SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Fall TV

A brief and by no means objective look at the dreck the networks are trying to pass off as "must-see TV" this year.

I'm spending Labor Day weekend on the East Coast, so you're lucky this is not simply a laundry list of all the things I need to accomplish before my flight leaves tomorrow night. Although I will take a moment to ponder where exactly the term "laundry list" came from. Did anyone, ever, actually have to make a list of the things they needed to launder? Could they not remember by looking at them, smelling them, or just picking up the laundry basket? Granted, not everyone has laundry baskets, and some things are easy to forget to wash (they're sheets. They live on the bed. Who remembers that they should be removed just because? Also, this is why I am not in charge of the laundry at my house), so I can see having "wash towels" or "do laundry" on your to-do list. But a laundry list? Really? Who has time to individually list each garment to be washed? And if you're just listing the types of laundry, are there really enough to forget? As in wash lights, darks, whites, and reds? Maybe if you have Alzheimer's. Which is, of course, a debilitating and particularly unhumorous condition. But also almost certainly not the source of the phrase.

Anyhow, I can't finish packing until my unlisted laundry finishes drying, so Fall TV it is. Sadly, this will be brief, as nowadays I use my television mainly as a radio - on in the background for friendly noise - or a screen for the DVD player. By the end of last season, the only show I watched faithfully in its proper timeslot was Top Chef, and that only because I wanted to talk about it with my mom the next day. I know that last season isn't quite representative, what with the (completely justified) writer's strike. But the season before wasn't much better. At this writing, there are no sitcoms I watch on a regular basis (except The Simpsons and South Park, but I'm not sure they count. I watch them almost exclusively in reruns anyway, so in terms of ratings they might as well be M*A*S*H). There are two hour-long dramas I follow religiously: Heroes and Battlestar Galactica (and if season 3 of Heroes isn't better than season 2, it will fall off my list), and three more dramedies I usually intend to watch but only remember about half the time. I also watch Top Chef, Project Runway, and occasionally So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars (although I despise shows where America gets to vote. After we elected George W. Bush the SECOND time, my respect for the American electorate went from tentative to nonexistent. We, as a country, have proven that we are morons. I can only hope we start the long path back the other way this November).

So this fall I'm not looking forward to much. Battlestar Galactica doesn't return until January at least. I will watch the premiere of Heroes, but my hopes are only moderate. (Mostly I hope to see less of the Cheerleader.) I caught up with some of what I missed last season on House over the summer, and I'll be glad to see it return. I've also come to enjoy Bones in repeats, which was a pleasant surprise - David Boreanaz had worn out his welcome with me in the final season of Angel, so I didn't give this show a chance. That was a mistake. I'm happy to see Pushing Daisies return, and I'm interested to find out if Chuck and Reaper can stop seeming like fraternal twins (one sci-fi, one supernatural) and become distinct from each other. I'll give Sarah Connor Chronicles another chance. It didn't wow me the first time around, but the cast is excellent and the premise is solid, so I'll try it again.

And that's it for returning shows. The potential in the new shows is even thinner on the ground. I'm moderately enthused about Fringe, the new X-Files type thriller on Fox. (I'm glad to see Joshua Jackson working again, anyway.) The only drawback is that it's created by J.J. Abrams, the mastermind behind such masterpieces as Alias and Cloverfield. And Lost, which I've never enjoyed but will refrain from bashing here, since my boyfriend reads this blog. I'm also waiting impatiently for Dollhouse, the new drama from Joss Whedon, starring Faith from Buffy and Helo from Battlestar, but it doesn't premiere until midseason.

And I'm done. Oh, there a couple more moderately interesting shows, especially on NBC, which has a couple titled Crusoe (you can guess the premise) and Kings (a modern-day take on the life of King David, who was apparently quite the Biblical badass). But not much to look forward to. The rest of the lineup seems to consist of desperate pandering (the 90210 remake, anyone?), ideas that were kind of stupid the first time around (Knight Rider), and painfully unfunny comedies (check out the ads for Kath & Kim. Molly Shannon lost my sympathies long ago, but I can't help but cringe for poor Selma Blair, squeezed into neon and whining like a thirteen-year-old deprived of Twilight).

I was contemplating getting DVR, but at this point I'll be using it to avoid primetime, not to manage its conflicts.

