The Den of Mystery

Skele-Tor, Eternian Witchdoctor! (Art + Story)

2010-08-14T23:02:00.001-05:00

Superhero Costume Coalition put out the call a few weeks ago to redesign Skeletor, He-Man's iconic archenemy. I'm not nearly the artist as the other contributors, but I decided to try my hand. I give you...

Skele-Tor, Eternian Witchdoctor!

Transported through time from the dim past, this tribal witchdoctor brings with him the primal dark, black magic so potent that it requires King Randor and his council to summon an ancient warrior spirit - via a magical sword - to wage bloody combat for Eternia's very survival!

I so enjoyed the concept, that I decided to write a prose piece on it....

"The Bone-Man"

The watch commander looked out over the purple Eternian twilight. Night had once more struck the land, though it hardly mattered. On of three moons already rode high, its surface full of the twinkling lights of industry. When the second crested the horizon, the bare darkness of early evening would fade to a dream.

There were no threats beyond the royal palace walls, or the city gates or the endless miles of agroplots. Orbital-1 had communicated no skirmishes for months; the mutants were quiet, their irregular empire concerned with a threat on the other side of the galaxy.

Terrestrial rebellions continued to crop up on the planet's far side, though, frustrating the King's new general. Though only a few dozen men or robots strong, truly a policing nuisance, it marred the image of Eternia as the Peaceful Realm, the Kingdom Beyond Strife. The Randorian Concord, forged over two centuries ago by the first of the King's line, held the nobles together in common bonds of defense, economy and prosperity.

What could there possibly be to rebel against in such a utopia?

Unstrapping his monocular, the commander swept through squares and neighborhoods and rooftops in the vicinity of the palace. Several score watch-guards patrolled the streets and more kept vigil on the wall with him. Lounged, really. He had not drawn his pistol in service once - ten years. The charge was still good, and his ceremonial short sword poked over his right shoulder.

But who could use a sword any more, or have need of it. With expanding wristguard electro-shields able to block the full body, it would take a heavy rifle volley to hit a half-way decent soldier.

"Aye there, scout, eyes up." He strolled over to his nearest runner and lightly rapped his chest. "What if I need you to dart inward to Chambers?"

Smiling, the scout stood straighter. "Should you want a report sent to the king on your recent losing streak at runes, I will happily trot off."

"Insubordination. Insubordination!" Both men laughed. It was true, but rank held little effect for soldiers without war or enemy. "I'll send you to the Fist if you keep that up-"

A shrieking stole the words from his mouth and all eyes on the wall turned to the inner courtyard and the blazing light erupting from between the paving stones. The air shimmered with intense heat and the ground began to melt outward, sinking to a white-hot pit.

"Call the marshall of the fireguard and notify him." The scout ran across the wall to a distant tower. "You three, come with me." The watch commander hustled over to a staircase and the four quickly made it as close as possible. The heat was incredible.

With an almightly bang, the light surged one last time and spiral of blue flame spun in the air a the center of the maelstrom. And then it stopped. Smoke obscured the put, but the glowing stones cooled as if smothered by ice water.

The commander approached, fumbling his pistol out and cursing the embarrasment. He slipped a little, the burned stones crumbling to ash under his boots.

One of his soldiers spoke up. "Sir, I think I see something in the midst of the smoke."

"Carefully, lads. It could be a mutant trick. Some burrowing robot or worse, a bomb."

Distant voices - the fireguard, no doubt - rose behind them. Each step was filled with dread. Quiet so long, the mutant may be making another try for the King's head. Some thought it was only his presence, and the legacy he instilled, the kept the younger nobility from seeking greater privilege and status over the commoners.

A great wind picked up the smoke and scattered it into the night. The courtyard cleared and at the center of a ten-foot-wide pit, there curled a half-naked man. He clutched a tube or club in one hand. His skin was pale, dirtied by ash, but unburnt.

"Gannus, summon the gate tower medic and notify the Watch-captains to tighten patrols. And you, Orlan?, to the Kingwatch. Let them know of this oddity." The young men ran off on their errands.

"Who is he, Commander?" It was not his old bunkmate Tir speaking, but a bewildered subordinate. A lesser, looking for guidance.

The commander knelt down and rolled the man onto his back. There were strange markings about his face and torso, paint or tattoos. A necklace of bird feathers hung limply, and was that an eye pierced and dangled from around his neck? It was as big as a fist. He had no shirt, pants, boots or gloves, just a thick fur belt and a flaps - with more stiched-in eyes at the bottom - of leather concealing his person. Bunched feathers wrapped his shins and....

"Bones...," the commander said. "There are bones littered all about him. He looks like a-a caveman witchdoctor."

Tir grunted. "Or a carnival dancer." He opened his mouth to say more...but then had no mouth or head. It vanished in a burst of fire, leaving his corpse to fall headless, smoking trailing.

"But the Vanished Gods!" The commander stumbled back from the bone-man, the witchdoctor, and activated his shield. A metal bracket sprang out from his gauntlet and expanded to a two-foot diameter circle of yellowish, crackling energy.

"Stay down, murderer!" He pointed his pistol from behind the shield. The bone-man's eyes were fixed on him - had they been open this whole time? - and thickly-tattooed lips began moving in murmur and chant.

Sparks danced along the bone-man's arm to the club in his hand. No, not a club - a massive legbone with ram's skull tied at the end. The skull's eyes took in the sparks. The bone-man rose and with a gesture sent a gout of light into the shield, overloading it.

No fool, the commander loosed a dozen shots from his pistol as he retreated toward a mass of astonished onlookers. Not one laser bolt hit. They pitted the ground around the bone-man's feet, kicking up puffs of ash.

The bone-man was please with this, and he waved the skull-club around, twirling the ash into grey column tall as his shoulder. With his free hand, the man from the pit grasped the ash and threw it like a spear at the watch commander.

What could he expect, this soldier of high science and technology. He flew to home at night in a car powered by fused atoms. Food came from hydropod farms on the third moon. In his hand was a gun that fired focused light with devestating effect.

The ash spear hit- and disintegrated around him, covering him in a layer of burned stone. Nothing happened, he thought, it was an illusion.

But then his skin started to itch and his clothes grew hot. Groaning, his thin plates of armor began to expand as if heated....

The watch commander burst into flame and ran towards the gate, screaming and screaming. He must've been dead already, the energy to move powered by residual fear so powerful it could animate a corpse.

The body collapsed and the remaining watch-guards and fireguard stood as stone, eyes moving between their dead comrades and the figure standing amidst the ruined courtyard.

The bone-man started to laugh at them. He whooped and swung his skull-club about him and stomped hard on the ash and bones at his feet, again and again until the skittered of their own accord and rose up in the air to form an archway.

Cackling now the bone-man paused long enough to spit through the arch of bone and ash. The air buckled inside and rippled with blue-fire. He stepped into it-

And was gone. The bones fell to the ground. The ash drifted. The courtyard was quiet.

The watch commander had been right. There were no threats beyond the agroplots or city gates, or beyond the high walls of the royal palace. But there had been, long ago.

And one was back.

*
*
*
*
*

Here are some other early versions and abandoned concepts (The Skel, a street tough; Byron "The Amazing Skeletor" Keldor, a stage magician):

Lost Se6 Ep 5 - Sundown

2010-03-02T22:57:00.002-06:00

[There was no Ep4 review-let; the needs of the baby outweigh the needs of the show.]

It's all about Sayid, and the darkness within.

Click to follow, but here there be spoilers galore!

***

I think we might finally start getting some answers soon, though I still feel like there are too many questions for LOST.

I hate seeing Sayid go the way he did. I like it when he tries to be a good man. I don’t like seeing his bad side. Maybe he genuinely went crazy; maybe there is a cure - for him and Claire.

But it was his story that made me wonder if the plane-didn’t-crash scenario is the version of their lives that FLocke will cause, or can. They aren’t any happier, or better people. Most in fact, become worse people. I guess that’s where the old saying “be careful what you wish for” is really proven true.

What was Kate doing there at the end? Was she just following everyone else? Or was she, along with most of the crowd, hypnotized? Her name and Claire’s were not among those in the cave.... I wonder what this means. Is it because only men can be candidates? Does it have something to do with the fact that women can’t conceive and survive giving birth while on the island?

I’m going to miss the show when it’s gone, but I can’t wait to get all the answers about what's going on!

-Mandy

Lost Se6 Ep 3 - The Substitute

Lost Se6 Ep 2 - What Kate Does

Lost Se6 Ep 1 - LA X (The Final Season Begins!)

Lost Se6 Ep 3 - The Substitute

2010-02-16T23:26:00.000-06:00

This week it's all about Locke: Alterna-Locke, FLocke, crab-food Locke...

Click to follow, but here there be spoilers galore!

***

This week’s episode was way better than last week’s, so maybe we’re back on track. And we had a big question answered this week: the numbers.

Anyone notice how Kate’s name was not on the list of candidates? I do wonder why. Maybe because in present island time and future and past flashes she’s never done a thing that didn’t help her in some way. At the moment I can’t recall a single unselfish act. But she is the female lead and there is something we like about her all the same.

Locke’s character is the only one whose life off the island is better than on it. He has the beloved girlfriend back, starts a new job and has the contact information of the best spinal surgeon in the area.

Anyone else wondering what happened with Ben when Locke met him teaching? Why was he there, and seemingly Locke’s friend? Despite all this, Locke still isn’t happy, though maybe after the talk with Helen, he will be. I wonder, if he had a choice, which path he would choose.

I have to wonder what Sawyer committed himself to when he told FLocke he wanted to go home. Or why he decided to follow Flock, 'cause if I had seen Richard Alpert as scared as he was running from him, I would have followed Alpert. Curiosity killed the cat, and that may be what this season of LOST has in mind for Sawyer. I really hope not, but I think someone in the love triangle has to die, and I think it'll be Sawyer.

Speaking of the love trio, I was a "Skater" fan until this season. Now I think Sawyer has become a better man and changed in such a way that he’s no longer right for Kate. I am drifting over to the "Jater" side.

Any ideas who the kid is? And why FLocke seemed to forget him the moment he met back up with Sawyer? Are there 2 FLockes? Why are we still getting questions in the last season, shouldn’t we be getting answers?

I still liked this episode, but come on - answer without causing more questions!

-Mandy

Lost Se6 Ep 2 - What Kate Does

2010-02-09T22:39:00.001-06:00

Kate is the main focus here, as we split between alterna-LA and the Island, with Claire and Sawyer important secondaries. And what's up with the resurrection?

Click to follow, but here there be spoilers galore!

***

I was so into the end of the episode and Claire going all Rousseau on us, that I kinda didn’t pay attention to the fact that when Jin sees Claire that was the last scene of the show. I blinked and missed the Bad Robot. It was only when the next show started that I realized Lost was over.

I have to say that for the last season, I feel like the episodes should be jam packed with answering our questions, but this one didn’t do a whole lot. I don’t feel like we really got anywhere until Claire shows up at the end. Frankly I was a bit disappointed with this episode.

Right now, Sayid does not appear to be Jacob, though I am not completely convinced. The people of the Temple (the other Others) seem to think he will have what I call a “case of the crazies,” like Rousseau’s people. Or the Temple people call infected.

If you have a child on the island, does the “crazies” not affect you the same way? Both Rousseau and Claire just went native, if you will. And paranoid. But after what Claire went through, I don’t blame her for being paranoid. And she seemed to only vaguely recognize Jin. I can’t wait to hear her story. Do you think next week will touch on Claire at all?

Kate in her plane-not-crashing scenario does perhaps the first non-selfish thing in her life. I find these flashes interesting, and I like the parallel lives of the characters.

I wonder if it all meets at the end with a big bang. Or will the characters get to choose which lives they would rather live? Are Jack and Sawyer the next Jacob and FLocke (fake Locke, for lack of anything else to call him)? I’m getting ahead of myself with these questions, but this episode didn’t move a whole lot until the end, when we see Claire.

-Mandy

Episode 1: LA X (Parts 1 & 2)

The Political Hoedown still exists!

2010-02-06T13:19:00.000-06:00

Now that I have a little more free time and/or the inclination to get into the political debate again, I've started posting at the Political Hoedown again.

A few recent musings, covering the Mass. Senate upset, Obama's politicking, his State of the Union, deficit spending and wordplay:

NPR or Administration: Who's flashing their bias?

Monopoly Money

SOTU for you!

Presidentin'

Interpreting Mass.

-Erik

Lost Se6 Ep 1 - LA X (The Final Season Begins!)

2010-02-02T23:11:00.000-06:00

Providing LOST commentary, we have my (Erik's) own wife, Mandy.

Click to follow, but here there be spoilers galore!

***

The beginning of the end. The biggest night in television so far this year. The reason Obama moved his State of the Union speech (he’s gotta be a LOST fan).

So Sayed…alive, dead, alive dead, who knows? My guess is Sayed is dead; the person who woke up there at the end is Jacob, possessing Sayed’s body. The Others who drowned him, were just as surprised to see him alive as his friends were. Obviously other people they have drowned (i.e. Ben) wake up in the given time frame, or they are truly dead.

Moving on, why does Jacob only seem to appear to Hurly while on the island? Is it because Hurly’s the purest of the survivors? The one most likely to believe, or the most gullible? He was able to see the cabin Jacob was in when no one else could. Jacob appears to him the most. Why? I love Hurly, but why him? Hurly said “I’m the luckiest guy alive” in the what-if-the-plane-didn’t-crash scenario. I can’t help but think this means something relating to Hurly being so special.

What does Locke/man in black mean when he says “I just want to go home?” Erik immediately assumed it meant he was the devil. I am not so sure, though many could argue for that. You have the Bible names throughout the series…John, Jacob, James, Daniel…the list goes on.

And when we are introduced to this man he is in all black, Jacob is in white. Of course we assume he’s the bad guy! But the devil on a time traveling island that seems like a twisted Garden of Eden? I don’t know; that’s too easy of a solution.

Let’s discuss the what-happens-when-the-plane-doesn’t-crash part. Most of them take a turn for the worse, so it’s looking. Do you think they’ll know this by then end of the series as what would have happened? Is this happening parallel to them being on the island? Are they living two futures at once? Are those that died (Boone, Charlie) alive in the alternate future?

And what the heck was Desmond doing on the plane?! Somewhere along the way, someone (Daniel maybe?) said he was a key. Seeing Desmond there threw me for a loop.

And lastly, Juliet. Could we have expected any other ending for someone with the name Juliet?

-Mandy

Olivia Hart Held, b 9/12/2009 6lb 11oz, 19.5"

2009-10-28T10:23:00.000-05:00

(Yeah, the pics are late, but there will be more and you will ooo and ahhh because she is adorable and perfect.)

-Erik

RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 From Outer Space - Encore Showing

2009-09-21T19:01:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to mention that because of the overwhelming success of the RiffTrax Live event that took place on August 20th, Mike Nelson and Co. have decided to do an encore presentation on October 8th (click for participating theaters and tickets).

What is RiffTrax, you may ask? Allow me to shamelessly cut-and-paste from their website:

Q: What is RiffTrax?
A: RiffTrax are comedic MP3 tracks that you play in-sync with your favorite movies. Written and performed by the stars of the award-winning TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, RiffTrax brings the unique humor of "Satellite of Love" partners Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett to Hollywood's hit movies.

I was fortunate enough to have my local theater participating in the live event, which had Mike, Kevin and Bill riffing on the short film Flying Stewardesses before taking on one of the ultimate bad movies, Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space.

It was a lot of fun, and the encore show is actually a few dollars cheaper than the initial showing! I highly recommend it to anyone with fond memories of MST3K or anyone who just wants to spend a couple of hours laughing their butts off.

-Adam

Because someone's got to post something, and I guess it's me.

2009-09-16T08:20:00.000-05:00

Well, it appears that with Erik entering Day 5 of fatherhood I'll have to hold the fort around here. It also means my first post since, what? May?

Seems that as of the epic Horatio Caine spoof we've dropped the Hooper and Buck pseudonyms. (Don't ask me why we even had them in the first place. It seemed like a fun idea at the time.)

I hope to have another "What I've been reading" post up by the weekend, which may evolve into a "Summer '09 in books, movies, and television" sort of thing. But until then, enjoy some amusing links.

If you click on over to Andy Awesome's page, you'll find a series of pieces in which he takes a pop culture theme or icon and captures its essence in four simple circles of art. Here's one to show you what I mean:

Texts From Last Night is in the vein of FMyLife. People anonomously forward embarassing or amusing texts they've received for the whole world to see. Here's a recent one:

(818): I hate to tell you this, but your sister reeks of whore.

So, you know, it's fun for the entire family.

And lastly, after reviewing nearly every X-Men and X-Men-related comic that came out in the 1990s, Not Blog X has begun re-reading and reviewing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series published by Archie Comics from 1988-1995. I read most of these back when they came out, so it's been a really fun nostalgia trip for me.

Enjoy the links, and hopefully Erik will be back soon with an update from the trenches.

-Adam

Ye like me kerrrr-chief?

2009-09-01T22:48:00.003-05:00

[Click to mucho grande!]

I forgot the REAL strip at home, says I. Me bag do me as empty as your head.

-Erik

She lied! They're made for mayhem!!!

2009-08-28T11:58:00.004-05:00

[Click pic to huge-ify.]

-Erik

The following are purely to boost site traffic. Enjoy!

Avatar, by James Cameron
Michael Jackson! He's not living....

Megan Fox makes James Cochran reach for the blue pillow!

I shudder to imagine the impact of a pro/con list.

2009-08-26T09:20:00.006-05:00

[Click to upwardly-size.]

What's on your checklist today?

-Erik

Because they're funny, that's why!

2009-08-24T16:45:00.003-05:00

[Click to gargantuanize.]

You smirked. Admit it. Sophmoric as these jokes are, you always laugh.

-Erik

CSI: Disputed Rights

2009-08-21T14:53:00.004-05:00

[Click to embiggen.]

Yes, this was done in about five minutes with a G1, MS Paint, PicSay and Google.

-Erik

"One Night on Endor"

2009-08-17T13:56:00.003-05:00

[Click to enlarge.]

-Hooper

"He has a ______ personality."

2009-08-12T12:27:00.007-05:00

[Click to enlarge.]

-Hooper

TPH: Getting Fixed

2009-08-11T14:10:00.004-05:00

Cross-posted at The Exchange & The Political Hoedown

Much is being made of Health Care/Insurance reform of late. Look on any major news site, op-ed page or political blog and you’ll run into several pieces posted just this week covering the breaking news! over Blue Dog Dems dealing or Obama pushing or Republicans pushing back, not to mention the pontificating on both sides of the aisle over what “reform” really means for health care in America, co-op vs. public option…and the shouting at Town Halls! It’s more than part of the news cycle – it’s a key argument about our future.

It’s the first major legislative battle Obama has had to fight, and for the Democratic Party, it’s a chance to reverse a fifteen-year-old loss. More than these, it is a new theatre of war in the battle for our civil liberties.

The Bush Administration is still fresh in our minds. How many readers have lamented that since 9/11 (or afterwards, when the Patriot Act was passed), our civil liberties have been trampled on/infringed upon/lost? It’s a common topic that talks of the individual freedoms we hold valuable in our country.

(Less directly, those voicing dissent were also realizing a harsh reality: that these “truths we hold to be self-evident” and divinely-granted exist only due to the government’s benevolent, diverse structure and state.)

The thinking is this: we have a measure of control (freedoms) over our personal lives (and by extension, choices) that cannot be impugned by any governmental body. The most common freedom referenced is that of Speech, tying into the freedom to disagree with the government and its members.

So were our freedoms infringed upon over the last seven and change years? And how does this factor into health care?!

Short answer: 1) no, and 2) health care reform as exists in draft form (ObamaCare) is a direct interference in our lives, a diluting of our personal liberties.

Not-as-short answer, we’ll talk first about Bush (yay, that hasn’t been done a lot!).

Aside from the flag-draped coffins arriving in cargo planes, the biggest uniquely “American” tragedy of the recent Bush years is the “loss” of civil liberties/personal freedoms. But let’s take a look further. Yes, the TSA interrupted our travel, causing frustration. We were also limited in the quantity of cosmetics we could bring on planes (still no guns). Regarding dissent – freedom of speech in general – if anything, Bush’s time in office saw a flowering of free speech. Having worked in a book store, I witnessed firsthand the number of anti-Administration books that were published – harsh tomes that didn’t hold their punches and outright derided, accused and insulted most of the top officials. Few were spared. One novel, by Nicholson Baker, had its main character fantasizing about killing Bush (though he was talked out of it).

In the theatres, we saw the scathing documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which took aim at the Administration’s run-up to and early execution of the War in Iraq (as well as the handling of 9/11 itself). “Critical” is an understatement. And how many times did we tune in to a left-leaning pundit, talk show host or guest lambasting Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld as evil, fascist, corrupt, or at the least questionable in their morality?

Is this provocative newsmaking? Strict journalism? No, much of what was published, printed, screened or screamed by the cable punditry was personal opinion, heavily biased and often filled with fervent desire to see those in power toppled like an Iraqi statue, i.e., brought low by impeachment. While this never happened, “administration change” was a stated policy goal of many armchair politicians.

So freedom of speech. Freedom to (angrily) travel. Abortion and gay-related issues existed at the end of term where they were at the beginning, from a national perspective. Your taxes went down (yes, for all of you; a new lower bracket was even created). Your incomes may also have gone down, or your home values or 401(k)’s; insurance premiums did rise. But those aren’t “freedoms,” but rather a part of living in a capitalist, largely market-driven society.

More importantly, during this time your freedom of choice wasn’t altered. Choice to drink or smoke, to have a hamburger, to drive an SUV.

To not be insured.

We require our drivers to get car insurance, mainly to pay for repairs when that other guy hits you while turning left out of a Taco Bell parking lot. It’s a safety net for those responsible in traffic accidents, so they don’t go broke when their ’89 Civic rear-ends a Bentley. There are multiple parties involved.

Health insurance is a different beast. It’s about you and your body. It’s a choice you make about protecting that body and your pocketbook in case of injury or serious illness. We don’t cover ourselves to pay for cold medicine; as John Stossel said recently, insurance isn’t welfare, but instead coverage for a potential catastrophic incident. It secures against the potential maladies that can’t be solved by a trip to CVS or Walgreens, those things that cost a lot to fix.

But we still – as of this writing, and since insurance was invented – have a choice whether or not to buy it.

Our employers might cover us. They certainly don’t need to provide insurance. Tying your health care to where you work has shackled many to careers they’d rather not have. But we expect it, don’t we? It’s taken for granted that if you work for a major corporation, “benefits” will be included – benefits being medical coverage, dental, vision, emergency room service, etc. When it’s not offered, many throw their hands up and moan. What am I going to do? they cry.

In the case you don’t have employer-provided coverage, you can buy insurance (as the company is doing for its employees) from a provider, paying semi-annually to maintain the safety net against grievous injury or sickness.

But, again, you don’t have to; there is no requirement. If we’re not careful, however, there could be.

For lack of a better term, I’ll call what’s coming out of the Democratic Caucuses “ObamaCare,” and in its purest form it approaches a single-payer (that payer being the gov’t) system that many in America don’t understand, but also recoil from when it’s mentioned. As is being drafted currently, ObamaCare would include a requirement – punishable, if violated – for all employers to buy their employees health care and for all individuals to somehow have coverage, buying it if is not provided otherwise. A mandate.

So be healthy, or pay a fine. Or another way to look at it, Dear Leader says buy our healthcare.

It’s just a matter of time, if ObamaCare is passed, before the single-payer option is introduced in some pilot phase. We have a debate now between a government insurance program (the “public” option; run & owned by the gov’t and funded with your tax dollars) and the co-op (a member-owned group that uses their purchasing power to get lower costs collectively than alone).

(I’m more for the latter, predominantly because I think small businesses should have the option – should they choose – of collective bargaining that we think only unionistas are entitled.)

Public or co-op, under ObamaCare one way has to be in the bill to ensure “lower” cost insurance options, as we would all need to have something under pain of high fines. And here’s where the freedom of choice goes away.

We should not be forced by a governmental body to buy health insurance, something that affects solely the individual (if I punch you, and you need dental work, no health care plan of mine in the capitalist world would pay your bill). It’s our choice.

