#also you guys i miss serling so bad. look at her she is such an icon sdkjfhdsfj

[mamawasatesttube]

Superboy (1994) #57

"Well, the thing is, I already know almost everything about you, Superboy." "Really?" "Sure. As the Project's most successful experiment, the journals have covered you extensively."

i want to see the journal articles about superboy pleaaase let me see the published cadmus research papers oh my god...

[peggy-faces]

Mad Men rewatch: Season 1, episode 2: Ladies Room

We didn’t get much at all of Betty in the first episode. In fact, she allegedly didn’t have any lines at all in the first draft of the script. So this is the first time we really get to meet her. Betty’s mother has recently died and she clearly isn’t coping well. To the point that she’s starting to experience stiff and shaky hands, and ends up crashing her car with the kids inside.

Don and Betty have a new neighbor who is *gasp* D I V O R C E D. I don’t know if it was the intention but I got the feeling that this didn’t help Betty’s anxiety. It’s implied that Betty does know about Don’s philandering and doesn’t want to admit it. The arrival of Helen Bishop makes her consider, perhaps subconsciously, that she too could one day be in the situation and it terrifies her.

From a modern perspective(and as someone who suffers from severe anxiety myself), it really is cringeworthy to watch Don’s dismissal of Betty’s mental health issues, but I guess that was par for the course for the early 1960s.

There is a sweet side to Don and Betty’s relationship. It gets lost in the wayside, but it’s there. The scene at the end where they’re having dinner at a fancy restaurant in the city is actually pretty cute. You can see why they got married.

At Sterling Cooper, Don and the dudebro brigade are having trouble with coming up with an idea for Gillette's new spray on deodorant as Roger and Cooper are trying to persuade Don to work on Nixon’s election campaign. I probably missed something but are they pitching directly to the Nixon campaign? Are they forming a PAC? Did they have PACs back then? It’s been a while since I’ve watched Season 1, don’t judge me.

Meanwhile, Peggy is having trouble fitting in at her work. Pete(who, as you’ll recall, she just had sex with last week) is off on his honeymoon and literally every man in the office is being a weird creep. She thinks she finds an ally in Kinsey, but then it turns out he’s just as much a creep as the rest of them. I love Peggy(obviously), but I generally prefer later series Peggy to early Peggy, but I have so much sympathy for her here, which is why the scene where she goes into the bathroom to cry but then decides that she’s not getting to let those bastards get to her is so satisfying.

The seeds of Peggy’s copywriting career are planted in this episode. While it’s clear he’s just hitting on rather than actually having faith in her abilities, Kinsey is the first person to tell Peggy that there are female copywriters. Then, after rejecting Sal and Kinsey’s astronaut idea(“who is this moron flying around space? He pees in his pants!”), Don says they should be targeting women who buy deodorant for men. Shame they don’t have any female copywriters on staff!

Random Observations

Peggy takes Pete’s postcard and hides it in her desk. NGL Pegs, that’s a tad stalkery.

I have problems with feeling in my hands/arms due to anxiety myself and it is truly terrifying so the scene where Betty’s hand start shaking and she crashes the car brought back some not great memories.

I don’t care how fancy that restaurant is, you couldn’t pay me to eat a raw egg.

We get our first glimpse of the legend that is Creepy Glen Bishop sitting on the steps as his mother struggles to lift a giant cardboard box with a pitchfork sticking out of it.

Francine is simultaneously the best and worst character on the show.

I love Mona. She and Roger have the most incredible chemistry, even when it’s clear that their marriage is unhappy. They are married in real life so of course they’d be great on-screen together.

Roger is apparently young enough to have had a nanny during the Lindbergh Baby debacle in the 1930s, which actually makes him only 2 or 3 years older than Don at the very most. That’s… weird to think about. The show makes him seem so much older. And I believe later events on the show actually contradict this claim so ???.

Don calling Betty “Birdie” is really cute, but hearing him call her “Bets” drives me up the fucking wall.

Peggy earns $35($294.48) minus $6.75($56.79) for FICA. Just a few years later she would be making the equivalent of a six figure salary.

Who is this guy? No really, who is he? Do we ever see him again?

The banana Peggy brings for lunch is the nastiest banana I’ve ever seen holy shit.

I always get a kick out of the scene where Don is doing push ups: “seven, eight, nine, ten *sees Betty get into bed* ninety-nine, a hundred.” Same, Don.

Audio commentary

There are two commentary tracks for this episode. The first is with January Jones and Rosemarie Dewitt and the second is with Michael Gladis and Elisabeth Moss. Jones and Dewitt do their commentary together and have some pretty amusing banter, but Moss and Gladis do theirs separately and the tracks are edited together. This is something that happens a lot on the Season 1 sets(but not on any other season, so at least they learned their lesson). I get that scheduling issues are a problem and there’s a limited amount of space on the DVDs, but it sounds awkward and weird tbh.

