I've been watching good stuff. Have you been watching good stuff?

It's been so very long, I'm sorry. It's been so long in fact that for a little while there I was staring at a blank screen, convinced that I had forgotten how to do one of these. Until I remembered that I had never really known how to do it and basically just made shit up as I went. After that, I was flying!

First thing's first, anyone expecting a post about Da Vinci's Demons; since that is what is mentioned in the 'Next Time' bit at the end of the last post... yeah, sorry, no. That was fecking ages ago and I've completely forgotten like 90% of what I was gonna say. Maybe after season 2, eh? If I'm still here. We cool, yo? Awesome.

TO THE POINT!

Just because I haven't been posting on here much of late; or, you know, at all; doesn't mean that I have been idle in my pursuit of the impossible quest. Oh hells no! Many and much is the sci-fi and fantasy that I've been cramming down my eyeholes and for the first time in a long time I'm actually enjoying more than I'm hating. There are some duffers of course; Atlantis springs immediately to mind, and, sickeningly, The Tomorrow People; but for the most part this last year has seen me getting very lucky with what I've watched.

Take Arrow for instance.

It's nonsense, of course it is, but it's enjoyable nonsense that doesn't take itself too seriously (except when it does, but they get that out of their system and move on pretty quickly).

Stephen Amell, or Tom Cruise's little brother as we must call him now that Natasha of House Kingston (she of Unspoiled Podcast, check 'em out) has pointed it out,

acquits himself well enough as the square jawed hero; although where he really shines is when playing the younger, more naive version of his character in flashback; and his bodyguard/friend/sidekick/hilarious pomposity burster Diggle, as played by David Ramsey, is one of my favourite creations of recent televisions seasons.

It's a shame that one of the shining lights of the first season had to be killed off the way they were but new paths are being forged this year and I for one am more than eager to go along for the ride. Especially if they keep Black Canary around.

It's not even about the leather

Then there's Supernatural. With three episodes left of S8; insert now traditional complaint about never quite managing to catch up; I'm going to have to throw my hat in with the minority opinion and say I'm loving this. It's not perfect, but after the (surprisingly) poor Sera Gamble seasons; how did she get it so wrong?; this run has been a real return to (almost) top form.

It's a little frustrating that they haven't managed a total return to the glory days because the niggles are so obvious and so easy to fix (says the layman who's never written a script). Stop having the season arc revolve around Sam and Dean falling out and just let them be brothers for 5 minutes; stop coming up with new and ingenious ways to alienate Castiel; stop trying to make us love Garth by having Dean warm to him...

Can't we all just get along?

I'll leave it there, before I lose myself in a rant. I don't want to bury the fact that I do indeed love the show now, almost as much as I did in the glory years.

And speaking of returning to past glories while inexplicably failing to see the problems that caused the fall from grace in the first place, I give you...

Actually, I give you...

I'm loving The Originals in a way that I haven't loved it's parent show in a very long time. In a way, that makes me all the more wary of the show, because I can already see it traveling down exactly the same path as TVD. The new characters are great, but there are too many of them; there are hardly any humans on the main roster (I count two, if you include the priest and he has cannon fodder written all over him); Klaus, stripped of his God-awful pining over Caroline is chasing another hot blonde within 5 minutes of the pilot starting; the over-used to the point of dramatic uselessness 'daggering' was used to put one of the leads on ice in the fucking pilot...

As I say, I'm enjoying the show. It's bringing back warm and fuzzy memories of when The Vampire Diaries could produce episodes that you actually believed would have some genuine consequences. I just hope that Julie Plec and her team can resist going back to their favourite old tricks time and again.

Oh, and give your greatest assets a chance to shine. Be it Claire Holt on The Originals, or Candice Accola on The Vampire Diaries, this franchise has two awesome female characters played by two fantastic actresses. Let them off the leash, let them be bad ass, and stop burying them under tired old love triangle bullshit.

The future of tv bad assery. If only they'd let her.

