Donna Jack: A Lady of Infinite Jest

Day 11 - A show that disappointed you

Several years ago, I kept hearing all this buzz about a new show called Heroes. "It's awesome!" exclaimed friends and coworkers alike. "It's superheroes done right on TV!" they added, with gleeful exuberance. Well, I like superheroes. And I like television, in case you had somehow missed that over the past couple weeks. Plus, I admit I was intrigued by their whole "Save the cheerleader, save the world" campaign. "How Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" I thought. As you've also probably noticed, I also love Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a great love. I wasn't interested in a clone, but I was intrigued to see if they could do a similar idea differently.

Quixote and I tuned in somewhere half-way through the season; we caught up, of course, first. And we were enthralled: time travel! Geeky Japanese guy as comic relief becomes slightly dark-edged bad-ass! Creepy serial killer who can steal powers! Sweet guy of faith who can absorb powers without that annoying Rogue-like life-sucking thing! Flying characters! Mindreaders! Pseudo-scientific explanations! Split personalities where the main personality doesn't have a superpower! A healer who's a bastard! Generational conspiracies! A stab at multiethnic representation!¹

Heroes really felt like something as sprawling and epic as X-Men done in an intelligent manner on television. We really enjoyed the hell out of S1 and, while the ending was predictable, we still finished out the initial storyarc(s) feeling pleased and stoked to see where the show was going.

Also, as I've mentioned before, my appreciation is vast for Bryan Fuller projects. Color me unsurprised to discover Bryan Fuller was initially involved with Heroes!

Of course, then S2 happened; instead of building on the awesome of S1, they rehashed the origin storylines. Sometimes even the same origins, going back over ground already covered on S1 characters. There was a wider representation of ethnicity, but they continued to do it poorly. The cohesion of the show began splintering, with plot holes as dense as black holes and storylines randomly abandoned. In S3, it got even worse: instead of drawing on the strengths of comic book superhero origins, the television series seemed doomed instead to act out the worst aspects of comicdom in garish colors and excruciating detail.

We gave up when Sylar relapsed, after the first half of S3. Right before they decided to do the whole political terrorism/registration act storyline. We were irrevocably disappointed: we don't really give up on television shows that easily.

Quixote was so badly burned out on it that he had negative interest in checking in on the series periodically to see where it went. I would occasionally visit the Wikipedia articles and scan through the recent plot developments. My choice to drop the show was constantly vindicated as the storylines continued to spiral into ridiculous chaos.

Honestly, I'm happy it's finally been cancelled. It should have been put out of its misery some time ago, and has become one of those media franchises where I only admit to it having one season.²


1. Admittedly a poor stab, but still a stab? This is something that needed major work, especially their representation.

2. Much as there is, essentially, only one Highlander film.


( 30 Days of TV: The List )

Day 09 - Best scene ever

I feel like I should be prefacing each of these posts with the reminder that my answers are constrained by what I can remember when I sit down to do this meme. I do put a good measure of thought into each question, going down the lists of my favorite or important television shows, probing my memory for "best scene ever" examples, for example. But I don't have an eidetic memory, so I have to rely on whatever my mental net can pull out of the mess of my media memory at the present. I'm sure if I had longer to ponder the question, I'd come up with more or different answers; however, with an on-and-off 24-hour consideration here in the summer of 2010, this is what I came up with.

Also, I have chosen to interpret "best scene ever" as "coolest, most bad-ass (optionally hilarious) scene ever."

I think I'll go with a top 5.

Note: I've included links to these scenes where possible for those who want to relive them; if you haven't seen the episodes in the first place, however, I don't recommend watching them out of context!

5. Mal first demonstrates his unique brand of negotiating in Firefly.
This is one of those quintessential scenes from the second episode ("The Train Job") of Firefly that firmly demonstrates these protagonists are not entirely Good Guys. It also does so in a macabrely funny manner. It's part of what made Firefly such a strong and compelling show.

