EPTGen: stop here thanks
Time to annoy a bigger audience. Let's rant about what gobshite I watched lately.
To not give you a wrong impression, I do not loathe characters (or story lines)(aside from borderline Pedo Anime shit jk), just because they're purposely painted as too much.
#1 Example: Shaun Pegg's Spaced. A great series with stereotypical characters. A nerd, a giggly girl, an out of touch artist, a weapon fanatic, a drunk landlady – they make up for a really good sitcom. Especially, because Shaun Pegg brings much to the atmosphere with dozens of nerd related hints about Star Wars, comics and whatnot. A really great reminder of the magic of the 90es, with stupid and incredible single stories in between. It comes off as rather boring and has the feeling as if the writers tried a little too hard in the first two episodes, but develops into one of the best comedy pieces of all time imo.
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/tumblr_meuf62bksk1qh1tyu5m.gif)
#2 Example: Black Books. Another, for the lack of a better word, sitcom about a drunken Irish book store owner, his nerdy helper and his inofficial, platonic-only girl friend from the store next door. It doesn't really tell a story but revolves around insulting random customers, really. It has tons of funny dialogues, absurd and overdone mini plots. You just have to love it.
However, good comedy is hard to come by and it wasn't as if I was looking specifically for that. I wanted really good series with a small entertainment value. To also round up the picture, I'll give you a Top 10 list of „entertaining“ series, I came to love for one reason or another. No order.
- Hannibal
- The Wire
- X-Files
- Firefly
- Six Feet Under
- Black Books
- Spaced
- Monty Python's Flying Circus
- Rome
- Luther
Really random, like I said.
One of the first things I tried in the past years already was „The Walking Dead“, the series which is about Zombies, but doesn't call them Zombies. I have never read the comics, even though Quint supplied me with ample links to catch up. A word about that, I have nothing against Animes or Comics, I'm simply too stupid to read them. They are too complicated for me. I read them when I was a kid, but stopped at some point, because... I don't know, they're neither pictures, nor real book-like-text-printed story. It takes too much from me to use my own fantasy, but tells too much story (at least the good ones) to overwhelm me.
Anyway. The series has a great start, it gives me the feeling I'm observing a survivor of a plague, a great dystopy and everything, beautiful pictures, horrifying plot twists. And then he finds his Carwl, his son, and it's over in an instant. It's family drama, the Zombies are no threat at all, except they need to be a deus-ex-machina threat. No wait, since every character is brain dead from the moment the family is re-united, it makes sense. Oh god, it was horrible. The true horror of the show was to watch the family bond, un-bond, a mother not being able to watch out for her son for ten minutes and red necks having cross bows. So bad ass. Why, I mean why. They don't plan, they're just idiots. Why would you watch this?
Be that as it may, the next thing I tried was Sherlock. Yes, the BBC Sherlock with Cumbercatch and Bilbo Baggins, who also was a doctor in Black Books. It was fast paced, it neatly told the story of Sherlock Holmes, but for some reason dodged his heroine/cocaine addiction. It was thrilling when they chased moriarty, slightly overdone though. Then you had to wait a couple of years to see Sherlock's third season. And then it was shit again.
Another example of writers screwing up after getting too full of themselves. Omfg. Sherlock is a brainiac, I got it fromt he get go. It is not enough for him to re-construct a masterplan by looking at a broken plain ticket or seating number or something, no he also had to show off by learning a slavic langueage in seven minutes. SEVEN. Yeah, obviously. I don't know, did this show expand to the United States, or what was the reasoning behind it? Did market research show the only audience left not watching the show were braindead coma patients? Why was it trying so hard?
But there was plenty of room at the bottom. Watson's fiance had to be a spy, his opponents had to be so obviously powerful, that Moriarty, which by definition is Sherlock's arch enemy, should look like a child in comparison? Why not just go with what the show did so well in the previous episodes? Why do I have to witness Sherlock stumbling utter nonsense in a wedding speech as best man? Oh god, please don't continue this show and re-make season 3. Please. Or at least completely overdo it and have London be invaded by Optimus Prime transformers.
