I’ve been meaning to write a bit about Reaper, a show in the same vein as Chuck, ever since its season finale. One thing I noticed was the fairly significant similarities in their progression. Reaper ended its second season with what could be considered an evening of the playing field between Sam, the slacker Reaper looking for a way out of his contract with the Devil, and his pseudo-girlfriend Andi, who had shrinked from Sam this season after learning he was a son of the Devil: she had lost her soul to the Devil as well. Additionally, the season ended with a cryptic message from former demon, and current angel, Steve that everything that’s happening is happening for a reason, and the blueprints aren’t downstairs; the world was expanded, and Sam’s significance had increased.

Similarly, with Chuck the season ended with Chuck obtaining a newer more powerful Intersect which gave him physical capabilities as well; twisting this slightly to make the point, he was now on a level playing field with his pseudo-girlfriend Sarah, who until now had been the kickass super-agent of the relationship. And in the process of obtaining this new Intersect the scope of the story was expanded: the enemy of the last two years had been but one part of a larger machine. The parallels are striking.

That isn’t to say the shows were similar. In fact, the contrast between the two shows was much greater in their second seasons than their first, but the similarities in their arcs are  nonetheless notable.

Chuck and Reaper have followed similar paths on the production side of things as well. They were both affected, and truncated, by the Writer’s Strike and as a result both were “bubble shows” that made it back for a second season by the skin of their teeth. Of course, here their paths diverge slightly. Reaper was given a short season renewal. I’d initially read that it was a 9 episode season, but ultimately 13 aired; Chuck was given a full 22 episode pick up.

So Chuck returned in the fall and spent months developing its identity and fanbase to the point that when it was placed once again on the bubble (albeit as a likely renewal) the fans sprang into action. Reaper, with its shorter season, began airing as a mid-season replacement and didn’t have as much time to grow a fanbase. So, despite continual assertions of inevitable cancellation by TV rating analysts, the fanbase barely materialized and the show was killed, while Chuck’s wildly successful fan-driven campaign resulted in saving the show from the increasingly fickle chopping block.

But following the trend of cancelled shows being picked up by other networks, seen this year with Medium and (potentially) My Name is Earl, the execs behind Reaper were rumoured to be looking for a deal that would have allowed for a third season on a new network. Jenny Wade, who starred on this season of Reaper as a demon and Ben’s Anya-esque girlfriend, posted on twitter of an unofficial deal in the works, a deal that fell through rather quickly. Since then, I’ve been following her and she recently posted a video discussing Reaper. In it she, among other things, defends Tyler Labine and Bret Harrison, the stars of Reaper, from fans who said they gave up on the show. This is the first I’d heard of it, but I decided to hypothesize completely uninformed of the context of the comments.

Tyler Labine was cast in a new pilot which was subsequently greenlit for a season order. I can see how that can be construed as “abandoning” a show, but it’s simply the reality of the industry; in addition, his contract for Reaper almost certainly overrode any other deals and the pilot he filmed was merely “backup.” Bret Harrison is another story; he hasn’t quickly moved onto other roles or anything of that sort so the anger of the fans seems even more unjustified to me. What I think it boils down to, though, is Reaper’s unintended doppleganger: Chuck.

One of the more noted aspects of the Chuck renewal campaign was how vociferously some of the stars of the show encouraged the campaign: namely, Bret Harrison’s Chuck counterpart Zachary Levi. While at a convention in London, he took a group of Chuck fans to a nearby Subway and, following one of the ideas of the fan campaign, started buying five dollar footlongs. Subsequently, he appeared on CNN, and most likely other channels as well, to discuss the campaign and support the show and the renewal campaign. As far as I know, Bret Harrison did none of these things, so I presume that this is at least one aspect of why the fans seem displeased with Harrison. Which (finally) gets to the point of this post: are those sorts of actions the duty of an actor?

I don’t think so. An actor’s duty is to act. Beyond that, every actor does things differently. Acting, in the end, is just a job. To some people, their job is their life, to others it’s not. We’d all like to believe that all the actors in our favourite shows and movies ansolutely love the roles they’re playing, but that’s not always the case. And really, it’s not their job to love their job.