Harry Crane was supposed to kill himself, but Weiner ended up liking the character so he lived. I’ve heard this before and I vaguely remember there being more info in future commentaries but I believe this is the first it’s been mentioned so I’ll put it here.

Jones and Dewitt agree with me on the raw egg thing. Ewww.

The restaurant scene was shot in a restaurant/bar called The Prince in Koreatown in Los Angeles.

Despite being married IRL, this is the first time that John Slattery and Talia Balsam have acted together and they were nervous.

January Jones originally auditioned for Peggy and she got pretty close to landing the role, but Matthew Weiner told that she didn’t come across as “innocent” enough whatever the hell that means. Betty was originally supposed to be a very minor character but Jones made Weiner decide to expand her role in the series.

Jones complains that she never gets to see any of the actors besides Don and kids.

Dewitt didn’t want to cut her hair, so they made her wear a wig. But the wig looked so fake that they wrote it into the show.

This episode was shot a full year after they shot the pilot. The actors had no idea whether or not the show was going to be picked up. They also didn’t know if they were going to shoot in New York or Los Angeles(the pilot was shot in New York, but the series of the series in LA). Ultimately it came down to Matthew Weiner not wanting to move his family across the country. Moss argues that it’s actually more practical to shoot in Los Angeles because it’s not like they can make modern day New York look like the New York of 1960 and in LA, they have easier access to sets and such, there are a lot of restaurants and other businesses in Los Angeles(“there are a lot of places that look like they were abandoned in the 60s”) that are very reminiscent of that 1960s aesthetic, and the architecture in LA is apparently more period-appropriate than the architecture in New York.

Weiner told Moss that in every ladies room in every office, at some point you’ll see a female employee in there crying(???). How Matthew Weiner knows so much about what goes on in women’s bathrooms is unexplained.

Gladis says the character he played in the pilot(“Dick”) and Paul are considered to be different characters and he had to re-audition for Paul when the show got picked up. The main difference, he says, is that Dick smokes cigarettes and Paul smokes a pipe.

Moss has extremely high praise for Christina Hendricks, her most frequent scene partner in the earliest episodes, and calls her one of the most wonderful actresses she’s ever seen.

Gladis had bronchitis and was “drugged to the gills” during filming.

Gladis worked on the impersonation of the Rod Serling and watched a lot of the Twilight Zone. He loves that Paul is a sci-fi nerd.

Moss says that the closest thing Peggy has to a friend is Don because he’s only one not trying to fool her or take advantage of her.

Gladis says that his kiss with Peggy was his first on-screen kiss and he was very nervous.

“No one worries about the bomb anymore” says Michael Gladis. Man, I miss 2007 sometimes.

Anyway, pretty good episode. Six and a half bad wigs out of ten.

[delkios]

About a week ago I was talking to @robininthelabyrinth about doing some Rogue-centric comics recaps, starting with the brief time Heatwave worked at Cadmus with Superboy.

For those of you wondering “Why is what is generally a criminal working with a hero?” here’s a brief rundown of things that happened that lead up to this point:

Back in the mid-90s there was an event called Underworld Unleashed in which Nero, DC’s version of Satan, tricked most of the Rogues into attacking key points around… some continent that is literally unrecognizable on a map.  Those points exploded, killing them.  The event went on, Trickster I figured out Neron’s angle and helped the heroes defeat him and the Rogues remained dead at the end of it.  A couple years (real time) later, Flash issues 125-129, Neron is back to his old, manipulating people into giving him unlimited power schtick and brings the Rogues’ souls to Earth, this time as unkillable, power-amplified specters bent on causing as much death and destruction as possible.  Through Linda and Wally’s teamwork and love for each other, Neron is forced to retreat while restoring the Rogues their souls/life.  In the New Year’s Evil special issue, Trickster I tricks the Rogues into going after a sacred treasure in a Zhutan temple when, surprise, Neron pops back up and Heatwave, who emphatically does not want his soul back in Neron’s clutches, convinces the other Rogues to help Tricks and Piper defeat him.  It was a convoluted issue.  After Neron is, yet again, defeated, Heatwave decides to stay with the Zhutan monks, hoping to save his soul by being good.

That is, to my knowledge, the last we see of Mick until his appearance in Superboy 65.  Recaps are taken from issues 65, 76-81, 87-90

For those unfamiliar with this particular run, here are some characters to know:

Superboy/Kon-El: a psuedo-clone of Superman who debuted following The Death of Superman storyline.  Very 90’s teen-with-attitude, he’s one of the founders of Young Justice. His powers weren’t originally copying Superman’s (he was originally a modified human clone rather than half-Kryptonian) but mimics the basic flight/super strength/super durability through the use of tactile telekinesis.  Lives at a Cadmus facility.  At the time, his relationship with Clark was very… hands off.

Guardian/Jim Harper: another Cadmus clone who acts as chief of security and mentor to Kon.  As a clone, his body was modified to be stronger, faster, etc, with accelerated healing.  He also has an indestructible shield.

Dr. Serling Roquette: former head of the genetics division with a sense of style that is both terrible and amazing.  Has a thing for Kon.

Mickey Cannon: Cadmus admin director. Called ‘the Mechanic’, he’s said to be able to fix anything.  Uh… that’s about all I can say about him, really.

Dubbilex: one of Cadmus’s experiments known as a DNAlien, part chaperone and part mentor to Kon.  He is a powerful telepath and can use telekinesis.

Dr. Dabney Donovan: co-founder of Cadmus and creator of various genetic experiments.  You remember that line from Jurassic Park about scientists being so concerned if they could they never considered if they should?  This guy never bothered to hear the second part of that sentence.

Dr. Helen Angelico: head of genetics, called Doc Angel.  Not nearly enough of her.

So we start with Kon crashing a ship into the aptly named Planet Krypton- a superhero-themed restaurant that, thankfully had just been shut down for renovations -with some Challengers of the Unknown.  Who will continue to be unknown because I don’t know a thing about them.  He’d been gone for so long, Cadmus was trying to find someone to replace him as a field agent.

Always fun to play 'Who Can You Name?’

Some heroes decide it isn’t their scene and bounce, others attempt and fail to make themselves look good, and others still- notably Young Justice to the side there -just want some news on Kon.  Steel and Kyle, meanwhile, are there as JLA reps, passing along info about Superboy as it comes (which, at the moment, isn’t really anything).

Guardian, please.  Cadmus hires much worse than a crook with a flamethrower.

After being exposed, Punch and Jewelee take Serling hostage.  Luckily that’s when Superboy finally manages to make it back.

Figuring with Kon back in the picture, a new field agent is no longer needed so the heroes begin to disperse.  Until Cannon decides to hire Mick as a back up agent.

And potential patsy.  Nothing comes of this mental aside.

Jumping forward to issue 76, a little backstory is needed to understand the current situation.  Originally Kon’s genes were modified to stop aging at 16 because of a clone disease, but, immediately proceeding this issue, the events of Sins of Youth caused Cadmus scientists to restart his aging, unfortunately at the expense of his powers leading to Cadmus to call in their back-up agent.

He’s not without his own gadgets, of course- a Legion ring grants him flight and a Cadmus scientist by the name of Gadget Guru gave him a shield that can fold and expand in an instant.  Kon tries asking Harper to train him but Harper declines despite preferring to have Kon watching his back over Mick.

Donovan tries to get Serling to cash in on a favor she owes him but, before she can meet him, gets into a reconstructed space ship with Kon, Cannon and the Guru which takes off into space.  As Cadmus tries to locate them, Rex Leech, Kon’s former very shady manager, comes in carrying his unconscious daughter, Roxy.  Meanwhile, a pair of Cadmus guards are transporting an important blood sample that Donovan, mad that Serling didn’t follow his instructions, decides to take for himself.

Oh comics.

Doc Angel has Roxy stabilized in a containment tank while Rex tries to schmooze up to Mick.

Harper gets an urgent call to get to a storage vault.

For some reason they call Mick “Rory Calhoun”- and it’s not just here.  There’s at least one issue in the Flash- written by the then current writers -where he’s called that.  I don’t know why this is a thing.

Anyway, a bunch of guards dead on the floor, their armor torn open but whatever killed them instantly cauterized their wounds.  On the wall are the words 'Rip’ and 'Jak’.  An alarm goes off, announcing a fire in Lab Three- Doc Angel’s lab.

Quick shout out to Paul Gambi, the Rogues’ tailor, for making some fantastically durable costumes.  Mick’s in particular has been noted on more than one occasion to not only survive some of the hottest temperatures around, but also protects him well enough he barely breaks a sweat withstanding those temps.

Doc Angel is missing but Roxy’s tank was damaged in the fire meaning it’s time for the Guru’s apprentice Tekka to step up.  Harper, meanwhile, explains to Mick that they had a possible sample of Jack the Ripper’s blood and Donovan is the most likely person to make a clone from it.

Tekka finds a hole in the floor that’s venting heat like a volcano.  In true, heroic fashion, Harper and Mick head down.

Ripjak attack!  Turns out that Ripjak’s blood and even touching his skin burns on contact.  Harper says Donovan must have infused Ripjak’s blood with pyro-granulite, something Donovan’s done before. Unfortunately the build-up means he’ll explode, destroying anything or one near him.  They chase him to where Doc Angel is being held. Harper plays bait while Mick frees the doc.

Ripjak does a number on the two before they toss him into the geothermal reactor, including partially melting Harper’s shield and managing to burn through Mick’s suit.

They’re both treated and expected to make a full recovery, and Tekka stabilizes Roxy.

