Look, if you don't *get* it...

It seems to be an epidemic of late.  I have come across at least three reviews of television shows in the last week or so where the reviewer seemed to simply...not get it.  Most of them were about the Battlestar series finale, but there was one about this week's Dollhouse episode as well.  It just, it annoys the crap out of me.  Seriously.

I am not talking about someone whose point of view differs from mine here.  I am quite used to reading reviews of a show I was disgusted by while the reviewer thought it was a shining example of television, or vice versa.  While that can be irritating, it can also be really interesting, because sometimes seeing a thing from another person's point of view can give you a broader idea of the whole picture, whether you agree with their end result or not.

What I am talking about is reviewers who clearly weren't paying attention to what they were watching in the first place.  That's a cardinal sin my friends.  I have two simple rules for reviewing media in a public forum (and I don't mean someone's personal blog here, I am talking news sites and the like), and they are these:

1. If you are watching/reading/listening to something with an intent to review, you need to pay attention to it.  You should probably even give it more than one go-through.  If your job is to review something, then you are not only there for entertainment.  You have an obligation to (at least attempt to) understand what is going on to the fullest, that means attention to detail.  If you miss a crucial line from inattention and then go off bashing or raving about something out of context, someone who is reading your review to gauge if something is worthwhile will be misled and those who saw/read/heard your item of review are going to be confused and likely irritated (perhaps enough to doubt your competence).  
2. You need to be capable of objectivity.  Whether or not you like the work as a whole is irrelevant.  As a reviewer, your job is to help a person decide whether or not this is a piece of media that they personally would enjoy (or, if they've seen it, to help them get an objective view of the media so that they can gain a better understanding of what was actually going on throughout).  You can't let your view be tainted by your personal taste.  You need to be able to step outside of yourself and say, "well, despite how I felt about this episode, this particular element actually really worked, or this particular element really didn't work at all."  Reading a review where it is clear that the writer just didn't care for it at all and didn't even try for objectivity (or a review where the writer clearly loved it so much they feel the need to gloss over anything that might have been a flaw) you're just going to hit a huge strike with your readers 90% of the time.

Maybe I am being harsh here, but I expect reviews on a site where I go to get news to be professional.  Just as I expect that site to post a disclaimer for potential spoilers or items that should still be considered rumors.  Obviously, there are exceptions.  For example, if you write for something like The Onion, well, you're going to have a different set of rules, aren't you?  The same goes if you're writing for a clearly defined "gossip site."  The difference with these types of site is that you have a certain expectation coming from them and that expectation has a lot less responsibility attached than if you are going to a site for reliable news on what's going on.  Just as reviews in a newspaper should be professional, so should be reviews on a news site.  If a reader wants one person's specific thoughts and opinions, rather than an actual review, they would go to a blog.  If a reader wants to discuss with others online about the merits or lack thereof, they would go to a community message board or chat room.

Sigh, I guess I'd better give you an example about what I mean, hmm?  Note, some spoilers ahead for the most recent episode of Dollhouse.  Okay, proceed.  

A large chunk of this week's Dollhouse episode was focused on giving us the back story of the doll known as Echo, whose real name is actually Caroline.  We learn exactly what it was she did to end up in her current circumstances.  At one point a conversation is shown where the local Dollhouse head honcho Adelle is offering her an "out" of sorts by becoming a doll.  Adelle mentions she's been doing this particular "dance" for two years now.  It is clear that Adelle is referring to herself and her position as the headhunter for the dollhouse--she has been doing that for two years.  In the review I read of this episode that just got my goat, the reviewer completely misheard or misinterpreted this remark (this is why I really advocate watching more than once if you are reviewing a tv show or movie--I refuse to believe someone is writing reviews for a professional publication and doesn't have a VCR or DVR).  The reviewer stated that Adelle had said that she and Caroline had been doing this "dance" for two years and proceeded to speculate on what Caroline had been doing for two years and how had she stayed ahead of the Rossum corporation, yada yada yada.  Then the reviewer berated the show's writers and runners for not giving more detail about this and just leaving it hanging in the wind.  The reviewer just made up their own unsolved mystery because of lack of attention and then got annoyed about said unsolved mystery, allowing it to color the review of the episode.  Totally unprofessional.  Also, very confusing and distracting for the reader.

Sigh, look, I know people make mistakes.  We are all only human after all.  But here's the thing.  I am someone who very strongly feels that if you have a job or a duty, to give it less than your best effort is just unforgivable.  Whether it is the job you are paid to do or volunteer work, there are people out there expecting your best from you.  To not give it to them is just not cool.  Clearly, just looking at the job I spent 7 1/2 years being miserable in, not everyone feels this way at all--but that doesn't stop me from being offended by the lack of trying by people.  It's a really sad state on the human condition, if you ask me.  Apathy is the disease that is going to kill our culture, I swear it.  Um, I seem to have gotten off track.  Although, given that this is a blog, with a readership of maybe four, that is allowed in this kind of forum.  If I had been writing a professional review on something, well, I would be actively using the delete key now, wouldn't I?