Many of those that are uninsured are post-college adults who either don’t have the job that supplies insurance or choose not to be covered, as they are young and healthy. Catastrophic risk is low for them, as relates to illness (we all can fall victim to accidents & injuries).

Why are we seeing a party that champions individual choice (we can cut to the quick with one word: abortion) refusing to allow the same regarding health care coverage?

This is a step toward a nanny state, and what do nannies do but take away the choices of the child.

If we are soon mandated to have health insurance, how long before fast food joints are fined for serving real beef burgers (too fatty!) instead of veggie burgers? Or bread producers (and their supporting farmers) ordered to make only gluten-free products, as some claim our bodies aren’t supposed to handle the stuff? Or regular pop – or pop in general, as diet might possibly in an alternate world lead to cancer! It’s all unhealthy, right? We shouldn’t consume these products, as they’d raise the potential for future maladies (and jack up costs)…right, Dear Leader?

What about the “legalize” movement, predominantly supported by the same left-leaning people who voted Obama into office? It’ll be a cold day before pot is legalized; in fact, it’s more likely that cigarettes face a 100% national tax – punishing smokers, isolating them, even more – on their way to an eventual banning.

And then there’s that can of beer you drink while watching a game. Prohibition was a failure, and it was the result of a religious-backed temperance movement that saw it pass. Well, “health care reform” advocates want your body to be insured and in tip-top shape; liquor doesn’t factor into that equation. Look for higher sales taxes, more restrictions on purchases by individuals and establishments, neighborhood bar & grill closures.

Because you have to be as healthy as the government says. There is no more room for personal choice when it comes to our bodies, right? That’s what I’m hearing with ObamaCare. Health care reform is no longer an issue of children being without insurance or the homeless being denied care. We’re not talking about lowering costs so the woman working two jobs can afford coverage to combat her returned cancer.

No, we’re skipping the true “need” aspect of health care (that being low, market-driven costs with state restrictions eliminated, co-op pools for small businesses, et al) for the ideological stance of a small group of policy makers too enamored with the concept of “universal coverage” to realize the dread cost to the end-consumer or the country as a whole.

The potential for failure to reform health care – to make it affordable for all – is high. No one likes to hear the tragic stories where if they had coverage Bobby would be alive, or little Susie’s heart valve defect would’ve been detected in utero, avoiding frantic emergency surgery, or Ted wouldn’t have gone bankrupt paying for his wife’s caner medication and treatment. Those stories will compound if nothing is done.

But the right action isn’t necessarily the one presented, and I’m not saying it’s 100% the Grumbling Opposition Party’s way either. What I do fervently believe is that we need to be mindful of the individual’s right to choose – and the related personal freedoms that could be endangered should we lose that right.

Our civil liberties come in many forms. A woman’s right to choose is not the only heath care choice we have the “right” to make. If we want to create a society that lets the person and not the government make the choice in the vast majority of cases, we cannot allow ourselves to turn a deaf ear when protest is raised on a topic we feel strongly about.

Take a few steps back. Slow down the process. Reform the health care system, but don’t devolve our rights in the process.

-Hooper

Tears of Oil

2009-08-09T00:23:00.002-05:00

And you said no story with killer robots and mad scientists could be boring...

TPH Returns - "Fiscally Conservative, Socially Realistic"

2009-07-15T00:44:00.002-05:00

The Political Hoedown returns, now with no foolhardy attempt at regularity.

*Is there room in the US for a moderate party? Can self-styled "progressive" or reform Republicans (think Teddy Roosevelt or *gasp* Barry Goldwater?!) and, in their own way, "Blue Dog" Democrats (who're fighting DNC leaders about the Health Care reform bill as currently drafted) find a common slogan to rally behind?

*Palin-tology: the future of our maverick-y sled dog.

*Today's polls mean little for next year's mid-term. No big expansion on that point; just don't trust them. …okay, I'll expand a little.

Read on @ The Political Hoedown!

-Hooper

Moonwalking with the angels...under strict supervision.

2009-07-02T08:28:00.002-05:00

A glimpse of the future

2009-06-19T07:48:00.003-05:00

I thought this was too fun not to share, especially since I'm a child of Transformers and Hooper is a child of G.I. Joe.

Funny Videos Funny Cartoons More Video Clips

I find David Lynch's Koosh Ball unnerving.

-Buck

Update the blog often? Not on my watch!

2009-05-27T14:50:00.004-05:00

On Friday night, I went to see Terminator: Salvation. I really meant to post some manner of review before now, but things like weeding the vegetable garden and re-seeding the lawn got in the way. (Ah, the perils of being a new homeowner.)

I will say that I don't quite understand all the negative press the film has gotten, because I found it to be very enjoyable. My only major critique would be that it doesn't really do all that much to further the mythology; at the end of the film we're basically at the same place we started. But the performances were good and the effects were teriffic (Especially the sound work; can't wait to try this one out on the new surround sound.). I'll try to expand my thoughts by the end of the week.

-Buck

Not a fan of the gays, America?

2009-05-21T06:58:00.008-05:00

What happened last night, compatriots? I'm not talking about the Sox winning or the exciting last minute of the Cavs game. Kris Allen winning American Idol: bwah?!

I'm not saying he isn't talented or a good singer. As a musician, he's probably better than Adam Lambert, the to-this-point odds on favorite. But he was so...whitebread college town bar singer. Adam knows he's a star.

Is it the boy-kissing, America? Certainly Adam would've been the most "fabulous" idol, and he makes no bones about that (!). His appearance is over-the-top fancy emo, and that voice! Bordering at times on the absurd, it always invigorates his song choices and shows why all season he'd been considered in a class on his own. It soars and swoons, that voice.

But it also sounded, some weeks, like he should've been in drag, aping Liza. Can I chalk that up as the reason for his loss?

I'm not convinced Tuesday's performance did it for Kris and did in Adam. Like Carrie Underwood, Adam had been nigh untouchable in the elimination rounds. He was a shoe-in, even over Danny Gokey, he of the sob story and the early fav. Then Kris sang Heartless, astoundingly well, and it seemed - to me - that people could now justify their votes for him. Favs dropped in his path, and he clinched it with his more marketable voice.

So that means people were waiting for greatness to justify why this guy the Red Eye said would go out before the top 10 had stuck around while better, or more favored, singers left. With Gokey gone, his fans - more similar to Kris' than Adam's - latched on to the only "traditional" thing left.

Alas, alack.

Though I may be called paranoid, I'm not convinced this underdog story occurred naturally. I've said it before, let's repeat the chorus: it's fixed. If election after election Chicago's Democratic Machine can massage the votes enough to get their people in, then of course we can legitimately call shenanigans on American Idol. The producers got a great story arc out of this - the dark-horse-who's-apple-pie-America - and the means to drum up post-show dollar votes for Adam (feel he was cheated? Buy his album and show ol Slidejaw Allen who really deserved the dandy crown).

It is a show, and therefore not important in the grand scheme, but I would've really liked an Adam victory. He rocked it with KISS and Queen (well...Brian May and Roger Taylor). That showmanship, that voice and atypical sense of personal acceptance made him the clear winner. A shame it wasn't made official.

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 6:00 AM - 8:00 AM

2009-05-18T20:47:00.007-05:00

And we come to the close of another harrowing day in the life of Jack Bauer.

Hour 1
• How much you think a video set-up like that costs? That’s a snazzy teleconference Olivia’s taking part in.
• Kim is sadly still a little slow on the uptake, especially for someone who worked at CTU for a couple of years and lived with a former agent.
• Is it too much to ask that we have a season where Jack doesn’t have to go rogue? I know I’d find it refreshing.
• At least he was able to tell Renee what’s really going on. It plays better that way.
• Clever, Mr. Almeida. Someone was watching Incredible Hulk last summer when Stearns reverse-engineered Banner’s blood from that tiny sample.
• It’s so weird having one of the Kiefer-narrated Bank of America commercials come on during a 24 break. It’s calm, collected Kiefer vs. angry shouting Kiefer.
• I greatly enjoyed Olivia’s little freakout.
• If Kim stabs this dude with that pen it just might make up for the entire cougar debacle.
• A shoot-out in an airport? Quick, get Bruce Willis and Dennis Franz on the phone!
• Okay, she can stab the woman. I’m not picky.
• A frustrated “Dammit!” from the next Bauer generation? Awesome.
• Commercial for American Idol finale with Simon voice-over: “Only one can win.” So it’s like Highlander then. Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. Cowell. (Seriously, I loathe the show, but that’s the best soundbyte they could find?)
• See what kind of fun you get when I watch the live broadcast instead of watching it on Hulu? You’ve been missing out on my witty commercial commentary these past 5 months.
• Please don’t have Kanin strip-searched. I love Bob Gunton, but I have no desire to see him nekkid.
• Good lord, is that a CompactFlash memory card? All the technical doodads in the White House and it’s not recorded on a SD card?
• Evil Doctor should really have an accent. British, maybe, or perhaps something eastern European.
• I apologize for the earlier comment that Kim didn’t remember anything she learned at CTU. Thought to grab the laptop and knows how to get the data off of it. Good show.
• Product placement? What product placement? Now sit down and enjoy the Hyundai Genesis—I mean, show.
• Scalpel to the jugular! Neck stabbing! Neck slashing! Neck breaking! You do NOT fuck with Jack Bauer and his spinal fluid!
• Gotta say I’m a little disappointed, as I thought the final hour was going to be rescuing Jack, which would have been a nice twist. But looks like we’ve got Renee and Kim finding Jack while Jack goes for revenge on Tony. Not what I wanted, but I’ll take it.

Hour 2
• Oh, good. For a minute I thought they were going to have a recap for the hour that just ended.
• Jack was going to immolate himself rather than let Tony get his blood? That’s commitment.
• I was wondering how Will Patton’s character fit into everything. And I have to say that I never really believed Charles Logan came up with everything on his own, so this works for me.
• Tony is really off his nut. Jack also killed to revenge his wife’s death, but he didn’t kill everyone that got in his way to do it. I doubt he’d even have killed Nina in Season 3 if she hadn’t threatened Kim.
• Last-minute rescue? That’s how we do things at the FBI. (I actually typed CTU without thinking, then realized what I’d done.)
• Having a seizure while strapped to a bomb? Jack is just not having a good day.
• Renee Walker: Action Woman!
• Michelle was pregnant? Make her death hurt a little more, why don’t you, 24 writers?
• Moment of truth. And Jack goes for the non-killing shot. Son of a bitch, that looked like it hurt.
• Interesting that we appear to be leaving the door open for a possible Tony return in the future.
• That was a really nice scene between Jack and Renee. He’s met a lot of people this season who have helped him come to terms with what he’s done in the past.
• That’s not how it works, Henry. When you’re president, you don’t get to just pick and choose what’s legal and what isn’t. Oh, wait…
• Taylor totally made the right call. Even if it has the potential to ruin her marriage. But David Palmer got through it; she will too.
• Knowing Renee’s back next season, I can’t wait to find out what happened in that interrogation room.
• Kim goes for the stem cell procedure to save Jack as we tick away the final minutes of Season 7.

Thoughts

This was quite possibly the best 24 finale since Season 1. Seeing Jack look for forgiveness on his deathbed, from a Muslim, no less, was an outstanding turn for the character, and Sutherland nailed it. The teaful confession, "You don't know the thing I've done," was handled with grace rather than being melodramatic.

As for the Taylor family, it's impossible to not see shades of David and Sherry Palmer circa Season 1. As hard as it was for Allison, her daughter broke the law and a man died because of it. She has to pay the price for that. And how about a round of applause for Cherry Jones as the president? Here's hoping she's back next year, because I want to see what direction she takes the character in following what looked to be the complete dissolution of her family.

As for the rest...

Kim proved she's a Bauer through-and-through and will do whatever it takes to save her father's life (though we already know he'll be back next season). I know I've given Kim as much crap as anyone, but after the way she was handled this time around, I'm all for her returning next year.

Renee got to go on quite a journey over the course of this day, didn't she? I'm pretty sure Annie Wersching's been confirmed for next season, so it should be interesting to see what happened to Renee following her...aggressive questioning...of Alan Wilson.

Which brings us to Tony Almeida. Carlos Bernard was fantastic this season, and despite what he did, you can't help but feel just a touch sorry for the man, considering what he's lost. I can't wait to watch this season again knowing Tony was playing both sides the entire time.

And a final shout-out to the late, great Larry Moss. I am really sorry he's gone, because after Bill Buchanan's noble sacrifice, he was shaping up to be a new colleague Jack could turn to and maybe even confide in. He was definitely my favorite of the new characters we saw this season, and it's a shame he didn't get to stick around.

I might just be basking in the post-finale after glow, but I have nothing but praise for this season of 24. See you all in January.

-Buck

City of Crime

2009-05-13T07:45:00.002-05:00

I stumbled upon this yesterday afternoon and...well...it's pretty much the greatest thing ever.

-My name's Buck. I carry a badge.

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 5:00 AM - 6:00 AM

2009-05-12T11:14:00.003-05:00

This week, I didn't follow my usual method of typing my thoughts as I watch the episode, so that may be why there aren't as many bullet-points. Or it could be that it was another build-up episode to what is hopefully a slam-bang finale. Read on.

• The subway ride was a little tense, but not exactly action-packed. That was a little disappointing.
• I was surprised to see the bio-threat stopped in this hour. I’d expected a virus cliffhanger leading into the final two hours.
• So is the kidnapping of Kim part of something larger, or is it just the Cabal’s way of saying, “Fuck you, Bauer. You really screwed up our day.”
• Much as I like Chloe, it’s nice to see her get one-upped every once in a while.
• Loved Agent Pierce’s “I’ve just about had it with this crap” scene with Olivia.
• Jack’s wailing on Tony was a little brutal, but you really felt the emotion in every punch.

Thoughts:
• Another 24 final-hour switcheroo, but it’s shaping up to be a good one.
• Lots of focus on loyalty and family this year (and in a good way, unlike last year's Bauer family debacle). Jack’s families, both blood and CTU, the problems in the Taylor household, etc. It’s interesting to see the final crisis of the day involving Kim in danger. We really haven’t seen that since Season 1 (I refuse to acknowledge The Cougar Incident).

-Buck

Star Trek

2009-05-10T10:36:00.006-05:00

I'll expand this with more words of praise later, but just had to say how damn much fun Star Trek is. J.J. Abrams and Co. did an outstanding job and created one of the most enjoyable sci-fi films I've seen in a long time. If you weren't planning on seeing it, I strongly urge you to reconsider. And it's not just for die-hards. You can go in having never seen an episode of the original series and still enjoy it.

UPDATE: Not a full review, but more thoughts after the jump. Minor spoilers if you haven't seen the film.

• Casting was great. No one really goes for the "I'm playing the actor who played this character the last time around" bit, and the movie is all the better for it. Karl Urban certainly channels DeForest Kelly, but it's not an impersonation. He's one of the best bits in the film.
• It's damn funny. I *heart* Simon Pegg.
• I will say that there are plot holes you can reflect on, but it's such a darn fun film they won't dawn on you until days later, and even then they won't ruin the film for you. Thou shalt not nitpick thy films, for that path leads to dickhood.
• Eric Bana's villain Nero is a little underdeveloped, but his motivations are fairly simple to begin with so it's not all bad.
• You get to see Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru test.
• I felt that the casting gave us feasible versions of the favorites, updated for modern audiences. Sulu's a bit more macho, but I doubt John Cho would have wanted everyone to think he was as "fabulous" as Takei.
• Bruce Greenwood's perfect Capt. Christopher Pike, who hopefully at least gets to cameo the next time around.
• I was very surprised by the Spock/Uhura relationship, but I felt it worked and it added some interesting layers to both characters.
• While I think they could have gone with a straight reboot instead of using an old character to start a new timeline, Nimoy was perfect and it was delightful to see him interacting with the new actors. Still, the creation of a new timeline allows for new stories without crapping on the continuity of old. Though I do agree with this fellow's perspective on Star Trek canon.
• It's just...it's just a really enjoyable movie. Pure fun and entertainment, despite a not-quite-there script. Probably the most satisfied I've been upon leaving a theater since Bourne Ultimatum (Dark Knight and Iron Man being right up there as well).

-Buck

Feeling Blue...

2009-05-08T13:06:00.004-05:00

[Click to enlarge.]

-Hooper

Family Ties

2009-05-06T16:27:00.003-05:00

[Click to enlarge.]

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 4:00 AM - 5:00 AM

2009-05-04T20:10:00.006-05:00

Slow episode? Short review! Enjoy.

• I am really enjoying the character scenes this season, like the one we just had between Jack and Chloe. Why did he think she shouldn't know about his exposure? He's one of the few friends from the old days she has left.
• Kind of a slow episode so far...seems like we're just getting our players in position for the final showdown.
• Olivia's going to fiddle while the Taylor administration burns.
• The WitSec guy is the guy from the Bob Evans commercials!
• Ah, racial profiling. With special guest Bug from Crossing Jordan!
• Hey, Olivia has a few scruples after all.
• You can fancy up your computer trickery all you like, you won't hide from Chloe O'Brien.
• Well, so much for Hodges. Looks like Olivia didn't back out in time. But hey, she didn't actually pay for it, so free assassination! Silver lining kids, silver lining.

Thoughts:
Well, that was uneventful, wasn't it? It's a shame to have a "setting the stage" episode this late in the game, but hopefully it will be worth it. Three hours left to stop Tony and the Cabal. My money's on a crazy cliff-hanger next week that's resolved in the first half of the finale, with the final hour being a slower, more coda-esque bit.

-Buck

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 3:00 AM - 4:00 AM

2009-04-30T14:25:00.004-05:00

My apologies as to the tardy arrival of this week's review. So let's get right to it, because Jack's RUNNING OUT OF TIME!

• Previously on 24: Tony Almeida is a bastard.
• I’m glad we didn’t have some ridiculous bit where Jack can’t talk for most of the hour and can’t tell anyone about Tony. That’s what I was fearing when Dr. Macer kept telling him not to talk.
• You’d think hotels would stock shower curtains made with something a little more “breathable.” Yes, that was an awful pun. I got a million of ‘em.
• I wonder if Tony’s desire to change the game will go as well as when Hodges tried it.
• Ah, compromise with very evil people. The essence of all 24 administrations.
• He took a shower with the dead guy still sitting next to the tub?
• I also wonder what the long-range plan was before Tony suggested his alternative.
• Ah, guess I have my answer, thanks to Jack interrogating Hodges.
• Nice bluff, Jack.
• And BAM! Chloe’s back. Really nice scene between her and Morris. It’s hard not to agree with him, but you can’t fault her loyalty to Jack.
• With all the running and sweating and fisticuffs…can you imagine how bad Jack must smell at this point in the day?
• Is this Martin individual 24’s first gay character? I’m not bothered by it, just curious.
• So Olivia is going to have Hodges assassinated. It’s a shame President Taylor can’t see that her daughter is deeply stupid.
• Nice to see the CTU logo again. And the Chloe/Janice snark is much better this time than the last time Chloe was in the FBI offices.
• Right on, Jack! You tell Janice about how President Palmer...wait...President Palmer? Ah, crap…

Thoughts:
• Well, Tony’s got his fall guy for his sunrise gas attack. This is ending similarly to Season 3, which saw Jack and Chace trying to find the last of Saunders’ virus-carriers. That’s not a bad thing, as those were some of the most exciting hours the show has produced. And it’s different enough that it doesn’t feel like a rehash.
• We all know Kim will come back to give Jack the treatment he needs so he’ll be back for next season. But with his mind slipping, will he be able to stop Tony and the secret cabal? Frankly, it would be pretty interesting if they didn’t. It would be kind of a vindication for Jack and CTU, showing that their methods, while questionable, still saved lives.
• You know what I’d like to see? Some off-hand reference to the fact that part of the L.A. suburbs are a nuclear wasteland now. But that would just bring up bad memories of Season 6.
• Olivia is an idiot. Is it wrong that I just want Agent Pierce to shoot her and rid us of her idiocy?

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Ep 9

2009-04-28T14:16:00.006-05:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Nine: "Turn and Face the Strange"

What Happened:

Let's nutshell this one:

*Sylar and Danko frame HRG, who figures out the two are working together (clever girl). HRG also faces divorce, after Sylar messes with him while looking like his wife, prompting the company man to slam his wife into a table and press a gun to her head before a conveniently-timed call from Lyle (who? Oh, the brat) convinces him of her real-ness.
*Peter and Angela (later met by Claire, Nathan, and HRG) show up at a broken down camp of sorts where the bodies are buried, or something ominous (summer camp gone horribly wrong!).
*Matt Parkman meets his son, successfully delivered by Hiro and Ando, after ruining the one good thing in Danko's life (because that's heroic; to be fair, he doesn't kill anyone and realizes he's hit bottom).
*Suresh discovers what his dad was up to back in the 60s.

***

There are three great things about this episode:

1) Matt meets his kid, and it's a genuinely happy moment in a grim story. We see this has/will change Parkman's characterization for the better, both within the story and narratively. The guy's been Debbie Downer since this all started, not thinking logically, ignoring all the cop stuff and any sense of levity.

2) HRG is still amazing. No non-powered character is better than him, and I'd say he's more rounded than anyone on the show. So not only does he deduce the Sylar-body isn't Sylar, but James Martin, he then puts two and two together that Danko rigged this up. Sans glasses, he strolls into Danko's office, pretending to be Sylar-as-HRG and holds up some "new" files from Primatech. The bald hunter takes the bait. HRG holds him at gunpoint, but it goes downhill after that (Danko correctly tells HRG which agent Sylar is posing as, HRG shoots him and tells those around that it's really Sylar, but Sylar holds off healing to frame Noah. Noah flees, etc etc.). He's smart, and he operates using real logic, not make-believe emotional snap-decisionry (a Petrelli favorite).

3) The Japanese Trucker that sounds like GW Bush's neighbor.

***

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"
Episode Five: "Exposed"
Episode Six: "Shades of Gray"
Episode Seven: "Cold Snap"
Episode Seven: "Into Asylum"

-Hooper

He's very convincing, for a gecko.

2009-04-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

Written a while ago, here is a comic strip "from the vault."

...not that anything has gone anywhere but the vault. I digress.

***

-Hooper

It's been a shell of a quarter-century. (Yes, I made the obvious pun.)

2009-04-23T19:07:00.008-05:00

Has it really been twenty-five years since the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came onto the scene?

A few more pics and some TMNT thoughts after the jump.

The years have seen some great comics (let's hear it for the goofy if entertaining Archie Comics series), several different cartoon incarnations, four feature films (two of which are quite good), and countless action figures. And I hear there's yet another film in the works. Guess they're not going away any time soon. And that's fine by me. These guys are probably my second-favorite 80s property after Transformers.

-Buck

Perchance to Dream

2009-04-23T07:26:00.007-05:00

The following conversation took place Tuesday morning, as Mrs. Buck and I were driving to work.

Buck: Did you have weird dreams last night?
Mrs. Buck: Yeah.
Buck: Mine didn't make any sense at all.
Mrs. Buck: Did yours involve vampires and Rory Gilmore?
Buck: They did not...yours sound much better than mine.

-Buck

(I did have a dream about the Gilmore Girls once, but it did not involve creatures of the night.)

Lions attacks buffalo. Crocodile attacks buffalo. Buffalo's friends arrive.

2009-04-21T14:30:00.000-05:00

EDIT: Link Fixed!

They call it the Battle at Kruger.

A landmark wildlife preserve in South Africa, Kruger Park offers a variety of safari options. Few realize "open warfare" was one of them. This video was shot by some tourists and their guide. To entice you to click through, I will say it features a pride of lions attacking a water buffalo...before a crocodile decides it wants some of the action.

And then the buffalo's friends arrive.

It's not David Lean-quality directing, but it's a unique glimpse at nature-in-action that even the best Nova special often misses (or has to over-edit to present). The tourist commentary ("Oh, you're too late!") is entertaining.

War at the Watering Hole!

Enjoy.

