"Heroes make good presidents."

Day 22 - Favorite series finale

You know, I was thinking about this... and having trouble even remembering series finales. I'm just not pulling up any in my brain. Also, older series did not particularly have a series finale in the way we tend to think of them today. The shows just sort of trailed off with an episode like any other.

So, I've been reviewing my favorite shows, contemplating their season finales, and they're all a bit fuzzy or they were nothing I really held onto in the "wow, great ep" category. Which leads me to the only one that's not, because I recently re-watched it -- twice, and so I'm going to go with it. It was the two-part ep "High Treason" from The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

It stands out to me because I think it was the best ep of the entire series. All the semi-regulars returned with the exception of Dixie (I don't mind Dixie, really I don't, but I'd also rather she not be there...). But Pete, Whip, Viva, Prof. Wickwire are all there and they're all amusing as hell. Pete and Viva arguing in jail over who designed the cell. Pete: "I scoff at your moronic interpretation of hoosegow architecture." The hilarious dialogue subtitles for one of the side characters. Terry Bradshaw and the football jokes. Pete and his bible. Pete and his crossbow with the dynamite. Pete and Tiny. Okay, yeah, Pete Hutter is still the funniest character in the show. "High Treason" showed the series truly finding its legs, settling in on what the audience really loved about it. It was a serious story with a bunch of wackiness that grew naturally from the circumstances. And it was the last ep. Grrrr. This is why it needed another season so badly.

It also wasn't a "true" series finale in that nothing was wrapped up, nothing "ended," it was just a rousingly good show that promised more. But right now, it's the series finale I remember most.

My kingdom for a ship

Day 21 - Favorite ship

Well, that's an easy one. There aren't that many ships, and really, the coolest, bestest, neatest of them all is the TARDIS. I mean, come on! It's small on the outside, gigantic on the inside. Travels through time and space. As much as I love the Enterprise... if she wants to travel through time, she has to slingshot around the sun, and that's just pesky. Besides, you can't land her anywhere you want. And Seaview, while an awesome submarine... and has even left the confines of the oceans (watch out for the creatures from Venus), just can't do what the TARDIS can. So, Tillane, that's one more we agree on! :-D


And I'll take K-9 too!

Where do we go from here?

Day 20 - Favorite kiss

Oh dear. In a TV series?? I can't even think of a kiss, let alone have a favorite one. Okay, then, I'm going to go with the only kiss I can actually remember, and it wins by default...

Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The end of "Once More With Feeling"... Buffy and Spike.

"Warp speed, Mr. Sulu."

Day 19 - Best TV show cast

Okay, this is an impossible question. All my favorite tv show have awesome casts. They all took their characters and made them their own, and if you replaced a single one, it wouldn't be the same show.

But, for the sake of argument... I need to pick one. I'm going to go with the original Star Trek. They were perfection. And come on. The show runs three seasons, dies a horrible network-induced death... and lived on. Spawned a jillion movies, new series. That kind of longevity is not just because there were some great episodes in there. It's because that particular cast worked so well together on screen. Gene Roddenberry created the world, but those actors gave it life and breath. So, they get my vote for the best TV show cast.

Trains and dames

Day 18 - Favorite title sequence

The Wild Wild West!

From the second season on, that is. He doesn't get to punch the girl in the first season and it's not as good without that moment. Has the catchiest theme song, and the coolest visuals. Perfectly represents the series. Simply the Best Television Title Sequence Ever!

"I promised her rings for her fingers..."

Day 17 - Favorite mini series

That would be Shogun, which I can't believe came out thirty years ago!! I was twelve, and I still remember waiting anxiously for each part to air to find out what happened. I was completely entranced by the setting, the characters, the plot. I loved learning little bits of Japanese as Blackthorne did. I loved Mariko. I loved the cultural differences, the history, the samurai, and Orson Welles narrating. I loved Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga. The mini-series would not be half as powerful without him. It was such a beautiful mini-series, filmed in Japan, with gorgeous costumes and scenery. I loved the theme. Most of the plot even stayed with me over the years, which I can't say of other mini-series we watched back in the '80s, like the interminable (at the time - my opinion may be different now) Winds of War. When Shogun came out on DVD, I bought it immediately. I watched it again and found I loved it even more than I had as a kid. It held up just fine. Definitely everything a mini-series should be.