What it boils down to is this:  Someone can be an excellent writer and be completely unsuited to writing reviews.  I don't know how much I fit into the former category, but I know for a fact I am squarely outside of the range of people who fit into the latter.  I watch what I like, most of the time, and I tend to really like what I like.  While I could definitely get the "pay attention" part down if I was going to write professional reviews, I already know I probably would not be so good with the "objectivity" part of things.  This is why I continue to refrain from submitting entries to some of my favorite sites when they are looking for new writers, and also why I think I get so upset when the people they choose to write reviews so clearly should be writing something else.  If you give out the assignments for any type of publication that has professional reviews, it is your responsibility to make sure that the people you give those assignments to are capable of doing them professionally.  

I'm not naming names but there's a site I love that has at least two reviewers who should be doing almost anything else.  And damn, if it isn't irritating.

Okay, end rant.  

Um...happy thoughts, happy thoughts...

Ooh, saw Monsters v. Aliens on Friday and absolutely loved it!  It's a nice family friendly movie that seemed to appeal to all of the kiddos in the audience while definitely still having enough substance to entertain us grown ups.  It was just plain fun.  So, if you're looking for something up that alley, I totally recommend it.

In other news, found out this week that I am having a girl come August.  Huzzah!  So that's super exciting.  

And on that note, fair folks, I bid you adieu.  

Not too much to say actually.

I've got some odds and ends I guess, but nothing substantial today.

I really liked the Battlestar series finale.  Honestly the only thing I felt wasn't done that well was the explanation of Kara's return from death.  It is just that apparently she was on the same level as the head people (i.e. Six and Baltar), but everyone could see and feel her...I dunno.  I didn't dislike it or anything, I just felt it was lacking somehow.  The archaeologist in me was really pleased with how they explained the colonials being our ancient anscestors without leaving any trace of, you know, a prior advanced civilization or anything.  Also, from the standpoint of their pantheon being the Greek gods, it just makes more sense for them to be in our past than for someone in our far future to have adopted a pantheon that in this day and age has been completely relegated to myth with no active worshippers.

Random thoughts on the episode:  It would have been so much better if SciFi/SyFy had showed the whole three hour episode together instead of airing the first hour separately.  Gah.  It just made the first hour seem pale and nonsensical in some ways IMO.  But whatever.  Said and done, yo.  I really was distracted by Apollo's shampoo commercial hair.  What was up with that?  I mean, over the course of the season it has gotten bigger and bigger--and I don't know why.  Weird weird.  I mean, I get that if he isn't in the military anymore there's no reason for him to keep it super short, but it was really getting out of hand by the end there.  I'm just sayin'.  Um...what else?  Oh yeah, All Along the Watchtower.  I have never been annoyed by Moore's choice to work that into the show, and I honestly actually love how he wove it into the entire fourth season.  I think it was cool, so I loved that they used it to close the show out.  I know it annoyed the crap out of most people, but seriously, it was fun.  

And that's all I think I have to say on that.

Dollhouse this week was pretty darn awesome.  And apparently the ratings didn't even take that big of a hit for airing opposite the BSG finale, which I was a little worried about.  Poor Ballard, he is surrounded by dolls and just doesn't even realize it.  Also, now in addition to Alpha, we've got a new "conspiracy" to figure out.  Who altered Echo's imprint to send Ballard a message?  I like the suggestion that it was Topher's assistant, though I almost kind of hope it was Echo--although I wonder if she could have known any of the info she passed on, so that may not be likely.  But still, ooh, new mystery.  I have to honestly say that nothing in this episode happened like I thought it would happen and I quite enjoyed that.

I finally broke down and bought Bolt on DVD--I kept seeing the commercials and wanting to get a hamster, but what with two cats, a husband, and a kid on the way, I thought, you know, maybe I should just buy the movie instead.  So I will probably be watching that this afternoon, after I watch my last Primeval DVD.  

That's all I've got I think.  I hope you all have a great one!

TTFN!

May as well jump on the bandwagon...

Well, the whole science fiction online community is in something of an uproar this week following Sci Fi Channel's announcement that it is rebranding itself to SyFy Channel, complete with new slogan, "Imagine greater."

In general, the response seems to be a big collective WTF????

But don't just take my word from it, here are some links that can give you an idea of how the nerds of the world are reacting.

io9's story.

Flick Filosopher put it up as her question of the day.

