blog@cliffdweller

Yesterday I sat around and watched TV. It wasn't really TV, it was iTunes. I don't have an antenna or cable because I always get sucked into shows I don't want to waste my time watching. So instead now I spend around $100 a year downloading tv shows form iTunes.

It's cheaper than cable.

So I sat in front of the teevee yesterday and caught up on a couple of the shows I have season passes for: Eureka, and Kyle XY.

I think I've pondered this before on other shows, but I'm going to do it again here.

Shows where people are discovering things about themselves always seem more interesting than shows where people are struggling with things about themselves. Smallville is a great example of a show where someone is learning as they go. At least it was for the first season or two. Now it's just a franchise (altho I havent' seen any of season six, yet).

Kyle XY was interesting the first season where Kyle had to figure out why he didn't have a belly button. It was interesting because the audience was lead down a road and allowed to catch on to the mysteries just seconds before the reveal in each episode. Very masterful.

Now in Season Two, they removed the mystery. Kyle was grown in a tube by a big faceless company that was destroyed by one stick of dynamite. The explosion killed everyone in the entire facility except the one chick who, like Kyle was grown in an incubator, and is now out to maybe kill him or maybe marry him. Oh, and even though the big scary company was destroyed, the even bigger, scarier parent company has stepped up to the plate to provide the assassins and intrigue. Only all the intrigue has turned into Beverly Hills 90210 intrigue instead of global issues like evil governments and possibly space alien intrigue.

I guess it's easier to create an episode where a teen gets lectured by his father about smoking pot than it is to create one where mysteries are slowly revealed to show major conspiracies and coverups on an international scale.

So Kudos to the creators of Kyle XY for making an original and interesting show (not to be confused with John Doe, which had similar properties before it was cancelled). And shame on corporate committee writing rooms for dumbing it down in season 2.

I also watched part of the Pilot for Greek on ABC Family yesterday, and I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the scene in the background where one boy was sneaking out of another's room early in the morning pulling his shirt over his head and saying "this doesn't mean I'm gay, I was drunk". Good for them for showing that things like that really do happen, even when it has nothing to do with the main characters or the plot (as far as I can tell).