Meanwhile, in Kon’s half of the plot, the bad guy he’d been fighting, Kossak the Slaver, gets beaten out of his own ship and escapes, following a beacon that leads him to Cadmus.  He heads to Lab Three and claims that Roxy is an escaped slave he’s here to collect.  Kon gets back in time to stop Kossak from attacking Doc Angel and, in the ensuing fight, Roxy’s tank explodes.

Roxy is actually possessed by… something, which makes her skin turn bright red and her eyes glow.  She agrees to return to Kossak so long as he leaves all the people in the lab alone and, when she goes to say goodbye to Kon, imparts her power on him.  Which somehow kickstarts Kon’s powers again and Kossack leaves after another butt-kicking.

Superboy, back in costume, visits Harper, passing over the gauntlet with collapsible shield since Harper’s was destroyed.

Roxy is back in the containment tank after giving Kon her power and Doc Angel called in a doctor from STAR Labs, Sarah Charles.  The two promptly get snippy at each other and Kon has them leave to cool off.  Which is, of course, when Roxy busts her way out again as the red sun critter thing, saying she won’t be kept imprisoned.  She flies off, Kon gives chase and when Harper does the same.

She starts destroying property in a town called Kurtzberg and a local cop, with all the logic and protocol of a generic comic cop, calls for the two of them to freeze while simultaneously firing directly at Roxy.  The bullets, however, melt in the heat she’s generating but Roxy doesn’t enjoy the unintentional pun.

I’m not quite sure how Mick managed to get there before Harper who is in a flying car.

Anyway, it turns out the people Sarah called are the Titans who immediately peg Roxy as unstable (as in, unwilling to calm down) and decide they need to use force to contain her.  Kon isn’t having it and puts himself between them.  Tempest uses a hydrant to freeze Kon and Mick shoots off a blast of fire to free him.  

How can you be a jerk to that face, Harper?

Eventually Doc Angel and Sarah make it over and explain how Roxy’s sharing a body with an alien entity and they need the entity to expend its energy to get Roxy out.  The problem is eventually solved through what essentially amounts to the power of friendship.

If you’re wondering how Arsenal got the heat gun, it’s because Nigthwing took out Mick in pretty short order.  Which, really- Nightwing vs Heatwave is no contest.

Mick doesn’t show up again until issue 87 where Harper dies in the line of duty, protecting someone from Shrapnel.  Mick doesn’t have over much to do this issue as Kon feels responsible for Harper’s death (Harper went out on that mission instead of Kon) and gets taken on an astral jaunt with Deadman.  There are a couple choice moments, though.

I should note that Kon’s tactile telekinesis doesn’t work when he’s unconscious, making him as vulnerable as a normal person.

I find it hilarious they gave Mick a flamethrower bigger than his torso.

But, at the end of the issue, there’s a cryptic conversation between Amanda Waller and Lex Luthor (he might’ve been president at this time, I don’t remember) and someone trying to steal Harper’s remains.  Kon manages to take it back and, upon opening the casket, finds there’s a baby inside.

Next issue, the Wall is very unhappy to see that her super-clone cargo has disappeared (aka with Kon) and threatens Cadmus as, being the Secretary of Metahuman Affairs (so yes, Luthor is president), they fall under her jurisdiction.  Cannon, not a fan of the kind of pressure Waller and the new administration is putting on them, decides to get rid of Cadmus.  Literally.  Asides from a hole in the ground, the building is gone.

In the span of a few days, baby Harper grows a couple years, old enough to talk and, with the memory of his previous life returning, worries that he’ll have to fight.  Oracle finds tech and data traced from Cadmus at a LexCorp building and Kon follows her directions to a sewer where he promptly fights tofu critters and finds Mick and Serling.

I gotta say, artists generally make Mick the beefier of the Rogues (when they bother to give them different body types) but this artists really put that heroic build on him.  His shoulders are literally twice the width of his waist!

A random encounter with some sewer ferryman later, the quartet makes it to a weird underground compound where they jump a robot-looking thing and pull the equivalent of three-kids-in-a-trenchcoat with it.  They come across Talia al Ghul experimenting on a gender-flip Superman Blue by the name of Strange Visitor who I know nothing about.  After Talia and Waller’s assistant leaves, the gang bust out of their disguise and take out the guards.  Mostly.

And then this ability was never seen again.

Kon and Mick go to rescue Stranger who very much does not appreciate it.  Talia re-enters and calms down Stranger and the group is captured.  When they come to again, they’re on a space station.  Some guy in a flying chair named General Good makes an army of clones from Harper against Harper’s explicit wishes.  Kon destroys the incubating clones and the quartet is rescued by Sgt Rock who drafts them into the upcoming war.

This issues then follows into the Our Worlds at War event which I never read so if Mick shows up anywhere there, I don’t know about it. Superboy was also canceled shortly after.  In the following year Mick shows back up Flash comics in issues following up to Rogue War where his attempts at reformation are retconned as the Top’s influence in order to tie into the ongoing Identity Crisis event. And these issues are promptly forgotten by everyone and we are all deprived of Kon confronting Mick about going back to the Rogues. Especially egregious when Mick helped kill one of Kon’s best friends.  I mean, yes, Kon was also dead at the time but you’d think that’s one of the things you’d follow up on when you come back to life!

[anotheruserwithnoname]

The Orville season 1 - that’s a wrap

Last night the 12th and final episode of The Orville’s first season aired in North America. There were supposed to be 13 episodes, but in a decision that parallels both Voyager’s first year and, oddly, Tom Baker’s first season on Doctor Who, the powers that be have chosen to hold one episode over for the next season. That doesn’t mean the season just ends; apparently the held-over episode is an earlier one, so last night’s episode does feel like a season finale.

I haven’t had a chance to write about recent episodes, but with the show soon to debut in the UK (Dec. 14), I thought I’d look back with some thoughts on the first season. I’m going to keep this spoiler-free for those in the UK who might still be curious about whether to give Seth MacFarlane’s science fiction dramedy a try. I’ll put a break in here first though since this might be a bit wordy. The tl;dr is the 12 episodes of The Orville S1 were not only stronger than the first season of any Trek series other than TOS, taken as a whole, but were to me more satisfying than any other science fiction series I saw in 2017 - and yes, that includes Doctor Who.

Of course The Orville wasn’t perfect. Like the franchise it took its inspiration from, there are plotlines and dialogue and directoral choices that are hit and miss. At the same time, though, the show took some brave choices. Having an episode based around the topic of sexual consent is always going to be a risk, but having it air (coincidentally) only a couple of weeks after the Harvey Weinstein floodgates opened, even more so. We’ve also seen episodes addressing social media, transgender issues and organized religion. It’s taken stands on some topics, stayed neutral on others, and has always sparked conversation that continued after the credits rolled.

In other words, it does what Star Trek used to do on a regular basis. But with touches of Twilight Zone and Black Mirror tossed in from time to time.

This was also a show that has more heart in it than nearly any other SF series on the air. Not everything is goodness and light. People die. People make mistakes. Bad mistakes. The captain is not immune to this. And - and this is one of The Orville’s strengths - people learn and evolve. There is little of this “character reset” that plagued the episodic format. In the show’s early episodes you could well find yourself rolling your eyes at one character’s behaviour in one episode ... only to discover there’s a payoff to this later in the season. It’s actually a bit of a fallacy to say this show is purely episodic with no arcs; there are arcs, they just aren’t in our face about it. The rewards are there for people who pay attention, but if you miss an episode, with a couple minor exceptions, you can catch it up later without losing your place in the story.

A lot has been made about comparing this show to Star Trek Discovery, with many Trek fans saying Orville is more like true Trek than Discovery. And I have to agree. Discovery, after it got past a rather long period of growing pains, got a lot better and more Trek-like towards the end of the first half of its season - I am not a Discovery-hater. That said, it’s not so much the storyline that’s been a disappointment, it’s been the characters. For me, and many others, the characters on Discovery took a long time to gel, both as a team and as characters we care about - perhaps too long, with a lot of folks indicating they jumped ship after only 3 or 4 episodes because of it. The Orville managed to have its characters gel and establish them as people we care about pretty much by the end of the first episode, or Episode 2. Discovery is right now just about a crew (with a focus on one character). The Orville is about a family (with no character the exclusive focus, not even Seth MacFarlane’s Capt. Ed Mercer). As such maybe we should stop comparing Orville to Discovery and start comparing it to another show about a misfit crew that became a family: Guardians of the Galaxy.

At the same time, The Orville has impressed a lot of people by featuring actual honest-to-god science fiction concepts. 2-D space, alternate dimensions - you can tell that Seth took notes from when he spearheaded and produced Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s sequel to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos a few years back. And there aren’t that many comedy series that have a scientific advisor. Or who boast a number of Star Trek veterans behind the scenes. The special effects are excellent, and the Orville ship itself just looks cool, from the spiral staircases used in lieu of turbolifts in some parts, to the mess hall that - I’m not making this up - appears to have been furnished by Ikea (in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the tables there). It could have looked silly - but instead it makes the ship feel more like a “real” place.

Bottom line: The Orville has funny moments, but it is not a comedy. In fact, there are more moments of attempted humour in TNG episodes than there are in Orville episodes, and the humour in the Orville feels more natural, with the occasional exception (and not every joke will appeal to every viewer). The term to use is dramedy - a dramatic comedy. The Orville can get dark at times; the season finale has one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever seen on a network TV show - not even Game of Thrones has done this. The episode “Krill” tackles the issue of morality in combat head-on. Many people are comparing The Orville to the classic dramedy series M*A*S*H. And I agree with the comparison. When M*A*S*H was funny, it was funny... until it was time not to be funny anymore. The episode “Firestorm”, in which Security Chief Alara Kitan has a crisis of conscience after an unexpected fear reaction results in her being unable to save a man’s life, pretty much just has two funny moments. The rest of the time, it’s as dark as episodes go. “Krill” has a telling moment where Gordon Molloy, the ship’s practical joker, goes from making gags about a person’s name to somberly noting that in order to complete a mission, a lot of people have to die. This in an episode that gave us a more in-depth and fulsome overview of the culture of The Orville’s resident “enemy” alien race than the Klingon-heavy Discovery managed in six episodes.

We actually care about these characters. We want to see how single mom Dr. Claire Finn and her sons fare aboard the Orville (Claire is played by former DS9 and 24 co-start Penny Johnson Jerald, who gives some of the show’s best performances). Bortus and Clyden, the loving couple from a (supposedly) all-male species, have one of the most natural-looking relationships on TV, even with the alien make-up. John Lamarr’s character arc is legitimately unexpected (and you gotta love the fact that actor J Lee is getting his big break with this show after working behind the scenes in Seth’s office for a few years). Kelly Grayson (played by Friday Night Lights and Agents of SHIELD alumna Adrienne Palicki) and her ex-husband Capt. Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) have a very mature relationship, with both giving excellent performances - MacFarlane himself will surprise those who only know his vocal work and role in A Million Ways to Die in the West; he is amazing in “Krill”. Isaac, the show’s version of Data, has one of the coolest characters on TV and undergoes real growth. Gordon is a jokester with unexpected depths. Alara is physically the strongest person on the ship, but because she is so young (and looked down upon by her parents) we want to see her succeed even more. Hell, even Norm MacDonald’s Yaphit, an intelligent CG-animated pile of goo, goes from being a gag background character to an interesting, full-bodied individual as the season goes along. Without spoiling, a number of bad things happen to him in one episode and he gets rightfully pissed off as a result - and you end up agreeing with his view. This is a pile of goo with a mouth.

The Orville is a show that I think will work great for binge-watching. The Pilot - which is a much better episode than the professional reviews suggest - is rough in places. But it’s also fun and a strong start (I am glad they revised Alara’s make-up, though, in an unintentional parallel to what happened with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock between Trek’s pilots and TOS proper). And then we go into the second episode, “Command Performance”, which focuses on what has become the show’s breakout character, Alara (played by Halston Sage), which combines another crisis of confidence story line - the episode is in some ways a companion piece to “Firestorm” - with a b-plot storyline that could have been written by Rod Serling (the resolution of the b-plot of “Command Performance” is exactly the type of thing Serling would have done in TZ). The fact most of the episodes were written by MacFarlane and his Family Guy co-writer, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, suggests these two might have found their true calling. Cherry in particular does an amazing job; I hope she writes more S2 episodes and I’d love to see both her and MacFarlane tackle an Orville novel down the line.

Best of all is the fact The Orville was swiftly renewed for a second season. This means if you’re seeing it for the first time, either on UK TV or the DVD release in January or on streaming, it’s not going to be a case of history repeating itself and the show being one and done. Fox notoriously cancelled Firefly after only a dozen episodes. I personally am not a fan of Firefly, but I respect the fact a lot of people loved it. Ironically, Firefly came out during Star Trek Enterprise’s run, and a lot of people embraced it because it scratched the itch Enterprise didn’t. Orville is that to a lot of viewers who don’t like Discovery’s dark and bloody take on Trek (it’s ironic there’s talk now of doing an R-rating Trek movie directed by Tarantino; someone didn’t get the memo it seems). Fortunately - and let’s hear it for Seth MacFarlane’s pull at the network - Fox is giving the show a chance to grow and develop for a second year.

If S2 is as strong as S1, we’re seeing a classic series appearing before our eyes. Not bad for a guy who not long ago built an episode of Family Guy around the lead characters having an ipecac-drinking contest and see who’d barf first. 

[culturalgutter]

We people of Earth are experiencing a renaissance in horror on TV like we’ve never enjoyed before, as traditional gatekeepers are dispersed in the wild hunt for content, any content that is compelling or innovative or just plain outré enough to collect people at watercoolers, where presumably advertisers can drop a net on the whole pack and harvest their disposable incomes and/or pineal juices. There’s Scream Queens, Scream, American Horror Story, Ash Vs. Evil Dead, Stranger Things, Bates Motel, and so many more jostling for your eyeballs, and they are all worthy of your eyeballs. The surprisingly gory Supernatural is in its 80th season, I think, and The Walking Dead has proven itself stronger than even zombie fatigue. And for every Penny Dreadful or Hannibal that is cut down, a Twin Peaks or X-Files will rise. But everyone in my house is sick, and have been in various configurations for the last month and a half, so I can’t tell you about any of those new shiny things at the moment.  Sick babies are hell on your Netflix queue. And while David Cronenberg and Anthony Burgess’ epidemiologic horror is also top of mind these days, I find myself ultimately retreating to the comfort food of old favorites. In this case, the genteel rictus smile of Boris Karloff’s Thriller.