Real Life Comics had a nice commentary in their stip for today.

Then of course there is Airlock Alpha, where this is the primary news item on the billing at the moment.  For those of you who don't know, until a few weeks ago, Airlock Alpha was actually SyFy Portal.  The rebranding of their site seemed a little sudden, but Michael Hinman (the owner of the site and its sister sites Rabid Doll and the forthcoming Blip Network) has finally been able to explain that he was approached by a corporation wanting to buy the rights to "SyFy," and it was a good enough offer that he sold the name and changed his site up.  Turns out that corporation was NBCU, because they wanted to rebrand their genre channel.

I was really going to go without commenting on this just because (as you can see by all of the links above), there are plenty of people already talking about this, and most of them can say it better than I can.  But then I read Michael Hinman's piece reacting to the hugely negative public outcry about the change.  As he says, he came up with the name "SyFy" ten years ago and while he has no regrets about the sale of rights on it, he has been a little hurt and surprised by two aspects of the fallout.

The first is that for some inconceivable (and yes, I am pretty sure that word means what I think it means) reason, NBCU is acting like they came up with the name "SyFy" all on their own and just bought the rights from Hinman because it turns out he independently came up with that name and had beat them to said rights and they wanted to clear up any legal issues.  This is a huge WTF for everyone.  As Hinman states, he personally has met the president of Sci Fi on more than one occasion and has worked with the people at Sci Fi Channel for years.  It's not like they didn't know about SyFy Portal long before they started trying to come up with a new name.  No one over there was unaware of SyFy Portal.  Thankfully, no one outside of NBCU seems to be buying that story anyway.  So really it's just more a question of why the conglomerate is playing stupid and trying to steal the credit of creation, rather than acknowledging that they felt that Hinman had hit on the term that they felt best expressed the new era they are trying to usher in for the channel with the change.  Bleh.  Stupid business people.

The second issue he brought up is a much more personal one for Hinman.  As previously mentioned, a lot of the public reaction to the announcement of the rebranding has been negative.  It seems that a lot of this negative attention has been to the name "SyFy" itself, saying it is a stupid name.  Having come up with this name and having used it in one form or another for over ten years, Hinman is obviously a little baffled by this.

Well I can't speak for everyone out there, but I think that what most of us feel is stupid is not the actual word "SyFy" (hell, I've been a huge fan of SyFy Portal for years and have never once thought it was a stupid term), but the idea behind the rebranding.  I am sorry but I don't in any way see how changing the spelling of the word Sci Fi to SyFy is going to "broaden" the scope of what they can show on the network--nor will it justify airing wrestling on the channel.  Move the darn wrestling back to USA already, geez.  Ghost Hunters, I can deal with, paranormal fits in the genre in my mind, but wrestling?  Come on people.  Sci Fi or SyFy, who thinks that wrestling falls under that category?

Okay, sorry, rant over.  May be a bit touchy about that particular programming choice.  

Clearly, however, NBCU feels it can air whatever it wants on the channel anyway, so I don't know why changing the spelling of their name (or the logo) is going to have any effect on that whatsoever.  But that's just me I guess, or you know, most of the nerds and geeks worldwide.

I think what most of us feel is stupid is that NBCU has all but explicitly said they don't want to be limited to showing science fiction or fantasy related shows on their genre-specific channel.  If that's the case, then save yourself a ton of money, dump the extraneous channel, and move your original programing over to your more "open" properties of NBC and USA.  I am sorry but when it comes down to it, the channel doesn't have that much original programming anyway.  USA did pretty well with The 4400, move Sanctuary and Stargate Universe over there.  Eureka and Ghost Hunters could probably carry their own on NBC.  All of those original B movies could easily fill weekend programming slots on either channel.  Battlestar is wrapping up this week, so is there anything else out there really?  I mean, gone would be the all day marathons of cancelled sci-fi shows but most of us have those on DVD already.  We geeks, we tend to be collectors.

What's stupid is that NBCU has a great opportunity with a channel like Sci Fi or SyFy, but they don't know what to do with it or how to market it to the people who want a channel like that.  I mean come on, there's a Golf channel, if that is sustainable, how in the heezy is a channel that is just sci-fi/fantasy not?  Also, what is stupid is that in most of their press releases about the change have had many very thinly veiled insults to the people who do indeed want a channel that is exclusively genre-specific.  Not cool NBCU, not cool.

So all that said, I don't think it is the name "SyFy" that people are pissed about--it's everything behind the name.  Trust me Michael, we still love you.

And that's me done.  

Happy St. Patty's Day folks.

P.S.  Are you watching Castle?  It's actually pretty awesome.  Huzzah for Nathan Fillion.  Gah, I'm an easy sale though, I love quirky murder mysteries.

