Car Shoot Car

My promised rant about The Mummy 3: How To Waste Jet Li has been postponed momentarily so I can make this horrible confession. Though I don't want to say it, and feel like I'm betraying everyone I know and love, I watched Paul W. S. Anderson's Death Race a few hours ago, and I didn't think it was the worst film of the year. Whether this has anything to do with seeing the truly appalling 88 Minutes a couple of days earlier, I do not know. BTW, if you're after a synopsis of Death Race, read the Wiki page I just linked to. There's no way I'm going to go through it again, which means I'm exhibiting as much effort as Anderson did while writing it.


I usually cannot abide anything the guy does. Resident Evil remains one of my least favourite films of all time, Aliens Vs. Predator defecated all over two franchises that even hacks like Stephen Hopkins and Jean-Pierre Jeunet couldn't soil beyond salvation, and I'll never forgive the guy for wrecking David Webb Peoples' script for Soldier. Knowing that he was going to swallow Paul Bartel's entertaining Death Race 2000 and then regurgitate it out as a hairball of mediocrity angered me a lot, though perhaps not as much as the die-hard fans of the original.

Of course, PWSA has stripped the original tale of its subversive edge and satirical bite, turning in a homogenous tale of wronged convicts and duplicitous wardens, as if crossing Steve Jackson's Car Wars and John McTiernan's Rollerball remake with John Flynn's Lock-Up, adding just a dash of Mario Kart to appeal to the gamers in the audience, while cynically introducing exploitation tropes like exploding people, gratuitous hotties, and Grizzled Old-Timer Ian McShane saying "Bullshit" a lot (but sadly, no "Cocksucker"). The cast aids and abets PWSA in his quest for mediocrity. The usually likable Jason Statham merely scowls and shows off his disconcertingly buff bod, Tyrese Gibson fails to act (as usual), and worst of all, Joan Allen appears as the warden of the prison within which the Death Race takes place. Having had her face filled to bursting with enough botox to kill a blue whale, she is incapable of emoting anything other than muted anger. It's like she's trapped behind a mask that looks like a puffy parody of her own face.


This, more than anything else on display, depressed me totally. Joan Allen is a terrific actress (if you don't believe me check out her turn as Pat Nixon in Oliver Stone's biopic of the shamed President), but here she has been plastinated so badly that she looks like a cross between Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and a cat with Moebius Syndrome. Just to rub the misery in, she also gets to deliver such lines as "Release the Dreadnought!" and, worst of all, "Okay cocksucker. Fuck with me, and we'll see who shits on the sidewalk", which is obviously PWSA trying to please the audience by getting an Oscar-nominated actress to utter profanities in a "shocking" manner, but just ends up sounding desperate, not to mention incomprehensible.


This all might have worked if the whole enterprise wasn't so joyless and measured, aiming for a Grindhouse aesthetic but blowing it by being too neat and tidy. People explode, cars fly through the air, necks get snapped, and men hoot and holler at the sexy ladies brought in for no other reason than that sexy women attract viewers (an actual bit of meta-exposition from the film, horribly enough), but it feels hollow and gratuitous. That's saying something, considering Grindhouse movies are supposed to be hollow and gratuitous, but this is like the pod person version of those movies, all sheen and competence instead of enthusiasm and imagination.

And yet I still found myself enjoying it on a lizard-brain level, perhaps because I thought the design on the cars was so sweet. They don't look particularly battle-hardened, even when peppered with bullet-holes, but they look butch and tooled-up. Who can resist the sight of a car covered with mini-guns, even though, illogically, they fire constantly throughout the movie and never seem to destroy anything?


PWSA has raised his game with the action scenes as well. Though repetitive and often unimaginative, they are at least edited and shot with more coherence than a lot of modern action films, and with more muscular effect than he has exhibited in his previous, lethargic films. They're not perfect by a long shot, and confusion creeps in from time to time, but for the most part they are mindlessly fun to watch, with the added bonus of seeming to be filmed using real cars, pyrotechnics, and stuntmen (with sporadic CGI blowouts). Sadly, all of the good will generated by that commitment to real stuntwork was erased at the end of the film when Ian McShane addressed the camera. Totally unearned, and utterly embarrassing. You don't mistreat Al Swearengen like that, Anderson, you tool.


So basically I'm saying the movie does not count as pure FAIL, which is a really insipid bit of praise, but considering how badly this most awful of directors usually screws up, it's a notable improvement. However, compare it to Neil Marshall's Doomsday, and the lack of quality becomes apparent. That was exactly the film this wished it was, and once more I urge any readers to watch it immediately. Either that or watch 88 Minutes. I'm serious! That shit is off the mu'fukken chain.

