“Castle” Successfully Pandered to this Geek

I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to turn my brain off, and just take in some mindless television for an hour or two a week; I find it incredibly relaxing. Without fail, Castle always fulfills my compulsive need for something easy to watch. It’s not a cerebral show, it’s never hard to follow, and you don’t have to remember much of anything from week-to-week. However, the characters are amusing, and the murders stories never cease to hold my interest.

Anyway, this week Castle had a Halloween episode that seriously pandered to the sci-fi & comic geek crowds. The show opened with star Nathan Fillion, formerly of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi classics Firefly and Serenity, suit up in his Captain Malcolm Reynolds garb, bust into his living-room while drawing his pistol, and striking a one of his famous poses. I was amused.

They followed up with a generally geeky episode filled with Buffy references, comic book art, vampires, and the pretty female detective costar (Stana Katic) drawing a distinction between comic writer / artist Frank Miller’s work with publishers Dark Horse Comics & Epic Comics… It was a nice homage to Fillion’s past, and (what I’m assuming are) the Firefly fans that watch Castle simply because Fillion is in the show.

Geek Arguments Courtesy of Wired

I’m exhausted beyond the point of original thought – Here’s a funny one yanked from Wired.com (However, I did edit a small typo. They misspelled aficionado).

10. “No real programmer would ever use PHP.” – This won’t work for every geek, of course, but for those it works on, it should work really well.

9. “Comic books are just for kids!” – I’m sure you’ve heard this one before—I know I certainly heard it often enough in high school, and even though it’s even less true now than it was then, I’m sure comic book aficionados still hear it today.

8. “Role-playing games are just for people who can’t deal with real life.” – There are, sadly, still a lot of people who think anyone who plays D&D must live in his parents’ basement and bathe once a month. Such people must be put straight, and immediately!

7. “The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are so realistic!” – I doubt many people actually believe this, but there are an awful lot of misconceptions about pirates out there, so you never know.

6. “Yeah, I got an Xbox 360 so my daughter could play Hello Kitty games. Is it really good for anything else?” – We’ve hit the ones that are hard for me even to type, now…

5. “Mac, Windows, or Linux? Does it really make a difference?” – An argument so old its original form was probably first written down in hieroglyphs, I know, but I don’t know a single geek it wouldn’t work on—myself included.

4. “The Ewoks were the best thing about the original Star Wars trilogy.” / “Greedo shot first!” - I couldn’t decide between the two. If one doesn’t work, I’ll bet the other one would.

3. “Tolkien? Ehhh, I prefer Terry Brooks!” – I almost feel like I should argue with myself just for writing that. I’m going to let the top two stand for themselves.

2. “Joss Whedon is a hack!”

1. “I don’t see what’s so bad about DRM!”

Nine out of ten of these statements would drive me nuts. Any guesses which one wouldn’t?

Check back tomorrow when I reveal the shocking answer (And post something sensible).

Update

The answer is #8. State the other nine at your own peril!

I Have Returned

I am back from my adventures in Costa Rica. It was an incredible trip, but I will have more on that later.

I’m still catching up with my life which pressed forward in spite of my absence, so this will be a short one.

Here’s a video from Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy titled, “Things You Never Hear.” Pay close attention to “Things You Never Hear #3,” and keep in mind that I actually wrote yesterday’s post about two weeks ago.

In other geek news, a fan created this fake trailer for a Green Lantern movie staring Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan. The trailer is cheesy yet cool.

I’m rooting for a Green Lantern movie staring Fillion… dare I say, Joss Whedon could direct it.

Dollhouse Rocks the Proverbial Socks

Last week’s premier of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse captured my interest. I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn’t blow me away like the pilot of Firefly. Episode two is a totally different story.

With the characters and premise fresh in my mind, Joss & co. just dove in headfirst. The episode started typical enough and then BAM! The most outrageous plot twist. I think I had the same facial expression that leading lady Echo (Eliza Dushku) had when the reveal came. I think I was just as shocked and confused as she was. It’s rare when I can watch a scene where I feel the same way as the character in the scene.

The rest of the episode was exceptionally thrilling and clearly planted the seeds for future plot threads and conflict. 

I can’t wait to see where this is going. 

I have no intentions of spoiling it if you didn’t already see it. 

Check out Dollhouse on Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/search/Dollhouse?sort_by=relevance&type=episode

The first episode is on there now, I expect the second one will be up soon.

Fox Marketing Strategy – Dollhouse & Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles

I just got back from a night out and the first thing I did was watch my DVRed Dollhouse. 

I really enjoyed it. It raised a lot of intriguing plot lines and introduced some cool character with a lot of morality problems. I know that Joss Whedon writes character driven stories, so I can’t wait to see how he creates a character driven show with so many characters who’s personalities are regularly wiped clean.

I haven’t watched Terminator yet… it’s really late and I wanted to write a post before I go to bed.

Earlier today I had a brief dialog on the comment board for Occasional Superheroine (one of my latest favorite geek blogs). 

I wrote:

Now that I am thinking about it, I think Fox realizes that Joss has such a loyal fan-base that they might be able to turn these shows into successes through them alone, even on a Friday night. 

They probably figure that the crazy Firefly crowd will rally around the show regardless of the night/time, and then they will stick around to watch Firefly alum Summer Glau on Terminator. 

That’s the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me at all.

After seeing the way that Fox was advertising both shows together during Dollhouse using short commercials featuring Dollhouse’s Eliza Dushku & Terminator (formerly Firefly’s) Summer Glau, I am convinced that Fox is trying to squeeze a hit out of two Friday night shows by using the notoriously loyal Joss Whedon fan-base (In a future post I will write more about Joss Whedon’s fans, the Firefly revival, and the Browncoats. It is an amazing story… but I think I’ve written enough about Joss & Firefly in the past three days to last for a while.). 

