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Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Arrival small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

Because ah yes, we have finally reached the arrival, the very moment that you two noname readers out there have been waiting so damn long for!...

... the long awaited return, of the one and only, IvanFian small Smallville weeks in review!...

"Clark gives his oh shit looks, Lex doesn't get a fucking clue, Lana is a fucking bitch, and Chloe is barely used again at all... and James Marsters is fucking topless already?... Fucking WB... Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to a fresh new season of Smallville!"...

Now, I was hoping that Commencement would pretty much commence a whole new era of Smallville. You know, the kind of season that didn't completely goddam suck, or whatever sort of crap...

WTF? The Kryptonian followers of Zod were completely laughable to me. Not only did the black dude get his ass kicked by Superman this episode, but didn't he get his ass kicked by Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well?... I can't honestly believe how damn dumb these Kryptonians turned out to be. I mean seriously, they just turn their backs on Clark before he conveniently gets the strength to push them both into the fucking vortex?... How is it that Superman finally found people out there that are even fucking dumber than he is? Couldn't they just fucking have stared at the fucking portal for ten more fucking seconds? Would it really be that hard? WTF?...

... they weren't the only ones on the show who got their asses handed to them by Buffy Summers and soon to be Smallville as well...

Now, I love James Marsters. Or at least, the James Marsters that I've come to know from Buffy the Vampire Slayer... Even from Angel, I loved every single thing about his vampire with the soul of a poet sort of thing... except for the fact that Joss Whedon fucking stripped him down to his underwear pretty much every single fucking episode of the season...

... so oh, guess what the fuck was the only thing he got to do in his brief WB cameo here?...

... besides turn out to be a purely shit-looking version of the T-1000, I mean... and I definitely do mean "shit"...

Commencement was a decent season finale last season, because it set us up with the whole Zod villain thing, and the Fortress of Solitude from the second movie. But really, how the fuck did the writers manage to even fuck that up in Arrival?... The Fortress took up about five fucking minutes of the show, and that was it. All Clark did was fucking stand there as bolts of energy surged through him, as if we were actually supposed to care about his "education"... And then he just loses his powers at the end of the episode? WTF?...

I assume that Jor'el (or Zod, or whoever that voice may be) has a plan that doesn't include really Clark having no powers in the end, nor his two morons from the ship getting fucking stuck in a fucking window pane for the rest of goddam eternity... But seriously, what fucking plan would that be? I like being kept in the mystery about things, but at least give us fucking cool effects and storylines in the meantime to keep us goddam occupied... At least last season had the introduction of Lois Lane and the Kryptonian Crystals. WTF did Arrival really bring?...

Ah yes, more whiny Clark. Though he wasn't as whiny as I had feared he would be... So he got together with Lana, as if that will actually fucking last. He lost his powers and thankfully didn't really complain much about it, although I know there's going to be a hell of a lot of college angst about this shit to come... I didn't care for anything he did in those scenes at all, nor his "oh shit, I'm lying through my teeth again" rehashed moments with Lex Luthor. And the Fortress of Solitude crap was just such a cocktease of a letdown, that how the hell can I ever really look forward to the new season of Smallville?...

The two pluses of the show have always been Chloe and her cousin, Lois Lane. Now, both characters were criminally underutilized in Arrival, but at least both gals got to bring some brightness back to the fold...

True, Lois was far too heroic and far too serious for my tastes for the vast majority of the episode. I hated how actually mature she was in helping the Kents out after the meteor hit. And she barely even got to kick or scream or throw a orgasmic fit when she was necked three feet high... But at least she got a bit of comedy in at the end of the episode, when it came to Clark and the flowers. Lois Lane and her quips were pretty much the only thing keeping this show alive last season, as far as I was concerned... hope Erica can do the same this year...

Chloe though, is much more hit and miss. That I'd love to hit it, that's for sure... Her appearance at the Fortress of Solitude was pointless, as just watching a cute blonde freeze in the fucking North Pole ain't exactly the hottest ticket on television these days... However, seeing how absolutely adorable she was in hospital clothes was definitely worth it in the end. And not only that, but she and Clark there provided the only decent scene worth watching in the entire episode...

I did like the contrast between the two characters there, as Clark kept giving his "oh shit, now I've shit myself" looks towards the Yukon window, and Chloe just kept smiling and beaming, knowing she's going to be the first on the planet to officially fuck an alien... I mean seriously, how the fuck could Clark not fuck her then and there? She was absolutely no sweet and adorable... and probably wearing no fucking underwear under that gown as well, goddammit...

Unfortunately for Smallville, the two cousin gals have never really been enough to even remotely make the show palpable to watch. Lana Lang is probably the biggest reason for that, as I couldn't even fucking stand the few scenes she did have in Arrival...

I understand that she didn't trust Lex, which is why she pushed him away before collapsing and napping like the slut she is. But really, her acting there was just so similar to her normal bitchiness, that it just brought back all the worst memories of past seasons for me... I kind of liked her plan of leading the Kryptonian morons right to the kryptonite room. Of course, that led completely nowhere but yet another fucking Clark and Lana scene, where they confessed their love for the umpteenth time to the gagging sound of a thousand fucking virgins like me...

Well, maybe I would've been able to care about something in Arrival, if only it didn't signal the arrival of yet another pointless story arc for John Glover... He's by far and away the most acclaimed actor the show has. So why the fuck do the writers keep fucking him over, replacing him with fucking topless scenes of fucking James Marsters instead (the WB sure loves doing that, I'm sure...)?... Here, we had Lionel just carving a damn Superman symbol into the floor like a mental patient. Hell, knowing the show, he will become a mental patient soon enough. Until he forgets all his fucking memories, that is... and resets back to the actor and the character that we actually give a damn about...

Now, I'm hoping that Lex turns out to be a decent villain this season. And now that Clark is human, maybe Lex actually will do some real probing over Clark's behaviours (until of course, Clark gets his powers back, and Lex conveniently enough stops DNA testing or whatever...)...

All I do know for now though, is that Lex was a complete moron in Arrival. Sure, he somehow managed to steal away the Kryptonian ship... But unless the show deviates from the story of the comics and movies, we all know that Lex will not figure out Clark's secret for decades. And that means in Arrival, he wasn't bright enough to fucking put two and two together, and realize that Clark being in the center of the fucking bright light in the fucking cave, may have fucking something to do with the fucking alien ship in his hangar bay...

Ah, yes... Lex is still a moron. Clark still lies through his teeth. Chloe still has nothing to do. Lana still lies flat on her back with her face all fucking scrunched up... and now, we get fucking Marsters and Clark poster shots of fucking asshole nakedness, rather than Erica Durance or anyone else on the cast who actually matters...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate Atlantis: The Lost Boys and Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus Reviews (Spoilers...) -

You know, for most of the second season so far? The writers of Stargate Atlantis have just seemed a tad bit?...

I mean, The Siege (Part 3) was a decent enough closer to the first season. And both Intruder and Runner had some decent writing and action in there...

But since then? I dunno, but it's like every single frickin', decent writer on the show went back to Stargate SG-1 this season or some crap like that. Because I think it's pretty safe to say by this point, that the second season of Stargate Atlantis has just licked balls compared to the series' inaugural...

If the focus of the first season was adventure and discovery, what the fuck has been the theme of the second season?...

... well, that's certainly been the broken record of my Atlantis reviews so far, at least... and for good reason...

Now, the Lost Boys was definitely a solid episode, for the most part. I mean, sure it never quite reaches the pinnacle that a series like Lost is said to by the critics, for instance...

But then again, Lost Boys was definitely way better than the actual show of Lost, the series that licks goddam donkey balls according to me at least... the show that I fucking hate like fucking mad cow shit on a goddam weekly basis... but that's a rant for another day, I'm sure...

Yes, The Lost Boys was definitely one of the better episodes of the season. It's just that, it also highlighted all the same problems that have been plaguing season two as a whole, as well...

McKay was mostly in character this episode. I loved his psychotic reaction to being dosed with the Wraith enzyme through the food, as it's definitely hard to tell whether he was actually being affected by the thing, or if he was just on his lemon chicken hypochondriac spree again... And McKay stole the show with some very laugh out lines. Claiming that he would've thought of Sheppard's plan if only he hadn't become a "drug addict", was definitely one of the best lines he's had in a very long time...

But I dunno. McKay still felt off this episode, like he has ever since Trinity... The repercussions of that episode are never even referred to on screen. But it's painfully obvious that the writers seem to be still sticking with it as a rut in the back of their minds... I mean, except for that drug addict line, did he really have any comedic interaction with Sheppard this episode? Besides going Ford crazy over being duped with the drug, did McKay really provide any sort of comic relief in The Lost Boys?...

What made season one of the series so great was not the plotlines or the action really, but the heartfelt comedy and the heartfelt emotion shared by the team... And I just don't know what has happened with the writers this season. Because despite decent performances in Aurora and now in The Lost Boys? McKay just hasn't had that it factor that he had all last season long, since at least Duet... if not Intruder...

Ronan was decent in The Lost Boys. I mean, he surely kicked ass and took names with his sword in one hand, and his stun phaser knockoff in the other. He technically didn't really have any lines, but his rivalry with Ford was definitely seen through the glare of his eyes... Still, this is the guy that they replaced Rainbow Sun Francks with? Sure, unlike the old skool Ford, Ronan actually serves a purpose on the show, as the muscle or the Teal'c of the series (without the token term "indeed", might I add)... But still, the guy has yet to pull off a decent joke on the series, besides becoming one himself outside of the action sequences...

Teyla didn't have much to say either in The Lost Boys, but I was still surprised that I ended up liking her character. In the whole "we need a montage" collage, I really enjoyed her ass-kicking sparring while suped up on the Wraith drug... Rachel as an actress may not be the best with words, but she definitely has a way with her fists and her feet. I thought her short little fight sequences were amazingly well done, as I even didn't cringe when she started flirting with goddam Ronan over punches and animalistic instincts...

But seriously, I think I do cringe every single friggin' time something comes out of her mouth... The actress tried to sound concerned when talking about how damn good it felt to be on the Wraith enzyme. But her acting range just paled in comparison to how Sheppard sounded when he was stuck in the infirmary with Wraith DNA...

Now, if anyone truly highlighted simultaneously both the best and worst aspects of the second season of Atlantis at the same damn time? It's Sheppard... I mean, on the one hand, he had some amazing lines along the way. Hell, I even think his most classic one, deserves a frickin' line in this review by its own goddam self...

... unfortunately for us, The Lost Boys instead ripped off an even worse SciFi movie in Independence Day (without the kickass, dogfight action that ID4 had, that is...)...

I mean seriously, what the fuck was wrong with Ford's plan? Plant some C4 on a Wraith Hive ship, and get the fuck out, I mean?...

If Sheppard had thought it up, it probably would've worked... I mean, they essentially did the same damn thing back with the Genii in season one. And getting in and out of a goddam Hive ship was how Sheppard started the whole series back in Rising, afterall...

Really, Sheppard may have frowned upon the whole Genii guy's plan to overpower the Genii compound. But seriously, since when have we ever seen Sheppard have a different idea than just shoot to kill while attacking the Wraith?...

I liked seeing Rainbow Sun Francks return in The Lost Boys. It was a nice homecoming, for an actor who really didn't deserve to be kicked off the show... I mean sure, if you ask me, the new fro has just got to go. But besides that?... Yeah, it would be nice to have the old Ford around. Something tells me that by not even having any frickin' lines last season, just his presence there allowed McKay and Sheppard to do their comedy thing that I now miss so damn much...

I really enjoyed Ford for the most part this episode. I mean, even if he claimed if it was all just a ploy, for once his routine speeches about his grandparents and hot tamale cousin, actually had a bit of oomph and deeper meaning to them... And even if the flashbacks were kind of forced on us at the start of the episode, it was cool to see how Ford did survive being culled by the Wraith, and how he even started his own goddam foobar Atlantis team...

I thought the actor did an amazing job once again, of showing just how schizophrenic he really is. I mean, the character actually believed that drugging the team against their wishes would be for the better. And the actor really made us believe that he believed it as well...

... it's just that, notice that I used the term "once again" in that last little statement of mine?... as I'm started to even believe myself, that maybe it ain't just the writers' fault for the fact that I keep thinking, "been there, done that", throughout this entire second goddam season of Atlantis...

I loved how fucked up Ford's mind was in Runner. I loved how he was basically acting like a little kid, seeking approval for everything he did, without ever realizing that his goddam thirst for approval was making him go goddam batshit insane towards everyone else in the end...

The problem was, nothing was really added to the formula in The Lost Boys. Sans the small speech about his family on earth, I mean... Once again, he was the same ol' Ford we got in The Siege (Part 3) and Runner. He's still mindfucked by the drug, still looking for a pat on the back from his friends, still looking goddam confused as hell from trying to understand the season finale of Lost, and still too goddam fucked up in the brain to realize when he's being a complete lunatic of an asshole...

The same trend seems to be starting for Sheppard as well. Once again, he was the pessimist, simply complaining that there was no way to pull off this raid of a plan, even if he's done it twice before in the goddam past... Where's Mr. Positive these days? I miss all the old skool jokes he used to make. There was a time when him and Rodney would be pulling those "R2" lines out of their collective asses, dozens of times in each and every goddam episode...

Because in SciFi these days? It's not about coming up with fresh and new ideas anymore, since Trek and even SG-1 has pretty much done it all...

Still, The Lost Boys (despite all my negativity) was definitely a solid episode...

We got some kickass choreography from Teyla and Ronan. We got some decent slapstick comments from McKay. We got a more than welcomed return from Ford. And we got ourselves a nail biting cliffhanger, as I really did find myself on the edge of my seat when Col. Sheppard found himself interrogated, by what I suppose is the Queen of the Hive ship (though SciFi experience suggests, that the supervillain will just MWAHAHA and let Sheppard live for some goddam moronic reason in the end...)...

But I dunno... overall, the formula for this episode has been done before in both SG-1 and Atlantis so many times...

... and there just wasn't any real team dynamic or banter, to really separate The Lost Boys from all the rest...

... as if Stargate Atlantis has just lost that kind of intangible charm, that made it the best damn show on television last year...