Oh, and for the ladies (and gay fellas) who have just Googled "Jason Statham hot muscles", here is a screencap of him doing pull-ups, which he does in the middle of the film for no reason other than that his fanbase kinda expects this to happen at least once a film.


It's a totally insane bod.

TOUCHDOWN!

We have to shout from the rooftops; Friday Night Lights is coming back for a third season of 13 episodes, all of which are guaranteed. Just as with Veronica Mars I have been holding two thoughts in my head in a kind of DoubleThink mode, loving it and yet not wanting to commit to it too much because shows this wonderful rarely last long. Mars, Firefly, Journeyman, Deadwood, Dollhouse (we all know it, let's not kid ourselves that Fox will suddenly surprise us); we've been burned before. But finally, some good news!


Yes, 13 episodes is not the amount I would like (can 365 installments a year be managed somehow?), but I'd rather have an HBO-size season than nothing at all. More Smash! More Riggins! More Landry! Best of all, more wonderful Coach and Mrs. Coach sparring! Where's my booze and pompoms? It's go time!

Lost - Eggtown

I tell you, not having a computer at home has made this very difficult. My beloved screencaps, which I take so much pride over, have had to be taken from YouTube, so the quality is a bit poo, but then to be honest this was far from my favourite episode. I had great difficulty mustering much enthusiasm for it, not helped by guessing what the twist ending would be as soon as I saw Kate giving Aaron the stink eye when Claire suggested she hold the baby. That is what I hear is known as "foreshadowing", which sounds like "flawshadowing", a word that, according to the Shades of Caruso dictionary, means, "Pointing out that something is going to happen later in a story either with some shaky writing or a sledgehammer-subtle visual". This is a genuine word. I didn't just make it up.


It was an especially disappointing episode as it was co-written by the hugely talented Elizabeth Sarnoff, who has previously worked on Deadwood and some of Lost's best episodes, including The Man Behind The Curtain. However, she did also co-write Stranger in a Strange Land, possibly the worst episode of Lost ever, so let's hope she only writes one of those a season and now Eggtown is out of the way we're back to the usual superb standards.

Sarnoff worked with another writer this week, a chap called Greggory Nations, who previously worked on Nash Bridges and apparently wrote the Lost show bible, which must have been a frustrating and time-consuming experience. On the production side of things, we were treated to the return of Stephen Williams and Cort Fey, who last shot the incredible Confirmed Dead. That was a visual tour de force, but this week was comparatively restrained, either because of the nature of the script, or because the shooting schedule didn't allow for more time to be expended on it.


This week was primarily about Kate bartering for information and freedom, either through trades or trickery. Hurley and Locke came off worst, with Miles and Ben doing fairly well with their own trade-off (Ben will give a tantalisingly exact amount of money to Miles so that he will keep his mouth shut, possibly by killing other characters, including C.S. Lewis). That theme was reflected in the title, which appparently referred to trading in the old West. That said, the definition was listed as fact on Lostpedia, and repeated around the blogosphere, but now it's missing from the Lostpedia page altogether. This was what it said, as far as I can recall:

Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that was also highly perishable. Nobody wanted to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they had their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would tell each other things like, "If I were you, I would stay away from Bogart. That's an egg-town." Of course, salesmen often didn't trust each other, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town's customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman would venture into Bogart only to find it truly was an egg-town. He was either persuaded to not visit a town that had good customers or was tricked into visiting a town that could only offer eggs. The term "egg-town" represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case.

That they have taken it down makes it seem like it might not have been true, or was a joke. Detached from the possibly genuine meaning, calling a place an egg-town sounds fake, like saying, "You wouldn't want to invest in that company. Those are pickle-juice stocks. They'll just quack your portfolio into a zinc-box." Of course, I could be wrong about this.

Whatever the meaning (many think it has to do with the eggs Locke brought Ben prior to killing the island's last chicken -- in which case, why wasn't the episode called "The Last Chicken"?), it was a Kate-centric episode, and much as I don't want to join in with the usual internet shrugging whenever the show concentrates on her, I often find it hard to give a damn about her and her woes. This has nothing to do with Evangeline Lilly, who I think is just fine in the part. However, she obviously has considerable charm and liveliness outside of her stinky Kate garb, as shown when she was interviewed by Letterman recently. Her tales of failing to travel to China due to oblivious disregard of international visa laws charmed his horrible white socks off, and us too. Why doesn't she get a chance to shine like that in the show?

