Is Dominion even worth watching? Check out this preview and judge for yourself.

The big question on my mind this week is...will Dominion be worth watching? Syfy's continuation of the movie Legion (which really wasn't very good) takes off after Defiance on Thursday night. All that I know of it comes from the preview embedded below. But the gist seems to be that after the archangel Gabriel led the lower angels in an all out attack on humanity, Michael sided with the humans and a war resulted. So now the setting is total post apocalyptic. All humans that managed to survive the war now cloister in fortress cities, and of course there's a "chosen one." Hmm. What do you guys think? Watch this preview and let me know in the comments. Who am I kidding, I'll watch it anyway.

Helix has a MacGuffin and I think I know where the show is going

No, Doreen! You can't be dead. This really did kind of suck. Sigh.

So, I've been watching SyFy's Helix on Friday nights (yes I know my social life is just banging) but as one who is all too familiar with "income inequality," it's the more affordable mode of entertainment for me (that and cooking my meals at home really does save money). However, since it premiered about three weeks ago, I've been a little "meh" about the series as a whole (wrongfully comparing it to The Walking Dead at times). I have my reasons for my immediate eye-rolls in watching the episodes. For example, I don't really like anyone in the cast, the weird "elevator" music when the title credits roll took a bit of getting used to, and I was kind of primed for this to be a twist on zombies in the arctic. Either that or a really cool Outbreak-esque apocalyptic tale. But both of these scenarios never really materialized, and I think that's a good thing.

In addition, it turns out that the whole "zombie breakout" thing that I expected turned out to be a MacGuffin. Do you guys know what this is? In fiction, a MacGuffin is a plot device that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. MacGuffins are usually the central focus of a film's first act, and decline in importance as the story progresses. This is exactly what's going on in Helix, and the result has finally piqued my interest (if just a wee bit).

Now, I don't think that I have an unusually short attention span. In my defense, I tend to hold onto a series a lot longer than I should (this is happening with Almost Human, which has just about reached the intolerable level in the "boring" department). But I was just about ready to give up on Helix when the episode this last Friday aired and everything seemed to coalesce.

Dr. Peter Farragut infected with the Helix Vector (they call the zombies "vectors".)

Mysteries in Helix are plentiful much in the vein of Lost, but by far the most intriguing thing about the show are the characters themselves. At the center of this evolution are characters who may act like psychopaths but may in fact be on the side of good. Peter (brother to Alan) is one of these as it turns out that he was doing grunt work, i.e., he knows nothing about the disease. Hiroshi was the one running the show the entire time, and Hiroshi has this whole creepy fascination with Julia (which seems oddly compelling). This "creepiness" gets another layer when Julia comes to a realization that she's been to the arctic laboratory before and doesn't remember any of it. Why?

Hiroshi Hatake with the strange glowing eyes that he hides behind contacts. It's
another mystery that needs some explanation. But then I'd also like to know about
all the frozen monkeys and about the message supposedly encoded in the RNA
strands of the Helix Vector disease. Sigh.

Is it possible that Hiroshi used Julia as one of his experiments? And what do we know about Hiroshi? One, he has many secrets. He has a secret scrapbook of all things Julia, a secret stairway down to the quarantine level, and has the ability to stare down one of the zombies (and they just let him walk on by). He's also a cold-blooded killer, willing to murder unarmed men over clean air (when they could just open a window to get clean air).

Then we have Sergio who murdered Doreen and fed her to hairless rats right after a great bonding moment. WTF? For the record, I really liked Doreen. She was the one true scientist on the show, given that Alan is self-absorbed and incompetent and Sarah is just useless. It's unfortunate really that she pretty much had a target on her back, being the one that got close to Sergio and being fat and unattractive (as deemed by Hollywood). This show also has other problems: the "zombies" are all black people with the exception of Peter, and the "villain" is turning out to be a Japanese guy. It makes me wonder if the show's being written by paranoid white men who secretly wish we could return to a time when it was okay to sexually harass a young attractive woman (and suffer no repercussion).

I hope they explain the black goo before the series finale though. I have so many questions about it.

TL;DR: Helix has a MacGuffin, and I think I know where the show is going.

The first 15 minutes of Helix is cut awkwardly in parts but still manages to reel me in

Notice the black goo dripping from this guy's left ear. Chilling, isn't it?

