Various Thoughts

I began watching this series for one reason and one reason only; I saw a picture of the cast in either a 4chan thread or an ED article (I forget which) and thought to myself "Who is that white-skinned girl? She looks interesting.". On the plus side, Chiana did indeed turn out to be interesting.

The first two seasons are fairly good. It felt sort of like Battlestar Galactica mixed with… something. I used to know what the ‘something’ was, but that was weeks ago when I first thought of the comparison. I suppose I should have wrote it down…. No matter.

The third season, however, is trash. Total and complete trash. Not only does pretty much every episode contain nonsensical situations and pointless storylines, but the two new crew members that are introduced are both useless and have horrifically grating personalities. The first, Jool, replaces Zhaan and has not a single redeeming quality or, indeed, even a purpose in existence. Jar Jar Binks has more of a right to exist than this character. No joke. The second, who is introduced toward the end and becomes a regular in the fourth season, is Noranti. Basically a giddy hedge witch version of Yoda. Horrible on all levels.

The fourth season rises above my ground-level expectations by returning believability to the episodes’ premises. It also replaces Jool with Sikozu, a character who actually does something other then run around like a chicken with its head cut off. It ends on a questionable note however, with a ludicrous cliffhanger seemingly pulled out of thin air.

The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries begins by mostly reverting said cliffhanger, and then proceeds to jump to the spontaneous outbreak of a full-scale galaxy-wide war between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans. The war feels like a heavy-handed plot device. The whole baby subplot also feels like a heavy-handed plot device. Still, it’s a decent finale to the series and finally ends the ‘capture John to gain his wormhole knowledge’ reoccurring storyline… albeit in a heavy-handed deus ex machina way.

The pilot episode for this remake of the 1983 miniseries of the same name feels like the pilot of Battlestar Gallactica crossed with the Jasmine arc from Angel. Do note that I have never seen the original.

Perhaps I’ve become too jaded, or just seen too much (though the two aren’t mutually exclusive), but I cannot help but see extensive similarities to shows I’ve watched long ago in most of the ‘new’ series that are released. So while it may be true that I’ve never seen this particular blend of storytelling elements, plotpoints, and characters before… I don’t see it as anything but a blend of storytelling elements, plotpoints, and characters. Here’s some Independence Day, there’s some Angel, over here we have a dash of Fringe with an overlay of BSG….

I’ll probably watch the rest of the series on the off-chance that it might draw me in; but I don’t have high hopes at this point.

The wedding plans are underway in episode seven. After Rita asks him to come up with a list of friends and family he’ll want to invite, Dexter starts thinking about who actually qualifies as a friend and can only really come up with Miguel as an answer. Miguel, however, begins pushing him against the Code that has guided his life up until recently. Elsewhere, Debra has uncovered a lead on the skinner murders after taking the time to re-examine all the case files.

Episode eight has Dexter and Miguel teaming up to clandestinely investigate a suspected murderer while Lieutenant LaGuerta seems to becoming inseparable friends with Ellen Wolfe, the defense attorney who acts as Miguel Prado’s main rival. This relationship seems to be the polar opposite of, and yet still similar to, the one between Dexter and Miguel. There are several side-stories flitting about on the sidelines here as well; Debra gets closer to Anton only to have him mysteriously disappear, Angel’s new relationship seems to be picking up, and Miguel’s wife Sylvia strongly begins to suspect that her husband is having an affair. The episode concludes with Dexter showing Miguel the full extent of what he does and the Code he follows.

The ninth episode begins with Sylvia appearing at Rita’s house, distraught because Miguel didn’t come home the night before. Dexter wonders what he could’ve possibly been doing after they had finished and heads over to find out. Miguel gives some rather evasive answers and Dexter begins to suspect that he may have gone and killed someone on his own. The skinner’s face is then finally shown after it’s discovered that Anton was abducted from his apartment. Back with Dexter, he hears that Ellen hasn’t been returning LaGuerta’s calls and begins to get a nasty suspicion about what Miguel was doing the night before. And after a thorough investigation makes a distressing discovery. After gathering himself, Dexter decides that a lesson is in order to show Miguel exactly why it’s important to follow a specific Code… only to find out that his entire perception of Miguel was flawed from the beginning.

