Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Lost Season Six Episode One

This is not spoilage, silly. It's speculation. So you get no spoiler warning. If you need spoiler warnings, please turn off your computer and stick your head in a toilet and flush. Thanks.

Season six picks up exactly where season five left us. Juliet falls into hole, finds bomb, pounds on it with rock. Then, what everyone thinks is a nuclear explosion turns out to be just another time hop - this time into the present. However, in the present, there's no hole. The Swan station imploded when Desmond hit the switch. Juliet's wounded body finds itself trapped under all that rubble, buried alive.

Meanwhile, above ground, the same thing has happened to all the Losties, but they don't realize it immediately. Slowly they come to realize they have been returned to their original timeline but not moved in space. It dawns on Sawyer last, because bless him, he's not that bright. However, we see a realization on his face and then he rushes to the side entrance of what was The Swan to try to find a way to get Juliet out of there.

Juliet's wounds turn out to be serious but nothing Jack couldn't fix, provided Jack was okay. However, the realization that Faraday's plan didn't work has become the straw that broke the camel's back in Jack's head. He goes mildly catatonic, unable to comprehend what went wrong, but that now he feels the deaths of all but a fraction of the Oceanic 815 survivors are somehow his fault, because he wasn't able to turn back time. Kate slaps him hard and has one of her speeches, but it doesn't help. Jack's mentally Gone Fishin'. So it is left to the others to try and help Juliet before she dies of her injuries.

Meanwhile, back at the shadow of the statue, Ben and UnLocke emerge from within to announce that they have killed Jacob and everyone is to follow Ben, as Ben has already dutifully bowed to UnLocke. He demands that everyone, one at a time, express their loyalty, starting with Richard. However, when Richard is called out, it is discovered that he, Alana, and the dead body of Locke are now missing. UnLocke demands Ben lead an expedition into the jungle to hunt Richard down and get Locke's dead body back immediately. Ben does as he says.

Richard, Alana, & a couple of her people are hurriedly rushing to the underground temple catacombs with Locke's dead body in tow, in a desperate attempt to have the spirit of Jacob placed into the body of John Locke. The flashbacks are all of Richard's arrival on the Island (he was First Mate on the Black Rock crew), how Essau and Jacob compete for Richard's fealty, Essau takes the Black Rock & landlocks it when he loses to Jacob, and Jacob shows Richard how to use the Temple to heal people and what that entails.

At end of the episode, as UnLocke (spirit of Essau pretending to be Locke) has Ben lead the expedition, hot on the heels of Richard & Alana, they attempt to reincarnate Jacob using Locke's body as the sacrifice. However, something goes wrong, and when Locke is animated, it's not Locke and it's not Jacob, but someone rather disoriented and confused and alarmed. When Essau enters the room to encounter it, he freaks out and runs away screaming into the night jungle. When Richard asks the rejuvenated John Locke who he is, Terry O'Quinn busts out a mean awesome Manchester accent he's been practicing for five years: "Why, I'm Charlie Pace! Who the bloody hell are you, mate?"

USA Toduh

I picked up a copy of USA Today today. Yes, on rare occasions I actually buy a newspaper. Try not to faint. I try very hard not to go into detail about my worklife cuz that's not what my blog's about, but suffice to say I'm currently not in a position where I have access to Internet news in the morning as I prefer, so I must resort to more traditional methods. ..Okay so I like the crossword puzzle.

They say print is dead; that newspapers are Dead Man Walking. Rumors of their demise have been greatly exagerated. Alright, slightly exagerated. However, perhaps their time has come. Perhaps like three week's worth of garbage still accumulating in the kitchen, it's time to drag it out to the curb and let City Sanitation take care of the rest.

I read Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm this Wednesday morning, May 20th 2009. Catchy title. Very original. Never heard that one before! Page 11A. In my youth, a piece like Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm would be notated as an edtiorial. This portion of the newspaper would have at the top of the page "Editorials" which to my Dad meant "here there be insane crazy people failing to convince you they are not crazy insane - watch your step." Pages like this are to be properly labelled as such, for the same reason polluted swimming holes teeming with purple algae and ameobae the size of golfballs have signs around them saying "no lifeguard on duty swim at your own risk."

