I'm Breaking Up With You... Maybe?

You know, when Lost is on, it's like other channels and other shows don't exist. At least on my blog. But trust me, I'm watching other shows. LOTS of other shows. In fact, I've been having quite the TV trials and tribulations lately, and have decided to share.

In December, there was barely anything new on, so I decided to see how much of the saved shows (100 hours' worth) on my PVR I could plow through. (I originally spelled that plough, but worried it might look strange to American readers. Especially next to the word "through." People not familiar with British spelling might think it said ploo... or pluff.) ANYWAY, in the fall, I was working on my Finding Lost Season 4 book, and didn't have time to watch any TV. So it piled up. And now it was time to watch through everything and decide what was staying on my list and what was going.

Before I continue, I was on the CBC last week on Jian Ghomeshi's show. To anyone who followed quirky college novelty bands in the 90s, Jian was in a band called Moxy Fruvous, and I actually went to see them play (I interviewed them, too... I remember Jian being taken with some paisley shirt I was wearing and talking about shirts the whole time... yes, PAISLEY. It was the 90s.) My husband wanted me to go onto the show and say with absolute seriousness, "Well, in Lost this season we'll find out that once Jack was the King of Spain, but now he eats humble pie." He triple dog dared me on that one. Anyone who knows Fruvous will get that one. No one else will. I didn't do it. Ghomeshi was a really nice guy... and super smart. He doesn't need to be reminded of that band.

The subject of the show was, "Breaking up with television shows." As many of you are aware, this is actually a phrase I use often with my TV. I love my TV. Television series and I develop very complicated relationships, we have our arguments, we put work into it, and we find it a mutually fulfilling arrangement. When a show lets me down, I'm extremely upset and uncomfortable about it. Other viewers just shrug and change the channel. I go through a very bad breakup situation, holding on, stalking the show, and refusing to believe it's over. (I had lots to say on the subject, but if you listened to the broadcast, or the podcast that's now up on the CBC site, it doesn't sound like it... the script went haywire and too much time was spent on shows we weren't prepared to talk about, and we'd been prepped in the back to talk about a bunch of things and then it just went in a completely different direction, so I had to make it up quickly and it moved far away from the wicked analogies I'd been prepared to make. So I shall make them here.)

Take Fringe. I watched the first 2 eps of Fringe and left the rest to watch in December. JJ Abrams, Alias writers, how could it go wrong?? But... see, I don't know, maybe it's just the science side of it that's just not doing it for me. But it's just not doing it for me. Granted, I didn't get far -- I got to the one where that woman walks into the restaurant at the beginning and then everyone dies -- and there were moments that made me laugh out loud, but mostly dialogue that was completely wooden. The crazy scientist dad is WAY too over-the-top for me (that wavering voice, that weird not-British accent, the eccentricities that make me want to throw a shoe at him), and I didn't understand why exactly Joshua Jackson's character was still hanging around... other than to just whine about how he has no purpose and shouldn't be hanging around. I love Joshua Jackson, but not so much in this. And Anna Torv didn't have a lot of charisma either. I don't know what happened... the first two eps were awesome. Maybe I wasn't focused enough. I really want to give it a second shot on DVD, but so far, it's not working. And I'm really sad about that, actually. Now apparently the first episode of this year was pretty awesome, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I was told it had a pretty extensive "previously on" and I ask Fringe fans out there: was it extensive enough that if I skipped the rest of the season and just watched it, would I be caught up?

Man, this is SO unlike me to ever want to miss a single episode of a show. Does that signal the end?

And then -- oh man -- there's Heroes. Oh, the torrid, passionate affair I've had with Heroes. I almost left Lost for it. (Never, Lost. NEVER.) Season 1 of Heroes was so mindfrakkingly awesome it made me look at Lost -- my long-term partner -- and think, "you know... I remember when it was like this between us." And then... the season 1 finale. OH that season 1 finale. I came onto this blog moments after it had ended and ripped into it with a vitriol unlike any I'd ever displayed on this site before. A book came out by David Lavery, Lynnette Porter and Hilary Robson on Heroes (Saving the World) and they asked to use that blog in the book as the ANTI finale, with Lavery responding to me as the PRO finale (he was WRONG. Ahem).

