Videos
Podcasts
Blogs
Quizzes
GamesPosts Tagged: ‘TV shows’
I have a bad habit when it comes to television shows: Once I’m hooked, I’m all in — often until the very, very bitter end. I don’t break up with TV shows that often, but when I’m done, I’m done.
Earlier this week, I got around to watching the season (now series) finale of “FlashForward.” I hadn’t intended to watch it … I more or less checked out of the show as soon as I heard it was canceled. But I needed some exercise entertainment, and Hulu had it ready to go. While I watched — especially in the last few moments, when it set up for a new season that will never air — I had the same thought that kept bugging me during the first episode. “This ought to be a miniseries.”
Naturally, there are spoilers for the season finale of “Lost” in this post.
I’ve said before that the moment I quit loving “Lost” was when I saw Dr. Pierre Chang/Dr. Marvin Candle broadly exclaim that the energy the DHARMA initiative is tapping into might allow them to travel through time. The erratic time jumps that followed in season 5 really sealed the deal — they seemed formulated to confuse viewers and string them along instead of advancing the story.
It turns out the joke’s on me.
I used to love “Lost.” In its first couple of seasons, I couldn’t get enough of lostaways, tailies, the DHARMA Initiative and all manner of fan theories. Every week, I waited for serendipitous flashback encounters and unexpected plot turnabouts with bated breath.
Now it’s like I’ve seen the strings and suddenly realized I’m at a puppet show. Not that there’s anything wrong with puppets … I just thought I was watching people.
‘Dollhouse’: Has the Whedon body count become predictable?
by Tracy V. Wilson | February 1, 2010
When I sat down on Saturday morning to watch the series finale of “Dollhouse,” I really had only one question on my mind: “Who’s going to die in this episode?” It was sort of the inverse to my thought at the end of the third-to-last episode, “Getting Closer”: “Oh, yeah. This is a Joss Whedon show.”
Everyone knows that they use blue screen and green screen techniques in movies. For example, when a $20 million actor is seen dangling by a rope over a deep river gorge, you know that is done using green screen. Usually there is also a little shimmer or outline that makes it obvious that the scene [...]
Maybe it’s because yesterday morning, my co-workers kept insisting that it was absolutely vital that I watch Sunday’s season finale of “Dexter” as soon as possible. Maybe it’s because I can’t turn off my editor brain while watching TV, so I pick apart the patterns in just about every show I watch. Or maybe it’s because I expected things to go far, far worse than they did. Regardless of the reason, I wasn’t really shocked by the ending that Entertainment Weekly, New York Daily News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and plenty of other publications have all called “shocking.” Find out why (and read massive spoilers) post-jump.
It’s a good news/bad news kind of announcement: Fox is canceling “Dollhouse.” In spite of storytelling that picked up in the last half of season one, the show’s ratings have been poor, even with DVR results factored in. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As if reports that Joss Whedon would be treating the season finale as a series finale weren’t enough, the show went on hiatus during November sweeps — presumably so it wouldn’t pull down Fox’s average. The good news (if you’re a “Dollhouse” fan) is that the network plans to air all 13 episodes of the second season after the show returns from its hiatus.
It seems like no matter where I turn on the Web lately, I’m not more than two clicks away from something about ABC’s remake of the early-80s miniseries “V.” I found the upfront trailer through io9 (and at least two other blogs and an IM from my brother). Io9 has a big pile of stills, too, and SciFi wire has more clips. Whedonesque put up a link to Televisionary’s review of the pilot, as well as a link to a political analysis of the upfront trailer on Open Salon (in a now-deleted post).
Trailers like this are tricky business. It’s not so much because they have limited time to get the point across. That’s pretty simple for this one: Ooh, aliens … they seemed good, but scariness is afoot! No, the sticking point here is that so many of the actors are familiar faces, and their previous work includes shows with devoted followings.
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Sun, Sand and a Passenger Jet Coming Right for You
- Golden Fields of Canola
- The Park That Never Sleeps: Central Park
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- Blow Your Mind: Nebula in a Box
- Blow Your Mind: Three Minutes Till Impact
- Touching the Void: Psychedelics and Death
Stuff You Should Know
- Stuff You Should Know at SXSW
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Listener Mail: What’s the world’s largest engine?
- Listener Mail: What makes a “classic car” classic?
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
How-to Stuff
- How to Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor
- How to Travel the World in 4 Days
- How to Smell Like Someone at HowStuffWorks
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 69: Perfume: The Culture of Scent
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 68: Astrology: What’s PopStuff’s Sign?
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 67: Collecting: PopStuff’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
- Good News from the Oldest Mayan Calendar
- One Year Later: Colony Collapse Disorder
- Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics
