Kacey and the Art of Surprise....

This is a long over-due blog… I feel like so much has happen.

Jamie mentioned in her last blog that I was headed to Bali for my two week spring break. PSYCH! I snuck home like a ninja and surprised the crap out of my family. It was awesome! But now I’m back in Abu Dhabi until summer.

The second thing that has been happening just in the past week… I started watching Battlestar Galactica and last night I finished season one. Now thankfully I have Netflix and won’t have to wait for a whole summer to find out what happens…but the surprise ending of the first season, combined with my recent awesome surprise home got me thinking about all the other shocking moments… well in television.

And TA-DA I came up with a blog!

WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS (Granted slightly outdated spoilers…BUT STILL MAJOR SPOILERS)!

Now obviously this is totally my personal list regarding moments that I remember watching television and say “holy &#?%!” … and honestly this day in age with spoilers all over the internet it’s hard to do that (as I have recently discovered with Downtown Abbey because I have NOT watched season 3)…but here some moments from some of my favorite shows.

Friends… Ross’s wedding to Emily. Two things: Monica and Chandler in bed together and then Ross saying Rachel’s name at his wedding. Oops!

Alias… SOOO many WTF moments in this show, but perhaps the one that made me physically react the most because I was on the edge of my seat  was Vaughn starting to tell Sydney who he really was but then BAM! They are hit by a truck…end of season.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer… There are two here. Buffy dying was pretty shocking….but the show was returning so I knew it wasn’t permanent. Probably even more shocking was her mom dying. With all the violence and death on this show… her mom dying from natural causes ended up being the most tragic of all.

Doctor Who… surprises at every turn here and I could say either the separating of Doctor and Companion  or a regeneration is always a bit intense, but since I’ve started watching Doctor Who I always knew those were coming. However so much happened along the way that I didn’t see coming… Few moments I remember going “WHAT!”: River Song meeting the Doctor but he didn’t know who she was (and we didn’t know who River was)… Amy being fake Amy…Amy and Rory being River’s parents… Every time Rory died… and River being the Doctor’s wife. Yes most of those have to do with River. Overall Moffat just keeps me guessing.

Lost….lord we don’t have time for that.

Battlestar Galactica… Okay I’m only one season in, but the end of that first season when Boomer shoots the Old Man was a total heart stopper.

Torchwood… when everybody dies. First Toshiko and Owen die… at the end of season 2… than Ianto dies in mini-series “Children of Earth” which is possibly one of the most intense and most shocking mini-series ever. Jack sacrifices his own grandson to save the world... just... too much.

Grey's Anatomy… so the finale where Meredith realizes their unknown crash victim was George was honestly when I stopped watching. That was such an edge of the seat season ending and I had to spend the whole summer wondering if he died (or Izzy). The next season just couldn’t live up to it. (However, Sarah has informed me about later happenings as she is a dedicated fan and I hear the finale with the gunman tops all other season finales.)

Fringe… again another JJ Abrams creation full of crazy-ass shit. But it all really kicked off when I realized that Olivia had managed to cross over to another universe at the end of season 1 and Leonard Nimoy was waiting for her in the alternative universe. Crazy.

Sherlock the miniseries…I didn’t know much about Sherlock Holmes before this miniseries and the Robert Downey Jr. movie versions, but I knew enough to know that Sherlock falls and “dies” in the “Reichenbach Fall” (but doesn’t really die). However, the whole finale of the second season and all the twists and turns about Moriarty setting Sherlock up just blew me away…and I still found the end utterly shocking.

I wasn’t alive for it actually happening… but honorable mention goes to M*A*S*H and the announcement of the death of Col. Blake because story goes that not even the cast new it was coming. It still gives me shivers and brings me to tears just thinking about it.

Okay that’s enough for now… there might be more later because the surprises just continue, especially as I continue to watch new shows. But I don’t want to give too much away!

Coming Soon: Sarah composes an impassioned essay about the importance of pencil safety.