Maybe Zachary Levi really loves Chuck more than Bret Harrison loves Reaper. Or maybe that’s just who Levi is; maybe he will spend a week evangelizing all of his friends when he finds a great rib joint. I don’t know either of them. What I do know is that the both of them did a great job. They performed their roles well, and brought to life their characters. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit.

(Obviously, I care a little; personable and fan-friendly actors are better than the alternative, but I’m not going to chastise an actor for not being an acolyte for their show.)

And ultimately, Zachary Levi talking about Chuck on CNN did not renew the show. Zachary Levi would not have even been on CNN talking Chuck except for one thing: the fans. The fans created the campaign, the fans pushed the narrative, they renewed the show. Anything Zachary Levi did was ancillary, just as anything Bret Harrison could have done would have been. The only thing Zachary Levi did to renew the show was give a great performance, one that engendered such an enthusiastic fanbase. He did his job. And so did Harrison.

A few months ago, when I wrote my critique of Captain Janeway, I wrote that “I could go on for much longer (I really really could) ranting and foaming at the mouth about all the things that Voyager did wrong” and I wasn’t kidding. In fact, I’ve decided that, in an effort to pass some time while still avoiding growing as a human being (cause who needs all that hassle?), I’m going to go through all of Star Trek: Voyager and describe all the things the show did wrong and how it could have done things better.

I don’t mean when I saw “how it could have done things better” that what I will describe is the best way to do those things. I’m not a genius or anything, and that’s exactly the point. I’m just a guy with a blog, who watches way too much TV, and I can still do better than the shit the Voyager team plopped out on a weekly basis. I’ve already watched a few episodes from the first season and I plan to start my write ups soon. And for the record, my posts won’t be unbridled hating; already, I’ve seen a few decent ideas that were merely horribly executed. Who knows, maybe there will even be a good episode in there every so often.

In the 60′s and 70′s there was lots of hope and high expectations (never good things, FYI). Artificial Intelligence (AI) was going to be conquered with relative ease and by the turn of the millennium we’d have self-aware machines helping out humanity wherever they could out of the kindness of their heart, or they’d have taken over society and enslaved us all. Either way, everyone was certain it was going to happen Any Day Now.

That didn’t happen. Autonomous robots are still a fanciful thought with the closest approximations of thinking and feeling robots merely mimicking emotions they’ve been taught to mimic and parsing the expressions on our faces through complex analysis which ultimately comes down to further training of what emotions a certain kind of face means.

There are some efforts out there that rely on emergent properties popping up in simple loops of code which are initially taught a few base commands some of which would allow the code to modify itself. These are slow going but I think they are the best bet right now.

A few years ago I was considering a minor in cognitive neuropsychology, primarily because I was interested in AI and I wanted to try it from a different angle. Rather than come at it from a mathematical deterministic manner, I began to think about AI development from an evolutionary standpoint.

Intelligence didn’t come from nowhere; it took thousands of generations of incremental improvements, both physical and mental, to get to the level of humans, or even the level of dogs. Which is why self-modifying programs seem like the best bet of the available options, but I think there is one thing that self-modifying programs lack that could be crucial in developing truly independent and self-aware intelligent machines: childhood.

I’m sure that my stance has either been attempted enough times to be proven useless or is actively being researched by people in the field who know much much more about all this stuff, but I think that the AI researchers out there need to start looking at creating families. Instill in the base code of the first generation of programs a need for procreation and a few other basic operations and let life flourish or crumble.

I’m not saying that this is easy, but I think it will be the method by which substantial artificially intelligent machines will be created. Rather than create something in our own image, we must generate an environment conducive to development and allow it to persist.

I’m going to discuss tonight’s episode of Heroes, so avert your eyes if you still give a damn about what happens on that show.

