Missing Link

While I first was taken aback by the overflow of story-lines and subplots provided in Caprica - after all BSG had taken a little longer to introduce all players, questions, trajectories - I now, after only two episodes, am intrigued, fascinated, and 100% committed to the twelfth world. This is a place, a show, filled with all what makes humanity both good and bad, with all that has happened before, all that will happen again.

This society is advanced, in many ways. Students staying out after curfew occupy the time of cops, nothing bigger on their plates until this bomb that brought us here.

Homosexuality isn't argued about, but is so accepted that it is there but hard to catch in episode one. A friend had even to point out to me the subtle: "I would hit at a hot guy and your dad would leave with his sister", comment, so unimportant, it is something so trivial here, what better statement could the writers have made? Hooray for humanity that can see beyond something as laughable as a discussion of who someone else is allowed to enjoy live with. In this world, questions of right and wrong, and seemingly a full set of rules apply that tell your children thow to move about the day, or night. Rules, regulations...what else do we yet need to know about pre-cylon Caprica? Caprica before it's first hit in the stomach, its first loss of power?
What about the need to be part of this world? Adama,..., Adams, conformity, belonging. I am going to wait and discuss Adama-bad-ass in a later blog, so much yet to see.
Caprica

The show brings us law, order, science, family drama, teen drama, class clashes, religion (or religious insanity), and drugs/holo-bands that allow the cut from reality, polygamous life styles (not a problem for the old religion here again), and a teacher that weirds me out. It seems it all started because of the STO. The need to lay claim to a single god, to only one right answer, one way to reach the goal of higher moral existence that allows for whatever it is one seeks to find. Aaaah, we're back at the beginning. Once again. Arrogant human creature.
Now, as a good friend pointed out, we have a human avatar, knowing nothing of why, what, and where she is, surrounded by the very root of humanity's downfall. All that is within the seven mortal sins is lived in this space, that much we know from the pilot. It is the pit of human want. How will that make humanity look; a humanity that is far ahead of us, yet precedes the war?
There is much, we are not privy to as of yet. Why would they need all the robots if the worlds are at peace? How regulated are the worlds?
What happened to make Caprica what it is, brought together the 12 worlds? There is yet another missing link in all of this.

I am in.

Meet Caroline

tinydancer79

So I luckily have fallen sick and am forced to stay under covers for a little while. Else I may never have been able to finally catch up with my DVR related 'work' and thus the Dollhouse double features.
I have just finished "Stoploss" and "Attic" and am more than satisfied with the treasures the attic held. If you've given up on the series during the break and because it will finish as a completed series tomorrow you should give this show another chance. Coming full circle with its apocalyptic scenario it has married the dystopian fantasies of many great minds and given it the high-speed adrenaline kick of again very smart Joss Whedon.
For those of you that have not seen the series financed in part by Eliza Dushku (wanting to show she is more than a pretty face), the show is the ultimate foreshadowing in corporation exploitation, but not by brute force, at least not at the beginning.

Rather, you are being sold a promise of a better life for five years of yours. A classic devil trade, but not in the afterlife, your soul is not what is wanted, but your body. Your mind can be exchanged. Your mind can be altered to fit whoever pays for it. You're a doll dressed up to play make believe but don't know you're doing so.

Isn't that almost like reality is now. We trade our selves to bosses, friends, neighbors... so few chances to be one self.

But what is at stake on a grant scheme? I can hardly wait to see what the future will be like in Whedon's nightmare. I will now keep watching, and hopefully not be 'disengaged'. But after the doll announced she'll now meet her soul, I think I might not be let down.

Big Love is Big Drama

Incest (kind of), Racism, Sexism, Homosexuality, Bigotry, Religion, and ...Dr. Jekyll?

This was the season's defining episode, if I have ever seen on. Filled with promises that may be hard to keep on the tight schedule of a show with so few episodes per season. Conflicts wherever one looks, dealing with most any conflict there is to deal with, both new and old within the parameters of the series. Margie and Ben, re-igniting the incestuous side of their relationship, blackface on TV, and within the freeing speech at the Casino (who wouldn't want to yell the FU at Barb?), a story of one of their own, whom the tribe does not welcome. Ahhh, there goes the worst form of racism, the idea of having noble repressed natives, thankful to the white man. They have their own ups and downs, now even on TV, who would have thought.

The reappearance of Mr. Stockwell, however, I found was a poor choice. Too many dead dad's are haunting their children and our screens and have been, especially in connection to HBO, pointing outside the frame, ripping me right out of the story, in an unpleasant way. Alby is a character so transparent, I feel I personally did not need help in understanding his paranoid broken mind.
And while I love a good villain, I would like Joey to get a break from playing a man that is so trapped in his childhood, that he acts before thinking still. He killed, came back, and lost it again. J.J. playing him like you play a little child.

Tonight's episode of Big Love, while shock full of ... well, shock-ing moments -Nicky's holding the gun once again regaining her power and losing it immediately was wonderful- may have slipped one by some of us. or my mind is again in imagination overdrive, which is quite possible.
What is up with J. J. performing a biopsy on his cancer (?) ridden wife? When they market him as the 'baddest villain', are they talking about someone who enjoys keeping his wife sick, cutting into her? Actually, cutting into himself also maybe? Or how the heck does he lose all his fingernails?

Vent Your Spleen

Though an old-fashioned phrase as such, I often feel it is quite adequate when surrounded by my dear friends, all TV and Film geeks and buffs, talking about their beloved and hated shows on TV, films that should never have been made, or need to be seen by all.

I needed a place to collect my thoughts, a place where I can write about the shows not part of my dissertation. Series, serials, quality TV and even reality, which are part of screen culture today and all need discussion.

Since most of my colleagues are in the same position, fruitful intelligent talk on many shows is cut short, because we are running off to interview these or those people, are archiving this snippet of research material, only have thirty minutes before we return to our dissertation scripts.

BUT - everyone takes breaks, here and there, short and long, on their computer. We all know the facebook status: writing my dissertation / working on paper etc. mmmmh...so why are you on facebook???

So this will be my break. Write about things I love, note ideas that may lead to papers for me or, should I have any, readers of my blog... we'll see.