Television Of The Weak: Everybody Has To Say Goodbye, Some People Do It With Stem Cells

This week we've got the season finales of 24, Fringe & Lost along with the continuing sagas of The Mighty Boosh & Wallander.

24: "6:00AM - 8:00AM" by Tucker Stone

And so we come to our end. 

Prior to the beginning of this now-concluded season, things had taken a bit of a turn for the ugly for Fox's stalwart actioner. Season six was near-universally reviled, both due to the hiring of a soft-core porn icon as one of the main villains as well as the premature ejaculation of a season-opening nuclear explosion, worst of all, Powers Booth's face attained a sort of plasticine Mount Rushmore quality so unappealing to look upon that the sight of a woman kissing it brought many buckets of upchuck into the American home. It was a rough go of it, and many a men stopped coming to Chez Factual for the weekly "punch each other in the dick when somebody dies" viewing parties we used to throw.

Then the Hollywood writer's strike hit. When 24 returned to the television line-up, it had been almost two years, with only a scant two hour episode of Airwolf: Walkin' In Africa wetting the viewer's appetite to bide the time.

All season 7 had to do was "be better", and despite the post season 3 propensity 24 has towards rehashing the same basic plots, it pretty much was. Carlos Bernard's return was ridiculous, sure, but it gave Carlos Bernard the chance to kill people, which is something he's good at. Cherry Jones was a terrible fucking joke of a President, but she eventually spawned drinking games of her own--take a shot everytime she sputters "I am the PRESIDENT" and see how quick you end up in the hospital. Kim returned, as dumb as ever, Chloe climbed back into the harpy seat, and Bill Buchanan--America's coolest yoga instructor--got himself one of the grizziliest corpses the show has seen. On top of them all--for the first 20 hours, at least, was Jack Bauer.

As per usual with 24, the writers continue to think that their audience tunes in for something other than shoot-em-up killfests, so yes, you do have to watch Jack ask some random imam he just met how he can find forgiveness--the answer is some random secular prayer, God forbid Jack find an imam who actually uses the word "Allah" or anything--but other that that, there's some relatively strong violence by the hands of Jack, never too far from a scalpel. (Hey! That was disgusting!) Kim throws out her predictable "hey, now that he's sleeping let's do that magic fix-em-up surgery", Agent Freckles handcuffs Janeane Garofalo and heads off to the land of torture, and yes, it all closes on a cliffhanger that won't be resolved until next January, when it will be resolved when the trailer for season 8 starts airing. If you want suspense, you'll have to get it out of the real news--that's where we'll find out if head-butting a designer is considered a probation violation.

Fringe: "There's More Than One Of Everything" by Matthew J. Brady

So apparently this show is all about the parallel universes now. They explain everything, or at least cause it somehow. I guess diseases that turn skin transparent or chemicals that transform people into freaky monsters all just come from alternate realities. That seems to be what the writers are saying this time out, which seems like a lame attempt to tie everything together, but what the hell, why not? Crazy sci-fi: it's ready for prime time. Lost probably does it better though.

So, yeah, we've got the mummified Mr. Jones, who escaped from prison via teleportation a while back, and then did something or other in an episode that I missed. He's trying to use some device to access an alternate Earth and meet up with his father figure William Bell, the boogeyman who is apparently behind all the various weirdness in the series. Olivia and company have to stop him, probably because his attempts to open inter-universal windows keep shearing people in half. If only he had Olivia's ability to randomly make universal jumps, which isn't even mentioned this episode; I guess she's keeping it a secret. There's also some stuff in which Mr. Baldy (who seems especially Uatu-like this week, as he meddles with Earthly events instead of just observing) helps Walter find some sort of deus ex machina device to stop Mr. Jones, and we also learn that Peter is apparently from an alternate universe, after he died as a kid in the "real" world. Yeah, that's fun.

And then we get a kinda-lame cliffhanger, as Olivia gets warped into another reality to meet William Bell (Leonard Nimoy, making a dumb two-second cameo in which his face is conveniently covered by shadows until a supposedly-dramatic reveal); I guess Massive Dynamic has figured out how to make the transition much less dangerously than Mr. Jones. And what makes this universe different? Why, the World Trade Center is still standing! Shocking! Or something. Next season, maybe Olivia will travel to a pristine federal building in Oklahoma City. Will I be watching? Probably, but I reserve the right to bitch and moan, since this is the internet. Take that, Hollywood!

