Super M*A*S*H !!!

Hey everyone, it's the summer TV season so we all know what that means...

All those folks whose TV Producer friends said "Yeah, I'll help you get that on TV" have their wishes come true. Sometimes the results of this are awesome, 'The Good Guys' & 'The Unusuals' (I just won't let that dead show die will I? It's like the zombie of cancelled cop shows to me) and sometimes the results are 'The Philanthropist' (yes, I DO remember the plot of that shows pilot) which never did see the light of day again, except in blogs no one reads by desperate screen writers (see how I broke the fourth wall there?)

This summer we have two new entries that warrant mention from the digital ivories (I've been hanging on piano allegories lately). 'Rookie Blue' is back for its sophomore season, which is good for people who watch 'Rookie Blue' (I'm not taking on any more cop shows until the new season starts, still mourning the loss of 'The Chicago Code'.) and the show inspiring today's title 'Combat Hospital'.

[...Now I just want to say that I had the idea for this show a few years ago, probably about the same time the writer/producers on the show were concocting it themselves. In my case it was inspired from watching a Nat Geo doco (feel Australian with all these shortenings) about doctors in Kandahar treating the wounded there. The doctors in the show called the hospital 'Rocket Town' due - remarkably enough - to the persistent rocket attacks from insurgents (or locals, depending on your affiliation) Now MY show would've been called 'Rocket Town', but i suspect after the 'let's rename our niche show in the hopes of making it NOT a niche show 'Cougar Town' debacle that other shows with 'Town' in the title are off limits. So yeah, once again my lack of connections and general past apathy have saved me from an embarrassing situation at Pitch Fest in Banff where two teams with the exact same project run into each other, as if we were wearing the same striped sweater from Old Navy's summer 2010 collection - I saw you at the mall wearing-my-shirt-guy...]

Was I typing about something? Oh yeah, Combat Hospital. Silly me, maybe I was hoping for another M*A*S*H, but then again, why would I? I still have M*A*S*H, every season, every episode, sitting on top of my bookcase, so if I REALLY want to watch it, there it is. Do I expect another show about military surgeons, set in a warzone, during an ongoing war, laced with humour, helicopters delivering wounded and supposedly quirky characters, including a charming womanizing, boozing doctor with a drawer full of pharmaceuticals to be compared to the all classic and critically untouchable masterpiece that was M*A*S*H? Of course not.

But the show is acceptable, for a Canada/US co-production. (you can tell Canada comes first because the main character is Canadian, which is obvious to the audience because she has a Maple Leaf flag on her uniform (a'la what's his name from SG: Atlantis - which I continue to refuse to watch) The production quality is better than I expected, and the direction is certianly on par with a regular season drama. You even have some respectability with the cast, Elias Koteas (the poor man's Canadian Robert DeNiro) as Colonel Xavier Marks (TV name if ever I heard one) - a kind of dry, humourless salute to Colonel Potter - a young Afghan translator named 'Vans' (because he wears a shirt that says 'Vans', get it?) who I suppose could be the approximation of Radar. There's Simon, the boozing British civilian neuro surgeon who manages to bed all the ladies in his private plywood shack with a mock up of the London skyline as a backdrop, and the requisite moralistic rules be damned Rebecca, who may or may not be pregnant, stirring things up. Throw in the Vietnamese decent doctor Bobby (would it be too meta to suggest that the doctors name being Trang is an attempted allusion to M*A*S*H, in that while that show was set during the Korean War, it was really about Vietnam? Yeah, that's too meta). Oh yeah, I also forgot Deborah Kara Unger as the Father Mulcahey/Hot Lips Hullihan hybrid (last I saw DK Unger, she was taking in a young black man who would learn the truth about Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter, and before that she was having things done to her by James Spader that meant I had to keep that movie hidden from my Mom) as the base psychiatrist. (No Sydney Fieldman references so far, but there was a stoic CIA agent in the second episode - whether he was 'like the wind' or not remains to be seen - Everyone getting tired of my obscure M*A*S*H references yet? Yeah, well screw you, this is my pretentious TV blog)

So we get stories about Doctor Rebecca bringing an Afghan girl back to the base, and this is dramatic you see as if her Afghan family finds out they may want to disown/murder her, (would that this part were made up to, yet sadly it's probably the most realistic element of the story). Or there's the episode about the unknown bacteria spreading through the new patients. Could it be that this mysterious ailment could be cured by a local Afghan remedy? How about the episode where Rebecca must plan a party for the base while dealing with the realities of having used the whole installations O- blood supply in a vain attempt to save a young man. Yeah, these all sound original, right?

