Best Graphic Story

Well, I just learned that a few of the webcomics I read qualify for a new Hugo category! That’s right, the humble world of webcomics qualifies for the most prestigious award that sci-fi has to offer! And I’d like to give special attention to two of them.

First of all, Phil and Kaja Foglio have an elligible story. Their 8th volume of the Girl Genius comic, “Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones” is beautifully drawn and magnificently written (which isn’t really a surprise as it is, after all, a Girl Genius comic). The story is a fun and slightly creepy adventure.

The other story I’d like to point out is Howard Taylor’s “Schlock Mercenary: The Body Politic.” Now, while Howard’s artistry isn’t quite as breathtaking as what you see in Girl Genius (by his own admission), and while his stories have comedic elements highly infused throughout all the serialized drama, I think that it actually surpasses Girl Genius in a few ways.

To begin with, while both stories are fun and adventurous romps through science fiction, I think that Howard Taylor’s work meets more of the qualification for the “science” half of the science fiction combo. Girl Genius is a gaslight fantasy, a sort of wild extrapolation of what Jules Verne might have given us. A lot of the sci-fi elements within are actually well-disguised elements of fantasy that hide behind the “Heisenburg Compensator Gambit.” (Star Trek fans and physics students probably know what I’m talking about when I mention Heisenburg Compensators, and the physics students could probably tell you why the name sounds sciencey but is in fact fantasyey.)

Now, that isn’t to say that Schlock Mercenary is completely devoid of Fantasy elements, especially not considering the story that The Body Politic presents. Though in general, Taylor’s military space opera has a firmer rooting in science than the sparks and mad scientist who play in Studio Foglio’s gaslight world.

Still, that’s the rub isn’t it? It’s very tempting for me to judge the Entire story of Schlock Mercenary against the Entire story of Girl Genius, but that’s not what’s elligible. The elligibility falls to fairly well defined aspects of those two stories, chapters within the larger framework.

Regardless, I would love it if either of these webcomics won a Hugo. That would rock so many kinds of world. Seriously, M Class on down.

For those who might be interested in reading these two stories that I mention (though there are, of course, other options. I should look into it and see if the Zap! webcomic would qualify in any way…), here’s a couple links. Knock yerself out. And if you’ve never read Schlock Mercenary or Girl Genius (or Zap!) before? Then you’re in for a major treat.

Here be the stories themselves…
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20070520.html
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080204

And here be the websites proper.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com
http://www.zapinspace.com/

And for the record, Howard Taylor has started offering this particular story for a free download to anyone who doesn’t want to go through the hassle of clicking through his archives. Excellent move, if you ask me (I initially said, “Dude, doesn’t a large part of your income depend on people buying your books?” Then I said, “Hey, self, the books are already available easily anyway, this won’t hurt the dead tree sales.”)
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/TBPHugo.pdf

So, I hope you enjoy the worlds of Schlock Mercenary and Girl Genius! Congrats to both. Here’s hoping that a webcomic takes home a Hugo! Seriously, even if it’s a webcomic that I never read I’ll probably cheer for joy. Though yeah, it’d be more awesome if it was one that I did.

Pushing Daisies: What TV Needs

I should’ve written this review quite a long time ago.  But something about tonight’s episode pushed me to it (midway through the episode, even, it’s only 7:34 as of this exact moment.)

Pushing Daisies is, to oversimplify the premise, a murder mystery fairy tale (or “forensic fairy tale” as I’ve heard it called, though forensics has little to do with the actual procedings of the case cracking.)  The show features a pie maker who can raise the dead with a touch, and then make them dead again with a second touch (but it has to be within a minute, or someone else will die.)  He and the staff of his restaurant (”The Pie Hole”) work for/with a private investigator to solve mysteries by waking the dead and asking them how they died, though in the granted minute of time they rarely have the ability to gather everything they need (especially in cases where the murderer pushed them from behind.)

Now that I’ve oversimplified it, the actual reason for enjoying this series has to do with its presentation.  Nearly everything about the show screams fairy tale, from whimsical names of the characters (Olive Snook, for example) to the amazing narrator who, well, narrates the events of the show.  Furthermore, I see the show as a celebration of the wonders of everyday life and community.  The people of these shows really throw themselves into their work.  Regardless of what job a person does, their whole world seems to be filled with the positive, fun aspects of those jobs.  Bee keepers work in giant, stylized bee and honey themed buildings, the local fried chicken restaurant is run by an incredibly familiar looking Colonel, and circus clowns carpool by the dozen in the smallest cars around.

This isn’t to say that the world of this show is so idealized that everyone lives in perfect happiness.  No, the murderers of this show are always disgruntled about something, otherwise why murder?  Whether because they feel wronged, or because they have something to gain, this is still a world of problems.

I think I like this because it discards that old, tired saw that happiness and wonder is just an illusion, and that beneath the sparkling coat of paint the world is filled with ugliness and meanness.  Instead, this show suggests that the world is, in fact, a wonderful place where it’s okay to hope, but there are people within it who mess up the perfection.

If I were to level a complaint against the show, it would be that sometimes the “murder of the week” style can be fit into the plot where it doesn’t always seem right.  Some episodes I would prefer for the murder to not be there while the characters deal with their own personal issues, and those issues are indeed interesting.  Everyone in the show is a schemer and secret keeper in one way or another, whether the secrets be because they’re afraid, greedy, or just of the opinion that the secret is their business and no one else’s.  What this winds up creating is a sort of stew that combines all the best elements of a farce with a stylized melodrama.  With all the people coming back from the dead, faking death, and not telling people about the deaths being faked, the series is constantly setting up dominoes just for the fun of seeing them topple an episode, five episodes, or an entire season later.

In fact, the writers may be realizing that the murders don’t always need to take place.  Tonight’s episode  (It’s 8:08 at this point in the writing.  Yes, I’ve been writing during commercials for half an hour now) featured no actual murder, just a vast series of consequences falling on the footsteps of three major characters and one recurrant character (is she the lady from Shining Time Station, that old PBS show that was on when I was younger?  I need to IMDB that, I really hope it’s her.)

Anyway, if you’re a fan of fairy tales, murder mysteries, farces, cooking shows, melodrama, pies, or kindly British narrators, you really need to watch an episode or three of Pushing Daisies.  Seriously, what are you waiting for?