(Somewhat belated) Comic-Con Wrap-up

We went, we saw, we were exhausted.

Actually, we did pretty well this year. Having had several years' experience to learn what is and is not possible at Comic-Con, my boyfriend and I managed to maintain some Zen over the weekend. Which is to say I freaked out over non-essentials only three times, my boyfriend only expressed the wish to kill about ten people with his bare hands, and we managed to settle our one major quarrel with a solution acceptable to all of us (he stayed in room 6CDEF to watch Mutant Wars, and I trekked up Fifth Street to meet our friends at an Irish pub; everyone was happier that way).

As usual, the Convention Center was filled to capacity; walking from room to room was often the most frustrating part, unless you tried to walk around on the exhibition floor, which was worse. I still got into every panel I actually stood in line for, though I did give up on Heroes before I even got to the Convention Center that morning, and we skipped the screening of Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog when we heard that they'd closed the line for it three hours before it started (in retrospect, I'm not sure that was true, but we'd already seen it anyway and we were tired after watching The Next Avengers movie, so we headed back to the hotel).

Of the panels I did see, the Dr. Horrible one - featuring Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Simon Helberg, Jed and Zach Whedon, and Melissa Tancharoen - was definitely the highlight of the convention. It was pretty much a "you had to be there" kind of thing, although I will say that NPH and Nathan Fillion were unremittingly hilarious. I laughed almost the entire time. I think somebody posted the whole thing on YouTube if you want to look for it, but really - you had to be there. And I will never think about Twittering the same way again.

The lowlight would have to be the Twilight panel. I admit that I haven't read the books, but several of my friends enjoyed them, and the excerpt I read on Amazon seemed intriguing. Also, the movie has been getting a decent amount of buzz in geek circles, and I wanted to get in on the ground floor. So I got in line about an hour before the panel started, with a few thousand fans. Honestly, I wasn't sure I'd make it in, but it didn't turn out to be a problem. Once in, I found myself surrounded by tween girls and middle-aged women, all of whom seemed to labor under the misapprehension that this was the first time anyone had ever been so devoted a fan of anything. (Harry Potter, anyone? Lord of the Rings? The original fandom - Trekkies? Wearing a "Team Edward" t-shirt does not require the same level of commitment as joining Vader's Fist, little girl. I don't care how much you loved the books.) Sadly, the fans were not the low point. That honor belonged to the panelists. Catherine Hardwicke, erstwhile director of such hard-edged fare as Thirteen, giggled nearly as much as her cast. Kristen Stewart, playing Bella, was more interested in speaking sotto voce to her castmates than in answering questions into the microphone. Robert Pattinson, playing Edward, appeared tongue-tied for most of it, stalling for time by running his hand through his absurdly cut, longish hair. Every time he did this (ten at least), eighty percent of the room screamed and swooned. When there was a brief lull in audience questions, the moderator said "Any more questions?" and a woman in the row behind me muttered, "Yes. Are you all drunk?" It was the wittiest sentence spoken in the panel. They showed footage (the climactic vampire battle in a dance studio, a fourteen-year-old girl told me later); it was slow and uninspired. All in all - thumbs down. I know the tweens will vilify me (the fourteen-year-old did; I placated her with my free double-sided Twilight poster), but honestly, it looked like schlock. And I hear that the final book, which came out a week later, has disappointed many with its decidedly unfeminist conclusion. I hate to appear (openly) prejudiced, but I have to say I always had my doubts about a vampire series written by a Mormon housewife. Go watch some Buffy, little girls. Or at least read Interview with a Vampire. It may be schlock, but at least it's intricate, philosophical schlock.

I also saw the panel for Dollhouse panel, in which Eliza Dushku flirted shamelessly with Tahmoh Penikett and talked about hunting. Funny, but not as funny as Dr. Horrible. Battlestar Galactica showed some kickass footage and also boasted a good-natured, intelligent cast (best line, James Callis: "I had to think, is it possible for someone to be a deeply spiritual person and at the same time a raging nymphomaniac? And the answer is, yes.") Sadly, Jamie Bamber is the only man I've ever seen made LESS sexy by an English accent. Weird, huh? The Watchmen panel was thoughtful and interesting, with each of the actors talking expressively about the motivations for their characters - I have high hopes. The Spirit panel managed to be informative and intelligent without actually telling me what the plot is, which was confusing. Although Samuel L. Jackson was unsurprisingly brilliant (best line: "When I was growing up, Nick Fury was a white guy. It just goes to show that in America you CAN be anything you want to be. You too can grow up to be a black man").