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM

2009-04-21T14:04:00.006-05:00

It's what we were all afraid of: Tony Almeida has been lying to and using Jack Bauer since this day began. Surprises in the Bauer family, deadly traps meant for the FBI, and an hour-ending showdown are just some of the good bits this week.

• I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the rest of the day without Larry.
• Working Theory: This assault on Hodges’ lawyer is to get an assassin in to take him out so he can’t name his co-conspirators. Alternative: The assassin is going to go after the president.
• Ah, the old “Shoot yourself to retain deniability” trick. Well played, Mr. Almeida.
• Okay, so Tony was not working for Hodges/Starkwood, and bribed one of their soldiers to smuggle out some of the bio-weapon.
• "I would think you'd know by now that no one can change my father's mind when it's made up." Nice.
• Nice to see Jack showing some shock/remorse at Larry’s death. I think he was really starting to like the guy; despite their disagreements, it seemed Jack thought Larry was a good man.
• And now we’re going to be mass-murdering FBI agents? Tony’s really gone over the edge, hasn’t he?
• Ah, you can’t keep a good Bauer down.
• Well, Working Theory was half-right, I suppose. I guess slipping him the suicide pill is a little cleaner, considering they’re in the White House.
• Will Patton! Let’s all welcome one of my favorite character actors to 24!
• Tony was working for the same group Hodges was, but they weren’t actually co-conspirators, eh? He’s his own “cell,” I take it?
• I think Jack knows. You could tell he smelled something fishy right away.
• Ah, Kim has a new boyfriend who seems much closer to her age. And a baby! Awww, and she’s named after Teri. Jack’s going to blubber like a fool when he finds all this out.
• Yeah, how do you like that, Tony? You’ve helped kill one of the best friends you ever had! Bastard.
• Boom.
• Always nice to see Jack springing into action.
• Producers, I swear, if you killed Larry and Renee back-to-back…Ah, okay. Good.
• Tony, you have no idea what you’ve done. You think Jack was upset at Henderson and Logan for their crimes? You cannot conceive the shitstorm of fury Jack Bauer will unleash upon you for this betrayal.

Thoughts:

After ruminating on it a bit, I have decided:

A) Hodges and Tony were working for the same group, albeit independently of one another.
B) When Hodges went “off-mission” with his wacky missile/General Juma plot, Tony was tasked to stop Hodges and tie up loose ends. This sample of the virus is one of those loose ends.
C) The slow burn as Jack discovered Tony’s betrayal and Tony realized Jack knew was perfect. Expertly written, paced, and acted.
D) I honestly like Tony more as a villain, something I mentioned at the start of this day. The character shift was a welcome change, and look how much mileage we’ve gotten from it.
E) I actually haven't minded Kim being around. When was the last time that happened?
F) Is this the first season where the villain we started the day with is the same villain we’re likely to end the day with? I’m sure we’ll see more of the shadowy organization Tony’s working for, but the final showdown has to be between Tony and Jack.

-Buck

The War of the Words

2009-04-21T07:46:00.003-05:00

We're trying to get some content going besides just the usual 24 and occasional Heroes reviews. Last week saw the Plot Summaries goofiness, and here's more tomfoolery for the masses.

Just something silly I scribbled down during a graduate class last year. Marvel at my clever wordplay!

I drew my lingual blade and swung it towards the approaching warrior. His headless body fell as I kept moving. I took a moment to survey my unit. (Richardson was down, smothered between (two parenthetical ghouls.)) Smith was rushing to his aid. I picked up a discarded exclamation! launcher and took down three more of our foes. Their screams echoed! as the points pierced their flesh. It looked like things were improving. It had been a hard campaign, but we were close to wiping out this pocket of enemy grammar resistance. They would no longer taint this ground with their unholy presence. Just then Williams screamed. [A bracket ship] had appeared overhead, crushing Williams beneath one of the dozens of heavy [brackets] it was dropping as it passed over the battlefield. Then there came a mighty ROAR as a battalion of CAPS LOCK SHOCK TROOPS came pouring over the hill. I cur@$#sed, as I wiped, some stray commas, from my blade. This battle was far from over.

-Buck

Plot Summaries, Take 2

2009-04-17T13:42:00.010-05:00

After enjoying the plot summaries I linked to earlier in the week (check it out if you haven't, and be sure to read the comments section, as many other readers chimed in with their own), Hooper and I were bitten by the creativity bug. So without further ado, here are our own plot summaries for various movies and TV shows. We hope you have as much fun reading them as we had writing them.

Hooper's are in RED, mine are in BLUE.

• 8MM: Private detective discovers a burgeoning niche market in home video distribution.
• Armageddon: Widower fails to protect daughter’s virginity, dies.
• Back to the Future: Deranged scientist steals nuclear material, pushes teenage boy to incest.
• Bad Boys: "Thug" culture corrupts urban police station.
• Bambi: Hunter misses second shot. (Alternate: Hunter fails to fill his quota for the season.)
• Big: Pre-teen with hormone imbalance seduced by corporate climber.
• Blade: Narcissist seeks to destroy all those like him.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Teenage girl desecrates corpses, dates older men.
• Chicago: Murderers are set free, pursue employment in the entertainment industry.
• Deliverance: Weekend plans go awry.
• Dog Day Afternoon: Gay man acts up for media attention.
• Dracula: Recluse discovers new tastes abroad.
• Face/Off: Cosmetic surgery breakthrough discovered.
• Family Guy: Two local pedophiles go undetected in family-friendly neighborhood.
• Finding Nemo: Inattentive father loses physically handicapped son, mocks mentally-disabled woman.
• Forrest Gump: Retarded man has bad timing, inexplicably breeds.
• Frasier: Retired police officer suffers indignities of two closeted sons, ill-bred caregiver.
• Free Willy: Eco-terrorist ruins seaside attraction.
• Friday the 13th: Mother celebrates her late son's life.
• Friends: Woman abandons man at altar, shacks up with best friend's brother, has love child.
• Glory: Experimental military unit fails to achieve objective.
• Hot Fuzz: A fascist and his mentally-challenged friend work out their issues by assaulting senior citizens.
• House MD: High-end teaching hospital employs drug addict and self-absorbed residents who only treat one patient per week. (Alternate: Self-loathing drug addict saves lives.)
• How I Met Your Mother: Father shocks children with tales of promiscuity, brings into doubt his fidelity to their mother; "Aunt" Robin viewed in new light.
• Karate Kid: Put-out teenage boy enters physically abusive relationship with WWII vet.
• Kiss the Girls: Man expands unique collection, finds pen-pal.
• Lawrence of Arabia: Effeminate white man conquers Middle East.
• Mary Poppins: Nanny introduces psychedelics to upper-crust British children, violates child labor laws.
• Masters of the Universe: Foreign LARPers force couple to participate in their RPG; deformed midget discovers music.
• Men in Black: Government kills illegal alien, covers it up. (Alternate: Government agency's hiring program scrapes bottom of barrel.)
• Poltergeist: Parents abuse drugs while daughter is abducted.
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: Returning vet has hard time fitting in, goes on crime spree with black man.
• Roseanne: Morbidly obese couple deal with economic hardship, disappointing children.
• Shaun of the Dead: British retail drone deals with spoiled meat.
• Signs: Faithless preacher ignores daughter during crisis.
• Sleepers: Murderers go free after sham trial.
• Smallville: Immigrant suspected in property destruction, mysterious deaths.
• South Park: Transgender teaches youth while town wallows in political corruption, spontaneous violence.
• Speed: Cripple endangers commuters.
• Spider-Man: Introverted teen gets radiation poisoning, begins professional wrestling career, kills wealthy industrialist.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Retiree runs afoul of secret government think-tank.
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: Paramilitary religious cult takes boy from single mother, skilled mechanic's job.
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones: Bi-polar teen endangers commuters, seduces older woman, attacks geriatric, propagates civil war.
• Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: Assassination plot prevented; government enacts new reforms. Wife-beater promoted. (Alternate: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.)
• Steel Magnolias: Diabetic ignores doctor's advice, neglects newborn.
• The Big Lebowski: Differing philosophical viewpoints prove a distraction on League Night.
• The Blues Brothers: Fugitive brothers form band; antagonize police, socialists.
• The Bourne Identity: American tourist kills many, finds love during European janut.
• The Godfather: Domestic problems spill into the workplace.
• The Green Mile: Incarnation of Jesus Christ killed yet again after wrongful imprisonment. (Alternate: Dangerously large black man incites violence between prison official, inmate.)
• The Longest Day: Tourists take advantage of scenic beaches.
• The Negotiator: Many die in hostage situation.
• The Rock: Geriatric felon slaughters soldiers of fortune.
• The Shawshank Redemption: Convicted double-murderer escapes.
• The Simpsons: Mentally handicapped man starts family, gets union job.
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Tourists fail to anticipate special needs of local handicap.
• Tombstone: Lawman and his terminally-ill friend go on killing spree.
• Unbreakable: Paraplegic commits acts of terrorism, stalks family man with genetic disorder.

-Buck

GHOSTBUSTERS: Unemployed college professors destroy hotel with nuclear weapons.

2009-04-14T15:20:00.005-05:00

Dorian of postmodernbarney (with some assistance from some of my favorite comics bloggers) brings the masses "Uncomfortable Plot Summaries."

Some of my favorites:

ALIENS: An unplanned pregnancy leads to complications.
BATMAN: Wealthy man assaults the mentally ill.
BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA: Redneck trucker kills Chinese immigrants.
DIE HARD: Dysfunctional cop saves marriage by murdering foreign national.
JURASSIC PARK: Theme park’s grand opening pushed back.
LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
SCARFACE: Immigrant finds running his own business stressful, dangerous.
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT: Redneck bootlegger makes mockery of law, sanctity of marriage.
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE - Religious extremist terrorists destroy government installation, killing thousands.

Plenty more at the link.

-Buck

"Where are my Heroes reviews?!" (BABY!)

2009-04-14T14:28:00.006-05:00

Due to a busy work schedule, as well as a rather big deal in my personal life (see below), I've been preoccupied. I do intend to get the reviews up sometime (there are three extant), but give me a bit to square other things up.

And my big deal?

We shall debut the child in September, certainly to rave reviews and much fanfare.

-Erik
(Hooper)

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 1:00 AM - 2:00 AM

2009-04-14T13:09:00.005-05:00

The game has changed, my friends. That's really all I can say before you click through for the rest of the review.

• Jack really has no qualms about getting upitty with presidents, does he?
• Very clever of Taylor, unofficially giving Jack and Renee permission to go ahead with their mission. Still, we all know how Jack’s last unofficially-sanctioned mission went.
• Hodges’ goal is really just to sit at the big kids’ table? Well, I did call him childish in a prior review.
• Much as I want Tony to succeed in blowing up the rockets, I don’t think this is going to work.
• And it almost didn’t. Lost the detonator, alarm’s been triggered…but look at Tony pulling through.
• While I’m not sure what’s next, it really would have been inconceivable to drag the Hodges/Taylor standoff out for the next six hours.
• So Hodges isn’t the top of this year’s villain foodchain? At least he doesn’t want us to think so. Are we moving into a fourth act? That’s a bit unusual for this show.
• She’s not that much older than him, but Taylor’s taking a somewhat motherly role with Jack. He hasn’t had an influence like that since David Palmer, and it’s nice to see it.
• Even if Kim had been trying to see Jack all day, Renee did kind of overstep her bounds. I think her attraction to Jack has blinded her to the fact that they still barely know each other.
• Kim and Jack, reunited. Hey, and no creepy C. Thomas Howell!
• Well the Jack/Kim reunion was pretty bittersweet, but not nearly as uncomfortable as the last time they saw each other. I imagine that despite Jack’s protests to the contrary, we’ll see her giving him help for that experimental treatment as the day ends.
• Ah, as Season 3 taught us, you can’t keep a good bio-weapon down.
• Larry’s down and Tony doesn’t see the gunman…
• Oh you have got to be shitting me…
• There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Tony Almeida, the hero-turned-villain-turned hero we were all rooting for...was a black hat all along.

Thoughts:

What to say? The writers really pulled out a great twist in this installment, though we can’t say we hadn’t imagined this scenario. I know I for one was questioning Tony’s loyalty back in the early hours of the day. And maybe it was due to Jack’s unwavering support of him, but I was convinced he was on the side of the angels now.

I have no idea what to expect for the last quarter of the day. What’s Tony’s plan? Is it still just the simple vengeance against the government that twice wronged him? Is he Hodges’ ace in the hole, or does he have his own agenda? There are so many possibilities. One thing’s for certain: we can’t take anything for granted in these final hours.

-Buck

"And I thought they were soft...on the OUTside!"

2009-04-09T13:38:00.007-05:00

The world of sleepovers got a whole lot awesomer.

ThinkGeek presents the TaunTaun sleeping bags. Currently available for delivery only to Hoth, the company hopes to distribute Sectorwide later this year.

Featuring an attached, embroidered tauntaun head pillow and a lining simulating the "smelly, but warm" insides of a dead tauntaun, the sleeping bag is perfect for camping out in the yard, spending the night at a friends or saving your future wife's idiot brother from certain death by exposure.

Measuring 32"x60", the sleeping bag is, according to ThinkGeek, perfect for childrend and small adults. And it's so cozy, simulating "the warmth of a Tauntaun carcass ."

It even has a little glowing lightsaber as the zipper. Aside from authentic sound effects as you unzip it, this product has it all.

Buy yours today!

**Warning: does not protect against wampa-attack. Jedi visions not included.**

-Hooper

Buckshot: Off the Port Bow

2009-04-09T08:36:00.003-05:00

It still seems strange to me that in this day and age, piracy is still such a threat.

But if there's one thing I've learned from the interwebs, it's that the only solution to the piracy problem is ninjas.

Or perhaps we could track down this fellow to aid in the negotiations. Either way, it would get very interesting.

-Buck

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM

2009-04-07T13:52:00.011-05:00

Much better than last week, tension-wise. Though I do hope we're not going to drag the standoff with Hodges out for the next 7 hours. Still, there was some 24 goodness to be found this time around...

• Nice to see Larry showing more backbone.
• Damn, Voight’s really chewing the scenery.
• Shame we didn’t get a shoot-out like I’d hoped, but I suppose if Starkwood had fired on federal agents, Taylor would have brought down the thunder, and it would all be over rather quickly.
• Oh crap. Jack’s dying.
• Olivia’s kind of our new Sherry Palmer, isn’t she?
• It’s interesting watching Jack run things from a distance, in the command center. We don’t get scenarios like that a lot.
• Nice crazy virus eyes, Sutherland!
• All this talk of Kim leads me to believe we’ll see young Ms. Bauer again. Think that means we’ll get a return appearance by C. Thomas Howell as her way-too-creepy boyfriend? *
• That was some high-quality face-kickin’, neck-snappin’ action courtesy of Mr. Almeida. 24 could use more kicks to the face in its fight scenes.
• Is Hodges’ endgame the “I love my country so much I’m going to hurt it” or the “We’re going to show we’re relevant by creating a crisis only we can resolve”? Either one seems poorly thought-out. Then again, he is pretty crazy.
• I don’t think Olivia’s fooling Agent Pierce. You don’t work Secret Service detail for 5 administrations and not know what’s going on in hotel rooms. The look on his face when she came out said it all.
• A very ominous ending as Taylor silently exits the room after her conversation with Hodges.

Thoughts:

 For me, a much more entertaining entry than last week, thanks largely to Tony’s cloak-and-dagger antics.
 I’m still curious as to just what Hodges wants out of all this. Maybe he wants the president to recognize the threat of giant alien robots.
 Gotta say, I think I prefer Janis to Chloe right now. Don’t get me wrong, it would be cool if they called Mrs. O’Brian in to work with Janis at some point. But I like that Janis doesn’t talk down to everybody. Chloe’s smarter-than-thou attitude gets old fast with me.
 I’d pictured a much more sinister way for Olivia to get revenge on the reporter. I was expecting her to start screaming that he was trying to rape her or something, only to have Pierce come in and shoot him. But that’s a tad more messy than blackmail, I suppose.
 I’m sure there are fans that hate it, but I don’t mind a few episodes with Jack sidelined. I think this season’s cast is strong enough that they can keep things moving without him at the forefront.

* Seriously, Elisha Cuthbert: 26. C. Thomas Howell: 42. I don’t care how old Kim is supposed to be due to the show’s sliding timeline, it’s just wrong. Besides, if you followed the timeline, Jack’s actually 4 years older than he should be, if his birth year of 1966 can be taken as fact. That or Season 7 is taking place in 2013.
Actually, by the same math, Kim’s the same age as the actress playing her, so the relationship is still creepy. But her given birth year is ’87, which means she was only 14 in Season 1, and that dog don’t hunt. That’s of course assuming Season 1 did in fact take place in 2001…
Yes, I just did all this math on a post-it. Shut up! 24’s chronology is making my head hurt…

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 8

2009-04-01T13:30:00.008-05:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Eight: "Into Asylum"

What Happened:

Nathan and claire bond in Mexico while on the lam, and decide to return to the US. They have a cute scene where Nathan tries to raise money by out-drinking some American college students; he fails, but Claire steps in and her unique physiology allows her to win. A drunken Nathan admits he gave Claire the free pass to try and win her over, to make her like him, and that now he has to set things right. Upon waking (sober), he admits he doesn't have the ability to pick up the phone and Get Things Done, Claire loses faith, but later he comes around.

Angela and Peter find sanctuary in a church, giving Angela time to sleep and dream. They must bring the family together, including her sister. A sister? While at the church, Peter asks God why bad things happen to him. In pop a squad of agents led by HRG, who discovers the two hiding in the confessional. He says nothing. Good man, Noah Bennet.

A hero-napping goes awry when three of four agents are killed. Noah is not happy and lectures Danko for sending in agents who didn't know what they were up against. Turns out the killer is a shapeshifter and is posing as an agent. He can be anyone by just touching them, and has serious identity issues.

Danko is confronted by Sylar, who offers to work with "Building 26" to get all those with powers, leaving Sylar the last man standing. Their first joint target is the shapeshifter, who they track down and kill while he's wearing Sylar's face. Sylar takes his ability (empathically, not through rough neurosurgery, so the body is preserved), the agency thinks Sylar is dead and this dangerous liason can continue.

To be continued next week in "Turn and Face the Strange."

***

I enjoyed having a shapeshifter brought in, and that power adds a lot to the mix, especially since Sylar now has it. I liked that part of the episode. All the Petrelli-related stuff was a bit slow, overdue and simply continued to shuffle them around.

That's the problem with this season. Characters are simply moving from point a to b to c to etc. in order to get them to some predetermined endpoint. Why not give them real stories in the meantime?

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"
Episode Five: "Exposed"
Episode Six: "Shades of Gray"
Episode Seven: "Cold Snap"

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 11:00 PM - 12:00 AM

2009-03-31T14:51:00.002-05:00

This week's episode was a little light. Not necessarily bad, but not the 24 gold standard either.

• Hey, it’s Dr. Sunny Macer from Season 3! Loved the double-take she and her partner give Jack when they saw his scars. Did she and Jack never actually interact the last time she was on the show (She was at the hotel for most of her screentime, and Jack was never actually at that location.)? I found it odd that she introduced herself to him in this episode.
• Hodges thinks Tony will turn again? I doubt it.
• Your false modesty isn’t fooling me, Olivia! Chief of Staff is what you’ve been waiting for.
• Renee is totally in love with Jack, isn’t she? And is it my imagination, or has she gotten paler as the day wore on? (Maybe it’s just the fluorescents…)
• Ah, a crisis of conscience from Hodges’ right-hand man.
• Larry thrives much more in the office setting than when he’s in the field.
• Holy crap! Jack smiled! And he made a funny!
• This has been a good tension-builder episode. I would have liked a bit more action, but the build-up to it has been handled rather well.
• I know Tony’s helping them, and at this point, the FBI’s taking any help they can get, but earlier in the day we had an argument about how Tony couldn’t go to the White House because he would be arrested. I assume they’re just giving him a pass pending a successful end to the hostilities?
• Nice twist. And nicely played by Hodges’ assistant.
• Mexican stand-off. Nice.

Thoughts:
Overall, not a lot to talk about. Kind of a filler episode, but it still had some good beats. Watching these online, I don’t see the preview for next week’s episode (which is fine by me, as FOX has a history of putting massive spoilers in those previews), but I’m assuming we’re going to see a nice ol’ shoot-out with Jack and Renee swooping in to save the day.

Man, do we really have 8 episodes left? Where do we go from here?

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 7

2009-03-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Seven: "Cold Snap"

What Happened:

Bryan Fuller returned with "Shades of Gray," but this week he really lets 'er rip.

First off, you can tell the writing duties have shifted, providing more specifics for camera shots, as the direction of the episode was superior to what's come before. Technically, it was better than anything this (half of the) season.

One of the parting shots last week was of Sylar in Danko's apartment, while Danko was present. This episode opens with Danko shaving and we see his routine, the meticulous nature of it, until the door alarm goes off ("The front door is open," chimes a voice). Grabbing a gun, he makes his way through is apartment to the entryway, closing the door. It's then, as he stalks into this living room, that he sees the present Sylar left him: Doyle, the Puppetmaster, all trussed up and unconscious with a note: "My gift to you."

HRG ducks around honking cars in stalled traffic and gets into a Angela Petrelli's car. With Nathan and Peter both flapping in the wind, it's up to the Company Man to keep the Angela's secret agenda on track. They back and forth about how HRG needs to give over a big fish to Danko, she suggesting Rebel and HRG offering up...her. She does him a favor and gives him her umbrella; he does one right back and says "don't go home." Theirs is a peculiar, but dynamic relationship. Spymaster and spy.

And he did, fortunately, leave her on guard. Shortly after he leaves, she asks the driver why they've stopped and as he's answering, plainclothes agents yank him out of the car and reach in for Angela, too. Then she jerks awake; it was one of her visions. She leans forward and tells the driver not to stop, ah, but there's construction- His door opens and he's pulled out, but she's long gone, having ducked out. She sidles up to a businessman. Silly me, what a day to forget an umbrella, can I share? she coos.

Danko has Mohinder brought to room marked "Human Resources; it's the storage room for the drugged heroes, including the mortally wounded Daphne. Thinking he's been brought to help her, Mohinder demands she be taken to a hospital. And then he's zapped and hooked up; remember, he was about to work with Nathan. HRG is offered a "ta da..." gift by Danko - the Puppetmaster, who did unpleasant things to Claire and Sandra. Danko claims he caught him. HRG offers to snag Rebel in return, by letting Tracy go and using her as bait. If the plan goes awry, she can always be killed in "self-defense." Tracy is briefly shown concentrating and breathing out frosty air...under the heat lamps.

Across the country, Hiro and Ando find themselves taking care of Matt Parkman, the baby and not the telepath sci-fi'ed back to infanthood. Turns out Janice Parkman (the two-timing ex) had her a baby boy - Parkman's. The two don't know what to do. Save Matt Parkman, was their quest, but this isn't their Matt Parkman to (want to) save. Hiro wants grandeur, Ando thinks there's more to the situation and the baby turns on the TV (look, adult Matt Parkman in a bomb vest on the news!). Hiro turns it off. This goes back and forth as our Japanese duo argue, with Hiro finally unplugging the TV (bad Baby! No TV for you.). It's only when Baby Matt turns the TV on...while it's unplugged...that Hiro and Ando start paying attention.

After Angela's escape, over in Building 26, Noah hangs up the phone and says she escaped. Probably tipped off, fumes Danko. She is clairvoyant, reminds HRG. And then the lights go out. "Rebel, rebel," quips HRG.

Tracy's heat room is shut off and she freeze-breaks her shackles, leaving through the unlocked door. Rebel guides Tracy through B26 to "Human Resources." She unhooks the important people (Matt, Mohinder, Daphne) while leaving the rest to rot. That she did that is impressive for her selfish character. Matt mentally blocks them from the guards they run across and, once on the street, Tracy ditches them. Matt carries Daphne to a hospital, Mohinder in tow.

Things move quickly. Matt gets Daphne into a hospital, nudging the doctor's gray matter so he won't report it as a gunshot wound. Matt and Mohinder stay with her.