4. Buffy finds her inner core of strength in "Becoming: Part Two."
I couldn't find a decent clip of this one, sadly: in the season finale to the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her vampire boyfriend Angel has lost his soul once more and become the terrifying Angelus. Naturally, Angelus has stalked Buffy and his game culminates in a good, brutal round of taunting battle. Since I can't find a clip, allow me to quote from Alexander Thompson's transcript of the episode:

( Transcript here! )

3. Daleks vs. the Cybermen from New Who.
This is my optionally hilarious choice: in the season finale ("Doomsday") of the second season of the new Doctor Who, you have this extended scene of the Daleks and the Cybermen smack-talking each other. I was hysterical with laughter the first time I saw it, which helped some considering I was sobbing with heartbreak by the end of the episode.

2. Ambassador Delenn, Defender of Babylon 5
I love Big Damn Heroes: Delenn is the quintessential definition of one such in Babylon 5 and this is one scene by which that is incandescently apparent. The fierce temperance of her words and the way the Earth Alliance warships don't even hesitate before leaving always has me shouting "Fuck yeah, Sea King!" Or, you know, something like. The scene is from "Severed Dreams" (3.10).

And the most kick-ass scene?

1. Battlestar Galactica to the rescue on New Caprica.
If you plan on watching Battlestar Galactica, but you haven't seen through Season 3, don't read this! That said, this was one of the most amazing scenes in the show, even while being immersed in a bunch of sub-par aspects of the show fore and aft. When Adama dropped the Galactica into atmo in "Exodus: Part 2", I'm pretty sure I punched the air with amazed glee. Watching them launch the vipers and then do an FTL jump away sealed the deal: I was crowing that Adama had huge, titanium cajones.

Quixote says that he concurs with most of my choices.¹ He adds that he considers the closing scene of "Time Enough at Last" from The Twilight Zone to be one of the most iconic scenes ever. He also wants to mention the closing scene of The Prisoner in "Fall Out" for its sheer WTF?! scene awesomeness.



1. I can specify that he's not including Buffy the Vampire Slayer in his echo.

( 30 Days of TV: The List )

Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show

Incredibly brief answer tonight... thanks to a chronic health condition, I am under the weather and worsening. I need to be in bed.

I'm sticking to answering from Buffy the Vampire Slayer for this one, since it's what I used on yesterday's favorite episode question.

There are more than a few cringe-worthy episodes of Buffy, and today I'm going to call out "I Robot... You Jane" (1.8) and "Ted" (2.11). One for castigating "TEH EVIL INTERNETS!!11!" and the second for its heavy-handed storyline.

I can't get any more in-depth. I'm hurting too much.

Quixote says that it's Babylon 5's "Midnight on the Firing Line," for being one of the worst episodes of S1 (which was an awful, awful season) and becase it's a rehash of the deplorable pilot with nothing original in it.

( 30 Days of TV: The List )

Day 05 - A show you hate

I don't pay much attention to shows I don't like, so it's hard to qualify something that I feel enough distaste for to say "I hate that show." (At least without spending a lot of time dwelling on this subject, which I'd rather not do.)

I don't like The Family Guy or Squidbillies; they annoy me and I'm forever turning them off whenever they turn up on Adult Swim. That's really all I've got.

Quixote comes up with Dollhouse and Heroes, with Heroes as a show he cares much more strongly about. We loved the first season, but then were truly horrified by how it devolved. He was especially intensely disappointed and ended up turned off enough to turn off the show (and never check into future developments, as I would periodically do).

Short answers today! As I said, though, I don't spend much time on what I dislike completely. And I have to run off to work soon.

( 30 Days of TV: The List )

P.S. LOL, Quixote wandered back in here to give a mini-rant about how much he hated Star Trek: Enterprise, and that he'd like to add that to his answer. He was infuriated by how Berman and Braga used Enterprise to try and rewrite Star Trek to suit themselves and was incredibly displeased with how the show failed to live up to its potential.

Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)

Here we have a tie for Community and Glee, with Community edging slightly ahead of the Fox juggernaut. See, Community has been of consistent quality throughout its first season, with only a few slight dips. When Glee has slipped qualitatively, it's been bad.

However, I talked about Community yesterday, and you should totally just read that post again. And watch the clips. Again. They're funny! (Quixote doesn't care if we talked about Community just yesterday, that's his answer again today.)

My delight in Glee is founded on a love of musical theatre, singing along to good songs, an appreciation for ridiculous plots, and a willingness to watch awful people if they're funny enough. Almost everyone on the show is a reprehensible human being to some degree, and I'm okay with that. They're fictional: I don't have to respect them. I'm just here to dig their music and absurdity.

Okay, my relationship with the show has gotten deeper and more complex than that since the show began, but I don't really want to get mired in a discussion of its major issues right now: it's been getting some things right, but it's been doing even more so very wrong.

I am failing at not beginning an actual analysis of Glee. This post stops here!

( 30 Days of TV: The List )

I've been thinking about doing the 30 Days of Me meme for a little while now, but then enna_xor went and posted her first entry in the 30 Days of TV, which promises an interesting daily reflection on viewing habits and preferences. I find these sorts of informative memes to be interesting, so it's time to give one a try.

I'd love to engage with y'all in the comments - even if you don't pursue the entire meme in your own spaces, tell me your answers in mine.

Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled.

Four shows immediately spring to mind: Firefly, Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me¹, and Carnivale. Firefly was cut down in its prime and was a show that made me fall in love with it within two or three episodes; however, in retrospect, I can admit that it had some problematic aspects in its worldbuilding and execution.² Pushing Daisies is my heart's true whimsy-love, but it was episodic enough that I don't feel a bone-deep ache of loss over its cancellation. Dead Like Me's cancellation affected me very strongly at the time, as I felt an intense connection to its story and characters in the midst of watching it; since then, though, I feel more distance from it, and don't feel as terribly.

But, oh, Carnivale.

Carnivale was brilliant and dark and gritty and, most importantly, it was fully planned out. More aggravatingly, the creator refuses to tell the story in any way except through film, how he originally envisioned it. At least Pushing Daisies and Firefly either have had or are planning sequential art continuations of their stories.³ And Firefly and Dead Like Me got feature films.⁴

So, that's my answer: Carnivale most emphatically should never have been canceled. I first watched this show five years ago, post-cancellation, and I still haven't finished mourning that loss. Discovering that HBO offered not to cancel it if the producers would limit expenses per episode to 2M and that he refused to compromise at all further complicates my feelings.⁵ I just want to finish watching this remarkable story unfold.

And, for fun, here's my husband's answer: Star Trek.

He doesn't feel this needs elaboration, considering the cancellation of the original show to be one of the most tragic assassinations in the history of television. Although, he did unpack it a bit further to remark that even one more season of Star Trek would more than likely have made science fiction a viable television enterprise thirty years before it finally became one thanks to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Sin of sins, I myself actually haven't seen a full episode of Star Trek (the original series) beyond "Space Seed." One of our summer television projects therefore has been set.




1. Yeah, I have a thing for series created by Bryan Fuller: I almost put Wonderfalls on that list as well.

2. The Companion element being one of the most glaring that wasn't working out as it should have at the beginning.

3. See: Serenity: Those Left Behind and Serenity: Better Days. As a side note, there's also been some additions to Firefly canon in the recently released Firefly: Still Flying. Pushing Daisies had one short comic that was a Comic-Con goodie, but this news article shows there's plans for more (although those plans keep getting pushed back, it's still apparently in production).

4. See: Serenity and Life After Death. (The collector's edition of the Serenity DVD includes the River Tam sessions, which are a must-have.)

5. See the Wikipedia article's section on the cancellation.


( 30 Days of TV: The List )