Okay, it may be difficult to do a medical warzone story that M*A*S*H hasn't done already, but that's the same problem that any family/animated comedy writer has with 'The Simpsons'; if you tried to do something they hadn't already done, you would have nothing to work with.

So yeah, watch 'Combat Hospital'. It's a pleasant, inoffensive yet wants to be edgy drama that takes the plots of M*A*S*H, extends them to half an hour and removes most of the jokes (that sounds like a far more scathing review than it is meant to be.) Seriously people, the show is good fun, a decent modern substitute for a classic age old comedy in the summer months. As a July-September entry, it's a real winner. Just don't stack it against House or Fringe or any main season entry, if you do, you may as well go out and get every episode of M*A*S*H, you'll laugh more.

Sci-Fi in the 20Teens

If anyone out there can tell me just what we're gonna call the 2011-2020 period, please let me know.

So I was watching DirecTV on the Continental flight from Houston to Seattle on my way back from Costa Rica, and I came across the Pilot for "Falling Skies" on TNT, (first of all, this show is what ABC's "V" should have been, which has now been cancelled, thank Gawd) and it got me to thinking about the current state of Sci-Fi in TV & on film (keeping in mind that "actual Sci-Fi", like the literary kind, on paper, is beyond me. If I'm reading, I want it to be non-fiction. Let the moving pictures tell me the fake stories.)

It's well known and accepted (I assume) that Sci-Fi is known for reflecting the collective fears of the society it is generated in. Classic examples abound; In the 50's, with fear of being suddenly and overwhelmingly overrun by communism ran rampant (like it was something that rained from the sky - "Tomorrow, sunny with a 40% chance of communism with some early morning marxism..") and the movies/television (well mostly movies, television had yet to develop itself that far at that point) spoke to this. "The Day The Earth Stood Still" warned us all that if we didn't learn to get along aliens would come from the sky and vaporize our weapons with giant robots controlled by commands from the necronomicon. "Earth vs the Flying Saucers" (or something titled like that) was about plain old alien invasion, same with "War of the Worlds". Aliens come down and threaten to eat our brains, and only a lame deus ex machina can save us (cuz' intergalactic beings with faster than light travel are incapable of protecting themselves from microbes).

The 60's were all about the fear of the potentials of technology. "2001"s Hal 9000 is the classic example. Star Trek often dealt with the failure of technology or the dangers of letting super computers control civilizations; consider episodes like The Apple, Return of the Archons, The Changeling, Spock's Brain, What are Little Girls Made of? etc... Also rife with episodes about the fear of the weapons we built, (The Doomsday Machine being the all time classic). While not dealing directly with technology, "Planet of the Apes" spoke to the dangers of what could happen to our world if we let it get away from us. We would be maniacs, and blow it up (apparently).

The 70's continued this theme of fear, only it expanded beyond technology and into the world of medicine and the body. "Alien" is the prime example here, or "The Omega Man", "Soylent Green", all about what would happen the firmament, the 'material' of the Human race if we let it all get away. This also saw the emergence of the psuedo Sci-Fi/Horror zombie plethora, "Day of the Dead" being the major comment on the consumerism mixed with body horror. Also, watch just about anything David Cronenberg did at the time. (Star Wars notwithstanding in here, I maintain that it belongs in it's own category of 'space fantasy', there's nothing all that scientific about it)

The 80's seemed to be about the fear of being left behind, the fear of the excitement and wealth of society passing us by. "Flight of the Navigator", "The Last Starfighter", "ET", the trend is subtle but present. "Quantum Leap" even took part in this, literally removing Dr. Sam Beckett from his life and making him re-live other peoples lives.

90's Sci-Fi commented on the distrust of the authorities on power. The granddaddy of all conspiracy shows "The X-Files" taught us all that there was a sinister motive behind anything and everything, including Bee's. Other copy cat shows like "Dark Skies" went further with this, attempting to sew every event in history into one giant conspiracy. "TekWar" & "Robocop" also touched on these themes.

9/11 shaped 2000's Sci-Fi pretty clearly. The idea of the dangerous 'others' who live within our midst. "Battlestar Galactica" illustrated this beautifully, so did "Lost" by making the term 'The Others' a common reference. "The Matrix" goes so far as to insinuate that our whole existence is masterminded by someone or something else (blending 60's fear of technology excellently with modern fear of the world around us).