Tracy slips into a department store and is in a dressing room, stealing clothes (creatively freezing off the security tags) when instead of a helpful assistant knocking (a different size?), it's HRG chiding Tracy that she should've stayed with the telepath. She threatens the wicked cold snap she's been building up; HRG thinks his drawn gun would finish her before the cold got him. A battle he doesn't want to fight. Lead me to Rebel, he claims, and he'll let her go - still on the run, but with a chance.

Hiro stars packing a bag for the baby; they will take him with them. Ando wonders if Hiro is so cold to the baby because of his own strained childhood: distant father...departed mother. It's then that Hiro tells Ando that he held his mother as she died when traveling back into the past (see Season Three, volume 3: Villains). He's trying not to cry, to be brave for the baby (of course nearly making Ando cry). Someone enters the home, breaking their Moment. They pull an ET and hide in the baby's closet, but Janice knows they aren't babysitters and gets a bit testy. When they start in about Baby Matt's power, she starts to believe they are genuinely there to help. Ah, but then the door again: agents.

They need Janice and Baby Matt for questioning. But he's just a baby.... She realized the danger Baby Matt is in and goes with the agents, saying they can get the boy from his babysitters. The agents clearly don't believe her and storm the house. Baby Matt brushes a hand against Hiro's face. Ando shoots his red lightning against the agents with forceful effect, only to get a gun butt to the face.

Hiro, previously powerless, freezes time. Yatta!

Turns out the "go/ignition" power of Baby Matt's works with people, too. Unfortunately, the touch only brings back the time freezing, not teleportation, so Hiro has to put Ando in a wheelbarrow and cart him twelve miles to the bus stop before restarting time. Toddler Touch and Go. Hurm.

Tracy passes an ATM that speaks her name, gives her money and a receipt that lists a Union Station locker containing ID and a boarding pass. She hops in a cab. Micah, watching from the sidelines, follows her.

So to be clear: Micah is Rebel, helping the nasty tart that looks like his mom. Can this end well?

Angela meets her friend Millie for lunch, seeking help. Well, she won't get it...at least not without receiving a tongue-lashing about her bizarre behavior since Arthur's death. Angela doesn't want to hear it, she's trying to help her boys and needs cash, clothes, a car. But Millie says then turn yourself in. That won't work for Mrs. Petrelli. She gets up to leave, but Millie relents and forks over all her cash (several hundred); Angela grabs her umbrella. Walking down the street later, she spots some plainclothes and tries to elude them, only to realize she's in a closing ring. Ducking into a hotel, she gets into an elevator before getting nabbed. Instead of going higher, the agents bring her car down. Just before she stops, she hears a thud on the car's roof. The doors open and Peter is there. He flies away with both of them.

Daphne wakes up, healed, and leaves the hospital. To Matt, she says their relationship was a mistake and she's going back on the run. She won't slow down for anyone.

At Union Station, Tracy opens the locker and gets the docs. Micah reveals himself and his role, to Tracy's chagrin. She tells the kid this was set-up to get Rebel - him. Micah wonders how she can be so selfish. He sets off an alarm so they can slip out. They walk through a parking garage, and Micah makes it known he thought, from her political bio, that she was altruistic. Maybe a few years back, but not now, she replies. Danko's forces make some noise and close in. Tracy asks Micah to talk to the sprinklers and get them to go off - and then to run. "Stay ahead of the ice."

Sprinklers drenching her and a squad of commandos, Tracy steps out from behind a car and walks to the middle of the garage. The others circle around her, pinning her in, guns drawn. And then she freezes everything. It isn't a quick freezing flash but works in waves, icing them more and more as she pushes the cold snap out of her. She even freezes herself solid, though she still lives. Micah escapes before the cold reaches him. Danko emerges after the "attack" has stopped and shoots Tracy in the chest, shattering her. HRG comes to his side and looks down (sadly?). A chunk of Tracy's face - her eyes, forehead and the top of her nose - comes into view. A tear runs down from one eye...and it blinks.

Daphne is in Paris when Parkman catches up to her, telling her he knows she loves it. How did he get there so fast? He flew. How'd she get there? Ran on water. And then he starts to actually float and offers her a view of the Eiffel Tower few ever get. She takes him up and they fly together. In the air she figures out this is all an illusion, and she's still in the hospital bed dying. Paris, the argument, reconnecting - it's all to give her a better end than what she got. And because he refuses to let her go. She asks him if he'd do her a favor. Anything. "Fly me to the moon." The jet off up in the sky and then across, a straight line to the moon...that becomes a flat line on the heart-rate monitor. Mohinder consoles Parkman.

Peter and Angela stand in the head of the Statue of Liberty and he asks her what she wants to do now.

To be continued in "Into Asylum."

***

Daphne and Tracy are dead, the latter only until the writers can work in a way to rebuild her. Daphne's death, while sad, is OK. She wasn't adding anything to the story and her relationship with Parkman was pretty contrived (ok, he sees them together in a possible future that also has Sylar a doting husband in oven mitts? Nah. That's like hoping Sandra Bullock and Keanue make it as a couple after Speed). And her power wasn't even used to its fullest offensive capacity.

Hiro has confronted his grief, and with Ando and a new mission, perhaps he can become more of the courageous man he only mimics now.

Danko isn't happy with HRG, but at least got to kill a hero.

Micah is Rebel, the communications hub of a future heroes movement. But is he mature enough to be smart with who he contacts and to accept orders? He's smart, but just a kid.

Angela and Peter might be forming the nucleus of a resistance - brains and power.

No hero is in chains who we care about, but Sylar might be aiding the "enemy."

***

Next week, Sylar propositions Danko...to be his partner (dun dun duuuuun!!!).

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"
Episode Five: "Exposed"
Episode Six: "Shades of Gray"

-Hooper

Buckshot: Awesome

2009-03-26T07:50:00.004-05:00

This seems familiar, but I don't know if I've actually seen it before. Was it a Super Bowl ad?

In any case, it is, in a word...awesome.

-Buck

The Unused Final Crisis Cover

2009-03-25T14:28:00.003-05:00

Few people know the original ending to Final Crisis didn't culminate in Superman saving the day, as per normal, but rather another titan we all know and love.

Da smackdown with Darkseid woulda been brutal.

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM

2009-03-24T11:58:00.007-05:00

Another very solid hour as we make our way towards Day 7's finale. Good character moments all around, with a healthy dose of action to boot.

• Good for Larry, not taking any crap from Kanin.
• Tony seems reluctant to help. Still angry over Emerson’s death?
• Hey, looks like Henry’s all right. That’s good news for the Taylor household.
• And we say good-bye to Bob Gunton as Kanin resigns. At least he’s still got that warden gig at Shawshank…
• Connor Trinneer! Star Trek: Enterprise’s Chief Engineer Trip Tucker joins the battle against terrorists. Well, sort of. First he’s going to get the delightful experience of Jack putting a gun to his head.
• “They’re six-year-olds, Greg. They need to eat their carrots.” I don’t know why, but I find that to be a great bad-guy line.
• Jon Voight’s Hodges is slimy, smug, and acts like a spoiled kid who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas. I like him.
• “You and I both knew he was dead the minute he stepped out there.” Damn, Tony. I know you’ve had a raw deal the last few years, but that’s cold.
• Does anyone else want to smack the smug right off Olivia’s face? And now she gives the go-ahead on these stories?! Karma’s going to give this girl one hell of a payback in the final hours, mark my words.
• Put it together, Larry…you may not like Jack, but you’re not stupid.
• Good for you, Jack. I don’t care what Tony’s argument was, that man didn’t deserve to die. Plus, we got a great tough-guy exchange out of it:
“You’re going to turn a surveillance job into a firefight? It’s gonna be two against ten.”
“Two against nine.” Bad. Ass.
• Sometimes I wonder just how much adrenaline Jack’s heart can take. He temporarily flatlined in Season 2, went through heroin withdrawal in Season 3, endured a year-and-a-half of torture in a Chinese prison…you’d think eventually his heart would just stop.
• Well what did you think that hissing sound was, genius?
• Don’t worry, Jack. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You are signed for additional seasons and a 24 movie, after all.

Thoughts:
1. A really good episode, continuing the tension felt in the very first hours of the day.
2. Renee's been side-lined too long. We need her back out there with Jack in these last hours.
3. I like that while Tony's still fighting for the greater good, he's now more of a gray-area hero compared to Jack's black-and-white worldview. (Or would one argue that Jack is the gray-area hero? I see his "whatever it takes" attitude as being more clear-cut.)
4. I've read some pretty negative things about Larry in other reviews. Am I the only one watching who actually likes him?
5. Will Morris and Chloe be back?
6. How bad is the shitstorm going to be when all of Olivia's dirty dealings come to light?
7. Can't wait 'til next week.

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 6

2009-03-20T23:30:00.004-05:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Six: "Shades of Gray"

Note: This will be really short, as I didn't see the whole episode the first time around and have been busy since.

A quick rundown:

*Parkman had a bomb strapped to his chest by the Hunter (Danko); he was drugged and released into a crowded area around Congress. The SWAT team surrounded him, and Nathan quickly arrived (flew) at the scene, calming Parkman down. Matt was able to read a bomb tech's mind and defuse the device. He was taken into custody after being knocked out by Nathan (can't have him reading minds now, can he?).

*Sylar came to the end of his road trip, an old shack in the woods, and finally met his father, Samson Gray (played liver-spotted, in full beard and very grey by John Glover)...who turned out not to be the great white hunter Sylar expected. Dying of cancer, on oxygen, Samson also has the intuitive/absorption power. In fact, he "hunted" for a number of years before giving up on the big game, finding it pointless, and settling in with what powers he can still remember (including a lulling whistle [sedation] and telekinesis).

He stuffs animals now (not slang for anything, you pervs). Sylar chose not to kill him and instead sought answers, such as why did Samson kill his wife (as seen last episode in flashback). Unfortunately, the years have not been kind to his memory, and Samson didn't remember. But he did remember the hunger that drove him to kill for powers, that Sylar deals with, when he saw his son cut his finger and then heal.

Pinning him to the wall with arrows and sedating him, he moved to cut Sylar's head open and gain access to all his abilities, but was stopped. Sylar was playing possum (irony!) and proceeded to choke Samson with his own oxygen tube...before realizing it better to let this old, broken man die alone and in pain. He left, having only made one mistake: he told Samson where he got the healing power...a cheerleader in California

*Tracy got moved back into her heat room in Building 26, received a message from Rebel that hope is coming, and then Nathan said that he's her "only hope." Danko questioned her about Nathan, trying to get her to admit he has a power (she did say, "You're one of us!" at one point). She replied he's lousy in bed, and doesn't know anything about any power.

*Danko continued to press Nathan, but it appeared he pressed to hard. Nathan came back after the Parkman affair with a presidential order removing Danko from the task force. Catching the Senator in a glass (exterior) elevator, Danko shot the glass and pushed Nathan out. Of course, Nathan flew away after exchanging quite a look with our dear Hunter. "Tell me you didn't know about this," Danko whispered to a stunned HRG.

*Claire helped the Puppetmaster (Doyle) evade the agents and supplied him with fake IDs. While she was saving him, he actually resisted the urge to have a female agent shoot herself, instead forcing her to knock herself unconscious against a wall.

*Hiro and Ando got a message from Rebel telling them to save Matt Parkman at a certain address. They showed up, looking for "Matt Parkman" and are mistaken for babysitters...for the infant named "Matt Parkman." Hilarity is sure to ensue.

To be continued next week in "Cold Snap."

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"
Episode Five: "Exposed"

-Hooper

Mixed Signals

2009-03-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts regarding the proposed Illinois crosswalk/pedestrian law that would require cars to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk:

To be clear, I have no issue with a law on our books stating that for the crosswalk going with the flow of traffic, the pedestrians should have right-of-way vs. turning cars. That's common sense.

However, entering into law the notion that a driver would be legally responsible to stop (therefore in the wrong, in case of an accident) when a pedestrian uses the crosswalk that runs against the flow of traffic is more than just bad legislation. It's dangerous.

We have walk/don't walk signals at all stop-light controlled intersections. This lets pedestrians know when it is safe to freely cross (walk), when discretion is required (don't walk-flashing) or when it is unsafe and then can't/shouldn't walk (don't walk-solid). When traffic is flowing, say, east-west, the north-south crosswalk signals show a "don't walk" sign, the equivalent of a pedestrian's "red light." They know not to cross, as they would be going against the flow of traffic and, as such, in the wrong for any accident. It all has to do with respecting those with whom you share the road - cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, rickshaw drivers (Chinatown), etc.

If the law, as proposed, is passed, that "don't walk" signal becomes meaningless. Now, pedestrians no longer have any legal obligation (only mortal) to not cross against traffic. Why should they? The law says they are in the right and cars must yield to them. It's hazardous for their lives and the motorists and is bad form when held against the rules of the road and all the safety skills we had drilled into us at Safety Village.

In a perfect metropolis, the only big vehicles on the roads would electric street cars, with bike lanes and better sidewalks. But we don't live in this semi-science fiction world. We have cars, and must deal with their presence not with hostility but respect, as we want them to respect us, the pedestrians. Violating the crosswalk signals places us in mortal danger, as it does those cars headed towards us.

A new law on the books would also add undue mental distress to motorists who would face not only the physical and mental damage of hitting a dumb guy who saunters across the road in clear ignorance of the "don't walk" solid signal, but also new legal woes. Moving forward with what is presented, we're treating motorists as health advocates treat smokers - not deserving of equal treatment.

I'd urge you to push for a change to this crosswalk law, to contact your state congressmen and senators and see some positive amendments put in place. If not that, I would implore you to think through the ramifications of this law in all their forms.

More information can be obtained by talking to the Active Transportation Alliance, a great non-profit promoting "better biking, walking and transit."

-Hooper

Buckshot: What I've Been Reading

2009-03-20T08:40:00.000-05:00

I think Hooper's going to be starting a similar feature, each time recapping his ten most recent reads. This is sort of a follow-up to my "Year in Books" post; everything I've read since the start of 2009.

The Lost Ones by Christoper Golden -- The conclusion of Golden's Veil Trilogy. Not quite the ending I was expecting, but a very entertaining conclusion all told. This series has been one of the author's more memorable works.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi -- A gripping true-crime story in the grand tradition of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, full of insane twists and police incompetence. Both authors eventually came under suspicion for being involved with the titular killer, with Spezi even going on trial. A great read.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- Last year, I picked up a nice two-volume paperback set containing all of the Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories. I decided to start off with the best-known Holmes story, and was greatly entertained by the mystery Doyle crafted. I can't wait to get into the rest of the collection and see if he can maintain that level of writing.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons -- Decided to read it again before seeing the movie (though maybe I shouldn't have). I still haven't read all of the back-up material though.

Gil's All-Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez -- When the back cover promises a werewolf and vampire (Duke and Earl, respectively) battling an army of zombies and the impending apocalypse...how do you not buy that book? Martinez's novel is a rousing horror/comedy romp. I don't know if there are any more Duke & Earl novels, or if he's planning any more, but I'll definitely start checking out more of his work.

Infected by Scott Sigler -- Hooper raved about this one, so I checked it out from the library. I'll say one thing for it; it moves at a break-neck pace. And while it's entertaining, I found it hard to relate to any of the characters. Still, the set-ups laid out in the closing chapters did get me to check out the sequel, Contagious.

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis -- Anyone who reads Warren Ellis knows about the "stock Warren Ellis protagonist," and this novel's Mike McGill fits right into that mold. Overall, a disappointing effort. But there are pieces of prose in there that make you wish Ellis could break out of his self-inflicted mold and write something truly great, rather than what boils down to guilty pleasure reading. Pick it up used or from the library if you choose to read it.

Currently, I'm reading Mind the Gap: A Novel of the Hidden Cities by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, and it's off to a good start. If anyone's read any of these novels, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

-Buck

Buckshot: Thoughts From the Morning Commute

2009-03-19T08:44:00.004-05:00

Whilst Mrs. Buck and I were driving to work this morning, Nickelback's "Photograph" came on the radio. And I noticed, not for the first time, that certain stations omit this verse when they play it:

Remember the old arcade
Blew every dollar that we ever made
The cops hated us hanging out
They said somebody went and burned it down.

Now while I, like most people, find most radio edits silly (I've always said if it's a word I can hear on television in the 8 PM - 9 PM timeslot, it's a word I should be able to hear on the radio), I can't for the life of me figure out why these lines get edited out on certain stations. It's not like there's profanity there. Is it for what's implied? Are they afraid it's going to promote arson? That some impressionable youth will hear the song and suddenly have a desire to set a building ablaze? When you consider that a few of the band's other songs have rather thinly-veiled references to oral sex, a reference to burning down a building seems mundane in today's "violence is okay, but sex is bad" culture.

*Sigh*...I just can't figure it out. What say you, dear readers?

-Buck

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM

2009-03-17T15:00:00.003-05:00

Jack fails to prove his innocence and gets into even hotter water. Plus nefarious dealings with the First Daughter, and I make some erroneous snap judgements as I "live-blog" this week's episode. (Can it technically be live-blogging if I watched it online? I did type the review as I watched it.)

• Morris is back, and he’s asking about Chloe. Renee’s back in the FBI office as well. Supporting characters are about to join forces...maybe
• Whose car did Jack steal? Is that the Quinn, the assassin’s car? Larry’s…well, it’s obviously not Quinn’s car.
• Sounds like Hodges is preparing for some sort of coup d’ tat…and he’s basically running Blackwater?
• And Renee’s busted. Any bets on how long until Morris (and possibly Janis) but her and Chloe out of holding?
• I’ve been really enjoying the scenes between Jack and Senator Meyer.
• Allison’s hanging Kanin out to dry, or so it seems. She’s denying it, but she’s not unhappy he’ll soon be in trouble with the press.
• Well, I misjudged the whole Chloe-in-holding situation. It’s more of Morris bargaining for Chloe’s release than an exciting jailbreak. But it is in fitting with the character.
• Despite the manhunt for Jack, this has been kind of a slow episode...yet I really don’t mind. This season, the small moments have been just as solid as the big action-y ones.
• Show of hands, who else saw Meyer’s assassination coming? Shame too, since he and Jack were finally getting a rapport going.
• I call bullshit on Allison’s explanation. I say she leaked the story about Burnett, then went right back and killed it to get in the president’s good graces and stick it to Kanin.
• I was expecting Jack to just jump Quinn from behind after he emptied his gun into the office, but the forklift thing was SO much better.
• That was a pretty good fight scene between Jack and Quinn. One of the better 24 fights in recent memory.
• Larry thinks Jack killed Meyer, but why wouldn't he? I've read reviews that really rag on Larry's by-the-book attitude, but I find it refreshing. It's more fun when not everyone trusts Jack implicitly. Larry actually reminds me a lot of Ryan Chappelle.
• Tony’s back in play now that Jack’s back to fugitive status.

Thoughts:
A solid episode, and the connection of Hodges and his Starkwood group to Juma and Sangala isn’t so overly complex as to be implausible. While we’ve done the traditional villain shift/threat escalation the show does as the season progresses, I like that the overall plot throughline (crazy bastards want to mess with Washington) hasn’t changed all that much. Jack's fight with Quinn was appropriately brutal and dirty. Jack fights much the way I saw Rorschach's fighting style in Watchmen described: He fights like a cornered pitbull.

A shame we lost Sen. Meyer, as I was starting to actually like him. But still, we got Tony, Morris, and Chloe back in play, so it's not all bad. I look forward to seeing how we wrap up these last ten episodes.

-Buck

Buckshot: The Economic Crisis Hits Metropolis

2009-03-12T07:43:00.004-05:00

"Lex Luthor Bailout" with Jon Hamm - watch more funny videos

I hereby cast my vote for Jon Hamm as Lex Luthor in the next Superman film.

EDIT: Looks like sometimes the embedded video loads and sometimes it doesn't. Here's a direct link.

-Buck

Trade-Waiting: Why Make It Hard First?!

2009-03-11T15:12:00.006-05:00

Raise your hands if you intend to buy the "Thor: Balder the Brave" Premiere Marvel Hardcover, 176 pages for $25. I...don't see much interest. Collecting Balder the Brave 1-4 and Thor 360-362, seven issues from the mid 80s, Marvel has decided to sap your wallet of its meager cash supply, insisting these issues require fancy treatment. Yes, Walt Simonson, author and co-artist (with Sal Buscema), tells a very epic tale and his style has definitely influenced the current generation of "widecreen" artists, not to mention the recent slate of Matt Fraction-penned Thor tales.

But $3.57 per issue for seven, 20+ yr-old comics that no one's beating down the door to buy in deluxe edition? Is this the best we can get collect? Thinking on Thor, what about Dan Jurgens's run that, more recent and "relevant" to modern audiences, remains only collected piecemeal?

While these old comics are great, and Simonson's Thor run deserves to be fully collected, why not choose omnibus trade paperbacks that are affordable? For $24.99, DC reprinted the whole of Superman's "Our Worlds At War" saga - 20 issues! - and fulfilled the two "A+A" principles of comic book trade collecting: Affordability and Availability. Yet even DC has been failing, with Marvel, on the first principle, probably the most important.

Because publishers love it hard.

***

Release a popular story, and you know it will sell in trade in today's market. A great example is the Sinestro Corps War in the Green Lantern titles over at DC. Several one-shots and months worth of both Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps, the "SCW" was admired by fans and non-fans alike for its effective, clear, self-contained storytelling. Three collections (vol. 1, vol. 2 and Tales of the "SCW") hit stores after the conclusion...in hardcover. The prices were $24.99 for vols. 1 & 2 and $29.99 for Tales...; the softcovers (or what we traditionally think of as "trades") are $14.99 for each.

So let's break that down looking at vol. 1. It collected the one-shot that started the story as well as the next four parts. The HC prices out at ~$5 ($4.998) per issue. To be fair, that's how much the GL: Sinestro Corps Special cost, and it was 64 pages. The other issues carried a $2.99 cover price, a $2 mark-up in HC. Of course, materials costs in a hardcover are greater than an SC.

Over in that SC, each issue costs you $3 ($2.998). So it's a $1.96 savings over buying the issues as they were released, while the HC is a $8.04 mark-up over the singles.

Which would you choose?

This is but one illustration of a trend that's gripped the Big Two over the last several years. Before 2000, trades were rare to begin with; only the biggest stories were collected, or those by the better-known creators. Titles were sporadically gathered into trades, often leaving large gaps between storylines (tragically, in the 1990s there was no DC or Marvel title fully collected among their best-sellers - that goes for Superman, Batman, Spider-man, the X-Men, etc. - when such a practice would've probably revolutionized comic collecting). The back issue business boomed (well, then busted, but it boomed for years before that!).

Over the last ten years, publishers have realized the revenue potential of the bookstore market, which means you need collections, square bound if softcover or just HC, to fill shelves. And because we're dealing with capitalist organizations, they want to make a buck. Thus, overpriced hardcover collections are released, followed months later by softcovers.

It used to be that HCs were reserved for the best a company had to offer. Neil Gaiman returns to The Sandman with "Endless Nights," released first as an oversized HC and then later, an oversized SC. It was a big deal, and the HC made that apparent; it even broke into the NYTimes top 20 fiction bestsellers (HC) when it was released. Now, you get every so-so X-Men arc in "premiere" HC shortly after it concludes, with the SC still half a year away. The pizazz of the hardcover collection is diminished.

***

Let us not deride collecing in trade every issue of an ongoing series. There's nothing wrong with creating such a backlist. Personally, I think it's great to be able to check out a year's worth of a series from the library or "trade-waiting" (the practice of not buying singles and only getting trades) and not missing anything. But Marvel and DC are missing the point. People buy these things for convenience/availability, yes, but due to the financial breakdown of the trade allowing for better affordability than singles.

Single-issue ads pay for large chunks of a comic's cost as does the cover price itself; trades then, ideally, are closer to "pure profit," produced after creators are paid their gross fees with just royalties owed now (if any) as well as production costs. Therefore, trades can be priced less than the sum of the single issues they collect. That's the logic that governs softcovers, but HCs are priced higher (in the case of vol. 1 of Sinestro Corps War, ~ 47% higher) to capture more profit. The economic logic is simple - understandable, in today's highly competitive market - but long-term deadly.