To be honest, there are only two times she interests me. Firstly as an action lady, kicking ass and taking names, as shown here in a murky screencap of her knocking the shit out of a padlock while Miles watches in bemusement behind her.


Secondly, as a member of the Kate-Jack-Juliet-Sawyer quadrangle of loaded looks and occasional lust. This aspect of the show has often annoyed fans, but I started to enjoy it in the third season, mostly because I love Sawyer and was happy to see him receive some attention from the islander of his dreams. I still get choked up during the scene when he nearly gets killed by Michael Bowen and she pleads for his life.


Another thing that damaged my potential affection for the character came early on, when we found out she was on the run from the law. It's a horrible cliche in TV and film that if we're going to side with a character who is a fugitive, they either have to be innocent, or guilty of one of the "lesser" crimes (car theft, or self-defence murder). A friend could never enjoy Con Air, as even though Cameron Poe killed a man defending his pregnant wife, it was still murder, and he couldn't get past it. It doesn't bother me anywhere near as much (and certainly didn't affect my love for Con Air, which is a classic half-spoof/half-full-on actioner filled with flights of absurd genius), but it can be very obvious. In the first season, Kate was shown doing some incredibly stupid and reckless things, getting the love of her life killed and robbing a bank just to get a memento of him back, but her first crime was left unexplained. I suspected it would be something to do with killing someone who abused her, and it struck me as a reasonable way to have her be a fugitive but still be accepted.


However, it turned out to be a horrible cliche, and a total non-surprise, and smacked of a lack of imagination, as if her character hadn't been fully thought through. Her flashbacks have been less revealing than anyone else's, featuring only the odd cool moment (her "good dad" knew Sayid in Iraq!). This meant I was less than invested in her flash-forward, and if the big moment of the episode was the shocking reveal of her "adoption" of Aaron, then that got spoiled too, so we were totally onto a loser.


Even worse, the trial scenes were rushed through so fast that they were littered with illogicalities. Though I was glad to see Big Love's Shaun Doyle defending Kate, he seemed to get her off with some bizarre tactic that involved going on and on about being a hero. Never mind the fact that she was involved in at least two deaths and a bank robbery. Never mind that she spent years on the run. Never mind that the US Marshall escorting her died in the 815 crash (that really doesn't sound at all dubious). She looked after a bunch of people on the island. And we only have Jack's word for it! No testimony from Hurley or Sayid, though that might be because Hurley is in an institution and Sayid is hunting The Economist, and the sixth survivor (if Aaron counts as number five on that list) is hiding until the forthcoming reveal. Also, I didn't like her hair during the trial. She looks better with it down. [/catty]


While watching it, we were incredulous that the prosecutor asked Jack if he loved Kate. Would that really be a question during a big murder trial? "Do you have noogy-oogy-boo-boo feelings for the defendent? Remember, you're under oath!" It struck us as silly, but thinking about it now, knowing that apparently the prosecution only had one bit of proof up their sleeve (Kate's mom's testimony), and the defence only had one thing to exonerate Kate (Jack's shifty testimony), I guess they really needed to crush him with some hardcore legal manoevering. Even so, it was a weirdly awkward moment in Lost history.


Good job Kate's mom finally tried to revoke her Lost-Gupta status by changing her mind, although seemingly doing it so she could see Aaron was a bit of a screw-up. The character has long annoyed me. I might not like Kate's backstory much, thinking it the least fleshed out of all the Lost characters still living (let's not get into the Shannon/Boone stuff), but it did have that frisson of featuring some rare mother issues in a show so dominated by father issues. Sure, Kate had those too, but her mother was particularly nasty, so seeing her soften in this episode was a welcome change. Beth Broderick played the hell out of her short scene, showing a mixture of contrition, indignation and bemusement. Kate's rejection of her was all the more affecting for it.


In the past few weeks I've tried to look at the visual choices made by the directors, but this week, as I mentioned before, was rather muted. That said, while going over the YouTube clips, I noticed a lot of third-person shots throughout Kate's scenes. Sometimes it was subtle...


...and sometimes it took over the frame.


I guess it's to do with Kate's connection with those around her, especially the men in her life. For a lot of the episode she is trying to figure out if getting off the island is a good idea or not, and so is doing her own thing. She needs Sawyer's help, but it's her plan, and she gets what she wants, though perhaps she isn't going to be too happy about what she finds out. Not to mention having to put up with Miles's lame come-ons.