Marc Thiessen's The Eye of the Storm opens with facts, dates, quotes, and well-intentioned serious jargon, but he sneaks in opinions as if they were facts. I know this, because that's what I do on my own blog and on my videos. I can get away with this, because I'm not being published in a national newspaper. I'm not pretending to be a journalist. Unlike some people, and I don't want to point fingers because that's so uncouth, but Marc Thiessen is one of them. His piece opens, and I quote:
Last week, Sen. Diane Feinstein rose to defend Nancy Pelosi, explaining why the House speaker didn't object to waterboarding when she was told about it seven years ago: "I don't want to make an apology for anybody," Feinstein said, "but in 2002 it wasn't 2006, '07, '08, or '09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks."
Feinstein says she doesn't want to make an apology for anybody, and then she goes right on ahead and apologizes for Nancy Pelosi. I do not fault Marc for this. He's just reporting the facts, because he's pretending to be a reporter on what's pretending to not be an editorial page.

Marc Thiessen then argues a case that actions caused by our government in the months and years after Nine Eleven should be seen in context and not challenged; that today, we all think the danger has passed but it hasn't, because Marc Thiessen believes we are in "The Eye Of The Storm." Marc Thiessen then goes on to cite many examples on the public record of attempted terrorist attacks thwarted or pre-emptedly stricken, by the CIA. For example, in 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told Jose Padilla to blow up some high rise apartment buildings in the US. Padilla was arrested in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, before he committed these heinous crimes. What they arrested him for, is curiously omitted from Marc Thiessen's sound reporting efforts. In 2006, an Al-Qaeda cell was broken up before it could successfully carry out its reported plan to take planes from Europe and crash them into Heathrow airport, and buildings in the London Financial District. Why they were grounded for what they didn't do yet is unclear. Perhaps they thought too loud.

These and other events were stopped by the CIA and other law enforcement entities in the US and abroad working together in solidarity against the Evil-Doers. It was a heady time in which the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys always had moustaches they could twirl. Of course we should allow the Non-Evil Doers carte blanche on the freedoms of mankind, because they are so well intentioned, and wouldn't hurt anybody, unless they thought about hurting anybody.

Marc Thiessen thinks these events should be looked at with rose colored glasses, in light of all the nightmarish horrors that kept us up at night on September Twelfth. Questionable acts by our own government were done for the sake of National Security, and they should not be challenged. They were done for Mom and apple pie. They were protecting our freedoms so I have the right to type these words I type now, without the fear of enemies blowing up my favorite convenience store. The fact I now have fears of my own government subjecting me to waterboarding and ass pyramids for writing these very words is merely caustic irony, and can be medicated with moderate amounts of American brand beer. Marc Thiessen says today is different. After Nine Eleven, we have worries and concerns we didn't have before. However, because the CIA has done its job, We the People have become complacent. We no longer fear.
Today, it is taken for granted. The men and women of the CIA responsible for this achievement are victims of their own success.

After the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, they were vilified for their failure to connect the dots and stop al-Qaeda from carrying out its plans. Now they are vilified for doing what was necessary to connect the dots and stop the next 9/11. They are called torturers. Their achievements are questioned. And we are debating whether they ought to be put on trial or hauled before truth commissions for their efforts. They are not torturers. They are heroes. They don't deserve subpoenas. They deserve medals.
I got a message for Mr. Thiessen. This perception that things changed on Nine Eleven? That's all it is. It's not real. What had been abstract for a very long time became concrete in the eyes of Americans, but elsewhere on the planet, it had been very real for a very long time. We joined a club that day, of countries who had been victimized by gooberheads and chowderbrains.

Notice I'm not describing the gooberheads and chowderbrains by any cultural or religious or economic stigma. I'm describing them as goober heads and chowder brains. It makes no difference what you believe or what other people think you're worth. If you have chowder for brains, you're stupid. If your head gets stuck under seats in movie theaters, I don't care what name you use for your god.

If you kill and maim in your god's name, you're a chowderbrain. You're a gooberhead. The phrase "Intelligent Design" is poorly worded. It's not intelligent. If you dismiss the evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution because it doesn't coincide with your precious book, I am not going to mince words with you: you are stupid. The lines are not drawn between Muslim and Jew and Christian, but between those who use their grey matter intelligently, and those who do not.