And there was more. We missed the Masquerade (third year in a row. Damnit, I am going to that next year!), but I caught most of the replay the next day. More on that in a later post. We managed not to eat dinner in the convention hall at all - turns out there's a restaurant in the Marriott next door. Only a couple of bucks more expensive, and way better food. I donated blood as usual, and was excited to find out my blood type (weirdly, none of my doctors ever mentioned it). I am the deeply rare AB negative, which I think is cool, although I can't really explain why. I guess I just like feeling special. I got swag and more swag. (I've now consolidated it to one small corner of my bedroom. Anyone desperate for a limited-edition Chief Tyrol BSG action figure that looks uncannily like Forrest DeWitt should make me an offer.)

And then we returned to our non-insane real lives. I want to go back now. Two weeks of living in the real world (and attending my real job) have depressed me. But I forge on nonetheless.

Next task: finding a hotel for next year!

(All quotes are from the best of my memory and should not be considered verbatim. I took a notebook, but I mostly doodled in it. So sue me. You want news, try CNN.)

SemiGeekGirl's Guide to Comic-Con, Part III

Down the Rabbit-Hole

Ah, Comic-Con: the coolest place on Earth to get the migraine of your life. Don't get me wrong - the Con is one of my favorite times of year. But the exhibit floor alone is 575,701 square feet of insanity. That's about ten football fields. And that's not even counting the upstairs areas where the panels are held. Do yourself a favor and save yourself at least a little stress.

Tip #3: The Programming schedule is your Bible.

As usual, the Con schedule for this year went up barely two weeks before the event, leaving precious little time to plan - especially if you could only manage to attend for one day. (In that case, you were screwed, because all passes for Friday and Saturday - the most glittering, celeb-friendly, panel-heavy days - were already sold out.) It used to be that you could look up the schedule a couple of days in advance, figure out what you felt like attending, and wander in fifteen or twenty minutes before the panel started. As recently as 2003, I drove down to San Diego around eleven, stood in line for an hour, hour and a half max, to get a badge, then meandered upstairs to get a seat for Joss Whedon's post-Buffy panel (which was awesome, by the way). By contrast, last year I got in line for Ballroom 20 an hour before the Heroes panel, didn't make it in, stayed in line to catch the Battlestar panel and then stayed through the intervening two panels before Joss Whedon because I was afraid I wouldn't get back in if I left.

You don't necessarily have to plan where you'll be every moment - chances are it won't go exactly as you plan anyway - but you should look through the schedule and mark anything you'd be absolutely heartbroken about missing. If it's in Ballroom 20 or Hall H, plan on being there two hours early. At least. The good news is that the San Diego Convention Center reached fire-code capacity (125,000 people) last year, so it literally can't get any more crowded. The bad news is that 125,000 people is still pretty damn crowded.

A lot of the smaller panels will be less well-attended, so you might be able to just walk in a couple of minutes before they start. But in any case, know what you want to see, and - almost as importantly - know where it is. It takes a lot longer to walk from one end of the Convention Center than you think it does, and for crowd-control purposes some hallways will be one-way. There are maps posted on the Comic-Con website - they'll pass them out in the hall too, but I suggest at least scanning it before you get to San Diego.

Also, know where and when you'll meet the people you're going with. You probably won't all be in the same panels - and DON'T count on being able to save seats - but you'll want to be able to find each other afterwards, and if you don't plan ahead it could be very difficult. Don't plan to meet on the exhibit floor if you can help it - it's huge and crowded and almost impossible to navigate quickly. Better spots to meet are upstairs in the Sails Pavilion, where there are tables to sit and eat and compare swag, or upstairs on the patios/smoking areas. They have benches and usually aren't that crowded. If you do lose track of your party, make sure everyone has a phone that can send and receive text messages - cell phone calls are a huge no-no in panels, but a discreet text (with your phone on vibrate, obviously) can usually pass unnoticed.