Imagine I'm a new comic book reader. I decide to collect X-Men in trades, as there's no comic book store nearby, but I can get the collections easily at my local Borders. I decide this after 1) seeing one of the X-movies on cable and checking out the first Astonishing X-Men trade from the library. Going whole hog, I choose to get all three main X-titles (adjectiveless, Uncanny and
Astonishing), as it will cost less in trade than in singles, so I can afford all three. I follow along online with what's going on in the singles, when stories end and when I can expect trades. Much to my disappointment, however, my financial situation does not allow me to pay 40%+ more for the issues in HC and that is the only way I can get the titles once the arcs have finished. I could
wait for half a year (at least) for the SCs and realize my 10%+ savings, but I am disillusioned that for entry-level titles at the biggest comic publisher in the US, I have to pay a premium to get what is essentially the second go-around of the offering plate. I am punished for buying the collections. I make another decision and choose not to get the HCs. In time, I forget why I wanted to buy these in the first place and just...drop comics. Then, I go on a shooting spree.

While a bit extreme, the above does illustrate the problem of releasing HCs so far in advance of softcovers. There is no incentive to buy HCs if you're watching your wallet and SCs are down the line; but then again, there is much rage when forced to wait close to a year after a story's wrapped up to buy said softcover. Much rage.

***

How does the "HC-first" policy help titles? Are the companies claiming it's better for business and helps grow the customer base? If anything, new customers will abandon bookstores and comic book shops (the former matters less than keeping the latter alive and prosperous), heading for discounts online at Amazon or DCBS. This hurts the industry, long-term, by destabilizing brick-and-mortor retailers like a Comics Galore or Graham Cracker Comics or Asylum Comics.

So it's no only the consumer who is punished by the edict to issue trades in HC first, softcover later, denying them affordability (you can't argue that the quick publication denies availability; in fact, they publish collections - incl. HCs - so quickly now for a lot of titles, that availability of a story is almost better than during the hey-day of the "comic book shop" pre-1994); now the comic book store that kept the industry alive* during the bleak mid- and late-90s loses business to the online retailer because it can't offer the same level of discounts.

What sort of companies deliver their primary (or most visible) delivery system? With the newsstand market long gone and other distribution methods still in growing pains, it becomes more apparent to me to provide beneficial pricing opportunities to comic book stores to keep this "direct market" afloat. Perhaps this can be done by releasing softcovers to them at the same time as HCs, though not to bookstores or online retailers (they can get them six months after the HC is released, or whatever the timeline is). The HC market exists, but not in the size to justify every single story getting it's own select or premiere or deluxe oversized HC treatment.

***

The best example of a series' collection is that of Dark Horse's Conan (the Cimmerian) by Kurt Busiek, Tim Truman, Cary Nord, et al. When it comes time to release a collection and they are prompt, the release comes in both hardcover and softcover almost simultaneously. The printing of the HCs is even far lower than the SCs, owing to the smaller market, higher price and desire to create an aura of "collectibility." Perfect. If you want to release everything in HC, this is the way to go.

Another good example is how Marvel treats their "Ultimate" line and DC their "youth" books (such as Titans-related, including Teen Titans and Blue Beetle): no hardcover releases at all of one arc. You might get a big HC, as with the "Ultimate" line, that covers three or so trades; what a great idea! And Teen Titans? Those stories are great for younger readers, good hooks, but HC collections would be like putting a electrode on a gerbil's food pellet. The shock to the system (cost; a sense of...fiscal violation) conditions one not to do said action again.

The big hurdle for publishers is to realize that not every arc is worth putting out in such deluxe format. Most of the mainstream titles at the Big Two would see brisker trade sales in paperback (conjecture) if released when the HC normally came out. Save the HCs for omnibus-type collections, like Marvel did with the first two years of Brubaker's Captain America run, or DC currently is doing with Starman (six deluxe HCs covering the whole series plus supplemental material...released long after the trades). Enchance their impact.

Long run, this method will be better for the comic book industry: more titles out in cheaper formats sooner to create and hook readers with a steady supply of material that will make said readers more apt to purchase the higher-cost items in the future.

And by Odin's beard, get some the lead out and collect Dan Jurgens' Thor run!

-Hooper

*An argument can be made that comic book stores, specialty shops that bloomed into existence over the 1980s, grew beyond their means in the 1990s and that the eventual closing of more than half nationwide over the late 1990s (continuing through today) was a market adjustment. The newsstand market gave comic books the mass media status they've enjoyed since the 1930s, though the days of the spinner rack are long behind us.

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM

2009-03-11T08:10:00.001-05:00

In this episode: A hero will rise, a villain will fall, and the world of 24 will never be the same. (Dun dun duuuuuuun!)

• Jack and President Taylor booby-trapped the saferoom before they came out. I think I've said it before, but this woman’s got balls of steel. She’s like Jack’s big sister.
• “Senator, shut up.” Possibly the greatest three words to ever escape Jack Bauer’s lips.
• That’s not how I usually “release” a hostage.
• Vice President’s kind of a wiener, isn’t he?
• Bill! Nooooooo! You damned noble bastard…
• Juma, you got what you deserved. It's just a shame it had to come at such a price. I like that even though Juma was going for his gun, Jack could have taken him alive, but exacted retribution for Bill.
• Yeah, Renee’s totally going to bust Jack out of lock-up.
• Back to Jon Voight’s character, who we already knew was working with Juma. He says he’s still on schedule, and wants to discuss weapons and targets…that can’t be good.
• Man, Larry is pissed that Renee went over his head and talked to Kanin. I like Larry when he’s irritated; he’s more fun.
• And tonight’s “Oh, snap!” moment goes to Larry, suspending Renee indefinitely for disobeying orders. The upside is that Larry’s going to accompany Jack to interrogate Burnett, and I’ve really enjoyed it this season when these two have worked together.
• Ah, I see. Voight’s man tried to kill the old patient to cause a distraction. I just thought he was an asshole.
• Nice moment between Aaron Pierce and Olivia. The hint about Martha Logan…in prison (She did try to kill her estranged husband. Did we ever find out if he died?)? In an institution? Dead?
• Tenacity is an inherited trait in the Taylor family. Olivia may have been harsh on Kanin, but she had a point.
• Nothing like waking up in the hospital and seeing the cheerful visage of Jack Bauer standing above you. It’s like waking up to the Angel of Death.
• Framing Jack for murder? That’s old hat to him. Do you realize how many fake murder raps Jack has beat? All you’re really going to do is piss him off.

Thoughts:

Things moved fairly quickly from ending the White House siege to cementing Jon Voight's Jonas Hodges as our final(?) villain of the day. Perhaps a little too quickly for my taste, but it's fine. At least we got to see Jack show remorse over Bill's sacrifice, and it let Renee see that the man is indeed human at the core.

With regards to Bill...we lost one of my favorite characters tonight, but at least he went out with a bang (no pun intended). Bill made the hard choice, knowing he didn't have what it would take to see this through, but Jack did. And by giving himself for the cause, he gave Jack the chance he needed. I can only assume with Bill gone and Jack sort of wanted for murder, he'll get Tony by his side to finish things.

It looks like we'll have at least one more season following this one (and possibly a feature film?)...but does anyone else feel like there's a sense of finality about things this year? Like Jack will ride off into the sunset as the clock ticks the final seconds of the day? Although I could also see him beginning the next season working for the FBI (or directly for the Taylor administration in some capacity), possibly partnered with Renee.

-Buck

The Den of Mystery Reviews WATCHMEN

2009-03-10T15:04:00.004-05:00

"Set in an alternate 1985 where the "doomsday" clock is at four
minutes to midnight, Nixon is in his fifth term and heroes existed...once....
Outlawed in the late 70s, only "masks" working for the government can keep
active, the rest slipping into obscurity, retirement or the shadows that birthed
them.
"Until one of them dies."
That is a wildly simple intro to the world of Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's "graphic novel" magnum opus. Lauded as one of Time's top 100 novels of the last hundred years, it was a game-changer when it was first published. Declared unfilmable by both Alan Moore and legions of fans who doubt the complexity would transfer to screen, Watchmen now comes to theatres after twenty years of legal and studio wrangling.

It has a hard "R" rating, is awfully close to three hours long, has no real "star" power in the cast and features superheroes analogous to other superheroes...and no one's heard of any of them. A tough sell.

We at the Den, Hooper and Buck, caught it separately this past weekend and will try to untangle some of our own thoughts on the film.

Hooper gives it a hard 8/10, citing maintenance of the overall thematic integrity of the original series; flaws exist but still a damn fine film.

Buck claims it fell short of the mark, giving it 6/10, and calling it "too faithful" to the source material. Prior knowledge is almost a requirement.

And now, the review. Beware, ye readers, of SPOILERS.

***

Hooper:
I walked out of the theatre happy (overall) with what I saw. This movie captured much of the original series, focusing the story without fundamentally changing it. The essence of what made the story great and lasting - the deconstruction of these heroes, why they put on the mask, what it means to even consider yourself a "super" hero, how we compromise - is up there on the screen.

Buck:
I found it...lacking. Initially, a 7/10 or "C." You can be TOO faithful when adapting a story. Ultimately, I did not find it satisfying.

Hooper:
1. Do you think it was right to keep the movie set in 1985, as some people say the nuclear/USSR threat is a novelty/unbelievable by today's youth?

2. When you say "too faithful," do you think it would've been better to cut out, say, the Mars stuff and Laruie's parentage (+ mom)? Basically, I wonder how, given what you saw, you'd've addressed an adaptation.

Buck:
What I meant by "too faithful" is that the movie actually made me upset that I'd dragged Mrs. Buck to see it. Knowing she's unfamiliar with the material, I tried to watch the film from her point of view, and grew increasingly frustrated. The film almost had an attitude of "Everyone's read this, right? Okay, well, what we're going to do is film it exactly as it appeared on the page. We're going to go into painstaking detail to re-create Alan and Dave's creation. Except for the ending." As an adaptation goes, this wasn't constructed for people who are unfamiliar with the source.

That being said, I do want to see it again to see if my opinion changes. Who knows? Maybe the 7-hour (or however bloody long it is) director's cut will be a revelation that makes me love it. But as it stands, I was disappointed overall.

Pros: Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian, Jackie Earle Haley's Rorscach, and while at first I was a bit thrown, I grew to really enjoy the detached way Billy Crudup portrayed Manhattan.

Cons: Matthew Goode's Ozymandias, the completely maudlin denouement in Antarctica, some of the "ramping up" of the violence (not that I'm a prude, more that I simply considered it unnecessary).

Hooper:
Morgan and Haley made me buy their characters as real. The most important "sells" in the move were those two characters. Do we see the "dark grey" morality of Comedian as a result of his worldview and its crushing weight or is he a jackass with a flamethrower? Is Rorschach a paranoid nutjob version of Batman, dolling out violence like candy, or is he the only real hero in the movie? Very strong performances that will help set their careers in high gear for a long time.

So we shared a dissatisfaction with the ending (for me, the "squid" change wasn't bad, but the scenes after it were) and the hyper-violence (which, while the comic was violent, caricatured a caricature).

One could argue, so far as adaptations go, that even Lord of the Rings was written for the fans, not the average movie-goer. Did we really need all that Last Alliance nonsense and any related lore? "A ring created by a malevolent sorcerer-king that corrupts everyone" - there, I saved you ten minutes at least from the first film. And references to other rings; those are just Easter eggs. Why not have Galadriel just a powerful sorceress-queen (elf) at odds with the evil guy? And all that walking and the talking trees and that other wizard (in white like the good guys' wizard guide? C'mon. I can't keep this straight). You could strip that novel down to one, 4-hr movie. Still epic, but not boring in the least.

Likewise, I think you could either cut out or add in to Watchmen, but so long as it's a superhero movie that hates superheroes and their petty fisticuffs, regular movie-goers will feel put out and lost. That, to me, is what I came away with from the few times I tried to think of myself as a layman on the subject matter. I understand entirely why you feel upset at bringing Susan; it's why I didn't press Mandy to go. This isn't a non-fan movie. Not all movies have to be made with EVERYONE in mind as the audience. Watchmen cannot be all things for all movie-goers; it has to choose, and as Matthew Goode said, it's essentially a 3-hr arthouse film. It takes comic book/superhero stereotypes to task, forcing us to think about what we enjoy about them. And maybe what we shouldn't.

In fact, Snyder was talking about Watchmen and 300, saying they are essentially big-budget cult films that'll recoup their investments and then some, but are not meant for the general viewing public.

Would you then downgrade your initial 7/10 to something that reflects "disappointed overall?" That seems generous for a movie you didn't like.

Buck:
I've downgraded initial viewing to 6/10. Like I said, maybe a solo repeat viewing will change my mind. CHUD reported today that Snyder wants to put his cut in theaters this summer, and I might pony up for a repeat trip to the theater to try it out. Someone at CHUD (I think it was Devin) actually said that it's a movie that will get better with repeat viewings, calling it a sort of new Blade Runner (misunderstood film that gets better the further it's removed from its initial release).

I didn't really press Mrs. Buck to go; it's more that she knew I wanted to see it and doesn' t like me to go to movies by myself (she thinks I look like a creepy loser when I do that). The main problem she had was that she wanted the skinny on who all these people were. She wanted to know how they ended up as costumed adventurers, etc. Sadly, with the exception of what was left out of Rorschach's story, there really wasn't any more origin material in the original comic. So it's not really a fault of the filmmakers, but it was her chief complaint.

I have a feeling I'll like it the more I watch it. I've actually caught myself re-visiting scenes I liked in my head. So it could be that my current distaste is a result of trying to view it as an outsider rather than a fan.

To go back to your questions:

1) I don't know what "threat" you'd have if you didn't set it during the Cold War. That being said, there should not have been that much Nixon. The man is seen as too much of a pop culture punchline/fodder for impressions, and while I had no problem with the actor's performance, there were giggles in the theater each time he came on-screen.

2) Yes, you could have left out Sally Jupiter altogether. Possibly the Mars material as well, though I'm not sure where you would have put Jon during his alone-time.

Lastly, a 20-something couple sat next to us...with their 3 1/2 - 4 year-old daughter and 8-9 year old son. And the mom and dad fell asleep during the movie. That's some damned good parenting there, folks. Does anyone even look at a movie's rating anymore? You know that the son probably saw commercials with people in costumes and figured it was just like Spider-Man or X-Men and the parents didn't even bother to find out what the movie was about. It's possible that my anger towards them and fear for how the children were processing what they were seeing helped to color my impression of the film.

Hooper:
Except for when jerks make noise in a movie, I don't pay attention to anyone else in the theatre. They can applaud at the end, or be shocked or laugh when appropriate. That's fine. Sort of a "live studio audience" for the movie. But I'd've seen that crew, commented to myself that the parents should be beaten (maybe even in Rorschach's voice!), and ignored them.

I think the "new Blade Runner" analogy is perfect, especially since there are multiple cuts extant: theatrical, director's sans Black Freighter, director's w/ Black Freighter. Who knows, there might be a scene of Manhattan returning to Ozy at the end on the cutting room floor or the "you tried to rape her!"/"Only once..." exchange, the death of Hollis Mason, etc. I don't know how much was cut.

Some say the threat should've been terrorists/radical Islam, that it should have been made now, with Bush in office as Nixon was; make it "topical" like V for Vendetta...because that helped that movie immensely (...ahem). It surprises me that people our age don't remember the USSR or at least the idea that their parents lived under the threat of nuclear war for much of their young lives. We're not that removed from two decades ago, are we?

Buck:
I wouldn't think so.

I do know that Hollis' death was filmed and cut. Don't know about any of the other material you mentioned.

Your opinion on performances? You've mentioned Haley and Morgan already, and they did turn in great work. What did you think of the rest? I thought Ackerman was all right, if nothing spectacular. And Wilson did a fine job, although I felt the "What do you expect? The Comedian is dead." line was delivered all wrong.

So what's your take on the cast?

Hooper:
As we've said, Morgan and Haley did stellar work, easily worth at least a few small critics' choice supporting nods (if not wins).

Malin Ackerman was flat and just "ok" as Silk Specter II. Another reviewer said he thought Karen Allen was the sort to have played here, were this the 1980s and she still young and fiery. But Ackerman...didn't really add anything. I think they needed an older actress in the part, not a young gal playing slightly older. But she is the weakest character in the original story.

Patrick Wilson, Nite Owl II, did a serviceable job, but didn't feel washed out; rather, creepy instead. Sometimes I felt like I was watching a mouth-breather basement dweller D&D fan socialize for the first time in years. This isn't the brilliant, has-been inventor. That being said, he delivered most of the lines accurately, but not always convincingly. Like with Ackerman, I would have preferred an older actor.

Ozymandias/Adrien Veidt is a tricky character to imagine. Should Matthew Goode have played him happier, more of the scholar-athlete/eccentric billionaire (Bruce Wayne outed, but happy about it because he found out his parents were really Nazis who deserved to die) or as the detached genius who tires of these greasy people with petty problems and no vision of true greatness, of the betterment of all humanity, of the Big Picture? I think it's obvious which one he chose. The former is the comic version, and what I wanted to see on screen, yet I found myself appreciating the latter take. It might be more "real" for the character to have no bubbly outer face, no mask. Hm. I'm torn. I think...okay, here we go. Give Ozy back his triumph at the end, the tears, the smile, the convo w/ Manhattan; have the hired shooter kill only the secretary and then get pulped; make it Rorschach who informs him of the mask killer and not Dan D: that would make Goodman's performance 100% palatable. The meat of his part on screen was sometimes reliant on scenes changed w/o good reason.

Crudup as Manhattan - the voice, the flashbacks, the look - it all made sense.

Buck:
Good points on Ozymandias. I kept asking myself, "Why Lee Iacocca gotta get whacked?"

Hooper:
Even unadjusted, it's amazing to see how big Watchmen's opening was in relation to other comic book movies, especially when you look at X-Men, Superman Returns and Batman Begins. Big names that didn't get this many raw dollars (though, adjusted, did sell more tickets) in their opening weekends - and they were PG-13 and well-known properties!

A guy at work came up to me, asked me how my weekend was. I said good, and that I saw Watchmen. Great, I hear it had a big weekend! he said. So...you think $55M+ is a good opening? I asked. Sure! Especially for unknown superheroes in March.

Buck:
I did say yesterday that $55M is a good March opening, especially for a genre picture.

While replaying the "a Comedian died in New York" line at the end was most likely put in there to make it crystal clear to the stupid viewer that that was Rorschach's journal in the basket, I did like hearing it again.

Hooper:
I think it underscored that Rorschach, for all his dark mania, was really the hero.

Hooper's Take: 8/10

Buck's Take: 6/10

The Den of Mystery gives Watchmen...7/10.

Buckshot: Watchmen Links-travaganza

2009-03-06T13:56:00.010-06:00

For better or worse, the day many comic fans thought would never happen has arrived: There is a Watchmen film in theaters. I'll be seeing it tomorrow, and despite some unfavorable reviews, I'm looking forward to it.

Following hot on the heels of yesterday's magnificent Saturday Morning Watchmen comes a bunch of great Watchmen-related links I've stumbled upon in the last few weeks. So click through for parodies, tributes, and other goodness.

iFanboy offers a simply great T-shirt.

The film's marketing department has set up a New Frontiersman page at Flickr. It's full of all sorts of little "easter-egg" bits you probably won't see in the film.

Super Punch did their own link roundup.

Simpsons-ized Watchmen. This is currently my desktop wallpaper.

Dorian’s *ahem* viewer’s guide.

PvP’s salute.

YouTube sensation itsjustsomerandomguy’s Rorschach vs. Wolverine video.

Kevin Church pulls his Just Imagine...Stan Lee’s Watchmen! out of the mothballs for the occasion, and it's very, very wrong.

Church also rises to the occasion in his set-in-a-comic-shop webcomic series The Rack.

Comic Critics present their take on a Watchmen video game.

Chris Sims over at The ISB reveals the shocking new ending to the film!

And finally, Fairfield Weekly takes a look at how the Watchmen characters began life as characters from Charlton Comics.

Hope you enjoyed the links. I'm sure I'll have something to post tomorrow regarding my thoughts on the film, and maybe Hooper and I can do another tag-team style review once he's seen it.

-Buck

Buckshot: Saturday Morning Watchmen

2009-03-05T14:25:00.003-06:00

I'd resolved to post something new each day this week (The start of a trend, perhaps? We'll see.), yet couldn't decide what I should share with the interwebs. Then I found this. It is...beautiful.

This is a YouTube mirror. Click the link above for a better-resolution version.

Tomorrow will probably be a rundown of all the amusing Watchmen-related items I've come across, just in time for the film's opening.

-Buck

Buckshot: Buffy Revisited

2009-03-04T16:06:00.001-06:00

Let me take you back…

It was the spring of 1997, and I was idly channel surfing when a show caught my eye. Though I’d come into the show late, I ended up watching the rest of it, and actively tuned in to the next episode. The show quickly became my favorite program, and I was a loyal viewer until its eventual end in 2003.

That show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Joss Whedon’s supernatural take on high school and the undead has often been imitated but never duplicated, and it remains my all-time favorite television show. Recently, I was fortunate enough to complete my collection of the series’ run on DVD. A few months ago, I popped in the first disc of Season 1 for something to watch on a Sunday afternoon.

Mrs. Buck knew it was a favorite of mine, and had seen an episode here and there, but was for all intents and purposes a Buffy virgin. She was a bit hesitant, but quickly saw what made the show so enjoyable. Long story short, in the space of roughly two months (possibly three; we’re a little fuzzy on just when we started), we watched the entire series from beginning to end. And after digesting the entire run, I felt a retrospective was in order. If you think I’m going to be one of those folks who attempts to psychoanalyze the show and what Buffy meant to a generation, don’t worry. These are just reflections and observations; what I took away from revisiting a show that helped shape my interests.

Season 1

For the record, the episode I stumbled across that got me hooked was the sixth episode, “The Pack.” And it’s probably a good thing I started a few episodes in, as the pilot may not have kept me coming back week after week. Not that the show’s bad, just that it’s a genre show that has trouble finding its legs in the first season. But even though the 12-episode initial season tells a complete story with a pretty final ending (they didn’t yet know they’d get picked up for another year), it does lay solid groundwork for the future.

Highlights: Anthony Head as the long-suffering Giles, Mark Metcalf’s gloriously over-the-top portrayal of The Master, the story potential of a vampire with a soul. B+.

Season 2
The cast was more comfortable in their characters’ shoes in the second year, and about halfway through the season the production values notably increase (though it’s still fun to watch a fight scene and go “That’s Gellar…now it’s her double…Gellar…double…" They got better at the editing as the show went on). It’s also around the halfway point, specifically the two-parter of “Surprise” and “Innocence,” that things really kick into high gear. Angel losing his soul showed that the rules could change in a heartbeat in Buffy’s world, and the show was all the better for it.

Highlights: David Boreanaz as the villainous Angelus, the introduction of James Marsters as Spike (who would go on to become one of my all-time favorite characters on any television show), the ensemble really starting to click. A-.

Season 3
Senior year at Sunnydale High. Angel returns from the Hell dimension Buffy was forced to send him to, and the kids make some hard choices about what the future holds for them. Toss in Mayor Richard Wilkins III, the best Buffy villain of them all (in my opinion), and rogue Slayer Faith, and you’ve got what may be the most solid season start-to-finish of the entire series.

Highlights: Hopeless romantic Spike in “Lovers Walk” (“I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.”), Harry Groener’s delightful turn as the evil Mayor Wilkins (I can’t praise it enough), the final battle on Graduation Day. A.

Season 4
No more Angel! No more Cordelia! Giles doesn’t get to wear his fashionable tweed anymore! And yet…I love it. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite season of Buffy, but Season 4 comes close. For one, there’s a lot of great comedy in this season, as everyone tries to figure out where they fit into each others’ lives following high school (Heck, Willow even went gay!). Spike’s return as a series regular and the intrigue of Riley Finn and the government-sponsored demon-hunting Initiative were nice additions as well (Naysay all you want, Buffy fans, but I actually liked Mr. Finn.) But the real reason Season 4 remains my favorite is the mostly-silent episode “Hush.” It’s funny, it’s scary, and The Gentlemen are some of the greatest supernatural villains ever created in any medium.