Guess what! There were discussions of terrorist attacks long before Nine Eleven. Condi Rice read them at least as late as August of that year. We knew an attack was imminent. We just didn't know where or when. Such threats have existed long before Nine Eleven. When I was a kid back in the 1970s, we made jokes about terrorists hijacking planes and wanting to go to Disneyland. They were printed in Mad magazine. I think the terrorists were Libyan or Cuban back then but the basic premise was the same. Since before the Cold War - since before the Revolutionary War - the US has had enemies both foreign and domestic to contend with. Nine Eleven was the first time bloodshed occurred on the main land at a scale rivaling the Civil War, and we didn't do it to ourselves.

Marc Thiessen believes we are in the eye of a storm. He is wrong. We are not. It's much more complicated. However, to improve upon his metaphor, We The People are metaphorically under constantly changing weather patterns. Some of us respond to this by watching the metaphorical equivalent of the Weather Channel ALL day, as if watching it happening will help us prevent it. Thiessen wants the CIA to make sure it is always sunny, when at best our government should be more like an umbrella.

If I wake up tomorrow dead, because some gooberheads and chowderbrains blew up my great home state of Texas, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to read the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet and I want you to uphold them. I ask you to defend those words because they are what have made this country great, up until recent decades when our country has stopped being as great as perhaps it once was, because we stopped upholding those words.

I ask you not to uphold those words for just some Americans, or all Americans, or anyone with whom you happen to agree. I ask you to please uphold those words for all men and women regardless of race, creed, color, gender, place of origin, current whereabouts, sexual orientation, preference in music, or whether or not they agree with what's in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that plaque at Lady Liberty's feet. I want you to promise me that if I die because of terrorism, you will uphold these words and extend them to the very people who killed me. Why? Because the Bush administration didn't uphold these words. The Obama administration is not upholding these words. Nancy Pelosi, when she was told about waterboarding and she didn't do a doubletake and spit out her dentures, she didn't uphold these words. She bowed to overwhelming pressures when it was her JOB not to. NONE of our civil servants are upholding these words, and it's not the words that protect us but our vigilance and dedication to them. That is what protects us, or rather would protect us, if someone was actually doing that and no one is. Our civil servants are not upholding the very words that give them jobs. So if the Lone Star State explodes in a glorious fireball because gooberheads and chowderbrains took my inalienable rights, I ask you please to not take theirs. Turnabout is NOT fair play. It's cheating. We're better than them.

Inalienable rights mean just that. Life, Liberty, and Happiness for everybody; not just the people you don't mind having in your backyard. If we don't do this, if we don't continue to uphold those words as a beacon of justice and equality to the rest of the world, it's not that the terrorists win. Screw the terrorists. They're gooberheads and chowderbrains. They can't win.

If we don't do this, We The People lose, and we have only ourselves to blame.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

the NOT lost ARG

Okay so what's the big deal? Why am I bothering these guys? It's the principle of the thing. There's no policing on the Web when it comes to ARGs cuz there's no organization with any legitimate clout that'd bother to enforce anything, and there's no laws against playing ARGs nor should there be, but it's easy for the unenlightened and gullible to be taken in unless someone goes around and blows the whistle. Granted, the guys behind this thing could be completely innocuous and well-intentioned. However, they could also be fiendishly clever and selfishly arrogant.

We have no way of knowing. So many are assuming it's the real thing until proven otherwise, when everyone on the Internet should be thinking precisely the opposite way - take as a given something is not what it claims to be unless you can get confirmation.

What am I talking about? Well last night in Twitter I happened upon some other Tweeple talking about "#TheLostARG" of 2009 which pretends to be the sequel to 2006's The Lost Experience and other less impressive Official attempts by people behind the television series Lost to bring the excitement and storytelling of the series out beyond the confines of conventional television. I was a big fan of The Lost Experience. I even started a petition to get TLE's own Rachel Blake (aka Jamie Silberhartz) a special guest appearance on the TV series itself. Of course, that never beared fruit but you can't hate a guy for trying.

