Personal Status Updates! (Page 1 of 13)

So, SLIDERS REBORN, my insane 20th anniversary special, features a new character. A twisted 15-year-old girl named Laurel Hills who serves as -- well, let's be blunt. She's a plot device to reunite Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo in 2015. Laurel is based on a (20-year-old) friend of mine who once told me she felt completely and totally out of sync with reality. I pissed off the real-life Laurel and she wasn't talking to me for awhile.

I tried to escape into the world(s) of SLIDERS REBORN. And couldn't. Much to my horror, I couldn't write Laurel Hills without the real-world version of her around. I had alienated my muse.

Thankfully, we patched things up and I have been able to resume my efforts. However, Part 2 of SLIDERS REBORN is going to be a bit late -- it'll come on July 30, 2015 instead of July 30 as planned. Nigel Mitchell can confirm that the entire story outline is complete -- I just got delayed in converting it into script.

So let this be a lesson to you all. Never piss off the people you write about until *after* you've scripted all their dialogue.

How is your dog? I remember you telling us that the tests were (drumroll) inconclusive.

Yeah, including Laurie in SLIDERS REBORN may not have been the best strategic move. I guess, in my mind -- I love Quinn. I love Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. They're my treasured imaginary friends. The sliders. And I love Laurie. Of course I would make her one of them. A slider. And then I screwed up and I was pretty sure I'd lost my friend. And I just couldn't write the Quinn and Laurel scenes and what they are to each other.

(It's not sexual or romantic.)

Anyway. Laurie's back. Laurel Hills will be fine. The sliders will return in July.

My black lab, Rocky is going on two years without a spleen. He has some arthritis, but is in pretty good health otherwise. I think he and my other dog, Boo, are going to be depressed more than anything else since Buster is gone.

And typing that last part just about set me off again... It sucks.
But drowning my sorrows in TV shows and junk food is keeping my mind off of things for the most part.

Reddit. Hmm. That would be one of the ones that I have no idea how to use.

I do need to catch up on the rewatch

Reddit's cool. But at the end of the day, it's just a message board and on Sliders.tv, you can feel free to go off-topic and personal!

**

After months of using Other Web Browsers on my mini-laptop, Google Chrome is finally working! Well, the portable version of Chrome is working without crashing every two minutes. I've tried Maxthon, Internet Explorer, Opera and all of them had weird performance issues, which serves me right for buying a computer with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Atom processor that wasn't yet compatible with Chrome. Man. What a mistake the Asus T100TA has been.

I thought that, since I have my super-powerful HTPC in the living room serving as my desktop, a low-powered 10-inch laptop would be good enough for when I want to type in the bedroom or work at the coffee shop. But it hasn't been good enough at all; I have to do a lot of web data entry on this thing and either Chrome would crash or the other browsers would freeze up halfway in. For God's sake. My next laptop is i3-Intel with 4GB of RAM minimum.

**

My doctor has advised that I reduce my caffeine intake, so I've switched to decaf for the placebo effect. For years, coffee was either Tim Horton's or 8 O'Clock beans ground before drip-brewing. And after trying a lot of what's out there, my decaf of choice is supermarket Folgers with a dash of salt and cinnamon. I have painfully pedestrian tastes, but at least it's cheap.

*sigh*

Two things. First, in preparation for the Rob Floyd interview, I rewatched the closing scenes of "The Seer." And I was horrified to realize -- I messed up my SLIDERS REBORN prequel. "Reprise"'s description and dialogue of "The Seer" -- I copied it out of one of the scripts. Clearly the wrong draft. It doesn't match what was actually filmed, who said which lines, the physical action -- even the final line of dialogue is wrong. Total screw up!

That's embarrassing.

Second, I'm working on the first segment of SLIDERS REBORN's Part 2. Nigel Mitchell kindly rewrote the alt-history for me. And it's going fine, but it's so dark! So grim. I'm not having fun.

It feels like work, for God's sake. It is now more obvious than ever to me that I don't really want to write SLIDERS. I want to write episodes of COMMUNITY with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and I will totally get back to that at the 1/3 mark, but this 1/3 is so grim.

Thank God tomorrow's a holiday and I can power-drive through the whole script.

Thanks, Griz. It's been a week now... I assume that at some point, it will stop feeling weird to not see him every day. On the bright side, my emotional breakdowns are happening less!

