Looking West

Everybody here on the Dork Forty would like to wish Mr. Adam West a very happy birthday.

You're still our favorite Batman.

The Zombie Apocalypse Will Be Televised

So The Walking Dead has now gone from an indy comics slow-burn hit to the most-watched program in cable television history, and we’ve yet to say two words about it here on the Dork Forty. Which is odd, considering that our dual obsessions with funnybooks and horror border on the pathological. And I have been watching and enjoying the show, so… I guess maybe it‘s time to talk zombies.

In spite of the obsessions mentioned above, this really isn’t a show I should be all that gung-ho for. For one thing, I’m not a big zombie fan. Or, rather, I’m not a big fan of the zombie apocalypse, which is a slightly different thing. Zombies themselves I’m okay with. I mean, who doesn’t love a rotting corpse? It’s just when the zombies have over-run society that I start to lose interest. Part of the problem, I think, is that I‘m not real big on apocalypse fiction in general. Growing up in the third and fourth decades of the Cold War, I saw an awful lot of apocalypses in TV sci-fi. Those all seemed to mostly involve people running around in deserts and big fields of yellow grass, and uniformly bored the crap out of me.

While watching how a society collapses might fascinate me, the aftermath of that collapse leaves me cold. It typically only reveals ugly truths that I kind of take as a given anyway. Yes. Get hungry enough, or desperate enough, and the rules really do change for most people. That doesn’t tell me anything new or interesting about human nature. So it really does take a lot to make me enjoy Armageddon. Colorful characters help (“I Master! He Blaster!”). So do mysteries surrounding the cause of the apocalypse (such as the one Jeff Lemire‘s created in his Sweet Tooth comic). Or you could just write it so well that I can’t not read it (as in The Road).

The zombie apocalypse seldom gives me any of those things, though. Once you get past the first couple of Romero flicks, very few people (Romero included) have said anything new or interesting. I recognize, for instance, that 28 Days Later was a really well-made zombie apocalypse movie, and I can appreciate it on that level. But it’s still just the goddamn zombie apocalypse all over again. So I’m not a big fan. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to see more zombie apocalypse fiction that explores different themes, and I enjoy the few examples I’ve seen that have (Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, World War Z).

And we'll finally get around to talking about Walking Dead... after the jump!

Caprica: RIP

So you might have guessed, from my taste in funnybooks, that I was a big fan of Battlestar Galactica. Or you might not have ever given it any thought; lord knows I wouldn’t have if I were you. Regardless, though, my love of Galactica carried over to its bastard offspring, Caprica, which has recently been cancelled. Now, the writing’s been on the wall for that cancellation since the spring season wrapped. Ratings weren’t good, and they didn’t get any better when the show resumed in the fall. So we’re left to wonder why. It would be easy to blame sci-fi fanboys’ obsession with action-adventure material, something the deeply character-based Caprica lacked. But that’s too easy an answer, and so tonight I’d like to take a look at the show and what, exactly, might have gone wrong.

But maybe I‘d better outline why I like it so much first. Essentially, I just appreciate the sheer raw quality of it. Caprica, even moreso than Galactica before it, offers up a cast of complicated and deeply-flawed characters that I love to watch. The best example of this is probably Eric Stoltz’ Daniel Graystone. Arguably the series’ central figure, Graystone is the creator of the Cylons. He’s a driven visionary, a scientific artist and hyper-successful Type-A businessman. His genius and magnetic personality make me want to like the guy, even though he’s also arrogant and unthinking, and possessed of a ruthless practicality that drives him to intellectual (and literal) theft. I’m left riveted by him as he slowly learns that he’s not as good a person as he thinks he is. It’s a great look at the making of a villain, and one that keeps him more relatable than (though not as much fun as) JR Ewing.

Which brings us to the “Dallas” thing. Caprica was conceived as a science fiction family drama. In other words, a sci-fi nighttime soap opera. Or in yet still other words… Dallas in space. Robots instead of oil. Virtual reality addiction instead of alcoholism. But otherwise… pretty much the same thing. Now, times being what they are, Caprica was also conceived as the “quality drama” version of the nighttime soap. So the leering villains and bitchy heiresses have more depth, and the moral dilemmas are shaded with gray. I dig this aspect of the show, too. TV sci-fi (hell, sci-fi in general) doesn’t often venture into the realm of character-driven drama, where emotions are as important as plot, and character motivation isn’t always spelled out or easily-explained.

But Caprica jumps in with both feet and handles it well. Going back to the Greystone family for example, we have Daniel’s daughter Zoe, who’s a real piece of work. Raised by loving but neglectful parents, Zoe craves her father’s attention so much that she creates an AI program more advanced than anything he’s capable of (which he promptly steals as the basis for the Cylon brain). And her relationship with her mother, Amanda, is so far gone that she joins a monotheist cult out of disgust. Zoe’s motivations unfold over the course of the season, difficult to discern clearly because she dies in the pilot episode, but slowly revealed through the AI copy she made of herself. Until finally it hit me that the show’s major storylines, these things that so many grown men and women are willing to fight and die for, are only important to the story because of the pained and spiteful lashing-out of a petulant (if brilliant) teenage girl rebelling against her parents. Heh.

