Film is a collaborative art form. When someone is nominated for Best Director, they are receiving praise for the costumes, for the lighting, for the lenses used, for the performances, for the script, for the way it was shot, for the way it was edited, and yes for the way they championed all those things to make a final product. I’m not saying that Directors don’t offer up tremendously valuable work or that they shouldn’t be considered for awards because they rely on others to make a final product.

Serkis is one of the few actors who has figured out motion capture as an art form. He acts through totally fictional characters, but if you were to compare his work to any of the wholly CG characters you see in other films that don’t have an actor providing a base performance, it would be laughable to claim that he contributed nothing to the film.

Should we create a new category called Best Baseline Performance for CG Character? I guess we could, but I don’t see the point. What Serkis does is acting. He acts without little balls tapped to a spandex suit just as frequently as with. However they altered his performance in post production is a part of post production and should be examined as a separate act.

A recent addition to this group of series is Doctor Who. Two of the last three companions have had romantic feelings toward The Doctor¹ and the most recent companion, Amy Pond, has continued the trend with gusto. Which is where the angry fans get involved.

Many² fans are angry that every companion since Russell T Davies rebooted the show has been a potential paramour; I think it’s probably less than ideal if every companion is like this, but at the same time I’m much more interested in how it works for each individual case and I think the way they’ve handled Amy Pond’s infatuation with The Doctor has so far been pitch perfect.

But going a step farther, I think the new dynamic that has been established since the show returned is a more realistic one. A brilliant, intelligent man brings you around through time on fantastic adventures; do you expect anyone to not fall in love with the guy?

Footnotes

1. Some people claim that even Donna Noble had romantic tension with The Doctor; maybe I just hate Donna Noble too much to see that.
2. I know that’s a weasel word, and I’m not linking to any specific critiques, but I don’t feel like looking them up; they’re out there.

Quick plot summary: Boyd drugged Echo/Caroline so she wouldn’t be able to tell everyone that he was Rossum’s founder. Then they went straight to Tucson and got arrested by Rossum goons. Boyd ‘broke out’ with Topher and led him to the lab where they were building the remote imprinting device. It wasn’t working and Topher fixed it, at which point Boyd reveals that as part of his plan and reveals he’s Rossum’s founder. Ballard and Mellie went off to destroy Rossum’s supercomputer and as they were doing it Boyd forced DeWitt to activate Mellie’s sleeper mode. Ballard managed to get Mellie to ignore her assassin orders but not for long so she killed herself. Boyd holds Ballard hostage to stop Echo from killing him, but she shoots Ballard in the leg to get him out of the way. She gets into a tussle with Boyd and when Boyd gets the upper hand, Topher appears from behind and Dollifies Boyd with the remote imprinting device he fixed earlier. Echo tells the Doll Boyd to wear a vest of C4 and carry a grenade into Rossum’s supercomputer and pull the pin. They destroy the supercomputer, Topher has the only working prototype of the remote imprinting device and Rossum’s two founders appear to be dead. The world is saved. Cut to ten years later, the world is in turmoil, Ballard and Echo are fighting their way through the streets of LA, now an apocalyptic battleground.

As all of that was happening, Anthony and Priya headed to Tucson to help out and they did, and Dr Saunders is now a new version of Clyde, wears a suit and is still outrageously hot.

OK, so let’s talk about Boyd’s master vision. Years ago he saw Clyde’s tech, presumably before anyone else since it was pretty wildly revolutionary, and decided that because it existed it would be used, abused, and eventually lead to the downfall of man through weaponized imprinting. So, rather than destroying the technology, he decided to neuter Clyde, take the technology far beyond Clyde’s initial goals, abuse it to become one of the most powerful men in the world so he could find a vaccine for imprinting, use that vaccine on the precious few he wanted to save, and then create the apocalypse himself so that he and his followers could be the few sane people in a world of madmen.

I guess it works, but I think it would have made more sense if Boyd didn’t think he was being the good guy. He’s fomenting an apocalypse, he developed and distributed the technology he’s supposedly trying to stop. He’s not the good guy. Buffy villains always knew they were the villain, it’s what made them interesting. The Mayor of Sunnydale is the best example out there of an affable villain, and that seems like a better mold to make Boyd from. Nonetheless, it worked well enough. The one thing I particularly like about villain-Boyd was his dislike of Ballard, since Boyd and Ballard apparently have the same fundamental belief — that the technology will be abused if it exists — though one of them is obviously thinking bigger and the ways they react to that fundamental belief are diametrically opposed.