And now I have to wait until bloody hell November or January or whatever, to be given the chance to be proven goddam wrong...

... PS - Notice I forgot to mention anything about Dr. Weir?... yeah, umm... I didn't forget...

... my momma always used to say, if you've got nothing nice to say?... then get stuffed...

Modern Science Fiction television, is all about taking old ideas, and making them feel new and relevant to the world today...

... and there's no greater example of this anywhere in the world right now, than goddam Battlestar Galactica...

... a goddam series that literally is taking stories and plotlines, straight from the old skool BSG series back in the 70's...

When I first read the synopsis about Pegasus? I was convinced that this episode would be nothing but pure bullshit in the end...

I mean seriously, how the fuck could finding the Battlestar Pegasus even remotely help the series, I thought? I was convinced that having two Battlestars would ruin the epic, adventurous feel the series had going for it, by having just the lone Battlestar Galactica up against insurmountable odds...

Now, I don't know if Pegasus is quite up there with the best of season one. I don't know if it'll ever be close to touching the immortal Hand of God, or even its lesser brethren of The Miniseries and goddam Kobol's Last Gleaming (Part 2)...

But cover to cover, from start to finish, Pegasus was absolutely the most stellar episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season to date. It easily beats out Home (Part 2) and Resistance as the fucking new Admiral in charge of the season... And without a shadow of a doubt, easily beats out both Stargate Atlantis episodes this week as the fucking best IvanFian episode of the goddam week...

... hell, it might even make a run for goddam best IvanFian episode of all goddam shows this season so far...

... and it's gonna be one hell of a long wait until January then, that's for sure...

I mean yeah, Pegasus basically just stole the same tried and true formula, of a fucking rogue military group taking the law into their own hands. And obviously showing off the worst faces of humanity as well in the process... Hell, didn't Ron Moore even write the same damn shit way back on Voyager, in that god-awful season cliffhanger known as Equinox?...

... and I can't fucking believe just how well the Pegasus executed this fucking blind jump of theirs, straight into both the Battlestar Galactica world and our own...

A lot of people on the net have already made their own conclusions, that Admiral Cain (as if that name was ever used for a good person before...) was Ron Moore's version of a goddam George Dubya Bush with balls... or without balls, actually...

But I myself? Well... I see a larger truth in Pegasus, than just goddam liberal-minded attacks against the American Republican government, as the internet just so loves to do...

I admit that I for one, have always been in favour of declaring martial law in the Battlestar Galactica world... I mean seriously, if the civilians would just shut up instead of rioting, what would really be the problem? There are only frakkin' 50000 humans left in the known universe, and they should be happy to be goddam protected, I thought to myself...

The thing is though, Admiral Cain and her crew showed exactly why we need a civilian government...

... martial law only makes sense in the context, that the power will be given back to the people at some time or another...

The thing is, if you think about it hard, each and every single one of Admiral Cain's decisions in this episode made pure technical, logical fucking sense...

If I had heard on the news, that two military soldiers in Iraq had assaulted and killed a superior officer, I would've demanded that they would be jailed by military court martial, without the judge of a goddam civilian jury (though I will always be against the death penalty, even for treason)...

And knowing full well that Kara Thrace has fucked up problems with the XO and fellow officers, and that Apollo mutinied against his own commander of a father not once but fucking twice, then why the fuck wouldn't it sound good on paper to move these two people the fuck away from their Galactica family?...

In the military, it's regular procedure that family should never be under the same damn chain of command...

But you know what our friends on the Serenity say about the chain of command, right?...

... it's the goddam 'chain that I wrap around my fist, and beat you to a living hell with until you understand who's in gorram command', a guy like Malcolm or Jayne would most likely say...

The thing is, logical speaking, Admiral Cain was in the right. There is simply no excuse for Starbuck getting away with everything she does on the ship, or for Apollo fucking pointing his gun at a superior officer on more than one fucking occasion...

But I dunno... there was still just something in my goddam gut, that told me that Admiral Cain was in the wrong...

... and that definitely puts a lot of things in perspective in the real world, as well...

Pegasus was essentially the complete opposite of Flight of the Phoenix... While the latter dealt with low moral at the start, and a rising from the ashes near the end? Pegasus was all about being welcomed "back to the Colonial Fleet" at the start, with fucking hugs and kisses to go around... and then ended with perhaps one of the most goddam tense cliffhangers I have experienced since... well?...

... Atlantis' The Siege... or Kobol's Last Gleaming, actually... which weren't that long ago, but that's besides the point...

The point is, Pegasus was just a fantastic episode from start to finish on all fucking, motherfrakkin' accounts...

Helo and Tyrol didn't have much to do except to both be Boomer's bitch. The thing is though, for once, I actually felt sorry for the fucking hottie Cylon in the cell, that's probably going to turn on us all...

I mean, this is rape we're talking about. This is the one thing in the world, that's universally accepted as evil... on officially stamped paper, at least...

... yet so many people out there don't give a damn when a pedophile in jail gets fucking raped back in the ass... yet guys like me can't get enough of seeing Japanese hentai girls get the fuck raped out of their bottoms...

Rape is perhaps the one thing that almost everyone on the planet can accept as a fate worse than death. And yet, I find myself struggling to find a real consensus on whether we all truly believe that or not from the show...

On the one hand, I didn't give a damn about Number Six in the holding cell, having been fucked up the ass a couple hundred times or so... I mean seriously, her fucking people wiped out billions of humans in a single night. And the fucking bitch in Baltar's head still has dreams of wiping out the remainder of the Colonial Fleet, if not every single human on earth as well... I mean, for Gods sakes, these are the same robots that are fucking raping all the female survivors back on the 12 colonies for their ovaries. Have we forgotten that?...

... Number Six there wasn't human to me... she was a machine... and nobody would really give a damn about raping the goddam ass of a toaster in their kitchen, or the goddam trunk of a car, now would they?...

... so why do I view the copy of Sharon on the Battlestar in a completely different fashion?...

I mean, did the Chief and Tyrol really do the right thing? They killed a human, to save a bitch that will most likely end up turning on the entire crew someday...

... either way though, I can't condone rape... it's the most animalistic and inhumane of all the tortures ever devised by humanity...

... yet it's also something that I can assure you, every single man on the planet has thought of seriously at one point or another... it is definitely a part of all of us, somewhere deep down and dark inside...

The difference is, the government and civilian morals that we cling to in this world, prevent us from ever even giving the thought of rape more than a fucking serious second in our fucking minds... It's the civilian morals that we have, that prevent us from ever seriously talking about rape in public, like the crew of the Pegasus were boasting about to Tyrol and Lt. Agathon...

... sure, I know that Sharon there is just a machine... and I wouldn't trust her for the world...

... and yes, to be honest, I would love to fuck the hell out of Grace fucking Park...

Hell, if you ask me? Just thinking about fucking her and making her feel so good, is rape...

... I mean, just seriously tell almost any husband or boyfriend that you're mind-raping their girl, and see how they take it...

But Ron Moore and the show have just done an amazing job, in separating the human view (Sharon) from the subhuman view (Number Six) in our minds... even if they are essentially both Cylon...

Every character executed their jobs perfectly in Pegasus, as it really was the most complete hour of television that I think I've watched since at least Hand of God...

Colonel Tigh only had a few scenes to himself. But I just love his humour whenever it comes to getting drunk and skipping a round or two. And the actor just has amazing chemistry with Edward James Olmos, when it came to his concerns about the Admiral and checking out her legs (umm... I meant, logs... yeah, that's what I meant...)...

Lt. Gaeta and Dualla were pretty much just offscreen fodder in Pegasus. But this was more than made up for, by revisiting minor characters like Cally again... I mean, she's the one that just suddenly killed the Galactica Boomer, even though they were close friends. And yet here she was, lurching and leering away from the thought of ever raping the same Cylon model?...

And I loved her and the Chief's reactions, to finding out that Admiral Cain had been drafting civilians into her force. Afterall, in a state of martial law, I'd have to agree that all people should be doing their jobs to help out and survive, even if it costs them their freedom... and yet just from Tyrol's reactions to hearing the aeronautic engineer's story? I can't help but think, that maybe the goddam president of the colonies had it right afterall...

President Roslin was once again the very damn same president we loved at the start of the first season, and finally starting seeing again in Flight of the Phoenix. She was warm, and caring, insightful, and supportive of the Commander. And thank God we didn't hear about her cancer or her goddam prophecy bullshit even once in Pegasus...

She wasn't featured in a lot of scenes, but the actress was definitely golden in them all. She really did look like Admiral Cain had "shot her dog", when the bitch shot down Adama's command... And I dunno, but you could really just tell so much from Roslin's facial expressions, of how much it meant for her to have the commander in charge instead, that you couldn't help but side with this one bitch over the other...

Even Baltar seemed to find his better half in Pegasus, despite his god-awful speech about giving a damn about the raped to hell Cylon bitch...

I mean sure, Number Six in his head was just overblown in her reaction to her copy's treatment. Because really, since when did she care about other Cylon models, or the fact that they're getting raped like every goddam human back on Caprica as well?...

And personally of course, I'd prefer getting the completely self-interested, sexophile, Baltar bastard we got in the first season. But either way, the actor still shines through...

Dr. Gaius Baltar really seemed to genuinely care in that scene. And I loved his earlier metaphor, of a "stick" versus a "carrot". It showed the true difference between a rabid dog, and treating an animal with respect. Even if it is still an animal... It's scary to think that he's starting to side more with the Cylons than he is with humanity. Yet I think if the Pegasus crew has taught him anything, it's that all the propaganda that Number Six in his head has been brainwashing him with, might just be true as well...

... the Cylons are starting to look more human to him... more human than we do, anyway...

And I felt bad for Apollo too, I guess... I mean, not only was he reduced to being the other CAG's utter bitch. But he had to fucking fly a fucking Raptor as well? That's just humiliating for a captain...

Now, I know that Lee has been a complete and utter idiot all season long. I think stabbing his father in the back while his dad was still lying there on his frakkin' back, was definitely a good indication of that... But still, he's our frickin' moron, you know? He's not a hard ass, and he definitely has good intentions. On any other day, I would welcome a court martial for him...

... but nobody likes a tighty-whitey, tight-ass like Captain Tractor Taylor, now do they? Suddenly, Lee doesn't look so bad...

I loved Starbuck's reaction to her transfer to the Pegasus. Unlike Apollo, she tried to fight it with everything she had. And you could tell that she almost got through to the commander... She spoke her mind, and she did it all with a cocky smile at the end. That's exactly what we've always loved about Starbuck...

Hell, it was like the writers purposely made every single damn, core character on the show as damn likable as they could, just to make the Pegasus crew seem that damn bad...

Commander Adama was absolutely the man in Pegasus. With every single look he gave, you could see the conflicted nature in his soul... How the fuck did Edward James Olmos not get nominated for an Emmy, again?...

On the one side, he had his sense of duty. He has followed orders all his life, he claimed... But after being in charge and command for so damn long? It's hard to give up the right to say what it is right...

Lee has mutinied against the chain of command twice already. Guess Adama now only needs one more notch on his belt to catch up...

The difference is, I didn't give a damn about Apollo fighting for civilian rights, because martial law during those times really didn't seem so bad. President Roslin was completely out of her mind, she conned Starbuck into stealing the Cylon Raider, and she did everything she possibly could to make the military look bad behind the Commander's back... And yet Lee would still side with a bitch like that?...

But now, things are different, as Adama said when referring to the witch trials last year... President Roslin has suddenly become a wonderful leader again (for now, at least). And everyone on the Battlestar Galactica has become a tightly knit crew with a sense of honour and hope, after finding the map to earth, at least...

Then Admiral Cain just steps onto the flight deck, and ruins the whole sense of family that Galactica has built over the past two or three episodes... It's no wonder then, that I find myself siding with Commander Adama completely...

Olmos gave what was perhaps the best damn performance of his life in Pegasus. He looked like his fucking dog has been shitted on when he began realizing he had to give up command. And his fury could barely be controlled by his sense of duty, when refusing Kara's request to speak freely about her transfer... He had real chemistry with Laura Roslin again. They seemed like they really trusted each other. And his scenes with Tigh were amazing as well, as the two joked about getting the ship logs ready for Admiral Cain to inspect...

... and just the amazing contrast, from his awestruck sense of a dream, at seeing the Battlestar Pegasus for the first time on the Dradis?... from his first moment of respect, as he saluted the Admiral setting foot on the Galactica?...

... to the stone cold face he held, when ordering a Marine strike team to get back his crew?... to the damn expression of both regret, and a complete lack of remorse at the same damn time, when it came to ordering the Admiral to listen to him for a change?...

It's weird seeing Ensign Ro from goddam The Next Generation again, playing a by-the-book military Admiral, when back on TNG she was fucking over Riker for fun and games...

Still, despite the fact she looks way too young to be an Admiral, I thought she did an amazing job of being a stone cold bitch...

Every statement and decision she made, she played it with the kind of conviction and the kind of force you'd expect from a person who really thinks they've become the finger of God in the goddam fleet... As far as the chain of command was concerned, she was the fucking chain you wrap around your fist, and fucking fist Cylons like Sharon right up the ass with, just for shits and giggles (and for probably more shit as well)...

On paper, Pegasus just looked like another old, worn and torn, Science Fiction staple recycled and reused...

... but then again, I never really put this episode into the proper context beforehand, now did I?...

Turns out, Pegasus in execution was by far the most deep, insightful, thought-provoking, and relevant episode I have seen from any series in years, science fiction or not...

... it spoke volumes more about the art of war and the acts of contrition, than pretty much any Battlestar Galactica episode before it...

If there was any one true fault of Pegasus, it was that there was no one true, definitive scene that I would watch over and over again...

But completely unlike any television show since the best of TNG? I actually liked the fucking moral of the story...

Regardless of who's side you take, whether it be Adama's or Cain's, Pegasus has taught me something that Stargate and the fucking morons in the Pegasus Galaxy, have yet to even begin to unravel...

In turn, the Battlestar Galactica completely dehumanized the Pegasus, going so far as to even killing a lieutenant while barely flinching an eye...

In the real world, while this may be a gross generalization, Republicans have dehumanized terrorists... and pretty much all those who even begin to agree with their ideals...