So where does this leave us now in the 20Teens? Let's look at the shows, the examples we have. "The Walking Dead" explores not just a world where zombies rule, but instead of focusing on the horror or the consumerism it deals more with the day to day realities of 'Living Among Them'. Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" while not being completely Sci-Fi, shows us a world where society has collapsed and we must all fear the cannibals. "Cloverfield" gives us the first person account of an invasion we are completely unable to contend with. "Jericho" while a drama, not a Sci-Fi (and cancelled before it's time) depicts the realities of living in a world where you must rely on your neighbours as the foundations of society have been nuked out of existence. Even "Lost" deals with surviving without the support of the systems we have built over the past 6 decades. And while hilarious, "Zombieland" is chilling in also showing us a world where survival is the true horror of the zombie apocalypse. Noah Wylie's latest show, "Falling Skies" deals with the aftermath of being invaded by six legged creatures who contracted out their battle weapons contracts to the Predators and who's spaceships resemble large sawhorses. What does all of this have in common?

Today we fear the collapse of what we have come to count on for our future. Remember in 2008 when the rich took all our money by betting against the people who didn't have any, and this threatened our way of life so much that we had to give over even MORE money so as to prevent us all from losing all the money we had, only now there's no money to pay for anything anymore so now we still have no money? Yeah, that thing. The modern fear seems to be that the future will be a world where there will be no support, no systems we can count on. We'll have to learn to survive on our own with very little, move back to subsistence living and fear our neighbours again. No police, no welfare, no pensions. Just you and whatever you can carry, or whatever you can grow where you stop for a few days. The future has always been shown as being more advanced (even in "Blade Runner" made that advancement look dirty and unpleasant) but we are faced with the reality of going backwards, and being unable to content with what comes next. It's not us being wiped out by aliens, it's about us having to run and hide from the big bad universe/planet which has come home to roost. This I find the scariest of all. I'm a service industry worker. I have very few survival skills. MAYBE I could make due in a zombie holocaust (the apocalypse which I feel most prepared for - fingers crossed!) If our pensions and medical system were to vanish overnight, I don't know what I'd do.

So what's the next trend in Sci-Fi? I dunno. Talk to me about in 2015.

And also ask me just how likely I think a "28 Days/Weeks Later" zombie outbreak is. You might be surprised by how close I fear we are!

Lie to Me: The "insanity" episode

At some point in every TV shows life, they feel compelled to pull out all the psychological stops on the 'insanity' episode.

SIDEBAR - Okay, NOT every TV. I'm pretty sure 'Friends' never did an insanity episode. We are referring to most dramatic television shows that are not simple procedurals. If the show has any 'inventive' fictional elements to it, then it probably has an 'insanity' episode somewhere. Example: I'm pretty sure Law & Order never did an insanity episode, but I'm not convinced that Law & Order: SVU never did. Please correct if wrong.

"What is the insanity episode?" and "Where can I find this marvelous addition to a TV shows legacy you ask?" (if you DID ask that, then you are merely pandering to me, and I appreciate it!) Simply, the insanity episode is the installment of any television series (usually comes by the 3rd season if the show makes it that far) where the audience is left to ponder if anything we have been privy to these past years has been real, or was it all the dream of an insane mind, and our character/or characters has actually been in the looney bin the whole time. OR a lead character is committed for a short time, usually do to something happening in an episode that we cannot be sure whether or not it actually occurred.

I know what you're thinking; "That's total bull crap, every show doesn't have one of those!" Au contrare...

M*A*S*H: Final episode, "Goodbye, farewell, Amen" Hawkeye gets committed for repressing the memory of a Korean woman who smothered her baby to avoid being caught by the North Korean Army.

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. "Normal Again" from Season 6. Buffy gets hit with some demonic venom which causes her to believe all her Vampire and demon fighting is really the imaginings of a disturbed girl in a mental hospital. Because that would make so much more sense.

The X-Files: (I searched my whole collection for the episode title, but when they're listed with synopsis like "Mulder and Scully investigate a murder" or "Mulder and Scully suspect several people may be being murdered by a dead man" or "Mulder uncovers a conspiracy" it can be hard to pin the actual episode down) - the one with the deadly hallucinogenic fungus, where Mulder and Scully find themselves completing half the episode while buried under the dirt, victim of some uber-deadly magic mind control mushroom.

