The Fangirly Diary of a Geek Girl: Heroing on the TV
WEDNESDAY
Lots of TV news today!
First, I saw Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and loved it. It wasn’t perfect but it has potential and loved all the references and I hope Cobie Smulders is back and come one Marvel don’t be cheap and pay Samuel L. Jackson to be there from time to time. Welp, that was a long and punctuationless sentence. The only thing I didn’t like at all was the character of Skye… that or the actress juts sucks. Oh well, that aside, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had great ratings! Woo! It even became the highest-rated network drama debut in almost 4 years. Kudos! Here’s a sneak peek on this season:
And because DC really wants that Marvel money, there will be a Batman-inspired series on Fox named Gotham. Apparently, it’s the origin stories of Commissioner James Gordon and Gotham City villains. No Batman though. And they must have the not-well-known villains because the really fucked-up ones came with Batman… they could have made a Gotham Central, you know? That would have been cooler. Oh well, I’ll watch it.
Damon Lindelof, you know dude behind cool stories that have script problems like Lost, Prometheus and Star Trek Into Darkness, wrote about Breaking Bad, and compares Walter White/Heisenberg to Bruce Wayne/Batman. He talks about White not stopping just because his cancer went away, and he compares it to what if Batman’s parents came back from death and what would that mean to Batman’s heroing ways.
[…] Would Bruce stop being Batman? No. He would not. Because he is Batman. And once the catalyst has … well,catalyzed? There is no going back. And this is how I know the same is true with Walter White.
Also, here’s Breaking Bad fanart by none other than J. Scott Campbell, comicbook artist that I call “el manitas” because he draws dainty hands on his characters… of course, you cannot appreciate that in these busts but still!
And continuing with the theme, here’s what the Breaking Bad cast has kept as souvenirs. Obviously Bryan Cranston has the famed hat and sunglasses, and Aaron Paul has been promised the burnt pink teddy bear~
Kit Harrington promises we’ll get more deaths than ever in new season of Game of Thrones! Yay?
It doesn’t get any easier this season… More deaths this season than any other! I can’t tell you who dies. You’d think they’d tone the deaths down, but they don’t. They’ve realized that’s a successful option, so they’re just killing more people than we’ve ever killed.
Bryan Fuller talks some more about Hannibal and how they don’t have the rights to Clarice Starling because MGM is being mean. But he has a plan just in case!
if we don’t get the rights to the Clarice Starling character, we will introduce a similar character, Shmarlice Shmarling, that won’t get us sued, that will give us the same dynamic that that character is. Because she’s such an important character to the canon, and it would be a shame not to get her, so we’re hoping. But that bridge is far, far off yet.
Do you remember The IT Crowd? Well, they are returning for a last ever episode! And here’s the trailer! But… just one more isn’t enough, dammit!
There’s a long-ass interview with Joss Whedon on Entertainment Weekly, where he talks about everything including his childhood, his past work, why Twilight sucks, Wonder Woman, The Avengers, and why Loki ain’t gonna be in the sequel. It’s very entertaining!
Talking about Loki, Tom Hiddleston has photographic evidence about the time he put on some muscles when he thought he might be Thor (before he was told he will play Loki instead).
I’ve never committed so much to an audition in my lifel. The guys at Marvel said, ‘Can you put on as much muscle as you can in six weeks?’ I went from 180lbs to 198lbs, and had only 7% body fat. I still have the pictures to prove it.
No. You cannot just say that and don’t show it. Don’t you know one of these day and age mottos is “pics or it didn’t happen”?
Djimon Hounsou, who will be in Guardians of the Galaxy, joins the list of black celebrities who really want to play T’Challa/Black Panther. You know, like Idris Elba and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who are also in Marvel movies (Thor and Thor: The Dark World). I just want a Black Panther movie. Come on, Marvel!