... and at the same time, liberals have dehumanized the US soldiers... and I'm sure, fucking wouldn't mind if the Bush Administration was raped right up the ass as well...

It doesn't matter who's side you take. There's really no right and wrong, regardless of what any of us want to believe...

Afterall, I avoided Red Eye thanks to the fucking pink eye that its trailers kept giving me... So what could really be so hard about avoiding the next, generic airplane thriller to come off the coat-tails of 9/11?...

The thing is, I'm a fucking sucker for good deals... and Flightplan at fucking four dollars for a theatre ticket, was just too perfect to give up...

And the ads kept drawing me in... With Jodie fucking Foster (my old Hollywood crush) on the cover, and the words "Suckle Up" waving me in?... well, "Buckle Up" eye typo or not, I had to board this flight...

The critics were all correct. The last third of the movie is just plain Die Hard 2 ridiculous. But never in a good, Die Hard 1 sort of way... I mean yes, the big revelation about what was really going on in the plane was thought out. It all made sense...

It's just that, the revelation blew its cargo load to the audience way too bluntly, as if I was watching goddam Mr. Glass in Unbreakable all over again... It was all spelled out for us in one fucking minute flat. And right after that? The film became Die Hard with a fucking vengeance... except we had fucking Jodie Foster as the assassin with the taxi trigger finger this time around...

The action in the latter third wasn't that bad. We got some horrible CG explosions, and some really awful music. But for the most part, it was no worse than the last third of fucking Adaptation (guess the writers of this film took a page out of Charlie Kaufman's ideas for a film's last act... bad move I say, since Adaptation fucking sucked...)...

It's just that, all the action completely didn't match the tone of the film. It was like somebody switched off a light, and everyone's brains in the theatre were supposed to suddenly shut off as well...

Now, before the last third of the film? As all the critics have pointed out, Flightplan was brilliantly planned out as a Hitchcockian Thriller. Hell, you could almost see his shadow there, 37000 feet high in the air on the fucking wings of that luxury plane...

Hitchcock sucked cock. I'm sorry, but he was before my time. And he will forever be a bore for my time...

First of all, the grand prize of the movie was obviously trying to figure out if Kyle Pratt's daughter, Julia, was in fact real or not. And if she was, then where the fuck could they stash her on the plane?...

Well, my first initial reaction was obviously from watching too much goddam SciFi television... I mean, wasn't it obvious? They beamed her off the ship. Duh...

Besides that though? Jodie Foster's character did keep a nice pace with the game, always seemingly staying one step ahead of the audience... She would accuse the Arabs right when we would. She would want to check the cargo holds right when we thought of it. And if it wasn't for the trailers, I'm sure that none of us would've remembered that stupid heart thing that her daughter smeared onto the window... For the most part, Kyle Pratt was true to her engineering name, and stayed one step ahead in the game...

... well, if the game wasn't just so obvious in the goddam first place, that is...

Okay, first things first, I'm going to spoil the whole fucking movie here. For the most part, at least... simply because it was so damn obvious what was going on, that it ruined the whole fucking movie for me...

Clyde from Kinsey was obviously evil. Not only did he make that weird smirk at the start at Jodie, but he's a fucking Air Marshall as well... C'mon already. He was sitting near Jodie conveniently, he has a fucking gun with him, and he looks like a fucking serial killer who enjoys fucking little lost boys for fun. How the fuck can't he be guilty?...

Well, first things first, I didn't want her to be fucking real. I hated the bitch actress girl that played her... Why the hell must thrillers always try to make the kids seem cute and eerie at the same damn time? It freaks me out... How the hell would we ever want this fucking girl to be alive and be real, when she's so damn creepy, that she might as well be a ghost?... I know that was sort of the point. But it really ruined everywhere when I put two and two together, and figured out where the fuck she was... as I really didn't want the bitch to survive...

I didn't catch which stewardess was in Avionics at the same. All I do remember thinking to myself, was that there was some goddam reason why the camera angle was so damn shifty eyed in that one scene alone. Hell, you could almost hear the villain stroking his monstrous mustache in that scene... So either Julia was being held there, there was a fucking bomb on the plane in that room, or a fucking desperate housewife was strapped to the rail tracks while a fucking bullet train was speeding her way...

... serves me right, for actually going into a movie theatre with my goddam brain on...

And now thanks to me, I've just ruined the whole movie for you two readers out there. Cheers...

The thing is, the only surprise this movie even remotely supplied for me, was the fact that Sean Bean's character of the captain, wasn't in on the whole thing in the end. I mean, isn't there an unwritten law or something, that he has to play a villain in each and every movie he appears in?... Just like Bill Paxson has to die in every single film he's in, otherwise the movie shall suck?...

Sean Bean was definitely the best part of the movie. You couldn't tell which side he was on... He definitely seemed to do everything in his power for Kyle Pratt. Was it simply out of protocol, or did he really give a damn about Ms. Jodie Foster and her tragic circumstances?... Hard to say, but his character was definitely interesting in the end. He showed a lot of pathos for the lost little girl, he showed a ton of real fear when the bomb threat finally appeared, and you could visibly feel the remorse in his eyes when he realized the truth of it all...

Now, I suppose Jodie Foster was decent in her role herself. Like I said, if stupid ominous camera angles and smirks hadn't given the whole damn movie away to me, then I would've probably enjoyed how she always stayed a step and a half in front of the crowd... As an engineer myself, I liked her little switching of the cables to freak out the whole plane with a cabin pressure warning. I liked her ideas of how to check on her coffin, and how she would ask all the little questions that would finally lead her to the truth... In fact, I don't think there's a single question she didn't ask in this movie that I would've asked myself. Her only damn mistake, was trusting the damn Air Marshall on board with the goddam evil gun and grin...

But her character just was too one-dimensional for my own goddam pleasure. The whole movie was about her either being morbidly depressed from her husband's suicide, or her freaking the hell out about where her daughter may have gone... Sure, for a thriller, those are traditionally the only emotions an actress needs to really emote. The point of a Hitchcockian thriller, is simply to elicit a response in the audience, of the primal kinds of fears you feel 37000 feet up in the air...

Now, despite my misforgivings about the tiny bitch with the sixth sense, Flightplan was a well crafted, well thought-out, and a pretty well designed movie overall... What else could I expect from an aeronautics engineer, afterall?...

... but alas, the film still tasted like bitter, goddam airline food in the end...

... keep an eye out, if any airline ever does play Flightplan or Red Eye as their goddam in-flight movie someday...

That any movie with Sean Bean in it, where he doesn't turn out to be a villain?...

Because you know what? My eyes lit up like the goddam Northern Lights, when I first heard about the plot about Aurora...

Fuck, Sheppard wasn't the only one with the Pavlovian response when he heard those words...

The thing is, while I love the Ancients and all the backstory we get on them, it's really the Ancients (or Alterrans) from Stargate SG-1 that I can't get enough of... You know, the kind of Ancients who were able to fill Colonel O'Neill's mind with stuff like how to build a ZPM out of just a Goa'uld staff weapon, and how to upgrade a frickin' Goa'uld cargo ship to about the intergalactic speed of the Daedalus...

I love the Ancients, and I still do love Stargate: Atlantis... but really, the spin-off show just has some goddam fucked up way, of making the Ancients look like goddam dumbasses...

In Before I Sleep, why the fuck were the Ancients trying to break through enemy lines with transport ships, when they have the frickin' Stargates to use?...

And in Aurora, it really makes no fucking sense... Why the hell did the Ancients send out a slow-ass warship, that somehow takes months to get back home, when their fucking recon work of the "utmost importance", requires a fucking ship that's as fast as the Daedalus?...

I'd like to think the Ancients in the Pegasus Galaxy were simply a goddam devolved version of the ones who left earth from the plague five million years ago... Afterall, even the engineering idiots on the Aurora were taking goddam forever to upgrade their own damn engines to even go a fraction of the intergalactic speeds that a true Asgard vessel can...

And WTF? The Wraith technology has a weakness? Unless it's like a fucking Cylon light switch, then why the fuck would it matter? I thought the Ancients were supposed to massacre the Wraith in terms of technology?...

If anything, Stargate Atlantis just keeps on making the Ancients look like a slightly more advanced (though much more sexier) version of the goddam Tollans (with sexy results)... I mean, the Tollans fluked an advantage over the Goa'uld with their ion cannons. And the Ancients did it with shields and drone technology... but that's about it...

Because from what we learn from episodes like Aurora?... God, no wonder the Ancients lost the goddam war...

On the Aurora, they carry around little stun guns that may look like the crystal of a Prior Staff, but really can't do anything past the same kind of crap you get from a hand phaser in Star Trek: The Next Generation. And their ship from what we saw, barely even uses any of that coolass thought-based technology that the chair weapon platforms do, as instead we saw a crapload of good ol' fashioned push buttons instead... And their stasis pods? Maybe if SG-1 didn't already have the same kind (if not better) of goddam virtual environment technology in season 8, then maybe I would give a damn about Sheppard jacking into the Matrix...

... was it me?... or did it just feel like we were watching some average episode of Trek, or some crap like that?...

... hell... were those fucking nacelles I saw on the old and busted Aurora warship in space?...

I guess the episode itself wasn't bad... afterall, it was more of a character piece than anything else...

The one truly annoying character was Col. Caldwell. He whined like a little son of a bitch the whole way through, first complaining that he wanted his own people to handle the situation (though I really don't see why we saw nothing of Hermiod), and later bitching about puny little Wraith cruisers on approach... I know that he didn't want the Daedalus to be discovered, or for Atlantis' cover to be blown, but really? He was a strong willed commander in The Siege (Part 3), so why the fuck did the writers have to make him into a pure asshole, just to make Dr. Weir look good?...

Well, to be honest, nobody can make Dr. Weir look good (personality wise at least... although body wise, nobody can make her look bad...)... Sure, I liked her comments about chess at the start. But she completely overreacted in a very dominatrix way, when Ronan even suggested the thought of leaving the table, let alone Atlantis... And then what else do we get from Weir, but yet another bitch session with Caldwell over how damn much control she has over his phallic manlihood? His goddam bigass ship, I mean...

I guess there was just something fucked up in the air though, because Teyla was a bit weird as well... I mean, just a year ago, she was like Teal'c at the start of SG-1's first season. She pretty much believed in magic, and felt helpless against the Wraith. But just like with Teal'c, just one season later, and suddenly every character on the goddam show is a techie...

I mean, sure she can have a pretty decent memory and all, at remembering what the hell kind of dribble McKay says all the time. But since when the fuck did she learn what all those technical terms she used this episode actually meant?... I liked the moment between her and Ronan, when she was stalling for time. They always give each other decent winks and smiles and all... But really, Teyla can now technobabble with the best of Captain Janeway's now? WTF?...

Ronan's acting was way off in Aurora. Every single line he had felt way too soft, and nowhere near the hardcore-like manner you'd expect from a man on the run for seven years. He was probably too submissive too, sort of just letting Teyla do all the talking... Then again, maybe I just felt that way about him, because I really expected a "Jonas"-like reaction to him being on the Daedalus for the first time. I mean, sure he was probably wowed by Puddle Jumpers in the past, but this was different... Why does no-one in the bloody Pegasus Galaxy even bat an eye, that a human race has a fucking ship that's fucking superior to everything the Wraith's got but the fucking Hive ships?...

... and apparently, superior to the fucking Aurora Warship as well, as it got its fucking ass kicked and name taken all too easily...

Considering this is Atlantis we're talking about, and that this episode was essentially a bad Trek ripoff, I was expecting at least a few of the things that make Trek so damn addicting to me in the end. But really, where was the Voyager technology technobabble to keep me busy? Where were the fucking space battles?... All we got instead was a fucking blip on the radar, just magically making a fucking explosion sound when it got smashed by two other blips on the radar, as if the Daedalus MGM crew installed fucking Playstation sound effects on their computers along with their fucking card games...

Instead of Star Trek, we got fucking McKay as Morpheus... we got fucking Sheppard as Neo...

... and we got such a fucking weirdass mix of The Matrix, The Wizard of Oz, and fucking I Dream of Jeanie, that I don't even know where to begin...

Once again though, Sheppard and McKay were the saving graces of the show. It was obvious that the relationship between the two was still strained (as McKay took the "don't trust me" comment a bit too seriously). But at least some of their old skool banter was finally coming back in full Aurora thunder and roar...

McKay was the man for sadly just one of the first times this season. I loved almost every single line he had, from trying to describe the virtual reality to Caldwell near the start, to making Sheppard worry like a son of a bitch right before going into the stasis pod... I loved the bit where Teyla convinced him that Sheppard would the 'safer' choice to get into the pod... And yeah, I laughed a decent laugh when McKay heroically woke up the Wraith from stasis, only to realize that he didn't have a fucking clue what to do after that. At least he didn't drop his gun and clip this time around, of course...

Aurora was mainly a Sheppard episode, although his best scenes were always with McKay. I mean, Sheppard bickering about not being told about the Wraith cruisers coming, and not being told that Caldwell was going to blow the Aurora the fuck up with him still in it, was just goddam priceless in the end... and definitely the kind of thing that I miss so damn much from Atlantis pre-Trinity...

... and if there's any real indication that Stargate Atlantis is coming back in fine form?...

Why can't all XO's look like that? Colonel Tigh, I'm motherfrakkin' looking at you...

It's the little McKay moments, like him drooling over a Wraith in fucking boiling hot sheep's skin, that make the series as good as it gets... Him running away from the waking Wraith like the wuss that McKay still somehow is, also didn't hurt things either...

But I don't know... whenever Sheppard was in the virtual reality alone, or with the Aurora crew I mean? The episode was just lacking... His performances were just stiff and dry (probably because of the construct we call the Matrix...). And without any even remotely interesting crew members on board the Ancient ship? I was really goddam wishing for the return of Captain Jean Luc Picard, or some shit like that...

That's the thing that gets me the most about Aurora... and that's the thing that gets me the most about this entire goddam second season of Stargate Atlantis...

... all the plotlines this season have been goddam interesting... on paper... or in the Matrix construct, at least...