So now there's a handful of Twitter accounts involving people posting Tweets that seem cryptic and vaguely referential to the tv series and a lot of other Tweeple are gobbling this up, presuming without investigating further that this is the new Lost ARG (Alternative Reality Game in case you didn't know). I posted the following to a self-titled "Lost ARG Blog" voicing my dissention to the idea of people "taking sides" or accepting candidacy for a bunch of boys who cried wolf:

PLEASE prove me wrong! I WANT to eat crow on this. The only remote proof I've seen is the youtube account, and that can be faked or hacked. Faked would mean someone inside YouTube itself mighta helped. Not out of the question. Hacked is more likely. They had three years to guess the password.

This is of course an ARG of some sort. People are working up puzzles for others to solve. Theree is NOTHING wrong with that and I applaud it. Perhaps this started as a grass roots thing with a half dozen or so friends and has taken on a life of its own.

I take umbrage w/the fact these guys are passing themselves off as THE LOST ARG when there's no concrete evidence supporting it. Using the Lost trademark w/o any proof is bad form. We have heard nothing from Bad Robot, Hi-ReS!, ABC, Channel 4 in the UK, and of course Lindeloff and Cuse are completely silent. If this were an actual Official Lost ARG, there would be no question. We'd know by now. These guys are using the brand without permission, because otherwise they wouldn't hide the fact. Their silence proves their guilt. There's no pleading the fifth in ARGs.

If they wanted to play with Egyptian hieroglyphs and Morse code and constellations, they didn't have to use the word LOST. They coulda called it anything else. It's bad enough we're not getting anything official from Bad Robot on this for this last season. To see a fanwanking facsimile trying to pass itself off as something professional and official? It's an insult to our intelligence and I'm appalled so many are going along with it.

Please prove me wrong. I WANT to eat crow on this. We need formal confirmation from Bad Robot, or they need to change the name of their little game and stop passing themselves off as THE Lost ARG when they're clearly not.

"So what?" You say. So these guys are posing as a real ARG when they're just fans having fun.? Why make a big deal out of it? You're right, I'd be an idiot to rain on their parade and steal their thunder, IF in fact they're totally harmless. I'm 100% it if they're totally harmless, provided they stop calling themselves THE LOST ARG when they're clearly not.

What if they're not harmless? What if they say they're harmless, but somewhere down the road they introduce a website and tell visitors that if they want to learn more about The Secrets of the Island, they have to fill out a form that gives the people behind this faux ARG personal information? There's already talk of people trying to figure out passwords for accounts. Were this an official project, that kinda thing would be off limits. You never reveal your password to strangers. That's standard protocol online, yet so many people think such standards don't apply to them. There's always exceptions to such rules, and online predators take advantage of such misinformation.

If they're just asking for names and Twitter passwords, that's relatively tame. No permanent damage. What if they ask for addresses? phone numbers? email account passwords? Social security numbers? Credit card information? Okay, maybe you're smart enough to not give them anything like that, but not everyone is as smart as you. Some people would go for it, and a phreak only needs one bank account to wipe clean, and then they've made a profit on the resources it took them to put the whole scam together in the first place.

I am under no illusions that people will listen to me. Most of them won't. I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. I have no power or resources nor have I any way to stop these guys, but if just one person listens to me and thinks twice before they give personal information somewhere down the way, then maybe I've made some small difference.

Deaf Radio

I dedicate this blog post to a guy named Mike Shannon for no other reason than because people like him and George Gimarc and people who update Wikipedia about radio stuff and guys who actually love radio more than I do have taken the time to capture the history of it for posterity, so when someone like me wants to write about radio, I got places I can go to check my own memory and pretend to remember more than I do. Recently in my car I've found myself listening to the radio again. I guess I'm too lazy to change out the CD in the car. Isn't that pathetic? So when I have the radio on in the car it usually starts on the NPR station even though I haven't donated to them in over a decade. I haven't had a decent job in over a decade. I'm barely paying my bills. I can't afford to pay theirs, too.