Nevertheless, while she's seeking an answer to her questions, Jack in the future and Sawyer in the past try to (benevolently) impose themselves on her, and as such crowd her in the frame. She acts reluctant to let them in, but she is in the frame too, just to show her complicated feelings for the men.


In one scene, while she is alone in the frame, ostensibly visiting Sawyer to discuss the outcome of their plan to get Ben and Miles together, we can see her reflection in a mirror behind her, together on the bed with Sawyer. It's as if we're seeing what's in the back of her mind (i.e., some sweet island sex with her hott bad boy).


Of course, by the end of the episode she pushed Sawyer away and leapt on his relief over her non-pregnancy so she had an excuse to leave (not to mention Locke banishing her from the Barracks in an echo of Juliet's branding and shunning by the Others). Well, that's one reading. The other is that she wanted to be with Sawyer, but on her own terms. Sadly, he didn't see it that way. That certainly seems to be the case with Jack in the future, so obviously besotted with her but unable to do what she wants out of some unknown reticence over her adoption of Aaron. These hott men just won't let her be herself, and she's willing to be alone if necessary, and by the end of the show the only male sharing the frame with her is Aaron.


So, in retrospect, a frustrating episode, mostly treading water while setting up future episodes with Sun and Jin, showing Faraday suffering from a mysterious case of amnesia, and giving Ben something to do other than be tied up and sarcastic. I didn't hate it (it's an impossibility), but it didn't fire my imagination the way Confirmed Dead or The Economist did. Oh well, I don't expect every episode to be a masterpiece. It was still worthwhile, and Kate still had her good moments. For a start, she has finally removed the stinky clothes that have been dominating the screen every time she appears. Canyon was most pleased by that turnout. Also, she did get to be a badass (when the show started I often thought of her as Spock to Jack's Kirk, but that didn't work over time). I love that she is meant to be easily as tough (if not tougher) than the guys around her, and the most startling moment of the whole episode came as she reacted to Sawyer's snide taunting with a vicious backhand that knocked him across the bed.


He made a few good points, even though he was being unnecessarily spiteful. To be honest, the show is definitely featuring much more violent behaviour from our heroes, and the internets are buzzing with talk that the castaways are now far worse than the Others ever were. If it's not Hurley turning on his friends, Jack attempting to shoot Locke, everyone kicking Ben around as if he were a sneaky football, and Kate knocking Sawyer's hair flying, it's Locke turning into a pure psychopath by putting a grenade in Miles's mouth, a WTF moment that is running the risk of being purely absurd.


Hopefully that grenade is fake; otherwise Locke is crossing a line. Of course, the news that Miles won't be around in the last five episodes due to Ken Leung having other commitments makes me mad enough to look the other way on this. To quote Carlton Cuse:

We have one actor we very much need who is doing a play and another actor doing an HBO series. But we also have some opportunities. Nestor Carbonell, who played Richard Alpert last season, was on Cane. But now we'll be able to use him. Another unforeseen advantage is that we'll be able to respond to confusion the audience might have about the season so far.

Yay regarding Carbonell, but it sucks that Miles won't be around. I totally understand Leung's need to find work, though. This is mere frustration that this excellent character won't be around. Rumour has it the other missing actor will be Sonya Walger, who will be off obsessing about babies on Tell Me You Are Available To Finish Filming Lost Please.

Anyway, I'm still freaked out by Locke's utter craziness this week. I bet he killed the damn chicken out of fury. I'll even bet he'd named the thing Ben, and tore its head off in frustration. To make things worse, Locke's attitude to Miles' predicament was obnoxiously blase. He pissed me off with his little ring flip.


Man, just because Ben is being particularly accurate with his little barbs of disdain doesn't mean Locke can get away with being a jerk of this magnitude. That said, Ben sniffed at Locke bringing him a copy of PKD's Valis, saying he had already read it. Dude! That's a total masterpiece! It rewards further reading, and you should know that, you pouty douche. I'm conflicted!

Still, we get a break from the island violence and PKD-snubbing tonight, with the broadcast of The Constant. I saw a quick clip from it on YouTube while looking for these clips, and it looks like the most fascinating and headbending episode ever. Watch out for Minkowski's first appearance. It will drive the internet wild with speculation and worry over Desmond's fate, if it hasn't already. Speaking of driving people wild, we very nearly had a wardrobe malfunction in Eggtown. Sawyer was being more open than usual while wooing Kate in his bedroom. If you know what I mean.