But just like with the fucking Matrix movies, what the fuck has gone wrong with the execution?...

Where is the comedy banter really? Where is the sense of newness and exploration? Where is the writers' fucking imaginations?...

Aurora wasn't really anything more than a decent episode... all the boring virtual reality scenes of shit saw to that...

But at least it was a step in the right direction... with Sheppard and McKay lighting up the screen as the dynamic duo that they are... and with a fucking hot bitch sandwiched between the both of them in the process...

And yes, while I was severely disappointed that we got no real space battles this episode, that we didn't get any coolass new Ancient technology, and that the Ancient warship (and its crew) was goddam Picard pussified in the end?...

... guess it reminded me a bit of Yesterday's Enterprise, one of science fiction's best ever episodes made...

And I guess I've just seen too many kickass Star Trek episodes, to simply ignore a goddam good sacrifice when I see one...

Y2kk Update: - Battlestar Galactica: Flight of the Phoenix Review (Spoilers...) -

Just by judging the name of "Flight of the Phoenix", any true SciFi fan instantly knew what the whole episode was about...

Because just like with any Trek or feel good SciFi series beforehand, the crew would rise from the depths of despair and ashes, and burn brightly as one as a reborn flame... yadda yadda yadda, or some crap like that...

... and it certainly didn't help things out, that BSG named this episode after a bloody hell, bad Dennis Quaid movie (they should've picked The goddam Parent Trap instead, goddammit)...

But the thing is, I have a real soft spot in my heart for series that can tell a heartbreaking story within the confines of a 1 hour standalone episode... I've always had a thing for the cliche but ever classic tale, of a crew working together and rising to the occasion, and all that other standard fare bullshit of course...

To be honest, I was really surprised at Flight of the Phoenix... Sure, it wasn't the greatest episode of BSG ever made. But it was surprisingly entertaining, especially compared to the depressive and monotonous drab we've been getting throughout the rest of the season (and yes, Final Cut and some other episodes I have given a decent pass to in the past, definitely have not held up as well as I thought they would...)...

If I had to pick and choose the best of the best?... Sure, it doesn't say much, considering Battlestar Galactica's second season has been shit on a stick, pretty much. But right now, I'd pretty much place the Flight of the Phoenix, on a path and a flightplan right behind Resistance and Home (Part 2) for the best of the season to date...

The key to Flight of the Phoenix, was that a truly great SciFi writer these days can take an old tried and true storyline, and mold it into something that feels reinvigorating and fresh... And the true key to Flight of the Phoenix, was that for the first time in the entire season, every single character was actually likable... the kind of way they were from time to time in the first season of the show...

Commander Adama didn't really have that many scenes to shine. But he sought the council of the President, and he did it in the kind hearted, polite, humble, and almost horny way, that he did throughout the best of the first season of the show. He showed good judgment this episode... He was wise, as he trusted the pregnant Sharon pretty much as far as he could throw her. And he definitely wanted to ring her little neck with his fist again (I would've just preferred to fist her, mind you)... But he did what was best for the crew. He wanted to give them hope and faith all over again. And he did it by just being there for them, letting them have the freedom to do their thing, and taking his chances on rolling a hard six... the kind of way he used to, before getting two bloody hell sixes to the gut, I mean...

Now, I've been President Roslin's biggest detractor since day one. But really, if only the writers would let me, I would and could fall in love with the actress who plays her... There were fleeting times last season, when Madame President was warm and fluttery and free spirited, in the way that the most kind-hearted of mothers act. And that's precisely, pretty much exactly how she acted in Flight of the Phoenix...

She didn't have many scenes. But she was just compassionate and genuine and caring in every single one of them, the way I wish she had been all season long... Thanks to her whole cancer thing, thank the gods that there was no mention of her goddam prophecy bullshit. Instead, what we got instead, was touching little reminders of the wonderful school teacher she used to be... From returning the book that Adama had given her last season, to holding back the tears of joy when she was shown her name on the Blackbird, she just had that kind of gentle grace to her that I wish the actress could always get the chance to goddam show on the goddam show...

Now, as soon as I heard that ol' Celtic lighter music show up, I simply thought to myself that the BSG people were really overusing it, and killing whatever atmosphere or mood that that tune was able to create back in the immortal Hand of God... But the ironic thing was, out of all times this season to use it? Flight of the Phoenix was just absolutely the perfect place... From Roslin's reaction to the Blackbird tribute, to even making me freak out from her smashing the champagne bottle on the carbon composite (which I probably would've done as well, just for shits and giggles), the Celtic music just fit in perfectly...

It was meant for the most emotional of family moments. And what really defined Flight of the Phoenix as one of the best episodes of the season so far, was that everyone on that hanger bay in that scene, really did seem like a family...

... hell, I even got a rise out of the champagne rising, when the president officially popped off the cork...

... guess I just love it, whenever a women seems so damn elated to pop her cork... but I digress...

Now, if there was any one complaint about Flight of the Phoenix, it was definitely the fact that the two parallel storylines of the episode just felt so distant and so disconnected from each other... Sure, both the Cylon virus and Blackbird hotrod threads carried the same kind of message and theme, that you can achieve anything when you have the will and the faith to survive... but I dunno. Except for maybe a few lights flickering here or there, it was like the two storylines were from two separate episodes or something. It just felt weird, you know?...

Chief Tyrol hasn't had much to do all season. And his best performance to date will stay safe with Resistance. But he still did a decent job in Flight of the Phoenix... It's not like he looked like a man possessed or anything, as he could barely even pull off being a desperate man for faith when pumping all that alcohol to barter with. But he definitely did look like a happier, and a much more likable man by the end of this episode...

He started it off with a hilariously bad choreographed duke out with Helo. And ended it with a champagne bottle in his hands, holding the booze and his chin up high. The stark contrast and change in his character over just the course of an hour, is exactly the kind of stuff that I love in my popcorn standalone episodes... I mean, sure season long story arcs are still a must these days. But I will forever have a place in my heart, for the kind of standalone episodes that old skool SciFi's like Star Trek and Stargate entertained me with throughout my youth...

If any character wasn't quite likable in Flight of the Phoenix, it was Colonel Tigh. He played far too much of a devil's advocate, always seeming like a complete moron by being constantly contradicted by the commander a second or two later... I don't mind him being the pessimist. It was just kind of odd how he didn't see the real point to "hope" being on the ship, until near the very end...

Still, he provided the best damn comic relief of the entire episode. I can't believe that I didn't remember that he was a drunk asshole, while he was catching Tyrol in the act of siphoning booze... And because of my utter dumbfoundedness? I laughed so damn ridiculously hard at Tigh just taking a bottle of the shit for himself, that it really was hilarious in the end...

Well, if there was any other character who really, really ridiculously sucked in Flight of the Phoenix, it was Helo... I mean, I know I said I like my tried and true, feel good, standalone episodes and all. But Helo's plot these episode was just way too ridiculously straight forward and cliche for its own good... He starts off as the guy everyone hates and ignores at the poker game (nice scene with the bent cards, by the way). And then by the end of the episode, he's getting the token handshakes from everyone who ignored him, for just having one decent line and idea in the episode to say? WTF?... I would stick kick his ass for being a pansy, mind you...

Kara was the only one who really stood up for the Cylon lover. I guess I can hope that either a) Helo is next on her fuck buddy list, or even better, b) she's had her eye on Boomer for a very long time (pregnant lesbian sex is supposedly great...)... Either way, I'm just happy that we got the old Kara Thrace back in Flight of the Phoenix. Because for the first time in a long while? She was actually likable... No more soap opera antics with fucking Anders. No more fucking traitorous, sniper bitching, or the stealing of military Raiders... Here, she was just the playful, cocky, arrogant, son of a bitch Starbuck that we've come to know and love from the first season of the show...

Even if she didn't have much to say, just smirking there (as she was flirting with Lee over the Blackbird and whether it was good to fly) was the kind of thing that I've missed from her character for a very long time... And even without any real action? Maybe it was just because of Lee's reactions or something, but I loved the Blackbird testing scene as well. She just seemed so fucking overjoyed by playing a few fucking pranks on her boytoy, that her laughter in the stealth ship cockpit was almost as goddam welcome and endearing... as seeing Jessica Biel's naked fucking ass in a fucking stealth cockpit as well, but I digress...

Now, for all the poor saps out there, the Laura flight deck scene will probably go down in history as the one key scene from Flight of the Phoenix. But I personally loved above all else, the "payback" scene where the Battlestar pilots finally got their dues with the drifting Cylon attack fleet... Everyone there, from Hot Dog, to Starbuck, to especially Lee, just fucking let 'er rip and let the Cylons have it. This was their own Flight of the Phoenix, their one true moment of ectasy and true release where they could just have fun, and find a little hope and faith...

All episode long, Lee had been the pessimist. But as soon as he saw hundreds of Cylon ships just go dark like the Cylons had done to the human fleet back in the miniseries?... His eyes just lit up, and so did his Viper guns. And I don't know... but it was just so goddam sweet, to see the CAG that damn happy...

Now, me being the ever conspiratist and pessimist that I am, I am convinced that the Cylon attack on the Galactica this episode was nothing but a ruse. I mean, just the other episode ago, the Cylons specifically said that they wanted to protect Sharon's baby at all costs. Yet even if their ultimate goal was to capture it, how the fuck would ripping apart Galactica to do so, really help the child in the long run?... If anything, whether she knew it or not (like Baltar did last season), the Cylons were helping Sharon on board (with a baby on board, of course...), to gain a measure of trust back from the crew or some shit like that...

Either way, no matter what really happened, I'm just fucking happy that we got fucking Grace Park in fucking hottie sweat clothes. And we got fucking scenes of her in fucking sweet tank tops. And of course, it actually did look cool to see her jam that fucking wire up her arteries... Sure, I would've preferred to jam a certain something else up her fucking ass. But hey, that's just me... She provided for us one of the most memorable space battle scenes in the show, without the Cylons even firing a shot. This was the first real episode, where Sharon actually felt a bit like the Sharon of old, before all this baby and Cylon space opera bullshit started...

As for the rest of the characters? Dr. Baltar was strangely enough mostly absent for the episode, with Number Six nowhere in sight. And even stranger, he was actually intelligent and useful, using the ol' Star Trek and Stargate (and fucking real life) trick to wipe out the virus with a fucking hard drive format... guess he's been following my Tweakui updates a bit too damn closely...

Lt. Gaeta finally got to show the hardcore cat, Felix side of his force, and blew up against Tigh right in the middle of command duty. I still think that the creepy little bastard in a Cylon, as he was the one who suggested the network that compromised the ship in the first place... But hey, if Baltar hadn't tested the guy yet, then the fucking BSG crew really is dumb enough to deserve to die...

And if getting Grace fucking Park into fucking hot clothes wasn't enough for one burning flame of a day at the Phoenix, then how about Petty Officer Dualla, showing off that she ain't so petty when it comes to looks and charms... Now, I didn't particularly like how her whole fling of a thing with Lee was still going on. And I kinda forgot that Billy even existed anymore until he showed up at the door... But hot damn, the girl has a nice waist. Why can't she always wear that kind of gymnastic fighting shit when on duty, I may never know...

All I do know, is that cliche or predictable or not? Flight of the Phoenix was just a greatly enjoyable, standalone episode for the series...

It was labeled by so many on the net as just a wasteful "filler" of an episode, long before it ever hit the air... as if the term "filler" automatically means an episode will be crap these days, even before she ever gets to fly...

Now, while obviously Battlestar Galactica's greatest strength is its space opera sort of series arc shit, Ron Moore behind the scenes has had a hell of a lot of prior experience with great standalone episodes in the past, way back on both Star Trek: TNG and Deep Space Nine...

And if Flight of the Phoenix is any indication of the potential for the writing of this series in the long run?...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate SG-1: Prototype and Stargate SG-1: The Fourth Horseman Reviews (Spoilers...) -

To be honest? I'm still so goddam plagued and confounded, as to how the Stargate SG-1 writers could pull a complete 180 turn from their craptastic eighth season... and produce a ninth season as miraculously awesome as the one we're getting now...

Because seriously? Prototype is absolutely the amazing kind of episode, that should be the ideal model or prototype for all episodes to come...

This was the kind of episode that would've been considered great, even in the glory days of the Stargate SG-1 seasons 2 through 4...

This is the kind of episode, where every member of the cast felt important. And where the team really felt like?... well... a real team...

Now, it is kind of weird that Stargate SG-1 would be competing against itself for best episode of the week or whatever...

But seriously? As good as The Fourth Horseman was, Prototype was just that much more intense, and that much more genuinely interesting... almost in the same kind of way, as great classic episodes such as Torment of Tantalus, the Fifth Race, and The Lost City were to me...

Now, I've never really minded the Goa'uld as villains in the past. Apophis was kind of lame, but he did have his moments. And while Anubis was normally way over the top, I did like what his half ascended character brought to the mix in terms of the background of the Ancients...

But the SG-1 writers in the past have always painted the Goa'uld as conquerors. As pretty much feudal kings and lords, hell bent on power mongering, and never really for the venomous kill...

I think that movies like Silence of the Lambs really seem to prove, that audiences are way more interested in interviews with serial killers, rather than just Conan the Barbarian becoming a tyrant of a king (although I do hear that that movie did kick ass back in its day...)... And Khalek just had such strong lines of script written for his wonderfully, Britishly evil accent, that in just one episode? Anubis Jr really did seem to provide more credibility to his villainous character, than pretty much any Goa'uld has since Ba'al back in the sixth season's Abyss...

I just loved the turn for the worse in his demeanor, as soon as Daniel Jackson told him that he knew all about Anubis' genetic memory. And the conversation that followed, speaking of the pleasure that a man gets from an intimate one on one kill, was exactly the kind of writing that was needed to shake up the show this season... But probably my favourite moments from Khalek, were when he was reading Woolsey like a book. I love it whenever Dark Jedi read the minds of poor weak willed fools, and calling Richard as the "Dick" that he is, was just the perfect kind of eerie comic relief that a truly insane villain brings into the fold...

... and oh, of course, now we finally know what would happen, if a fucking Jedi ever went one on a thousand against the SGC...