Stephen King had high praise for Thriller in 1981’s Danse Macabre*, and you’ve got to respect Stephen King’s opinion in these matters. Deference to King aside, since it wasn’t widely syndicated like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock’s anthology shows, and a slew of others, and I fall in the Gen X cohort that missed the first go-around, I never actually clapped eyes on the show until Netflix picked it up a few years ago. There’s only two seasons, but these are 1960s seasons, so the hour-long format delivers a full 50 minutes of content, not the 37-42 minutes we get today, with a total of 67 episodes, so it certainly doesn’t feel like a short-lived series. I think a show would have to be on for almost a decade in Britain to ding 67 eps.

In a lot of ways, Thriller is just like its horror anthology contemporaries and successors: weird standalone teleplays – usually horror, but sometimes a crime or mystery story —  starring many faces who, if not already famous and beloved, would certainly become so later on: Ida Lupino (who also directed a boatload of these and scripted one), John Carradine, Leslie Neilsen, Ursula Andress, William Shatner, Harry Townes, Elizabeth Montgomery, Rip Torn, Mary Tyler Moore, and on and on and on. The stories tended to be horror siphoned from a very EC Comics vein, where bad people succeeded in bad things, only to be visited with hells of their own making. The most upfront difference was its host, a man once simply billed by his forbidding last name in Universal’s horror heyday, Boris Karloff, who also starred in a handful of the stories as a glorious bonus.

Boris was a big value add, no question, not only bringing the heft of his horror credentials, but investing every host segment with superbly ghoulish glee.  Each episode, after an appropriately shocking cold open, Boris would step into the scene or the camera would pan to reveal him, much in the manner of Rod Serling’s introductions in The Twilight Zone, but instead of Serling’s moralistic omniscience, Boris was conversational and warm, and the bloodier the subject matter, the more delighted he seemed.  It’s a neat trick, possibly unparalleled, to be at once so kindly and so sinister. I could watch nothing but a loop of his host sequences for hours. And Boris really worked for it. When he warned, “And those were no ordinary pigeons. They were pigeons from hell!” you knew he meant it. Before the lights went down for the story proper to begin, he would also introduce the cast, reminding you of the unreality of it all briefly before returning to his convivial threats. I love these sequences, especially when the cast physically walks into the picture with Boris, looking haunted or malign, and I love that, at least initially, Boris referred to them as “Mr. Rip Torn. Miss Patricia Barry,” etc. It’s exquisitely mannered. The tagline was, “As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this one is a Thriller!” And he was pretty true to his word.**

There were a few clunkers, though there always are, and even the success of the better episodes may be a matter of taste, particularly several decades after some of the punchlines and the story outlines have been retold so often they’re blunted with quaintess. But the source material was as top notch as The Twilight Zone at its height, harvesting work from August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Richard Matheson, and particularly Robert Bloch, who wrote seven episodes. And hell, Ray Milland directed an episode about Jack the Ripper. There was a ton of talent going into these shows, and if it had had a better timeslot, maybe it would have survived to become the institution The Twilight Zone (deservedly) is. Thriller did at least spawn a comic series, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, which survived the show and Karloff both into the 1980s.

My favorite Thriller episodes all turn on that EC Comics flavor horror. You could easily swap out Boris for the Crypt Keeper as far as that goes, but I do prefer Karloff’s puns. Here, in no particular order, are my five top Thriller episodes for the adventurous viewer. There’s a DVD collection, plus it’s currently showing on the Decades cable channel. You may find many episodes on YouTube.

William Shatner did two Thriller episodes, and I have a hard time picking a favorite. Part of this is simply because Shatner’s really good in both. People make fun, but he’s a damn fine actor, and his black-and-white work could be a lot more restrained than we expect from Captain Kirk or Denny Crane. In “The Hungry Glass,” based on a Robert Bloch story, Shatner is one half of a young married couple who have just bought a house . They were sold the house by a realtor friend, who you may also recognize as Russell “The Professor” Johnson, and it has a spooky reputation that has kept the Century 21 sign out front for a generation. When the Shatners take possession of the house, they’re there for approximately a minute before the realtor’s wife screams that she saw a figure outside the window, and it’s not Torgo because the window overlooks a scenic sheer drop. There are nervous chuckles and rationalizations, but it doesn’t take very long at all for Shatner and his wife to start seeing fleeting figures in reflective surfaces. And then the wife finds an attic full of mirrors.

