Category: Idiot Box

The power of Mabel

So I’ve been watching this new Disney cartoon lately. It’s called Gravity Falls and it is the best kid show on TV. That’s a pretty bold proclamation, but I’m willing to stand behind it. And that’s competing with such wonderful things as Adventure Time and… well, pretty much just Adventure Time. Does Regular Show qualify as “for kids”?

Yes, that’s the image I’m going to use to try to sell this. Do you have a problem with it? I don’t. Pants are terrible and should be abolished.

Anyway, Gravity Falls. The show is about a pair of twins, Dipper and Mabel, who are sent off to the eponymous town of Gravity Falls to spend the summer with their great uncle Stan. I should note here that he is referred to as “Grunkle Stan” and that “grunkle” is quite possibly the best word ever. Take that, pickle. In Gravity Falls, weird stuff abounds, and most episodes so far have had a sort of creature-of-the-week vibe to them, but it’s pretty clear that there’s more going on here, and that should it make it to a second season, things aare going to get a lot deeper. Kinda like Fringe. No, exactly like Fringe. Which is good, because that’s a really awesome show too.

One of the things that I really love about Gravity Falls is the level of detail in the show. There are coded messages in the end credits, crazy single frame inserts, creepy recurring men in the backgrounds, and loads of tiny continuity things. For example: in one of the first few episodes, Dipper is chased onto the roof of Grunkle Stan’s Mystery Shack, and ends up knocking the big S over. In every subsequent episode, whenever there’s a shot of the Mystery Shack, the S remains slumped over. Also, apparently some characters have four fingers and others have five? You may think it’s an animation flub, but Dipper finds a mysterious tome in the first episode, and on the front cover is an image of a hand with six fingers. Mysterious!

Part of what drew me to the show in the first place is the silky-smooth hand-drawn animation. Check it out!

You just don’t get that level of beauty with butt-ugly Flash animations. I honestly can’t wait to buy the inevitable overpriced blu-ray set so that I can enjoy it in full HD goodness.

And since we’re sort of on the topic, my other favourite part of the show is Mabel. She is adorable, wears a different sweater every episode, and is Goddamn hilarious. Every time she opens her mouth, I invariably end up laughing out loud. I don’t know the last show that made me laugh so much, never mind a single character. The rest of the cast is great too, but Mabel makes Gravity Falls. If I ever have a daughter, I hope that she ends up with a little Mabel in her, because that girl is charming like nobody’s business. Even Abed from Community cannot hold a candle to her sheer lovableness. She does a Legend of Zelda “item get” spin at the end of the first episode, for crying out loud!

If you want to know more about Gravity Falls, go torrent you some episodes. It is so so so worth it. But don’t take my word for it, here’s a link to the Talking Time thread for it, where I done stole that movin’ picture from. Read up while you’re waiting for your torrents to finish.

Share It Maybe

You can probably guess that I’m not a huge Carly Rae Jepsen fan. She’s pretty much the embodiment of cookie cutter pop music. Nothing special or original going on there. Anyway, it seems that one song, “Call Me Maybe,” has become something of an internet meme. Which would annoy me if her music was bad, but as it is she’s merely uninteresting. Far more tolerable, but a bit less hilarious than Rebecca Black.

Anyway, here’s the best thing I’ve seen to come from this particular meme.

Awesome stuff like this is why Sesame Street has persisted so long in such a cynical world as ours. Also, check out this hilarious video with Kermit and Cookie.

24 sentences of materialism

Alright kiddies! I totally forgot to do a “24 Days of Materialism” feature this year, and the best thing I could come up to sort of replace it is this: The 24 Sentences of Materialism. It’s basically the same concept, I choose 24 things I like and tell you to buy them, only this time I’m ripping off the long-dead Video Game Article‘s “One Sentence Reviews” feature. So here’s a list of video games, albums, books, and TV shows that I love and think you should buy for yourself or your loved ones (and also a link to a related webpage for each). Honestly, I think this is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. It’s terribly difficult to express everything I want to say about a product in only one sentence.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – Take one part Ocarina of Time, one part Wind Waker, mix well, and then tweak everything just slightly: provides a surprisingly fresh Zelda experience!

2. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite – Why not help persuade Capcom to bring MH Portable 3rd or MH3G by picking up what is easily the best game in the series to date (that is available outside of Japan).

3. Groove Coaster – A rhythm game that’s incredibly simple, but will still suck you in with its trippy visuals and eclectic track selection.

4. Volchaos – A rather superb Xbox Indie game that brings back the glory days of video games: short, challenging levels, and a great sense of satisfaction when you get them right.

5. Fallout 3 – I don’t know why I don’t spend more time with this game; it’s so unlike anything else I play and all the more wonderful for it.

6. Super Mario 3D Land – The game that justifies the 3Ds’ existence.

7. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island – Getting this game (and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap) for free because I paid too much for my 3DS makes it totally worth it.

8. Anima: Ark of Sinners – It’s not really very good, but you can see potential shining through the blandness and kludgy controls.

9. Tron Legacy Soundtrack – Oddly enough, this is probably my favourite music to listen to while playing Minecraft.

10. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers – The Live Anthology – Just slightly less than four hours of pure delight.

11. Bound Together – Who could ask for more than an Earthbound tribute remix album?

12. Back in Blue – I love OC Remix but don’t generally love their albums, but this Mega Man 9 tribute is awesome all the way through.

13. Private Line – 21st Century Pirates – There must be something in the water in Finland, because they’re so good at hard rock/metal.

14. How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack – This one really should be mandatory reading for every human being.

15. The Forever War – Best novel I’ve read in… forever?

16. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth – This comic collection goes beyond hilarity and does its best to teach you some very important lessons.

17. GameSpite Journal 10: The SNES Turns 20 – What kind of gamer wouldn’t want to read a book all about SNES games?

18. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 – A huge, beautiful history lesson.

19. Futurama Season 6 – The first few episodes are kinda weak, but the quality shoots up after that and has me very excited to get BD set of the second half.

20. Community Season 2 – Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.

21. Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour – It’s like Criminal Minds if Criminal Minds sunk all the budget into the script and had first-year college students do the rest.

22. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (80’s) – Campy, cheesy, corny; whatever you want to call it, it’s all goofy nostalgia.

23. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – I liked the original series, and this one is better in every conceivable way.

24. Fringe Season 3 – Somehow this show has gotten to a point where I feel it might be better than LOST.

TE @ C4

It’s gotta be… weeks now since I went to Central Canadian Comic Con. It was cool, I must say. Though I guess I’m not as much of a nerd as I thought it was because it was (local) Nerd Mecca and I wasn’t super-psyched about it. Oh well. I took a few (blurry) pictures while I was there. Everything from Minecraft to papercraft, and even one ass that did not belong in that costume. Actually I took a few pictures of those, but I figured one is enough to prove my point and deleted the rest. Be thankful. There’s an alternate universe where this post is all pictures of asses that shouldn’t be seen by human eyes.

         

         

              

         

         

              

              

         

Pointless potential

So I’m mostly just doing a test here to see if I can post through my Wii. If you’re reading this, I totally can!

Proofreading from here is going to be a bitch though. The Wii’s tiny little text input window was totally not meant for this kind of work. So if you notice lots of little typos of the “jsut” and “anythign” variety, assume it’s a post written from the comfort of my bed. Which might make this worth it. Now unless I need to post an image, I have one less major reason to turn on my computer. Poor, neglected compy.

In related news, I’m on my third Wii console now. Not because I’m Nintendo’s bitch and keep buying each new colour or anything, but because Netflix is a horrible Wii murderer. Well, maybe it’s not Netflix, but all the evidence points to that conclusion. Let me start from the start.

