So, this was one of the few new shows this fall that I was looking forward to with particular interest. The premise, of a slacker who discovers his parents sold his soul to the devil, and now must be a bounty hunter of sorts for souls that have escaped hell, amused me, in a way that the early promise of Buffy did. The clips I saw made the writing and the performances look pretty sharp, and I liked the cast. So I gave it a shot. Was it worth the hype, as one review called it, the 'best show on the CW" (which maybe isn't saying much?)



OH YES.



The cast is dead-on, so to speak.







Bret Harrison is Oliver, the slacker. I recall him most from a Law & Order: SVU of a disturbing nature, and from Orange Country, which was an underrated flick that I guess didn't get enough exposure because Jack Black wasn't craaaaazy enough in his role. Harrison has a great face for this sort of thing: good expressions, believable shock and awe, kind of likable.







Taylor Lavine is 'Sock' who is the real undiscovered gem here. He's played a lot of really E-list roles in small Canadian productions, but he has that special charisma, for the big, obnoxious, hyperactive duuuude, that makes it work as someone compelling to watch rather than just irritating. He's hilarious.







Missy Peregrym, with a name I wish I invented, may be familiar as the illusion-caster from Heroes, now playing the love interest. She's pretty sharp, part Biel and part Swank I suppose, but certainly convincing as a brain and beauty slumming it at the chain store after being soul-crushed by a parent's death.







Lastly, Ray 'Twin Peaks' Wise as Satan. Man. I love this guy so much it hurts. He's so smooth. Rolls his 'rs''s and has a sly grin, while being totally creepy. I'd like to get him, Goldbloom, Walken and DeFoe in a room for some stoney conversations and just record it all. He's AMAZING. And while not as bad ass as Peter Stormare's tar-footed, dirty-white-suited devil in Constantine, he's damn impressive as Satan in a powersuit.



:::



The pilot, directed by Kevin 'Command Center' Smith, involves establishing Oliver and his supporting cast, including his job at the Price Right (ie. Wal-Mart) with Sock and Andi, his parents' discomfort on his 21st birthday, the arrival of the devil, and after his shock, his attempt to perform his task, by taking out a murderous arsonist who has taken the form of a fireman after escaping Hell. Pretty straight-forward. However, Wifebot(tm) and I were shooting milk out of our noses in the execution.



Just some of the highlights:



- A scene in which Sock and Oliver are talking in the car before going into work, there's a small rabid dock leaping repeatedly, violently, against Sock's passenger door. While they talk, he pauses, then times it and flings the door open right as the dog's in mid leap, sending it flying with a yelp. It was awesome, and that dog would continue to rock throughout the episode



- These dog are chasing Oliver, from outside his house, to finally in the Price Right where, interrupting a tender moment with Andi, they pool at the end of the aisle, like rotweillers, dobermans, and this little ratone... growling with hate (except for where their ears are up, and the tails are wagging) As they chase down the aisle, the little ratone's in the lead, but Sock comes flying around the corner with a backpack-mounted leaf blower fired up in one hand, and a fist-pumping in the other. The little dog skids to a halt. It's hilarious. Milk, out of nose.



- At the party at a bar the night before Oliver's soul is taken, Sock is playing pool, and his ex comes waltzing in, the only member of the group to have a 'real job' as a district attorney's aide. She shoves past him as she comes by, knocking him into the table on mid-shoot, sending the balls and the cue everywhere. His outrage was awesome.

"Hey, everyone, she used to be a DUDE."

"So did you."



- Sock rocks an R3 wristband.



- The devil cooks a mean chicken fried steak. "Oh god, I'm SO glad I don't have arteries."

Does this little 'yessir' gesture with his fork.



- Devil: "You'd be like a bounty hunter. That's COOL, right?"



- The portals to Hell are hidden all around. Anywhere that feels like Hell... IS Hell. Naturally, the nearest portal? The DMV. Awesome.



- "Oh gag, look at that tool." Points to Sock, up on some industrial shelving, furiously, methodically wrapping his right hand in duct tape. Had it been electrical tape, I'd have died.



- Oliver's given a 'vessel' for capturing the escaped soul. It's in an ornate wooden locker. "It doesn't LOOK evil" says the not-CrabMan.

Sock: "WADDAYAMEAN. It's got DEMON HEADS all over it."