New music!

Wow. Am I in complete love with James Newton Howard's soundtrack to The Last Airbender! Not a movie I'm remotely interested in seeing, but boy howdy, I cannot stop playing the score. I think it just might be my new top favorite by him. I love that there is at least still have one composer who can really turn out great music, whose scores I'll buy sound unheard, because I trust him to deliver. I don't think he's disappointed me yet.

These questions are getting harder

Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show

Hm. I'm not sure how to answer this one. I don't really have a guilty pleasure show. Perhaps, Time Tunnel, which is really bad and cheesy and makes me roll my eyes, but I'll still watch it if it comes on? But guilty pleasure implies seeking it out to enjoy it... and I don't seek out Time Tunnel, nor do I own it on DVD or have any intention of owning it, nor do I particularly feel embarrassed watching it, bad as it is, so the guilt factor is lacking. So... not so much an answer. Hm.

I suppose I'll settle on Queen of Swords, a short-lived series that came out in 2000 (that long ago????) about, basically, a female version of Zorro. It wasn't actually bad though, you just had to suspend your disbelief. I mean, come on, since when do lace masks guarantee anonymity, particularly for a woman?? But there were some really well-written eps in there, and the rest were all better than average. And, of course, it had Peter Wingfield and Valentine Pelka in it, and I adore both actors so much it wouldn't matter what they're doing.When they're together... even better. I originally watched the show for them, but the female actors ended up winning me over too, particularly Paulina Galvez as Marta. She was awesome. I wish I could see her in more things. Queen of Swords was fun and entertaining and full of eye candy. Hm, so I guess this show isn't an answer either, as I'm not feeling any guilt for loving it.

If this show ever comes out on DVD, I will snap it up. Alas, I don't think it ever will. Too small and forgotten. Sigh.


(Of course, it was also hard not to see this as an odd sort of off-shoot of Highlander, with Peter Wingfield's character of Dr. Helm simply being one of Methos's aliases over the years. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you. There can never be too much Methos or Peter Wingfield in the world.)

The ladies of televsion

Day 15 - Favorite female character

So, I'm going to list two here. They're actually very similar. They're both the "secondary" lead female on their respective shows. And where I love the titular lead on both shows, neither particularly has a series arc. Oh sure, all kinds of things happen to them, and they do change and mature and deepen, but they're still doing the same job they started out in. Whereas the secondary characters grew by leaps and bounds in all kinds of other ways. And I absolutely love and respect that about both of them.

I'm referring to Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Gabrielle on Xena: Warrior Princess.

Both start out naive and a bit mousy and, while they both had funny dialog, there wasn't much to them. They usually needed rescuing. But only very early on. And then they grew. Boy, how they grew, and in all kinds of ways. You kind of have to watch both series really to watch the progression, but it was lovely. Willow had Oz, then Tara, discovered she was a witch, became hugely powerful, flipped out and went to the dark side. I mean she goes from a cute nobody to someone you do not want to mess with. And she gets all the emotional arcs to go with it.

Same with Gabrielle. A farm girl who wants to be a bard and go on adventures, and who gets far more than she bargains on when she hooks up with Xena. She evolves over the seasons into a more than capable warrior in her own right (much as Willow evolves as a witch). She also gets quite a bit of tragedy and emotional growth along the way (ie: Hope, among other things) right up to the very end of the series.

(There's all kinds of character parallels between the two shows, really, now that I think about it. Buffy/Xena, Xander/Joxer, Spike/Autolycus, Angel/Ares, and Willow/Gabrielle. How interesting!)

"Because the alternative is unthinkable."

Day 14 - Favorite male character

Well now, here's another question that has a ton of answers. I could say Sgt. Saunders from Combat!, or Captain Kirk or Admiral Nelson or Adam Cartwright or James West or Spike. I love them all, but really, one male character tops them all for me. That would be Methos from Highlander.