Once upon a time, little Ryan was super excited that he got a message from Nintendo (via WiiConnect24, which is otherwise useless) that said he could now download a Netflix channel for his Wii. Little Ryan downloaded that channel with all the gusto, and immediately dove in. The first movie that queued up, completely by chance, was Confessions of a Nymphomaniac. Little Ryan felt a different kind of excitement and watched it. His love for Netflix bloomed instantly. Life would be wonderful from now on.
After watching more movies on the Netflix channel for hours, Ryan turned the Wii off and left to do other things for a while. He came back even later on, but when he turned on his Wii, it showed a horrible message:

“System memory has been corrupted.”

Little Ryan was devastated. His best friend had suffered from an apparent brain aneurysm, and he didn’t know what do to. The next day he turned on the Wii, just to see, and to his delight it worked! Little Ryan jumped for joy! For a while, everything seemed perfect, but then the Wii stopped working for real. It did not recover from the memory corruption, and had to be sent away to be replaced with a new console.

Little Ryan was depressed for the two long weeks his Wii was gone, but he was ecstatic when it returned, still loaded with all his Virtual Console and WiiWare purchases. Only while the license to download them was retained, they refused to play on the new console. Little Ryan set about re-downloading them all, painful a task though it was. At the end, he downloaded the Netflix channel again, and set about to watch him some River Monsters. Man, Little Ryan loved him some River Monsters.

Days and weeks went by uneventfully. Little Ryan and the Netflix channel were living happily together until one morning Ryan woke up and his Wii said

“System memory has been corrupted”

Little Ryan was devastated. Again. His Wii was dead again! But it pulled through the crisis, and Little Ryan continued to Netflix. Over the next few months the error came up again. At first it seemed to happen randomly, but as the fall set in, it started to happen every time Little Ryan tried to turn on his console. He eventually gave up and sent it in for repairs.

When Little Ryan received the second replacement Wii, he vowed to never download the Netflix channel again, because it was the devil. Four years, Little Ryan and his original console had spent together, and never had a problem. Now Little Ryan and his third Wii get along just fine, and there is no Netflix to be seen.

The End

So yeah. That’s what happened in a nutshell. The really sad part is that I loved the Netflix channel. Yes, Canadian Netflix lacks most of the AAA movies, but who cares? There’s so much on there to watch anyway! I felt like a kid in a candy store every single time I booted that channel up. I always found something to watch, and ended up watching tons of stuff that I’d have never even heard of without it. I owe Netflix a great deal, and I’m sad that I can no longer use it through my TV.

I do still subscribe to Netflix, and occasionally use it through my iPhone (mostly during workout time), though I’m a little skeptical about loading it up on my 3DS. Who knows what it’ll do? I’m certainly not signing up for Xbox Live Gold just for Netflix. One monthly fee is enough. I intend to find a cable that can make my iPhone do TV-out soon so that I can watch stuff on my TV, but it’s still not the same. The Netflix Wii interface was a little clunky, but it was nice. Better than the iPhone interface anyway. Oh well, those days have passed, and for now I live with Netflix being more a fond memory than anything else.

Go Green Machine!

Over the last month or so, I’ve been trying to sneak in an episode or two of the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon in whenever I get a chance. I own all the DVD sets after all, so I should probably actually watch them.

Now, I hear a lot of people groaning, and I stop to wonder why. I’ve heard many people who used to love the old TMNT get a hate-on for it these days, and all these people are stupid idiots. The most common reason I’ve heard for ex-fans no longer liking the show? Because the Turtles use an excess of 80’s slang and are therefore out-of-date. Here’s the thing about that: they don’t.

If you actually stop to watch the show, you’ll notice that the Turtles and the majority of the characters around them don’t use slang very often, if at all. And none of it is particularly dated. Leonardo’s vocabulary is often very proper, even eschewing contractions here and there in an effort to sound more mature and leader-like. Donatello is very similar, only he doesn’t have the air of superiority that Leo does. Raphael is the Ninja Turtle Chandler. Or Chandler is the Raphael of Friends. There are two exceptions to this rule:

1. Michaelangelo. Yes, he uses an excess of slang. But it’s not really just random 80’s slang popped in there to be cool  rad. It’s 80’s surfer slang to be specific, and it’s there because that’s a part of the character’s personality. He enjoys extreme sports, surfing in particular. 2003 Michaelangelo is the same way, but using 2003 lingo.