What I love most about Prototype, is that it perfectly and profoundly blended science, religion, witty comedy, and nail-biting script writing, all into a single standalone hour of greatness... and it was all capped off by one of the most brilliant battle sequences that Stargate SG-1 has ever done in years (well, since the seventh season, at least...)...

Now, personally I would've tried more zats rather than bullets that could easily be deflected. But really, for the most part, the SGC pretty much did take every damn precaution possible to keep Khalek subdued. This episode left me wondering how the fuck they were actually going to stop him... as Anubis Jr just kicked everyone's asses and took their names, without any real effort whatsoever...

I loved the effect of the deflected machine gun bullets, as it just looks so much cooler than showing shields or stopping bad CG shells in mid-air. And the whole thing with the guards at the door, the Tok'ra force field being one way, and the floor having 50000 volts of electricity, was just analyzed and defeated so damn cunningly and swiftly by Khalek, that his shocking solution (no pun intended) even stunned me...

But what really gets me about this episode, was that somehow there was real closure in the finale... I just loved Khalek's reactions before and after stepping through the gate...

Arrogance has always been the Goa'uld's downfall. And he was just too goddam confused when he found himself right back at the SGC, to even be bright enough to notice that Daniel Jackson was just camping there to his right, with a goddam bullet painted for his heart... if the bastard had a heart, that is...

... and I just loved the camera sweep from Cameron Mitchell to Daniel Jackson in that scene as well...

This was truly a team effort in all regards. As every single character on the cast truly had something meaningful and important to do...

I thought it was brilliant that Samantha Carter rigged the planet's call-forwarding device to return to earth. I never saw it coming until I saw the gate dialing back almost immediately. And yet the solution made so much goddam sense in the end, that I literally slapped my head silly from being as dumbass as Khalek... And Carter was finally back to being the smart, sassy science girl we've always known her as. Whether she was analyzing data from the "ascendometer" (kickass phrase, by the way), or pretending that Lam was really Janet Frasier in an even hotter body, I just got the feeling of old skool Sam back in this episode... it really felt like something out of season three or four...

Even if he didn't get to say it himself, I gotta give Mitchell props for that "ascendometer" thing. Hope that becomes the real name of the device some day... Now, I really don't get why he was dumb enough to push the button on the stasis pod without even asking about it first. Sure, we got a "new guy" rip out of it all, but it just felt too damn idiotic for its own good... But besides that? Cam was quite the man in Prototype... He took the cuts and bruises to the head and just kept on ticking. And I just loved his "intimate" moment with Daniel and Khalek in the end (God, 'shippers would just love to tear the linings off of that phrase...), giving the doctor his props, and giving the devil his due with a dozen bullets into his fucking chest...

Now, I still hate Landry's guts, as the guy is simply too cut and dry with his performances to ever really win me over. But along with Beachhead, Prototype does show some promise for Beau Bridges... Instead of stealing the spotlight with his awful American accent and hooky, pedophillic, uncle-like line deliveries, he simply sat back in his chair this episode, and let the rest of the cast do the talking for him... Sure, he talked his ass off to Woolsey. But for every other scene? He played it just like Hammond would have, listening to council and advice, and simply being the stream and the glue that the rest of the team sticks together through... He played the role of a leader, or a general, finally. He cared about his people, and the actor showed it with his expressions rather than lame ass words. What more can I really ask from the guy?...

Dr. Lam still isn't really growing on me. Not until she actually gets on me, mind you... But just like with Beau Bridges, Prototype was most definitely Lexa Doig's best role on the series to date...

At times, she did her usual thing, acting like she was flirting with Cam, Khalek, and Sam (basically, everyone on the base but her real life husband), with her little quippy, cutesy, girl scout voice... The actress seems to have a hard time delivering lines like an adult. Or she did, until things started getting heated up with Khalek... While I would've loved more cleavage and fucking sex from her in that sense, what I mean is, she delivered all her lines about dopamine and drugs and the Ancient scanner device, pretty much as greatly and maturely as Dr. Janet Frasier would've back in the day... and really reminded me of one of the damn good reasons why season eight really sucked for the show: there wasn't any goddam doctor on the base...

Teal'c didn't have much to do, I admit it. If any cast member was ignored in Prototype, it was him... Still, he got to pull off a few good stunts. While I don't know why he was parading around with a P90 rather than a Zat against an advanced human, that scene where he gets Force pushed right into two serviceman, was definitely very serviceable in the end... And even if he didn't have much to say? I don't know, but his presence in the Anubis lab with Daniel just felt more natural to me than his stalker-like tagging along with Vala and Daniel earlier on in the season...

Prototype belonged to Dr. Daniel Jackson though, as this basically was his interview with a fucking serial killer... I just loved his reaction to Khalek's whole speech about death and intimate killing, as Daniel just flicked his pen and walked away speechless. I mean really, what could anyone have possibly said back?... I loved the fact that the whole briefing room turned their heads around when Daniel of all people suggested that Anubis Jr. was too damn dangerous to keep around. Not only did it show just how much he's matured from the naive archeologist from seasons one and two, but that maybe he has a score to settle as well...

Ra was Jack's baddie. The Replicators had their way with Sam. And Apophis was always Teal'c's worst fear... But Anubis was always Daniel Jackson's true enemy. And the fact that Oma kicked Nubbie's ascended ass, not Daniel, probably didn't sit so well with the good doctor over these past few months... It was just nice that he finally got some measurable sense of justice against the thing that he's been fighting for the past three years, ascended or not. When that bullet sliced through Khalek's shoulder, it just gave me a sense of closure too, you know?...

... and a lot of pleasure... especially to see the goddam onslaught of overkill that followed... guess Khalek was right afterall...

Now, Prototype did have its faults. For one, besides a few crafty lines here and there, it did seem to lack a lot of comic relief (Cam provided most of it, but Daniel was dead tense and serious for pretty much the whole of the show). And I still don't care for Woolsey's, or Woolsley's, or however you spell his name's character... Sure, he may be a villain with a conscience, which gives him some sense of being two dimensional at least. But even though I love Robert Picardo, he plays the character far too dryly for my tastes...

But Prototype wasn't just a great episode for almost every single damn character on the show. It wasn't just an episode with a great villain and a great action sequence... but it was also goddam genuinely interesting, with all the newly revealed information about human evolution and how it can lead to ascension...

I never liked the explanation in season four, that you had to be pure in the heart to ascend. And even though Anubis and the Ori proved otherwise in seasons eight and nine, the path to ascension was never truly explored until now...

Prototype treated ascension not as the kind of magic that we've been spoonfed over the past few years, but simply as a science far beyond our understanding... and it was just fascinating, to see characters like Sam and Lam (or S 'N L, as perhaps I should call them from now on...) care so damnb much for how his brain was functioning, and whether we could ever achieve the same...

Using technology to ascend was a fascinating way of reinterpreting the fundamentals of Buddhism. And just the thought of what Anubis could've done with that Ancient DNA machine (create a new army of evolved humans, or even created an army of ascended beings to fight the Ancients), is definitely a kind of story I'd love to be revisited at a later date...

I loved how this story was integrated so damn firmly and deeply with the current fight against the Ori. Everything felt connected in this episode, as a lovely transition from the past seasons with Anubis, to the new threat of the Priors... Hell, I almost agreed with Woolsey. Having a weapon to fight the Ori, is almost a damn worthy price to pay for the deaths of two or more servicemen... or is it, really?...

By now, the two of you readers out there are probably mopping the floor with all the drool I've spilt from this goddam episode...

I mean, Prototype may not have been perfect, and it may not quite get up there with the absolute best of SG-1...

But the ascendometer is definitely claiming, that at least this episode has now climbed itself up as one of the best damn episodes of this stellar season nine... and one of the best damn episodes of the past few years...

I seriously don't get how the writers could come up with such amazing stories, after the shit they hit the fan (or fans) with back in bloody hell, season fucking eight...

All I do know, is that thanks to whatever magic or miracles or Jedi mind tricks they're pulling out of their fucking rabbit hats?...

With Atlantis and BSG so far only having decent seasons so far? The Fourth Horseman would've been a fucking shoe-in for best episode of the week, if only it wasn't competing against its own Stargate SG-1 self... Though in the end, this episode was just too much of a set-up for the inevitable Part 2 to follow (about three fucking months down the road, might I add), to really be considered great by itself...

We finally got the full backstory on the Alterrans and the Ori... I personally thought that the returning Orlin blurted it out far too quickly and bluntly for my own tastes. But he did provide us with definitely enough fuel for the fire of forum debates over the next three fucking months of nothing...

So, my earlier guesses were right. Just like some of the "gods" from earth's own mythology in the past, the Ori gain power on their higher planes of existence, by massive amounts of people forking over their free will. And if you believe in the notion of the human soul, than that explanation actually really fits the bill...

You almost feel bad for the Priors then. They believe in something so much and give up their lives for it, yet they never quite get to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or the light coming from the 9/11 buildings, if you get the tasteless connection, I mean...

What really got me about The Fourth Horseman though, was not exactly the explanation of the Ori, but how it made the Ancients seem that much more noble... Imagine if we earthlings could get simple ants and mice to do whatever we wanted them to do. We could turn them into grand armies if we wanted, like some psychotic pied piper. Then we'd be just like the Ancients... the ability to choose domination or not, I mean...

Before, it seemed like they were being arrogant, leaving us to our own free will, simply because they had to get up to the higher planes of existence by themselves. But now, an element of nobility has entered into the fold... Both them and the Ori want to reach the next stage of enlightenment. The Ori want to do it through religion and sapping powers again (like they did to get up there in the first place), while the Ancients are doing it their own way, of free choice and will...

Suddenly, even leaving an entire galaxy to die doesn't look like such a god-awful thing (though picking on Oma back in Threads definitely did make them look like hicksville assholes...)...

... I'd prefer if some of those hot, ascended Atlantis chicks could just fucking bend backwards for me instead, but I digress...

The Alterrans don't want the Ori to gain the devotion of the Milky Way Galaxy, or else they might even become powerful enough to win the war on the higher plane. So now that their asses are on the line too, the fucking Ancients actually want to throw us a bone (and apparently, any pedophiles out there a boner), by letting Orlin come back to help us as a child...

Now, I can't say I quite enjoyed Cameron Bright's performance as Orlin. I mean seriously, I'm all for cute adolescent kids (as sick as that sounds), but getting Bright of all people, wasn't so bright... Does this kid just love roles where he fucks older blondes or something? First Nicole Kidman in Birth, and now Carter? WTF?...

... not to mention the fact, that the kid tried but failed miserably at acting like Orlin... The original Orlin may have been stiff and dry in his performance as a descended Ancient. But his facial expressions were anything but the robotic gestures on Bright's bright and incredibly horny face...

Amanda Tapping shared this episode with Christopher Judge, though I personally preferred her storyline much better to his...

Sam definitely was weirded out a lot from having lunch with not only a kid that still has an obsessive crush on her, but from being with a moron who couldn't even remember what he had just said a second ago... She also strangely enough tried to provide a lot of comic relief, with Dr. Lee the mad scientist listening to fucking rock music of all things. That didn't exactly work, but the virus storyline definitely did...

Now, Dr. Lam sort of didn't really feel natural in her role during the plague... Lexa Doig seemed concerned with things, granted. But you could still tell that she just can't really seem to care about the 8000 or so people dying on paper...

Still, she's definitely learning her place on the show. She's stating all her medical lines with the same kind of emphasis that Doc Frasier had back in the day. And thank God she's not throwing any more hissy fits over her father (although why we didn't get that aforementioned sponge bath with her, I may never know... Why we can't get a fucking hot tub scene with both her and BSG's Grace Park, I may never know either... and why I just thought of all that while I was mentioning Landry as well, I may never know as well... but I digress)...

Landry sucked. He fucking sucked ass. He just looked confused in his role, as Hammond stole the spotlight from him with just his goddam two minutes in a suit... That fucking sucks for Landry. Landry fucking sucks. I hope he gets sick and dies. And that a dog runs over his car or something. Next...

Teal'c reminded me a lot of Reckoning with his performance in The Fourth Horseman. While obviously, half of that was from the return of Judge's brother of an actor, the other half was because he really seemed passionate about the future of the Jaffa nation... It was great to see Bra'tac finally back, and it was even better seeing him and Teal'c on the same page again. All the Jaffa have ever known in existence has been slavery and war. Gerak and the council were choosing slavery, so Teal'c and Bra'tac did one better by picking war...

I suppose that Teal'c didn't really have any memorable lines, so there's really not much to reminisce about here. But he just put that kind of emotion and dedication into his lines that you rarely ever get to see from the actor, and it made every single scene that just more intense, no matter what was being read or said... When Gerak walked into the council room as a prior, Teal'c's face sold me on the scene, not Gerak's words or funky gold face. I'm sure him and Bra'tac will be having a hell of a lot of fun with this situation whenever SG-1 returns three months later...

Cameron Mitchell didn't really provide the comic relief that I was hoping he would. I mean, I did like his responses in the anti-Prior weapon briefing, as a "gun" would've sounded a lot more cooler than a ultrasonic weapon for Amanda Tapping's baby (though couldn't Priors just block against all incoming sound with their shields? Sounds like an easy contraption for them to counter...)...

When it came to the plague, it sort of just showed Mitchell standing in generic spots all over the country. Like one of those country hick, vacation slideshows, to the sound of Halo Warthog banjo music or some shit like that...

Still, what more can you really expect about a story about a plague? You can't really show the kind of kickass action you could in Prototype... Instead, all the dread and fear comes from the real threat of a plague hitting this planet one of these days... it all comes from inside the viewer, really...

Any day now, earth is set for a new killer strain of influenza, knock on wood. We've been lucky so far, but bacteria superbugs are fucking growing stronger and more resistant to antibiotics each and every day...

How much longer will it be before something like the plague in The Fourth Horseman finally hits North American coasts and wipes out millions of us in just a couple of years? I'm praying that won't happen in my lifetime... But the fact is, the threat is very real. Which is why the "influenza" outbreak in The Fourth Horseman, had me hooked on the edge of my seat...

... even with Cam taking camera snapshots, Lam just sticking to the labs, and Sam getting shoved and rammed in the ass by the little son of a bitch that could...