So Helix starts tonight on SyFy, and if memory serves me correctly, we get another episode tomorrow night as well. But don't quote me on that (I think I saw something on my DVR).

My first impression in watching the trailer and then the first 15-minutes was that it has a setting I like, i.e., Antarctica, and it looks to kind of be an end of the world thriller about a disease that turns your blood black, leaves its victims disfigured with horrific black veins all over their body (and bleeding from every orifice), and also imbues them with maddening strength and just sheer crazy.

There were parts of it that are cut awkwardly to truncate conversation and maybe not reveal so much to the audience. That's okay as I'm willing to watch the uncut pilot tonight. I know that they're just trying to pique my interest, and I consider this "mission accomplished" by the cliffhanger left in the last few seconds.

This is my favorite story that takes place in Antarctica. It was remade by
John Carpenter into a great all male film that still leads me to question
which of the survivors at the end was the Thing and which wasn't? Maybe
Helix is going to take this question and say that the disease is going to
have some kind of outer space origin. That would be really cool.

There are a few questions that come to mind. Most notably, I ask, "So is this a reinvention of the whole zombie apocalypse?" If it does turn out to be that I won't care much. I love zombie-esque stories. I also love stories where the stakes are incredibly high (as in the movie "Outbreak" with Renee Russo and Dustin Hoffman).

Additionally we are treated to a real science fiction atmosphere with the base in Antarctica. This is no remote all male outpost with the survivors of The Thing from Another World eeking out an existence amid sled dogs and low technology. The base more than anything, resembles the facility you saw underground in Cabin in the Woods, with glass elevators that descend into the ice for thousands of feet to vaults where dangerous disease strains are held in cryogenic storage away from the population centers of the world.

So here is the question of the day: Are any of you out there going to either record or watch Helix tonight? I've been excited about it for a few months now, but still don't know much about it. I guess I shall see soon enough.

The shocking twists and turns of Defiance channel George R.R. Martin in a spectacular season finale. The lesson? Never meet an evil person in the woods. Like ever.

This scene ended the episode. It's the invasion of the Earth Republic
army taking over Defiance. It's a bad time for this sci-fi outpost.
Everything is indeed broken. Click to EMBIGGEN

The culmination of an amazing season one ended last night with cliffhangers that made me realize, Defiance is not your run-of-the-mill "play it safe" and be predictable sci-fi series. I am thoroughly engrossed in this story, and I HATE the fact that I have to wait until June 2014 for more. SyFy channel built last week's episode as "the one everyone will be talking about." Although good, it had none of the shocking moments that Monday night's season finale called "Everything is Broken" had. And I just want to warn those who are following this series and haven't watched it yet, there are some major spoilers in this post.

Kenya had the upper hand on Stahma, but got outmaneuvered. R.I.P. Kenya.

OMG they killed Kenya. She was like one of my favorite characters. And Kenya didn't die a useless death either. She was outmaneuvered in a game of chess and paid for it with her life. I really shouldn't be shocked, but I am. Kenya's demise was foreshadowed by the venomous and treacherous threats coming from the evil Stahma. "This will not end well for you," Stahma said to Kenya. I just didn't think Defiance had the cojones to go there. After last night's episode, I'll never say that again.

To be fair, I admire Stahma. She's got more layers than an onion and makes for a powerful villain. She's as ruthless, conniving, and clever as Cersei in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. But I thought Kenya could outwit her. In truth, I believed she had up until the end. I kept asking myself, what would I do if I were in Kenya's position? I don't know if I would have met Stahma in the woods, but I sure as hell wouldn't trust her...not after she back-stabbed her sister, Mayor Rosewater, to give Datak an edge in the election.

Meeting an evil person in the woods is never a good idea. Here Kenya
in back (she's the brunette) is meeting Stahma. This scene reminded me
in every way of the 1976 film "Omen 2" where Damien kills a blond boy in
the woods who suspects who he truly is, i.e., the Antichrist. See picture below.

This scene gave me nightmares when I was a kid. The dark-haired boy is
pure evil. The blond kid in the background goes to the same military
academy and stumbled across Damien's secret, so he kills him with his
"powers." It's awful. Lesson: never meet an evil person in the woods. Ever.