It's at times like this that you really miss being able to get HD screencaps. I can imagine I just disappointed a lot of Sawyer fans with that crappy and frustrating image.

Lost Countdown: No. 10 (Updated with corrections and pics)

So long have I been waiting for the return of my favourite show (just in case you haven't been paying attention, it's Lost) that it became one of the reasons I co-created this blog, so that I have somewhere to go on and on and on about it (sorry, Canyon and Masticator). One thing I wanted to do was lead up to the premiere of the fourth season with a list of things I love about it, but time and chores have obstructed me, and the truncated nature of the season, caused by the writer's strike, has made its return a bittersweet event. Nevertheless, here is number ten in my countdown of Reasons To Love Lost:

The Awesome Character Actors In The Supporting Cast:

Just like Deadwood, the cast of Lost is not only enormous, but filled with familiar faces of character actors of huge talent and/or nerd value. In season three we saw appearances by Robin Weigert, Jon Gries, Samantha Mathis, Nestor Carbonell, Cheech Marin, King of Awesome Nathan Fillion, and even Billy Dee Williams. I love that showriters Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are such nerds that on the commentary for Exposé, the episode where we "meet" Mr. LeShade for the first time, they admit they and showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got the costume designer to ensure the colours of his clothes matched those of Lando Calrissian in his Bespin Cloud City attire from The Empire Strikes Back. That's quality nerdery.

Best of all, due to the flashback nature of the show (more on that later), many of these actors can possibly come back in the future. John Terry, who plays Christian Shephard, and William Mapother*, who was so brilliant as the creepy Ethan Rom, were only meant to be in a couple of episodes but keep coming back in flashbacks because the showrunners love their work so much. Maybe we'll even see Michael Bowen and Paula "Trixie" Malcomson again.


What makes me even happier is the way the main cast, many of whom seemed to be so much less interesting than the incidental cast, have grown so much over the last three years that they are now often on a par with the guest stars, if not better. More on that later as well.

So, my list begins with a quick post, but that's what happens when you begin playing Bioshock midway through the night and everything goes wrong, what with the brilliance and atmosphere and addictiveness and satire of Objectivism. More annoying Lost bleatings to come, dear reader! Only a few days to go! Aiiiiieeeeeee!

* Edited to add: In my hurry with my first attempt at this post I mashed up William Mapother's name with that of his cousin Tom Cruise, and called him Thomas Mapother (which, of course, is Cruise's real name). A terrible crime for a supposed Lost fan, but I was punished by dreaming about Cruise during the night, talking about how unhappy he was filming Valkyrie in Germany, which would be uncharacteristically rude if it actually happened outside my head.

The 2006-2007 Caruso Awards (Pt. 2)

I wasn't going to plumb the miserable depths of the TV season, thinking that for once I'd made a positive statement free from grumpiness or cynicism or teeth-gnashing. It was nice! It made me happy a couple of days ago, and I was considering getting my anger on with a couple of pissy statements, and then I could move on. However, some TV is so bad, so misguided, so detrimental to the reputation of the medium, that it has to be named and shamed, preferably with little tiny jpgs. So, here is the TV that made our toes curl last year. Apologies for dredging up negative memories for anyone who has suffered through any of this.

Worst single episodes of the season:

10. Drive - Let The Games Begin

Oh Nathan, you devilish, gallant, funny little studburger you! How we love you and your dashing good looks, with the added bonus of self-deprecating humour and goofiness. We think you are TEH BOMM! However, please stay away from Tim Minear, because he is TV poison. Angel fans rightly bemoan the premature cancellation of the show, but with Minear on the production, it's a miracle it didn't happen earlier, as he seems jinxed. His record is shocking, with cancelled show after cancelled show, but in a way it doesn't surprise me. To date I've find him a flat, humourless writer, with a couple of Angel/Firefly episodes rising above the rest. Granted, he has a grasp of the dramatic side of the Mutant Enemy equation. Sadly, that's not enough. His shows tend to be unpleasantly dour, but Drive was made worse by the absurd premise (we're talking Prison Break levels of absurdity, if you can believe that), rushed production job (blame Fox), erratic casting (yay Dylan Baker! Boo Melanie Lynskey! Really really boo!!!), repetitive structure, and general air of half-assery. We only got as far as the third episode, and it didn't have much longer to improve, but this was bad enough to stop us watching anyway. Drab direction, shitty dialogue, embarassing acting from almost all concerned. Oh, I feel bad now. Forgive us, Nathan! We still love you! ::multiple smooches::

