With that out of the way, I guess it’s time to talk about Pan Am, the new period drama about a flight crew aboard a Pan Am plane in the 60′s. I’ll be talking obliquely about certain plot points that aren’t obvious based on the short description above, so if you’re wary of spoilers and have yet to watch the premiere, this is where you stop reading.

I really enjoyed the pilot, a lot more than I ever expected to, even when early summaries started talking about the spy subplots, something that would normally guarantee a positive reaction from me². The flashbacks were a clever way of moving the action outside the frame of the plane, and continue to prove that flashbacks are awesome sauce. All the characters felt unique in a way that often doesn’t happen this early in a series run.

And from a purely aesthetic perspective, I loved the look of it. Even if Mad Men weren’t well written, acted, and directed the look and feel of the 60′s would make the show enjoyable, and that is if anything more true of Pan Am. The old school stewardess look is fantastic³, and the sheer pleasure the show exudes when showing a plane boarding is escapism in its own right given the current depressing state of air flight. This was a time when flight was a fancy, and the show excels when it’s selling you on the glamour of it all.

Of course, everything is glamourous at this point. The show is selling itself, so its best foot has been put forward. You’ve got sexy women wearing a fetishistic uniform, the intrigue of cold war espionage, and the hints of intrigue in the characters’ pasts. It all comes together to make a show that is incredibly enjoyable. The question that remains is whether or not the show will follow through on its promise, which is what next week will be all about. I know I’ll be there.

Footnotes

1. A related reason is that posting those smaller thoughts on this blog wouldn’t look right in its current incarnation, something I’m looking into fixing but it ultimately a fair way away
2. To be fair, when I did ultimately get to those parts of the story, they were immensely exciting to me.
3. Maybe it’s for the best that flight attendants can be of any gender, and they no longer have to wear girdles and fit into specific weight to height ratios, but it made for a very pleasant flight.

That said, I think sometimes people take offense too easily on the subject. Case in point, Feministing’s lambasting of ABC’s new — and already basically cancelled — sci-fi drama Defying Gravity. Defying Gravity is set in a near future where abortions are illegal and one of the main characters, in the flashbacks to five years earlier, gets pregnant accidentally and has to decide whether or not to get an underground abortion.

They attacked the show viciously and then Defying Gravity’s show-runner, James Parriott, responded to the critics directly discussing the themes of the show and even spoiling some future plot points to explain to his audience that the show is about bigger questions than abortion.

I personally think they didn’t handle the abortion stuff very well, but not because the woman who had the abortion hesitated and debated with her close friend over the issue. I support choice, but that doesn’t mean I think abortion should be handled glibly. One commenter disagrees:

I really appreciate Mr. Parriott taking the time to respond. However, I really hate the fact that even pro-choicers seem to have conceded that abortion is necessarily an awful, tragic, agonizing experience. Sure, for some women it is a gut-wrenching decision, but for many women it is not a particularly difficult or traumatic decision.

I guess that’s my problem with Parriott’s description here. Why shouldn’t women ever be shown making an “glib, easy, and insensitive” decision to have an abortion? Why do women always have to be portrayed as damaged and guilt-ridden over their abortion? Certainly that is some women’s experience and it is a valid one, but when it is the only way we see abortion played out it just reinforces the idea that abortion is a horrible, awful thing, which I strongly disagree with.

I don’t think Defying Gravity dealt with abortion in that way at all. The abortion story plays out in flashbacks from five years earlier than the main storyline. The character was an astronaut-in-training five years ago who would’ve not been in the program if she’d kept the kid. But in the main storyline she’s in the program. She either had an abortion or a miscarriage. Ultimately, she has the abortion because she wants to go to space. She puts her career ahead of her uterus. She’s not emotionally damaged because of the abortion, but she also didn’t commit to it with the ease of a colonic which, quite frankly, seems like a rational response; a fetus might not be a child, but it has a hell of a better chance of being one that a tumescent appendix.

