I've officially stopped caring about Heroes. It's silly, annoying soap operata has worn thin after only three episodes, and it's obvious the creative staff put all their energies into making a tightly woven first season and were left with essentially brainstorm remnants for this second season. The stagnation the show is already showing is awful. Two storylines (Peter's and Hiro's) have already come to an end, in a sense, and yet, unsure of really what to do, they've left them where they are (Ireland and fuedal Japan), instead of bringing them home to contend with new challenges. Not to mention my favourite character, D.L., is dead, so that's also annoying me, but the show's ripping off (we'd call it an "homage" if it were done well) of storylines from popular coics ("Legacy Virus", "Days of Future Past", Watchmen, amongst others) is lazy writing. Then there's the fact that the writers aren't nearly as clever as they think they are and the surprises they have planned are so immediately evident (the same happened with the first season as well).
So, to update my feeling from the last post, I'm not even going to wait until DVD. I'm just ignoring the show now.
Pushing Daisies
The first episode appeared on ABC last week, and had me enthralled. Directed by Hollywood director/cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black), the first episode was extremely cinematic, beautifully visualized, and overall it played out like a 45 minute movie, a complete story with a beginning, middle and end with the ending left open for further adventures.
Pushing Daisies is created Brian Fuller, known for his quirky comedy dramas Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, and this certainly falls in step, if not moves to the head of the pack. The pilot, relying on the surprisingly engaging exposition, tells the tale of Ned who discovers at a young age his ability to bring the dead back to life with a single touch. Unfortunately, one more touch and their dead again, and if the resurrected still lives, another in proximity will die in their stead. This creates a distantness and wariness of others, refusing any kind of close contact.
The first, and last, girl Ned loved, was Chuck, who at 9-years-old, lost her father and had to go live with her two Aunts. Years later, Ned has become a pie-maker and, through coincidence, become the accomplice of a private detective, Emerson Cod, who discovered Ned's ability and is using it to solve crimes for quick reward. When Chuck turns up dead, Emerson and Ned "investigate" as they do, reviving Chuck, but Ned can't let her go and keeps her permanent status a secret while trying to bring her murderer to justice.
Watching the Pilot for Pushing Daisies I felt giddy, like I was a child sitting down for storytime, the Narrator (British thespian Jim Dale) reading to me the morbidly amusing tale of Ned, Chuck and Emerson while the colourful visuals widened my eye. An overwhelmingly pleasurable experience, laughing out loud often, and just as much wowed by the whole experience. There's a certain magic to Pushing Daisies that I fear (and know) will not be sustainable long-term. This effect of this near-perfect little pilot, sucking in the twisted fairy tale sensibilities of Tim Burton films like Edward Scissorhands and the sweetness of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, will only be diluted by it's episodic nature, the need for weekly programming reducing the quality of the production and exhausting its exceptionally unique storytelling possibilities.
I only caught the last 15 minutes of last night's episode and I could tell it still had the charm (Dale's narration the key), and it's design sensibility left unwavered, but it also felt like an episode of a TV show as opposed to a chapter in the story of the character's lives. If this were, say, a BBC programme, with a season being six episodes of the best of everything the creators could come up with and providing a story arc for Ned and Chuck's blossoming-but-complicated romance, well, it would likely be a brilliant series, but as an open-ended TV program, I see diminishing returns on its entertainment, which is too bad.
Drop zone and Pick-up lines
I intentionally ignored Bionic Woman last night, because it's not worth the effort.
I was wanting to watch the Jon Dore Television Show last night, having enjoyed his stand up at the Rivoli a few times, but it doesn't start until next week.
The Sarah Silverman Programme airs its first episode in Canada tonight, which I'll definitely be giving a shot, because I've had a little crush on this racy, foul-mouthed Jew comedienne for years. She's so totally got to be high maintenance, but I guess only Jimmy Kimmell really knows for sure.
(in researching these two shows, I discovered that Comedy Network has the previous night's episode of Daily Show and Colbert Report on-line...awesome!)