SUPERMAN: DOOMSDAY
(Review)

Marvel’s gotten the jump on DC as far as straight-to-DVD animated features are concerned, inundating comic geeks with lackluster fare such as the Ultimate Avengers flicks and Iron Man.
DC finally got in on the act though, with the okay but not really stellar effort, Superman: Brainiac Attacks. They’ve followed that one up with the decidedly more adult Superman: Doomsday.

The Good:
The gimmicky fat of the original comic book story—particularly the quartet of Super-replacements who pop out of the woodwork once the Last Son of Krypton bites the big one—is wisely trimmed off, paring the tale down to its essentials, and allowing the storytellers to more deeply explore the effect Superman’s apparent death has on Metropolis and those closest to him.
We see how Jimmy, Perry, and of course, Lois, deal with their grief as their beloved champion and friend dies while protecting humanity from the evil forces of destruction, personified by the killing machine known as “Doomsday.”
Here, Doomsday is a merciless juggernaut, bane of innocent deer and doggies called “Biscuit” alike. Oh, and Men of Steel as well.
A tough baddie is key where Superman is concerned, and it’s fortunate that the Doomsday sequence is particularly effective, the action and suspense dealt out with skill and style as the two combatants rumble throughout Metropolis.

And though I do miss Tim Daly as Clark/Superman, genre mainstay Adam Baldwin (seen on The X-Files, Angel, Firefly, and presently, Chuck; Baldwin also voiced Green Lantern Hal Jordan for the Justice League animated series) does a commendable job, edging out early George Newbern (who voices Supes on Justice League) with his vocal performance.
Acing their characters as well are Twin Peaks’ and Reaper’s Ray Wise (as Perry White) and Lost’s and Pushing Daisies’ Swoosie Kurtz (as Martha Kent).
Jimmy’s subplot is also interesting, though perhaps could have benefited with slightly more screen time. (Jimmy is voiced by Adam Wylie, Zack on Picket Fences, and the voice of Brainiac 5 on Legion of Super-Heroes; Entourage fans may remember him as Jay on “One Day In The Valley.”)

Finally, there are also nice tips of the proverbial hat to the Fleischer animated Superman shorts from the 40’s and the Legion of Super-Heroes comic book, as well as a playful swipe at the aborted Superman Lives script written by Kevin Smith, with Smith making a brief, amusing cameo.

The Bad:
I definitely miss Dana Delany as Lois, as Anne (Ally McBeal; Men In Trees) Heche’s interpretation seems strangely insubstantial.
But, as disappointed as I am with Lois, James Marsters (another genre mainstay, having spent considerable time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, as well as kicking around Smallville more recently) does a sad-a$$ job as Luthor. (Clancy Brown did such a dead-on, bang-up job as Lex, I still “hear” that resonant voice whenever I read a comic with Luthor in it.)

There’s also the gross underutilization of Cree Summer—who did work on Batman Beyond, but is more (in)famously known for her turn as Foxxy Love on the audaciously hilarious Drawn Together—and John DiMaggio—Brother Blood on Teen Titans, and brilliant and unforgettable as Bender on Futurama. Summer and DiMaggio appear in Doomsday as Mercy and the Toyman, respectively, both characters getting rather limited—and truncated—screen times.
I mean, when you’ve got Foxxy Love and Bender in one movie, you sure as heck ought to use them.
The reimagining of the Toyman here as a sort of Goth loser also doesn’t really hold a candle to the creepfest that is his incarnation on the Superman and Justice League animated series.

The Ugly:
And I thought Supes looking inordinately tired in the first season of Justice League was bad…
Here, the strangely chiseled cheekbones of the Man of Steel make him look rather… odd. It’s a curious design choice that somewhat compromises the hero’s look. Fortunately, the animation’s good, so that sort of makes up for Kal’s ugly mug.

And the Downright Strange:
There is a curious homoerotic vibe that Luthor exudes in Doomsday. How else should one take it when Lex, in the opening VO, uses the word “beautiful” to describe his nemesis?
Then, in a later sequence, after Supes’ “death” at the hands of Doomsday, a bare-chested Luthor apparently traps the Man of Steel in a room equipped with red sunlight generators and wails on the beleaguered hero with a pair of kryptonite gloves, all the while screaming things like “Why did you leave me?! Why?” and, disturbingly enough, “Who’s your Daddy?”
Now, the homoeroticism in this antagonistic relationship has long bubbled beneath the comic books’ four-colour surface, but its presence here just feels very off-key.

It should also be noted that Superman: Doomsday is rated PG-13: there’s action aplenty, extras and supporting characters and animals meet untimely demises, and, when we enter the story, we discover that Superman and Lois Lane have been, well, Superfriends for the past six months; the kind of Superfriends who snuggle and spend the night at each others’ places…
Having said all that, this is the most mature and adult I’ve seen DC animated stuff get, and for the most part, it’s a commendable effort, though it may not exactly be for the kiddie brigade.

Ultimately, I may have a number of issues with DC’s sophomore stab at the direct-to-DVD world, but it’s clearly the best effort to date, taking us to places we’d never reached before in past animated DC works. It also leaves the limp Marvel efforts eating a whole lotta dust.

(Superman: Doomsday DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

FLASH GORDON
Season 1 Episode 3
“Infestation”

The episode kicks off with Rankol doing his Evil Floaty thing, which is probably the high point of this sad, lonely hour.
A wild rift opens up on Nick‘s brother’s wedding day and Nick gets bitten by a “joybug,” a species native to Mongo whose venom causes the ultimate ecstasy high, killing you as you get happier and happier.
There’s a cure, but it’s only available from the Omadrians of Mongo, so Flash and Baylin open a rift to retrieve the cure, while Dale is left on Earth to try and keep Nick alive by making him miserable.

Again, as with episode 2, the narrative is split into two, but this time, neither plot thread is particularly weighty.
Dale saving Nick‘s life by making it a living Hell is peppered by Panou‘s irritatingly goofball performance, while Flash’s encounter with the rabidly feminist Omadrians (they turn their men into eunuchs!) is standard selfless hero schtick: you can do anything to me but I need to save my friend, and no, I’m not leaving Baylin behind because it’s just so wrong to trade one life for another even if I don’t really know her as well as I know Nick, etcetera, ad nauseum.

There’s also some awkward sexual parrying between Flash and Aura which is kind of a tired, repeat performance of Flash and Baylin’s corridor fight from the previous episode, except it’s on a bed. Yawn.
And for the double yawn, there’s that heavy-handed look from the Omadrian leader woman, the look that says, “This young male stranger shows promise, and understands the tyrannical stranglehold Ming has over our world.” Hurrr. I wonder where that’s going, wink wink.

After the previous passable episode, this one just nosedives into I’ve-got-better-things-to-do-than-commit-myself-to-this-floundering-mess-on-a-weekly-basis territory, so it looks like I’m off the Flash for now.
Maybe I’ll check in on Flash and company at some point in the future and maybe the show would have gotten better by then, but in the meantime, Rankol will just have to float down the halls of Ming’s castle unseen by me.
Which is too bad. Like I said, Rankol is creepy in a really cheesy sort of way, so I’m gonna miss the old floater…

Parting shot: They really need to dump that awful opening credits sequence. And jettison that horrible theme.
I say reinstate that Queen standard! Since there already appears to be a healthy amount of cheese in this show’s recipe, what can an old Queen song hurt? And get Sam Jones for a cameo! (If Smallville’s made it a mission statement to offer gigs to Superman alumni, the least this Flash Gordon incarnation can do is show some respect for those that came before.)

(Image courtesy of ifmagazine.com.)

FLASH GORDON
(Pilot)

I’ve been waiting a long time for the Sci Fi Channel to come up with another show that would kick my a$$ into orbit the way the Battlestar Galactica redux did.
Well, my wait isn’t over.
Which is not to say that their Flash Gordon redux is a total waste, but it’s got some ways to go before it can reach a level where I can actually say it’s a good show.

Steven “Flash” Gordon (Eric Johnson, who played Whitney, Lana Lang’s boyfriend from way back in Smallville’s freshman season) is a star athlete whose father Lawrence is a physicist long believed dead. But it soon turns out that Flash’s father discovered a rift to another world and could still be alive, possibly lost in that other realm.
Meanwhile, incursions from that other world begin to occur just as Flash’s ex, Dale Arden (Gina Holden; Final Destination 3 and TV’s Blood Ties) returns to town, and a mysterious stranger driving an RV (Jody Racicot; incidentally enough, also from Final Destination 3 and Blood Ties) shows an interest in the young man.
All this activity leads to Flash and Dale inadvertently entering a rift and winding up in Mongo, where they meet the local tyrant Ming (John Ralston), who wants something called an “Imex” from Lawrence Gordon’s belongings.