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan (did we ever come up with a shorter nickname for you? If so, it escapes me at the moment), I think my brain is rejecting the idea of any new social media pages. I have to do Facebook and Twitter... and I am not a huge fan of either. I think I belong in the 90's... Or possibly the 1940's (minus the whole World War thing).

ireactions, at some point, fanfic in general stopped being enough for me. Every once in a while, it's fun to come up with a story in my head for a show that I like, but now I usually just turn it into a unique story of its own.

Okay, the latest from my world:

Beta readers are getting back to me about the new novel that I'm having them read. So far, nobody wants me to burn the book and rot in Hell, so that's good. It takes place in the future, so I was worried that people would reject the history that is established in that world, but it seems to be going over well so far.
In a way, it reminds me of coming up with Sliders stories and figuring out the point at which history goes wonky and how it gets messed up, and trying to tell a story in that world that feels natural. It's fun. But tricky. I have the whole history mapped out and never really get to lay it all out for the readers, so I have to try to get the point across with bits and pieces of that history.

Anyway, so far there are no major rewrites to be done. With luck, I will be able to move on to book 2 soon! Then I'll have to find beta readers for the second book in the series... not sure quite how to do that unless they've read book 1. But I shall cross that bridge when I get to it!

I had a weird Netflix experience. I was watching SWITCHED AT BIRTH, which has lengthy segments in sign language. I was watching it on my Windows 7 HTPC, but when moving to my Windows 8 laptop, I switched into the Netflix Windows 8 app. And all the subtitles were gone! I had no ability to understand the sign language conversations.

But when I used the browser, the subtitle graphics were back on the very same scenes in which they were absent in the app!

Peculiar.

So far, the beta reader feedback is okay. The only issue I have is when the feedback contradicts other feedback and I have to decide which direction to go. I hate decision making.

After a couple of bad weeks, my mood was lightened a little when I saw a new review for one of my books on Amazon. I love any feedback, but five star reviews, complete with favorite lines of dialogue certainly make me happier than the negative stuff!

Okay, your Netflix issue... Was there a setting for closed captioning? Maybe there would be an option that you could use there. On screen text is an issue with Netflix sometimes. The X-Files just got on screen text, so for the first time since I started watching the show, I know where episodes take place!

Your tablet issue is weird indeed. It also seems strange that you would have to buy another warranty. What is to stop this place from messing with the products, just to keep you buying I to their warranties?

Is there a manufacturer warranty? Maybe you could talk to Samsung about the issue or check online to see if it is a known problem. It could have a fix that won't require you spending a ton of money.

Sounds like it all worked out. Nice!
When my stuff breaks, I usually just give it to my brother and he fixes it. It's hand, and way cheaper than warranties.

The contradictions that I'm thinking about in my book involve the prologue. Some like it, but suggested some changes. Some disliked it because it is more about the world that I'm establishing than any of the characters that play into the rest of the story, so it feels detatched to them. In my head, it serves a purpose, bridging our world to the world that I'm setting my story in. But I will kick around some ideas for how I might change it and if any of them sound better than what I have, I will change it. If not, I will probably just leave it.

Okay, new tech report. My brother (the one mentioned above) sometimes buys things that are damged or not working on Ebay, fixes them and resells them for profit. One of the places that he buys stuff from sometimes has smart watches. So he ended up buying me a Galaxy Gear Fit for pretty cheap. It has a little bit of scratching on it, but I don't care. It works fine and it's pretty cool. The only downside being that it might make me want to obsessively walk around.

I would love to participate in the Rewatch activity, but not being on Twitter, I feel disconnected. I do watch Sliders episodes pretty regularly, and usually watch the episodes as the SlidersCast reviews them (which usually gets me in the mood for another episode or two)...

I forgot half of my post... It's been a long day

My watch is geared toward fitness mainly. It does have other functions though. I can control media playback from it, or answer calls. It is mostly useful for answering calls when I have a headset or in the car, but I can also activate the speakerphone, so I can answer calls if the phone is across the room and I can't get to it. There are other apps, I'm sure, but it is still new to me.

When I got my S4, I was checking out the fitness app. Just to get through the setup process and look around, I answered questions with random answers. So when it asked my goal for steps taken per day, I chose 10,000.
Flash forward to years and my watch communicates with my phone. My goal is now set at 10,000 and I see how many steps I've taken every time I look at the time. I couldn't turn in for the night without winning the challenge. Lowering the number felt like cheating at a game.