Though far from perfect, Caprica is for the most part a polished piece of dramatic writing, filled with complex and conflicted characters moving through a well-imagined, interesting, and most important of all relatable, science fiction culture. It’s well-written and -acted, has an interesting look and feel, and is directed with style and flair. It’s just damn good television.

So why did it fail?

Great Pumpkin Sighted!

That sound you hear is the cheering of the Dork Forty Halloweenies. For we planted our punkin patch, and we nurtured its sincerity in the manner pro-scribed in the Great Book of Halloween. We Monster Mashed nekkid 'round the fire. We took heed to the words of Brother Vincent, and when he asked of us "Can You Dig It?" we responded unto him in the positive. We wore our shrouds emblazoned with the likenesses of Brother Boris and Father Rondo. We knelt at the Altar of Bela, and learned at the feet of good ol' HP. And when we were done learnin', we took our message to the people (that's you, son, so stand up straight). We shared our knowledge, our ob-sessions, and our pretty pretty pictures.

And tonight, it's all paid off. 'Cause just a few short minutes ago, out in our very own Dork Forty Halloween punkin patch, the Great Punkin himself appeared to us, bringin' candy and shrunken heads for all! His appearance was fleetin', as is his way. He was there and gone in a heartbeat, and his form shifted dependin' on who saw him. Some thought it was a be-goggled beagle. Others, an errant bowlin' ball. But we all knew him as our Halloweenie saviour.

And there was much rejoicin'.

And now, we wanna share that joy with you, via the wonders of the interwebs, with a few choice scenes from the first holy text of the Great Punkin... It's the Great Punkin, Charlie Brown. Like the Great Punkin himself, you can't see the whole thing at once out here in the wild. Just the key scenes, the good ones. The ones everybody remembers. Which you can see... after the jump.

Hey Hey Hey!

So the sun's gone down again, we got the razor blades in all the candy apples for Maw to hand out back at the house, and we're back to waitin' in the punkin patch. The Great Punkin might show up any minute now! We're so excited. But while we wait, let's check out the Fat Albert Halloween Special!

Made in 1977, this one's your typical 70s kids' cartoon for the most part. Cool as the Fat Albert gang was, that show got pretty damn preachy at times, and this Halloween special is no exception. Between all the awesome put-downs, it's really about Halloween safety, and how it's wrong to scare old people, and all kindsa weak-ass crap like that. But! There's a section right in the middle with Mudfoot talking about how much better (and more Darwinian) Halloween was when he was a kid, and that's worth sitting through the rest for. So... without further ado... I give you The Fat Albert Halloween Special!

The Halloween That Almost Wasn't

So we try not to give in to nostalgia too much here on the Dork Forty. Nostalgia's dangerous for a dork. The entertainments of our childhood were really no better than the entertainments of today; in many cases, in fact, they were worse. It's just that our enjoyment of them may have been greater because our childhood tastes weren't as refined. But dorks too often get caught up in the idea that they don't enjoy things as much as they used to, and it turns them bitter. And there's nothing more tiresome than a bitter dork.

So when we're cultivating our nerd crops around here, we tend to treat nostaliga as a weed. We rip that shit out by the roots, poison it with the new and different, whatever it takes. We want to judge all the great dork stuff out there by its own merits. Some of it stands the test of time, some of it we love because of its flaws, and some of it just needs to be tossed in the dustbin of dork history and forgotten. And then there's stuff like what we're about to show you tonight...

The Halloween That Almost Wasn't was a comedy special done for ABC in 1979. The premise is simple, and pretty cool: Dracula (in his capacity as King of the Monsters) calls all his horrific subjects to his castle to lay down the law. People aren't afraid of them anymore, and that's gotta stop. The monsters (by which this special seems to mean, mostly, the monsters Universal Studios made movies about) have got to start being scary again, or Drac will lay the hammer down. The Witch refuses, and the show then breaks down into a power game between her and Dracula, with the fate of Halloween itself on the line. And then there is disco dancing.

Sounds like pretty good children's Halloween fare, and it is exactly that: pretty good. There are some decent gags, the show creates a pretty entertaining Halloween mythology, and the execution isn't entirely embarrassing. But then you toss in this tidbit: the special stars Judd Hirsch and Mariette Hartley. Fresh off their success on Taxi, a (for the period) rather sophisticated sitcom for adults, these two are for some ungodly reason cast in a kids' Halloween special. And they're fantastic in it. Or rather, he is. Hartley's good as the Witch, but it's Hirsch's performance as Dracula that steals the show.

An awful lot of actors have done comical Bela Lugosi impersonations over the years, and as a big Lugosi fan I'm pretty picky about them. Some I've liked. Some I've hated. But I hold no love for any of them. Except for Hirsch. He's genius at it. He understands that what he's doing is comedy, but he never winks. He plays it completely straight, never making Lugosi look like a buffoon, and he's ten times funnier because of it. He's even a tiny bit scary in the role. It's an amazing performance, and the only thing that makes The Halloween That Almost Wasn't worth remembering.

At least, you know, in the nostalgia-hating eyes of the Dork Forty nerd wranglers...

Hope you enjoy.