... or at least, somebody as fucking bright as Bright, to getting fucking hot, older women to always fuck the hell out of me...

... I'm sure Gerak and the Jaffa council would too, considering they're ready to sell their souls to the Ori for a chance at immortality...

How the fuck are the writers managing to come up with such amazing episodes like Prototype and the Fourth Horseman, after they fucked us all over with their goddam eighth season?...

Sure, I was disappointed that we got no real action this episode, as it was simply just a set-up and a cliffhanger for the eventual opener to the second half of the season... but still, even so...

... it's like the fucking writers sold their souls to the fucking devil for scripts and ideas such as these...

Stargate Atlantis only being decent... while Stargate SG-1 is being pure goddam bliss, the likes of which I haven't ever consistently seen since at least season four...

... I mean, if you had told me all that last year, I would've sworn to you that you were a crazy man...

And before I got into the theatre? I was dreading spending the next ninety-five damn minutes of my life in there...

Afterall, I was goddam exhausted... with a goddam feeling of out of body floating, and being out of my own goddam frame of mind, from all the goddam work I've done this past week...

Just Like Heaven, really did look like it'd be just like hell to fucking sit through...

It's just that... Just Like Heaven follows the same kind of romantic concept that a fucking pseudo-paranormal geek like me dreams of almost every single freakin' night...

I seriously wish, and have wished for God knows how many years, for the spirit of my soul mate to fucking just pop up in my room or some shit like that. And that I'd be the only one who can fucking talk, touch, see, or even hear her...

Not only would that fucking narrow down the whole supposed Star-Search, soulmate searching thing in life for me (if such a thing does exist). But also because, seriously?...

... it'd be the only goddam way a fucking girl would ever fucking fall in love with a nerd like me...

... and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had this kind of fantasy made in heaven...

The thing is, Hollywood romantic comedies really have a fucked up way, of fucking up our goddam hopes and dreams...

Why the fuck do they keep stuffing this asswipe into romantic comedy films? Didn't anybody behind the desk learn from fucking 13 Going on 30?... He even sucks as an actor in any genre. Didn't anyone else watch Collateral, where Mark fucking Ruffalo provided absolutely the most dreadful scenes in that entire fucking movie?...

I have no fucking idea why they casted him here, because the actor had absolutely no fucking chemistry with Reese Witherspoon whatsoever...

Did he provide any decent scenes? I suppose perhaps a couple... His nervousness while saving the man's life in the diner wasn't bad. And I snickered when he was taken down by hospital security guards near the end, although Donal Logue as his best friend Jack sort of stole the scenes there first...

But really, I just can't understand for the fucking life of me, why Mark Ruffalo always acts so fucking dry in every movie we find him in. As if he's high on bad beer rather than fucking life, or some shit like that... Whether he was dealing with exorcisms, or landscaping, or even fucking coffee mug coasters here, he fucking spoke like he was fucking monotonous or brain dead throughout the thick and thin of the film...

Sure, his character of David was meant to still be all depressed from his goddam wife just dying over a broken shoe or a broken wing or some shit like that. But even when David was "happy" near the end of the film, he still looked like he was fucking sleep-walking his way through the role, as if he was in some sort of fucking coma or some shit like that...

I already mentioned Donal Logue, who played Jack in the film. He provided probably the only real comic relief of this so-called "romantic comedy", as I did crack up when he told David that he's gonna owe him, the day whenever he has to move a body as well... I didn't mind the whole "JJ" bit as well, even though it was obvious who the "blind date" at the start of the movie was meant to be. As Jack (and Abby, to some extent) provided the missing links to the fucking supposed soulmates of the goddam movie... It's just sad that Jack was barely used in the film, considering he was the only funny character, that's all...

Instead, we got way too much of Abby. And except for maybe batting back SpongeBob with a fucking flapjack at the start of the film, did she really contribute anything at all?... I admit that one of the best scenes in the film came from Abby's little daughter putting a cookie on Elizabeth's plate, as the little four year old girl apparently can see more than just imaginary friends. But it's also kind of sad, that a four year old actress or whatever, who barely had a single line in the movie whatsoever, could fucking steal the scene from Abby's actress with a fucking knife to the back...

Jon Heder was supposedly the true headline for the film, at least according to all the fucking trailers. But if anything, this character was anything but "righteous" in the movie's grand scheme of things. He simply stole too many scenes himself, and not in a good way...

He was okay whenever he was doing his ghostbusters thing, especially when he went all mello-beserk from David bringing Elizabeth's spirit into the store... But every single comic moment that Jon Heder had, just fell on goddam deaf ears... I mean, why was he even in this film? Shouldn't he have picked one with an actually decent script?...

... yeah, well... I've always had a soft spot for romantic comedies in my heart...

... as embarrassing as that is, considering I was the only guy in the entire goddam theatre, who came to this fucking romantic film not just of his own free accord... but also fucking alone as well...

And while Just Like Heaven, wasn't quite just like a taste of Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the end?...

... it still definitely had its moments... all thanks to Reese Witherspoon, I mean...

I mean really, is there any film out there that she cannot save with her smile?...

Sure, Sweet Home Alabama was a horrible, atrocious romantic comedy. But even so, Reese Witherspoon was absolutely adorable in it... Legally Blonde (the first one, at least) was simply amazing for its time because of the actress. And Election's only decent character came from Witherspoon as well...

... and as for Cruel Intentions? Sure, I didn't know it was her as the blonde virgin at the time...

... but God, I still get ice cream chills everytime I think of that scene near the end... as I just can't help dreaming, that a girl like her would be my own fucking cherry float on top someday...

Pretty much every single scene she was in kept me entertained. Hell, even her horrible rendition of "Tomorrow", or whatever sort of crap, made me forget about how goddam comatose Mark Ruffalo was being in the background... if only for a moment, at least...

The actress just has a certain way with every single line of script she has, no matter how bad the writing may be. She just has that certain knack for saying things, that fills the room and fills the audience with adorable charm, elation and glee... Whether she's ordering coffee from a coffee machine, arguing over coffee mug coasters, or especially sticking her head through doors at naked horny chicks, Reese Witherspoon just has that irresistible it factor, that somehow makes us listen... and gets us men and women alike, coming hard through those goddam theatre doors...

She may have had no chemistry with Mark Ruffalo whatsoever, but I still found every single one of her "ghost" scenes to be wonderfully endearing in the end... I mean, even for a scene as simple as forgetting her own name, you just felt bad for Elizabeth, as Reese Witherspoon really sold the story of being a lost soul...

When the poor gal was learning just dull and monotonous her life had been all these years? I just completely blurred out Mark fucking Ruffalo in the background, and watched her float all the way to her body, as if I was floating myself in a dream... And you just felt bad for Elizabeth when she saw her body just lying there, comatose on the bed. You don't know how or why you exactly feel bad for a fictional character. But Reese Witherspoon just somehow makes it happen...

And even in the romantic aspect of things? She still did her best, and still managed to get the movie to pull through, despite all the other actors fucking things up... I mean hell, as much as I loved 40 Year Old Virgin? There was just no romantic scene in that film, that made me feel as warm and compassionate for the characters, as I did when I just saw Reese Witherspoon so nervous there, lying next in the apartment bed to whats-his-name...

I mean, she really did seem like a fucking fragile, floating cherry on top again...and man, did it feel good...

When David touched her body's hand, and she felt it? The actress just sold the moment so damn well, that I actually suspended my belief, and eerily for a moment even believed that these two could actually be soulmates. Though I'd like to touch more than just her soul, indeed...

When her face just lit up from seeing the garden of her dreams in real existence? That was exactly the kind of beautiful moment, that will keep me watching this romantic comedy for perhaps years and years, no matter how goddam horrible the script may technically be...

... and even if the ending was rushed? When all the memories started flooding back to Elizabeth's mind, the expressions on her face were simply goddam priceless, and worth a fucking million script lines alone... Her demeanor just so suddenly shifted from pure confusion to soft longing love, in a way that I personally can't help but keep dreaming, that I can sweep a girl off her feet just like that as well...

I mean, seriously... Reese Witherspoon just has a fucking way, of making me wish that I was in the fucking place of Mark fucking Ruffalo...

... and back in the hospital? If that fucking awful kiss on the lips that David gave to her, wouldn't have woken her up?...

And yes, Mark fucking Ruffalo?... was just like goddam fucking Ben fucking Affleck in the end...

But as long as Reese Witherspoon was on the screen, with her trademark flash and smile and sassy style?...

... then even though I've been so fucking exhausted from school and work all week long?...

... even though I've fucking felt so damn depleted for the past three months, that I've fucking felt completely goddam dead inside?...

... and even though throughout the whole of this day, I've been so goddam tired in my wake, that I still feel like I'm in some sixth fucking sense of a coma?...

If anyone could wake me from this dream? If anyone could make me feel alive again?...

You know, saying that Final Cut was a steaming pile of dogshit, just doesn't seem to sum it up...

... and calling this episode an absolute abomination and travesty to humanity, just doesn't seem to fit the complete bill either..

I'd like to claim that Final Cut should be goddam cut from the BSG series as a whole... and that every frickin' moron behind the scenes should be cut as well for even thinking up a turd of an episode such as this...

Because truth of the matter is? I just can't seem to think of a single word or phrase, that will actually cover how I feel about the goddam bullshit that can only be known as Final Cut...

... the thing is, Final Cut at first glance seemed like it would be just another one of those goddam, overdone, military-feel-good kind of episodes...

Battlestar Galactica as a series had made the US military look pretty much as goddam incompetent as they really are. It's just that, like Apollo says in his interview, while servicemen may not deserve our pity, they definitely deserve our respect... And to be honest? I'm not really sure if Battlestar Galactica (with the exception of Commander Adama) has given us any sort of respect for any of the men and women in the armed forces...

Now, I knew Final Cut would have a rather cliche ending. Afterall, that's exactly what Stargate SG-1 did with its famed Heroes two-parter...

... but I called this episode a by-the-book, military "feel-good" episode for a reason...

This was apparently Hercules week on SciFi Friday it seemed. And I've always hated goddam Xena as a show... But against all my preset agendas and prejudged beliefs, I actually found myself enjoying Lucy Lawless on the show, in some capacity or form or whatever...

She looks much better as a blonde, I'll give her that. And actually, her backside didn't look so bad in that yellow jumpsuit of hers, at least compared to that god-awful breastplate she always used to wear... And acting wise, she pulled off a nosy reporter with a decent level of accuracy. She certainly knew how to brown-nose and manipulate her way through people to get a story, as the lovely drink before the Col. Tigh interview seemed to articulate...

It's not like she did a stellar job, or interstellar job, at her role of a journalist in Final Cut. She did a decent one though, as she never really seemed out of place or out of character... Sometimes, the contrast between her perky, Xena self and the hardcore melancholy of Commander Adama was a bit too much for me. It just felt weird, as if her bad overall acting was dragging him down with her... But besides that? She didn't do anything exceptional, but Lucy Lawless as a whole strangely enough seemed to fit within the Battlestar Galactica world. And perhaps that deserves some respect, or a pint of D'Anna beers itself...

Now, to be honest, I was kind of surprised at the ending... I mean, after pulling off that Simon stunt with the god-obvious Cylon doctor in The Farm, the last thing I'd ever expect would be the writers yet again, making the most obvious choice for a Cylon to turn out to be a goddam Cylon in the end... So surprisingly enough, I was actually surprised that Xena turned out to be a Warrior Cylon, if only because it was just too damn obvious from the start...

I did like the ending, in terms of the questions it raised... So now we have confirmation that the Cylon fleet can find and destroy the Galactica one at any point or time. It's just that, they don't... for a reason... probably for all those goddam earth plans that I've whined about long enough in my noname reviews...

But really, what I'd rather know at this point in time, is why the hell did Number Six there pretend like she didn't know that the child was alive, especially after all her prattling on and on about having a child?... Is it simply that the Number Six in Baltar's head is separate and different than the rest of the Cylon models? Or perhaps, is that thing in Baltar's head not even really a Cylon in the first place?... it's really starting to seem that way...

Baltar didn't have much to do this episode. Neither did Number Six, except for pushing the doctor into an interview, and giving the first and only real hint that Xena was a fucking Cylon... Still, Gaius complaining that the Vice President doesn't get any respect or loving, is still better than no Gaius on a weekend summer day. Because really... he's a the vice president, and yet nobody seems to care on the ship or fleet? I've noticed that... he's the fucking Al Gore of politics, it seems...

Grace Park didn't have much to do either, except pussy whip Helo into following her further, by having herself bleed from the fucking pussy (pregnant Cylon menstruation, perhaps? Or just really hardcore masturbation?...)... She didn't have much screen time, which is a goddam shame considering Grace Park probably looks fucking hot in hospital gowns... But it's interesting to note that her alternate self back on Caprica didn't seem to even know that the baby was still alive. Which brings back all the questions, of whether the Boomer now on Galactica is duping the ship, being duped herself by the Cylons, or if both sides are simply being duped by whatever is inside of Baltar's idea...

I was surprised at the comment by the reporter, that if news got out that Galactica was housing a Cylon, that the whole fleet would turn against the Commander... Why exactly would that be? Boomer is practically like a prisoner. Did fucking Roslin simply brainwash the entire fleet into believing that airlock Cylons are the best and only way to cook your meals?...

Roslin had absolutely nothing to fucking do, except be a complete and utter fucking bitch when it came to the introduction of the episode... Why is she just standing there, pretending like she had absolutely nothing to do with how fucked up the fleet got at the start of the season? Has she even apologized for breaking her word yet?... She's such an utter and fucking bitch, that I wouldn't be surprised if she started having motherfucking sex with Apollo and Starbuck at the same time in the crew quarters, just to get back at the Commander behind his damn back...

... actually... I'd kind of want to see that, to be honest... though that would be a bit out of context for the show...

Commander Adama was a bit out of his element in this episode. He just didn't seem to have any chemistry with Lucy Lawless, as their personalities were simply too contrasted (and perhaps a bit too orchestrated as well) to ever find a proper mix... I liked some of the Commander's finer moments though. Pumping his fist at the destruction of two measly Cylon raiders was a bit much, but saving those now precious and rare Caprican magazines at the start actually had a somewhat deeper meaning... The commander's best scenes probably all came around or about Col. Tigh though. Having to apologize for his XO's drunken behaviour was a decent moment. And overriding the Col's opinion on the Galactica presentation at the end was definitely another...