The ending was also interesting but at the same time uninteresting. Either the technology got reinvented and the world still ended, someone else took over at Rossum and finished the job, or Boyd and/or Clyde had other copies of themselves, along with the schematics for the remote imprinting device, and continued their work until they brought about the apocalypse. One of those things happened, and it might be fleshed out and explained in the series finale, but there’s a question of it really matters what particular finger pushed the button on the apocalypse. Besides, the promo for the finale made me think the show has something else planned.

And since we’re on the topic, I thought I’d pooh-pooh the finale as it is sold in that promo. It seems like they’re planning on having Topher invent a new magic that can restore people to their original personalities. And I can only assume also make imprinting either impossible or closer to the way Echo experiences it, thus making the tech mostly harmless. The world will still have collapsed into horror for ten years meaning that rebuilding the world as we know it is a long-term project unlikely to be finished in their life time. And it’s also just more magic. I know that the show is sci-fi, but inventing a new technology that fixes everything each time things get worse is not a good system. It’s what Voyager did for years and we all know how I feel about Voyager.

Still, I hold out hope that the finale will be better than that. And I guess we’ll know for sure in a couple weeks.

Here’s the setup. Midichlorians are not the cause of Force powers, they are a parasite which feeds on light side Force powers, a parasite designed by the Sith long ago. In addition to feeding on the light side, midichlorians die in the face of the dark side.

So what does this explain? Well, when a Jedi comes up against a Sith they always seem to lose the battle for a while before coming back and winning the day. Why? Well the Sith’s dark side Force powers start to kill off the midichlorians and eventually the Jedi’s powers increase because of the decrease.

What’s more, because of the universal pairing of Force powers with midichlorians — and the Jedis’ failure to understand that correlation does not equal causation — the Jedis have this idea that if you don’t have a midichlorian count you cannot have Force powers. And so the Sith are able to operate in plain sight by merely exerting their dark side powers to limit their exposure.

It’s a really clever theory and there are a few more nuances I’d encourage you to read about at the original post.

Flashforward got a lot of hype as the next Lost — a laughable prospect to anyone aware of how brilliant Lost is — and while it certainly was one of the more promising pilots of the last few years, it is with equal certainty not the next Lost.

The one advantage it has over Lost is that it wears its science fiction on its sleeve; unlike Lost, which cloaked its science fiction with mystery, intrigue, and vague fantasy, Flashforward is from the outset delving into the implications of time travel and discussions of free will vs predestination. Unfortunately, that’s also Flashforward’s greatest weakness.

The first two acts which detail the initial cataclysm — in case you were wondering what the fuck Flashforward is, the essential premise is that for 137 seconds everyone in the world blacked out and during that time they all saw a vision of their future, specifically April 29, 2010 10PM — are great stuff. The carnage of the aftermath is visceral and jarring with lots of great short shots of people suffering through the fog of war slowly lifting over them allowing a clearer picture to form.

But once that fog lifts the show devolved into a series of conversations pondering the implications of what they’ve experienced. Because of this, there’s not nearly enough time devoted to giving the characters some much needed depth. Joseph Fiennes’ Mark Benford is given some level of history, and somewhat necessarily his wife as well though not with the same depth. I find Benford’s AA sponsor one of the more fulfilling of the characters right now so I take that as a sign that the show knows how to develop characters well, it just opted to utilize the pilot to explore directly some of the headier concepts the show’s dealing with. Not the choice I’d make but it doesn’t ruin the show, unless it becomes a running pattern.

Though the geek in me appreciated the explicit geeky discussions of free will vs predestination, I’ve come to appreciate the character driven exploration of these sorts of ideas that Lost does so well, and so the lack of character development bothered me. Of course, the show managed to make me almost forget about my issues with the show’s characters by ending off on the excellent cliffhanger with the lone person walking amongst the blacked out masses during those fateful 137 seconds. All told, I’m excited for more, though I’m also hoping for more from the show as it finds its way.

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.

Futurama has been renewed for 26 episodes to begin airing around a year from now, and all the voice actors are coming back (presumably along with the writers) to revive the animated show that mixed childish humour and deep and profound musings almost as well as Pixar does in their big screen adventures. I’ll be watching. You should too.

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.