Lost: "The Incident, Part 1 & 2" by Zeb L. West

At last! All is revealed! We finally know who Jacob is!

Okay, so we still don’t really know who he is... or what he is… or rather what he was…because now he’s dead.

But we do know that John Locke is actually Jacob’s nemesis! …whatever that means… In typical Lost fashion, we are served up a boatload of information about mysteries we’ve been dying to unravel…but with no real sense of what it all means! Oh those sly writers! They’ll tease, but they’ll never tip their hand. On the bright side, if last week’s Season Five Finale is any indication, there’s still a hell of a lot stuff to explain for Season Six!

The episode opens on two of our most deeply mysterious characters (one of which we’ve never seen before!) Sitting on the beach, in the shadow of the statue, are two men staring at a ship on the horizon that is presumably the Black Rock. One in white, the other in black, they allude to an age-old enmity, which seems to be played out in a cyclical pattern with the pawns being anyone they encounter. One is shockingly identified as Jacob, and the other, simply revealed to be a nemesis who wants to end his life. The nemesis swears that he will one day find a ‘loophole,’ to some mysterious set of rules that has kept these eternal enemies from ending each other before.

This ‘loophole’ turns out to be the other great revelation of the episode, when we discover that the resurrected Locke we’ve been following is actually the nemesis in disguise! Fake-Locke’s post-resurrection schemes to drive Ben to justice are really just a ploy to manipulate him into killing Jacob once and for all!

Our main cast characters (Dharma bums plus Oceanic Six) are mostly reunited as they agree to assault the Swan station to destroy the electromagnetic anomaly which will one day become the hatch. A hell-bent Radzinsky forces Dr. Change to turn the drill back on, and sets the wheels in motion for our action-packed finale. After a long-time-comin’ fist fight between Sawyer and Jack, Juliet is the season’s sacrifice, but also its hopeful redeemer.

The big cliffhanger is that Juliet, with her last breath, was able to detonate the hydrogen bomb that is supposed to destroy the electromagnetic anomaly which got us into this whole mess in the first place. The last image is the bomb exploding and the Lost splash screen (with colors dramatically inverted!) and we are left to wonder, did she really cheat time and change the past? If the answer is yes, next seasons’ bound to be pretty short. But only time will tell!

I can’t decide which is worse. The sick feeling I got when I would finish a Harry Potter book, knowing that I’d have to wait forever for the next installment, or the void created after a Lost season finale. Actually waiting for JK Rowling was much worse, because at least TV shows have a fairly reliable production schedule.

If I can be patient, then so can you. Thank you loyal Lost readers – we will reconvene next February to finish this once and for all. Tune in next week where I will be writing about something else!

The Mighty Boosh: "Bollo" by Sean Witzke

Bob Fossil - "Hey Vince, I'm a priest!"
Vince Noir - "Couldn't you get a real priest?"
Bob Fossil - "I didn't know how to get one."

Cut this week - the variety show opening, and its aftershow callback (there's actually a reason that Vince was dressed as a hedgehog Bruce Spence dancing to Indian music). The song, "The Ape of Death", has once again been cut short. It's not like this is a musically-based show or anything. Naboo squeezing frogs and getting his weed buddy to score him prosumer electronics. Howard as a ghost fucking with Bob Fossil by making a cup float in the air - "For the love of Yaweh make it stop!". Not much else really that I caught. (Actually, I caught all of it but it was either unimportant or unfunny. You can email me for the full list of cut sequences at [email protected])

Surprisingly, all the references of Howard having a gay relationship with a fox have been kept in. Inter-species sodomy = fucking funny, of course, also = fucking necessary. This is also the most Bob Fossil that's ever made it through a US episode, which is a fairly rich addition to the Adult Swim cuts. Fossil going on about the brown little handfoot man, showing up to a funeral in a Cardinal's hat, calling Howard on his shit for overacting as a monkey - Bob Fossil is the shit and it's a shame he seems to be the first thing cut in the editing by way of absurd process. Rich Fulcher pulls double duty this episode and plays both Fossil and the Ape of Death, who is a hella old Conan villain type - only as an ape with hair problems and a kickass bass guitar. This is the first episode where Bollo featured heavily, but like I mentioned last week, Dave Brown wasn't in the costume until the second season, so he's not even remotely funny. His only joke was cut, and I don't miss it. For the most part he's played straight and this show is at it's worst whenever it plays anything straight. At least he dies in a really funny way at the end.