9. Lost - Stranger in a Strange Land

Even a rabid fanboy like myself had to admit that the third season of Lost wasn't perfect. I found the 6 episode mini on Other Island a lot more meaningful and entertaining than most, but after coming back from the short hiatus with a couple of scorching episodes, the show faltered badly with this dreary travelogue. Bai Ling guest-starred as a tattoo artist who brands her new man (Jack at his most pointless), at the same time as Juliet is branded an outcast by her Othery cohorts, headed by Diana Scarwid (wasted in this and then frustratingly absent for the rest of the season). As usual the little details are fascinating (the brand on Juliet's back is an upside-down Scientology cross, apparently), but the big picture says nothing interesting. For ruining the momentum of the second part of the season, I must speak out against something I normally love without reservation. And what was it all for? So we could find out that Jack's tattoo means, "One night in Bangkok and my arm's all hurty," or something. Booooring.

8. The O.C. - The Night Moves

The fourth and final season of The O.C. was an almost total joy, allowing the show to head off into the pretty sunset with its head held high. The genius move was to throw caution to the wind and have all sorts of craziness fly free: Che falling in love with Seth's otter totem; Ryan and Taylor hooking up, thus unlocking his inner awesomeness; Sandy bemoaning his friendlessness and practically stalking a co-worker; Ryan and Taylor falling unconscious after an accident and entering a parallel universe (of sorts); Kevin Sorbo turning up as Ryan's delinquent dad to seduce Julie Cooper, etc. It was almost all gold, but with two episodes to go, it went haywire in a bad way. An earthquake hits Newport, and Ryan gets badly injured, while super-dependable entertainment generator Julie and honking, self-obsessed O.C. Gupta Kaitlin are trapped in an ice-cream parlour or something stupid, with only a creepy obsessive classmate to help them. If I remember correctly, approximately 198% of the episode deals with that subplot, driving me to nod off repeatedly. At the end, Ryan's grievous kidney injury heals after someone puts a Band-Aid on it, and everyone returns to a demolished Chez Cohen. I get why they did all of this, to ensure the family moves from Newport to establish themselves in a town less shallow, but there had to be a better, more entertaining way to do it.

7. Doctor Who - Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

I'm not cheating this time! It was a two-parter, and the only time the third season went awry (though the real-time Sunshiney one wasn't that brilliant either). It's not as bad as the season two episode with the Olympics, which was a maelstrom of mediocrity, but it came close. Plus, it ruined the Daleks! In much the same way that Rene Ecchevaria ruined the Borg by humanising them, writer Helen Raynor and show runner Russell T. Davies had renegade Dalek Sec absorb a spats-wearing Twenties gangster, only to reappear later as a penis-faced cross between Kid Creole and Bernard Bresslaw from Krull. As has been said before, many Who two-parters are 60 minute long scripts that can't be shrunk to 45 minutes, and are therefore stretched to 90 minutes, and as a result there are horrible padding sub-plots about pig-faced animal men (which made me pine for John Frankenheimer's The Island Of Doctor Moreau) and shantytowns in Central Park (an interesting subject, but badly served by the writing). The show rallied, thankfully, with the final five episodes being particularly great, but I can imagine this tedious mess would have put off anyone already (wrongly) angered by the introduction of Martha. (There's a name for Martha-haters; Crazy-insane-fools-who-are-dead-to-me.)

6. Jekyll - Episode 3

In a word, Jekyll was shit. In several words, Jekyll was shit with some fantastic ideas, lots of ambition, and the odd moment of pure genius. The first three episodes, however, were made hard-going by the awful awful direction. Douglas MacKinnon handled them (before passing the baton to the far more capable Matt Lipsey), and did everything possible to ruin Steven Moffat's flawed but interesting script. Making The Nesbitt gurn and bleat like an Irish Jim Carrey was his most obvious crime, but not understanding the basics of blocking a scene made many setpieces fall apart in the most hilarious ways. Cramped sets, shoddy lighting, awful over-acting, and ineptly staged shock moments littered all three episodes, but this was truly the worst. We thought it was a parody of horror movies, it was so wretched. MacKinnon is surely a shoo-in for Scary Movie 5, as long as the producers convince him it's a drama. Oh, and someone burn Gina Bellman's Equity membership so that she can never darken our TVs again. Why does she still get work? I blame Dennis Potter.