2. When people are referencing Michaelangelo. This is always prefaced by an “As Michaelangelo would say…”

So eat that, kids; your detraction doesn’t hold water. Maybe stop to watch an episode or two of the show before you make criticizms. But I do sort of understand. The problem is that the marketing for the show really pushed those slang terms. It was (and still is, to a degree) rare to see a piece of Turtles merch that isn’t plastered with words like “Cowabunga!” and “Tubular!”

As for me, I really like the show! (As I should, given how much money I’ve exchanged for all those DVDs.) The animation steadily improves with each season, and voice/colouring flubs happen considerably less often after the first season. There have been many instances when a one-liner has actually made me laugh out loud. More surprisingly, the lion’s share of those LOLers have come from Krang of all people. Brain people. Brain monsters. For example:

Rocksteady: Do we really have to ride in those [modules] again? All we do is go up and down, up and down
Krang: Sounds like a perfect job for a couple of yo-yos.

Fantastic! Sure, it’s not exaclty the wittiest stuff ever written, but it’s pretty damn good for a cartoon for children. And the narrative is pretty impressive for a kid show too; the entire first season follow one big plot thread, and the second season’s episodes can generally be split between two major storylines. Season three is pretty much 80’s Transformers (Turtles/Autobots stop Shredder/Megatron’s zany plans to steal an energy source), and I haven’t gotten any farther than that.

And yeah, if it degenerates into a “crazy caper of the week” type of show with only a semblance of an overall story, that’s still been more than enough for tons of other shows. Like Trailer Park Boys. Think about it. Each episiode is another one of Ricky’s wacky adventures, and each season begins with the boys getting out of jail, and ends with them going back in. That’s not how every season rolls out, but it’s the basic template. TMNT is the same: Turtles go on a wacky adventure each episode, each season opens with Krang berating Shredder over their latest failed assault with the Technodrome, and the Technodrome returns and then gets transported to a new nowhere land (Earth’s core, Arctic Ocean, etc.) at the end of every season.

Needless to say, I’m still a fan. It’s not the best old cartoon out there, but it’s certainly a contender. Mostly I just wanted to address the outdated slang issue. There are plenty of things that you could pick at and not like the show for, and if they’re reasonable arguments I’ll let you be. But picking on TMNT because of a vocabulary issue that isn’t actually there, I cannot abide.

Lucky as the wheat grass grows

I’d like to think that the world would be a better place if nerdcore supplanted whatever garbage hip-hop they play on the radio these days, but Average Joe just doesn’t want to hop on the bandwagon. I don’t understand how people, especially nerdy people, can not be into nerdcore. It’s quite often smart and funny, and covers so many more themes than club-approved rap, which is always the same dumb thing. But whatever; different strokes I suppose. Me, I love the stuff. (Duh.)

I just bought Beefy’s With Sprinkles on iTunes, after much deliberation. I’ve heard him feature in a couple MC Frontalot tracks, but was wary of paying money for an album from an unproven artist. A new Frontalot album I’d slap down the cash for without a second thought, but a rapper I’d never even heard one song from? The previews seemed pretty rad though, and at $10 it wouldn’t be a huge loss. Personally, I feel there wasn’t a cent misspent.

Beefy’s a pretty competent rapper, but what I really like here is that he’s not such a computer geek, and focuses more on video games and comics. This is great, because I always get lost in the more technology-oriented songs. “Zero Day” is up there on my list of favourite Frontalot songs, but I feel stupid when I listen to it because I don’t get it. I had to read a lot of Wikipedia pages to even grasp the basic theme of the song. Yeah, maybe it comes with the added bonus of learning, but I like when people write songs that I can easily relate to or understand, like Beefy’s “Game Store Girl” or “Sidekick”. Also he makes a referenece to Zack & Wiki, which is so many kinds of awesome.