In fact, the original post discussed a very similar situation (to my eyes) that they approved of:

The only TV show I can recall watching that even had a character obtain an abortion was Third Watch, in which a cop who has a recovering alcoholic husband, two kids and financial woes decides to terminate her pregnancy. I remember liking it because it was matter-of-fact, and the character makes a decision she knows is best for her family, and isn’t punished after the fact for it.

I personally think anyone who watched the early episodes of Defying Gravity and sees a show fighting against abortion doesn’t understand what science fiction is. Or really even basic fiction. Establishing a world where abortion is illegal and then having a character struggle with the decision to have one is not endorsing the anti-abortion stance, it’s storytelling 101.

What is the point of a television show having a women have an abortion as though it were a non-event? What’s the dramatic point to it? Conflict is at the heart of all stories, and having a women get an abortion with no real discussion about not doing it and no real emotional consequences is quite possibly the stupidest “plot development” a show could ever do.

“What is it with abortion and television?” the initial Feministing post asks. Abortion remains one of the few watchwords television tends to avoid. Why? Ultimately, it seems like anything you do with abortions on television will be attacked by one of the sides of the issue. You can’t have it be a glib non-event in the woman’s life both for dramatic reasons and because the pro-lifers would attack the show for “endorsing” abortion. You can’t make it a dramatic traumatic psychologically damaging event, because the pro-choice people criticise it, even if it’s the woman’s choice to ultimately abort. You can’t make it a simple act emotionally with severe physical ramifications because it will be seen as demonizing abortion.

Both sides of the argument are unsatisifed with any middle ground, leaving most writers with no ground on which to stand. So they avoid the story entirely, to avoid undue criticism. It’s a terrible state of affairs, that probably won’t change anytime soon. But nothing I, or anybody along the spectrum of opinions on this subject, will really have an effect; we’re all just screaming into a void hoping to hear an echo.

At a fundamental level, what is Grey’s Anatomy? It’s a character drama set primarily in a workplace. Is it overwrought at times? From what I’ve seen of it, absolutely. But I don’t think anybody that’s watched all of Battlestar Galactica could say they never crossed the line into soapy goodness.

But even ignoring that, this show is not Grey’s Anatomy in Space. Even if being a simple character drama set in space made it nothing more than Grey’s Anatomy in Space, it’s not a simple character drama. Already, the show’s established an ongoing arc and a greater power watching over the mission.

And for those not enamoured with weirdo rooms with God complexes, there’s the characters and their lives onboard a long-term space journey. They’re not just going through the motions here. They’ve got the men left behind learning to cope with their less stellar lives, people on board dealing with the problems of space travel and navigating their histories together while functioning as a crew.

This show isn’t the Best Thing Ever. Virtuality would have been a better show, I think. But that doesn’t invalidate what this show is doing. And so far, it’s been mostly interesting.

I may be slightly biased because the two ostensible leads (the Meredith and Derek, as it were), Ron Livingston and Laura Harris, are among my favourite actors and I’d watch almost anything they’re in. But I genuinely think this show isn’t some trifle; it might become one as the show develops, but everything I’ve seen so far has been a pretty decent melding of romantic character drama and science fiction drama. Watch before you judge.

Lost broke my brain on Wednesday. In the best way possible. If you’re not watching that show, I don’t know what to say to you.

Admittedly, this could just be my view of what a game-changer is. If you consider the introduction of the Dharma Initiative on Lost a game-changing event, then Chuck’s finale was more definitely a game-changer.

Regardless, this finale proved that Chuck is one of the best shows on TV. It manages to intertwine overarching mythology, spy action, drama, romance, humour, and geeky references better than any other show. And what’s more astounding is that none of these suffer for any other. The characters are fleshed out, they grow and change over time, the Chuck/Sarah romance is always there and develops and evolves with each new circumstance, and the action is more dynamic than most other television shows. Chuck is undoubtedly the best show NBC has right now, and to cancel it now would be more than foolish, it would be tragic.

Many people are spreading the word about the “Save Chuck” campaign, and Alan Sepinwall’s open letter to NBC is stellar. The best advice, however, is the simplest. Watch the show. Buy it on DVD. Contact NBC and voice your support of the show. Chuck is a show worth fighting for. So fight.