In one of my first rants against Heroes, I pointed out a glaring flaw in the writing of the show: Angela Petrelli is introduced as a distraught widow stealing socks just to feel alive, and yet this year it was revealed that she had coldly assassinated her husband. It was one of the most scathing and unassailable criticisms of the show I had. Well tonight they retconned the hell out of that. Apparently, she stole (or bought, I really was barely paying attention) socks when she needed to see a small action make a big difference or some bullshit (again, barely paying attention). Well, I call shenanigans.

In general, I’m OK with retcons in comics. Not necessarily when Spider-man #220 retcons Spider-man #108, though and here’s why. The stories are far enough apart to know for certain that it wasn’t a planned reveal. Ten issues apart, I’d accept it. But that far apart, it’s just breaking continuity because you’re lazy. The instances I approve of retcons are when a new story is being told from the beginning. So the origin story of Iron Man in Incredible Iron Man can be different, even drastically so, than the one in Iron Man because they’re two separate instances of that character with new stories being told. To allow yourself to tell new stories and explore new ideas, sometimes the details of a character’s past must be adjusted. But in any other instance, I don’t like retcons.

The worst part about this is that I sympathize with the writers in this instance. Bryan Fuller came back to a plodding mess with a bunch of inconsistent continuity hacked together, and he had to at least attempt to reconcile it all. So he had Matt Parkman find out about his child and according to spoilers I’ve read, he’ll get back together with the wife he left for no reason at all but plot expediency. And now he’s tried to change Angela Petrelli’s origin to have a connection to this event at Coyote Hills. Of course, there’s still no reason for everybody going back.

She said it was crucial to fix their current problems to go to Coyote Hills and face the past. But what did it really accomplish? We got that one salient point out of it. Which, I’m still not sure makes any sense. We didn’t really get much else from the episode. Sure there was a bit of backstory filled in; we learned Charles Deveaux actually had a power, though how it connects to his post-mortem conversation with Peter is still unclear; we got a little bit more of Nathan and Peter’s brotherly bickering; we were also told that Claire is actually really awesome and brave, despite her continued idiocy and short-sightednesss. And when it all came down to it, none of those revelations led to their fractured relationships being healed. At least not in any rational way. Instead, it was Sylar posing as Nathan Petrelli that seemed to push them together and let them forget their troubled past.

What I’m trying to say here is, it didn’t work for me. It all seems hamfisted. Admittedly, it almost has to be hamfisted because of what came before it, but that doesn’t make the experience any less distasteful.

Generally speaking, I’m OK with what Obama has done so far. I’m not particularly fond of the way he’s handling the economic crisis — it’s a little too deferential to the whims of an industry that imploded through incompetence and greed — but he’s generally improved America. And this is only three months in. That said, I’m not such a fanatic that I can ignore the increasingly serpentine dictates coming from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.

Glenn Greenwald has been following, and closely scrutinizing, the DOJ’s positions in the hopes that Obama’s campaign rhetoric would lead to real change in the department most disturbed and malformed as a result of Bush’s corrupt administration. There have been advances, none miraculous. But what’s more troubling is the movement towards some of Bush’s positions rather than away. Obama’s Department of Justice continues to strengthen the abuses of power put in place by the Bush administration.

I was sympathetic at first. So early into his term, we shouldn’t be so demanding. Indeed, many of the problems the DOJ is faced would inflict wide-spread collateral damage. But the DOJ is doing more than asking for more time to consider the proper solution, they are fighting to ensure the unjust status quo remains. Get with it, Obama. Fix this shit now.

Here’s a screenshot of my system tray on my computer from about an hour ago.

The red “FF” icon is video decoding using ffdshow. The blue “FF” icon is audio decoding using ffdshow. And the white Omega-ish icon is Haali’s media splitter, a tool to split a movie file into its video and audio parts for decoding purposes. I guess what I’m trying to say here is, my computer’s pretty busy right now. It’s also sort of mind-blowing how utterly normal it is to be able to do all this video and audio rendering simultaneously while still watching a movie, browsing the web, and myriad other tasks which only a few years ago would’ve had to be pre-empted by any video rendering, let alone multiple renderings of different videos.