- Oliver trying to convince someone what he was seeing was real:

"He was the devil. He was wearing... a SUIT!" As, you know, proof.



- When not-CrabMan is hospitalized with severe burns on his face after their initial attempt to capture the arson demon, Andi comes to the hospital and asks what happened. Oliver tries to cover, saying they were working on a project. She asks what kind. Sock: "Making napalm." Loved it. Just like Pan and Jim on the Office. Dodge, with the truth!



- At one point, Satan and Oliver are having a discussion in an empty hockey rink (Satan LOVES hockey) while the guy drives around shaving the eice with the ride-on thingie-doo. Satan stops Oliver, in order to better enjoy a Six Feet Under moment, when it gets jammed, the guy goes down in front of it to check, it starts and pulverizes him, thereafter doing lazy bloodsmear circles around the rink, to Satan's delight.



- Oliver: "People are DYING!"

Sock: "But yeah, but if you don't KNOW them, does it REALLY matter?" shrug.



- In an argument with his ex, whose courthouse office they've come to in order to get some records, and who is pissed that they are bothering her at work, Sock replies: "Yeah?!? Well, why don't you ever come to MY work? Don't you ever need a battery... or a Roomba?"



- In preparing for combat with the arson demon, there's a nice Hot Fuzz hoage where they get dressed up in protective gear and weapons made from crap they find at Price Right, like flame retardant suits, duct tape, safety vests, and my favorite part: active SMOKE DETECTORS. Later, when he's attacked by a fireball, Sock's smoke detectors can be heard screaming.



- The arson demon was named 'Smecker' (last name) so when they confront him a second time, Sock defiantly self-ascribes them as 'Smecker checkers!'



- Also, when they confront this massive arson demon dude, he's in human form as a super ripped tattooed dude, who is entertaining himself, mid-hose-wind at the fire truck, by flexing and popping and admiring his arms. When he goes to move against Sock, Sock can be heard stammering: "uh...fr...free weights? you, uh, work out?"



- Lots of Ghostbuster vibes here, as they are dressed in body suits and backpacks, going after a demon with an enchanted Dirt Devil handvac.



- After Satan sees Oliver talking to Andi, he sort of eyes her as she leaves. Oliver protests ("oh, I swear to god, come ON!"), and Satan, sort of agitated, says: "Swear to WHO? I don't play in the kiddie pool."



- As a little treat for his successful capture of the demon, Satan is cruising around Price Right buying all sorts of crap, in order to rig the sales contest for the month (straight homage to Employee of the Month) where Oliver wins a giant glazed ham.

As they devour it, feeding the pack of demon dogs or whatever, witht he scraps, Sock: "This just tastes better because it's the taste of VICTORY... plus... it's glazed."



:::



That should be all you need to know to set your DVRs, kids!



10/10 Clicks!

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So The Office returned with a 1-hour episode last night, and it was good stuff. Good stuff!



Highlights for me:



-nipple shear jokes in the 5K charity run.

-the fact that the run wasn't a loop. And Kelly didn't even record his win.

-The 5K is NOT 5,000 mile run. With no water.

-Jim went to do internet research on a sacrificial animal with a head of a meerkat, the body of an egret... no wait, it was a head of a monkey, with antlers... and the body was undecided.

-Creed was both a follower (more fun) and a leader (more profitable) of several cults.

-"Sprinkles (pronounced 'Prinkles' by Michael later) was in the freezer, just like Dwight said it was, but th bags of frozen fries were ripped to shreds."

-Meredith: rolled on that car window like a trooper, got potential rabies because the bat from last season was in a bag, WITH HER HEAD, and is the 'ugly face of Rabes'

-I love the new guy.



Much much more, but what did YOU think?

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Well, his comment on his own message board seems to have been true. No mas Cho. DAMN!



http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=130974

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Arthur Suydam can do no wrong.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/ ... i?id=11966

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It couldn't have been resisted much longer.