Earlier this year, CW aired, and quickly cancelled, a show on their Sunday night block called Valentine, about a female romance novelist recruited by Aphrodite and Cupid, along with a few of their Olympian friends, to help reinvigorate the world with Love, one couple at a time. In many ways, the shows are very similar. Obviously, the former is going to emphasize the ambiguity of Trevor Pierce’s situation — is he a broken man, or an exiled god? — and the latter was quite explicit, and delightfully mythological, about the history of their Cupid. But overall, both shows will follow that structure of a weekly romance unfurling as the overarching story develops in the background.

I’ve admitted in the past to being an unabashed romantic and lover of love stories, which why it’s no surprise I enjoyed Valentine, and really enjoyed Cupid. I’ve also been re-watching Gilmore Girls from the beginning and find myself very much caught up in the girlie moments of the show, tittering when they describe their first kiss or sighing during that all-important first dance. So I guess what I’m trying to tell all of you, is that I’m a huge girl when it comes to these things, so my judgement of this sort of material is likely biased. But, hey, if you’re got an hour free Tuesday nights, might as well watch two people fall in love, right?

I don’t want to encourage viewers of TBBT or HIMYM to stop watching those shows because they’re both decent shows and HIMYM was on the verge of cancellation every year prior to this. And quite frankly, if you’re stupid enough to actually watch a full episode of Dancing with the Stars, I don’t want your eyes anywhere near Chuck. I’m afraid the stupid might leak. But there is one other show that pulls down strong numbers reliably that probably isn’t totally deserving of them.

I’m going to let the world in on a secret. House isn’t that good. I loved the first season. I have it on DVD, even though it’s shitty non-anamorphic widescreen. I liked the second season. The show had lost some of its charm, but House seemed to be developing as a character. By the third season I started to notice that despite every second episode ending with some significant moment implying that House would be changing nothing ever really changed. The show’s plot got tediously formulaic. House had to do more and more outrageous things to maintain his edginess. And the idea that House, no matter how brilliant he is, could keep his medical license after all the atrocious actions he’d commited more than strained credulity. So, near the end of season three I stopped watching it. When season four started up, I started to watch the premiere and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even make it through the whole thing.

I’m not against episodic television, where not much really changes from episode to episode. Obviously, I prefer serialized television because it allows bonds to be made between the characters and the audience, but I do watch a few shows with very little ongoing story. That said, I do not like shows that pretend that they’re serialized. It insults my intelligence and demeans the characters. And that’s what House does. The ongoing “developments” amount to nothing but the same cardboard cutout characters getting reset back to the status quo nearly every episode.

So stop watching House and give your television time to a show much much more deserving. Seriously.

I started watching Kyle XY for a lot reasons. The first reason I had was the music: there’s an ongoing thread in the original scores for Kyle XY that, to this day, reminds me of Explosions in the Sky. And we all know that Explosions in the Sky’s music makes even the most mundane moments seem epic so the early moments of the show were greatly enhanced by the minimalist bombast of the score. I mean, there’s a scene where Kyle eats a freaking muffin in the first episode that makes it seem like he’s climbing Mount Everest.

So the music made me stay for a little while, but the thing that really made me stick around was the novelty and realism with which they handled a character with complete and utter amnesia, though it’s not really amnesia per se. The scene I linked to earlier is Kyle’s first meal. He didn’t know what food was or how to eat before that scene and his discovery of it is handled very well. In a scene shortly after this he pees his pants because he didn’t know what that strange sensation he was having meant. There are lots of little interesting trains of thought brought up through the narration in those early episodes that offer a fantastic look at what it might be like to be born fully grown. This sort of storytelling is already very much in the realm of science fiction, but the show goes beyond that by introducing Kyle’s superhuman abilities and the mystery of where he came from, why he isn’t there anymore, and why he has no bellybutton. And while those sci-fi elements are interesting, the thing that really truly makes me excited to see each new episode is the characters.