Tip #4: The Convention is an Endurance Sport - For Spectators

It seems obvious, but I'll take a moment to go over the basics. Wear comfortable shoes. The convention floor is (as I've mentioned) huge. Your feet will hurt by the end of the convention, but you can decide how much. (Incidentally, this is one piece of advice I never follow; costumes rarely lend themselves to comfy footwear. Ah, what I sacrifice for my passionate yet useless hobby!) Other than that, you can wear pretty much anything and still not be guaranteed not to be unique. If you're not in costume, dress casually and maybe bring a jacket; the Convention Center is ferociously well air-conditioned.

Bring some water. It's always good to have some, and you can take it everywhere in the Convention Center. You might also want to carry some food. The food in the exhibit hall is basic (pizza, hamburgers, chips, and Starbucks), expensive, and not that great. It's not bad, certainly, and I always end up eating there at least once, but you might as well save your money for souvenirs. Bring things that travel well - jerky, granola bars, fruit, candy. You don't want to bring too much to carry - the swag will take care of that, but it's good to have a snack for when you're waiting in yet another line.

Bring a book or a portable video game system. There will be lines, and more lines, and while it's fun to strike up a conversation and get to know your fellow geeks, it's also nice to have something surefire to amuse yourself with.

Well, that's all for now. I am, of course, currently running around like a madwoman, finishing the last touches of costumes, doing laundry, baking brownies (not that kind), and finding all my confirmation numbers. Speaking of which, one last tip: bring your registration barcode. You do not want to get stuck in the line of people who don't have theirs and need to be looked up by hand. And pick up your badge on Wednesday (4-day passes only) if you can. There's nothing more frustrating than starting your convention experience with a two-hour wait in the hot sun (the line starts inside, but where it ends, nobody knows...), missing the first panel you wanted to see.

Good luck, fellow geeks. See you on the floor!

Of Ends and Endlessness

So I've been thinking a lot lately about the last episode of Buffy. (Now, while I firmly believe that Buffy is the greatest television show of all time, this is not the post where I will defend that point. I don't have that kind of time today.) I'm not actually a fan of the final episode. I can kind of see where they were trying to go with it, but I thought that it fell really short when compared with the rest of the series, and ultimately it left me sad not only that the series had ended, but also that this episode was the last experience I would ever have of it.

Here isn't really the place to go into full detail on that either. Although I will say that the lack of mourning for Spike, the compression of mourning for Anya into one tossed-off "That's my girl" from Xander, the complete waste of time on an in-joke so obscure that all the dedicated fans I know missed it (the Trogdor joke - the only non-fan in the room for the finale had to explain it to us) - suffice it to say that the only thing that kept me from hiding in my room and bawling inconsolably afterward was the fact that I had thrown a party to watch it and my guests were still in attendance.

But all of those minor annoyances aside, I still had a major problem with the big spell. You know the one - Willow sits on the floor with the legendary Slayer scythe in her lap and pulls all the power she can handle to modify the ancient spell that creates and activates Slayers. Connected through the scythe, she holds on long enough to activate every potential Slayer currently on the planet - girls as young as eight or nine up through teenagers. As the show puts it, every girl who might have been a Slayer now is a Slayer. (The show's mythology was always a little vague on Slayer creation - it's hard to say what the earliest age it's possible to identify a Potential is, and there's also no information on at what point you presumably age out of the possibility. I'm assuming the spell did not also activate women in their thirties and beyond, who might have been Slayers if the current Slayer when they were fifteen, say, had died.)

To be honest, I wasn't initially that bothered by the spell. I thought the episode spent a little too much visual time on it (there was one recurring shot in particular, of a girl batting in a softball game - please, just hit the damned ball already!), but in general it seemed a fairly ingenious solution to the hordes of demons the Scooby Gang was facing. What bothered me came later, when a friend told me that Joss Whedon had explained that the spell was supposed to symbolize the final step in Buffy's journey to adulthood - the realization that she is not the only Chosen One, simply one of many, and that her life, no matter how heroic and dramatic, is not the center of the universe.