But as it turns out, Kenya did meet Stahma in the woods (NEVER DO THIS! NEVER EVER MEET AN EVIL PERSON IN THE WOODS PEOPLE!), and Stahma acted just like a spider, luring Kenya in by saying she was on the run from her monster husband. The only thing that makes this act even believable is that Datak is a monster. I suppose that Stahma said at least one thing that was correct: "You don't know Castithans." Kenya paid the price with her life by accepting a flask coated with poison. She was smart enough not to drink it, but just touching the surface of the flask was enough to kill her. It was a total turn around since Kenya had a gun to Stahma's head and seemed to have the upper hand. I'm still reeling from this surprise, and I thoroughly expect this to go down as one of the top ten shocking deaths in science fiction. It's right up there with Samuel L. Jackson's death in Deep Blue Sea.

One of the most shocking deaths in cinematic history.

OMG they killed Nolan. What the hell is going on? I loved Nolan. We've been seeing Defiance through his eyes since day one. We started out with him in the pilot episode in a crawler with his daughter in tow making their way to Antarctica. Right from the start, he established himself as a rugged military man with a sense of honor and the ability to beat anyone up in a fight. Strong, cunning, with a "straight as an arrow" moral compass, and boom...taken out with a bullet fired from an Earth Republic surgeon that has a reputation for loving his work. This is a euphemism for "I like to cut people up on the operating table."

Noes! They killed Lawkeeper Nolan. 

To be fair, Nolan's fate is similar to Catelyn's Stark's: dead but then resurrected through magic (sorry if I'm spoiling A Game of Thrones here). But the resurrection comes at what price? Irisa  has essentially given herself over to being "The Devouring Mother" because she didn't want to lose her dad. She's now the weapon of Irzu, the goddess of the Irathients, and from the look of things, I think this means she's going to lose all of her identity and become a killing machine. Her body may survive the fall into the strange glowing pit deep within the mines, but all the things that make up Irisa can't possibly survive that. So in a sense, they've killed off Irisa too!

Major cast members have been dropping like flies in this season. Who OTHER than George R.R. Martin does that? Well okay...The Walking Dead does it too. I don't know if I really like that or not? I suppose I do because I'm completely hooked in this show.

The conniving and murderous Tarr family. As much as I'd like to see them
get justice for killing Kenya and hurting others, they are some great villains.

OMG they killed Datak. Okay...we didn't see him get killed so he'll probably be back next season. But the fact is that he did kill the leader of the Earth Republic with a knife in his office and soldiers were pounding on the door. I just don't see how that could go over well? Hands covered in blood, dead body of the leader on the ground. I know if I'd been a soldier and saw that, I'd fill the dude full of bullet holes. All they wanted was access to the mines and they got that when Datak won the election. What further use is this Castithan to them? He's dead weight; a liability. And by the way the writers offed Kenya, I fully expect Datak to get executed along with Stahma in the season premiere.

Man oh man, the shocking twists and turns of Defiance channel George R.R. Martin in a spectacular season finale dripping with blood. Why does June of 2014 seem so far away?

The real world physics that could make the scenario of SyFy's Sharknado a distinct possibility and what you should do to protect yourself

Summer may be hot, but it isn't hot enough without flying shark eating
Tara Reid "OM NOM NOM NOM" ... Sharknado is an actual T.V. movie.

Summers are getting really hot, and I'm not talking about six-pac abs and string bikini hot (although I guess I wouldn't mind being on the beach to see at least some of that). Just a year ago, we had the hottest month on record. Ever. And everyone from scientists who study climate change to insurance adjusters paying out claims is asking, "Is this normal?" Now, just to be clear, I'm not trying to start a political debate and ask what side of the climate change argument you are on. However, I do want to tell you about one super crazy idea that just may be a possibility in the near future (it's super scary when you consider it could create flying sharks!)

In a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, physicist Rob Wood is proposing than an experiment be conducted on a small scale where marine stratocumulus clouds are seeded with a lot of tiny sea water particles. The effect they are looking for is to significantly enhance cloud droplet number concentration, and thereby cloud reflectivity and longevity. The result: a cooling effect.

The proposed barge that could be used to seed clouds with sea water
to cool down the atmosphere. But unless there are filters to keep sharks out
we could totally be looking at a Sharknado scenario.

Initially, the project would deploy sprayers like the one pictured above to ensure that enough salt water particulate can be blasted high enough into the sky. In turn, a plane equipped with sensors would monitor the physical and chemical characteristics of the particles and how they disperse. Cool, right? Well maybe not so much.