There sure is a lot of stuff going down on Mars lately.

Seriously, for the Life on Mars crowd, things have just been hopping.

Firstly, the alphabet has officially cancelled the American version of the series.  They have agreed to let it finish its initial 17 episode order (which is one more episode than the original series) and apparently the cancellation was announced in time that there will be closure.  The reactions I have seen to this news have varied widely, from "Oh thank God!" to "Well, man, this sucks."

Personally, I can't seem to find myself very upset by the news at all, even though I really have been starting to enjoy this version.  Here's the thing.  I have said from the moment I found out they were making an American version of the series that I didn't see how they were going to pull it off unless they were intentionally planning to give it a short run, which it was pretty clear the show's producers had no plans to do.  The whole concept of this series needs a tightly planned story arc and it needs an ending.  To stretch it out for seasons upon seasons is simply to defeat the purpose and to be completely unfaithful to the original show.  So honestly, I'm a little relieved that they will have to wrap it up and that we'll actually get to find out what weird alternate explanation the Americans have for what actually happened to Sam Tyler.  

Besides, the episodes I have enjoyed the most in this version have been those that weren't just cookie cutter remakes of episodes in the original series, and we only got a few of those.  I have been noticing a disturbing trend recently to go back to ripping off the episode ideas from the Brits.  Most upsetting of which is the fact that it looks like this week's episode will be a remake of my least favorite from the original--the key party episode.  Gah.  Really?  Really?  Is that necessary?  Come on!  Not cool people, not cool.  Sigh.  End rant.  I have already expressed my feelings about key parties.  I won't rehash.  Let's just say that this week I will probably be less inclined to pay much attention while I watch, just to save my sanity.  Come on guys.  I mean, I know originality is taken with a grain of salt when you are remaking a show that has already been done (and in this case clearly can't really be improved upon), but wasn't the big sell about making an American version that it would in fact be completely different than the British version?  If you are trying to have an entirely new explanation for why Sam landed back in time, don't you think you should have some entirely new story ideas too?  I'm just saying.

Anyhoo.  The next bit of news is definitely more exciting.  The original series is finally coming to us on DVD.  Huzzah!  Series (or season, for us Yanks) one will be available on region one DVD this July, and I believe it is planned to release series two sometime next year.  Yay!  If you never caught the orginal and are sad to see the current genesis go, give these DVDs a whirl when they come out.  It will fill the void.

And the last bit of news, for fans of the original series, BBC America last night premiered the sequel series to Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes.  In this show we get another present day detective, one Alex Drake, played by Keeley Hawes (you may know her from MI-6/Spooks or Death at a Funeral--she's also married to the wonderfully talented Matthew Macfadyen) finds herself somehow thrown back into the past.  This time the erstwhile time traveller lands in 1981, and promptly runs into Gene Hunt, Chris, and Ray from the original series.  This of course induces a major freak out on the part of DI Drake because she has read all of the reports Sam Tyler filed about his adventures in the brief time between waking up from his coma and killing himself (which we know was him actually deciding to return to 1973, real or not).  Drake knows she was shot just before waking up in the past, and assumes that she is also in a coma and finds herself among familiar company because she had been reading Sam's reports just before she was shot.  What the twist seems to be is that since Drake knows that Sam was in a coma while he was experiencing his blast from the past, she knows it is entirely possible her "coma" (as she assumes herself to be in) is going to lead to her death.  And she is damned determined not to die.

I am going to reserve judgement for another episode or two I think.  It does seem like they are trying to take this in a slightly different direction than the first series, so my fingers are crossed it isn't just a rehash.  I will say that so far the best part is the return of Philip Glenister as the original Gene Hunt.  Man, he is such an ass but you can't help but love him anyway.  Yay!  The worst part so far is the creepy clown that is stalking Drake.  Apparently we get a creepy tin-man type clown instead of the creepy little girl in the television this time around.  Seriously, these people want to give me nightmares.  Sigh.  

So, that's all the Mars drama I know about.  Like I said, lots going down.  

In other news, I was on the final chapter of the last book from my reading pile I wanted to tackle  before jumping back into the Wheel of Time series yesterday when my husband walked in and handed me Watchmen.  So I went ahead and started that last night.  Man, it is kind of dark and intense.  But I am enjoying it.  I believe we are going to try to catch the movie this coming weekend, so I shall at least be prepared.  I am amused that apparently the mainstream has been baffled by the film so far while the geeks of the world seem to be more or less satisfied.  I am glad that something so specialized is being so highly publicized.  Usually the films that aren't expected to appeal to the broader audience just get ignored by the advertisers, so huzzah for Watchmen.  

Well, I wish you all a spectacular week!

C