Having a short attention span (I know the politically correct term nowadays is Attention Deficit Disorder but screw that), I found myself crawling up the radio dial. I say "dial" as if it still is a dial. It's not. Radio has become digital. I push buttons now. I understand how old the phrase "radio dial" makes me look and I don't care beyond my surreptitious amusement to type about it for about thirty seconds okay I'm done let's move on where was I? Many years ago there was a radio station here in Dallas called "93.3 The Zone." No one remembers it cuz no one listened to it. The Zone briefly turned into "The Merge" and that's when I first started listening to it. I liked it, so naturally the Media Gods deemed it Too Cool To Live and destroyed it just as I was getting into the habit of listening to it. One reason why I enjoyed The Merge was that at the time, it was one of the few radio stations in the air that was attempting, however feebly, to play and support local Texas music by local north Texas bands. Predominantly this support was relegated to Sunday nights when most people weren't listening, but I figured it was a start and back then this idea of supporting local music actually mattered to me. I believed in supporting local music and independent film. I now don't believe in supporting much of anything, since everything I support tends to not make it big. I'm a curse. I decided years ago the best thing I could do if I loved something was to stay as far away from it as possible and enjoy it from a safe distance. I cite Kristy Kruger for example. She seems to be doing very well for herself. At one time I fancied myself someone who could figure out a way to help her jump start her career, but being completely incompetent and unable to network and totally devoid of ideas was not the best place to start in that arena. When I stopped trying to ingratiate myself to her, coincidentally her career went from local to regional to national to international. I adore her from a very safe distance now - like how safe Mars is from Chernobyl. This seems to be working for her. I'm very proud.

So I started listening to The Merge and it tanked. Everything I touch dies. The Merge died and was replaced by "93.3 The Bone" because someone in their infinite wisdom thought since people weren't listening to a vague radio name like Merge, they'll surely listen to something more concrete like a dog chewtoy. Needless to say I stopped listening to The Bone as soon as it stopped being The Merge. I take it as a personal insult when a radio station decides to change its identity while I'm enjoying it. Maybe I shouldn't be so sensitive. However, true to form, the second I stopped listening to the station, it became popular. The Bone enjoyed its existence on 93.3 from 2002 to 2009. It never got fantastic numbers but it seemed to manage to hold its own. One of the things 93.3 was doing right was that it had local talent. One of the things it wasn't doing right was that it wasn't playing local talent a lot of local people wanted to listen to, which eventually led to its demise.

Recently I happened upon 93.3. It was still one of the preset buttons on my dashboard. This indicates how rarely I change the preset buttons on my car. It also may indicate how long it's been since I listened to the radio. I mean, I have a CD player. I listen to my CDs mostly. Imagine my surprise to learn that what was once The Bone is now "FM 93.3 Quality Rock" and the morning show consists of a group of guys based out of Atlanta Georgia who call themselves "The Regular Guys." I shit you not. Quality Rock. Regular Guys. I suppose they also have Generic traffic reports and Store Brand sports & weather.

This is what conventional radio has been reduced to: a radio format that is designed to be as politically correct and unobtrusive as possible, to the point where the soul has been completely wrung out of it. At one time there were radio personalities that people remembered because they stood for something. Maybe they stood for shit, but it was something. I'm not talking about shock jock Howard Stern, although in his own way he was continuing the tradition. Since radio first became a place where music could be presented to an audience, there have been people in the business who were willing to take risks and present new sounds to the world that tuned in. Whether it was the big band sound of Glenn Miller, or that daring brash young man named Elvis Costello, there were men and women on the cutting edge of sound. They'd go out there and listen to what artists had to offer, and they'd bring back stuff that was original and hungry and thought provoking and challenging and fun.

Then top 40 came along and though no one knew it yet, we were witnessing the beginning of the end, and it's been a long time coming. Also recently here in Texas someone with money and influence has taken the radio station 97.1 frequency and tried to bring back a ghost.

"97.1 The Eagle" was a staple of north Texas radio for decades. As a teenager I remember it being one of those stations that everyone listened to, even if you didn't really like the music played. Personally I liked it cuz it's where I could hear Doctor Demento, but local church pressure caused the station to drop his show, and I don't recall being a big fan of The Eagle much after that, but I had a silent respect for it. In the late 90s and early 00s, between Howard Stern's morning show and Kramer & Twitch at night, let's just say Clear Channel's lawyers had their hands full.

Clear Channel had purchased The Eagle years before as it had aquired pretty much all its stations, without giving a damn about the people listening. CC realized around this time that The Eagle & The Edge were sort of vying for the same audience. However, both stations were owned by CC so why was it competing with itself? In some suit and tie's remarkable knuckle dragging move, a decision was made to pull the plug on the controversial Eagle and replace it with an adult contemporary format called "Sunny 97.1" that played "the best of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today." This was later replaced by a spanish format station.