The premise and set-up of this latest incarnation of Flash Gordon are pretty standard, and the writing and performances are passable without being particularly noteworthy. Mind you, I’ve seen far worse, but it’s the sort of show I wish were smarter, so it could be a lot more entertaining than it actually is.
As it is, the characters are agreeable without being overly interesting: Flash is written as the modern, capable hero, schooled in the Joss Whedon Academy of Flippant Heroics, while Dale is the modern, capable heroine who apparently also went to the same alma mater. Meanwhile, “RV Dude” turns out to be Zarkov, of the high-strung, twitchy scientist school, whose inventions aren’t particularly effective.
But while Johnson and Holden submit performances that just pass muster, Racicot comes off as a tad too annoying. Ralston‘s Ming is, thankfully, not overplayed, though at the same time, is not particularly a powerful presence either, and the Floaty Dude (Rankol; Jonathan Walker, from George Romero’s Land of the Dead), who is his right hand flunky, is creepy in a cheesy sort of way.
Some of the series’ other characters include Aura, Ming’s daughter, played by Anna Van Hooft, and Dale’s fiancée, Joe Wylee (Giles Panton): the presence of these two pretty much blares “romantic tension” for the two leads.

The Flash Gordon Pilot, awkward and clunky as it is, is pretty underwhelming. It’s not particularly atrocious—as I’ve said, I’ve seen worse—but it clearly lacks the wit and verve of some of the other new Pilots I’ve taken a look at in the four installments of TV Watch (see Archive: August 2007).
Having said that, I’ll be checking out a couple of its succeeding episodes, if only to see if this gets any better.

(Image courtesy of ew.com.)

SMALLVILLE
Season 6
Episode 21
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“Prototype”

Time for another of my semi-regular visits to Smallville. The reason this time out: January’s a ways off, and the TV movie this fall is about the Pegasus, so it’s probably mostly gonna be about that psycho b*tch, Admiral Cain.
I just wanted a Battlestar Galactica fix. Sue me.

Karl “Helo” Agathon himself, Tahmoh Penikett, plays Wes Keenan, an Army brat-turned-war hero, who happens to have been the first boy Lois ever kissed, and is now Ares Mark IV, the prototype for Project Ares, Lex’s little science project to create his own super-soldier.
And wouldn’t you know it, the witness to Wes’ assassination of the crooked Senator Burke (who’s threatening to shut Project Ares down) is one Lois Lane. Of course, plot conveniences and contrivances are nothing new on Smallville, so let’s just roll with the punch, shall we?
At any rate, the episode actually allows some of the cast to shine; Erica Durance, pleading with Penikett (who has been ordered to kill her), “Remember me!”; Tom Welling, telling Annette O’Toole that she should become Kansas senator in the wake of Burke’s death. (Isn’t there a line of succession here? Aren’t there Junior Senators or something?)
Penikett meanwhile, is underutilized, though is at least given something more to do than some other past Smallville guest stars (like WWE’s Batista).

In the end, “Prototype” isn’t a horrible episode, though also isn’t any indication that Smallville is a better show than when I last checked in.

(Image courtesy of supermanhomepage.com.)

SMALLVILLE Season 6 Episodes 10 & 11

Despite the fact that (or maybe precisely because) I’m such a big fan of Big Blue, I’ve never really followed Smallville with any solid regularity. Once again, live TV superheroics are marred by weak writing.
I mean, how many times must Lana get stalked by the Freak of the Week? How many times must Clark/Lana/Lex/Chloe/Lois get controlled by some external force, act all gonzo or evil or horny (or all three simultaneously), then have convenient amnesia once the dust settles? And just when does the madness end? The tortured relationships of Smallville put Dawson’s Creek’s to shame.
Still, I keep an eye out for specific episodes, just to see if, maybe, things have begun to look up on Smallville. Two of those episodes just aired.

Season 6 Episode 10 “Hydro”

I made it a point to watch this ‘cause I’m such a huge Tori Spelling fan.
Heh.
Aheh.
Aha-ha-ha!*
Actually, it’s because “Hydro” is Tom Welling’s second directorial effort for Smallville, and since his directorial debut (season 5’s “Fragile”) managed to sneak past my radar, I told myself I needed to see “Hydro,” so I could ascertain whether Clark could direct, as well as fly.
What I got though, was your average run-of-the-mill Smallville with Tori S. as the Freak of the Week, some more tortured relationship hooey (Lex has proposed to Lana, Lana hasn’t given him an answer ‘cause she’s still in love with Clark, but she’s pregnant, blah blah blah, boo hoo hoo, ad nauseum), and yet another anticlimactic showdown with the aforementioned Freak of the Week.
I dunno. Why has this show stayed on the air for 6 seasons?

Season 6 Episode 11 “Justice”

Okay.
This just didn’t do it for me. Considering this was the Justice League episode, it was vastly underwhelming, with a negligible plot and mostly toilet paper-thin characterizations.
And the costumes…
Oh, the humanity…
This could conceivably have worked better as a multi-parter, but Smallville just doesn’t work that way. So we’re treated to 40+ minutes of good guys running around in bad suits, with the fanboy highlight apparently a shot of the “League” walking towards the camera in Hollywood action film slowmo as Lex’s evil lab explodes behind them (as depicted above). Yeesh.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d actually looked the heroic part, but those suits would just die on Project Runway. Nina Garcia would absolutely slay those outfits.