The first computers were used to calculate polynomial equations, and ballistic trajectories. Now we use them to create Kyle XY videos and Lolcats. At first glance, that’s a bad thing, a sign of the dumbing down of society. But in reality, it’s a sign of the democratization of power. Computing power, that is. Those other tasks are still performed by computers, but now computers can do more than that. Beyond that, computers are more readily available. More people have more access to more computers. And we’re not all mathematicians tired of calculating polynomial tables. We have varying interests, some meaningful, others less so. Some of the things which interest modern society may disgust me greatly, but they are not signs of the devolving of society. They are side-effects of the ease with which anybody can express their true interests.

We’re not getting dumber, merely more aware of how dumb we all are.

I recently saw a commercial about using a supercomputer to analyse traffic flow and direct the traffic lights to reduce gridlock, but I know for a fact that traffic lights want gridlock. Every day when I drive home, I get stopped by nearly every light on the route. The light turns green and shortly after the one just down the road turns red; just in time to bring everyone that just made it through the last light to a halt. This is not an accident. It’s designed to slow people down. Slower drivers means fewer accidents. Which is a good thing, overall.

Of course, it has an unintended side-effect, one which likely increases the danger of accidents. Humans are resilient by nature, we tend not to give up easily. So when we come out of the gate looking to get something done, see the path closing ahead of us, however temporarily, we think “if only I got there a little bit faster.” And so we hit the gas a little harder, we push the pedal down a little farther, and we’re tens of a second away from rationalizing making it through the light. So we push a little harder, and finally we make it through. Human progress.

But as your speed increases, your likelihood of pushing through on a risky yellow also increases and your likelihood of getting in an accident (and a higher speed one at that) increases in kind. These gridlock inducing measures are designed with speed reduction in mind, but it inevitably leads to speed increases, and brakes getting hit a little harder each day, getting worn that much faster, leading to even more accidents. It’s a lose-lose scenario. I wish the people that programmed these lights understood that. Maybe the supercomputer will help with that.

The networks are railing about President Obama’s recent request for network time, especially given how frequently these requests have come in comparison to previous Presidents. In fact, the head of NBC recently attributed Chuck’s lackluster ratings to Obama’s preemption a few weeks ago. I somewhat understand their annoyance, their job is to get high ratings and when a show’s momentum is interrupted that can affect their ratings. But at the same time, there’s an easy solution in all of this: work with the White House ot make these a scheduled event. Like FDR’s fireside chats, give Obama a chance to inform America on a regular basis. So, with the White House, find a good time that the networks can all give away, and then schedule that for Obama. If Obama decides that there’s no need for an update any given week, then they can all fill the time with a repeat or something.

Maybe Fox will have to move American Idol one night out of the week, maybe some other network will have to switch a show. But in reality, any show which is sufficiently popular won’t suffer too much from a night switch. We often blame networks for constantly switching time slots of quality shows leading to their inevitable cancellation, but in reality it’s poor marketing of those new time slots that kills the shows. Any show they want people to keep watching they market the shit out of to inform its audience that it’s changed times. So give Obama his variety hour. And stop the fucking whining.

Last night, yet another of the final episodes of Kyle XY aired, and the show still manages to amaze me with its ability to draw realistic characters while maintaining its sci-fi arcs.

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.

Yeah, that one. I forgot to mention it in my initial rant that the real ending of the episode had that horrible painting as its climax. I mentioned the obviously telegraphed “HRG is a double agent” scenes from near the start and near the end of the episode as the bookends because that idiotic scene with the painting was more of an epilogue. But because I was reminded of this stupendously bad scene by a few other reviews I’ve come across, I just had to write a quick post to make sure everyone knew my stance on that particular scene and the painting in it.

Fuck off, Heroes.

I’ve recently taken to reading and posting on the Television Without Pity forums after watching Lost on wednesday nights. For the most part, it’s a vast improvement over the Ain’t It Cool News talkbacks I used to frequent to get my Lost theorizing fix. But they have their flaws.