Episode four starts off with Dexter trying to figure out how to handle the new dynamics in his relationship with Rita and the incoming child. I’m somewhat curious why they never bothered with condoms or birth control and then seemed shocked that she was pregnant. In any case, he also has to deal with his strange new friendship with Miguel and figure out a way to get Miguel’s remaining brother (Ramon) out of the picture. The police case that goes on in the background serves to give Dexter an idea about how to enhance his ‘good-guy act’ in order to truly convince Rita that he cares about her… though whether he actually does or not is still somewhat nebulous.

The fifth episode deepens the friendship between Dexter and Miguel while focusing a bit on the implications getting married would have on Dexter’s life. On the darker side of things, on Miguel’s urging, Dexter begins to hunt a suspected serial-wife murderer. The skinner murders continue in the background and serve as a means for Ramon to insert himself into the Miami force’s investigation into the Freebo case. The hunt for the wife-murderer ends on a cruise ship, where Dexter is forced to rush his ritual a bit in order to finish things right there in the cabin and get back to land quick enough for his ‘gone fishing’ alibi to hold. Unfortunately, Rita has a pregnancy related emergency which alerts Miguel to the fact that Dexter isn’t where he said he was going to be… and he puts two and two together to figure out that he was murdering the murderer instead of fishing.

Number six begins with a new ‘skinner’ murder. Deborah seems to think that the murderer may be connected to the police force in some way, and may in fact be Ramon, since the two most recent victims died shortly after she had questioned them in relation to the Freebo case. Dexter is preoccupied with his new focus on trying to get Miguel to understand the full extent of what it is he does, so as to distance him a bit from that side of his life. Dexter and Miguel become full co-conspirators while Deborah (who’s been working surveillance) witnesses Ramon beating and abducting some random guy and follows him to an abandoned located where he proceeds to torture him for information. Her partner (Quinn) pops up partway through and they both bring him in for the obvious charges, though it does appear that he’s not the skinner.

The first episode of the new Season begins with a truncated recap of the first two seasons. It then expands a bit by showing how well Dexter’s life has settled after all the hectic events of last season. Of course, this can’t last for long. His deceased father’s birthday is coming up, and as a ‘present’ he decides to take out a guy (Freebo) who killed two college girls and got away with it. Unfortunately, when he goes in for the abduction he runs into a stranger fighting with Freebo and ends up being forced to kill him instead while Freebo runs away… and having to leave the dead body in the house. This stranger turns out to be the younger brother (Oscar) of the assistant district attorney (Miguel Prado), and Dexter’s sister Deborah has been put on the case to figure out who killed him. And ironically enough, everyone seems to think that Freebo killed him. Dexter’s heightened interest in the case is not missed by Miguel though, who confronts him about it and ends up being completely taken in by the cover story he thinks up. The episode ends with Dexter again more or less in the clear, thinking about how he’s managed to evolve, and then having Rita drop a pregnancy bomb on him.

The hunt for Freebo continues in episode two, with Dexter deciding that he has to find Freebo first since he saw his face last episode when he busted in on the fight with Oscar. Miguel is still tooling about the office fretting about this and that while Lieutenant LaGuerta does her best to calm him down and get him to step back by relating her experiences with Doakes last Season. While Deborah continues to look for leads on Freebo’s murdered girlfriend (Teegan), who appeared up last episode, Dexter has already found her full name and last known address and plans to head over there in the hopes of finding him holed up there. On his way out of the department, he gets waylaid by Miguel who invites him and Rita over his house to ‘discuss’ something. It seems Miguel doesn’t want to take any chances on Freebo slipping through the legal system’s grasp yet again. After their talk, Dexter heads out to Teegan’s house… only to find a frat party fully underway. He resigns himself to having to come back the next night and heads back to Rita’s house to deal with the the pregnancy issue. Which that situation still unresolved, Dexter focuses on finding Freebo before the rest of the department does and lucks out by stumbling across him while casing Teegan’s house the next night. Not exactly prepared for this eventuality, he makes a hasty retreat to gather his tools together before returning to kill him. However, he gets waylaid by Rita shortly after he gets back home;  she’s decided to keep the baby. Thoughts somewhat ajumbled by this, Dexter nevertheless makes his way back to Teegan’s house to kill Freebo… only to get caught by Miguel… who had a very similar idea.