I couldn’t find the actual commercials, but here are the outtakes:

Personally, I still think it sucks that Fox is slotting these two shows on a Friday night, but if it keeps both on the air I will be content.

DVR rocks my socks!

Fox Gears-Up to Repeat History

Joss Whedon’t new show Dollhouse starts tonight and I really  want it to live a bit longer than Firefly did. 

One of the big reasons that Firefly died so quickly was mismanagement by Fox.

Joss & co. shot an exceptional two hour pilot for the show. It properly introduced viewers to the Universe, its complex character, and the main plot lines. Sadly, Fox decided not to show the pilot until the day it cancelled the show. Instead they showed other episodes. They were great, but viewers never had the chance to properly get to know the characters and were constantly confused even though they enjoyed the show.

To further add to the confusion, Fox’s pre-airing marketing blitz used key footage from the pilot. When viewers started watching the premier, it didn’t look like what they had seen in the commercials and trailers.

Dumb, right?

Well checkout this commercial for Dollhouse and Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Seriously, WTF are they thinking?!?!

This is how I imagine the pitch for this playing-out:

“OK, so we have these two modern sci-fi epics. Let’s just ‘Charlie’s Angels‘ them up. I mean make them look really 1970’s cornball! Let’s washout the colors, set it to outdated music, misrepresent the shows, and use quaint marketing language that was abandoned two decades ago for good reason. That ought to appeal to a demographic that will be utterly uninterested in the show while simultaneously pushing away the people who will actually want to watch it!”

Please Fox! You’ve already dug the both of these shows a grave by slotting them for Friday night. Don’t slay them with stupidity.

A Firefly Named Serenity

Growing up, Star Wars was my pinnacle of sci-fi storytelling. Movie after book after video game, I couldn’t get enough of it. 

Then George Lucas lost his mind and tarnished my beloved galaxy far far away. My love of space-based sci-fi was no more. The spark was gone; blown out by a whirlwind of three movies that might as well have just been fully animated. After-all, they were more machine than man. 

Then one night in my junior year of college my roommates were watching TV. As I walked through the living room and into the kitchen to get a drink of water, I was completely taken by the characters on our tiny television screen. Suddenly my 30 second break from study turned into a five hour sci-fi marathon. The show – Firefly.

Firefly was a short-lived, futuristic sci-fi TV series created by Joss Whedon.

The story takes place mostly aboard a rickety Firefly class spaceship named Serenity. Serenity is captained by an exceptionally honorable thief who has no problems dealing out death to those who cross his path. He and his eclectic crew of thieves travel the Universe committing all manner of crime (which never goes according to plan). 

What I find so striking about this show is that it is told from the fringe. Usually sci-fi epics give you a glimpse of the best that the future has to offer. Firefly follows the losers of a rebellion, who became thieves, and are just trying to evade the control of what they feel is an unjust and tyrannical government. Most of the show takes place on their beat up ship or on impoverished backwater planets. The people feel real and relatable. Their problems are the same problems that we face today. This makes the characters feel very relatable and down to Earth (or whatever planet they are on).

The only person on Serenity who isn’t a criminal is a prostitute (“companion”). This kind of setting is ripe for brilliant expeditions into the core of morality, religion, government, and law. As I watch I can’t help but root for the crew of Serenity, even though they are “evil” by most standards. However, I don’t root for them in the same way I root for Darth Vader. It’s not because they are cool or badass (some of them are)… it’s because they are so damn likable and compelling (except for Jayne… he’s an ass, but he is so good at being an ass that it’s ok). As this universe unfolds before you, it becomes very clear that morality and legality are two very different issues.

Firefly lasted only 14 episodes before its tragic cancellation (the series is available here) or you can watch them for free on Hulu (here). Make sure you start from the first episode! 

Watch the show to find out what this sign means!

Post cancellation DVD sales were so strong and the cult following that the show had cultivated brought about a movie followup called Serenity (available here).

Joss Whedon has also penned two, three issue Serenity comics (available here & here). 

These works are clearly a labor of love by Joss. Each installment is filled with morally gray plot lines, and brilliantly witty dialog. I just wish there were more installments. 

I strongly recommend that you give it a shot.

Joss “Sci-Fi God” Whedon Gets Another Show!

Joss Whedon is the brilliant mind behind geek classics such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and a spectacular run on the comic book Astonishing X-Men  (All of these deserves and will get their own posts).

Joss writes character driven stories that push issues of morality to their breaking point – Heroes are villains, villains are heroes, good is bad, and bad is good. He tells intricate stories from the perspective of the underdog or loser and constantly plays with the concept of “history is written by the winners;” one of my favorite philosophical notions. 

Things are rarely ever black and white with Joss, and that’s what I love about his work. 

Sadly, Firefly, one of my all-time favorite TV shows was prematurely cancelled because it wasn’t given a chance to develop its fan-base (I hadn’t heard of the show until it was off of the air for a few years). The show became so popular after its demise that a movie followup was green-lit and Serenity emerged from Firefly’s ashes. 

I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself with Dollhouse. The latest morality-bending TV series from the mind of Joss Whedon begins this Friday (2/13). I’m confident that it will be a good show. What I am not sure about is whether it will ever be able to survive in a Friday night time-slot. 

Please give it a try! I really don’t want to get attached to this show and have it dumped by the brilliant minds running programming at FOX.