House: Pretty much the whole end of Season 5 and beginning of season 6, where House hallucinates that Cuddy comes to see him in his hour of need. (note, not to be confused with the end of season 6 and start of season 7 where Cuddy actually DOES come to House in his hour of need)

Star Trek: TOS/TNG/DS9/VGR/ENT - Too many examples to count here, but the most memorable would be TNG's season 5er "Frame of Mind", DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars", VGR's "Projections", you get the idea.

LOST: Hurley spends time in a mental institution, 'nuff said.

You get the idea, examples go on and on and on. Where do these episodes come from? Usually in any dramatic series with a flair for the 'exceptional' there comes a time when the writers want to show just how hip and 'meta' they can be (i've adopted the word 'meta' for the time being, deal with it) they usually try and pull what I call the 'mind fuck' episode, where the audience is supposed to fall for the above stated premise: ie, what IF our character was really crazy all this time, and we just pulled a fast one over on the whole audience? Think when Peg Bundy lost the baby in 'Married, with Children' and they turned it all into one of Al's dreams. (Correction, I should say when Katy Segal lost the baby...) It's meant to show just how creative and 'with it' the writers are.

Personally I find the episodes rather offensive, as they always end the same way: No one was ever really insane in the first place, and its always the result of confusion/alien interference/actual dementia/demonic venom. Yes everything that we saw before actually happened, and now we can proceed knowing that some writer (I'm looking at you Brannon Braga) got to get their rocks off mining their old Psychology classes while filling up another 43 minutes of television.

So with all that being said, it brings us to last nights episode of my current favorite prime time network drama 'Lie to Me'

Lie to Me: "Funhouse"

Written by Jameal Turner

Directed by Daniel Sackheim

Synopsis: Cal investigates a man in a mental hospital who has been kept perpetually demented by muffins poised by his sister and brought to him weekly by his loving daughter. There you go, ruined the whole episode for you.

This episode, while again a B- on the overall scale of what I expect from this show, does something nice by actually bypassing the whole "was it really just dementia?" angle and showing us that Cal actually IS being looney, talking with his long dead mother and all. It follows the tenets of other 'insanity' episodes, ie creative editing where you get confused by where one scene ends and the other begins (much like being insane, I would imagine. You'd almost think those creative muthafuckas planned it that way...), laying cues in the episode long before we suspect there's some intellectual shenanigans going on, so on and so forth. By the end of it all, Cal has the solution (muffins, as said before. A solution he comes to while suffering severe dementia, I might add).

These episodes piss me off. Make angry Steve Angry. It's like Shutter Island. From the previews, I could just tell that Leo DiCaprio was in jail the whole time - sorry again to those who actually haven't seen the movie, but I just saved you 2 hours, + the time it took you to download it. Maybe its the decades of genre television i've absorbed, but the 'insanity' episodes are always so pedestrian and repetitive. Character thinks they are insane, through the course of the show something happens which makes them realize all is not well, and they snap out/are rescued from their delusions. Because if that actually worked, we wouldn't have to fund all the mental health centres that were shut down during the shift to 'societally integrated treatment' the Liberals forced on us in the '90's. (Societally integrated treatment, read: pay for it yo'selves fuckas!)

And while this episode isn't a prime example, these installments usually reek of lazy writing. If the character is insane, and everything is in their heads, that means there's no consequences to their actions. If there's no consequences to their actions, then there's no drama as there is no tension. As the audience we are supposed to be oh-so-confused by all the strange happening's a goin' on, but the truth is we're all pretty smart by now, that's why we're watching these clever shows, after all.

In fact, the only show ever to pull this effect off with any real suspense was 'House', and that's because, as this show often does, it inverted the elements. House actually WAS seeing things (through most of the season, actually) and he did think his actions didn't have consequences, when in the end they really did. Then House spent a few episodes in the nutter cage, and eventually everything worked out. But it took several EPISODES to get us there, it wasn't resolved in the span of a commercial break. So props to them for knowing what to do when you decide to make a character insane. (in all fairness, off the top of my head House is the only character on TV you could do this with legitimately. He's already fucked up enough as it is, it's pretty easy to push him over the edge...)

So yes, 'Lie to Me' has reached the 'insanity episode' benchmark. The 'flashback' and 'TV episode within a TV episode' episodes can't be far off.