Final Cut was perhaps the first real, Saul Tigh episode since Commander Adama came back to the fleet. The thing is, except for perhaps Resistance, Final Cut was probably also Tigh's best performance of the entire season to date... Finally, we got some repercussions from the Gideon Massacre, as they're calling it. And to my surprise, despite his wife's manipulative interference? Saul stood up as the proud soldier and took the heat, as he should have...

He took the Commander's advice from Resistance, and lived with his mistakes. He knew that he had really fracked things up, as all the death threats definitely seemed to indicate in this episode... Yet when the gun was finally pointed at his head, he took it like a man. He put his forehead right to the blunt of the pistol and dared the lieutenant to shoot. And yeah, while Tigh may not get any pity from me, he definitely deserves some respect for taking responsibility for his actions... in his heart at least, even if he can't show it in actual public, in order to spare Galactica all the media frenzies and goddam Salem hangings...

Besides Tigh, Final Cut was meant to be an episode for all the lesser crew characters on the cast...

Tyrol got a few shots in of his ugly mug. He was bright enough to just know when a Viper didn't feel right, yet still got his face punched in from the riled up and high pressured crew on his deck... Lt. Gaeta provided ridiculously dumbass comic relief, as he showed the bad boy rocker side of himself and all. Still, as stupid as the cigarettes were, I somehow still laughed for the most part. As the name of "Felix" is just too goddam dumb to ignore... And Dualla was taken too seriously for the most part. I don't remember what exactly she has against her father. But this episode definitely fleshed things out for her a bit, and maybe will eventually lead to some clues, as to whether she is a Cylon bitch or not...

I didn't care much for the Kat subplot or anything. Sure, taking drugs is a real problem in tons of professions, and her speech at the end was a nice message to anybody out there under pressure from their job... Still, I never really cared for her character in the first place. And seeing her frack up yet another flight landing, was just not my cup of earl gray tea...

Starbuck had a couple of scenes, namely the punching bag one. I really didn't understand a word she said there though, as it's hard to give a damn what a girl is saying, when she's all sweaty and panting and shit like that... I wished that her return to Galactica had some finer meaning and moments to it, even though we did get a kiss from Apollo and a grazing of the hair from the Commander in previous episodes. She still felt a little too ignored in Final Cut for her own good... But at least we got some continuation of her rivalry with Tigh. Wanting to be at the top of the suspects list was definitely in the realm of her character... Starbuck loves being in the spotlight, afterall...

Now, I didn't care much for Apollo either in this episode, as fucking Final Cut just catered to all the women out there thanks to that tiny ass towel of his, and cutting away everything else from his body... But when it came to his more serious notes? If there was any one real reason why I define Final Cut as a military "feel-good" episode, it was because of his speech to the camera... Military men mess up, because they are real people. But in my own honest opinion, it just sucks that most of the time, people back here in their home countries who aren't in uniform, only judge what the military does wrong... and never care what the military does right...

... of course... the original BSG music blaring in the background of the Xena video, definitely was another reason why Final Cut was strangely enough, the "feel good" episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season so far or whatever...

It didn't really put a more human face on the cast of Battlestar Galactica... but perhaps, if only, it managed to remind the viewers at home, to put human faces on the men and women fighting for us in the real armed forces today...

Final Cut wasn't a great episode by any means. It was purely a bottle episode, meant to let the little supporting cast members on the show finally get a chance to shine... and also to get some of its military detractors off its back, such as myself, it seems...

... but calling it a flaming pile of steaming dog shit, that should've been cut from the reel and my fucking long term memory a long time ago, just doesn't seem to do the episode justice either somehow...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate SG-1: Babylon and Stargate Atlantis: Conversion Reviews (Spoilers...) -

You know, judging from all the trailers and spoilers, I never would've thought that I'd like an episode like Babylon...

... then again, I never once believed before I saw the movie, that I'd ever enjoy a film like The Last Samurai either...

But as things turned out? The Last Samurai turned out to be one of my favourite movies of the past several years...

While I know I may not be in the majority by saying this, I kinda really found myself enjoying this episode for what it was worth...

... well, not really... considering Babylon might as well be called The Last Samurai in Space, or some shit like that...

Still, it's kind of hard to believe that I'd ever find an episode like this one to be entertaining, considering there were so many elements that I normally would've just plain hated...

I mean, where the fuck was Carter? Actress wise, Amanda Tapping was probably with her baby. But it just really detracted from the whole SG-1 vibe, by having her basically just pop-up in the background now and again... reminding us of how many damn months she spent looking for O'Neill when he went MIA, in that god-awful season six Furlings episode, yet contributing nothing to the episode but her horniness for the old geezer...

Daniel didn't have much to contribute either. I mean, he even admitted that himself, as only one line of Ancient text really didn't give the character much to do or help with... Hell, the writers had so few lines ready for Michael Shanks in Babylon, that they even decided to channel Jack O'Neill there with his whole, "oh, but it is", sort of line... and it just ain't the same without O'Neill...

And Landry? Fuck Landry. He sucks balls. His relationship with Dr. Carolyn Lam just drags the whole show down... Why the fuck was he staring at his daughter's breasts in the emergency room like a pedo? Or staring at her the same way I was, considering Lexa Doig looked absolutely fucking adorable in that hospital clothing of hers... fucking goddam adorable...

... now where was I again?... oh right, Tom Cruise fucking sucked... but I digress...

I had expected Teal'c to get something to do in Babylon, and yet he was basically put on the backburner for this Jaffa episode. Hell, probably his only real memorable moment was when he was really badly burned, by Volnak's comment that Teal'c was leading the free Jaffa astray from the old ways... Besides that, Teal'c just kept on smirking in the background like a crazy person, while completely wasting his time during the interrogations. Do the Jaffa not know how to pull off decent interrogations or what anymore? As all Teal'c really did was stare with his eyes, and bring in sorry ass excuses for whitewashed Jaffa in with Ori ghost stories...

Hell, even the opening sequence kinda felt mute... I know that the enemy was cloaked. But somehow, just mindlessly firing P90s (which reminds me - does Ben Browder not know how to fire a P90 or something? He somehow looked goddam awkward while providing cover...) at bushes and seemingly invincible trees, just didn't do it for me in terms of the action category...

... Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell just sort of won me over... the same way he won over that Jaffa guy that was training him, whatever he was called...

I mean, there was one reason and one reason alone why I truly enjoyed Babylon for what it was worth...

... because Ben Browder truly devoted and completely threw himself into the role...

I mean, when him and the Jaffa were fighting? You could just tell that Ben Browder was really digging getting his face dug into the dirt... During the obstacle course, you could actually kind of see the actor kinda having fun, as he was clotheslined upside down by invisible staff weapons here and there... Hell, even in the cliche "pain" scene, where the Jaffa guy was cleansing his wound? The scrunchy look on Ben Browder's face was absolutely perfect for his girlish scream to follow, as the actor just seemed to be oh so enjoying his role immensely this episode...

... and really... if the starring actor could really enjoy himself that damn much... how the hell could I not?...

I dunno, but just like with fucking Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai? Somehow, every single scene seemed to click for Cameron Mitchell in Babylon...

Whenever he spoke with Tony Todd's character about the Ori, you could actually sense some deeper meaning in their words. I actually found myself really interested that Heikon (or Haiku, or whatever his name was) didn't give a single damn about the fate of the free Jaffa. And seeing Cam's face afterwards from that revelation, was just as goddam precious in itself...

And when it came to their later talk of selling their Sodan souls for a "bag of tricks" to the fucking Cigarette-Smoking-Prior? You could literally see the conflict in Heikon's eyes, yet even Mitchell knew in his heart that his lone words can't sway a man of such enlightenment and faith...

... not to mention the fact that since this is SciFi Hercules week it seems (with Xena being on Battlestar Galactica and all), Tony Todd was in his full Hercules Gilgamesh role... selling his good natured, Mesopotamian (or Babylonian, in this case...) leader of a soul, for immortality and the powers of the gods...

Now, I really don't know why I remember that Hercules episode so damn much, or why I always found it to be Tony Todd's best role outside of The Rock... but somehow? I dunno... the actor just seemed to channel the same kind of rage, fury, and wonderful focus from his old Gilgamesh character, into his new misguided, conflicted nature as the leader of the Sodan in Babylon...

... kinda like the Japanese dude in Last Samurai, whatever he was called... except Tony Todd wasn't blown up by fucking Batman in ten disappointing seconds flat, but I digress...

And if there was any damn doubt that Babylon was a pure, unadulterated copy of The Last Samurai? Then just take one good look at any of the training bouts between Mitchell and that Jaffa guy, and you'll see damn Asian kids laughing at Cam's misfortune in the background... They're probably the same damn Asian kids that were laughing at Tom fucking Cruise when he was getting his ass kicked too...

... but you know what? That ol' bag of writer tricks worked a year ago in that movie... and somehow, it still worked here...

Because for some odd reason, I really did love every single fight that Mitchell had in Babylon... Whether he was getting his ass kicked, or simply showing off a block or two, Ben Browder just seemed to get so into his role as a fighter, that his endearment was simply infectious...

Even the fucking fake dual at the end was pretty cool... Sure, the battle finish with the elixir was copied straight from Star Trek's Amok Time. But the SG-1 writers even gave a verbal homage to that episode, with the whole "Bones" reference and all. And I gotta respect Cam Mitchell, for being as much of a goddam Star Trek fan as I am... (now... if they would just rename the Prometheus to the Enterprise, and bring back my goddam, fucking Star Trek Enterprise, I could be a happy man...)...

And the dialogue in those scenes were some of the strongest written all season long... Cam didn't force his beliefs of the Ori on that Jaffa guy, whatever his name was. Instead, he slowly built the annals of trust over the weeks they sparred with his ass on the ground, and slowly and ever so subtlely started asking him questions over time to open his eyes... Now that's what I'm talking about...

And to be honest? Just like with the "conversations" we all now miss from The Last Samurai, I actually found some of the discussions in Babylon to be rather intrinsic and insightful as well... Cam Mitchell talked a lot about faith, and how we on earth have never needed proof to believe in our gods (umm... what planet is he from then?...). I liked the brief mention of our real world somehow, as it brought such contrast to what the Ori really represent... Meanwhile, Tony Todd just wanted power from goddam Dahak, as the man only seemed to want to reach enlightenment, no matter which of the gods were offering it...

And I don't know... but somehow, the two dualling point of views were just written so well into the fabric of the story, that I actually did care to listen for once, you know?... or not really, considering most of the forums are ripping apart this episode as I write this...

... but still, strangely enough? Even though it doesn't have much competition in this regard, I did find Babylon to be the second best Jaffa episode the SG-1 series has ever done, right behind the fifth season's The Warrior...

... and surprisingly enough? I even enjoyed Ben Browder and Babylon enough, to name it as my IvanFian episode of the week...

I mean, seriously. WTF?... I liked The Last Samurai with Tom fucking Cruise of all fucking people...

... and I ended up loving Babylon, a fucking by the books Jaffa episode, against all odds...

... like those fucking, goddam useless, Asian kids chuckling in the background...

Stargate Atlantis' second season has been decent... but definitely a disappointment compared to the amazing writer caliber of the first season of the series up to this point...

... the thing is, I was hoping that Conversion would, you know?... change and convert my opinion...

Now, for the most part, I did enjoy this episode. It had a strong team dynamic, with every single member caring about John Sheppard. The kind of way that made Stargate SG-1 into such a strong series for its first four seasons of the show...

Teyla didn't have much to do, except get her ass kicked in stick fighting again. But I did love that training session, as she and Sheppard truly had a Morpheus vs Neo kind of bout, when it came to the single stick and the hand behind the back sort of arrogant thing... I did enjoy the Spiderman scene to some extent as well. Watching Sheppard just crawl up and scale walls, just like his little comic book heroes probably do lodged back in his room, and having him pop the security detail a new one in return, was definitely one of the better Sheppard moments of the season... (although WTF is with the Wraith Stunners? Suddenly, they can't stun a damn thing? WTF?...)...

And when it came to that kiss between the two of them? Uggh, at least the writers got away with it not being obviously "shippy". Although it was basically as non-shippy, as Carter kissing goddam O'Neill back in SG-1's first season Broca Divide... I did like how the kiss was handled at the end of the episode though. I mean, Sheppard apologized for it and got it off his chest... and as for Teyla? I don't know... Was that a sigh of relief that the kiss didn't mean anything? Or completely the opposite?... I don't really know. Guess I don't really care...

Ronon was sort of just in the background, even though he got to play hero with his version of the stunner (which works perfectly on mutated Sheppard, for some damn reason...). Besides that, plotwise he didn't do much... But I did like all the little nuances his character got to display in Conversion. From offering to go into the bug nest alone to save Sheppard, to even that little wink he gave Teyla (which she reciprocated, might I add), Ronon was actually fleshed out a lot in terms of subtle character details in this episode... and to be honest? While I still would much rather have Ford on the team (or even goddam Jonas), the actor is really starting to convert my opinion of him... well, maybe not really. But maybe a fucking bit...

Rodney did care for Sheppard as well. But either things were still strained between the both of them from Trinity, or the writers just really couldn't think of anything to give to the ol' doc this round, for the second episode in a row... Rodney McKay unfortunately had little to say. I mean, he did have his rare moments or two, with the splinter and Ronon picking apart a pile of shit and all... But really? Eh... besides getting ignored and freaked out by Darth Sheppard in the gateroom? Rodney unfortunately, was completely forgettable in Conversion...

I was hoping that Conversion would be the big time Dr. Beckett episode that the character hasn't had yet this season. But strangely enough, he felt like such a background supporting character at times this episode, that I almost forgot that this was supposed to be his damn episode...

