John Berry

11-6-09

--------I guess the big nerd news for the week is the Rebooting of V. Did John Berry see it you ask? Of course I saw it. Why would you even ask? I am definitely going to be following this one closely. When I was but a youth I didn’t get to watch all of the original series. This was before we owned a VCR, and I was pretty much low man on the totem pole when it came to what was watched on the TV. My how things have changed. Now the average family has a couple TVs and a DVR of some kind. Everyone gets to watch what they want. If you miss it on TV you just catch it on the internet. How awesome is that. I guess the only thing that I can’t seem to get on my TV is NFL Games that don’t feature The Miami Dolphins. What’s up with that? That’s a whole drama/greed dealio between the NFL and cable TV. There may be some relief in that department in 2010 when the NFL contract is up for renewal. But you didn’t come here to hear about the NFL.

--------OK so here is the deal. I enjoyed watching V. But it is now a totally different experience than it was in the eighties. One I am no longer a child, and two there is no reveal. We already know that the V are reptilian, we already know that the V are going to eat live creatures on TV, and most importantly we already know the V want to eat us. So what is it that the writers are going to write to keep us interested in the show, since we already know everything. Well the Original V incarnation lasted through two mini series and one full season. Which is actually a pretty short run. So a successful TV series could go beyond the scope of the original series. That would be interesting. The original series had the concept that some human slaves would be used as soldiers to fight other alien species who were enemies of the V. That would definitely be an interesting concept to explore.

--------One thing is certain. Anna, the female face of the V, is smoking hot. Now of course every show on TV has smoking hot women. It’s a staple. What is really cool about Morena Baccarin’s character is that she has an Alien quality to her. I do not recall this from her tenure on Firefly.

--------Who knows where this ride is going to take us. It could be cool or it could be lame. Take for example Marvel’s Ultimate Universe. We all knew Spider-Man’s origin. They took an origin that was originally one comic book and stretched it into several comic books. They tweaked a couple things and vastly improved the story. Battlestar Galactica is another awesome reboot. Now so far I have seen nothing on the V reboot that puts it in the same league as those two instances of reboot awesomeness. However I do remain optimistic and will be watching closely.

--------This week the Heroes episode was pretty cool. It’s almost always cool when we get a Hiro episode. This episode had a kind of Back to The Future 2 vibe. Meaning we revisited a time and place that already occurred and had Hiro running around trying to fix things. Now Hiro’s love storyline just holds no credibility to me. I don’t buy it. I can suspend disbelief that the character can teleport, stop time and time travel. However this love interest thing that’s going on just doesn’t read for me. It’s cool though. I have tolerated worse from this show. Remember the stupid ass storyline with Claire and the flying boy? Yawn. What this episode does deliver is some good old-fashioned classic Sylar. And let’s face it Sylar is the show. Samuel had a good role this week as well. This show was in need of a super villain group. Hopefully there will be a big finale battle at the carnival.

--------This week the movie Men Who Stare at Goats came out. I saw it and it was funny. There were a couple really good jokes. Clooney, Spacey and Bridges all give excellent performances. I am not even a George Clooney fan. I still hold his involvement wit ER against him. I used to hate it that Thursday night had awesome sitcoms and the boom… boring ass ER. That being said Clooney has done a few good films, Three Kings and Oh Brother Where Art Thou stand out. Of course Kevin Spacey always gives a solid acting performance and this is no exception. His role however was small. They must have said the word “Jedi” a hundred times in this movie. Which is kind of funny since Ewan McGregor played the greatest Jedi of them all.

--------I haven’t had a lot of time to read comics this week. I do have access to some Captain Americas that I have read a few of. Now I have always loved Captain America. He has never been my favorite superhero; however there have been story arcs in his comic books that have exceeded anything else I was reading at the time. For instance back in the eighties Captain America made a tough decision and used a machine gun to put down some terrorists in order to save some hostages. This was recorded on camera and got out. This resulted in Steve Rogers getting fired. This resulted in Steve throwing on a black costume and calling himself The Captain. John Walker, now known as U.S. Agent, was then commissioned by the government to don the Mantle of Captain America.

--------On one hand you had The Captain, D-Man, Nomad and The Falcon rolling around the country in a van doing good deeds. On the Other Hand you had a new Captain America and his partner Battlestar, another interesting story there, blindly following orders and being all around fascists. It was a good run and a great story arc, ending with The Captain battling the President of the United States who was mutated into a serpentine creature. Good stuff. In the end it was of course the Red Skull behind everything.

--------A quick note about Battlestar. Originally he was this big black dude in a Bucky costume. He went by the name Bucky. Then however the hate mail came in. Apparently the name Bucky is also a derogatory term for African Americans. Marvel actually handled it pretty well. They published the letters on the comment pages, they had the character address the issues in the comic book, and then they changed the characters name from Bucky to Battlestar.

--------The Captain Americas I am reading now are the ones after Steve Roger’s Death. I gotta say the new Captain America is pretty cool. We got drama and action. Not a lot of laughs and no Hulk-Sword. But what are you gonna do. Pick them up if you get a chance.