With one bullet partially dodged, Dexter continues on about his business in this episode while the rest of the department continues to look for Freebo (who’s now dead) and the identity of the murdered girl (Teegan). While investigating, they run across another murder. This one is also missing a patch of skin just like Teegan was and so they assume that Freebo killed him too. Dexter of course knows that Freebo couldn’t have killed him, but can’t exactly say anything to that effect without looking highly suspicious. Feeling somewhat bad that Deborah is still flailing around in the dark trying to find out the girl’s identity, Dexter prints out some posters with her picture on it with the impact font; “Have you seen Teegan Campbell?”, and places them strategically around. Even though one of them is almost directly over his shoulder, it takes her something like five minutes to notice it. With that information they find the house, find that Freebo was there, find that he almost certainly wasn’t the one that did the ‘skinning’ murders, and decide that he’s apparently left town long ago. The episode concludes with Dexter expanding his ‘killing code’ by taking out a known sex offender who’s recently begun stalking Rita’s children.

The pilot starts off with the dream sequence that’s apparently going to be the driving force of the series. In this sequence the actor playing John Connor doesn’t really seem to fit, he just looks…off. After the sequence runs its course, Sarah/John go back on the run and now Thomas Dekker is starting to resemble Nick Stahl, who played John in Terminator 3. This is a good thing.

We get the required backstory on Sarah via the guy she just left reporting her as disappeared, which anyone who’s seen the movies would already be aware of. After that, a mere 15 minutes into the show, we get our second largish gunfight. We also get to see a ‘good’ female terminator and a sort of re-done, reversed, version of the Schwarzenegger/Loken fight from T3. I liked the one in T3 better quite honestly. More Terminator backstory is revealed following this, and it’s again nothing that movie watchers don’t already know. Part 1 ends with the surprising choice of sending the group of protagonists forward through time to (allegedly) where Skynet is being built/activated.

Part 2 opens up with the unsurprising revelation that the ‘evil’ terminators are tracking him over in this time as well. I mean really, if you’re tracking someone from the past, it’s not that difficult to know where he’s going to be since you’re *gasp* in the future. Nothing particularly notable happens throughout the rest of part 2. I will note that Summer Glau does a surprisingly good job at playing a Terminator, so while the storyline hasn’t been all that hot (or original) so far, at least the acting is decent.

I’m not sure if I’ll watch this series further, as it seems to me like a blatant re-hash of the movies.

Episode 11 actually has some somewhat original content, I can’t say I’m not shocked a bit by it. Here we find out that Malachi can create Succubi, only they don’t seem to be actual Succubi, they’re just called Succubi. In any case, said Succubi give him power (basically revealing that he’s an Incubus) and make him essentially invincible. Ella discovers this fact rather quickly thanks to their Tome of Knowledge™, realizes the Succubi has to die in order to make Malachi vulnerable again, and promptly delegates Leon to help her assassinate them. So, Leon goes off to kill a live one, while Ella goes off to kill a dead one…which is really stupid, since Leon is clearly the more conscientious and human of the two (not being 500 years old probably helps). At the end of the episode, Ella learns that Malachi is an insatiable sex-fiend that has turned nearly the entire female population of the school into Succubi, which the viewers already knew long ago and so isn’t all that shocking.