In an attempt to weed out trolls and flame wars they have strict rules about your demeanor. You have to write grammatically correct and full sentences. You can’t attack personally, you need to stick to the subject of the thread and of the forum. You’re also not allowed to write spoilers in the “episode discussion” threads which is great because you can theorize and question without worrying about someone spoiling the show. But these rules and restrictions come at a price.

Every time I come to the forums, I read post after post which criticizes Kate and Jack. They call Kate a cold-blooded selfish bitch and basically do nothing but wish death upon her. They call Jack an idiot and say that he is the worst and most boring character on the show. But Kate is not a selfish bitch; she has a fucked up history, lots of baggage, a fear of commitment, and lots of other things wrong with her. But she feels every minute of that. And throughout the series thus far, she has been incredibly selfless, and willing to help the entire Island community. Jack is sometimes an idiot, but everyone is sometimes. Jack had to live his entire life under the thumb of a father he was unable to please. A father who would criticize him for attempting to help out a kid being bullied. His entire life is guided by that need to fix things; to impress his father. When he flies to Australia to pick up Christian Shephard’s body, he’s doing more than just mourning a father. He’s realizing that he will never earn his father’s love.

I’m not discussing these crucial aspects of their personality because I think that what they do on the show is what I would do or the best thing to do. It is, however, what I think they would do. These characters are not static. Jack tries to fight these urges, Kate tries to fight these urges. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they don’t. That is at the very core of humanity, and to attack these characters because they are consistent and not merely set pieces through which the plot progresses is idiotic.

So, when a forum poster attacks Jack for not questioning Kate further about Aaron’s fate and calls Kate a murderer, I respond forcefully with a logical rebuttal. Jack has never seen Kate as a murderer. He has never cared what she did in her past. He knows her. Whether or not he actually knows her, he thinks he does. He trusts her more than anyone else. That’s why he asks her for her support when trying to convince the Oceanic 6 to lie. He loves her so deeply, that he’d give up his freedom and perform surgery on a man he has come to revile so that she could be happy with another man. To think that Kate having murdered someone, no matter how justified or unjustified it was, would sway Jack’s trust of Kate is downright intellectually dishonest.

So, in my response to this practically trollish comment, I called that poster out for making that statement. I asked them if they were really going to use the “Kate is a murderer” line. I followed this up with a calm and correct rebuttal as to why that was a foolish statement. I then followed that up by telling the poster that they should judge the character’s actions by the character, not by what you want the character to be. I held no ill will to that poster, but I sincerely hoped they read that and realized the error in their analysis.

Instead, my message was deleted and I got a warning from a moderator because you are not allowed to discuss other posters on the thread. Which is a foolish rule, because the forum’s users lose any ability to examine the merit of one anothers’ examinations. I’m not saying that we need to be boorish in our critiques but without the analysis of analysis, any improvement of ideas occurs away from the group which results in the group seeing the improvements but not the improvements to the process which led to that. Perhaps, I was too brusque, but my point was valid and even ignoring the direct communication toward the other poster there was still content apropos to the discussion in that post. Deleting it only hurts the collective intelligence of the group.

I understand the need for some level of moderation on forums. Aint it Cool News’ talkbacks have no moderation save some manual processes enacted when a particularly persistent troll writes hundreds of useless messages and harasses the community indiscriminately. Without moderation, most of the internet would devolve into a slew of attacks and slurs. But to delete valid content because it was deemed slightly snippy according to the whims of a moderator is unacceptably, and unecessarily, Draconian.

Making fun of Matthew Good lyrics is a time-honoured tradition for me. I used to do it on my old blog and in the occassional short story, but it’s been a while so I thought it was time again. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy (some of) Matthew Good’s music. In fact, the song I’m about to ridicule is one of my favourites by him. Here’s the start of the song, which is primarily spoken word over instrumentals.

You know, today I was asked only one question
One question all day
Do you know what that was?
“Do you want this supersized?”