So that's what I'm currently watching, and enjoying. (Although you'd be forgiven for thinking I hated them from the tone of this post; I really need to stop moaning) Maybe it was taking a break from writing this blog that has allowed me to view these shows purely for the sake of viewing them, that has allowed me to garner more enjoyment than I had been for a while. If that proves to be the case, I may reconsider the renewed writing schedule I have planned, but for the meantime expect to see lots more of my meandering stream of consciousness waffle on here than has been the case for a while.  You love it!

Where did it all go wrong?

Well, that was... yeah.

When I started watching S6 of Supernatural I did so knowing that it was not considered the best, by it's legions of adoring fans. I also did so not really caring that it wasn't considered the best by said legions of adoring fans because a) those same legions of adoring fans had been particularly vocal about their dislike of several characters I happen to be very fond of and so their opinions are suspect to me and b) I had a nagging feeling that a lot of the backlash was probably down to there being a new showrunner and that can often lead to people getting 'different'  confused with 'not as good'.

As it turns out, and much as it pains me to say it, they were right.

Of course, professing a nagging disappointment with this season is nothing new, is it? I'm not being original at all here, am I? No, I'm just regurgitating (or will be when I get around to actually expressing any opinions and not waffling rubbish) the same old complaints that everyone else had over a year ago. At least, I assume I will; I don't really know why people didn't like the season, since I avoided reviews and discussions for fear of spoilers. That same avoidance of media on the subject of the show may mean that a lot of my conjecture has already been (long since) proven right or wrong, or was common knowledge from the start; I don't know, so please feel free to tell me.

The reason I'm coming to this so late in the day, when I was so close to being all caught up, is that I was thwarted in my every attempt to pick up the Season 6 DV... Nah, don't worry, I'm not going to repeat that in yet another post. Moving on.

It had been a long time though, between seasons, so for the most part any flaws in the early episodes were lost on me as I was just glad to be back in this world, but it didn't take long for that nagging feeling of something isn't quite right here to start scratching away at my subconscious. All the elements seemed to be in place, but they just weren't gelling the way you knew they could.

Sam returning from Hell  - spoilers ahoy for the rest of the post -  without his soul may have seemed like an intriguing and potentially exciting story avenue to explore; and to be fair to them they were probably feeling the pressure to come up with a different angle to the one they used when Dean came back in S4; but it was a storyline which failed to take into account that the Sam and Dean chemistry, the brotherly affection even when they looked ready to kill each other, was the glue that holds the show together. They could survive without it for one, maybe two weeks, but a storyline that required Ackles and Padalecki to play genuine estrangement for half a season was a shocking mis-read of what makes Supernatural work, and what the audience wanted to see.

It beggars belief, to be honest, that someone who has worked on the show for as long as (new boss) Sera Gamble has would be that far out in their concept of the show. Especially since I seem to have the idea in my head from somewhere that she was heavily influential in bringing angels into the show; a masterstroke for which we should be eternally grateful, because it marked a quantum leap in quality. If that's true though, how do you go from getting something so right, to screwing the pooch so spectacularly?

Moving on from the incredibly poor understanding of how this show works and on to the incredibly poor understanding of how stories work.  Take the character of Samuel, for example; deceased male relative of the boys, experienced hunter, able to be tempted by promises of being with their mother again; it can't have been just me that thought they had obviously wanted to use the Dad for this storyline but Jeffrey Dean Morgan turned them down. That's pure speculation on my part though, I don't know yay or nay.

Mitch Pilleggi. Legend

If you can't have JDM, though, then Mitch Pilleggi is no slouch as a replacement. And using Samuel instead of John at least let them use the line "...the difference between you and me? You know how to live without her", which for some reason really got me. Not sure why.

While Pilleggi is awesome in the role, the Samuel character does have one pretty massive flaw this season; namely, he dies. In a blah episode in which a bunch of other characters die as well. His story just ends, without ever really reaching any kind of climax. You don't bring people back from the dead and then kill them off again without there being some kind of point to it, some kind of redemptive arc, or at least a cool fucking battle. Did Season 6 of Buffy teach us nothing?

Damp squib ending of Pilleggi's character aside, the season as a whole was full of these narrative dead ends. The 'Mother of All' character that came out of nowhere and went back the same way a couple of episodes later being a prime example. It's ok though, that whole storyline wasn't a pointless detour at all, because the boys mother showed up so it must have been important. Yeah, right, you're fooling no-one, people. The wall in Sam's head is another; all that angst over something that gave him a couple of migraines. I ask you.