Well, surprisingly, in episode 12 Ella has reverted back to her serial killer roots (remember back in the beginning how she went around slitting innocent people’s throats?), and goes about her task of brutally murdering any girls she happens to come across. Shockingly (or not, if you’ve been paying attention to the lack of continuity so far) no one seems to notice or care about all these people (besides the last one) dying. Unfortunately for her, it turns out Malachi can create Incubi as well as Succubi, meaning she’ll probably have to kill the entire school to hurt him. Why he doesn’t attack her while he’s basically invincible is a mystery that not even aged-sages could discover the answer to.

Episode 13, the finale, is finally here and I just can’t wait to find out dread how they will finish up this fantastic god-awful season. It starts off with Leon in a cage giving commentary just like the Angelus scene in Angel…back to their plagaristic roots I see. I have to wonder where exactly Ella got that cage from however, as I certainly don’t remember it being there before (though I suppose it might have been in those secret passages). Leon then finishes his transformation from Xander to Angelus to Angel and ‘leaves town’. Joy. Meanwhile, Malachi is off flirting with the last uncorrupted girl in the school, who just so happens to be the key to everything…yeah, I call bullshit.

Now, now, now, what to say about the final sequence of scenes? I really don’t think there’s much to say at all, as the ‘End of the World’ ends up just being ‘a somewhat secluded rock starts dripping blood’. Thankfully, this is all now over, and I hope there will never be a third season.

Ella has turned into Buffy, Malachi has turned into Angel, and Leon has turned into Xander. Plus we get an introduction to the ‘watchers’, or, in this case, Archangels. This series had something unique going for it, long, long, ago, but now it’s simply a bad Buffy clone.

In episode 10, we get a ‘reverse’ of what happened after Buffy slept with Angel, rather then Malachi becoming Evil, Ella becomes a perfect housewife. Did I mention that I despise this series now? Because I do. Greatly.

Oh, almost forgot, at the end of the episode Ella divorces herself from the ‘Watchers’…you know…sort of like exactly what happened in Buffy. I will give them credit for stabbing Raphael in the gut though, that was the first interesting thing to happen in something like 8 episodes.

I’m not sure if I can continue to watch this anymore…I mean…Azazeal’s son is head-bobbing on an ipod like some stoner-dropout. What the hell? The messiah of the demons, an average slacker? It’s just…it hurts to contemplate that someone would spend 500 years attempting to create one more average layabout.

And then, Ella totally switches up her story and doesn’t try to kill Malachi. Plus, she’s suddenly being all sympathetic toward Azazeal, who (for reasons I can only assume are retarded) has been ordered by a “higher power”, to return without the demon messiah he’s been spending the last 500 years attempting to create. At the end, Ella switches up her personality yet again and finally attempts to kill Malachi, only to have a near-replica of the finale of Buffy Season 2. Which, I feel I should mention, makes not a single bit of sense. None. At all.

I think I’ll have to take a break before tackling the last 5 episodes.

Ep.04 has another ‘tell the entire plot in one line’ title, and I guess would be interesting if you were capable of watching Ella for 45 straight minutes. I am not capable of such a thing however, and skipped through most of it. Not that it really mattered of course, since the title gave everything away anyhow. It is worth noting that everything that happened in this episode was Thelma’s fault, as was the entire pregnancy of Season 1, and so it would seem that she’s the real villain of the series.

Ep.05 is so bad…so, so, bad. I thought the last episode was bad….but five, five is so much worse. It’s basically four, only instead of thrashing, you have delirious rambling. I skipped through most of this as well.

Six, six starts out like five (unfortunately). At around the 27 minute mark though, we get to see that Ella is not, in fact, ageless. Which is mildly interesting, but doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s an uninteresting character and that the last two episodes have been utter crap. The only other interesting thing in this episode is the female demon (or witch, or whatever) that appears with Azazeal. If only because she essentially appears out of thin air with no explanation, and yet seems to have always been there. The ending…the ending is just…no words can explain how upset I am by the ending of this episode, as it makes it as if the earlier two episodes essentially never happened plot-wise.