Here's my train of thought: sea water doesn't appear to be initially dangerous. However, when I bother to look deeper and start to think of their delivery system, and how it could possibly blast microscopic algae, bacteria, fungus, minerals...literally anything in ocean water...my imagination goes wild. Sure...the "reasonable" person in me says that this living stuff wouldn't survive the process.

BUT THE SCI-FI WRITER IN ME ASKS: WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SHARKS THAT GET SUCKED UP INTO THE MACHINE?  Cause the ocean totally has sharks in it and they nom nom nom on people ALL the time.

And I suddenly had this epiphany that "bold" font simply does not have the power to express but I shall give it the old college try: OMG..."SHARKNADO!"

Those brilliant guys at SyFy sooo saw this coming....

Here's the synopsis:

When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, thousands of sharks terrorize the waterlogged populace. And when the high speed winds form tornadoes in the desert, nature's deadliest killer rules water, land, and air!

Starring Tara Reid (the Academy Award Winning [okay not really] actress from American Pie) and John Heard, Sharknado premieres on SyFy on Pacific Rim Eve (Thursday is now "Pacific Rim Eve" and Friday is "Pacific Rim Day").

But guys, after having read my explanation of how the cloud seeding works can't you see that there are real world physics that could make the scenario in Sharknado for reals? 

I know, it's terrifying right?

So let's go over the things you should do to protect yourself should a Sharknado happen for real in your home town:

1) Get yourself a suit of riot armor and don't go outside without it. Flying sharks don't like the taste of riot armor, and they will avoid eating you for someone who is plump and juicy (which describes most Americans). 

2) Don't eat at Long John Silvers. Sharks can smell fish on you and if you've been eating there, chances are, they will consume you out of revenge. I know this is a fact because there's a movie called "Jaws the Revenge!" So it's totally real.

According to NPR, this "heart attack on a hook" has 33 grams of fat, 1320
calories, and almost 3700 milligrams of sodium. Not to mention that kids
will call you "fatty" and sharks will want to eat you.

3) Get a bigger gun. You know...something the NRA would approve of because flying sharks are dangerous.

Don't be frightened by its size. You can buy it without a background check
online thanks to Congress. Just get a couple of these babies and pack them
with you to the grocery store so in case the Sharknado hits, YOU ARE
PREPARED!

4) Become a ninja. Ninjas can always beat sharks. Just look at the below picture as proof. And if you cannot become a ninja, then hire a ninja. I hear they work for food. You know you've got a successful one if you tell him where you live, and when you go home, all your stuff is gone. Ninjas are like that. They can be in and out like the wind....

5) Dress up as Batman and buy a toy red lightsaber. Sharks are terrified of the Batman because of what happened the last time those two tangled:

And there you have it folks. Whew. Be safe everyone and remember my five rules even if you can't remember ANYTHING else. Trust me, they shall serve you well.

The Serpent's Egg left me in awe of the world-building on Defiance

I watched the Defiance episode "The Serpent's Egg" on Monday and am in awe of their world-building. As a fan of world-building myself, one of the things that struck me in the episode is how they are peeling the layers back from the mystery that is Irisa, and in doing so, revealing a lot about the world after the invasion. How do they do this? It's a perfect expose of "Show" and don't tell. Writers, you should be listening.

This is the leader of the snake cult that tortured and probably sexually molested Irisa as a child
when her awful parents gave her to him for such experiments. The introduction of this character
hints at a very dark religion that not only sounds villainous, but may have true power because of
Irisa's burgeoning supernatural abilities. I wonder if she'll get manipulated into serving them in the future.

Irisa spots a sharply-dressed Irathient that spawns quick flashes of snakes and some kind of ritual that could make your blood go cold if you walked in on it accidentally. Obviously, the Irathient man is no stranger and is somehow connected to Irisa's past but we don't quite know yet how all the pieces fit together. When they do come together...it's almost Manson-esque weird. She kidnaps this guy and forces a snake to bite him while he's tied to a chair. Only after that does he finally admit to belonging to a snake cult and we are treated to a tale of how her parents sold her as a child to him to basically be tortured and probably sexually abused. We also find out that he's done this same thing to a number of girls, and Irisa is the only one that survived. Yikes! But that's not all. Irisa is some kind of prophet or messiah and only needs to cap one sacrifice to make "something big" happen.

