Warp Section

Forever Geek is reporting the Saturn Award nominations today.  Much to my surprise Superman Returns received 10 nominations.  I have yet to see it, and from what my friends are saying about it, I think I can still wait.  X-Men III, yeah that was good.  Of course Pirates of the Caribbean was good.

The nominees for the 2007 Saturn Awards have been announced, with Superman Returns leading the pack with 10 nominations. Other nominated films include: X-Men: The Last Stand, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, Casino Royale, Mission: Impossible III, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Stranger Than Fiction
Source: Superman Returns leads 07 Saturn Award Nominations at Forever Geek

Forever Geek picks their favs for the winners.  For the animated category I have to agree with Scanner Darkly.  That was one freaky film.

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Since I brought up some gnawing questions in my last Heroes post, I thought I’d do the same this week for Jericho. After all, we have to have something to keep us warm through the long winter break.

Why the heck does Gray Anderson want to be mayor so badly?

Is it a sense of self-preservation? Does he believe that by being in power, he will ensure his own safety first? Or is there something more sinister going on here? Do we really know where he was before he came back to Jericho? Freud would say this his perpetual mistrust of the townspeople is a projection of his own distrustful nature. He knows that he would stab a guy in the back, so he figures that guy would stab him, too.

Will Dale get caught for the shooting?

I really just wanted an opportunity to say GO DALE! My wife and I seriously applauded when he blew Mitchell away. Dale seems to be one of the few people in Jericho with his sh*t together. No food? Find food. Life threatened? Remove threat. Done.

Is Bonnie (the deaf girl) really going to hook up with some little punk just to piss off her brother?

How old is she, anyway? She says she’s been taking care of the farm “for the last 14 years,” but she looks (and acts) like she’s still a teenager herself. This isn’t the WB, for crying out loud. (Actually, I guess nothing is the WB anymore–burn!)

What’s going to happen with Emily and Roger?

Of course Roger had to come back right on the edge of Jake and Emily getting back together. Maybe Jake will go running to Heather–the teacher we haven’t seen for 3 weeks. I’m sure she’ll take him in with open arms after being completely ignored all this time.

and the biggest question of all…

What is Robert Hawkins* hiding?

How the hell do these mysterious “others” have satellite imagery good enough to pinpoint him playing football with his kid? And if they have all this tech left, why do they care enough to come snag one guy? Why does he claim to be “comprimised?”
Robert Hawkins is all the mystery in Jericho bundled up in one package.

You can view some of that “extra material” here, or you can just stay tuned to Warp Section and let me do the dirty work.

*As a footnoted question, why does it always have to be the black guy? It seems like every time they want someone a little mysterious, magical, or scary, they plunk a black actor down in the middle of a white-people sea. How about some normal black people, and a scary white chick? I’m just sayin. On the other hand, they went out of their way to show us this black dude couldn’t play football, which must be their contribution to breaking down stereotypes.

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So we have the paranoia, the “Others” in the form of Jonah and his gang, and now we even have the screechy violin music, which lets us know that something mysterious is happening. But I feel like Jericho is slipping. Do Jake and the mayor really believe that the “enemy” would bother to drop poisoned food? They’d just spray some DDT or poison the water supply. And if you have enough supplies to be dropping them in Jericho freakin’ Kansas, then the rest of the world is in a heck of a lot better shape than the U.S.

This week we also saw Jonah’s daughter sneak into her father’s super-secret compound and drive out through–and I mean through–the front gate. The mystery may be building with Vietnam era Russian planes dropping Chinese food with American chutes, but the believability keeps dropping without the benefit of air resistance.

And I’m all for character development, but I’m starting to wonder who Jericho thinks its audience is with the soap opera-esque series of love affairs* and “romantic tension.” On the plus side, it keeps my wife watching, but the scene with DC-woman repeatedly telling farmer-Stanley “shirt off” is laying it on a little thick for my taste.

*Jake Green and the school teacher (and Emily?), Eric Green and his awkward wife/girlfriend issues, the angsty Dale and his little girlfriend, and now farmer Stanley with the DC IRS agent

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Warning: Do not read this post unless you want spoilers on Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Jericho and Smallville.

Some of these are common sense, and some are interesting. Don’t complain to me if you read them and didn’t really want to.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Suspension of disbelief is vital when watching pretty much anything on television. On one hand, the hardcore geeks among us can appreciate faithfulness to reality, but on the other hand, if we wanted reality, we’d go out and find some. Give me something better!

Failure to suspend is why my friend, we’ll call him Grey, couldn’t get into Jericho. “It would be practically impossible,” he contends, “to so completely nuke the country that you were cut off from everything.” To which I responded:

1) They’re in Kansas; they were barely connected in the first place*, and

2) You watched Firefly, where cowboys were shooting rifles in space.

But I like Jericho. “Post-apocalypse world” is a staple of the sci-fi genre. Just ask Kevin Costner, maker of The Postman, Waterworld, and The Bodyguard. I didn’t actually see that last one, but I’m assuming any world where Whitney Houston is worth taking a bullet for has lost 99% of its population, and all of its real entertainers.

Jericho has a good mix of character development and classic science fiction “what ifs.” We struggle along with the characters in considering how the hell to deal with nuclear fall out, electronics-destroying EMPs, and the loss of pretty much every aspect of “normal” life.

Now, to be fair to my friend Grey, I’m taking the complete holocaust as part of the mystery. If the writers never bother to address this peculiar set-up, I’ll be a little miffed. But for the time being, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

*I’m from Iowa, so I’m allowed to make Midwest jokes. I’ll tell you sometime about the border war between Iowa and Missouri, where they lobbed grenades at us from the state line… (we pulled the pins and threw ‘em back).

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One of the things I hate about the late-fall is that all my favourite shows take a holiday until the new year. Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, and now Jericho. CBS has decided to air Jericho in a split season format, just like most of the Sci-Fi Channel’s shows.

The first part of season one will conclude on November 29th in a cliffhanger style episode. Then you’ll have to wait until February 21st before you get to see the rest of the first season. Madness I tell you! Making us sci-fi geeks wait for two whole months to see another new episode.

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