5. Veronica Mars - Un-American Graffiti

Once the best show on TV, Veronica Mars was treated with disrespect and disdain by network heads for two seasons, and then in the hard-fought-for third, the viewers turned on it as well. Suffering an inexplicable downturn in popularity (and therefore a corresponding decline in confidence), it battled on, trying to hold onto the Gilmore Girls viewers and failing miserably (even though it's 10000000 times the show Gilmore Girls thinks it is). The odd excellent episode won back some plaudits (<3 Paul Rudd 4evah), and the season finale was a heart-breaking triumphant improvement, but a couple of episodes before that, the show shot itself in the foot with incredible sniper accuracy by turning Veronica into the living embodiment of Paul Haggis' hated Crash, as well as sending lovable Keith on an out-of-character mission to stop teenagers drinking. His return to the sheriff's office was a promising idea, but all it did was turn him into a big judgemental jerk who would fit right in on CSI: Miami. The A-plot (about a Middle Eastern family targeted by a hate campaign) was timely and relevant, but sensitively handled it was not. Veronica's snarky noir voiceover turned shrill and preachy, and every single previously lovable aspect of the show fell horribly flat. A soul-crushing disaster of epic proportions. Just like Crash!

4. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - The Wrap Party

Oh yeah, we had to get this in there somewhere. To be honest, there were episodes that were more unwatchably smug and tedious, episodes that ripped off Sorkin's previous work more egregiously, episodes that were even less funny and more preachy, but even though the first few episodes were already not that great, this is where the great project flew off the rails like a burning train, not unlike that bit at the end of Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Eli Wallach guests as a living embodiment of censorship victimhood, sitting the audience down and explaining in very deliberate terms how McCarthyism is alive and well in Dubya's America, which no one noticed until he points it out. Thanks, guest-star Eli Wallach! Then Simon and Matt go trawling for African-American comedians, only to find dispiriting amounts of, "Black dudes do this, white folks do that," of such magnitude that Simon is forced to retcon his past into an improbable Boyz N' The Hood parody. Oh, and Matt meets a bunch of sexy ladies who are very very very very very very very stupid. That's the joke for this episode. Stupid women saying stupid things.

::sigh:: Sorkin's appalling low comedy masquerading as sophistication is yet another symptom of his arrogant assumption that only he is qualified to write his shows, meaning he has to cast around for desperately unfunny jokes, plots that are either rehashed from West Wing (and thus are incompatible with the format of the show. Soldiers kidnapped in Afghanistan?), Moebius-Strip conversations, and single-episode ideas padded out to four-part mini-epics. It got worse (the finale, so bad criminal charges could be filed), but this was the beginning of the end.

And no, Guardian TV critics, I'm not saying this because I'm too stupid to appreciate good drama, so stop writing blog posts about how no one is capable of understanding Sorkin's genius. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops: when he's good, he's amazing; when he's bad, he's unwatchable. And embarrassing. And patronising. And arrogant. And unfunny. Let's hope GoodSorkin worked on the forthcoming Charlie Wilson's War, and if BadSorkin worked on it, I hope he doesn't get as pissy and defensive as he did when people called him on the atrocity that was Studio 60.

3. Battlestar Galactica - The Woman King

As I said before, as much as I loved the first four episodes of BSG season 3, I sat through the rest of the season with an increasingly heavy heart. More time was spent dealing with Tyrol and Callie's failing marriage, Baltar's status as a walking metaphor, and worst of all, Apollo and Starbuck's forbidden love (partially prohibited because of Starbuck's religious beliefs, but the tenets of her religion remain unexplained, so the whole thing seemed as ridiculous as it was boring). If the showrunners want to spend time on a romantic relationship, let's see Bill Adama and Laura Roslin getting it on. It's what the fans want, damn it. However, the show plumbed depths I did not think it capable of plumbing with this hour of horrid anvilbashing obviousness. Normally I would rejoice to see Bruce Davison in the show, but this time I just felt bad for him. Playing a racist doctor targetting Sagittarons, with only Helo to save the day, the dialogue became more and more leaden, the premise more obvious, the speechifying more insulting. As with the Veronica Mars episode, it was all about the big themes writ larger than large, and even though the show had flirted with metaphorical crassness before, this was the only time the writers and directors went all out to bludgeon the viewer with finger-wagging moral superiority. And it made me hate Helo. Good work, showrunners.