The whole reveal is done with great skill.  First, the episode does a great job of convincing you that Irisa might have lost her mind. She continuously beats up and tortures her prisoner in a dark dungeon somewhere in Defiance. And he keeps denying that he is who she thinks he is. But later, you realize that this is just a vehicle for her to jog her memory, and once she knows everything she actually chooses to let him go.

Simultaneously with this storyline, there's also one that follows Nolan and the Mayor out of Defiance with a suitcase of cash. Nolan is escorting a dangerous criminal to a prison in Las Vegas and on the ride we are introduced to Ambassador Tennety who turns out to be evil AND a polygamist. When was the last time you got treated to a woman keeping multiple men around? And the polygamy bit is not related to her evil (which is simply nature vs. views on marriage).

I also learned that the St. Louis arch is now a deejay studio. I suppose that works. I'm really pleased with how much I understand of Defiance just a few episodes in. Plus it's a reminder that rather than employing an info dump, it's much better to create your world through the experiences of your protagonist.

Are you watching Defiance yet? Do you think it's brilliant science fiction? What method do you employ to build worlds in your novels?

Have a great Wednesday.

On Defiance, inclusion rather than avoiding exclusion is the key to equality. Are you listening America?

I happen to think that the mechanism that fosters inequality in America right now is a lack of inclusion, rather than a conscious avoidance of exclusion. And I choose my words carefully here.

As you well know, exclusion (or discrimination) is illegal in the United States when it comes to employment. However, inclusion (or favoritism) is not. It's also a lot harder to spot, but is almost universal in today's job market. Think about what I'm saying for just a moment.

You choose to help people who RESEMBLE YOU. The people who live in your neighborhood or attend your church or school. Whites help other whites. Blacks help other blacks. Mormons help other Mormons. Baptists help other Baptists. Jews help other Jews. Gay people help other gay people. That's just the way things are generally done. I'm not saying that this is either bad or good. I'm not making a judgment here. I'm just pointing out the obvious so that my next point is crystal clear.

Monday night's episode of Defiance on SyFy called "A Well-Respected Man" is absolutely f'ing brilliant. To be clear, the plot was "meh." Here's the one sentence pitch for you writers out there: the mayor's sister gets kidnapped and she needed to find her. Exciting, right? But it's not the plot (or the one sentence pitch) that matters in this case. It's the character and "world" development, and how Defiance very skillfully plays its hand showing us that inclusion is the best way to surmount the ugly specter of inequality in all its forms.

Datak is a Casthithan. They all have a kind of albino appearance and milky hair.
They're familial structure is extremely important to them and a source of their
power. They also seem to suffer an external locus of identity, meaning that
their self-worth is completely dependent on how others perceive them.

In "A Well Respected Man," Amanda (the Mayor) gives her sister Kenya grief for being a prostitute. Of course to Kenya, she's like a duck with the "words words words" rolling off her back like so many droplets of water. Shortly after their verbal sparring, Kenya gets kidnapped by the Bioman; Nolan (in the role of Lawkeeper) along with Amanda must track her down. Since the Bioman is owned by Datak (a Casthithan), that's where they end up going to squeeze Datak for information.

Datak on the left. Lawkeeper Nolan on the right. They don't like each other much.

A little background on Datak: he's been trying to achieve a level of respect equal to his power and wealth. He knew nothing of the Bioman's nocturnal activities, i.e. kidnapping people to harvest their adrenal glands for a synthetic drug that's apparently worth a lot of money (it also kills them, but that's just "collateral damage" in the pursuit of profit, right?) Anyway, he would have helped the Mayor (Amanda) just to be a hero, however, Datak and Nolan don't get along at all, and Nolan burst down Datak's door and drags him out into the street, treating him like a common cur. It really pisses Datak off. So Datak hands Nolan and Amanda some great lines about how the town uses him all the time but never recognizes him. It's all true. And that, Datak says, is the reason he won't help Amanda find her sister. Pretty awful eh? Hold on...it gets better.

This is Stahma. She's Datak's wife and is extremely intelligent. Nolan kind
of gets this in the episode "A Well Respected Man" and certainly is
aware that she is a master manipulator. I like Stahma though. All of her
manipulations seem to be aimed at getting her husband respect or wealth,
which I think is an admirable quality as long as no one gets hurt.