This could be trouble.

So, one thing I am struggling with in SLIDERS REBORN: five characters. Five lead characters for a 120 page script is too many, and absolutely none of them can be dropped. I mean, a SLIDERS without Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is false advertising. And the Laurel character was designed as a plot device to reunite the original sliders, but dismissing her after that feels artificial. And I do not have the energy to write 3 - 4 episodes of SLIDERS; three feature-length scripts and a novella are taxing enough.

The unfortunate result is that the characters are carried along by the momentum of the plot. Their actions do not define them. I seriously hit a point of irritation when Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo spent two scenes working on opening a door. And it also means that the parallel Earths aren't particularly well-defined -- which, quite frankly, is a blessing in disguise because world-building is not one of my strengths.

I'm trying to compensate for this by focusing on pastiching the actors. Making sure that while they may not do anything superbly definitive, every line resonates. And at times, I find myself swapping lines and rewriting them to avoid the reader forgetting that the character is in the room. So, maybe Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo spend a lot of time working that door, but they have a hilarious argument as they work it. This results in scripting where Matt Hutaff once exclaimed in dismay, "Everyone's comic relief!" And yes. This is my peculiar impression of Dan Harmon's SLIDERS only with a lot less ability, talent and literacy.

Back on the old Bboard, Informant remarked that no work is flawless and no piece of art excels in every area. That writers must have a vision and then decide what the priorities are in serving that vision. I'm okay with SLIDERS REBORN being less about sliding and more about the sliders, but it makes me feel a bit like Tim Kring -- in that it would probably work better if I paid Bryan Fuller to turn my scribblings and ramblings into finished content.

Another weird thing that happened: Laurie (whom the Laurel Hills character is based on, although the resulting character is actually nothing like Laurie) finally finished her box set of FIREFLY. And she hated "Objects in Space" because the evil and sadistic bounty hunter threatened to rape Kaylee. I said I didn't understand why a villain being a rapist was a problem. Laurie said that it triggered feelings of fear and vulnerability and powerlessness that FIREFLY had no business triggering unless it was really going to explore the subject of rape -- and that Kaylee whimpered pathetically when all the men got to fight the bounty hunter. I pointed out that River defeats the bounty hunter and Laurie said that I couldn't possibly understand how it feels to be a woman watching a show where rape is raised so casually.

After that, I went home and went back to a scene in Part 2 of REBORN where Laurel Hills is cornered by three thugs who claim they have uses for "fresh, young flesh" -- presumably, to force her into sexual slavery. I changed this to the thugs wanting Laurel for "fresh young kidneys" and "virgin lungs" and "mint condition eyes" and rewrote some of the earlier bits of Nigel Mitchell's world-building to include a huge demand for black market organs. I asked Laurie if this was acceptable and she said sure. I don't understand at all, but I found forced organ harvesting to be equally threatening and therefore an acceptable rewrite.

Anyway. I have finished 1/3 of Part 2, which, because of the darkness and misery, was really slow-going. The final 2/3 are more the oddball bantering and lunacy I prefer to write, so I expect I'll have a rough draft done by the end of the weekend. And spend the rest of the month adding setups to my payoffs as well as more jokes.

May Informant have mercy on my soul -- I bought an iPad Mini 2.

My Samsung Tab S 8.4 went dead last night. Just stopped turning on completely. I went to the store and asked for an exchange. They offered me a refurbished model that creaked noisily no matter how I held it. I refused to accept it and they asked me what I wanted to do. I asked for a non-creaky Tab S and they didn't have any. I had a poke around the store and regretfully decided to transfer the cost of the Tab S and an additional ten bucks to buying a 32 GB iPad Mini 2. For all of Apple's many, many sins, it never feels like the screens are going to fall out of their tablets. I'll just turn off all the OS updates.

On the bright side, this means I can download the iOS exclusive HEROES REBORN app and tell you all about it.

The iPad Mini 2 is beautifully built. I definitely don't feel like the screen is going to fall out, unlike that Tab S 8.4's disturbingly loose and creaky screen. I was worried about the lack of a microSD card slot, but 23 GB of available storage after installing all my apps has proven sufficient so long as I choose books, comics and documents I plan to read over a month as opposed to over a year.