Of course, I wouldn’t title this post “The Death Spiral Continues” if I were extolling the wonders of a show. I merely take the time to discuss Chuck to contrast it with the increasingly dreaful show that follows it Monday nights on NBC. This week’s episode of Heroes continued to disappoint and downright offend as Parkman’s inexplicable prophetic painting continues to repeat a story that was overplayed and poorly executed when they did it the first five times. And when Rebel gives them useful intel, Matt and Peter finally start thinking and they double up on the mind powers to help them get past security. A smart idea and they got a couple good scenes out of it. Of course, why they wouldn’t at least cover the security camera in the room — leaving the others wondering who it could be — is one of many questions that are aroused by the idiotic behaviour in this episode.

Indeed, while in “Building 26″, Matt and Peter get ahold of video surveillance and Matt’s first plan is to leverage that information to get Daphne back. “One life at a time” he says, as though that makes sense. If your plan is to chip away at the problem until it’s been fixed and then suddenly you’re given material capable of destroying the very foundation of the bricks you’re chipping at, a change in stratagem might be in order. And then, when Peter escapes with that information, instead of bringing the information immediately to all the news outlets and uploading it to Youtube and posting to dailykos under the username LoveIsTheAnswer about the abuses of the Executive Branch and how horrifying the rounding up of these superpowered-Americans is for the freedoms of all Americans, he calls up his totally trustworthy brother who’s never betrayed him before and makes a deal to exchange all the incriminating evidence he has for Matt and Daphne. Even Nathan is astounded! It’s the stupidest deal ever. If you release the information to the public, Matt and Daphne would be ultimately freed, along with everyone else they’d illegally imprisoned. That’s what TNC would call “stepping over dollars to snatch up nickels.”

Oh but the stupid is strong with this episode. That’s just one of three equally stupid and repetitive stories. Claire is protecting Aquaman and, while he’s less annoying than West from last year, the story comes across virtually identical. They’re on the run and the guy saves her with his power somehow. Meanwhile, they discover that they’re not alone, that they have someone to share this part of themselves with. It’s just boring and Claire’s ongoing self-assuredness in the face of her obvious inadequacies is exasperating. And Sylar rediscovers his dad. Turns out his dad sold him to his uncle. Who knew?! The scene where Sylar relives that memory was played as though it were new astonishing information when it’s been known for at least a couple episodes now. The closest thing the scene has to a twist is when Sylar’s dad kills Sylar’s mom via some good old fashioned head-slicing telekenesis. Which, much like last week’s reveal of Mohinder’s pseudo-complicity, doesn’t make sense. Sylar obtained his telekinesis through his real power, the ability to understand complex systems intuitively and “fix” them, so to give telekinetic powers to his dad makes negative sense.

I’m feeling more and more angry with Heroes each new episode. I truly want the show to be good. I don’t like abandoning shows, especially not shows with sci-fi and comic book trappings, but Heroes is not entertaining for me anymore. Other shows are much better. Chuck, for example. Watch them instead.

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.

Of course, the arguments for and against Web 2.0 are numerous and varied. Pretending like I have the definitive answer is absurd, but I do find that historically the solution to most problems is found between the two extremes. Which is why slashdot’s “Fire Hose”  — which allows user generated content to be voted on by anyone but still requires editor’s to officially upgrade it to the front page — is the closest I’ve seen to the best of both worlds.

Of course, people have said for a few years now “go to Digg for the stories, go to slashdot for the comments” which is true for two reasons. Firstly, comments on Digg are frequently stupid, ignorant, racist, prejudiced, or all of these and many more. Their comments are so offensive at times that I no longer go to the site at all because I was simply disgusted by the comments I was seeing on a daily basis. Slashdot, on the other hand, tends to have more comments per story but because of their moderation technique you tend to get really smart or really funny stuff bubbling to the top. Granted, the know-it-alls on slashdot know that they know it all, but if you’re willing to suffer through a bit of conceit you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new or at the very least be given another perspective on something you already know.

Slashdot has an antiquated perception among the younger internet dwellers but I think that slashdot will survive at least as long as Digg and most likely outlive it because of its ability to grow into a new internet experience (social networking, et. al.) while retaining its original goals and experiences. But the real reason slashdot is still relevant is a simple one: quotes like this in random user’s signatures:

“Sisko > Picard > Kirk > Archer > null > Janeway”

Granted, I would have swapped Picard and Sisko but to see another person judge Janeway accurately warms the ventricles of my heart.