How the hell will they make THIS concept work for today's audiences???



http://www.variety.com/article/VR111797 ... id=14&cs=1

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I know I was initially pretty grousy about FF being Hitchy's new project. But man, Hitchy work wins out over boredom with the characters. Crap these look great.



http://www.wizarduniverse.com/magazine/ ... 004129.cfm

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Journeyman is pretty obviously Quantum Leap for 2007, which is kind of a funny-sounding way to put it, being a time-travel show. I was of two minds about the pilot: on the one hand, i appreciated that they didn't just roll everything out very obviously and cleanly in that family-friendly sort of way so that there isn't much challenge to the narrative (ie. Quantum Leap) but on the other hand, the script, and production, takes short cuts that bore me as a viewer.



Dan Vasser is a reporter for a thinly-veiled SF Chronicle, always on some scoop or other. He's married to a pleasant woman and has a pleasant kid. They live in the sort of stately home with full length driveway and cultivated lawn that only non-locals assume would be possible in SF for virtually any class of citizen, from a geographical standpoint, let alone a financial one. As we piece together from the narrative, he had a fiancee named Livia, and has a brother in the SFPD, whose wife back then... in 1997... is Vasser's current wife now. There's been a wife swap! Also, Livia is pushing daisies, and he's not over her. And now, Vasser's shunting back through time, at first with no clear purpose, but gradually becoming aware that he's intended to make something important happen. He always bounced back to the present, but with time elapsing differently than expected, and once his 'mission' is resolved, he's on to the next one.



The good:



I liked that the script wasn't particularly heavy-handed about explaining how all this is happening. In fact, it doesn't even make it very clear for the character, who sort of figures it out as he gets his time-legs. He only gradually concludes he's jumping for a purpose. And when he does, and decides to commit to this role, he makes that decision fairly cleanly, with a refreshingly cut-to-the-chase few lines of dialog with his current wife, saying: "I'll always come back." and boom! He's kissing her good night, then dressing in smart, well-fitted actiony garb, and sitting in an easy chair ready for the next jump to occur. In a day when long-winded, complex serials are the norm (and I'm not complaining) it's interesting to see a number of new series this season being built around the done-in-one framework, and especially nice to see that they don't BS about establishing the premise within the pilot. Here we had one mission, the character's resolve to see it through, and now we're ready for more done-in-one missions, with a connecting thread of relationships to build on. Fine. It's simple, it's not sophisticated, but it's absolutely acceptable as a TV show framework.



McKidd is an interesting actor to watch. If I remember correctly, he's Scottish, but he looks SO much like Daniel Craig that I feel like I trick myself into believeing I'm watching Craig running around. WHich is not really a problem. I actually like some of McKidd's mannerisms and expressions about things. He did a good job at the sort of 'recognition of impossible reality/resigning to accepting it' thing, without feeling too forced or too hammy. Vasser seems like a character that has taken on this time-jumping role with the same enthusiasm as his stories, and that's a critical plot point that works for me: he's not some 9-to5-er who just suddenly had a personality makeover. We've seen him, in the past, running off for a story even during his own engagement party. That's consistent.







Moon Bloodgood is the other standout in the cast. Not just because she flips my switches, but because of the way she played her past self as a waitress: awkward, confident, a little silly, but steady. She was pretty awesome. The future/current version of her was far less compelling, veiled in some sort of earnest seriousness, but we'll see.



Lastly, the show doesn't go out of it's way to explain where and when Vasser is when he jumps. He's not coming back to the same place and time each jump. In the pilot, he popped back to 1987, then forward on the next jump to 1997, then 1999. They don't give you little text annotation or obvious clues, and maybe that's a bad thing as well as a good one. I like the challenge of determining when and where he is, but at the same time, it depends on faith that the production will do what they can to be time-period consistent, and not be lazy about set dressing. So far, the music playing, the signage, the advertisements were all period specific and kind of fun. Having moved here to SF in 1997, that part of the pilot started looking eerily familiar, and the earlier stuff was just trippy, like the old MUNI buses and the Less Than Zero billboard ads.



The Bad:



For as much work going into the time-change sets and clothes and what not, they are already being infuriatingly lazy with geographical continuity. I was just saying earlier how much I enjoy SF-based shows where the sets made sense relative to one another. Here, it's cockamamie as all get-out. Vasser lives in this giant non-SF house on a non-SF wide street, with a hill crest revealing a shimmering view of downtown beyond, which caused my wifebot(tm) to cry out: "fake! FAKE!" and it even LOOKED fake. Later, he's staggering around in Golden Gate Park, and suddenly the Golden Gate Bridge is large and in view right over the hill, as if he were in the Presidio RIGHT at the entrance to the bridge.. and even then, as if the bridge's South Tower were shoved right up against the cliff. Additionally, a central conceit of the plot is that Vasser can interact with people from his own past by slipping in when then-Vasser leaves. This assumes he hasn't aged in 10-20 years depending, and it's really irritating. Even his then-not-wife and eventually current-wife, is of the same age, in the past scenes, with not even minimal digital cover-up to smooth things out.



