Monday, June 6, 2011
THE HERO OF CANTON, THE MAN THEY CALL WAKA WAKA! I picked up Firefly on Blu-Ray in an Amazon Gold Box special a few weeks back and was rewatching a couple of episodes yesterday, and wow, the Blu-Ray makes a difference. As Kaylee might say, "shiny!" (Though a minor complaint--how about listing which episodes are on which disc on the packaging?) In particular, I rewatched "Our Mrs. Reynolds" and "Out of Gas," and looking back at who won Emmys that year, the "Out of Gas" direction really should have been nominated, because that is just a masterfully put-together and cut episode. (It's tougher to make out an acting case for anyone, since that was the last Sorkin year of West Wing, the glory days of Sopranos and Six Feet Under, and SpyDaddy isn't getting dropped from my list, though Christina Hendricks as guest actress has a case to be made.) Of course, I might have loved it even more if it had starred the Muppets.
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I just rewatched the whole show, and am once again depressed that it didn't go any further. Even the Dollhouse treatment would have been good, instead of the botched run and the lack of an ending. So much that was excellent in that show. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteWhy would the last Sorkin year of The West Wing present an obstacle at awards time?
ReplyDeleteAs many problems as there were with that final year (in particular, the utter corner Sorkin wrote the show into at the end of the season, which took almost a season and a half to climb out of), there was a lot of good stuff, and the performances remained top-rate throughout (particularly in the supporting actor ranks).
ReplyDeleteWas Firefly filmed in HD? I kind of figured it wasn't and that teh Blu-Rays wouldn't matter. Am I wrong?
ReplyDeleteIt appears to have been, and they remastered it. The effects shots of Serenity flying obviously are helped the most, but there's a definite differnece.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I think blaming Sorking for the show's dismal decline in Season 5 and the beginning of Season 6 is unfair. That's almost all on the new creative team.
ReplyDelete<span>er, "Sorkin," not "Sorking." "Sorking" is my twelfth-level Elf, who has the Scepter of Walking Whilst Talking and the Finest Muffins And Bagels In All The Land. </span>
ReplyDeleteIt was. Apparently, Josh Whedon's insistence on shooting in HD was one of the reasons Fox tried so hard to kill it.
ReplyDeleteA lot of it is, but Sorkin had written the show into such a corner with the Zoey kidnapping storyline. Actually, I wish they had spent more time dealing with that storyline's emotional and personal fallout, rather than managing to largely resolve it in just two episodes. (See, e.g., what Grey's did last season with the fallout from the shooting, ironically involving one of the same major actors.)
ReplyDeleteIt took me forever to figure out who you meant, and then it all came back to me with a flashback to me crying and screaming at my tv, "No no no no no Ron Butterfield NOO!"
ReplyDeleteBut that's just my point: The new team could have done so much with it. They could have dragged the kidnapping on. (Bartlet decides he's ready to be President again, even with Zoey missing, but others disagree! Crisis!) Or they could have killed Zoey, setting up great plots on both a personal and political level. Or whatever. Instead they gave us Hafley, and "Access." Blergh.
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