However, while Sherlock was at least close to the original for a long time, there are shows which are worse, due to only recycling Sherlock in the first place. Exhibit: House MD. At first the show seemed to be nice, a good set up without too much depth. However, it's the same shit all over again without any kind of inspiration along the way. I remember watching half of the first season in high school after learning, when I already turned off my mind. It really wasn't that dreadful. Hence, try it out again.
The similarities with Sherlock are so damn obvious. Drug addicted, master mind, a detective, he even lives in 221B Bakerstreet. Well there are more parallels, but w/e. What annoyed me the most was the modus operandi. Patient comes in, almost dies, can't explain that. You can not possibly understand what House or his team does, except that he constantly defies authority. That, btw, is not a trade mark of Sherlock; in Holmes case, the authorities were stupid and he didn't purposely ridicule them for the sake of mockery. Anyhow, back to House. House has no idea what he does either, he relies on his team to give him the hints, instead of finding the much needed intel on his own. He usually almost kills patients with uneccesarily risky treatments, until one works. That's all I could gather here. Chop of his arm, no magical cure, chop of the other, metaphorically speaking. Also, Dr. Watson, err no, Dr. Wilson, stands by and screams „O Captain, my Captain!“.
I'm not quite sure if the writers understood the figure they were copying, but it doesn't seem like it. People think the intelligence of the character could be stressed out by people saying the character is smart, instead of the character acutally doing smart things. Also, at some point it seems relevant to put a contrast to it, in all examples so far – Sherlock holds weird speeches to show he is not good with people and social conventions, House has his drug addiction and is equally retarded when treating patients. But both HAVE TO HAVE a heart of gold.
Well, at least I found Hannibal. Hannibal Lecter, whom I loved ever since reading Red Dragon, yes reading it, doesn't give a shit. He tortures and kills, he has no empathy at all, the intelligent psychopath. If it wasn't for Silence of the Lambs, nobody would know him or could probably estimate the high quality the books, yes the books, delivered. These two novels were outstanding, so was the first movie and partially at least also the movie Red Dragon. Imo, the greatest villain next to Darth Vader in... ever.
And it went shit again in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. Both books and the movies. Holy shit, what have you done there? Silence of the Lambs lived off Lecter's short appearances. He was dangerous, even behind bars. He ate a nurse's face (literally), talked his cell neighbours into suicide and, just for fun, messed with the egomaniac psychiatrists. He also took care of Agent Sterling in a way she developed mental issues over time. That's how he roled.
However, both books tell us that Hannibal himself had weaknesses, his ego being one. He was accused of having no emapthy, even though that was wrong, because he was proud of his doing. It made sense. Everything made sense.
But how to tell a new story involving Hannibal. The writing staff of the movies and the author of the novel himself had to struggle. I can forgive the writers, they're just Hollywood, but I can't forgive Harris. In Hannibal I got 150+ pages of Lecter shopping sophisticated items, in the movies, well fuck the movies. This was worse than Jar Jar Binks ass raping Darth Vader. Way, way worse. Words can't describe it.
Back to the series, I tuned in and expected the worst. Lecter had two good actors already, a third one living up to the quality of his predecessors seemed impossible; yet it was delivered. Hannibal was great. However, Graham sucks balls. Not the actor, but the character. Say what you want, but Ed Norton > Graham 2.0. It's still a great series.
But do answer me this – you use the novel and have all rights to do so. The novels explains in great length why Graham works the way he works and why he is different. Perfect empathy vs. no empathy, plus luck = catching Lecter. No mental issues vs emotional instability. Apparently that was to hard to display in the series, so Graham has a Matrix like vision of the world and can re-construct crime scenes in his head. Also, while effects magically rewind everything, why don't they explain the solutions and interpretations Graham does? You see how someone was killed, and Graham suddenly knows what the murderer ate for lunch. Errr... please stop that.
Nevermind, it reads worse than it is, it's one of the truely minor things I can critize here.
Anyhow, the last thing I tried to watch was Da Vinci's Demons. I really can't understand why I watched it totally. I raged so hard while watching it, but I watched it to the very end.