As much as I just want to sit here all day typing about how much I like Beefy and nerdcore in general, but there’s a point to make! Like every rule, there are exceptions to this, but in general I am not a fan of music sampling. Seriously, I know rappers are generally talentless hacks, but they could get their producer to write up a shitty six-second looping beat instead of appropriating someone else’s music for their (usually) inferior song. Mostly I just hate hearing music I like cut and pasted into some garbage rap.

Beefy is the exception here. I don’t know how many of the songs on With Sprinkles use samples, but there are at least a few I recognise; most notably “Duh-nuh Nuh-nuh Nuh-nuh” and “One of These Nights.” But the real stand out here is “Uncanny” which samples the theme from the ’90s X-Men cartoon. Not only is it great to hear the tune, which I hadn’t expected at all, but the whole song is about getting up on Saturday morning to watch X-Men on FOX Kids.

This song is pure nostalgia, and it is me. When I was nine? Hells yeah I was up early on Saturday watching X-Men (and Spider-Man, and Ninja Turtles, and Mega Man, and Samurai Pizza Cats, etc etc). I even had the whole box of cereal in a giant mixing bowl thing going on. And I know many other people who did the same. It’s a wonderful, happy song that really brings on the warm fuzzies. And the X-Men theme is here for a reason. It’s not there because Beefy was too lazy or talentless to write his own music, or at least have some written for him. It’s there to enhance the experience of the song. The X-Men theme is to “Uncanny” as mutant healing factor is to Wolverine: it’s not really a defining feature, but it’s certainly cool and the song/character wouldn’t be the same without it.

While the song makes me feel all good inside, it does have a sneaky, unpleasant facet that is inherent in many things that invoke nostalgia: it makes you realize that stuff just isn’t as good as it used to be. Listening to “Uncanny” makes me think about why I don’t still get up early in Saturdays (that I don’t have to work) and watch cartoons all morning. The long and short of it is that there just aren’t very many really good cartoons on these days. Ben 10 is easily the best superhero cartoon produced in years. Batman: The Brave and the Bold seemed like a charming throwback at first, but then he travelled back in time to help Sherlock Holmes beat a ghost? I know comic book plots can get even more ridiculous than that, but sullying the good name of Sherlock Holmes is unforgivable. Johnny Test is fun in the same way that Dexter’s Laboratory and Johnny Bravo were, but wears thin pretty quickly. Pretty much everything else ranges from. Don’t even get me stated on the stupid My Little Pony craze.

I don’t even know if FOX still airs a cartoon block on Saturday mornings. When they rebranded it as the FOXBox,it started off pretty rad, with shows like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, Kirby, Shaman King, and Ultimate Muscle. Last time I checked in though (which was many years ago), it had been all but taken over by girl shows like Winx Club and Bratz. Apparently at some point they ran the Biker Mice From Mars reboot, which I’m very sad to have missed.

So yeah. Kinda got off-track there. To summarize: Beefy = good. Sampling = usually bad. Biker Mice From Mars = awesome.

It’s running through my brain

Yesterday I discovered the Playstation Store for the first time. This is both fantastic and not good at all.

I suppose I knew that it existed. As I understood it though, it could only be accessed via PS3 and then the games could be transferred to your PSP. If that was ever the case, it’s not anymore. And now I have access to PSOne Classics, and my credit card bill is going to inflate dramatically.

I’ve already bought Breath of Fire IV, Tomb Raider and Gex 3: Enter the Gecko. BoFIV and Tomb Raider because the kids at Gamespite keep telling my how good they are and how I missed out, and Gex 3 because I remember playing and enjoying the N64 version as a whippersnapper. In retrospect, it’s a game that only a child should enjoy; a second-rate Banjo-Kazooie.