As the series draws to it's depressingly limp close we learn that Castiel has been in cahoots with the baddies all along, in a compromise designed to win the civil war for control of heaven. The boys don't like this one little bit, despite the alternative being a genocidal monster taking command upstairs, so they give poor Cas a right old tongue lashing. "We were like Brothers, man!", shouts Dean at one point. "How dare you take a sensible stance and acknowledge shades of moral grey in your attempt to save all of creation from a lunatic with an apocalypse fetish!" he then doesn't go on to say.

Castiel. Unfairly Maligned 

Yes, the last few episodes seem intent on making us condemn Castiel for his actions when, let's face it, he's only in the wrong because the writers say he is. His actions seem perfectly reasonable to me. Misha Collins plays the hell out of it of course, because you'd expect nothing less, but it all smacks of desperation; by rights Castiel should just be telling the brothers to man up and stop being a pair of whiny bitches, not moping over whether he's doing the right thing.

Oh, and the way in which Dean figures out that Castiel has gone 'bad' is utter bollocks and makes Cas look like an idiot. Which, lest we forget, he is not. He is an angel, and in serious contention for the role of the new God; the guy's no dunce. Or he shouldn't be, written properly.

You're probably reading all of this and thinking that I hated this season. I didn't. There were several episodes; mainly the comedically slanted virtual stand-alones; that I loved wholeheartedly, the chemistry between the main players (when they were allowed to show it) was as good as ever, there were some surprising but welcome appearances by much missed favourites from earlier seasons, I actually liked all the Lisa and Ben stuff (Dean can't stay an immature ladies man forever) and guys like Pilleggi, Mark Sheppard and Sebastian Roche added a touch of class to the recurring roster of characters.

Lisa and Ben. I was sorry to see them go.

The problem is that the good things are fewer and further apart than they've been in any season since the (formulaic and really rather dull) first. I'm really hoping that things pick up a bit next season. (Don't tell me, all of you that have already seen it.)

A touch of class. But too little too late?

Oh, and was the fact that Eric Kripke came back to write the finale seen as a slight to Sera Gamble? It was certainly my thought when I saw his name in the credits.

So there you have it. My rambly and possibly nonsensical thoughts about Supernatural S6. They've been a while coming, so it feels good to get them off my chest. Next week, a little bit of Flash Gordon. 

Thank You Little Paper Boy

I finally, after months of fruitless searching (and fruitless whining on the internet) managed to get hold of a copy of Supernatural S6 on DVD a week or so back. My fears of once more falling massively behind; since all you dirty downloaders have already seen S7 and those with Sky and it's ilk were about to; fell by the wayside and I gleefully jumped headfirst into the creamy Winchester goodness, devouring episodes like I haven't devoured a show since Falcon Crest.

So naturally, the choice of topic for this week's post was as no-brainery as no-brainers get. Without further ado, I give you

Eerie, Indiana is one of those shows from my younger years that I know I watched all of, but only have the vaguest of memories of most of it. I remember Elvis, I remember the Mom (who would go on to much greater success as the Mom in Dawsons Creek) and I remember the creepy little kid with the '-' and '+' signs on his hand.

I remember John Astin being in it, and being great, though nothing about the actual part he played, and I remember the episode with the braces and the dogs. (That right there was a concept that wouldn't have shamed The Twilight Zone)

There are other snippets that I can recall, such as the brilliantly naff opening titles with the inspired theme music. Chills, you'd get from that music. Chills, I tell you!





Far from any specifics of plot or character, though, the thing I really think of when I contemplate Eerie Indiana; less often than the show deserves, but more often, I suspect, than anyone else I know; is just a vague feeling of having seen a classic. Do you ever have that feeling? That book, show or film, where you can't remember anything that happened in it, but you are nevertheless utterly convinced that it was great? Anyway...

I was somewhat taken aback to learn that the show had been revived, albeit for a short time only, as Eerie Indiana: The Other Dimension, with a whole new cast (one assumes because the original leads had grown too old). It would seem my finger was somewhat further away from the pulse than I generally like, in this case.