Ah, Methos. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Oldest immortal in the Highlander universe. One of the Four Horseman. Cynical, witty, snarky, still able to fall in love and become completely vulnerable all over again. A survivor. The perfect balance for MacLeod, who represents nobility and integrity, honor and chivalry, goodness. And Methos, who as he says himself was born "long before the age of chivalry." A man who recognizes MacLeod is a better man than he is, and after all those years of surviving, is willing to give up his head to him. Gets all the good dialogue and many of the best emotional moments on the show. Methos is, quite simply, the coolest male character in television. Ever. Not to mention Peter Wingfield is very good-looking and has one of the best voices (and accents). He's one of those actors who could read me the phonebook and make it sound good. He's also a damned fine actor.

I found this youtube compilation of the funniest Methos bits from "Till Death," one of Highlander's lighter episodes.

"Keep your hobbies off the plot table."

Day 13 - Favorite childhood show

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. My family was a bit unusual growing up. Other than Looney Tunes and similar cartoons, my mom hated kid's shows, so they simply weren't watched. I've never seen an ep of Sesame Street or the Muppets or probably a dozen other shows most kids of my generation have probably seen. I've seen a couple eps of Electric Company, but only because it was shown at school. At home, we only watched "real" shows, like Star Trek and Voyage and Bonanza. LOL! Voyage was my mom's favorite, so it naturally became mine and my sister's.

These were the days before VCRs, and I remember my sister and I having to be quiet during the best episodes while my mom put a tape recorder up to the tv speaker and recorded the episode for us to listen later. We also made a tape of funny dialog and sound effects. We had to wait for whole seasons to be shown so we could get back to a certain episode, and we knew them so well that my mom could start the tape just in time to capture a five second sound effect. We still have those tapes, and they're hilarious! We had a Voyage game. We had a giant trivia question book my mom created and typed up. We had sailor's caps. We had photos. We each had our favorite characters. This show dominated my early life in ways Star Trek couldn't even begin to compete with, even though it was watched just as often. I cut my writing teeth on this series, writing fanfic with my mom before I even knew what fanfic was.

The first black and white season was the serious season and has the strongest episodes. Those early eps, like Submarine Sunk Here, Doomsday, Mutiny, The Mist of Silence, The Traitor (the first thing I ever saw George Sanders in! He was so suave and cool I learned his name) hold up well over time. They're still solid shows. I always wanted to meet Paul Carr and tell him how much his arm-caught-in-the-gear scene scared me. Those yells of pain and terror always got to me. Once the series went to color, it slowly angled away from spies and traitors and old-fashioned submarine stories to monster/alien-of-the-week shows. Though there's still quite many good episodes in there, mixed among the dreadful ones. They're obviously cheesy by today's standards, but they're still a ton of fun to watch. And there's the flying sub, one of the coolest inventions ever, not to mention the jillion other inventions the Admiral came up with. And there's a mermaid! And it's really hard not to love a show where they got to carry Thompsons around on board a submarine while hunting aliens.

"It doesn't matter."

Day 12 - An episode you’ve watched more than 5 times

A single ep? I've seen whole series (like Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) far more than 5 times! But lessee now. I was going to pick my favorite Buffy episode, but I think I'm going to go with something more obscure that I love just as much.

Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years ran just a single season, but, boy howdy, it had some good episodes. It's predessor, Lonesome Dove: The Series was also good, but had a completely different tone. Much lighter, not that many shadows, until the final ep. The Outlaw Years, however, jumped right into the heavy-duty, serious stuff. I couldn't get enough of it when it aired, and I was so mad when they canceled the show. Particularly as the ending leaves off in the bloody middle of everything going to hell in a hand basket! The nerve!

My favorite episode is entitled "Redemption." (Of course!) This ep hits just about all my favorite themes, and hits them well. Redemption, characters who profess not to care but who care and care deeply. Characters trying to evade blame. False accusations and frame-ups. Traitors. Evil corporations. And a big one: characters who choose right over their own personal prejudices. Ah, it's very satisfying episode in a series of satisfying episodes. (Hm, this makes me want to make a list of my 10 favorite episodes, from any show.)