Watchmen is a great comic. It’s a zeitgeist for a time which our world managed to avoid, filled with mounting conflicts on a global scale and the constant fear of mutually assured destruction. Watchmen is set in a world where superheroes really fight crime through vigilante justice; most of them are good-hearted people who want to make a difference in their city. The key difference from the classic superheroes is that they have no mythic origins, they have no extraordinary powers. They saw this terrifying world and decided to make any difference they could. These are people who took on a battle larger than themselves not because they thought they could win but because it had to be done.

All except for one. Doctor Manhattan is a God among men. His powers seem limitless and we are to him little more than particles of dust flitting about in Brownian motion. He has all the trappings of superheroism but because he is inherently inhuman he becomes a complex compelling character whose decisions sometimes impress and often horrify. But the story of Watchmen isn’t about Doctor Manhattan. It is the story of the people who didn’t wake up one day with superpowers and then decide they should fight crime. They didn’t need a convoluted catastrophic event like an uncle being killed by the robber they could’ve stopped earlier to make them take the leap into the selfless, unforgiving, and sometimes overpowering, world of crimefighting. These people walked down a street one day, saw a mugging that everyone else ignored, and stepped in.

Watchmen is quite probably the greatest comic ever made. Because the characters feel real, and because the questions of morality and power are substantive and have a real, though ambiguous, contribution to make. And for reasons which are intrinsic to the paper; it must be read to be understood. So when I heard about a Watchmen movie I first felt elation. The idea of it happening was fantastic. Of course then I realised it’s the implementation that would destroy it. The odds of the film doing justice to its source material are so mindbogglingly high that anyone genuinely and purely excited without a hint of doubt or hesitation isn’t a true fan of Watchmen.

I feel that I must preface this post with a history. This post originated over eight months ago during a sheep brain dissection lab I had for a psychology course. The original question was “do sheep zombies need to eat sheep brains?” and from there the discourse progressed. After the creating the title (which was a solid twenty minutes of dictionary lookups and googling) I pretty much ran out of steam. But then, just a couple weeks ago my interest was renewed for no known reason and I began writing. And boy howdy did I write. Not only is this on the long-winded side of my typical post, but when I initially created this post I put it in the category of “Humour” which I seem to have been left by the wayside in favour of a more serious discussion of the topic. Though I know there are flaws and forgotten topics along the way, I’m sick of seeing it in my list of drafts and so I release it from the black hole that is my perfectionism.

Zombies

Zombies. The black sheep of the supernatural monster world. They’re the youngest of the group and shrouded in mystery. In their origins zombies were simply reanimated dead controlled by a Voodoo master. In fact, they were often used as mindless slaves for manual labour. Over time, the zombie was twisted into its current, more menacing, state: that of an undead creature with no intelligence of its own and a desire only for survival. Zombies represent a fear most people who live in an individualistic culture share: the loss of identity. A zombie is simply another blob in the horde seeking sustenance. Like the Borg of Star Trek, the zombie horde seems to absorb any and all things in their path and in the process lose any semblance of individualism.

Many zombies survive by the eating of living flesh, though their taste for brains is the one proclivity which resonates with movie goers. It’s obvious why brain eating becomes the most noticeable feature of zombies; as humans, we fear the thing which takes away that which we treasure the most. So, while many zombie films do not treat the brain as the most desired part of human anatomy, for our purposes here we will imagine a prototypical zombie for whom this desire is paramount. In particular, we will discuss why homo-chauvinism perpetuates through zombie culture.

So the question we’re going to ask today is whether or not zombies exist in other creatures and if cross-species feeding can occur. Why is it that zombie films never show a cute little puppy dog being gobbled up? Why do we never see a group of fleeing humans come upon a serene farm only to be attacked by zombie sheep? It’s not because these images wouldn’t have an impact on the viewer; they could be terrifying in one instance and hilarious in another. Is there some secret zombie dogma by which all films are compared? Do the creators of these films lack the imagination to shock the viewer with something original? What is it that zombies really require? If it were truly brains, then animal brains would be a hot commodity when humans became scarce. Similarly, zombies never seem to attack each other for what little brain remains after their conversion.