I've yet to see any of this revival, and though comments I read at the time would indicate that it maybe wasn't the classic it's predecessor was, it's very high on my list of things I want to see. First though, I'm going to relive my teens (Oh the Horror!!!) and treat myself to a rewatch of the original stone classic. When next I go a-shopping for Quest goodies I'll see if I can't scout it out, otherwise I may visit your friend and mine, Herr Y. Rohr. Either way, Omri Katz and his hot mom are going in my eyeballs sometime soon.

Sexy Mum

Anyone who can tell me why watching S6 of Supernatural prompted a post about vague memories of a 90's kids show, comment away. Get it right and win a prize. The reason may be obscure, but there is one.

Where the devil are you, DM?

So what it is, right, is it's this, right. I was going to come back from the latest of my little hiatuses with an in depth and insightful discussion of that most venerable of 80's cartoons, Dangermouse. I felt that this would be a treat for you all that would be sufficiently exciting as to make you forgive the shameless lack of content recently.

I make no apologies. 'Tis a work of genius.

Sadly, this plan was kicked into touch by the THEFT of my Dangermouse 30th anniversary boxset. By the same person, I feel compelled to point out, that stole my Dangermouse 25th anniversary boxset. Back then, it was to sell for drug funds. These days, it was to watch. So while I can compliment him on his ability to leave behind his self destructive lifestyle, and on his taste in retro secret agent goodness, I feel that a better use for my time and the wear and tear on my vocal chords would be to swear at him, loudly and with much vigour.

"I only borrowed it, I didn't know you were in the middle of watching it", he says when confronted. Oh, well that's all right then, isn't it. It's not as if there was any way you could have ascertained whether I was watching it before you walked out with it, is there? No, no way at all. I mean, asking for permission to borrow it, at which point I would have told you that I was in the process of watching it; that's clearly just fucking crazy talk, am I right?

Anyway, while I wait for the miscreant to return that which he has stolen, what am I going to talk to you about? What? Eh? WHAT? Well, howsabout a little round up of what I've been watching that isn't a seminal 80's cartoon whose narrator is one of the greatest comedy creations of all time?

Sheer class

Much of my viewing of late has been a rewatch followed by first watch of the later episodes, of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip; another show I thought I'd seen all of but have been proved wrong by a DVD set; and Murder She Wrote on ITV1. I have to say, some of the episodes of the latter have really thrown me with just how clever they actually are. I've gotten some right, and I've gotten some wrong, but only once has the culprit been obvious from the outset. I've been surprised by how much I've genuinely enjoyed the show. I'm now wondering how much of it's mammoth run ITV have the rights to repeat, and when it's going to disappear; they have S3 at least, because that starts this week.

As good as they are though; and Studio 60 is one of my favourite dramas of all time; neither of those shows qualify for the Quest. So instead let's talk about... Primeval and The Walking Dead, both of which aired months ago for those with a half decent TV package and both of which are now FINALLY airing for those of us relying on basic TV. Except you can add, both of which I've managed to get even further behind on by recording them and not watching to the extent that by my count I'm now 4 episodes late on both of them. Because I'm shit. So let's not talk about them after all. Thwarted again!

Once Upon A Time is still trundling merrily along, doing it's own thing and not holding truck with any of those old fashioned concepts like heroes who aren't dicks or plots that show some signs of progression from week to week. It's picked up the pace slightly in the last two episodes I've watched; what with the whole 'Heart buried in the box/people remembering the fantasy world/Sheriff pulling her head out of her arse and actually starting to acknowledge that something weird is happening; so I'm  quietly hopeful the last few eps should be belters. Seriously though, can you believe we're 17 weeks in and the protagonist is only now starting to maybe believe in the premise of the show? There's slow burn, and there's, well... I'm not sure what this is.

So all in all, my first post back after yet another long break has turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Not to worry though, because LOOK WHAT I'VE GOT!

Isn't it lovely?