V is back! Let the disappointment reign!

Thaaaaaaaaat's right folks, that embarrassing hour of mediocrity you forgot debuted on TV last season is back in the all classic, super respectable Winter replacement timeslot! V!

V, right? You all remember, right? Right? Elizabeth Mitchell? Scott Wolf? Morena Baccarin? She was the ultra hot Companion from 'Firefly'? Was gonna be Wonder Woman for a while before the studios did what they do best and kicked Joss Whedon off the project? No. Oh, okay. Well...

V is that show about the aliens who come to Earth ('V' for Visitors, see how clever they are?) in giant spaceships which float over all of our major cities (Vancouver stands in for New York here, are they saying that Vancouver isn't major enough to attract a six square kilometer alien space ship? Toronto may agree, but fuck them, they're Toronto.) Now I know what you're thinking, "Wait a minute, giant alien spaceships hovering over our cities, here to conquer us. Wasn't that 'Independence Day'?" Well, yes it was. But you see, 'Independence Day' was inspired by A) 50's B-movie invasion movies and B) This miniseries called 'V' from 1983. Now I watched the original -

- SIDEBAR - I would LOVE to say that I watched the original when it aired on TV, to be just that hip, but that means I would've watched a primetime miniseries when I was 2. As awesome as that would've been, it would've meant my parents were pretty irresponsible, so NO, I actually watched 'V' when I learned about the inspirations for 'ID4' before the movie debuted -

- And found it to be an excellent treatise on contemporary sci-fi and late cold war paranoia (yes, I could understand the importance of commentary on paranoia during the waning days of the cold war, I was a damn clever kid smarty pants) So when I heard they were making a modern remake I thought:

Wow, what a great idea. We live in the age where we're scared to ride the bus or train (well I am, at least) in case that backpack left under the next seat is filled with C4 (PS, if you DO see a random discarded backpack, please tell someone - police wise - about it. They'll shut down the train, send in the robot to blow it up only to find it's full of gym clothes, but you'll feel better about it) so a show about aliens who come to Earth, look like us and profess peace while insinuating themselves into our everyday lives would be a smash hit; full of intrigue, veiled commentary on our modern paranoia about our neighbours and speaking to how readily (or steadfastly opposed to) we integrate foreign cultures into our own.

And then I discovered the show would be on ABC. EPIC FAIL.

What's wrong with ABC you ask? Well nothing, really. I mean, they're no CBS (by the way, SUCK IT CBS!!!) But aside from a few shining lights (and their comedy line up, tre' excellent) ABC hasn't lately been able to field a decent drama. The problem - they're still so damned 'family friendly'. I've talked about this before with 'Castle', which I love, but ABC has this requirement (culturally, or self imposed, I'm not sure) to make sure their primetime shows are watchable by the whole family. Sure they try to sex it up with, well, sex and some blood, but it keeps them from REALLY attacking the material with the same gusto that Fox, or say, Syfy (BSG anyone?) does.

But wait Angry Steve, didn't ABC make that wicked cool mind bender 'Lost' that you loved so much. Yes. Yes they did, and that is the exception that proves the rule. We will examine:

V: "Red Rain"

Written by Scott Rosenbaum & Gregg Hurwitz

Directed by Bryan Spicer

We open with bodies littering the streets of faux New York under a 'blood red sky' to borrow from U2. Already, a more poetic scene than I've encountered before in this show. It reminds me of some of the final images from 'Watchmen' (the book, not the movie - not to knock the movie, as it was awesome) so there was actually some wicked thought put into this composition. SURE we cheap out by making it a dream, but whatever, it was still nice, more reminiscent of what we saw in the original show 27 years ago. Then we get a nice CG glimpse of Ryan's half Human, half V baby in the tank on the spaceship (our first real glimpse of a V in any form) and that was pretty cool too. Alright, now we're getting somewhere. Things are gonna puck up this season!

And then they give us scenes of rioting in faux NY. I love watching actors pretend to riot in my home town. It's heartwarming.

But then we get back to Anna's (alien queen, for those who don't watch) 'evil machinations' for the sad people below. I often compare this show to 'Lost' as I feel that's the show it's most trying to emulate. Sure, they come from the same network/studio, both have characters who's allegiances are in question, both have an ongoing serialized plot and both have intrigue and good guys behaving as bad guys. But whereas 'Lost' weaves these elements deftly like a concert violinist, V uses them like a blind man driving a Buick. Anna releases Ryan (one of her children) back to the freedom fighters he came from so she can use his daughter against him later? You bet she says that flat out, so there's no real intrigue. If you were having dinner with someone, stepped up to use the loo, and while you were gone they said out loud 'Now I will use him to have my plans put into action' that isn't all that crafty now is it?