Bullshit. Balderdash, even. Granted, I can come up with one or two extremely specific scenarios where that could happen but the most typical one — ordering food at McDonald’s — would have a question preceding that simply asking for your order. Lawyered! I get it, you think society is nothing but mindless corporate drones and pigs at the trough. I really do appreciate the inclusivity of your politics. I mean, I know I’m opinionated as fuck, but at least I target my disdain at specific groups which are disdainful not the entire fucking world.

Supersize guns
Supersize planes
Supersize satellites
…
How about we supersize 3rd World debt relief?

Laaame. Seriously, that’s just a stupid line. Supersize 3rd World debt relief? How ’bout you supersize your ego? Oh wait, that’s not possible. Also, I know you wrote this song when Canada was running a surplus but dude, we’ve got enough money problems as it is. Let’s put out our fire before we go water the neighbour’s lawn.

Around here our ambition throws a non-perishable item in a donation bin at Christmas
And it pats itself on the fucking back because it thinks it’s done something decent

Yes, Matt Good. Please belittle all the people in the world who try to be generous. I guess they’re not generous all the time so you might as well treat them like shit for giving even a bit of a damn. That’ll get society to be nice and apathetic, and that’s really what your music is all about isn’t it?

So this moron here is claiming that Obama was disrespectful to Latinos because none of his big cabinet appointments were Latinos despite their avid support of him. He also claims that Alberto Gonzales was a good idea simply because it broached a racial barrier. Completely ignore the gross misconduct and all the other reasons why Gonzales was terrible and just look exclusively at his skin.

First of all, the cabinet of a presidential administration is not there to meet racial quotas or to pay back favors done during the campaign. They are there to advise the president, and ensure their mandates are implemented. (I’m grossly simplifying this because I barely know American politics, and yet I still know this guy’s stupid)

If you think there are more qualified people that should be in Obama’s cabinet that’s a perfectly fine criticism, but they can’t be more “qualified” because of the race of the parents. You fucking idiot.

Second of all, Obama was not a good choice because he’s black, and Gonzales certainly wasn’t a good choice because he’s Latino. The fraction of people that voted for Obama simply to breach a racial barrier in politics is not what won him the presidency. It was his political acumen, in collusion with the economic meltdown and an infamously bad sitting president. I’m sure his race helped him in some groups and hurt him in others. But in the end, he won primarily because he was the best person for the job.

Basically, that guy’s a douche and a moron. He also defends Bush’s appointment of a Latino to Commerce Secretary and immediately follows it up with a rebuke of Obama because he appointed Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary. The guy’s a moron, people.

As you all know, I Love TV. Which is why I was neither surprised nor quite expecting a new study that says that unhappy people watch more TV. It wasn’t particularly surprising to me because when you have a series of posts dedicated to how depressed you are, it’s kind of implied you’re at least slightly unhappy. But I didn’t really expect it because TV is actually one of the things in my life that gives me happiness.

This study talks about how TV is escapism — which is true of any entertainment media, even though the same study says that happier people read more books — but in many ways, good television holds a mirror up to you and examines the various aspects of humanity. A few years ago, I was at a (cliche alert) crossroads in my life. I was around half way through a university degree which was promising but didn’t hold the appeal it did when I first applied. Beyond that, my faith was dwindling. For years, I had a constantly evolving understanding of God and religion. When I first had my religious re-awakening in high school, a lot of people thought it was because I had a crush on one of the girls that went to my church, but the fact is that I simply wanted to understand God better. I was experiencing teenage angst and wanted to figure what “all this” is about.

My faith grew over those years but ultimately I found myself having an understanding of God that differed and contradicted the one that both the Bible taught and that my church taught. Because of my growing skepticism of psychics, ESP, and other paranormal phenomenon and my growing understanding of how science explained the universe, I no longer thought that Jesus was actually the son of God. I still believed that he was a wise man likely sent by God to teach people a newer better way to live and worship, but I could no longer consider myself a Christian.

So, I was confused about life, the meaning of it all, and a few other things. Around that time, I started rewatching Babylon 5, a show that I hadn’t watched in quite some time, and I think it’s safe to say that it changed my life. I went from a mass of self-doubt and uncertainty about pretty much everything to having a very solid understanding of myself and the way I wanted to live in this world. I still consider Babylon 5 one of the best shows ever made, and almost certainly the best sci-fi show ever made.