I find irksome to work with sandboxed apps. I want to load all my ePubs and PDFs into the memory and then have each app work with the same files. Instead, I need to copy my stuff into a file manager app. Then open the file in the file manager, which will claim it can't open the file but offer to copy it into the sandbox of the ebook reader / PDF annotator / etc... It's rather crude. The function of apps is simple to the point of being somewhat handicapping.

At the same time, the OS itself is a polished piece of work. There's edge-touch detection: I can rest my fingers on the side of the screen to hold the tablet without the tablet registering that as a touch. I don't need to install apps to hibernate apps in the background. The screen rotates instantly as opposed to a 1 - 2 second pause. I definitely made sure to download all the apps I want and turn off all the updates, however. I have no doubt that any iOS update will move the user experience from smooth responsiveness to stuttering and freezing to encourage me to buy a newer iPad.

I miss how super-customizable and open Android is -- but I've still got that on the S3 phone.

To compensate me for more trouble and/or make sure I never ever returned to the store, the Staples manager gave me some store credit and applied it to buying Applecare+ insurance, meaning I'll have to go to the Apple Store if I have anymore issues. I think it'll be fine. It's kind of a shame about the Tab S, however. I don't know if I was having a lot of bad luck with the screen falling out and the battery going dead and the creaky replacements on offer or if something is wrong with the workmanship across the board.

It's entirely possible that Staples was selling me open box items (at the same price as the sealed box items). Staples does not reduce the price of open box sales. Maybe they were returned for a reason. They did not have any unopened Tab S 8.4s in stock -- the whole city seemed to be out. And by then, I was so soured on the whole Samsung tablet experience that I went crawling back to Apple.

Hi! New person here, though I've been leaving comments on Earth Prime here and there. I seriously loved Sliders as a kid, and recently got back into it after showing my wife "Luck of the Draw" and realising just how much I adored it. I've blogged a little about it on my mostly-videogames blog over here: http://intangirble.wordpress.com/2015/0 … n-history/ and recently put up a little post about Wade and the Hanged Man tarot card here: http://behemothblogging.tumblr.com/post … s-get-some

Okay, now that I'm done plugging myself: ireactions, I adore what you're doing with Sliders Reborn and I'm really stoked to see the next part. Adding a second female character gives things an interesting dynamic - honestly, though I didn't like Maggie's character I'm almost sad she couldn't have made up with Wade and stuck around with her, because having two women in the group stops Wade from getting shoehorned into being "the chick" and thus left out of the Real Action. Which Sliders tried its best not to do, but she does get shoved aside at times. (Though I'd be equally happy if you were just writing the original four - you write them well.)

On top of that, the screenplay format and the way you've written it feels... right. What I've read so far feels like the script for a really top-tier episode of Sliders, and it's exciting to feel like I have more of that to come.

Oh, I do believe it. (And now that I actually have a way to talk to you in person as it were, I hope it's okay that I used your comment?) It's just... so mindblowing (if horrible) to hear that it went that way. It's just this perfect, terrible storm of everything that's wrong with the media industry, and though I feel absolutely awful for everyone involved, it's very powerfully educational.

And yes, I love Nigel Mitchell's stuff. I'd definitely be with you on waiting for his input... even if it means all of us chomping at the bit have to wait a little longer. ;)

I'd been thinking that about the modern-Tumblr-fandom approach myself. I've been trying to make up for it a little with photosets and the like - I've at least seen some fanvids on YouTube and apparently this is happening. But yeah, it's impossible to get HQ anything of Sliders. I was really disappointed at just how poor quality the DVD transfers are just because it makes it nearly impossible to get good screencaps. I love doing image manips, but most of the techniques I'm used to using on them don't work with the grainy, artifacted images I cap from the DVDs. I'm starting to feel I'd almost have better luck ripping some old VHSes. :/

It's fitting how you say that SLIDERS REBORN so far *feels* right to you. I think a part of it is that nothing I've written is physically impossible to film with the actors at their current ages. But also, REBORN's Part 1 was plotted intuitively rather than logically, and it exasperated my poor editors in some ways.

Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are my friends. What would I want for my friends in 2015?

I'd want them to be alive and well and home. I'd want home to be normal. I'd want to know that after "Paradise Lost" and "The Exodus" and "Genesis" and "The Chasm" and "The Unstuck Man" and "Requiem" and "The Seer," everyone was reunited (somehow) and the Kromagg invasion of Earth was erased (somehow) and everyone got home (somehow).