Which, let's face it, is hugely depressing. The idea that the final step to growing up is, essentially, realizing that you just aren't all that special, horrifies me. I agree that the life-or-death self-centeredness that is the hallmark of adolescence must eventually give way to a more nuanced and inclusive view of the world, of course. And I do occasionally marvel at how little time I spent thinking of others as a teenager. But that ending still seems to take it a step too far. Because if you're not the star of your own life - if you don't get to be the Slayer or the Princess or the Jedi Knight - then you're just a number, living out your tiny life alongside the billions of other tiny lives, lost forever in the vastness of the universe. If that's adulthood, I decline.

But what got me thinking about this was the endless go-round of everyday adulthood. The constant cycle of bill paying and grocery shopping and laundry and everything else. Especially lately, as I've had to deal with getting slightly older on all fronts: socially, where many of my friends are getting married and one pair even managed to buy a house; financially, where I've discovered that saving for retirement is what you get to look forward to even before you've paid off your student loans; and biologically, where I'm having to start taking into account things like maybe I should start wearing sunscreen every day if I don't want to look like my grandmother by the time I'm forty. Which is all pretty depressing in its own right. And I got to thinking that maybe Joss was right after all, that you do grow up and settle down and settle for what you've got.

So I was depressed by my tiny life and the tiny events that could eventually be expected to parade through it (if I could ever scrape together the funds to finance any of them): wedding, house purchase, children, vacations, etc. Until, thankfully, I remembered something that happened on another Joss Whedon show, when Angel had an epiphany.

"If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. Cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today."
Angel, Epiphany (2:16)

Angel was both an adult and a hero, and this sounds like a pretty good philosophy to me. What you do every day matters, at least to you and the people around you. It matters a lot, in fact, even if all you do is all you can do in your tiny life, even if you're not a Slayer or a vampire or a Jedi Knight. And if that doesn't make you the hero of your own story, then I don't know what does.

I grew up with Buffy - went to high school in Southern California the same years she did and graduated college a week before the final episode aired. But it looks like I can't follow her to adulthood (a metaphor which actually works really well, as her story continues in comic book form, which I don't read as I can't seem to connect to the medium). I've graduated to Angel instead. Guess now I know why I moved to Los Angeles.

Dressing Up for Grown-Ups

Buffy: It's come as you aren't night. The perfect chance for a girl to get sexy and wild with no repercussions.
Willow: Oh, I don't get wild. Wild on me equals spaz.
Buffy: Don't underestimate yourself. You've got it in you.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2:6, "Halloween"

They're talking about Halloween, of course, but I've always found that little exchange to be a pretty good summation of why adults put on costumes. Or at least, why I do. Come-as-you-aren't night - doesn't it sound wonderful? A chance to be a princess or an elf or a superhero, or your favorite character from television or the movies. More importantly, a chance to be somebody besides who you have to be every other day.

It's not that being me sucks so much, really. I've got great friends and good family and fun hobbies and gadgets. But I work in a cubicle in an office, Monday through Friday every week, and I go home to my sweet, stable boyfriend of almost three years. On holidays I visit my normal, still-married parents. It's a good deal: believe me, I know it. But it's hardly epic, you know?

And for the most part, that's how I like it. Epic is more often than not a synonym for tragic, and as Chris Rock puts it, the only exciting relationships are the bad ones. I tried being sexy and wild once for a couple of months, and I admit, parts of it were fun - but a lot of it seemed to consist of being broke and hungover. Plus, as much as I always wanted to be Buffy, I have to side with Willow on this one, because I'm pretty sure that wild on me does equal spaz. At least until I've had enough alcohol to relax into it.

So sometimes it's incredibly freeing to be somebody else for a while. Especially when that somebody else comes with a ready-made persona that you'd never be able to pull off in real life. I've been Buffy, Raven, Black Canary, Yvaine from Stardust, Queen Gorgo from 300, Inara from Firefly, and Darla from BtVS. Except for Yvaine (her dress was just so pretty; if only I had a gay pirate stylist!), they're all kick-ass heroines (or villains) - sarcastic and sexy with great wardrobes full of things I could never wear in real life.

Red leather pants just aren't me... except when I'm Buffy. That linen toga/shift thing Queen Gorgo wears requires more social courage than I possess (and some double-sided tape). But I pulled it off all day at Comic-Con. Because when I wear the costume, I get to channel the character, and that's a thrill I don't get every day.

So look for me at the next masquerade ball, and on the convention floor at Comic-Con. I'll be the girl with the attitude and the leather corset.