Jamie Finally Started Watching Fringe (Please don't cancel it yet!)

After much pushing from Kacey and the use of Netflix, Amazon Instant Watch, and Xfinity On Demand I am completely caught up on Fringe.  As I worked my way through these three and a half seasons I could not help but think of other shows created by JJ Abrams.  I’ve comprised a list (super spoilery!!) of what you can expect when watching a JJ show, or, if you are an aspiring writer, what you may want to include in your show to get his backing:

Doubles – What a brilliant tactic, you kill of a major character, but keep the actor by putting in an imposter and waiting a few weeks (or longer) for the other characters to figure it out.  On Alias it was Francie, dead in the kitchen only to be replaced and then use poor Will to learn CIA secrets.  On Fringe we not only saw it happen to Charlie, but you never know when the shapeshifters might do it again. 

Prophesy – When they first pulled out that picture of Peter in the machine and again with Olivia playing a roll in the process, my first thought was of the image of Sydney in the Rembaldi prophesy.  I haven’t looked it up, but I feel like they used the same artist for both shows.  It is an excellent way to deal with the issue of fate vs free will, something that comes up time and time again in all of Abrams’ shows.

Romantic leads with the wrong person – Okay, so this isn’t unique to an Abrams series, but when Peter was shacking up with other Olivia I was yelling at the TV in the exact same way I was when Vaughn couldn’t see that Lauren was evil.  How could they not know? So, really, it's not just that they are with the wrong person, it's that the person they are with is actually evil. Or at least acting in an evil manner.  But I'm getting into the good vs evil topic and that comes later.

Daddy issues – So this is pretty much always present.  Peter & Walter and Peter & Walternate’s relationships are complicated in every timeline and every universe.  You could write an entire dissertation on the complicated back and forth relationship of Sydney & Jack.  But we can leave that for Sarah to handle in a future entry.  And Lost was a mass of characters whose issues with their fathers could keep a therapist busy for decades.  I wouldn’t want to make any assumptions about Abrams, but it is very consistent. Just saying, JJ, if you need to talk, we’re listening.  Let it out.

Badass chicks – As certain as you can expect to see some complicated father-daughter or father-son relationships on an Abrams series, you can also expect that the female lead could kick your ass.  I don’t really care who you are, her only competition would be one of Joss Whedon’s leading ladies.

Good vs Evil is not simple as it initially seems – Again, this is certainly not unique, but when watching Fringe I found that the relationship between the first universe we encounter and the second – from the perspective of both the audience and the characters – is very similar to the crash survivors and the Others on Lost.  We meet one group first and our initial introduction to the other side is so evil. The shapeshifters are killing people and causing chaos, the Others are kidnapping people. However, as we learn more about the other side and see things from their perspective, who is good and who is evil is far less certain.  While we maintain a certain degree of loyalty to our initial characters, we definitely abandon our black and white view of these complicated worlds.

Yell at the TV Cliffhangers and a constant fear of cancellation - Now that I’m finally watching a JJ Abrams show as it unfolds (I watched Alias on DVD and Lost on Netflix Instant Watch, both after the series had ended), I can now share the frustrations that come with taking such a risk.  First you live with the horrible cliffhangers week after week, and worry that the end of season will come with an even more insane ending and you’ll be stuck waiting all summer wondering what will happen. Like when Syd woke up and it was 2 years later and she had no memory of it or when Peter just up and disappeared… from existence.  And worse, as I am sucked further into the story and the lives of the characters I live in constant fear that some idiot at the top of the corporate food chain at Fox will cancel this show.  I mean really, what kind of ratings can you expect on a Friday night in the age of the internet and DVR.  Fingers crossed for season 5.

All in all, these are elements of great TV.  This is definitely not a criticism.  I like that I know what I'm getting when it says, from writer/creator/executive producer JJ Abrams, I'm getting quality, well-written TV and if lucky some time travel and red matter. 

Coming soon Sarah will write an epic poem on the adventures of Malcolm Reynolds, in iambic pentameter.