At the same time, nothing has ever felt more false to me than those earnest fanfics where Rembrandt comes out of the vortex in "The Seer" and Professor Arturo is waiting for him and they find Wade somewhere, go back to "The Seer"'s Earths, split the Quinns, retrieve Colin, liberate Earth Prime or reveal it wasn't home after all, send Diana and Mallory home, find Maggie a happy ending, reveal the Kromagg Prime backstory was a sham, resolve Colin and get the original sliders home.

The problem with those stories, in my view: they're the equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat while narrating how the hat will be placed on a table with a hidden compartment in which the rabbit will enter the hat. The rabbit coming out of the hat/the sliders being reunited -- that's the only part of the trick that should be shown to the audience.

The challenge is not to attempt to make the impossible seem plausible. Instead, it's to make the emotion of the reunion so stirringly joyful that any explanation is nearly irrelevant. To show that if you will swallow the brick-sized contrivance that Wade is somehow alive, Quinn has somehow been restored and they have somehow found Arturo and now located Rembrandt, you will be be rewarded. You will be reunited with four delightful characters who bounce off each other beautifully. If an explanation does come, it mustn't be for its own sake, but serve whatever post-reunion story is told.

I think that's part of how "Reunion" feels right; there is a desire to know that the Season 3 - 5 plots were resolved, but with the knowledge that a point-by-point account would be a convoluted mess. "Reunion" also serves two mutually exclusive wishes: to know that our four friends are happy -- and to see them sliding randomly again. Random sliding is SLIDERS' storytelling engine. It lets you plug the characters into any kind of story and sets up a ticking clock and an exit for each adventure.

But Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are in their 40s, 60s and 70s. They wouldn't return to sliding without screaming in protest. Yet, it's what they were built to do and to fail to put them back to doing what they do best is a dis-service to the characters.

Which necessitates another contrivance -- Laurel Hills as a catalyst to reunite the cast and justify sending them back into random sliding. Again, my editors were not in favour of a lot of this, specifically because I allowed intuition to override sense and logic.

That said, intuitive writing tends to serve characters effectively while failing to do the same for plots, or at least SLIDERS plots. The unfortunate truth is that any SLIDERS story requires a certain degree of historical and scientific knowledge that I just can't muster the energy to research when it comes to fanfic.

If I were getting paid, then absolutely, I would spend months on that. But SLIDERS fanfic is something I'm cranking out over weekends and if it becomes unpaid labour, it stops being fun and it doesn't get done. Which is why I was really grateful that Nigel is willing to review my stuff and suggest changes, and, in some cases, outright replacements. History is not my strength. Science is not my strength. These are serious liabilities when writing SLIDERS stories, and we must also remember that Nigel is a magician, not a wizard. So, we'll see.

And now for something completely different --

http://www.livingthedreamshow.com/allison-mack/

Allison Mack guested on Phil Morris' talk show (Phil played the Martian Manhunter on SMALLVILLE, among other things). It's an incredibly boring interview; Mack is, for whatever reason, extremely subdued and low-key throughout. But she said one really interesting thing. She said that she experienced a mid-life crisis during SMALLVILLE around -- judging by the numbers she was throwing out -- Season 7. She talked about how from age 4, her whole life had been acting. She was super-ambitions, grabbing every part she could. Her holy grail was to find a successful TV role that would go on indefinitely.

She got cast on SMALLVILLE. A regular role. The show kept getting renewed. Financially and professionally, Allison Mack was a success story. Internally, she felt completely blank and lost and utterly unfulfilled. Her work was hollow and meaningless and she felt detached from what she was doing and her life seemed composed of empty material achievements. She eventually found herself when she started focusing on theatre and stageplays and she realized that she wasn't happy reading other people's words; she wanted to create her own. It's a fairly dull podcast, to be blunt, but Mack drops these snippets here and there while being incredibly guarded and withdrawn -- and so now I'm going to engage in theoretical armchair psychology.

I think Mack was delighted to find success on SMALLVILLE, but as seasons passed, she realized that Chloe Sullivan was a completely irrelevant character. SMALLVILLE, for better or worse, was about Clark, Lex and Lana. Chloe was totally unnecessary as far as the show was concerned. She was a regular character who had about as much material as a guest-star; she was scripted like an extra. Because the cast and crew and creators liked her, as they did John Glover, they kept her around even though they really didn't know what to do with her.