2. John From Cincinnati - His Visit: Day Four

I'll get this out of the way so that I can get to the heart of why this episode was so terrible; WHY DID YOU STOP MAKING DEADWOOD, MILCH?!!!???! WHY?!?!?!!? YOU BROKE MY HEART!!! Now that's out of the way, you can rest assured that this rant has nothing to do with bitterness over the unresolved fate of that most excellent show. It's more than enough that Jesus From Cincinnati is a pretentious quasi-mystical nothing, with an obscure plot, risible non-acting surfers who don't surf either, and the shrieking of the hams (more on that below). I will say that the plot and that cod-Shakespearian dialogue often fascinated me, while not entertaining me even one iota. What the hell was Milch doing? Nothing like it has ever been made before, and considering the negative critical and popular reaction, never will again. Was it a car-crash? Or the wave of the future? Was Milch advancing the storytelling form, or was he masturbating with an enormous, smug grin on his pretentious face? Or was it all of the above? No one, including Milch, knows.

Every week was an exercise in audience-baiting, but the fourth episode was the worst of the lot. Never have I watched a TV show and been so convinced that the show creator was laughing in my face. The opening scene (Cass killing time in her hotel) sets the tone of the episode where nothing happens for 45 minutes, with only Rebecca DeMornay's Cissy Yost furthering the invisible plot. To make things worse, she accomplishes this by screeching for the entire episode. Like nails down an infinite blackboard, the show vibrates your eardrum until it splits, and then goes to work on your teeth and skull. I've never seen anything so willfully awful and knowingly unenlightening outside of a Tracey Emin exhibition. Lars Von Trier would approve, which perhaps is criticism enough. Milch's disregard for his audience is unparalleled, and it's only the existence of his masterwork, Deadwood, that stops me and several thousand other JFC viewers from hiring someone to torture him with the sound of DeMornay bleating at a pitch that would explode his head, just like the aliens at the end of Mars Attacks.

1. Torchwood - Countrycide

Talking about those episodes made me realise how truly abysmal they all were, but even during the middle of this unpleasant nostalgic flashback, nothing comes close to this eye-wateringly wretched hour of amateurish TV. I'm sure nothing good could have come from Chris Chibnall's horrendous script, mushing together cliches torn from much better films and TV shows, but to make things worse, the direction and acting reaches apocalyptically bad proportions. Like a group of teenagers armed with a camcorder and hopped up on Mountain Dew and multiple viewings of Terminator 2 and The Hills Have Eyes, the show unravels fast, with absurd macho posturings, childish dialogue, hysterical overacting, laughable portentousness, and ambition far exceeding ability. Seeing Torchwood Gupta Owen pretending to be a gun-toting hardass has been making us laugh ever since, his stupid little hopping movements like some kind of Dadaist performance piece.

That's before we get into the hilarious message of the episode, that sometimes humans are more inhuman than their alien antagonists. This is meant to be a criticism of our inhumanity? But it doesn't mean anything if a) you're comparing them to fictional non-human characters, and b) you're making the human bad guys do something that no human has ever done, i.e. band together as a village to eat visitors. There are many horrible things human beings do to each other (something everyone knows without Chibnall and his ridiculous ilk telling us), but I don't think communal cannibalism is among them. The fact that the show thought that it was illuminating some deep dark hole in our psyche, all the while stumbling around, mortally wounded by comical blocking and sub-moronic speechifying, made me simultaneously disgusted with the entire production and overjoyed that I was able to watch something so wrong-headed still being made in this day and age.

Okay, I did enjoy watching the episode with Canyon, because we laughed and laughed and laughed, but the thought that everyone thought they were creating something profound pissed me off when the tears of mirth had dried. There are episodes of Manimal that say more about the human condition than this, with the added bonus of Simon MacCorkindale turning into a horse. As a whole, Torchwood represents everything that's wrong with British TV, but this one episode was worse than that. It was the nuclear-powered awful-bomb that almost killed storytelling itself, and as such should be buried a thousand miles down in earth lined with salt. And yet, I can't wait for the next season, especially as the super-awesome Martha Jones is coming back for a few episodes (please don't ruin her or there will be hell to pay!!!). I might even recap it.

Wow, I went off a bit there. If I sound unhinged, I will say that many of the people involved are very talented and have done other good stuff, so it's often a conflagration of negative elements conspiring to create TV awfulness, and some of these shows are among my favourites. However, if it's bad, it's my duty to hit those bastards with every adjective I can think of. If it means even one less message-laden chunk of worthiness is prevented from reaching our plasma screens, all of this fist-shaking will be justified. Here's to a new season of gold and dreck to get my teeth into. As Prince once said, life can be so nice!