The most interesting thing about Gex 3 is that it’s just loaded with pop-culture references. And this was in an age before Family Guy. At least, Gex: Enter the Gecko (Gex 2) predated Family Guy by about a year, and it used the same schtick. After a little research, it seems like Enter the Gecko was actually released before Banjo-Kazooie, making my comment in the last paragraph a little backwards, but you’d think that Crystal Dynamics would have learned from the best for Gex 3. That is to say, the best for 3D platforming collectathons anyway.

I actually cannot wait to dig into Tomb Raider. I remember hating the demo with a passion, but I’ve heard enough people say that once you get around the lame controls and gunplay mechanics there’s a great adventure buried in there. I hope to excavate this supposed relic. Hyuk hyuk.

And Breath of Fire IV? I’ve played the first dungeons in the first two BoF games, and have delved a bit farther into Dragon Quarter (which I need to get back to…), but otherwise I have very little experience with the series. RPGs also seem better suited than complex action games to be played on a system that’s missing two buttons and an analog stick from the original controller. Also, I probably don’t need to buy a third copy of Final Fantasy VIII. Though I inevitably will. The idea of being able to play FFVIII anywhere is way too tempting. And when I can, I fear my 3DS and all other PSP games I own will become completely irrelevant. The only thing that’s really stopping me from doing so right now is the fact that my tiny memory stick is full and I don’t want to buy a new one.

In conclusion, I’m glad the most these games go for is $10 (sans tax!). That’s considerably less than people are trying to make me pay for used physical copies! Hooray!

Just killed a man

You know what’s ridiculous? Paying money for things. Don’t get me wrong, I buy stuff all the time. Or when I get the opportunity anyway. Money is a little tight right now so spending on unnecessary goods is last on the priority list. Especially when things are so way overpriced. Like the DVD/Blu-ray sets of Fringe.

I want to watch this series because it seems like a show that I’d enjoy. But everything in the world is stopping me from doing that legally. Netflix, which has been my go-to place for TV, does not carry it yet. Because stupid Canadian Netflix is stupid and has a considerably smaller library than American Netflix. Best Buy will sell me the more desirable Blu-ray set, but for $80 a pop. I make bad financial decisions, but I am surely not paying that much for a single season of a show I’m not totally sure I’m into yet. They have the DVD version available for $65, which is closer to what I’d be willing to pay for the BD set, but not for DVD. Wal-Mart will supply me with the DVD sets for $30 each, only not a single Wal-Mart in the city has season one in stock. Ever.

Also, Wal-Mart doesn’t sell TV Blu-rays? WTF?

So I guess for now I’m illegally downloading the series. Yeah, ya heard me. That’s what I did with the first episode, which is all I’ve watched so far. It’s good stuff though! At least, I enjoyed it. I always find serious TV shows very hard to start watching, and if there isn’t a hook that caters to my interests, I will pass them by without a second thought not matter how good a reputation they have. CSI? Not interested. The Sopranos? Pass. Game of Thrones? Oh God it looks so boring. Actually, I don’t think there’s ever been an HBO series that I’ve even been marginally interested in.

The ones I do like always have a specific little something that pulls me in. For example, I probably would have let LOST go, if not for that scary thing that was roaring in the jungle and uprooting trees at the end of episode one. What is it? A dinosaur? A monster? Something more sinister? There were plenty of reasons for me to stick with LOST (NB: Hurley), but that spooky thing in the jungle was the number one thing that caught my interest and made me watch the second episode immediately afterwards. I wanted to know what that thing was, dammit! And I would watch as many episodes as it took to find out.

Fringe doesn’t benefit from something so blatantly mysterious and intriguing, but rather the promise of many such things in smaller, episode-sized doses. From what I understand, the show is about a bunch of misfits solving mysteries and battling evil with “fringe science.” Already in episode one we’ve seen a creepy virus that makes skin invisible and mental linkage through copious amounts of drugs, so I have a feeling things will get pretty crazy pretty quickly.