That horrible finale, following that incredible season... it was like our love had been so strong, and I was beginning to see a future with it, and then... I walked in and it was having sex with According to Jim on our kitchen floor.

Sigh.

But I forgave. I believed season 2 would make up for it. We'd get our love back. But oh no. Hiro went to Japan for WAY too long, the Dunder Twins showed up from Mexico or Argentina or wherever, and some chick's power was fashioning roses out of tomatoes. "Don't you come near me or I will be FORCED to make a daisy!!!" UGH. I hated it. But then Tim Kring came out and made a mea culpa in EW. He said yeah, it sucked, yeah, we had every right to be upset, please don't leave, it'll get better. I had my bags packed and was standing at the front door and Heroes was there on bended knee promising to stop drinking. Sigh. I put the suitcases down.

And then season 3 began. I thought there was hope. It wasn't... awful. It wasn't awesome, either, but it had the potential to come back to where it used to be. And wherever it just wasn't satisfying me anymore, or where my suspicions started to surface that maybe it was going to cheat on me again, I'd think back to that wondrous honeymoon of a first year we had together, and I just couldn't leave.

But then I let the rest of the season build up on the PVR. My readers started emailing me either telling me to watch it because they really wanted to see if I'd like it, or telling me not to bother because it was terrible. Then Jeph Loeb left. And there was that EW cover story. It was a disaster. So, I started watching it.

Now, I feel like I'm in a bit of an abusive relationship with Heroes. One week it's good, really good, and the next week it's so awful I'm reading a magazine and watching another show using the picture-in-picture button. Sylar was emasculated (they took one of the great TV villains of all time and NEUTERED him) and Claire was a brunette and there were two Peters and there was this episode with Weevil from Veronica Mars where he actually looked like Weevil but Peter was in his body so the producers assumed we were too stupid to realize Peter was in his head so they had Milo play the character even though all the OTHER characters could see Weevil and I was So. Confused. But then there was the episode with Bubbles from The Wire (BUBS!!) and he played this guy who sent people into a vortex and it was beautiful. He was amazing. I loved it. I felt like, okay, I'm still in the abusive relationship with Heroes but... gosh, he's just so nice when he's not drinking!!

I watched up to the second half of The Eclipse episode.

And then it was the week of Lost. What I didn't tell y'all that happened to me that week was I upgraded my PVR. I've had an HD TV for over a year now, but had a regular digital box. But for Lost, I really wanted the new PVR (it holds 200 hours!!!) So these two dumbasses came in, sat on our couch and drunk-dialled friends on their cellphone while complaining to us occasionally that our satellite wasn't right or something, called Bell on our phone (while still talking to friends on their cells) and said "On the screen it's showing the satellite is at 90%, so is that OK?" and my husband's staring at the screen and it said 65%... of course Bell said it was OK and so these two yobs left, and I spent the rest of the night getting the damn thing to work properly while this lovely man in India sat with me and talked me through installing the thing myself.

ANYWAY... with my old PVR they took all my programming, and that included the rest of Fringe, the last two episodes of Heroes, and a bunch of other things. Sigh. So I have to catch up on those and watch them in streaming video on the network sites or something.

But to be honest, after Pushing Daisies was cancelled (:::SOB!!!:::) the news went out that Bryan Fuller was coming back to Heroes, and if he is, then there's still hope that it might return to its former glory. Think of it as going into rehab and coming back out the man he used to be.

But if he doesn't, then maybe I really will have to pack those bags and move out. Will I become a stalker ex? Checking in to see what's going on every once in a while, reading spoilers to keep posted on everything? Or will I make a clean break? Or will I let some time pass and then, like an ex who just wants to be friends, watch an episode just to make sure it's OK?

I don't know. Time will tell.

GOD, breaking up really IS hard to do. Thank god I don't have to do this with Lost. So many people left in season 3, and I like to think it's like some idiot who leaves her boyfriend because he put on weight or lost his job and then she finds out a year later that he's won the lottery and is the lead singer of a suddenly successful band and is totally awesome. Huh. Too bad she left so soon! ;)

I don't want to be her. So I shall hold on, Heroes. But really, there's only so long I can be the only one giving in this relationship. I need something back. Soon.