Let me elaborate, I'm having a lot of interest in the history of the Renaissance Florence. It really is one of the few times history is more interesting than fiction. You have a powerful family ruling one of the most important cities in their time, the city which would be the cradle of arts, politicis and wisdom. Within less than two hundred years this city was home to some of the greatest thinkers and artists in human history, including Machiavelli, Galileo, Il Magnifico, Dante, Giotto, Boticelli, Verrocchio, […], you can continue this list by quoting the names of the Ninja Turtles. Also, the city was part of the torn and ununited Italy of past days, a country torn by wars and political power play on the highest level. In the midst you have a rival family of bankiers, the Pazzi, seeking to overthrow the Medici dynasty with one enormous plan, involving help from the Vatican itself. Following up, an outrageous assassination attempt during mass in the Duomo on Easter, leading to two days of massive riots and more murders. There is no need whatsoever to re-write history.
Actually, there was a German TV short series (comparable to Rome with less tits and violence), portraying the twenty years after the failed conspiracy – called „Die Borgias“ or whatever. However, this series told the story of the Borgia empire in Rome, also really interesting stuff, which involved almost all of the characters above, minus Lorenzo. This was a good story, but suffered from rather bad actors in parts; e.g. Lucrecia Borgia you wanted to see killed, because her voice made babies die from super aids.
Anyhow, back to Da Vinci's Demons. Here Da Vinci is everything I loathe – overly complicated and larger than life. It's not enough that historical Da Vinci overtowers even the greatest of his era by lengths, it's not enough he added to the uprising science of anatomy, engineering or painted the most known masterpiece known to mankind, the Mona Lisa – he also has to be a stellar sword fighter, an arrogant piece of shit and a lunatic. That all was not enough action.
If the writers would've went for an Assassins Creed II approach of dragging Da Vinci into the story by creating a fictional POV character, it would've been fine. But no, Da Vinci had to be the hero of war. And he's not even linear. He develops by not developing and by not following his own logic.
In one moment he considers war machines as too bad, because it would only lead to more war machines and consequently more violence on both sides, in the next he developes yet another war machine. He deems the Christian religion as unfit, backwards and bad, yet follows an esoterical search for a book full of wisdom. Meanwhile, the Christians do the same. What. Suddenly the Arabs (at some point they were called Arabs) from Constantinopel (Arabs, yes) are involved. The twists are barely understandable and medievil pre-Renaissance McGyver-Indiana-Jones ends up in the jungle of Peru. At this point in the story I would have celebrated if he had found a crystal skull and aliens.
![[image loading]](http://abload.de/img/48913_1_01cu96.jpg)
bloody hell
But, there's more. From all the characters they could've added, they chose the ones, which made the least bit sense. For example, one of Da Vinci's helpers, because he's not really an assistant, would be Nicholo Machiavelli; the guy known to follow around the Borgias later – the arch enemies of Da Vinci in the series (his later employers also). Maybe, just maybe, I missed something here and the Borgias will appear as his allies, but that makes no sense in any universe. Also, more interestingly, Verrocchio constantly mocks Michelangelo whenever Michelangelo appears. Right, the guy with supporting the artists, mocks the greatest talent of his school. Whatever.
Also, don't get me started on the Medici in this series. Apparently, if you constantly yell at people over nothing, you'll be able to control a financial empire. Futhermore, the only reason for the Pazzi conspiracy, was that the Vatican had no way of attacking Florence directly. The pope also did not fear the retaliation and the massive strength of the Medici and simply didn't care enough to pay them money; that there was an institution called conclave, equally scary for a moneyless pope, observing the Vatican's finance in the background doesn't play a role either.
Next in line, the Naple's king and prince. They flay people and mummify them (if that is a word). I dare say, Game of Thrones played a role here.
Well, enough with the salty reviews. Hollywood, please bring back loveable characters. Please get rid of your urge to „develope“ characters, stop letting them „grow“ into munchkins of their historical or fictional originals. You have plenty of time to do so, there's no need to make them larger than life. Use fiction to create fun stories, not to re-write history. Bring me another Mulder&Scully or a McNaulty. Try to understand what you had earlier, not try to invent a new wheel. You might as well stop to include soft pornography. There are pages you can visit for free for that purpose. :|