The show also seems to be going in the opposite direction of Dollhouse when it comes to the subject of maintaining a running plot. As I explained yesterday, Dollhouse is working things together very slowly, while in the first episode, Fringe has already established basic character backgrounds, a huge corporation that may or may not have evil intentions, a possible secret society, and countless other plot threads that are clearly leading into something bigger. In short, it’s the sci-fi cop drama version of LOST. Which is almost exactly what I want to be watching. Really, my ideal TV situation would be watching LOST for a third time. Alas, I need to branch out a bit.

Hopefully the rest of Fringe continues to tickle my fancy as well as the first episode did. Judging by the little bits I’ve read about it on Wikipedia, I don’t think I’m going to end up disappointed. The fact that it’s a Bad Robot production also leaves me greatly optimistic, as other TV shows by said company include LOST and Alias, not to mention my 2011 Movie of the Year, Super 8. So yeah, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this one. Just wish it wasn’t so danged expensive to watch it legitimately.

Might be from Hell

I’ve decided that I’m going to try to spend most -if not all- of this week talking about TV. Mostly so that I can tell people that my blog is about random stuff, and not just video games. Also, because I have thoughts on TV shows that I want to share! I may have mentioned that yesterday.

So, Dollhouse. I watch this one every Sunday morning when I’m getting my weekly exercise on the elliptical. You might say that spending 50 minutes exercising a week is not enough, and you may be right. But this is my scheduled exercise, which I do very reliably, as opposed to any other exercise I get being more spontaneous. During the warmer months I spend at least an hour in the pool afterward, so it’s a pretty good day for my physical wellness. Adding Dollhouse to the routine has also bumped up the elliptical workout from 30 minutes to the aforementioned 50, which seems like a lot more time when I’m actually on the machine.

Hey, I thought this post was about a television program, not my slowly improving exercise habits!

I’m four episodes in right now, and I’ve got to say that I feel like it’s starting out a bit too slowly. The premise of the show is that there is this semi-secret organization called the Dollhouse, which wipes the minds of willing candidates and then contracts them out to do jobs. The “Actives” are then programmed with whatever skills and personality traits the job demands, and then some. It’s a neat premise, thought not exactly what I expected. I guess I read the summary on the DVD case as though our main character, Echo, was always herself, just with new skills programmed in for whatever she’s going to be doing that episode, like changing jobs in Final Fantasy Tactics. But nope, in every episode she plays a different character, and they all begin and end with her as a totally blank slate. It doesn’t really hinder the show, but you definitely feel less attachment to Echo, because you don’t really have that one character to follow, but the same actress playing a new one every time.

This format leads to the show having a sort of “caper of the week” feel to it, which I’m not really into. I prefer to have my serialized programming follow an overall plot thread. Little frays in said thread are fine if you want to add side-stories and character development, but up to this point each Dollhouse episode could be more or less a self-contained story. It does seem to be dangling carrots hinting at consistency and a grander plot, but so far they’ve all been repetitive background noise. By which I mean characters keep talking about stuff, but they’re always saying the same thing and never developing anything further. It could all come to a head in episode five and I’ll have egg all over my face, but I kind of doubt it. Any consistency here is enjoying a very slow burn.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that the show was cancelled after two seasons, so it could end up that all these loose ends will be hastily cobbled into a big, sloppy mess just to put a wrap on whatever story they’re telling. That might be even worse than having no continuity. Could end up that they winds themselves into a rich, if somewhat short tapestry. Who knows? I sure can’t tell where it’s going yet, but I have theories.

Dollhouse is certainly an entertaining show, but like I said, I’m not too keen on the fact that our main character isn’t (yet) really a character. The independent episode plots are cool, but I think the show will get much more interesting once the secondary stories start to develop and take the forefront. That said, Alias is still the top dog* when it comes to this specific brand of fiction. Sydney Bristow could go on any number of zany missions, but she was still always headed towards a clear goal. For Echo, not so much. But I’ll stick with it. Worst case scenario, there are only 22 more episodes, and they do provide an incentive to get a little exercise.

*In all fairness, my experience with Alias is from season three onwards, and even then I mostly “watched” it as background noise to Dissidia and Picross 3D. I certainly enjoyed what I saw though.