The attempt to tantalize us with the big picture mysteries, by showing us Livia, presumed dead, now living, with a smart haircut and apparently also time-traveling, didn't really work because we don't get enough of an understanding of why she's there, and current/future Livia actually seems to get more front and center attention than past Livia, and given the premise that he's still pining over his dead love, it seems imbalanced.



The conceit that he drops right into his journeyman role is an interesting change from serialized episodic TV these days, but at the same time, it's an imperfect match with the tone of the material. He DOES jump right in with not too much confusion or shock. It's a mixed bag. But that's fine.



Lastly, the rest of the cast kind of bores me, and I REALLY dislike his current wife. If we are supposed to relate more to Livia and the love of the past, that's fine, but they make a point of making him faithful, so far, to his current wife, and suggest that his family in the present are what matters. So, I think his current wife is miscast. I just don't dig on her much.



A final note about time paradoxes. They are really playing fast and loose with this one. Vasser is able to, and intended to, rewrite history by making select changes in other people's lives in order to effect the intended master plan change of his mission. However, there's not really much sense of a butterfly effect. It's like 7th grader time travel logic: go back, change this or that, and everything else remains constant. It's even worse when he's interacting with his own continuity, passing his own self in the hall, talking to his then-friends and affecting change in his use of them. There's no ramification to it. And in the close of the pilot, he plants a time capsule clue int he past, to prove to his wife in the present that he really IS time traveling. I was caught up in it at the time to appreciate the moment, but I was really hoping and expecting that the capsule wouldn't be there in the present, that the ripple in reality would lead to different changes: like, for example, he buried the box under where a patio would be laid in front of his house. I was hoping that in the present he would find that the patio, and that entire yard area, would be differently arranged, in some subsequent choice after he laid his clue int he past, so that earth would have long since been disturbed, the item lost or stolen. That would create more tension: no proof of his time traveling.



Last point: I found the scene of his discovery of Livia in the past as a waitress, and then later as his fiancee in his loft, EXTREMELY compelling. I also had a big-deal relationship in my past that was tough to get over, and I've often thought, over the years, about the moral dilemma of re-encountering her again. In Vasser's case, that temptation and emotional shock is compounded by the messy reality that he is legitimately in both relationships at once. In the past, he IS with Livia, and to not respond to her romantic advances would be hurtful to her, but to do anything would be hurtful in concept to his current wife. I found it a fascinating paradox. I have to admit, I hope he jumps on Livia. She has an iron abdominal group (a former laker girl)



I'm sticking around to see where they go with it, for now. I hope for more challenging scenarios and less neat nip and tuck time travel conveniences. We'll see.



7/10 Clicks

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Often, my posts about robottery could go either in the roboty category or the WRONG category... I'm charitable today.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19RJEnNUg1I



Points for making this thing work. It's pretty astounding. I love human innovation applied to nothing!

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OK, tear-wipe...

here we go:



"In the witch the sky of the necessity the broom type controller which it flies.

The taiwan game manufacturer "MEGA NET&TECH" developed, it was arcade edition of "[parase] D [runpe]". Still, development midway, it is with sample only.

If the sponsor is attached, also the day when it is seen with the Gaea plug of neighborhood is close whether?!

As for play animated picture in tomorrow rise stripe shank.

　

(Normal mountain hardness)"



:::





I LOVE machine-wrong-translated textery!





http://www.gizmodo.jp/2007/09/tgs2007_11.html

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This is their newest video from their newest album, The Else, which I think is one of their best. (If you like TMBG, anyway, they're a bit of an acquired taste)

http://www.spin.com/video/2007/09/07091 ... tbegiants/



Check this out! I love it! Robots! Blood! They Might Be Giants! Brand Awareness! Love!





I'm going to see these guys on Sunday, and I can't wait! They put on a hell of a live show.

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