Perhaps it is not the tissue itself but the contents therein; what if zombies eat intelligence? From a purely philosophical point of view, this could very well be. If we take the zombie horde as an analogy for mob mentality, then we can see they are what becomes of us when we sacrifice our intelligence; when caught up in a situation where mob mentality takes over, intelligence has little to do with your actions. This analogy can be seen by noting the origins of zombies. From a human-made virus infecting people with unending rage, to the literal undead raised by some witches curse, almost every reason used to explain the origin of zombies arises from humanity. Additionally, unlike almost every other supernatural monster, the cause is always recent.

Conclusion

After all this discussion what is the ultimate answer? It is my belief that, given the right circumstances surrounding the origin of the zombies, animals could be zombies and, again given the right circumstances, those animal zombies would be free to engage in cross-species feeding. However, zombies have an allegorical representation which the auteur is beholden to respect. Because of this, most zombie movies are not likely to entertain the notion of inter-species postmortem encephalophagia.

Sylar

That was the most anticlimactic battle ever. They’ve shown Peter get progressively more in control of his powers over the season and employing the various powers he’s retrieved and then when the final battle against “The Face of Evil” comes around he completely pusses out. He had to be saved by two doofi who took a full season to gain any semblance of control over their power. In general, I haven’t enjoyed Sylar as an enemy for half a season and the fact that he survived pisses me off to no end.

Peter

When he was nuking out in the final scene, couldn’t he have flown away? He really had to be flown away by his brother? The only reason they didn’t have him just fly away was because they’ve shown his brother being an evil villainous douche for the last half dozen episodes and they couldn’t allow him to survive without making up for it and the only way to make up for his nefariousness was self-sacrifice. Plus, they’ve already shown Peter nuking out a couple times and getting it under control. What exactly was so different about that situation besides plot expediency? Plus shouldn’t the nuclear explosion above the city have EMPed the city?

Hiro

Why was his Dad admonishing him for going after Ando when he should have been stopping Sylar? Going after Ando was going after Sylar. Why are they counter to each other? That really pissed me off. Also, when Hiro first vanished Sylar simply didn’t have the time to slice Ando’s head off? It’s not like his saving Ando was instantaneous.

The Eclipse

I thought it was cool that they had the eclipse show up at the beginning of “Volume 2″ to parallel the pilot but it’s little more than that: a superficial little thing that seemingly bookends the season with forethought but, in my opinion, is a little throw-on they thought would be cool but had no real meaning. It’s possible the second season will show that eclipses have some significance to the rising of Heroes but I doubt it since Tim Kring said in some early interviews that they weren’t really going to discuss how people got powers.

I’m pretty sure there were other things but that’s enough to make my point that, while the show is fun and entertaining, it’s not without its faults.

So what the hell is happening here? Well let’s briefly discuss Gestalt Psychology shall we? You see, Gestalt Psychology has some very useful heuristics designed to help make sense of the world around us. One of the heuristic principles involves continuity; if, for example, a branch of a tree goes behind a trunk, we don’t assume that when we see the branch exit from behind the trunk on the other side that it is another branch. That kind of reasoning would be foolish in our world. This heuristic, among the others of Gestalt Psychology, is helpful in guiding us through an erratic world of occlusion. Serialized television works in this same realm; hiding the whole story from the viewer, slowly releasing the information over the course of the series, intertwining the multifarious events in countless ways. It’s natural to make continuity connections and these connections lead people to believe that there is an ultimate structure beyond the few branches they currently see. This is why when Lost first came out, this was the common thought of the viewers. However, over time this heuristic’s likelihood waned in the face of common sense. If you see a tree branch spreading outward for miles in erratic directions with tree trunks blocking large aspects of it, we begin to believe that maybe it really is just a bunch of coincidentally positioned independent branches. No greater vision, no ultimate purpose. This does not diminish the intent of the creator — that will remain unknown for quite some time — but rather adjusts your perspective of the end result.

According to their creators, Lost and Heroes are very different shows. To continue the metaphor, Lost is a massively sprawling tree whose final form will remain unclear until the very end but whose shape was known to its creators at its inception. On the other hand, Heroes could be likened to a garden of smaller yet still intricate trees, whose roots grow together as the trees diverge. Because of this, Heroes will likely not suffer as many slings and arrows because there is little ongoing mythology to unfold, no ultimate mystery. Lost must continue its ongoing mystery until finally resolved in what could be the finest denouement television has ever seen, or a huge disappointment for all the hopeful viewers looking for answers. Each technique has its strengthes and weaknesses. In any event, enjoy the stories as they continue: if you don’t believe Lost has a real end-point, then don’t watch it, but don’t confuse personal belief with creator intent.