In the clumsy teen soap of SMALLVILLE, Chloe was Clark's secondary love interest. And the creators had no intention of ever advancing that, so Chloe was trapped as Clark's secondary love interest, perpetually weepy and whiny and her character contorted into bizarre shapes like her nonsensical healing powers. When Lois Lane was introduced, Chloe's journalistic skills became even more surplus to requirements. The material for Chloe was ghastly ghastly ghastly from Seasons 2 - 7. Allison probably thought about quitting, but she didn't -- as she says in the podcast, a long-running regular role on a successful show was everything an actor could want. Financially, it would be insane to walk away from a job most people never, ever, ever get to have.

So she took the money and did her job. Allison Mack's acting was always superb no matter how bad the material. She was a professional and she did a professional's job and Allison Mack is always incandescent onscreen even when the role is beneath her. But the result was that Mack became emotionally distant from Chloe and SMALLVILLE. It became a job. A job she did for money. A job she excelled at, but just a job. A chore.

And by the time Season 8 made her the female lead of the show, it was too late. Allison Mack cared about doing a good job, she cared about the fans, but she didn't care about *Chloe.* How could she? The writers didn't. Mack was offered a truckload of money and increased screentime for a two-year extension on her contract that took her through to Season 9 and she accepted. But after Seasons 2 - 7, Mack was beginning to wear out.

The vast improvement of Seasons 8 - 9 just came too late. SMALLVILLE and its fans were, to Allison Mack, a professional commitment. But not a personal one. SMALLVILLE was simply a job now. Had been for years. By the end of Season 9, I think Allison Mack was *completely* burnt out on acting professionally without any kind of personal investment.

She quit the show. She desperately needed a break. But, again, professionalism: she signed to do a small number of episodes so as to avoid abandoning the series. And she made sure to be free for the series finale.

SMALLVILLE's tenth season floundered badly. And while Mack's absence doesn't explain all of it, the sad truth is that even a detached and emotionally distanced Allison Mack is still a brilliant actress. Without Allison Mack, SMALLVILLE lost its very best performer who endeared herself to the audience. As charming as Lois and Clark were by Season 10, it just wasn't as compelling without Chloe and Mack's screen presence. If Chloe had been written in Seasons 2 - 7 as well as she'd been written in Seasons 8 - 9, maybe Mack would have felt differently.

Make no mistake, this is total theoretical armchair psychology from a boring podcast. Don't take it seriously.

Tired. Forgive poor grammar and meandering train of thought.

I read most of these when you first started posting here. Neat stuff. Also reading your gaming blog.

**

I expect to have a near-final draft SLIDERS REBORN: "Revelation" ready by Sunday or Monday. Nigel strongly advised on the alt-histories, but things shifted a bit as I went from writing an outline to writing a script. Some things were shortened and compressed; other ideas didn't fit the screenplay format and were dropped. So, I think I'm going to delay Part 2 to August 16 and send Nigel the script and let him work through it and see what he'd amend.

I did some writing today at a library and a coffee shop and then a restaurant and then a bar. And I discovered, to my horror, that while I can work effectively in a library, I am unable to write dialogue in eateries with music and background chatter. I have, however, been able to get a lot of writing done on my Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. There's something about only having one app at a time to work on that forces me to focus.

Looking forward to seeing your Work soon ireactions.
Given your issues with AH and Divergent Histories etc maybe we should make a Dedicated Thread for all of us to post Ideas, Discuss, Collaborate and Create on?

@Informant
Have not seen Arrow as of yet but did see my first Ep of Gotham last Week. It wasn't the Pilot/Premiere but instead an Episode about "A Baloon Man" with some Mafia, Penguin and Lesbian Ex Subplots attached/interlaced.
Might try and watch it again this Week if I can find out what Channel, Day and Time it was on last Judging it based on One Ep seems wrong but I'm curious as to your take on this show. Would you recommend it?

Saw Xena on Sat too.... As much as I loved it as a Kid.... God some is terribad.
I gave up on it when I was younger in the India/Gabrielle turned Yazoo style 80's Super Short Haircut Arc.