Earlier this year, the ghost was resurrected. The Eagle soars once more over the airwaves of north Texas. However, what was once a teeming cauldron of over-active disc jockeys each with a chip on their shoulder and an annoying attitude? Now we got robot jocks. They think we can't tell the difference, and consciously maybe we can't.

Not long ago Texas was subjected to Jack FM which I understand is popular here and in many radio markets across the world. Jack is all voice tracking, and its slogan is "we play what we want." So basically the format is telling the audience, to its face, that it doesn't know what it wants to listen to and even if it did Jack doesn't care. No requests. Jack's gonna play what he's programmed to play and if you don't like it, change the channel. Jack has a playlist of roughly a thousand songs, easily twice as many as its competition in most cases. However, it's still a glamorized automated playlist that's not determined by a deejay. It's determined by committee. It's soulless, and after the novelty wears off, it can't compete with my CD collection.

People owning radio stations still prefer a robot deejay to the alternative. This is safer: they surely wouldn't want actual human beings on the air that might accidently make a joke about domestic terrorism, or demean women as sex objects, or say the word "booger" during drive time. It's a ghost with no soul. The soul in conventional radio has been removed - exorcised by lawyers and politicians and special interest groups.

You think that's bad? Look at Radio Sass. This is the new direction of radio. "Through time compression, you get the memorable heart of each song, with an average length of aproximately two minutes with NO self indulgent guitar solos, NO long intros, NO repetition of choruses again and again. Radio returns to the snappy song length of the 1960s." Then they wonder why we listen to our CDs? Are they so dense?

Maybe we can't consciously tell, but unconsciously we can sense that there's nothing under the sheet. With "Quality Rock" they are actually trying to create a radio station that is as bland as our CD collection - no personality. Just sound. What they don't understand is that we each turn to our CDs not because we are easily offended, but that we each are offended in different ways, and we want our entertainment to appeal to our sensibilities, whatever they may be. Making radio more generic isn't going to bring us back. It only reminds us why we listen to our own music collection instead. When I listen to my music, I am my own deejay, program director, and everything. How did radio ever compete with that?

People who own radio think they're listening to their audiences. Millions of dollars are poured into focus groups and surveys and research and all kinds of stuff. The end result makes McDonalds' Fillet O Fish almost palatable by comparison. For all its attempts to listen to what its listeners want to hear, radio has been tone deaf for decades, and it never listens to anything about itself that it doesn't want to hear, which nowadays is pretty much everything.

Maybe a request line that actually answers requests and doesn't just thank you for calling, would be a start. However, why would I bother calling a request line, when my favorite CD is ..oh yeah right. I'm too lazy to change the CD out in my car. Guess I'll have to start exercising and reach across to swap them out, because almost a decade later, the radio dial is as much a lobotomized wasteland as it was when I stopped listening to The Bone, and The Real Eagle was put to pasture.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Penny Pounds

Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth

Far be it for me to rain on our parade. I should be happy. Lost is returning this fall for its sixth and final season, despite lackluster ratings. In for a penny in for a pound as one might say, but from a practical standpoint it might be easier for ABC to stay with the one what brought ya, as opposed to jumping horses this late in the game. The same seems to be holding true pretty much across the board for several returning series this fall.

Another of my recent favorites, Dollhouse, has also been renewed, as I celebrated in my last blog ramble. The reasons why however, are a little disturbing. Again, ratings for the fledgling new series have been about as close to rock bottom as you can get in the television business without actually being rock bottom. Criticism has been uncertain, especially for the earlier episodes. The general consensus is that once Joss Whedon chose, or was allowed (depending on which conspiracy theory koolaid you drink) to explore the conspiracy arc of his series instead of focus on more encapsulized storytelling, things seemed to improve with Dollhouse from a critical standpoint, but ratings-wise there was little change. Each week fewer people came back. I fear to the teeming masses the verdict is already in: Dollhouse is Joss Whedon's bad one. I'm in for a penny in for a pound myself. At this point I'll watch Dollhouse until the last episode is broadcast now matter how bad or good it gets. Some are not so loyal.