Anyways, at the end of last season, the V's turned the sky blood red, our "5th column" freedom fighters were gearing up for a war and Anna was pissed off in general at Humanity, so when season 2 started, I was ready for some progress, some change, ready for the story to blow wide open.

The title of this episode should've been "GET READY FOR EVERYTHING to stay the same." There's no attack on the V motherships. By the end of the episode the sky is blue again, and Anna is back to 'biding her time' while the wheels in her plan turn. Anybody remember that show 'Earth: Final Conflict"? You shouldn't, it's terrible. But that was another 'aliens invade Earth, very slowly' story line. I think things picked up around season 16 or so.

The show has good 'Lost' characters: Scott Wolf as 'Chad' the reporter who may or may not be interested in helping the freedom fighters. 'Hobbs' the mercenary who is just so bad ass he doesn't NEED to kill someone each episode, those types. It even has Elizabeth Mitchell as Erica, the protagonist, essentially playing Juliette over again but without the subtext. And it has good 'twists' as they were. We discover what the V's really look like when Anna kills one for... sport I guess, when she finds out that some of her followers are worried she's being poisoned by the Human skin she's wearing. (you'd think the big reveal of the appearance of the aliens would be a cliff hanger moment - we've had glimpses before but never a good look - but here we use it at a commercial break. Tells how confident the writers/producers were with the 'impact' of this reveal) We encounter a new, younger guy who's done research on some alien skeleton found in a mass grave in Mexico (that's yet to be explained, really) A guy who, by the way, our ultra secret freedom fighters seem to trust pretty quickly. We also learn of some crazy V plot to cross breed with Humans, which is another element borrowed from that exemplary paranoia granddaddy 'The X-Files' -

- Okay, yes, for all the X-Philes out there, I know the alien plan there was to create Human/alien hybrids that would survive the apocalypse of the killer bees who would sting us all, infect us with the alien black oil and make us all carriers for their reproduction, thus leaving a slave race AND providing a vaccine for the richest Humans so they could work hand in hand with the aliens, but I digress -

But this reveal in V DID give us what could be the first REAL juicy moment in the show, Tyler, Erica's son, might be half V, which is actually pretty decent for a twist. Tyler is also the kid who gets to 'get it on' as it were with one of the blonde alien hotties. If only nailing hot alien chicks was as easy as TV and Captain Kirk made it out to be...

So Angry Steve, why do you keep watching this show? Easy. Underneath the mediocrity of the program 'telling' us everything instead of 'showing' us (a cardinal sin in screenwriting for those not in the know) it has POTENTIAL. Potential that I can see will not be realized with the start of the second season, but that's okay. The V I watch in my head is way better than the one on Tuesdays. It behaves as an episodic show, where we wind up right back where we started at the beginning of each episode and you COULD watch any episode out of order and not miss much, but it wants SO BADLY to be a taught serial the way 'Lost' was. But 'Lost' had it's dedicated fans who came back week after week, season after season to find out if Jack would actually save young Benjamin's life, or what was in that Hatch, or will Kate's reappearance break up the love-in between Sawyer and Juliette. This show does not have that kind of power, character, or draw. The whole thing is bathed in the same neutral lighting (probably to make it easy for all the green-screening they do to recreate alien space ships on a tight budget and make sure no Canadiana makes it into a show filmed *gasp* in Canada) but any first year lighting apprentice can tell you that neutral lighting kills emotion on film (and essentially replaces the cinematographer with a light meter) -

- But it has ALIENS, and SPACESHIPS, and Elizabeth Mitchell is kinda hot, and so is Morena Baccarin and Laura Vandervoort (more hot), and sometimes they shoot at each other, and every once in a while there's some psuedo par-kour chase and it gets exciting up to the commercial break.

I don't watch 'Mad Men', and yet I watch this. Is something wrong with me, or am I just too dedicated to sci-fi? It just seems that spaceships will win out over suits any day.

So yeah, in conclusion, this was meant to pump the show to people, but instead it tore it down. But you bet my PVR will have it recorded next week, and you bet I will watch it. Isn't that endorsement enough?