Yes, after all my many trials and tribulations I finally managed to get hold of a copy; I only had to sacrifice 4 virgins in the end, which was two less than I was willing to stretch to; and now I'm merrily chugging my way through. By all accounts it's a bit of a weak season by Supernatural's own standards but to be honest, it's taken me long enough to see it, so right now I'm just glad of anything I can get. Not sure how critical I'm going to be able to be, that being the case, but what the hell. Expect a full round up of my slavish fan-ish thoughts next week.

Until then, then, I shall bid you adieu and once more trundle my way into the sunset. I hope I'm not leaving you feeling too disappointed.

Anything Frankie Boyle Can Do...

I realised something recently. You know that Fear Itself thing I wrote about the pilot of and said it wasn't very good? I've forgotten all about it. Seriously, it's entire existence slipped my mind. So I've seen 2 eps and that's it. That never happens, to me. I can remember shows that ran for 7 episodes on Saturday mornings when I was 12, but this...? How bland must this show be? 

Anyway, if I haven't been watching Fear Itself, what have I been watching. Well, as it turns out, not much. Unless you count The Tomorrow People but I'm sure people are sick of hearing about that show on here now. So all I'll say is S7 new boy Andrew, played by Nigel Rhodes, does a pretty mean Scottish accent, even though he isn't. Scottish, that is.

I'll never work again? Och, I dinnae believe ya.

Which doesn't really leave me much to talk about. So, er, what's everyone been up to? Any great TV watching stories to tell? At least one of you Countryfile fans must have orgasmed to John Cravens voice, at least? You can admit it, we're all friends here.

No? Well I guess it's down to me then. To produce content for this blog I mean, not induce orgasms in Countryfile viewers. I'll think of something...hang on...got it! No, it's gone.

Mmm...yeah...sheeps wool...soft and gentle...bush

This post will just have to be a random, disjointed mish mash of barely related comments, that has no flow, no point to make, and no merit whatsoever as a piece of writing. A bit like when Frankie Boyle writes his column for The Sun.

I still haven't gotten around to watching any of the DVD's I spotlighted in my 'Watching Soon' post. Not Jekyll, not Flash Gordon, not even Dangermouse. And now you can add Caprica to that list. I'll get to them soon, I swears.

What's the deal with Supernatural on DVD? When I needed S4 no-one had it. Everyone had 1-3 and 5, but no 4's. Now I want S6 and again there's a shortage. Even worse this time though, because all any shop I go in seems to have is a boatload of S1's. Is it any wonder people are abandoning the high street?

Jensen, Jared and Misha. Some people think they're hot. Can't see it myself.

I still think Wizards Vs Aliens is a cringey, tacky, low rent name for a TV show, young audience or not.

Game of Thrones S2 recently ended on Sky. I look forward to seeing it on DVD in September 2015.

But not for a long time

Who remembers Woof! ?

Saw the 1st season of the War of the Worlds TV show in HMV the other day. I'll be having that. I expected this show to come out on DVD to capitalise when the Cruise movie was released. Always thought it was a missed opportunity when it didn't. Unless it did, and they've been sitting in the same crate as all the Supernatural DVD's.

And not a sword wielding immortal in sight

Why has The Borribles not been adapted for the telly yet? Shearsmith and Pemberton to play the coppers.

I've just realised that the existence of American Horror Story in it's current form means Dark Blue must have been cancelled. I need to  get my finger back on the pulse.

Random pic of Candice Accola looking hot. Just because.

And that's the end. No point, no proper conclusion, just a random bunch of waffle about not much. Hope you enjoyed. Or didn't. Or whatever. At least the pictures were nice, right? 

Busty Asian Beauties

Welcome one and all to The impossible Quest, back up and running at last (albeit a week later than advertised because wouldn't you know it, as soon as I committed to a start date real life got VERY complicated for a little while). That's by the by though and we're here now, so without further ado, let's kick proceedings off with a look at everyone's favourite show about wisecracking dudes in a cool car fighting monsters.


It's an odd one, Supernatural. I watched S1, way back in the dim and murky past, when it first aired in the UK and I remember it being a really dull, repetitive, stuck in a rut throwback. I wasn't kind to it, in my comments at the time, but luckily this was before my all-conquering assault on the internet (Klout score of 43, baby - no, I don't know what that actually means either), so my hasty criticisms were not recorded for posterity. Fast forward a few years and I decide that the time has come to bite the bullet; The Quest will not be denied and besides, this show has been going for yonks now and everyone seems to love it; it must have something going for it, right?