When I wrote about Kyle XY getting canceled I mostly brought up its sci-fi aspects, but the real world relationships are why the show is so good. That science fiction is a part of the tapestry of the show is surely a reason I enjoy it, but I get as much pleasure from Kyle using his super genius brain to hack into a mainframe as when he’s super nervous about his first date with Amanda.

Last night’s episode had some of the sci-fi stories to tell, but the real beauty of them was that they were there to facilitate telling stories about the characters. Kyle used his ability to visually explore memories to help Jessi, his female bellybutton-free counterpart, get some closure on the disappearance of her mother. Those scenes also brought some much needed empathy and humanity to Jessi and managed to convert me from a Jessi pseudo-hater into a full-on Jessi/Kyle shipper. And all of that happened in just one of the plots of the episode. In another thread, Josh and Andy, one of the best teenager relationships — one of the best relationships in general to be honest — on television, are forced to deal with their impending separation. And he makes all the stupid mistakes you know you shouldn’t make when you’re desperate not to lose the most important person in your life. Josh began the series as the slacker joker who never takes a moment seriously and if you started watching this show with this episode you would have been amazed at his evolution and growth.

I wish this show was continuing on. Mondays at 9, two shows come on that I watch: Heroes and Kyle XY. I think you all know my stance on Heroes by now, but I haven’t done my due diligence in expressing my love of this sweet little show. Don’t let the fact that it airs on ABC Family dissuade you: this show is worth your time. Enjoy it while it’s still here.

The stories centred around a family that took in a John Doe youth who has a mysterious past and no bellybutton. As Kyle learns how to live — making friends, respecting elders, all that stuff — the kids watching can get reinforcement for the virtues of good behaviour. But the characters are never saccharine, they’re not perfect little angels, and everything doesn’t always work out for them. The parents talk to their kids about their problems and when sex starts to rear its head into their increasingly complicated life it’s played realistically from both the children and the adults.

Well-written characters and intelligent plots are hard enough to come by in youth-oriented television in the world of Raven and Hanah Montana and Zack and Cody but then the show starts layering in sci-fi elements and that’s when it gets interesting for me. Kyle has no bellybutton. To a sci-fi geek like me that’s fairly self explanatory: he’s someone born from an artificial womb, which means he’s either a genetic experiment or a clone. But the show takes its time in exploring Kyle’s history and what he could be.

As the history deepens and the sci-fi elements go from implied to explicit, the show has seen declining ratings — something I hope doesn’t happen with this new season of Lost and its much more explicit sci-fi elements — and as the characters grow up the stories become more mature which could cause some hesitation from more conservative parents, but the show’s core messages remain the same. Or rather it did.

Last night, I screwed up on the PVR set up when I went to record How I Met Your Mother and inadvertantly recorded Two and a Half Men. It suffices to say I was less than pleased. I went down to watch HIMYM, about twenty minutes into the episode, and saw no wonderul red light on my PVR. And screwing up on the PVR, or the PVR screwing me over, is not the atypical event, but rather what immediately followed it: I sat down and started watching the show.

Often, when I sit down to watch a show my dad will drift in and out of the room, he’ll pay attention for a couple minutes and then head off somewhere else, or even strike up a conversation with me when he knows he should at least wait until the commercial. Last night was the first time I ever “drifted in” to a tv show when it was a new episode. This isn’t the same as flipping to Space and seeing Picard digging a trench on Risa and sticking around for the rest. This is flicking to ABC and seeing John Locke igniting a stick of dynamite and, having missed what came before deciding “eh, what the fuck” and watching from there.

Granted, How I Met Your Mother isn’t quite as continuity reliant as Lost or some of my other favourite shows, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. I still haven’t seen the first two-thirds of that episode. Normally, I’d download the episode that night and watch it shortly after, but that night I sat my ass down and said “eh, what the fuck.” This won’t become a typical behaviour on my part if only because it felt so weird, even in the moment, to not know what had come before but the fact that it happened at all is a sign of my age. Or at least that I’m becoming more like my father, and who the hell knows which is the worse of those.