Stahma (Datak's wife) slips out and tracks down Amanda in the dark. Stahma tells Amanda that she loves Kenya because 1) she calls her employees "Night Porters" showing Stahma that Kenya has pride in her prostitutes, and 2) Kenya ran up to Stahma the first time they saw each other in the street and hugged her. How is this at all good? Well, Kenya said something important to Stahma...something that she desperately needed. Kenya told her, "Datak is an amazing man. Thank you for sharing him with us." In Casthithan society, sex is pretty loose. But no spouse would be cool about their partner seeking physical pleasure elsewhere. Period. Kenya recognized this and turns the act of Datak visiting her brothel from "exclusion" to "inclusion" by acknowledging it. Brilliant? I say so.

This is Mayor Amanda (on the left) and her sister Kenya (on the right). We come to find
out that Amanda actually raised Kenya when their mother got killed. She takes it very
personally when a woman on the street confronts her, saying "Kenya must have had a terrible
mother!" It's meant as an insult because Kenya was sleeping with the lady's husband
(who visited the brothel) and thus was ruining her marriage.

Stahma (using this theme of inclusion vs. exclusion) carefully points out to the Mayor that Datak's immense pride has been hurt and in order to save Kenya's life (and secure Datak's help), Amanda needs to show Datak respect. What form will this respect take? Stahma tells Amanda she wants her husband appointed to the Town Council, which not only ups the political intrigue of the show as a whole, but hammers home the idea that inclusion is probably the best way to address discrimination.

Inclusion rather than avoiding exclusion is the road to equality in Defiance. I just wish more people realized this outside of science fiction, and strove harder to include others who are very different from themselves. Yes, Defiance is brilliant. And if you're not watching it, shame on you. I put it right up there with Battlestar Galactica. If you haven't heard of Defiance until now, watch this trailer. SyFy spent $100 million on season one alone.

Being Human shows us the most sympathetic cannibal you will ever see

This graphic is via zombie hippie whose tumblr can be found HERE. Disturbing, right?

This season of SyFy's "Being Human" has been a real rollercoaster ride for a couple of the show's characters. Josh the werewolf is the kindest most decent man you'll ever meet who also murders other people and buries their bodies in the woods. This may be a real turn off for some, but heck, I'd be Josh's friend. He's actually a good person. It's just circumstance that requires him to bump off some fellow human beings when no one else wants to get their hands dirty. Let's not even mention the fact that a natural born werewolf has now reinfected him with lycanthropy, and the only other cool werewolf we've ever met in the series is probably dead from a vampire attack (that kind of makes me sad cause I really liked that old geezer).

Former ghost, Sally is now the coolest zombie you'll ever meet.
Sure she wants to eat the flesh off your bones, but honestly, she's
trying to go vegan and really hates that she ate a mouse.

And Sally? What to say about my poor favorite Sally. I love her so much, but she's basically the best looking zombie you'll ever meet. I mean she looks better than R did in the movie adaptation of "Warm Bodies" when "R" was almost human. Not following me? A little explanation may be in order.

See, last season they had this cliffhanger where Sally had destroyed her incorporeal form to go find her buddies (also ghosts) who were trapped in Limbo. They got out because Josh (the guy that gets stuff done) dug up her body, provided a heart from someone he murdered, and then dug up her corpse for a witch to resurrect. Damn. Now that's friendship folks. Most people just ask to borrow money every once in a while, right? I could imagine having that conversation: "Yeah um, I know we're friends and I was wondering if you could do me a favor? You can? GREAT! So...can you dig up my corpse, kill someone, and bring their heart to a witch so she can get me out of Limbo? SAWEEET! Thanks hon XOXO."

In life there are toilets and no one wants to scrub them. Josh, however
will do just that. In "Being Human" he takes care of a lot of tasks
that no one else seems to want to do. He's got to be the kindest
looking mass murderer I've ever seen.

But instead of resurrecting just Sally, the witch also brought back her buddies Nick and Stevie who happened to be hanging out with her in Limbo. And Stevie is the most sympathetic cannibal you'll ever see. Like seriously guys. And here's the deal...Nick, Stevie, and Sally don't WANT to be cannibals. They just are because there happens to be a few "tiny and unmentioned" side effects at being brought back alive by the witch. Of course, the witch didn't tell them, because (as it turns out) she's a pretty wicked witch and just wants their souls to stay young forever. And when she isn't doing that, she's like a cook at a homeless shelter, so I guess as far as her soul goes, it's all good. The woman can make some great soup (or so we've seen).