Howard's accidental death in Bollo's place is insanely hokey, even for the Boosh. All Grim Reapers being portrayed as cockney guys who kind of hate their jobs is inspired. Funniest thing this week - the receptionist in Limbo going "I'm a cockney, I'm a cockney" instead of just saying something in a cockney voice. That and the funeral, which is just so incredibly stupid that it has to be admired. Without it, the episode just kind of sits there. Once again this is a case of it not being the best episode, but one of the better American cuts.

Howard fucked a fox.

Wallander: "Firewall" by Tucker Stone

Without a long-winded introduction detailing the history of the Kurt Wallander series, there isn't a huge amount to say about this, the second episode of the BBC's series. (Well, unless you want to hear about the guy who will apparently play "Loki" in the upcoming Thor film that Kenneth Branagh will be directing. Even then, there's not much to say: he has curly hair, a few scenes, and he does a good job of not upstaging the lead character. Can he play the Norse God of Mischief? You won't find the answer by watching Wallander, that's for sure. Look at him standing though!)

Firewall is the last of the official Wallander novels--after this one, Henning Mankell used the character in a series of short stories that wasn't published in America until late last year, and there was a strange book called Before The Frost, where Kurt played second fiddle to his daughter Linda, who had also joined the police force. The implied exhaustion of the character shows a bit--Firewall wasn't a very good book, and neither is this filmed version. Someday, an author with the kind of coding and hacking background necessary to write a really good apocalyptic techno thriller will shock us all. Henning Mankell isn't that writer, and spending an exorbitant amount of time watching Kenneth Branagh dope his way around computers and the subculture of nihilist hackers intent on taking down the global finance system is a bit of a stretch. The inclusion of the book's most ridiculous character--a young hacker that Wallander once arrested and now depends on as a sort of ad-hoc computer detective--doesn't make it any better. The same problems that the book had are even clearer with a shortened running time: there's no definitive motive for the crazy "take the world down" villain who doesn't show up until the end, nor is there any explanation for why he's such a barbaric killer, Kurt's leaps in logic to "solve" the case make no sense at all, and far too much time is spent with scenes where the characters stand staring off into the middle distance of Sweden, which is probably a sign of mental decay. As with the first episode, it's an exercise in watching Branagh make his way through a truncated story, the only difference here was that he didn't have enough strong enough scenes to pull it off. The one that he did--a gruesome moment towards the end where he holds the hand of the film's final victim as she gurgles out her last--was too little, and considering what it took to get to that point, too late. That aside, last year's reviews seem to have universally agreed that the final film--the shocking One Step Behind--is far and away the best of the series so far. Only six days to go.

-Matthew J. Brady, Sean Witzke & Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Abhay]

The Fringe finale was 100% an episode of the Fantastic Four. The strong one (who's fighting with the smart one because the smart one made her weird with his stupid science) fights Doctor Doom, whose skin has been flayed off by his investigations in Weird Shit. Then, the Hothead (Pacey) came in and won the day by shooting the ultimate nullifier which the FF got in the nick of time thanks to the intervention of Uatu, just like in FF #... 52? Whichever. Also, the Invisible Girl (that one girl who doesn't do anything) continued to not do anything.

Also: Spock is Galactus, and that ugly lady who Spock remade into half-robot, half-ugly-lady is Galactus's herald, Silver Surfer or Terrax, whichever. Also, in the Fringe finale, your mom is a hooker, for money.

You could make an argument that the episode ended in the Baxter Building, but it'd be a slightly offensive one. Offensive to your mom, the hooker.

Also, WKRP was totally Ghost Rider.

[seth hurley]

wow.

[Tucker Stone]

i concur. wow is right.

[Chris Jones]

My friend Hilary, on Bob Fossil:

"I hate him."

[Sean Witzke]

Then she hates America.
Also Abhay... fuck.

[Chris Jones]

Exactly! Exactly.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Damn, I'm late on Abhay's comment (good thing Tucker linked to it in a later post), but it is genius. Obviously, I'm not the one who should be doing these writeups.