The second Shatner episode is called “The Grim Reaper,” another Bloch adaptation, and it stars a cursed painting that really looks like sweet heavy metal van art. Here, Shatner is the nephew of a different castaway, Natalie Schafer, who plays an eccentric, exuberant, and very alcoholic mystery writer. She recently acquired the cursed painting because she’s the kind of person who would, and her caring nephew has come to warn her off of it. As he explains, when the scythe of the depicted grim reaper drips blood, someone will soon die. And wouldn’t you know it? He touches the painting to demonstrate and comes away with bloody fingertips. That same night, his aunt discovers her husband is trying to snuggle her assistant. It’s a story that’s equal parts Clue and the Roddy McDowall vignette in the Night Gallery pilot, and it’s perfect.

My third Thriller pick is called “The Hollow Watcher.” The Hollow Watcher is a scarecrow, and  I love demon scarecrow stories. It is also a story of southern white rural poor, which always interests me since, well, I was/will always be, and their treatment always grabs my interest, but it’s fair here.*** It starts with Denver Pyle as a meaner version of Briscoe Darling, attacking his son Hugo’s mail-order Irish bride. As father and son fight it out, the bride sneaks up and whacks Daddy dead. Since the son was pretty well knocked out by his father, she’s able to convince him that he beat his father so profoundly that his father ran away, forsaking his land. Hugo, in hillbilly man-child mode, expresses anxiety that “The Hollow Watcher,” a scarecrow up on the hill/avenging monster will visit judgment on him for raising a hand to his elder. In the meantime, a man claiming to be her brother arrives on the scene, his wife recently dead. Hugo is called away, and brother and sister are revealed to be man and wife grifters with a very Crimson Peak approach to building a nest egg. Hugo might be gone, but the Hollow Watcher still overlooks the property, and as Boris reminds us, “The beliefs of simple country folk can create forces that can certainly surprise you.”

Next, I choose “The Terror in Teakwood,” a story about a hatred between two concert pianists so white-hot, it survives death. Hazel Court plays the wife of the still living pianist Vladimir Vicek (Guy Rolfe), disturbed that since the death of his rival Karnovich, he’s been acting, well, a little weird, and she keeps finding him covered in blood. She thinks that someone is trying to kill him. So she goes to her ex Jerry (Charles Aidman) and asks him to come work as her husband’s manager, while secretly trying to get to the bottom of the blood-covered husband biz. Imagine how worried she’d be if she knew what her husband did at his rival’s grave in the cold open.

Lastly, I recommend “The Incredible Doktor Markesan,” based on an August Derleth story, starring Boris Karloff as the titular doktor with Dick York and Carolyn Kearney as his nephew and nephew’s wife, driven to the door of his Old Dark House in penniless desperation. Markesan, creepier even than his house, agrees to let the poor couple stay, but insists they never leave their room after dark, and just to be sure, he locks them in. Markesan, sweetie, if it didn’t work for Dracula, it’s not going to work for you.

Those are my favorites, but even as I make the list, I want to recommend “The Purple Room” for the Psycho exteriors and Rip Torn almost unrecognizably young, “Mr. George” for its darkly comedic tale of a specter foiling three wicked people’s attempts to kill their young ward, Patricia Barry’s Jekyll and Hyde performance in August Derleth’s “A Wig For Miss Devore,” the weird voodoo weirdness of the Robert E. Howard story “Pigeons From Hell,” and on and on. This show has so many goodies. Even the crime thriller episodes have their good points, like…Robert Lansing. “Late Date” is a pretty good one of those, based on a Cornell Woolrich story. And while there’s a lot of exciting new stuff out there that deserves your attention, just because something’s of a certain vintage, that doesn’t mean you should give it up for dead.

[manic laughter, discordant organ music begins]

* Among Stephen King’s very astute judgments in Danse Macabre, I have, with time and home ownership, come to appreciate his verdict on The Amityville Horror as being mostly horrifying when you think how much money that poor family hemorrhaged.

** Of course, he never legally changed his name from William Henry Pratt, so if a show wasn’t a thriller, I suppose the joke would be on us.

***I will note here that the setting is rural North Carolina, and everyone pronounces the word “hollow” with a long o sound at the end. That has a very spooky ring and is certainly evocative of a man made of straw, but since it refers to a place, i.e. the hollow the scarecrow is watching over, it really should be pronounced “holler,” especially by country folk. I assume no North Carolinians were consulted in the making of this episode.

~~~

Angela does wonder about the alternate timeline where Bela Lugosi hosted an anthology show.

For No Mere Mortal Can Resist We people of Earth are experiencing a renaissance in horror on TV like we’ve never enjoyed before, as traditional gatekeepers are dispersed in the wild hunt for content, any content that is compelling or innovative or just plain outré enough to collect people at watercoolers, where presumably advertisers can drop a net on the whole pack and harvest their disposable incomes and/or pineal juices.