Sure, he had his heroic moments. Trying to pry the eggs away from the nest using saltwater and his neck collar alone was one... And sure, he had his genius moments. Realizing that the pheromones that Sheppard was producing could save the day, was definitely a decent solution in the end... (although there were so many better plans in the end than just going into the cave alone... Why couldn't the Daedalus turn off its hyperdrive diagnostics to go beaming aboard some eggs or whatever? And why the hell couldn't they just send a machine to get the goddam eggs, like a specialized MALP or some shit like that?...)...

But I don't know, the actor just didn't feel like anything but a doctor in Conversion. He didn't feel like a fleshed out character to me, as he was far too centric on the medical babble of Babylon than anything else... I expected more than just a few brief moments of remorse when it came to John's infection, yet Beckett didn't even seem like he felt guilty about the whole oreal after the first five minutes or so... And WTF was with his accent and expressions in the brain storming room? His "egg-hunt" comment just left a bad ringing in my ear somehow, as the actor just couldn't get the term to sound right, for some damn reason...

And while, like I said, I did like the solution that Beckett came up with in the end, I hated how quickly the episode just ended on that note. Atlantis has definitely had a problem with goddam short endings this season so far... While at least we got some closure when it came to the Teyla kiss, everything else in the final ten minutes just felt so goddam rushed in Conversion... I mean, where the fuck were the closure moments between Sheppard and Dr. Weir?...

... and you wanna know what else really fucking sucks about Stargate Atlantis this season?...

What the fuck is this woman's problem? When it comes to John, she's completely irresponsible and irrational... Yes, I know that going into his room alone is supposed to show how much she cares for him, and give the shippers a Wraith boner or two to play with... But WTF was with her stupidity in those scenes? Not only does she get choked because she was dumb enough to go in alone, but she also manages to leave the door unlocked to let Sheppard kick the asses of every guard outside? WTF?...

Now, Weir did have a few decent moments. For one, watching Sheppard kick the ass out of that Ancient glass in her office, definitely didn't win him any votes or favours from Elizabeth... And I don't know, but if there's ever any reason to give a damn about Weir? It's that her breasts sure were mighty goddam perky this episode around... God, they were like fucking melons beneath that hot red T-shirt of hers. And fucking sweet nippled enough to convert any fucking man into a straight fucking lesbian, but I digress...

The thing is, she lost whatever fucking brownie point she had with me when it came to goddam Col. Caldwell. She bitched and complained and bitched some more at him like there was no tomorrow... And sadly on the part of the writers, it wasn't completely her fault...

I mean seriously, what the fuck is wrong with the man? Not only does he try to take complete control of the base, not only attempting to subvert Sheppard's authority but Weir's as well behind her back... But then he fucking makes the moves on her? He fucking starts lusting after some brunette bitch that looks as young as his goddam daughter?...

... I mean, I'm all for goddam pedophilia at times (and so is every O'Neill/Carter shipper out there, apparently...)... but this was just goddam sickening...

I couldn't stand the Solitaire scene... I mean, sure it was nice to find out that they still have goddam network games on the fucking Daedalus computers. But when it came to fucking Caldwell playing fucking chess with Dr. Weir?... If it was just about the "strategic genius" part he mentioned, in terms of winning the battle against her and taking control of Atlantis, then I wouldn't give that much of a damn about it all... But the sad thing was, the writers fucking put in the fact, that Caldwell also wants to actually play fucking chess with Dr. Weir's fucking queen and bishop...

I admit that I liked how Joe Flannigan brought his own flavour and colour to his role of mutating into a giant bug. I mean, in SciFi, this kind of thing has strangely enough been done so many times, that it was nice to see his own rendition of it... I especially enjoyed his newfound understanding and perception of Ford. I probably would've thought and said the same thing in regards to not being afraid of the changes happening; how being so calm about turning into a giant fly, is perhaps the most upsetting thing about turning into a giant fucking fly...

The actor really pulled off a convincing conversion into complete animal instinct. The running against the Runner had its quirks. And that stick fight Neo-style, definitely was the highlight of the episode for me... Squishing the Wraith pimple on his arm was kind of amusing when he first saw the thing. And complaining about Weir's beside manner, while redundant in terms of Babylon an hour earlier, was still kind of cute in the way he was making her so much more nervous than he was...

But I don't know... I wanted to like Conversion... and the plot really wasn't bad or anything, despite being so by-the-book and cliche...

... the episode, even with the "happy" ending, was just so goddam depressing in the end, that it really wasn't funny...

I mean, seriously... With McKay having about two or three lines at most, and Dr. Beckett being in full technobabble mode, where the fuck was I going to get my laughs from?...

Sadly, the only time that I did fucking laugh in Conversion, was when the two goddam obvious red shirts just showed up behind Major Lorne...

You just knew they were there to fucking die. And then what do you know?... the both of them just suddenly get fucking goddam, Guy dumb enough, to just stand there in the fucking cave as massive bugs were swarming all over the fucking place...

Sure, Conversion was a decent episode to watch the first time around. The fact that the team cared so damn much about Sheppard, was reason enough to keep watching the full hour through... And I guess Mr. Neo finally beating Ms. Teyla Morpheus in the training room, provided a nice kind of balance to go along with the fucking Morpheus clone back in Heikon on Stargate SG-1 this week...

But without the trademark, hallmark comedy and team dynamic that made Stargate Atlantis into the best damn show on television last season?... well...

... it's going to take a lot more than Conversion... to ironically enough, convert me back from Stargate SG-1...

... or even fucking Hercules and fucking Xena on fucking Battlestar Galactica, for that matter...

But it's actually one of those rare kinds of comedies, or romantic comedies if you will, that really strikes a cord in you, you know?...

I mean hell, it's like the writers behind Anchorman just woke up one morning, tired from all their late night tantric sex sessions with each other, and thought to themselves...

I may not have been able to tolerate the scene-stealing, Steve Carell in Anchorman. But even I have to admit, he played the role of the creepy yet compassionate 40-year-old virgin to the fucking letter T...

He's the kind of guy, that would literally put his life on the line (or his chest hair, in this case) for just a few hard earned yucks from the crowd...

He's literally the kind of guy, who would fuck a horse, fuck a donkey, and fuck a goddam goat, all for the sake of the sound of the laugh...

And that kind of creepy, serial killer kind of comic commitment, was exactly what he brilliantly infused into his character of Andy in this movie...

I mean seriously, if I didn't know better, I would've sworn that Steve Carell was really a 40 year old virgin in this film...

Right from the getgo, from the very Poker game where Andy lost his poker virgin face, Steve Carell reminded me way too much of own self for my own goddam close comfort...

Granted, I would've never been dumbass enough to talk about titties as bags of sand. Or even been smart enough to actually get a fucking full house in a fucking Poker game, mind you...

But seeing Andy berate himself, calling himself stupid over and over again, as he just rammed his head into the walls of his home out of sheer embarrassment and social frustration? After letting slip his little secret, I mean...

The thing that really makes The 40 Year Old Virgin into a true comedy classic, isn't just the fact that we as an audience end up caring for its characters... but that we can truly identify with each and every single one of them in the end as well...

But he also reminded me a bit too much of my own goddam self, when it comes to my own goddam obsessions at least...

... with an ugly bitch that I could care less about mind you. But still, the stalker in me just can't help but root for the guy...

He talks about love in exactly the same way that I've seen it for the past 10 goddam years... Love is all about losing weight, and gaining weight, and obsessing over lost loves... and stalking their new homes... and finding their new phone numbers, and new e-mail addresses or whatnot...

... or, ahem, online blog addresses, if you're into that sort of thing, I mean..

If she wants to be a cock-sucking bitch, who goes down on every single fucking motherfucker who has a huge cock and a candy store, then that's her journey... that's her business...

Either way, one of the greatest things about The 40 Year Old Virgin, is that every single character got their due...

Paul Rudd's character of David was just perfect in playing the nice guy, who managed to calm Andy down from jumping off a balcony, simply by talking to him for more than thirty seconds at a time... And after seeing how low he could go (literally) when it came to the video camera down his pants? It was nice that he got to fuck the slut who couldn't even lift a cock-sucking iPod in the end...

The thing is, I even came to adore the characters of Jay and Cal the Cameraman in the end... as they reminded me way too much of the assholes in my own life, who tried to push me into actually getting some fucking pussy in my goddam high school years...

The two of them together brought up in the movie the one goddam argument that still haunts me to this day...

I mean, if you really like a woman, then the last thing you'd ever really want to do, is be a fucking virgin and fuck things up while fucking...

Because really... on your wedding night, would you really want to make things more awkward by being two virgins, who don't even know how your bits and pieces fit together?...

Because it's moments like these, when Jay and Cal in the bar were talking about mediocrity in the sack, that really makes you sit back and realize...

I've met far too many Jay's in my life. Playas who think they're hot stuff when it comes to the ladies, but always in the end admit that they're insecure and immature... They love to keep score of the bitches they've laid waste to. And that brought about literally the best damn Jay scene in the entire movie, as he forced and swindled Andy into taking the heat off him and his goddam phone book...

Cal was much smarter in the end than Jay, even noting that the movie, Liar Liar, had indeed a clever moral in the end (though that movie fucking sucked...)... His greatest moment was obviously conning Andy into talking up the psycho babe in the book store. As that was literally not only the funniest damn moment in the movie trailer, but one of the funniest damn scenes in the whole damn movie in the end...

... though I now fucking hate all girls who read novels, for a damn good reason, mind you...

But the strange thing was?... Hell, a lot of the guys in the theatre I was in at the time, even thought that Andy was being a smooth talker in that scene, while he was saying nothing but mindless questions to the fucking moronic babe... And really, is that honestly the kind of dating scene of a world that I want to get into? A world where you plant a dozen seeds, watch them sprout, and then fuck the plants that grow into bushes?...

... well... considering my current record of zero wins and ten thousand losses? I've been tempted so many fucking times in my life to just go for the fucking advice of people like Jay and Cal in my life...

... and even though I'm too fucking pussy, to ever go for that fucking pussy on a pedestal?...

... still, it's nice to watch a movie, where these kinds of assholes finally get what's coming to them...

... and I don't know... but I think it really says something about a movie, where not a single character and not a single scene, ended up boring in the end...

No matter how great Jay and David and Silent Bob over there turned out to be, the star of the show was none other than Steve Carell...

Like I said, every single fucking time I say something stupid ass in public, I end up berating and beating myself up with hockey sticks over what I fucking said. And then I lie fucking awake at night, hoping that nobody fucking noticed how dumbass I was the day before... only to listen to the fucking birds and bees in the morning, and end up telling myself, "fuck, this is going to be bad"...

Fuck. I'm the fucking Asian with a fucking basement full of video games... that this movie so promptly mocked in kind favour...

For one thing, why the fuck were they using N64 controllers with Mortal Kombat Deception on the fucking Xbox?... that's just plain wrong...

And fuck... for another thing... Andy in that movie DID NOT have more motherfucking games than this Asian nerd over here has, thank you very much...

Because there were just so many goddam amazing scenes in The 40 Year Old Virgin, that it's no wonder why I've procrastinated so long from even trying to list them all...

Andy's smooth talking with Beth in the book store was absolutely hilarious, as the bitch got all fucking worked up over a guy essentially playing the childish game of shadow...

The "date drunk" scene had pretty much the entire theatre rolling in laughter, as Andy was so fucking clueless to not even fucking try to take the wheel when the bitch just gulped down three or four shots in a row... I loved her comment, how the parked cars just "came out of nowhere", as sadly I've heard that phrase from fucking idiot drivers before... namely one fucking female driver, who shall remain anonymous...

The phone book scene, where Andy pretends to be a playa', calling women bitches and ho's in front of the fucking bitch herself, was just brilliant from the fucking backwardness and awkwardness of it all...

Now, for the most part, the speed dating scene was a riot. Sure, there was the sort of weird and kind of out of place moments, like Amy showing up out of nowhere... But c'mon already. Who really could watch that whole fucking nipple scene, and keep a fucking straight poker face through it all?...

But if any scene should nominate Steve Carell an Oscar? It's the fucking waxing scene... I mean, like I said before, this actor is dedicated more than any other actor I've ever seen before. He was offered the chance to fake the hair being ripped off his chest, and yet he refused, citing that it just wouldn't be as funny if it wasn't real...

If there is any reason why the 40 Year Old Virgin was knocked down a peg or two, it was definitely the fact that yes, it was a romantic comedy... and the romantic parts, while decent, just weren't nearly as entertaining as all the rest...

Honestly, how the hell can bringing the virgin daughter along to sex ed parties, be nearly as entertaining as the notion of your boss being a fucking fuck buddy?... or at least, that's the way that I saw things, at least...

Now, I've never been real keen on Catherine Keener (as if she hasn't heard that one before... ha ha, right?...)... and I do think she did a good job with what she was given to do. I mean, her mixed messages of both flirting and awkwardness as she was trying to justify giving her phone number away, was exactly the kind of thing I'd imagine would happen... if my fucking goddam obsession ever gave me her phone number, that is...

The thing is, I did like a lot of the scenes between her and Andy. But it was really more from just the dramatic irony of Andy's virginity, than anything remotely relating to chemistry between the two of them... I did like their "20 dates" of no sex declaration, as I think the entire theatre laughed when Andy claimed the lack of physicality wouldn't hurt him nearly as much as Trish thought it would...

... but meh... most of the daughter scenes, and hell, even the token break-up scene, were more boring to watch than anything else...

There have only been a couple of romantic comedies in history, where I've actually enjoyed the chemistry between the couple... namely, You've Got Mail and The Wedding Singer... and perhaps When Harry Met Sally and 50 First Dates as well, to a lesser extent...

... but when Steve Carell rammed into Trish's car, and went soaring through an Eruption ad or whatever sort of truck?...

That's precisely why I loved The 40-Year-Old Virgin as much as I did in the end...

Because I mean, this isn't just the kind of movie... that represents the fucking asshole buddies in my life, through fucking Jay and Cal...

This isn't just the kind of movie... that represents my hopes and dreams, and nightmares as well... of...

It's like the writers bloody wrote the film after finding this fucking website of mine and laughing about it later...

... a hell of a lot of fun... as I still have 17 more fucking years of whining and writing and waiting, apparently...

... then maybe, just maybe, there's some fucking hope for me at the end of the rainbow...

[c. visitors too bored to return...]
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