Saw the end of her Stay in Chin and return to Greece on Sat. Not to impressed. There was some fun Eps but Bad too. Have to say the Heavy Judeo Christian Yahwe Elements coming into play with this Twilight stuff is making me very uncomfortable. It just doesn't mesh well. The whole we don't need Gods stuff would be fine alone but when blended with the Eli and Angel Callisto schtick it just reeks of ill thought out hypocrisy to me.
"You don't need God's!" "Just Yahwe!" "A God!" "Please ignore that last bit!"

*Growl*

Also why protect this Supernatural Child when the last one was A-OK to put down? Double Standards Ahoy!

I am enjoying a rewatch of Dark Angel with Jessica Alba though. Although her Characters impulsive selfishness does grate at times.... Still good.
Always felt sad that did not get a Third Season to eiher space out the Plots a little or build on prior events.
Anybody here know any behind the scenes info re Dark Angel like has been shared re Sliders and Andromeda in the past on this Board?

P.S. May have mispelt Yahwe... Meh....

I find GOTHAM visually cartoonish but very dark -- and the mismatch doesn't grab me. If it's your thing, enjoy! :-) I lost interest halfway into the series. That said, I never gave up on AGENTS OF SHIELD, so it just means my tolerance is in different areas.

I don't think SMALLVILLE made Allison Mack unhappy,  but it also wasn't making her happy -- and that, psychologically, can be a serious issue if a job like SMALLVILLE was essentially the main goal of her career. I think nine seasons on a TV show like that should have been enough for Allison to pretty much retire, so it wasn't a money or a business issue. I would describe Allison as an elegant hippie spiritualist.

In contrast, I think if Allison had played, say, Veronica Mars for nine years, she would have been very happy.

It's interesting that you see growth in Chloe. Compared to Lana's patchwork quilt of Frankensteined stuff you have a point but I guess I will always see more of Chloe's path as Flip Flops and Staleness sadly.

You make a good point on Acting Life and it's sub varients.
Some Actors Shine on the big screen but are ill suited to TV.
Similar differences are there for Board Treaders too.
It's a rare Actor who straddles each aspect with equal grace and thrives in the environment too.

Mmmmm. I don't like Torchwood either.

There was this horrible, horrible summer in my life where I was unemployed and severely depressed. Naturally, I watched 2 seasons of TORCHWOOD and they were TERRIBLE. I'm told that the third season, CHILDREN OF EARTH, was a massive improvement -- but my fortunes and overall mood had improved by then, so I never got around to seeing it or the following series, MIRACLE DAY, which I also heard was okay.

BBC have gone very downhill sadly. Rather than continue their tradition of Quality Independant Programming they have instead decided to mimic some of the Worst offerings of the Commercial Channels like Reality TV programmes and Celeb Culture Shows. It makes me sick.

The only Programmes that bucked the new trend in the last 3 years were a BBC Three show called "The Revolution will be Televised" and "Orphan Black" which is an International Co-Production.

There are a few good Programmes from abroad like "Il Commisario Montalbano" to break up the Awfulness but they are NOT BBC Productions.

I don't know if skipping ahead on TORCHWOOD would help; I just know that Seasons 1 - 2 were largely panned for exactly the sort of thing you're pointing out, especially presenting a rapist as a heroic and moral figure. Season 2 was a mild improvement, but TORCHWOOD is fundamentally flawed. It claims that the organization is composed of professional elites, but they're all squabbling, immature morons who respond to every bad situation by making it worse. And the show presents these arguing, unfaithful, self-indulgent loons as characters in a 'mature' drama.

I do recall on a defunct message board a horde of posters screeching at me that the writer didn't intend for it to be rape, so I shouldn't refer to it as such. CHILDREN OF EARTH and MIRACLE DAY are well-liked, but that rapist character was turned into a zombie and then killed off after Season 2, if that's any help. Personally, I am steering clear of TORCHWOOD and any show that presents self-indulgent gratification as maturity.

Found this site:
http://liztellsfrank.com/2012/10/16/tor … -it-guide/

Figured that I would try to see if the show is any better when using a skip-it guide. We'll see.

But yes. I agree with everything you said about the characters. And some of the show's flaws are so weird. Like the scene where Jack teaches whats-her-name how to use a gun... Don't shoot like that. Especially a beginner. Honestly. Did they not have a consultant on hand? If not, just don't do the scene. Spreading bad gun safety around is dangerous.

THE SARAH JANE SMITH ADVENTURES is like the anti-TORCHWOOD in many ways. It is, inexplicably, produced by the same team that does TORCHWOOD.

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20281225bpyhaYN2