I really like Fuller’s comments on Hannibal’s fanbase and Steranko’s comments on Agents of SHIELD.
ok I need to talk about SHIELD: Both the lead guy (Ward) and Skye are bugging me, although I might not mind them in smaller supporting roles. It would have been cool to have Mike (J. August Richards) as our gateway lead character instead and more focus on May. I hope FitzSimmons will have more to do than be quirky science nerds, especially since Iain de Caestecker made a character I usually wouldn’t like into someone I did on The Fades. Also, I can’t wait until Ruth Negga starts appearing in episode 4.
also: “cool stories that have script problems” SO TRUE ABOUT STUFF INVOLVING LINDELOF. so much potential and then logic goes inside out.
@Diandra Rodriguez, Oh Bryan Fuller~ He’s just so cute to the fans :D And I’m glad he straight up said there won’t be rape stories in Hannibal so yay!
Now on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. … while Ward didn’t bother me as much… omg Skye is so not my cup of tea. She’s just there being all quirky for the sake of it. And I can already tell they are going to focus on her and I don’t wanna. I want more Agent May though. So much! I do have to mentally prepare myself for the next episode when they supponsedly go to Peru. I’m just learning to love Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and they already throw me a blow like this. Please don’t make awfully incorrect references about my country xD
@mirella, yeah, that was a great decision. I think one reason Fuller can do stories about death is because he has some kind of respect for pretty much everyone in his stories, from villains to victims. You can see different aspects of how they live/lived.
aw man, I hope they don’t misrepresent Peru or any other non-USA place. Except Canada haha they can have maple leaves and Mounties everywhere. Yeah, I can’t tell from one episode if it’s the writing or Skye’s actress that’s trying too hard or both. Then some people say, “how can you not like a fellow geek character?” or “she isn’t just some white girl because the actress is half-Chinese” and I’m like those weren’t the problems. Ward’s story bores me but his actor seems to have good comic timing for like two instances.
@Diandra Rodriguez, maybe is just experience. The actress seems to have a very green CV and will get better with time.
@Diandra Rodriguez, Ward annoyed me the most. Skye being quirky is something that comes within Whedon’s territory. Skye has potential to be fleshed out better. But Ward seems meh to me.
While the ratings for AOS seems like good news, I thought it could have had a bigger audience considering its Avengers and Marvel links, but USA loves NCIS (?) a lot. But then again, AOS ain’t about the superheroes, so it might be a turn off for casual viewers.
And considering I’m breaking my “no network dramas” rule for AOS, I might give Hannibal a shot.
@Rodrigo, what annoyed me was that all this time was taken to obviously set up Ward as the lead character, with spy skills equal to Romanoff! (Black Widow) while he didn’t earn as much interest as was given. Then again, he wasn’t as much of an interest void as Paul on Orphan Black, my current standard for least interesting person on an otherwise engaging show.
I was actually somewhat surprised that a genre show that didn’t have the usual procedural link (ex: I haven’t seen Sleepy Hollow but look at its ratings) did as well, even with the Marvel ties. Then again, it is a pilot and there’s usually some drop-off afterward. SHIELD also seems to be set up as an episodic/problem-solving show that might expand into character-serial storytelling. I just hope it keeps its core theme of more-or-less ordinary people amongst the extraordinary.
As for Hannibal, I’d say that for most people, episode 6 is when the story really kicks into gear. I don’t have many spoilers in my review here (http://www.yam-mag.com/reviews/tv-reviews/hannibal-season-1/), so you can read through and see if it is worth a shot. It definitely doesn’t have the same “look” as network shows, since the production is outside the NBC studios.
@Diandra Rodriguez, I’ll top Paul from Orphan Black with Betty Draper from Mad Men circa Season 1-3 or Nicholas Brody’s family from Homeland. :P
The thing with my tv viewing is that when it comes to drama series, I refuse to watch network-made ones on principle. Part of it is me being kind of snobbish with this, part is the length. The latter part should get me critixcized since I sat through 3 and a half seasons of Glee, but I consider that show under the Comedy category in spite of it being a dramedy (?) and lasting 1 hour per episode.
I really wanted to see Hannibal because of Mads and Dancy, but when I noticed it was on NBC, I was pissed and ignored it. Same with Agents of Shield, I really wanted that to be under HBO instead of ABC. But for Joss Whedon I have broken some of my rules and I ended giving the pilot a shot and will most likely sit through the entire season. But Ward needs to be fixed or die.