Highlights: Spike’s forced co-habitation with Giles, The Initiative and the human/demon/cyborg monstrosity known as Adam, “Hush.” A.

Season 5
Seasons 6 and 7 have their moments, but this was the last truly great season of Buffy. Admittedly, the introduction of Buffy’s sister Dawn was a little weird at first. But as it became obvious she was what would drive the season’s storyline, as chaos god Glory attempted to break down the barriers between dimensions, things really came together nicely. Sadly, this season also included the death of Buffy’s mother. As Joyce Summers, Kristine Sutherland may never have been a series regular, but her absence would be felt for the remainder of the series.

Highlights: “The Body” (the death of Joyce, an episode so well-written and performed that I still have trouble watching it without getting a little verklempt), the beginning of Spike’s evolution from villain to hero, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s performance in the finale “The Gift.” A.

Season 6
Buffy is resurrected through black magic, only to realize that she was not pulled from a hell dimension (as her friends believed), but quite possibly from Heaven itself. This season is uneven at times, though it does have some high points, particularly the critically-acclaimed musical episode “Once More, With Feeling.” I didn’t care for the turn the Buffy/Spike relationship took at the time, but watching it again it makes sense (even if it's still not all that enjoyable), given the psychological state Buffy found herself in. Oh, and Willow went evil and almost destroyed the world.

Highlights: The afore-mentioned musical episode, Giles’ return in the nick of time, Dark Willow. B.

Season 7
The ethereal First Evil, the very thing that evil itself fears, gathers an army of primordial vampires to lay waste to the world. Not to be outdone, Buffy and Giles raise an army of potential Slayers as the final battle (and episode) approaches. Simply put, Season 7 tries too hard. If Gellar had announced her intentions to leave before the season began, I’m sure it would be a wholly different thing. But the front half of the season is too full of episodes getting everyone in their place and new status quos. As a result, Gellar’s decision coming halfway through the season (thus making the season finale the series finale) makes things rush to a head almost too quickly. One can’t help but think that the story potential here couldn’t fill two seasons rather than 10-12 episodes. Heck, if they could have made Season 7 just six episodes longer, that would have gone a long way towards a more satisfying conclusion.

Sidebar: Another minor complaint here is the new principal of Sunnydale High, Robin Wood. Not that D.B. Woodside is a bad actor, or that Wood's a bad character (introducing someone who turns out to be the son of the Slayer Spike killed in the '70s is inspired), but rather that they sort of try to make him a substitute Giles. As a result, Giles kind of gets the shaft story-wise when he returns with the potentials. An interesting route would have been (provided they could have gotten Tony Head for the entire season) to have Giles obtain the principal position when he found out the school was being reopened, then be forced to leave on his search for potential Slayers, and give Buffy the counselling job she ended up with so someone was keeping an eye on the school while he was gone.End Sidebar

Highlights: The continuing evolution of Spike (Now with Soul©!) and Dawn’s characters, the revelations of the origins of the Slayers and Watchers, the final battle between forty Slayers and an army of vampires atop the Hellmouth. B.

Season 7 was, of course, not exactly the end for the Scooby Gang. In early 2007, Dark Horse Comics launched the ongoing series Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight. I've read the first three collections, and while it hasn't exactly set my world on fire, it is a good continuation of the characters and their world.

So how did the show mature? Well, it gets pretty adult at times. Relationships go to the physical level (sometimes not in a good way), marriages are discussed, etc. The cast really grow into their roles as the series progresses. There’s a great brief scene in the second half of the final season, where we see Buffy, Xander, and Willow sharing silent glances as a house full of potential slayers erupts into a shouting match, and you can see in their eyes their amazement at how far things have come from when the three of them comprised the entire “gang.”

Given that the wife was seeing most of these episodes for the first time, I tried to be more objective this time around. And while I’ll always be glad I have the entire series on DVD, seasons 6 and 7 probably won’t see heavy rotation in my viewing habits. There are simply too many flaws in there despite the true shining moments. That being said, I told Hooper that if you start with the second half of Season 2 (the afore-mentioned two-parter “Surprise” and “Innocence”) and go up to the end of Season 5, you’ve got four and a half years of real quality television, and I stand by that. The show will always be my all-time favorite, despite the imperfections.

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 5

2009-03-03T15:03:00.006-06:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Five: "Exposed"

What Happened:

Like last week, we focus on only a few of the heroes and leave the massive ensemble behind. Tight plotting here, folks. Forward movement. Let's get it on!

Claire's secret is discovered as Mrs. Bennett finds Alex in the closet. The explanation Claire uses, that they were having sex, doesn't hold water as Aqualad emphasizes he never touched and barely looked at the 17-yr-old cheerleader. That Claire lied and Alex has powers disappoints Mrs. Bennet, and she says that both Claire and HRG underestimate her strength, especially in times like these. She plots to evade the gov't agents in the van parked across from their house (they know Alex is there, even if Claire is off-limits). First hiding Alex in one of HRG's hidey-holes when the agents do a random search and then causing a diversion, Mrs. Bennett proves she's not just a brainwashing practice dummy. Her diversion (driving with Lyle to the movies) gives Claire and Alex enough time to sneak out the back, dodge the agents and hide in a swimming pool (of course they have to "kiss breathe" to keep Claire alive; they've been flirting pretty hard since Mrs. B "outed" him) until Alex can get to a train. They part fondly, and Claire returns home and starts to bond with her mom...until the Puppeteer shows up. Why? "Rebel" told him "Barbie" can help....

Meanwhile, in NYC, Parkman keeps painting the same image over and over (him wearing a bomb vest), wondering if it's tied to the floor painting he did of a nuclear bomb (or mushroom-cloud producing blast) leveling the "capitol" district of Washington, D.C. Peter tells him Rebel has sent a message over the computer telling them where Daphne is (D.C.) and to flee, as the Hunter has a idea where they are (Isaac Mendez' studio). They copy the address, trust Rebel and escape just before the Hunter's agents (plainclothes) arrive.

At Building 26, the Hunter sets Peter and Parkman as top priority for detainment, but also says they are armed & dangerous. So shoot to kill, if you have to. Nathan disagrees but the Hunter calls his bluff and exerts some ominous authority. HRG vocally agrees with his immediate agent superior, leaving Sen. Nathan Petrelli in the cold.

Now, too, at Building 26, Parkman and Peter worm their way in using double-barrel telepathy (Peter ditches flight for it; "I guess the rooftop escape is out," says Matt) and make it to a control room. Now seen by the Hunter on video monitors as just down the hall, Parkman and Peter mind-control two guards to draw their sidearms and by threat of force keep the Hunter from interfering. They discover Daphne isn't at this facility and Peter downloads a crap-load of data (including video of detainees being loaded onto planes) to use as leverage. Rebel pops a message up on the computer ("You have 30 seconds"), causes a blackout and the two heroes flee...right into HRG, the Hunter and their guards. Parkman holds everyone ("his" guards & the Hunter's group) until Peter has safely escaped.

When the Agents discover Rebel's message still on the computer screen, the good Senator calls on his mother, Angela, and asks if she is tipping them off. She knows a lot, after all. No, she says, why would she jeopardize the protection Nathan affords her? Besides, she can't work a computer. Peter then phones in while they're talking and says he'll deal - Parkman and Daphne for the wildly damaging data. If not, or if he's killed, the data will be leaked. Nathan says yes, and sets a place. The Hunter, upon hearing this, says he's operating on Presidential orders ("we do not negotiate with terrorists") and will either capture or kill Peter. Nathan reminds HRG that Peter can "hear [your] thoughts," implying that he should warn the guy.

At the meeting, HRG does just that, thinking loudly (as Peter calls out for Parkman and Daphne) that it's a trap. The Hunter, no veteran of telepaths, broadcasts his thoughts about sniping Peter and though his target hears, the Hunter does hit him high in the left shoulder, sending him falling off the parking garage roof...and right into Nathan's arms. Landing a good ways away, and meeting up with Angela, Nathan tries one last time to get Peter to turn himself over to Nathan's care. All Peter wants to know is why his big brother is doing this. It's out of control, I'm the only one who can, Nathan answers. Peter sadly mocks that it's because his brother loves him that he wants Peter under his eye, right? Sure, the Sen. says, but Peter knows better, takes a dose of "flight" and zips off. Angela warns Nathan that the game has changed and she has foreseen terrible happenings. And then, she whispers in his ear, leaving Nathan looking like he's been gut-punched.

Across the country, somewhere with mountains, Sylar and Luke Campbell drive on, and our favorite serial killer is getting a wee bit annoyed with Thrill-Kill Campbell. They stop at a boarded up roadside diner, Big Jim's. Sylar's been here before, he knows this place. Exploring inside, he has a flashback and discovers that he has been here before, when he was a young boy. And with his biological father, Samson Gray. But it is the worst memory he could dredge up, as it was then that Samson sold Sylar to his brother Martin. Sylar chases his father into the parking lot where he witnesses Samson arguing with his wife. It gets serious, and Samson waves his hand and blood streaks across the back window. He pushes Sylar's mom out of the car and speeds away. Li'l Sylar then sees what will be his calling card: a ragged slash across his mom's forehead, eerily reminiscent of her boy's amateur neurosurgery.

Coming back to the Now, Luke admits Samson is a world-class jerk and Sylar should give up the hunt. The can go off together, they don't need this- Ah, mistake, Luke. Sylar realizes the boy is doing this for the thrill of it all, the excitement of being "bad," and ditches him with a parting gift: his life. Now it's on to meet Samson Gray...alone.

On the TV, the US sees footage of American soldiers detaining - without Mirandizing or probable cause - dozens of US citizens. What is this secret gov't program? Is it legal? Peter has made good on his promise.

Back in DC, the Hunter fiddles with a drugged up Parkman as they drive in a black van to an undisclosed location. You'll be the face of their fear, says the Hunter. He gives Matt an injection and pushes poor Matt out of the back of the van into a large plaza...near Congress. On his chest? A bomb vest. It's the painting, come unfortunately to life.

To be continued next week in "Shades of Gray."

In Character Development:

No Hiro, Ando, Daphne, Suresh or Tracy. Thank God, for the last one. Two weeks without Tracy.

Peter...eases further into an adult role, taking telepathy for its tactical advantage, realizing you can't plan for the end-game (rooftop escape) if you can't reach the objective. Hurray! It's taken over fifty episodes, but he's thinking his actions through.

Nathan...is quickly losing control. I see sacrifice in his future. His own.

Matt Parkman...starts behaving less like a wounded, cornered animal. When Daphne is returned to him, odds are he'll begin acting like a cop again. In this episode, he controls at least four people at once, and though it's taxing, we see he's got a great will and is more powerful than previously thought.

HRG...is our man on the inside. Agreeing with the Hunter while protecting the sanctity of life (...sort of), he walks a thin line. Not really much here, but we know he's a good soul.

The Hunter...is not a good soul. He's like Linderman or Arthur Petrellie - the ends justify the means. Also, no prisoners and he plays for keeps. Since he is capable, and not some big brute or intimidating "power," his villainy is craftier, colder, sharper. I like him.

Angela...is certainly more involved than ever, and running at least one shadow operations (HRG as double agent).

Claire (w/ Mrs. Bennett and Alex)...thinks like an adult, like her Uncle Peter. By accepting her mother as more than a domestic damsel-in-distress/target-of-opportunity, she realizes that she can rely on other people to help her. A bit sappy, but necessary. This turn should've happened sooner. Alex is out of the picture, but he'll be back and gunning for Claire's pants. Mrs. Bennett shows a little bit of characterization. Fancy that!

Luke Campbell...shall be spoken of no more, until he microwaves himself back into our hearts. Not the abused, downtrodden boy we might've thought, he is a sociopath and a dangerous influence for Sylar. Left to his own accord, he'd see many more dead.

Sylar...finally has some answers. Next week, we see the Gray men come together, I hope.

Thoughts:

*Quick paced, better than many Season 2 episodes; the season begins to turn around.

*Claire is a better character after this episode, as is her mother. I think the writers figured out the petulant victim-child and brain-adled housewife weren't that appealing.

*I'm glad Luke is no longer a Lost Boy and is just lost and alone. He's bad news.

Looking Ahead:

*Samson Gray: about damn time.
*Does Nathan fly another nuclear-armed hero to a spectacular night-sky finish?
*Hiro or Ando...anyone?

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"
Episode Four: "Cold Wars"

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

2009-03-03T13:50:00.004-06:00

We've reached the halfway point of the season, traditionally marked by a 2-hour episode. Dubaku's down for the count, yet Tony swears there's another attack on the horizon, so Jack's pulled back into the thick of it.

How was it? I dug it. In fact, this year of 24 may be my second favorite. (Sadly, there's no topping the first season.)

Let's begin, shall we?

• My 24 viewing on Hulu is brought to me by Grey Goose vodka. That’s oddly appropriate, since events on this show often make one want a stiff drink.
• An operative sneaks into Dubaku’s hospital room and injects him with something. Is Juma killing his own brother? (Apparently, yes.)
• You know, I say this with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality, but we don’t see Jack in a suit and tie nearly often enough.
• Chloe, of course Jack is going to interrogate a suspect in the White House! If there’s one thing Jack does well, it’s finding new and interesting arenas of interrogation.
• “The president didn’t call me up here at the ass-end of the day to drink her booze and flip through a briefing book.” Now you read that and tell me the writers weren’t thinking of Red Forman when they wrote the Sen. Mayer character!
• Mayer won’t play ball with the president’s request to let Jack’s subpoena expire. It’s nice to see that not everyone ends up loving Jack Bauer.
• Bill? Jack, is there anyone in your ever-diminishing circle of friends you haven’t pulled a gun on? Although I guess it is noble in a way, as Jack knocking Bill out gives Bill deniability if Tony’s lead turns out to be wrong.
• “You and I? We’re gonna have a talk.” This is Jack-speak for “I’m about to break several of your digits and quite possibly cause some internal bleeding.”
• Kanin believes Jack…but why wouldn’t he believe Andy Dufresne?
• Renee tracks the guy from the hospital to a warehouse…where Juma is planning his assault. So Juma’s been in-country this whole time? Interesting…
• Larry tells Renee not to take any chances…she’s totally going to take a chance; like jumping onto Juma’s boat, losing both her gun and phone in the process. But hey, she finds out the White House is the target.
• So Tony killed the guy he got his intel from? You have fallen far, Mr. Almeida.
• Juma and his men are digging up into rock from a watery tunnel. Can’t tell if they’re actually supposed to be under the White House at this point or not. Can you get below the White House by water? Maybe they’re in a sewer tunnel.

Hour Two

• Agent Pierce is still hanging around, minding the First Daughter. Can’t wait to see him spring into action.
• Jack tries to convince Bill he’s got what it takes to interrogate Burnett. Bill, if you don’t have what it takes, then why did you grow that manly beard?
• Check out badass Renee, taking on Dubaku’s son with that shovel. Well, it was badass up until Dubaku Jr. got his hands around her throat. Luckily, Larry shows up to take him out.
• Naturally, Jack ends up guarding President Taylor. Still, I loved how he deferred to the Secret Service. “This is your house; I’ll follow.”
• Whew! For a sec there, I thought Juma was going to execute Bill.
• The entire siege sequence was pretty great.
• I like how Larry made sure that Renee knows rescuing Taylor, not Jack, is top priority. He knows she’s completely crushing on Mr. Bauer.
• I like that Jack’s method to stop Juma’s men opening the safe room isn’t to counter-hack, but merely to short out the access panel.
• Jon Voight! And he's eating noodles!
• Is there any actor out there with a greater “menace voice” than Tony Todd? I don't even mind that he kind of dropped the accent towards the end there.
• Color me disappointed. Agent Pierce is still a hardass, but I was hoping to see him take out 4 or 5 terrorists rather than just one.
• That look on Jack’s face? As he opened the door and let Taylor be taken by Juma so that Taylor could save her daughter? That’s shame for failing a commander-in-chief. You don’t often see that on Jack Bauer’s face.

Overall, a very solid two hours. I’ve been wondering if there are any seasons of 24 I’d like to own. I plan on picking up season 1, and probably 5. And now I definitely think season 7 will make it into my collection. While every episode hasn’t kept me riveted, this has been one damned entertaining season thus far.

Buckshot: The Dollhouse Dilemma

2009-03-02T12:11:00.008-06:00

The third episode of Dollhouse is available for viewing online, and I will watch it, probably at some point today. But I have to ask myself, why will I watch it, and why am I not tuning in during the initial network airings? It certainly wasn’t because the pilot (if you can even call it that, considering it was a completely reshot pilot based on network demands) grabbed me. There are some interesting concepts here and there, and I do like some of the cast members, particularly Harry Lenix. But the show forces me to ask myself if I’ll continue to watch solely out of support for Joss Whedon.

Anyone who knows me knows of my unabashed love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly/Serenity. (Hell, I recently re-watched the entire run of Buffy and have a retrospective I’ll get posted if I can find 45 minutes to finish it and get it formatted with images.) I also believe Joss’s summer 2008 interweb venture, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was a thing of minor genius. So this new show from the master should set my heart all a-flutter, right? Only it’s not. And I think I know why.

At the end of the day, Dollhouse isn’t really anything new. It’s Joss taking ideas we’ve seen before in other science fiction efforts and putting his own spin on them. That’s fine in theory, but Joss made his mark by turning genre conventions on their ear (the girl who usually dies in a horror movie is actually the strongest one around, a vampire gains a soul and becomes a hero, a western set in outer space), and Dollhouse isn’t really doing that.

Penny Arcade and Hijinks Ensue (among others) have given their take on the whole thing.

The second episode was actually a lot better than the first, due in part to a guest appearance by Matt Keeslar, star of last summer’s criminally under-watched ABC Family series The Middleman (seriously, check this out when they release the DVD). And Eliza Dushku’s not bad (not great, but not bad) in the role of Echo. If nothing else, the personality-imprint aspect of the show gives her the chance to stretch her acting chops and see if we can accept her as more than just streetwise damaged-goods slayer Faith.

So I guess I’ll give it a chance. Fox has said they’ll run all 13 (12? I'm not sure of the exact count.) completed episodes, and I will watch them all. But when Whedon’s been quoted as saying the entire experience has turned him off of television for good, it doesn’t bode well for the remainder of the episodes. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Joss made a heck of a mark on the television landscape, and maybe it’s time to move on. Write some more comics, produce some more great web content, maybe get another screenplay or two cranked out (besides the in-development The Cabin in the Woods). Heck, I’d even like to see him tackle a prose novel.

In the meantime, I’ll attempt to muddle through the remaining episodes of Dollhouse. Sources have said that once we get to the sixth episode, we get more of a mythology and Whedon's voice is heard more through the writing. We'll see.

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 4

2009-02-24T10:49:00.006-06:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Four: "Cold Wars"

What Happened:
You've waited for answers. And for about a third of this "volume's" story, we got them last night. Unlike other weeks, I can be very brief here because the episode was so tightly focused. There was no ensemble-cast wanderings, like we've had since the volume's opener. Let's begin.

HRG, kicked out of his house after admitting to still being an "agent" of sorts, goes to the hotel bar to have a drink. It is spike with barbitol, obtained by Nurse Peter and somehow secretly administered (did Parkman mentally coerce the barmaid to add it?). They drag him off to their room, keep him drugged up and Parkman begins to "interrogate" him, i.e. push through his memories to see what he knows about this new government round-up program, who organized it and what potential weaknesses there might be.

The Hunter and Nathan notice HRG's absence.

In a series of black and white flashbacks, Parkman uncovers some of HRG's recent past:

*Angela gave him a "retirement" package (plus watch) from the Company and told him to go live a normal life.
*Idly doing crosswords, he approached by Nathan to help form this new government "Company" to round up those with powers and safely contain them on the way to stripping away said powers. HRG says yes, demanding some ground rules be laid down first. He also shows Nathan his "Public Storage" room filled with boxes of data and a big black cased packed with guns, ammo and grenades.
*HRG and the Hunter, upon meeting, are oil and water. The Company's "one of us, one of them" maxim is abandoned for "twelve of us...and none of them." Overwhelming force.
*HRG even goes to the Hunter's apartment (showing he does his research) for a male bonding session that really doesn't go well. No fighting, but you can see these alpha males are headed for a showdown.
*In a twist, we see that Suresh was approached by HRG to be an agent of his, an undercover power to help counteract whatever the gov't decides to do. Suresh refuses.
*When faced with a gun, HRG lets Matt into his mind one last time to prove that Daphne is still alive, but drugged up and wounded.

Now, while we are learning that HRG is a mover and shaker, though not the power behind the black-clad commandos, the Hunter has been trying to locate his wayward agent. After seeing the bit about the public storage unit, Parkman jots down the location and lock combo; Peter takes it and flies over to it. Of course, there is a camera in that unit and the commandos close in. Peter snags a few guns and grenades (smoke, flash, etc.) and flies away.

After Parkman discovers Suresh knew something was afoot, he attacks him (a fight he can't win easily) and in the confusion, HRG escapes. He doesn't make it far, as Peter lands on the car he's trying to hotwire. Parkman sends Peter to the Hunter's apartment, where the two have a tense stand-off (lopsided, as only Peter has a gun). Nathan risks exposure and flies over, defusing the situation and letting Peter escape. This reiterates the point the Hunter has been making: Nathan, with his powered brother and daughter, is too compromised.

With the commandos closing in, Suresh offers to divert their attention, shortly after they find out about Daphne. Suresh knocks some soldiers around, but gets tagged by about eight or nine electro-rounds and the commandos still snag Parkman. HRG escorts him out and, once in the open, Peter swoops in and snatches him from their midst.

The Hunter tells HRG to take some time off, but this situation has galvanized HRG and he says he is not torn anymore between loyalties and will Do What It Takes. He later meets with Angela and we discover he's a double-agent, gaining Nathan's confidence while having an ulterior motive. When told by Angela that he'll have to make some hard choices to "prove" his loyalty to the Hunter & crew, HRG replies, "I've always been comfortable with morally grey."

In Building 26, Natahn approaches Suresh and asks for his help...or else the government won't just contain and seek to strip the powers away, but kill on site.

In NYC, Parkman finishes a furious bout of painting and wonders why, why! he's cursed to paint this. He and Peter look down at the big picture on the floor, the centerpiece of all Parkman's prophetic doodles: a nuclear bomb erupting in Washington, D.C.

To be continued next week in "Exposed."

In Characters Development:

Nothing this week with Hiro, Ando, Tracy, Sylar, Luke, Alex or Claire. Here are some quick thoughts on the others.

Matt Parkman - his orderly, police-trained mind is now showing the strains of his run from the law and seeing his love gunned down. He is out for revenge and is letting it cloud his judgement. It's a human reaction, though I'll say Greg here doesn't quite play it as well as he could. Hm. I think he needs to start thinking like a cop again. When Daphne is rescued and his desire to kill fades, especially as he starts to realize what he saw in HRG's head can be interpreted differently than "pure evil" based on his actions, I think his character will rebound into the "likable" column.

Suresh - he is wracked with guilt over killing people (vol 3., Villains) and just being a jerk overall. In fact, he probably carries a degree of guilt for those he let Sylar kill, unknowingly. So now he seeks redemption, and the sacrifice to let Peter and Parkman escape is just the beginning. Will he become Nathan's "pet special" and superscientist? What damage will he inadvertently cause this time?

Peter Petrelli - a soldier in this episode, and still a bit headstrong, I think he's taking more ownership of his powers and their responsibility, understanding that making a decision requires thought and care and that wanton revenge is not the right way (or else he'd have killed the Hunter).

Nathan Petrelli - conflicted over what he's doing and worried about the beast he's unleashed (the Hunter), perhaps after three seasons of "greater good" talk and always falling in with the smooth-talking bad guys he'll finally see the light.

The Hunter - he knew there were heroes before joining Nathan's little initiative. What more do we need to know? Who had powers in his past (see "Rev. Stryker" in God Loves, Man Kills)?