Objectively speaking though, it should be gone. The fact that it is not reveals a painfully disturbing shift in the weather-like behavior patterns of Hollywood California. As I explained in more detail last blog ramble, Joss Whedon was tasked to create a second 13th episode. It's a long story. I don't wanna type it again. The point is, "Epitaph One" was made with roughly half the budget of a normal episode, but by all accounts it's considered just as good an episode as any he made during the official first season run of production. This sets a bad precedent. Whether Whedon meant to do so or not, he gave evidence that it was possible to make the same quality of television at a fraction of the cost. How he did this is not as important as the fact that he did, and the fact that in theory he can do it again. Now, the network apparently wants him to do it over and over for a whole season. That's essentially the agreement made to keep Dollhouse on the air for another 13 episodes this fall. Fox will pay less for Whedon to make Dollhouse, and more money will be dependent on the production company 20th TV to pull together. In theory, this is supposed to be transparent to you and me the viewer. In fact, FOX TV and 20th TV both originally stemmed from Twentieth Century Fox. And here is where I should probably go into a long drawn out history lesson about what all that means but I'd rather you just wiki it, cuz again I'm too lazy to do all that typing.

FOX TV and 20th TV are essentially the offspring of 20th Century Fox. Around the turn of the century, FOX dropped the "20th" because we're now in the 21st Century. Oh, even that's too much of a headache to type out. FOX is the broadcast company behind FOX News, FOX family, and the regular FOX network that actually broadcasts Dollhouse. Whereas 20th TV is the name of the inhouse production company. Between these two companies, Joss Whedon is supposed to get enough money to actually make Dollhouse, but FOX is now saying they're not going to pay as much as they did this season for next season, and 20th TV will be expected to take up the slack. However you slice it, it means come this fall, Dollhouse will be tightening its belt.

This is happening elsewhere in the television world too. News just came down the pike that the similarly critically acclaimed but ratings shy tv series "Chuck" has been renewed, but there's a catch. The catch reads similarly to that Whedon's agreed in regards to Dollhouse. Chuck will take a pay cut, and will be asked to let a few cast and crew go as they tighten their belts over at that studio as well. Again, we the audience aren't supposed to notice a difference. The producers will be tasked w/providing the same quality of television but at a lower price. Personally I don't care about Chuck. I'm not a fan. I like Baldwin, but the show as a whole annoyed me when I watched it and I don't plan to return. I can only put up with so many retreads of Remington Steele. I could care less if Chuck gets the blond spy chick that's obviously way out of his league and this is some kind of prepubescent fantasy tale passing as prime time television...

But hey! You Chuck fans who supported Dollhouse recently? Thanks loads! We couldn't have saved Dollhouse without ya!

What broadcast networks are doing with OUR television shows? I do this same thing at the grocery store all the time. When I look for groceries I almost always buy the store brand, because it's invariably cheaper than the brand names. I can't honestly tell the difference between Peter Pan Peanut Butter and Kroger Brand Peanut Butter, but this is in regards to food. I don't have a gourmet pallette. I eat whatever doesn't kill me outright. I don't like the idea that my television programs are being purchased by broadcasters with the same irresponsible attitude that I use for my own stomach. It's one thing to buy store bought peanuts over Planters. It's quite another to tolerate Dollhouse 2.0 as if it were boxed by a Kroger Supermarket... no offense meant to Kroger.

I haven't heard this behavior regarding over shows I enjoy, like Castle, Fringe, Lie To Me, House, or Trueblood. However, I won't be surprised if this fall we see Nathan Fillion's wardrobe switch from fancy tailored leisure suits to cheap blue jeans and baseball caps showing company logos. After all, he is an eccentric writer. Why does he have to look so good?

I have noticed in recent seasons that it looks like they cut corners on Lost at every opportunity. The background areas are looking less like wherever they're supposed to be and more like suburban Hawaii, which is where they actually film. Also, the use of black backgrounds may appear to be a directorial choice to make the scene appear more suspenseful and forboding? I equate it to an inability to afford decent set building. That underground tomb where they'd been keeping the Jughead atom bomb for thirty years -- did anyone else find that remotely believable? Maybe it's just me.

As the recession continues to worsen, and as the pundits and talking heads on the news media refuse to acknowledge we're in a depression, I fear this trend towards cheaper television at the expense of production will continue its downward spiral. This is a bad time to be telling stories on the airwaves. Come to think of it, it's a bad time to be doing much of anything. But we're in for a penny, in for a pound, so long as we can still afford to do both.