There are a lot of times throughout my life that TV has helped me. Not because it let me forget about my sadness for a few minutes, but because I discovered new things. The long, drawn out character development that happens in television allows you to connect more intimately with their lives and in turn make discoveries about yourself.

Of course, one telling aspect of this study (what you didn’t think I’d turned this post into an opportunity to whine about personal problems did you?) is that it covers 30 years of television and television has only recently become something more than mere escapism. What was once a rare occurrence on television — serialized storytelling and complex relationships — is now a mainstay. Television, in the intervening years, has grown up. It is more than a time filler now. It can and does explore life with equal or greater depth and insight as other more respected media. And in another 30 years, after a generation of people who have grown up with intelligent and thought-provoking television, the data will tell a different tale.

Christian Rock sucks. It does. You shouldn’t try to defend it, you should be more worried about why you listen to such shitty music¹.

It’s shitty half of the time because it’s cloying and cliche and the other half of the time because it’s deceitful. The first half is the stuff you see in one minute mini-infomercials late at night. The second half is the stuff that makes it out of the core Christian Rock culture and into mainstream rock.

Switchfoot. POD. Seventh Day Slumber. This Beautiful Republic. Christian Rock bands generally have really lame names. And if you run across the music of any of the bands that “pass” as regular rock, you’d probably like it enough to listen but not enough to love it. It becomes a part of the din of songs that get played on your local rock radio station. But, for me at least, when you find out they are a Christian Rock band, suddenly every time their songs come on you can hear nothing beyond their hidden evangelizing.

It’s not that I dislike that they infuse their music with their religious beliefs; the best music comes from your most strongly felt emotions. But those bands go about it in a deceitful way. When interviewed they claim they’re not “Christian Rock” even when they began their career in the highly accessible Christian Rock tours that can really raise the profile of up and coming bands. I understand that the label of “Christian Rock” has a dirty connotation to it, but it has that because of bands like those that deny the meanings behind their songs. Rather than admit that they’re praising God, they pretend the song is about a girl.

The less notable segment of Christian Rock isn’t much better. With their over-the-top references to Jesus and God, they go beyond simply expressing their feelings and thoughts and head into the world of evangelizing. And when your songs are little more than evangelical chants wrapped in rhythm, you not only lock yourself into the Christian base, a base which doesn’t need evangelizing in the first place, but you reduce your credibility as an artist.

I’m an atheist but that doesn’t mean I detest religion; I simply have no need or desire for it in my personal life. But many of my favourite shows and movies have religious and mystical concepts at their very heart. So don’t think I hate Christian Rock simply because it involves God. I hate it because it involves God poorly.

An example of a band which is not Christian Rock but has lyrics which discuss God and Jesus very openly (and earnestly) is Page France. I’ve listened to most of Page France’s “Hello, Dear Wind” and overall the album’s a little weak, but the tracks that I find myself returning to since the initial listen — the opening two tracks (Chariot, and Jesus) and the closing track (Feather) — all contain various levels of religious and Christian symbols. But the key is that those songs talk about Jesus and God in novel ways, and they appear to be not an active part of their music. Their songs don’t include God because they think their songs should include God, but merely because the songs they end up writing include him.

I said Christian Rock sucks, but the truth is that Christian Rock shouldn’t even exist. Like the “Pro-American” parts of America Sarah Palin talks about, Rock music isn’t something to be chopped up and spread among ideologies. Music which contains religious references isn’t Religious Music. Categorizing music is fine, in fact I Love it, but there’s a difference between an adjective and a noun. A noun is what you are, but an adjective is simply a modifier. Much like the difference between calling a gay person “a gay” and “a gay person” it seem nominal at best, but the difference is staggering in its connotations. And far too many people don’t treat “Christian Rock” as an adjective followed by a noun.

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Footnotes

1. With apologies to Daniel Tosh [↩]