HRG (Noah Bennett) - playing the undercover hero, the spy who'll never get all the credit he deserves, the "Company Man" will most certainly play a key role to undermining and dismantling what the Hunter is doing. We see his humanity numerous times in the flashbacks, as he stresses these are people they are hunting, not animals. They can be an asset, many can be good. Remember, not all were locked up at PrimaTech, only the most dangerous. Tag the quiet ones, watch them and make sure no one goes "boom." But those tactics did prove flawed as more heroes started popping up. Perhaps he'll work for integration or some sort of mass-hiding to protect these "special" people.

Daphne - Not dead.

Thoughts:

This episode moved. More importantly, it moved in the right direction, highlighting good characters (HRG, the Hunter, Parkman) who had dynamic stories to tell. We need to have some episode that are predominantly action at this point, not just talking heads. Bryan Fuller's first episode is close at hand.

Looking Ahead:

I want Sylar to get to the end of his road trip and an actual resistance to be formed with Peter and Parkman at its head. Are you saying that between those two (and with Angela's shadow backing, bound to be made apparent to them) they can't 1) get a hideout, 2) gather more heroes and 3) counter-attack? Come on!

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"
Episode Three: "Building 26"

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

2009-02-23T20:03:00.006-06:00

A bit of action to kick things off, then things get personal as we close the case on Dubaku and move on to the next threat facing our nation's capital.

* Was it any surprise that Erica was in on Sean being THE MOLE?
* Jack has apparently taken the John McClane Driving Tutorial, as he goes off-road through a park to catch up with Dubaku. When was the last time this show had a good chase scene? I'm thinking Season 3 when Jack and Chase were trying to catch Saunders' last operative.
* I had a whole thing about Dubaku being a smooth talker and convincing Marika to go to Sangala with him. Then she did the whole "try to kill the driver and flip the jeep in the process" bit. Looks like she didn't buy what he was selling.
* So the Sangala invasion already started? At least it appears successful thus far.
* Dubaku has a list of all the corrupt government officials...and it's implanted under his skin! Eew.
* Sean and Erica are going to crash the FBI mainframe to cover their tracks. Not if Chloe O'Brian has anything to say about it.
* BLAM! Erica takes one for the team. C'mon, who didn't see that coming?
* Well, I guess the server wipe did work. And Sean's BS story about Erica being behind it all seems to have worked for now. Don't be that stupid, Larry...
* ...and he's not! Larry nails Sean to the wall as he tries to slink away. Good show, Agent Moss.
* President Taylor and her daughter Olivia are talking, at least. I like that just because Henry's in the hospital, it doesn't immediately clear up all the bad blood between Taylor and Olivia. That would be way too saccharine for this show.
* Renee and Jack have a verbal throwdown at the hospital. They're either going to end this day in love or in a deathmatch. Either way, should be fun.
* As the sun sets, Tony meets up with Jack in front of the Capitol. He says he's gotten word of a new terrorist attack by General Juma himself. After a moment of pure bromance, they leave to go after one of the architects of the plan. It's the weasely guy who gave Dubaku his travel arrangements last week...and he's the chief of staff of Senator Mayer, who was grilling Jack as this day began. Interesting. We move to Act 2...

Thoughts
Probably the smoothest transition from "Stopping Threat #1" to "Reacting to Threat #2" since Season 1. Having brothers as the villains certainly helps. It makes sense that Juma would have contingencies, and that he'd immediately move them into action upon hearing of his brother's capture.

I'm also happy that we haven't had too much of Jack Gone Rogue this time around. It's been done to death. I like how he has government support now, they just don't entirely trust him. Just the way it should be.

The dawning of this new threat means we should be seeing Jon Voight's character (whom we haven't seen since Redemption) popping up soon.

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 3

2009-02-18T21:00:00.001-06:00

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Three: "Building 26"

What Happened:

Not much. An aside: Bryan Fuller, a creative force behind the show's first season, returned with "Fugitives" after it became apparent that his ABC wundershow "Pushing Daisies" was dead (hi-ohhh!). Responsible for the stellar "Company Man" episode about HRG's past, many say his return marks the show's return to good storytelling. Alas, we're not there yet.

This week, Claire is pissy with HRG, her mom and life. At breakfast, she gets a "Rebel" text. HRG now claims to be a "consultant" and he reminds Claire that the last time his real career was known to his wife, she almost died (so pipe down, blondie). She gets a "Rebel" text telling her to warn "Alex" that danger's on its way. Sylar continues his road trip with Luke "Hotplate Kid" Campbell and the boy has fun, testing Sylar's lie detector power and getting Peter Pan to admit he's a serial killer. They stop for lunch.

Back in...India?, Ando and Hiro find a random wedding they are supposed to interfere with (did I miss something specific about their target in that painting?) and Hiro determines to stop the wedding/save the bride from the marriage. In related news, Ando glimpses a familiar looking woman, follows her and they talk. She admits that the wedding isn't her idea of a good time, but she wanted a sign not to go through with it. Ando then uses his sparky red powers to convince said bride that he is a sign from above that she's not to get married. Hiro (and the fiancee) are (separately) PO'ed. Fiancee knocks Ando on the head, absconds with him and demands the wedding go forward.

In Washington, D.C., specifically Building 26, the Hunter uses several large boards to map out the various heroes (by power or just at random?) and we see little pictures of far more than we've been introduced to. Hunter derides Nathan, who then slaps back and gives a pep talk ("I'm requesting our budget be doubled."). Guest-star Moira Kelly, last seen in 1992's The Cutting Edge, rolls in, says she's with the Department of Homeland Security and all this black-ops nonsense needs to be justified. And the illegally detained US citizens on US soil? Trouble, Sen. Petrelli.

Clair manages to track down Alex, and he turns out to be a comic book store employee (thin, though with glasses) who can breathe underwater. He is doubtful of her warning, but after a healing demonstration, he believes. They dodge HRG, black-clad goons (during which he opens up about his power) and she hides him in her closet.

Back at Building 26, Cutting Edge tells Nathan the gig is up; powers just aren't real. As if destiny were itching to prove her wrong, Tracy at that moment breaks the chain holding her, escapes her cell and its heat lamps, and takes an analyst hostage. With guns trained on her, and both Cutting Edge and Nathan watching, Tracy freezes the analyst and shatters him, looking an awful lot like angry "Jessica." Tasered, she is returned to her cell where she tells Nathan it was awfully convenient her door was unlocked and the chain was loose. He pretends not to understand...or does he? After Cutting Edge agrees with Nathan that yes, powers are real and he's got all the funding he needs, Nathan confronts the Hunter, giving him the analyst's name and family story. Wife, two kids. So the Hunter knows what his "demonstration" cost, as he obviously engineered Tracy's escape attempt, for the "greater good." Casualties of war, and what not, he claims. Tensions rise.

On a roadside diner, Sylar and Luke chit chat about stuff, the past. Samson Gray went fishing with Luke, trucking along a red wagon, treating him like a son and even admitting that he'd sold Sylar to his brother Martin for money. Sylar reaches back and remembers that red wagon, being pulled in it. Not the monster his traveling companion is, Luke writes down the location of Samson's hideaway, casually hoping Sylar won't kill him. As they bond, some suits enter the diner and it's apparent the Hunter's men have acquired their target again. In another well-staged fight, Sylar defeats the suits, an undercover agent and some commandos. Luke pretends at first to be an abductee, but only to distract the undercover agent so Sylar can TK him across the restaurant. Sylar flees, locking Luke (who then gets tasered) out of the car. Ah, but he returns a short time later and messes up the van-full of commandos, stealing their hard case laptop...and Luke. The obvious question (that Luke then poses, once conscious) is why Sylar rescued him. Why indeed....

The wedding back on in India, Hiro now takes the opportunity to interfere, claiming the bride is being forced to marry and his Ando is being held hostage by the groom. The groom protests; the bride agrees this traditional marriage isn't for her, as she catches the eye of a eager gal in the back row. The groom threatens, but Hiro grabs a novelty/decorative sword and takes a stand (bringing Parkman's painting of Hiro to life...which in no way looked like a wedding on my TV. Just saying). Seeing defeat, the groom relents, leaves and Ando is freed. Hiro understands the powers don't make the hero; the person does.

After hiding Alex, Claire talks to her mom and can't take the lies, telling her that HRG's new "consulting" job is a bit more secret police-oriented than first described. Stopping by her bedroom, HRG gets teary and says the Mrs. wants him to move out for now. For the best, right, Claire-bear? She gets weepy, they hug and he leaves. "Aqualad" is seen in her closet.

HRG heads to a hotel and has a few drinks, getting far tipsier than anticipated. He collapses and his buddies offer to take him home. Parkman, Peter and Suresh prop him up and exit stage left.

To be continued next week in "Cold Wars."

In Character Development...:

First off, nothing happens on screen with Angela, Suresh, Parkman or Peter. Next week, for the latter three. Daphne is still dead.

Claire & HRG (and Alex)
She's a whiny brat, and that needs to change. While going against her father has put her in the good graces of "Rebel," it keeps her character growth tamped down. Still the victim and unwilling (or unable) to make mature choices, she needs to be put on the back burner for a while. HRG just needs to pick a side and start the freaking fight. He's more dangerous than his fellow agents.

...and we needed an Aqualad?

Sylar & Luke Campbell
Cut the road trip junk and we'll be cooking with gas. As it is, the driving, reminiscent (as one reader said) of Season 2's South American extravaganza, gets old. Have at least some better adventure on the way. There was no "real" development with these two, though we were reminded that Luke isn't a wholesale devil like Sylar, has feelings and can sympathize.

Hiro & Ando
As I said, Hiro learns that powers aren't a requirement to consider yourself a "hero." Just standing up for what's right, the helpless, the distressed can do it. Ando, take note. It's been said that Ando's a better character than Hiro, as he isn't so dreamy and flighty, but there's a resentful streak running through him that doesn't allow for logical reasoning. Really, with either of them. They tend to leap to a conclusion and if it brings conflict, get upset like a dog that's knocked its ball under a couch.

Tracy
You gonna get it, girlie. She never learns and will ideally be killed off, paving the way for Triplet the Third who, if all goes according to plan, will be a rounded character full of complexity. Instead of voicing her opinions to the gathered commandos, before she froze the analyst, she just makes a face and does the deed. No explanation. Seeing "Cutting Edge" in the back, knowing her escape was a set-up, what not come out and say that?

Thoughts:

A slow, uneventful week. Do you have something?

*The writers won't be the same in a few weeks as they are now, and the hope is that the new blood (Fuller) takes out some of the artificial roadblocks to good storytelling. You don't have to keep Sylar away from the other heroes, but if you do, is road tripping with a sidekick the best route? Better to have him find his dad earlier and let their story play out over more than a few episodes. Maybe...they talk! And argue without killing each other.

*Not shoe-horning in Parkman, Suresh and Peter into this week's stories worked wonders. Honestly, not every episode needs to feature every character. The best old episodes left us guessing week on week what Character X was doing while Character Y narrowly escaped peril. Or learned of a new power.

*This week was called "Building 26" but it focused more on other people than the Hunter, Nathan and their crew. Shouldn't this have been look at who they are? A missed opportunity.

Looking Ahead:

*So...no John Glover/Samson Gray next week? Double drat.
*Daphne? I'll take a body, but I need to know.
*Will we get a bigger glimpse of that board? Lotta heroes on there...
*Does HRG really truly no-backsies choose a side next week?

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"
Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

2009-02-18T18:30:00.004-06:00

An old favorite returns, the reveal of THE MOLE, and some really great tension. In short, this episode was what 24 does best.

• How awesome is President Taylor? I would have loved it if she’d actually driven herself to Henry’s hospital. The lady’s got moxie.

• Renee’s getting pretty good at the compartmentalizing I mentioned last week. She’s going to have a lot to answer for when this day’s over. Torturing Tanner, threatening Vossler’s family (even if it was merely a ruse).

• I love Morris driving Chloe to the FBI building with mini-O’Brian (Prescott!) in tow. Little bits like this make the show worth it. Who else wants to see a spin-off? 24: The O’Brians.

• Jealous Janis (Alliteration is fun, kids!) when Chloe arrives. There’s going to be a pissing contest in Techie Town (See?).

• Dubaku picks up his Escape America© package from a henchman. He and Juma certainly employ a lot of weasely individuals, don’t they?

• Ok, I’m laughing at myself now, but I totally didn’t see it coming when Jack and Renee came crashing through Waitress Girlfriend’s door.

• Jack asks Maria (Waitress Girlfriend) for a favor, promising she'll be all right. This is sort of like Jack asking you to jump off a building and try to fly.

• Chloe’s passive-aggressive reaction to how Moss set up the FBI’s computer systems is great.

• Ooh! Janis is locked out of certain systems and seems to be getting upset. Frustrated at the new Golden Tech Girl, or is she THE MOLE?

• Agent Pierce! My second favorite 24K supporting character (after Bill) returns to escort the First Daughter to the hospital where Henry is fighting for his life. There’s your next spin-off: Each week, Agent Pierce goes undercover to defeat villains around the world, bedding a different beautiful woman each night. 24: The Lives and Loves of Aaron Pierce. It also makes me wonder what other past cast favorites Bill will call up from the bench.

• Is it wrong that I giggled like an idiot at the “You’re a little bitch” back-and-forth between Janis and Sean?

• Jack and Renee are arrested by DC police after warrants for them pop up in the system (The work of THE MOLE!). The police cars coming out of nowhere to block their escape was a nice “What the hell?” moment.

• So Sean is THE MOLE! Actually, it’s kind of appropriate. Usually, a 24 mole is the person who hasn’t been acting all shifty and dickish. Give the writers credit for being up-front about it this time. But there’s still something off about Janis...

It was nice to see some of these seemingly unrelated side characters and plots coming into conflict with the main storylines. Granted, the long wait following Season 6 already made this season seem fresh, but I think we're going to consider Day 7 one of the best seasons of 24. I think this show follows the inverse of the "Star Trek film formula" (where the even-numbered installments were usually the best entries in the series). With 24, the odd-numbered seasons seem to be the favorites.

-Buck

Buckshot: With deepest apologies to Alan Moore

2009-02-17T19:11:00.005-06:00

(I can't take credit for the idea. I saw a version of this as a user icon on the CHUD forums. I just did my own with a better-quality pic.)

-Buck

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 2

2009-02-15T23:00:00.004-06:00

A week late and a dollar short, but here's the next review, all spit-polished for your enjoyment.

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode Two: "Trust and Blood"

What Happened:

The story is told in flashbacks, as Nathan talks on the phone to a mysterious, silent individual. He's at "Building 26" and it's forty-eight hours after the plane crash. Everything...didn't go according to plan.

Well, the plane crashed, and that could hardly have been on the flight itinerary. Anyway, the plane goes down and "some" of the heroes escaped. Commandos busy themselves hunting through the Arkansas woods and do a poor job. Clarie briefly tries to escape with Peter, but HRG steps in and says, Nuh uh, Claire-bear...but he lets Peter get away. Meanwhile, Ando's bummed that he can't get a plane ticket to Arkansas (a mythical place to his Japanese travel agent) when in a flash (ahem) Daphne jets over and whisks them both to the crash site. Parkman, Suresh, and Hiro link up, Parkman goes all Isaac-eyes and rushes into the woods where he demands drawing material. The other two get some clothes at the sedentary trailer/hill-folk dwelling they find while Parkman sketches some stuff out. Meanwhile, Tracy and Peter pull the old prisoner-running-this-way-as-distraction-while-other-prisoner-karate-chops-the-commando-on-the-back-of-the-head maneuver (the ol' PRTWADWOPKCTCOTBOTH Maneuver, as I learned it).

Meanwhile, a woman and her teenage son (Luke Campbell) pass the taxidermy shop, surrounded by ambulances and cop cars; she knew it would come to this, what with that nut living there. The boy, by the by, is dark-haired, morose and recently got in a fight at school. No dad in the picture. Upon entering there house they find the commando Sylar was questioning, duct-taped to a chair with screw drivers pinning his hands to the armrests. They freak, Sylar appears, TK's them into chairs and says he'll torture them to get the commando to talk. Ooo.

Back at the crash site, Daphne and Ando have arrived. Parkman, Suresh and Hiro look at Matt's drawings: one of Hiro & a blond (Claire?) in India; one of Daphne getting shot in the shoulder in front of the plane wreckage. The second has Matt nervous and he starts back to the crash site and the others reluctantly follow. Claire gets the third degree from HRG and Nathan, giving some fire back, too. Daphne and Ando, the sidekicks, meet up with Parkman, Suresh and Hiro. Daphne acts impulsively (hah! that's two!) and dashes into the camp to get Claire. And here's where things get bad.

While standing, for a moment, in a plain view of the every eye in and about the crash site, Daphne takes that fateful shot in the shoulder as a squad of commandos crests the ridge behind the group's hiding spot. She then takes another, and several more for good measure before collapsing in blood and dust. Claire leaps forward and gets shot, shrugs it off and gives her best Wolverine I'm-a-pissed-off-unkillable-psycho look while Parkman cradles Daphne's lifeless (?) body. Much happens in slo-mo. Parkman now looks up at the soldiers and concentrates, forcing the main shooter to kill his other fellows until he is killed by the main commander, the Hunter. The heroes (Suresh, Hiro, Ando, Parkman) run away as Claire struggles to heal. Hunter takes Claire captive and threatens to put a bullet in the the back of her head, her Achilles' heal, but Nathan steps in, giving her to HRG to ferry back home. HRG promises to her he'll not be such a jerk to her friends. Claire returns to Costa Verde and gets a text message from "Rebel," who promises revolution against Nathan's people.

Tracy, after calling Nathan and promising Peter in exchange for her life, and Peter meet up later that night with Nathan...who did not come alone as promised. Peter holds Nathan at gunpoint, HRG and Hunter have their sights on him but HRG claims he "doesn't have the shot" (that's for you, Claire-bear). Peter flies away; Tracy is captured and taken to Building 26 where she's bound and drugged. For the greater good. Peter finds the other guy heroes and they plot to save their friends and counterattack.

Back to Sylar. He starts to choke the mother after the commando lies, claiming Luke wants it anyway, that they are hindrances to each other, basically putting all his own angst on the kid. Surprising us all (or, not at all), the kid has powers! He uses them to boil and burst the cup of coffee in Sylar's hand. He and Sylar have a pow-wow in the other room while the mother recuperates and the commando frees himself. But, Luke sees disaster (for who?) and microwave blasts the commando in the chest (the effect is like air rippling above a hot road), killing him. Sylar agrees to take Luke with him after the boy says he knows where Samson Gray, the taxidermist, lives. The head off in the Campbells' car.

We find out that Nathan's been telling the story over the phone to his mom, Angela, and she will not absolve him of any guilt over the tragic events. She will have no part of it and hangs up as she looks over the files she has of the Hunter...and others.

To be continued next week in "Building 26."

In Character Development...:

Peter and Nathan
Aside from reiterating that Nathan's a jackhole, there's not much on him. He is protecting Claire, but he's not learning from his mistakes. The "greater good" spiel might've worked circa Season 1, but characters grow. I guess not enough.

Peter, on the other hand, has grown. Showing determined leadership and realizing not all will turn out right with the world, he's made the decision to be forceful. Making a decision in general is big, but to take the lead and not appear wishy-washy floppy-haired Peter is a grand development. The power limitation also forces him to be practical where he's been spacey and relied on a bevy of crutches in the past.

Tracy
She screwed. Politicking doesn't get you out of "heroes" Guantanamo, where/whatever that might be. Betraying Peter (or was it Nathan?), constant hedging, ignoring moral choice - these don't help in this fictional world. Good or bad, you have to come down on a side.

Suresh, Parkman and Daphne
So Daphne maybe dies; no body bag is seen. If she is worm-food, not great loss...except her power and what she does for Parkman (happiness). Speaking of, Parkman takes a big leap forward this episode by actively using his power in a combat situation. It's not the psychic knives or brain blast many of us (X-Men) fans desired, but "commandeering" still works. The psychic/seer stuff might get old fast; hopefully, he just gets flashes of insight and not full-fledged plot foreshadowing (ala Isaac Mendez). Suresh runs around.

Hiro and Ando
Not entirely a hero yet, Ando follows Daphne, another sidekick, and avoids death. Is he seeing what it takes to be a hero and, therefore, how best to use his abilities? In combat, I'd imagine his boosting would make Parkman an engine of mental destruction or Suresh a Bombay Hulk. The learning curve Hiro discovered in the first and second seasons plays out again, but with Ando.

Not one to sit by and not complain, Hiro laments his loss of power and says he needs to be a hero again. Parkman's painting supports that theory. Ideally, if he is to get his power back, it'll be an added bonus of heroism, not the direct benefit. Get a sword.

Claire and HRG
She's a victim who wants to take action against her abusers. HRG is a good solider with a conscience. See previous seasons. It's not that I don't like their characters (he is still my favorite), but until Claire realizes she's not Invincigirl all duded-up with the martial ability to combat evil, her story will be repetitive. Perhaps - and this goes against contact, popularity and wisdom - she needs to sit out half a season or so. Rest the character, save the plot.

What to do with the Company Man? I like his moral quandaries, but I think he's had enough now to realize that "fighting from the inside" doesn't work. Instead of derailing the Hunter by not killing Peter or keeping Claire free, maybe he should be in the field terrorizing this new fascist black-ops commando unit. Give him the Invisible Man, the Haitian and a few other "acquaintances;" I'm sure his hero team would boost the ratings.

Sylar (and Luke Campbell)
Of all the characters, Sylar is moving forward. By giving him a Maltese Falcon/MacGuffin (in the guise of his biological father) to hunt, we can see him interact with people differently than if he was on a killing spree. Already he has a sidekick, the mentally unwell Luke Campbell. I smell future betrayal. Luke brings a new power to the fore, microwave emission, and a random character dynamic. Is he evil? Misguided? A normal teen rebelling? And what's his (blood?) relation to Sylar's father?

Thoughts:

*Sylar plays Peter Pan, picks up a Lost Boy (Solar Lad? Hot Plate Boy?). Positive. The best part of Season 2 was the "team-up" between Beard-O Nathan and Parkman as they hunted the latter's father.

*Daphne goes the way of the dodo...or does she? Speedesters, in comics, are notorious for both dodging death and healing quickly. I don't count her out.

*HRG isn't a total bad guy, as we all knew. However, he's not interesting enough anymore. I want less "new company, same as the old company" and more "I do have a particular set of skills..." bad-assery.

*Peter's powers? Perfect for him. It forces him to make difficult choices, making him grow up at the same time. Limiting him to one-at-a-time also allows for less arguments of "Why doesn't he just go ballistic on these people with lightning, TK, ice, telepathic assault, etc.?!" when faced with conflict and impediments. I like this quite a lot.

*Claire needs to heal Hiro so he gets his powers back. Maybe Peter, too. Mandy (wife) seems to think this is the best course of action. Linderman's ability healed brain damage by the Haitian. Suresh's formula could give powers and gave Peter almost his original one. Adam Monroe's blood healed people not him.

*Parkman using his powers aggressively? Finally. Finally. Now he needs to use them for espionage.

Looking Ahead:

*Is Daphne Dead?
*Where is John Glover/Samson Gray?! How long will this be dragged on? Road trips are fun; fantasy-novel style Walking Without Destination less so.
*Does the Hunter have a power we don't know about?
*Does Tracy make a deal?

Heroes: Fugitives
Episode One - "A Clear and Present Danger"

-Hooper

Hooper Reviews Heroes: Fugitives - Episode 1

2009-02-11T15:21:00.009-06:00

If you haven't watched the previous two and a half seasons of Heroes, I can catch you up right quick.

Concept! Heroes walk among us, ordinary people with powers far beyond those of mortal Man. Some want to be left alone, others want to help the world while yet more desire power, control and to be feared. Periodically, they clash. Rarely do they stay dead.

Ok? Now to the first episode of the second half of Season 3 (also called vol. 4. Whew!): Fugitives.

***

I will be breaking the reviews up into four parts: the episode summary, main characters development/activity, my thoughts, and questions for next week. Please use the comments section to add your wild theories, because we all know you have them.

Heroes Season 3
Volume Four: Fugitives

Episode One: "A Clear and Present Danger"

What Happened:

When we left our heroes, they had scattered after taking down Arthur Petrelli's "villains" and destroying Pinehurst, a front company in reality founded to artificially develop "powers."