And the performances. Urrrr. Former American Idol contestant Alan Ritchson (Aquaman) does little except flash his smirky grin, walk around bare-chested, and be the butt of fish jokes.
Justin Hartley (Green Arrow; he also played Aquaman on the failed TV pilot Mercy Reef) and Lee Thompson Young (Cyborg) don’t really elevate the acting either.
Kyle Gallner (Impulse; perhaps more widely seen on Veronica Mars) is the only one who actually registers, in that impish, precocious Bart Allen way. (This episode might even have been better off as an Impulse spotlight.)
And Lois is such a superhero groupie slut, it’s embarrassing. First she does the kissy-face with Aquaman in season 5, then is all hot and heavy and talking coitus without the interruptus with Green Arrow—though “Justice” does seem to put a punctuation mark on that relationship. Still. Slut. (Yes, she doesn’t know Ollie is Green Arrow, but can you imagine all the locker room talk on the JL Watchtower in years to come?)
And though I will admit that it was neat-o to see Chloe be this League’s Oracle, if you want to see the League done right, there’s 5 seasons of the animated series out there. Hop to it.

Again, why has Smallville been around for 6 seasons?

* Actually, I enjoyed Tori Spelling’s cameo in Scream 2’s metamovie. I’ll give her credit for that.

(Images courtesy of kryptonsite.com. Review originally posted 012307.)

LOST Season 3 Episode 14 (WARNING: SPOILERS)
“Expose”

It’s interesting that I’ve got a lot to say about an episode that does nothing whatsoever to forward the island plot threads…
Lots’a pluses, though.

So we find out Nikki and Paulo’s stories and end up with an interesting CSI on the island/morality tale/re-working of an old TV show convention.
A) the “murder mystery” was passable, though the second Artz (hey, dude! Good to see ‘ya!) talks about the Medusa spider, bam! There’s your culprit, Grissom. Though I must admit, I didn’t catch the whole “Paulo lies”/”paralyzed” thing. Sneaky…
B) again, passable, in that we have seen this sort of morality tale before (ultimately, they both end up getting what they want, and they can’t even enjoy it).
Also, I’m not entirely convinced this sort of side story has a proper place in Lost, given that at the end of it, both characters are (apparently) dead.
Lost flashbacks have always helped me understand characters and motivations better; once I’d seen where these people were coming from, it would become clear why they did certain things. But in this particular case, Nikki and Paulo end up dead. So what if I understand them better now? Thing is, I didn’t really know them at all. And perhaps that’s one of the points of this episode, that we never really know people, the way the other 815ers had no idea what this couple was up to.
But because they were introduced in Season 3, and hardly did anything at all in the past 13 episodes, I had no feeling for them one way or another, other than to hope that they contributed something significant to the show’s narrative before they died (as has sometimes happened in the past).
Well, if their ultimate contribution was this little morality tale, I’m not so sure it was all worth it.
C) Remember how your favorite TV shows of yesteryear would have those episodes where characters would reminisce, and we would see recycled clips from episodes past (among other things, a strategy to control a show’s budget, since you essentially shaved off the production cost of one entire episode)?
Well, this episode does it in grand style, not just by bringing back the dead (yay, Maggie Grace! And Evil Blush-On Man* himself, Ian Somerhalder!! And Leslie!!! I mean, Artz…), but by astoundingly inserting Kiele Sanchez into the amazing footage of the crash wreckage from the pilot.
Additionally, now that we know their story, it also becomes apparent why we never really saw a lot of them in the first two seasons, as they apparently had their own agenda, searching the island for a little black bag… (And didn’t they pull the old “someone hid something in the bathroom/oh, that’s why he went to the bathroom in that episode” trick with Charlie already?)

So, all in all, it was an enjoyable episode, though ultimately, it feels like a diversionary tactic, not having moved the island story forward and not really making me understand Nikki and Paulo any better. (What it did was neatly explain to me why I hadn’t seen them before.)
I don’t really see any long-lasting ramifications of this episode, unless 1) either or both of them pull a Beatrix Kiddo and somehow manage to dig out of their graves, or 2) that despite Sawyer’s poetic gesture, the contents of the little black bag become a plot point for the future… (And not in some hokey sort of “Here, Ben and the Others, take this and let us go, please” “Oh, sure, why not? I’ve always wanted these…” way, either.)
We’ll just have to see, won’t we?

* What I named Somerhalder after his recurring role in Smallville, where he played Adam Knight, one of those guys who gets involved with Lana, only to get Clark jealous, only to reveal himself to be a baddie. (Also, see Jensen Ackles, currently on Supernatural.)