So yeah. Sally, Nick, and Stevie started ROTTING (as in full on body parts dropping off). And the only thing that would make the "rot" go away was to satisfy an indescribable hunger for flesh. Sally ate a live mouse and Nick ate his cat. When Nick tried to eat his girlfriend, she killed him with a baseball bat making him a ghost again (and we can assume that his ghost has now been consumed by the witch off-screen because that's what she does). Well Stevie went the furthest, and I think Stevie has been pretty adorable thus far these last three seasons. Just, his hunger struck and he didn't know what to do about it. So he ate his parents and then ate a United States postal worker who just wanted to deliver the mail.

This is the face of the new cannibal. Stevie ate his parents and a postal worker. Interesting eh?

I've never seen cannibalism passed off like this. Up till now, it's been pretty much one cannibal: Hannibel Lecter, and that dude is scary. Don't get me wrong, the "Being Human" way of approaching this last taboo is incredibly horrific. But it also manages to be other things. It's tragic, sad, and kind of funny. Yes, how can you not laugh when Josh and Sally find an arm in a breadbox and say, "Stevie! Come explain this?!" And Sally wins my heart over when she says offhandedly in her hipster getup and GAP skirt. "Josh, I don't know how much time I have 'cause...I really want to eat that arm." Sigh.

I have sympathy for Stevie, who asked Josh (of course) to kill him. And Josh being the man that does everything in the show, did JUST THAT in the garage of Stevie's home. Josh has gotten so jaded to killing that he's now at a point where he can kill people and still go to lunch at McDonald's afterwards to talk with you about your love life with his puppy dog eyes.

"Being Human" has gotten really dark, and I guess that's appropriate considering that it's a story about monsters who desire humanity more than anything. And yes, it's the kind of dark fiction writing that I'm really attracted to with sympathetic characters forced into incredibly unreal situations. I have to say though, I never expected a television show to address cannibalism with such bravado. I mean, my reaction wasn't "Stevie frickin' ATE his parents!" it was "Awh...poor Stevie...it must have broke his heart to eat his mom and dad like that."

Perhaps taking the horrific and giving it a new spin is what writers do these days to forge a new path in a world filled with sameness.

Best. Movie. Ever.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the best show EVER. Seriously, just watch and be amazed. Oh SyFy...you clever television programmer you. And yes, I actually watched it this past weekend.

Have a great Thursday.

Alphas

So I've been watching Alphas on SyFy and I really like this show. It has Ryan Cartwright in it (which was a big plus for me) because I loved him as Vincent Nigel-Murray in Bones and was really sad when he got killed in the last season of Bones. /sniff

Why did he have to die? Why couldn't it have been Wendell?

I love the way British guys talk.

I think that having him playing a character with severe autism brings out his true acting ability as he is obviously supressing his strong accent (a feat I'm sure that is difficult).

If you don't know what Alphas is...here's a summary:

Alphas is an action-packed thriller from writers Zak Penn (The Avengers, X-Men: The Last Stand) and Michael Karnow. In the series, five ordinary people are brought together to form one extraordinary team of Alphas -- people with the unique power to stretch the capabilities of the human mind giving them superhuman physical and mental abilities.

Operating within the Defense Criminal Investigation Service of the U.S. Department of Defense and led by preeminent neurologist and psychiatrist Dr. Lee Rosen (Emmy Award-winner and Academy Award-nominee David Strathairn), an expert in Alpha phenomena, the team investigates cases that point to others with Alpha abilities. As they work against the clock to solve this new brand of crime, they must prevent their own personality differences and disparate backgrounds from interfering with their ultimate mission to catch the enemy.

In addition to Academy Award nominee David Strathairn (Temple Grandin, Good Night, and Good Luck), the ensemble cast stars Malik Yoba (New York Undercover, Why Did I Get Married?), Warren Christie (October Road), Laura Mennell (Watchmen), Ryan Cartwright (Mad Men, Bones) and Azita Ghanizada (Castle).

It's on every Monday and you guys should watch it and be Alphas fans with me :))