Several months pass.

Nathan, using his post, is planning on rounding up all those with abilities to protect the regular citizens. He starts the episode giving an interview that vaguely refers to his plans to help protect America. What he will do - remove their powers, imprison them, force them to train and work with the US gov't - is up in the air. As the episode progresses, we see his black-clad squads capture Tracy, Suresh, Hiro, Parkman, Claire and Peter. The only one they have trouble with is Sylar, now on the hunt for his biological father. After he seeks out "Martin Gray," his adoptive watchmaker deadbeat dad, he gets the address of the main Martin claims is his real dad. While there, the goons attempt - and spectacularly fail - to capture him. Then he starts "asking" some questions....

Taken to an airport hanger with other captured heroes, blindfolded and manacled, our protagonists are led onto a plane bound for parts unknown. Except for Claire. Nathan, her biological father, packs her away in a car and tells her to forget all of this. Of course, she doesn't. Instead, she knocks out the driver and sneaks aboard the plane.

In mid-flight, Claire unhooks the imprisoned heroes from some chemical nose-plug thing that obviously inhibits powers. Peter awakens, sees the situation, absorbs Suresh's strength and begins to fight the guards. Pandemonium ensues, causing him to get Tracy's cold touch, which he unfortunately uses on the tail end of the plane...now a gaping hole sucking out nameless people we don't care about. Claire goes to the cockpit and sees her father, HRG. "Claire?!" She looks stunned. The ground rushes up through the cockpit as they lose cabin pressure and control. The episode ends.

***

In character development...:

Here's what they did before they got on that plane (no, this isn't about LOST).

Peter & Nathan Petrelli
Peter Petrelli is an EMT now, his brother Nathan a powerful Senator on the Homeland Security committee; the death of their deranged father is behind them. Peter had his abilities stripped from him partway through the "Villains" arc but, using Suresh's super-serum, got them back...or did he? Unable to save the life of an accident victim, he laments to his co-worker that he could've saved him, if he had more power. Throughout the episode he runs into Claire, who warns him of Nathan, and Suresh; they just catch up before reminding each other to be careful. He also seeks out Nathan after Claire's warning, and confronts him not once, but twice (though, the second time, Nathan is in his apartment, waiting). The greater good is brought up, and each has clearly different views of what that really means. Nathan asks Peter, when they first meet at their mother's mansion, what powers he currently has. Flight, Peter replies, as he hasn't seen any of the other heroes since Pinehurst. When Nathan surprises Peter at the apartment, he maneuvers him into a trap and captures him with his chief "hunter's" help.

While Peter struggles to be a hero, Nathan has bullied his way into a very powerful post. He's giving interviews, talking about the greater good, the larger struggles against unseen threats. We know he means "heroes," but the average American can just think he's after terrorists. Good cover, because regular citizens would flip if they knew he was masterminding a program to round up all those with powers and shuttle them off to an undisclosed facility...for everyone's own good, of course. He defends himself and reiterates to his mother that Claire is to be kept away from the others and in the dark. There is a small part of him that cares for his daughter, even if he's never really been a father to her. When everyone is aboard the plane and it taxis for take-off and flies in to the night sky, he stares after it...regretting? Scheming? Mentally rubbing his hands together in evil glee? Or is it resignation, as he knows what he's done to these people is a violation of our freedoms, but in his "greater good" mentality these actions remain the best course to keep the country from ruin? Hm....

Tracy (triplet the second)
She's getting back in with the Governor of NY, or at least still has her political contacts to fall back on after being on the losing side in the PrimaTech heroes vs. the Pinehurst villains fight. The episode - in general - starts with Nathan giving an interview/stump speech about protecting America; Tracy watches while assuring NY's governor that she has no leash on him anymore, that he's climbing the ladder under his own steam. And then she gets taken. She is the first to be kidnapped, and here her attackers show their preparedness. As we know, she can freeze things by touch, and tries to do so when the first attacker closes in on her, grasping his arm and icing it up...but it thaws. Yes, they have built in to their uniforms some measure of "power repellent" against some of the easier-to-block abilities. She is still taken after they use a powerful taser device against her.

Mohinder Suresh
Suresh drives a cab again. After chatting with Peter, a gaunt man gets into his backseat, pulls a gun and tells him to drive. We see his face and it's Nathan's chief black-clad hunter. Driving to the top floor of a parking garage, Suresh stops the cab and finds himself facing a ring of goons with rifles and a waiting fan to whisk him away. The hunter tells him to get out, and he does...but he doesn't go quietly. Gripping his open door, he pulls it off the hinges and batters the chief hunter away (so they have armor on those suits; otherwise, he'd be pudding). He uses the door as a shield against the goons, who fire taser rounds (about the size of sidewalk chalk) ineffectively and with stormtrooper-quality aim, until reaching the downward ramp. Sprinting around the spiral ramp, he stops as...Noah Bennett (HRG) pulls up in his stylish black crossover SUV, urging him to get in now! To save himself! He does, foolishly (why does Suresh always make the wrong choices? He knows Bennett has frequently worked at odds to the heroes, both good and evil, to keep humanity safe from super-humanity). Bennett asks if he's been in contact with any other heroes, Bennett skids to a halt as gaunt hunter appears, Suresh gets confused and apologizing, Bennett tasers and delivers him to the goon squad.

Claire Bennett
Struggling with the mundane real world, Claire wants the action back. Something to keep her from being just another kid. Her biological grandmother, Angela Petrelli, pushes her to choose a college and therefore a normal life. Claire wants to hunt down Sylar, knowing that the "trips" her dad is always away at are related to special people. They have to be, in her mind. Angela tolerates her, at best, saying that Sylar is dead. End of discussion. Later, Claire picks up the phone and hears an agitated Angela talking to Nathan about the future abductions of Peter and Matt Parkman. Nathan tells Angela to keep Claire away from them. It is then that Angela looks up...and sees Claire on an extension.

So later, Claire tracks down Peter and warns him that Nathan's coming to get him. Being who he is, Peter believes her right away and goes off to confront Nathan. Claire, meanwhile, heads to Parkman's apartment. She knocks and they talk, but Matt's more interested in these drawings he's made (see below) that show he and Claire...looking at the drawings. Another shows something sticking out of Matt's neck. What is that, Claire asks. And then Matt is shot with an electro-tranq dart, commandos burst into the room and she's taken.

Hiro & Ando
Hiro, now without his powers since Arthur Petrelli stole/blocked them, is trying to make Ando (who still retains his artificially granted ability to augment others' power) a hero and instill in him a sense of responsibility. This...isn't working so well. Hiro has bought an old firehouse and has converted it to a sort of Ando-cave for his superheroing. To keep tabs on each other, he injects Ando with a GPS tracking device, saying he did the same to himself. Hiro even got an "Ando-cycle," complete with two-way communications to base. Ando is skeptical and views this as Hiro's attempt to live through Ando now that he's powerless. He leaves.

Later, Hiro tracks down Ando and calls him, demanding to know why he isn't saving the world or being a hero. But I am, Ando says. Then why are you in a strip club, Hiro replies. Ah, Ando. As they continue to bicker, Ando hears sounds of a struggle on Hiro's end and we see our pudgy protagonist carted off, unconscious, by the Hunter's commando squad. Ando races back to the firehouse and is able to track Hiro...to the US.

Matt Parkman and Daphne
They are trying to live normal lives, if their powers (and Daphne's impulsiveness) can let them. She's working and he's a security guard, but neither is really happy. But better being normal than in danger. It's while arguing about what they should be doing that Matt gets a vision of Usutu, the dead African seer. Daphne agrees to be normal, and heads out. Matt's turtle later escapes and in putting in back, he sees Usutu again who tells him he'll be a great prophet and gain the ability to draw/paint the future (like Isaac Mendez). And sure enough, his eyes get all cloudy and he begins to draw. And several hours later, Claire appears, they talk, get taken, etc. You've read that before.

HRG (Noah Bennett)
... is, as always, an enigma. He's working for Nathan, co-leading the round-up of heroes and yet...I don't believe it. See Suresh and Claire for his part in this episode.

Gabriel "Sylar" Gray
Oh, and Sylar, thought dead in the fiery demise of Pinehurst, is healed up and back in the game, searching for his biological father. Sylar tracks down his adoptive father, the watchmaker Martin Gray. At the watch repair shop, Martin pulls a shotgun on Sylar before realizing who he is. To our great surprise, he doesn't lie to Sylar and admits that he wasn't a good father and walked out because he couldn't stand Virginia, the snow globe collector; they should never have had a child together (small lie). No, Sylar's father is the watchmaker's brother, Martin explains after light (verbal) pressuring. The brother, Samson Gray (named later), needed money and gave his child to Martin and Virginia who wanted a kid but couldn't have one. Martin gives Sylar the address; there is no violence between these two, just some regret and resentment.

Going to the address given him, a taxidermy shop, Sylar enters and pokes around. A small picture of a young boy with black hair and glasses (little Gabriel "Sylar" Gray...?) is seen, as is a snow globe and a smoldering cigarette. Suddenly, one of the better action scenes of the series starts. The black-clad commando squad attempts to capture Sylar, shooting electro-darts in him, noosing his head and arms with those contraptions animal tamers use (metal noose at the end of a pole). To no avail. Using his telekinesis, he literally moves the house he's in, shaking everything, throwing his attackers all over the place (with a little electrical assist) until they're down for the count. One remains conscious. Shaking off the restraints, Sylar levitates him off the ground and informs him there will be a Q & A session following this beat-down.

Thoughts:

*Sylar returned too early; I was hoping he'd sit out most of the season and come in towards the end as a repentant savior figure. Following his end-of-the-episode appearance, the next ep would detail where he'd been all season, what he'd learned, done, etc. But that was my fantasy version of the story. As is, I look forward to John Glover giving his impression of Father Knows Best to a bratty superpowered psychochild.

*I want HRG to be good. I think, at the core, he is. But to side with Nathan? Eh...I hope there are wheels within wheels.

*Suresh's super-strength in demonstration was terrific. In fact, the use of powers, the crack detainment squads, the action in general - big fan of all of that.

*I think the direction is better now than it was before. It's not as...average. The producers have realized this show needs a visual flair to match the storytelling and whoever is in the director's chair agrees. Technically superior to the last two "volumes."

*I don't know how Nathan would know about Ando having powers, as they weren't part of the same plot group at any point last "volume." So unless he shows himself off, I think he's clear to act.

*Forcing Peter to touch heroes to get their ability adds a degree of vulnerability to his character, instead of just passively absorbing them through proximity. That was a cop-out to make him this God-like hero.

Looking ahead:

*Looking forward to the plane crash and how they survive.
*Will HRG emerge more heroic after his fellow commandos/goons are knocked out in the crash?
*Where's Daphne? Did she dodge capture?
*Is Angela a plotter, maybe with something on the side with HRG?
*Do we meet John Glover/Samson Gray next episode? They can't get him in soon enough.

Until next week!

-Hooper

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM

2009-02-11T13:11:00.005-06:00

I'm going to try something new this week. A briefer, bullet-point review that's less recap and more of my impressions and thoughts as I watched the episode. (Which I really enjoyed by the way. Probably my favorite since the premiere.)

• Jack looked immensely uncomfortable in the Oval Office. I thought that was pretty funny. Though we couldn’t see, I kept imagining he was wringing his hands.

• President Taylor made a pretty tough call this week, potentially at the cost of her husband's life: How can she give in to the terrorist demands when she’s willing to put other American lives in danger?

• Possible best moment of the night #1: Taylor asks Jack how she can know where his loyalties lie (a valid question, given that he's currently under federal indictment). Jack silently seethes for a moment, then responds "With all due respect, Madame President...ask around." This would get best moment except when you stop and think about it, who's she supposed to ask? The two late President Palmers? Deceased CTU directors George Mason or Ryan Chappelle? Jack doesn't exactly have a full stable of character witnesses.

• Larry’s expression when he gets a phone call from the (seemingly) dead Renee was priceless.

• Jack wants to threaten Vossler’s (the Secret Service agent working with Gedge) family (but not hurt them) in order to find out where Henry Taylor is. Renee agrees a little too quickly.

• Possible best moment of the night #2: Jack’s outburst to Larry and Renee. “When are you going to stop pretending that they’re playing by the rules?”

• Larry says the rules are what make us better. “Not today,” responds Jack. That’s the best moment of the night.

• Unless this whole Dubkau’s-sleeping-with-a-waitress subplot gives us an opportunity for Jack to torment someone else’s loved ones (It’s one of his hobbies!), what’s the point? The waitress’ sister knows Dubaku’s not who he says he is, so maybe this will bear fruit.

• Jack finds Vossler, T-bones his car with Larry's SUV, and nabs him. With Renee on the phone pretending to hurt his baby, he talks. There’s a struggle though, and Vossler pulls a knife. Jack ends up stabbing him in the gut. Even Renee seems skeptical when Jack claims self-defense (though that's how it looked). But honestly, at this point you wouldn't believe Jack's claim of self-defense either. It's not like he still has a lot of credibility.

• Bill and Kanin have prepared a Matobo decoy to fool Dubaku’s men while Jack and Renee try to rescue Henry. It doesn’t work, and ends all explosion-y.

• Violence! Glorious violence! As Jack and Renee storm the bodega where Henry was being held. They kill all of the terrorists, but one gets a shot off and tags Henry in the gut. Well that ain’t good. (Actually, I couldn't tell if the shot came in fact from Jack's gun. I wasn't paying the closest of attention at that moment and Jack had a pretty horrified expression on his face.)

So there you go. Another suspense-filled hour, with some good action and character scenes thrown in. I like that when the shit hits the fan, Jack is able to compartmentalize and ignore how crappy his life truly is, but in the quieter moments (the Oval Office, the meeting with Larry and Renee outside the Capitol) you can see the man's barely hanging on.

Thus ends the first third of our season. Can't wait to see what's next.

-Buck

Buckshot: In Which I Get Cranky About Readership

2009-02-10T09:47:00.007-06:00

Here's the deal. I've got notes for last night's episode of 24 that can be easily put together for a review. But I'm not sure it's worth my while anymore. Because I'm not sure anyone's even reading these reviews. We're 1/3 of the way through this season and not one of my reviews has seen a comment, be it positive or negative.

And it's not just the 24 posts; it's the blog in general. Hooper checks the site traffic like it's heroin and he's Amy Winehouse. He assures me we're getting moderate traffic and fresh pageviews. But what we're not getting is comments and feedback. Aside from the occasional post from jmc or anonymous visitors, the comments sections are mostly empty. There are 25 posts on the main page, and 12 comments total for those 25 posts. If you're enjoying what we're providing, you're not showing it.

So here's what I want from the readers. Give me some sign that you're enjoying the 24 reviews (And sorry, Dad, you don't count, because I already know you're reading them.). Or a sign that you're hating them. For that matter, did you enjoy the recent The Colorado Option bits of original fiction, and some of our recent reviews?

I just want something to indicate people are reading this stuff, period. Make it worth our while to continue.

-Buck

The Hooplah Reviews "Final Crisis"

2009-02-06T14:13:00.002-06:00

Right off the bat (not "write off the Bat"), this series succeeds beyond it's immediate "crisis" predecessor, Infinite Crisis, and in the fullness of time will stand as one of the most articulate and well-realized comic book stories about stories.

Don't believe me? Let's look at this a bit closer.

Grant Morrison has been chomping at the bit to write Jack Kirby's myths-made-flesh, the New Gods, since he started in on mainstream DC heroes. His JLA run heavily featured their involvement, not only as members but as threats to humanity, the cosmos, reality, etc. Theirs was a story of never-ending battle, cyclically ending in calamity. First World becomes Second becomes Third cracks into Fourth and dies to give birth to glorious Fifth.

But what's important is the story. It changes over time from that of gods clashing to man deciding its destiny. The Fifth Age, ushered in over the trying times of Final Crisis, is the age of Man. Self-determination, to borrow from Woodrow Wilson.

So does FC do all that? Does it move past the normal Event tag into some grander space?

On the whole, yes.

Without talking down to us, Morrison has used the medium of the comic to pull back the layers of our heroes and their narratives. Their tales and myths, if you will. Deconstruction in comics isn't new, and has been a trend for the last two decades, but at the core of Morrison's heroes isn't self-loathing, doubt or regret. It's hope, optimism, the relentless pursuit of Good against all odds.

In the back-and-forth Buck and I had on this, he told me, "I guess my only beef is that it almost reads like an Elseworlds, because it didn't seem to change a whole lot in the grand scheme of things."

To a large degree, he is right. These heroes and villains were there before and they will be after. The city of Bludhaven (destroyed in Infinite Crisis) is still a war zone, of sorts. The teams still exist, though they might have a different roster. The Daily Planet globe still stands. No major heroes died, though it looks like the Hawks are back on the cosmic wheel, waiting to spin back off, reincarnated into new bodies. Batman was zapped millennia into the past where he's leaving clues to his whereabouts (I see a mini coming up next year!). Superman lives. Wonder Woman is back to being a hero. Mary Marvel was forcibly changed back to normal, and therefore has the potential not to be evil. Mr. Tawny is still sipping tea.

I think the reason it didn't change anything - well, aside from the world now acknowledging the Multiverse - was that it was meant to reinforce what we already knew. These heroes never give up. It doesn't matter if they die - death won't keep them from at least trying. They are amazing forces for good, as I've said. Their "story" supersedes all others, all negative strains, all doomsday plots and schemes and devices.

That's what the two-issue tie-in Superman Beyond was about, to a large degree - the "good will always triumph" story dominating whatever evil is thrown at it. Likewise, the same with Final Crisis.

But there is change at the end of it.

Batman picked up a gun...and used it. Shouldn't that be some banner event? His demise was a sacrifice, but not an end. Still, he shot the Darkseid-possessed Dan Turpin. He didn't shoot to kill Turpin, but fatally wounded the essence of Darkseid.

The New Gods are back, as is the pre-Crisis Multiverse. In this, Morrison is (perhaps) saying there shouldn't be limits on these stories. Why say "one Earth," "52 parallel Earths," "x-dimensions of the Snowflake," etc.? The Power of Story (and the wild potential of comics) bursts from such constraints.

To be critical for a moment, Morrison did play this a little close to the crazy vest. Plotting it linearly for six issues (there's nothing awry with any of that structure; if you can't grasp it, go back to Archie), he diverges into the scattershot narratives upon narratives form that confused many in #7. Time has no meaning until it's all hashed out, the heroes have won and the rebuilding started. Unless you accept the conceit he laid out previously - time is collapsing in itself as result of Darkseid's fall/higher-dimensional death and has no meaning on Earth in the classic sense - the last issue is a confusing mix that cannot be followed, much less understood. Were I him, and aware as he is that not all comic book readers want to put in a great deal of effort for the big Event comics, I'd've made this slightly more coherent for the casual reader.

As it stands, that hurt the read-through only slightly. This is a story about ideas (and ideas about story); what impact does time really have on such things?

In a recent IGN interview, Morrison said, "This isn't arbitrary. This is the result of a lot of thought. You know I love to talk and theorize about comics and the creative process but I feel I'm close to over-explaining and justifying something that was really simple. It's about trying to create a feeling."

I agree with Morrison. We aren't dumb. He knows that. His talking about every little thing - satisfying the instant gratification desire that forces us in only a week to demand all answers after one quick reading - will ruin not only his creativity and faith in readers, but our faith in ourselves as creative participants in the vivid and continuous dream that is story.

Whether or not Final Crisis is a rewarding read depends on how you go into it. Scott McCloud talks about the iconic in comic books, how we see ourselves and larger ideas in the stories and line work. Morrison grasps this concept, and maybe overreached a little here and there. But taken as a whole, we've been given an amazing sequential art experience. It challenges us to keep up, promising all the knowledge we'll need. How many comics do that?

As an "Event" comic, it only partly succeeds. The casual reader can have a hard time, tie-ins were mismanaged (or mismarketed), the art and schedule proved problematic. The grander DC Universe is impacted, but in ways far more subtle than, say, giant crashed alien spaceships in NYC, heroes uncovered as alien invaders, "no more mutants" or even the disappearance of infinite earths.

But as a comic, as a story, it raises the bar and the imagination. I'll take that over splash-page battles and soap opera melodrama that masquerade as good writing.

-Hooper

Buckshot: That was a hell of a game.

2009-02-03T09:00:00.003-06:00

It's a day late, but congratulations to my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, on their triumph in Super Bowl XLIII.

-Buck

Buck Reviews 24: Day 7, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

2009-02-03T08:57:00.007-06:00

The following review was typed in real time.

An action-oriented, Jack-centered installment, as things begin to shift from one plotline to another.

Jack & Co.
• Jack & his team follow the Matobos to Dubaku’s location, a nondescript office building. They infiltrate the building and a firefight ensues. You know Jack was itching for this. He hasn’t killed anyone in several hours.
• Dubaku's been hiding Michael Latham in his lair, presumably if the CIP device failed. Dubaku straps explosives to Latham and blows him up to cover his escape. (Is this 24's first exploding man?) Dubaku then walks right out the front door of the building with the rest of the suits.
• CTU-lite gets the Matobos back to their safehouse. Bill wants to hijack a satellite to track Matobo, but Jack says they don’t have the time or resources. Matobo says they can go to President Taylor, and that they can trust her. Jack, Bill, and Renee prepare to take the Matobos to the White House while Tony will continue to hunt Dubaku through other methods.

Kidron, OH
• Sean and Janis find Dubaku’s target in Kidron; a plant that produces pesticides. The pressure has started building in the primary tank of insecticide and they can’t stop it. It’s going to flood into the atmosphere.
• Janis and the plant manager attempt to vent the insecticide into a runoff room within the plant. When Dubaku unplugs the CIP device and flees, the pressure drops in the tanks, but the plant manager and other employees suffer some chemical inhalation, and some of the chemical made it into the air.

Henry Taylor
• Henry awakes and prepares to leave Samantha's apartment, only to be attacked by Gedge’s partner, who comes up to check on the delays. Henry is now Dubaku’s hostage.

Thoughts
• The show gives the population of Kidron as 30,000…'fraid not. Maybe if we expand to include Wooster to the west and Canton to the east. But Kidron isn’t even an incorporated town. I realize I’m nitpicking here, but the show’s depicting an area that’s practically in my backyard; it’s hard not to critique.
• Nice to see Renee finally doing something again. Hopefully she doesn't get sidelined much more as the day progresses.
• I read a theory that Janis is the FBI mole, and she very well may be. But for the moment, my money's on Tom, the Secretary of Homeland Security, being involved in some way. A comment he made to Chief of Staff Kanin near the end of the episode seemed off to me.
• I get that Tony doesn't want to go to the White House because it means he'll be arrested, and won't be able to help in the hunt for Dubaku. But again, it makes me wonder if Jack will be able to trust Tony in the end.
• With the CIP device seemingly destroyed, it looks like we're going to follow a similar format to Season 3, where we went from Rogue Jack to Mexican Drug Cartel to Terrorist Supervirus Attack. That actually all played out pretty well in the end, so if they're planning a similar tonal shift or two this year, here's hoping they pull it off.

-Buck

The Colorado Option: John, Part 1

2009-01-30T16:59:00.005-06:00

The Colorado Option: hard-boiled, low down, dirty stories of broken men, last-ditch efforts and guttered-out dreams. This is one of those stories...

John, Part 1 by Hooper McFinney

Note: Contains adult content.

***

Dreams stumbled away, and last night's revelry took their place. Last night....

It was the only thing that kept him going.

The rain battered the window and leaked in around the frame, puddling under the sill. An idle hand slapped him awake, and a voice screeched for money, where was her money. They were all the same, he thought for the hundredth time.

Eyes stuck shut with sleep and debauchery, he reached over and fumbled on the nightstand for his wallet. He pulled out a fifty. At least, he hoped it was a fifty. Didn't matter - his was an endless well of wadded up bills.

"Here, take it." At least, he meant to say that. "Huh, tuk ih" oozed out instead from between cracked, bleeding lips. Hell of a way to start a morning.

Father John found the handcuff key, undid himself and got ready for mass.

~To be continued~