I realised quite quickly, when I slapped in the first DVD, that other than some pretty iconic imagery; the flaming title card, the Mother on the ceiling, the Impala cresting a rise in a road, and of course the Winchesters themselves, I had very little memory of anything from that first batch of episodes. I had watched them, but their events had slipped from my memory like so much pus from an infected wound. As, it seems, had my ambivalence. You see, it soon became apparent that yes, it does have something going for it; an awful lot, in fact. I look back at the 'me' of all those years ago and I'm thinking 'what the Hell are you on, mate'? (For the record, I wasn't 'on' anything. Just say no, kids.)

Is it flawless? Of course it isn't; it's formulaic in the extremis and is severely hampered by having such a small cast, but those are problems that are mitigated by the chemistry between that cast (and it is small, with only two regulars and occasional visits from their Dad, with his visits being, by necessity, brief and infrequent, since his absence is a core aspect of the shows premise). Big name guest stars, or at least big names in genre circles, help a little more, (I'm particularly fond of the Amy Acker appearance, but then; Amy Acker!) and of course a bit of gratuitous blood and gore never goes amiss. All in all though, I seriously doubt that the show would have enjoyed the longevity that it has, were things to have carried on in the same vein indefinitely.

Things improve immeasurably with the introduction of Sebastian 'I'm in everything but hardly anyone knows my name' Spence and Nicki 'I got my kit off in a rubbish show about soldiers' Aycox, as a pair of recurring villains, along with an almighty mcguffin in the shape of a Demon killing gun. These factors, combined with the return of Jeffrey Dean Morgan as John Winchester, mean that the show closes out it's first season on a reasonable high.

It's with Season 2 though, that the show really begins to show signs of what it's capable of. Old family friend Bobby (the only one of the Brothers oft mentioned but never seen support network not to be killed off at the end of S1) becomes a recurring presence, new allies are introduced in the (shapely) form of a kick-ass bar owning Mother/Daughter combo (and their geeky Tin Dog), and the boys are newly re-energised in their mission to take out the Big Bad, thanks to some additions to the mythology that widens up the scope of the show nicely. And while all this is happening, the human authorities are starting to notice the trail of unexplained deaths left in their wake; that'll be back to bite 'em.

As a serial whore, I make no apologies for enjoying S2 far more than I did S1 (and I enjoyed S1 just fine). The additional cast members and increased reliance on the over arching plot was always going to appeal to me more than the almost anthology nature of the previous year.

Serial structure vs episodic? Check. Recurring support cast instead of relying on the leads alone? Check. Deep and ever expanding mythology? Check. Hot chicks and violence? Check (Come on, I'm not gonna deny that's a motivating factor). The show had arrived. This was the year that I really felt like a fan for the first time.

The improvements continue into S3, with a new enemy being introduced as well as some intriguing new characters (one of whom would be given short shrift by the writing strike mandated curtailed season, with her storyline ending without the necessary build-up; a missed opportunity).

Of course, as all true Supernatural fans will tell you (or at least, all the Supernatural fans I've dared talk to, given my spoilerphobe leanings) the show really kicks into high gear with the dawn of S4. Why? Because it's here that we see the introduction of a certain Angel, going by the name of Castiel (as played by Misha Collins). He's the canine danglies, by all accounts, and I'm very looking forward to seeing what he brings to the table. As it stands right now though, I can't really venture an opinion because I've only actually seen his first couple of episodes.

You see, as much as I might have wanted to immerse myself in S4 immediately after the slightly rushed but still very very good cliffhanger ending to the 3rd year, I couldn't. Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Not a single shop in my near vicinity could see their way clear to selling me a copy. 3 different branches of HMV in 3 different cities and numerous smaller retailers all failed me. They all had S1-3, and 5-6 as well, but for some unfathomable reason that no-one could explain to me, not a one of them had 4. I was distraught. (One of them actually tried to convince me to buy S5 without seeing 4 first. I considered getting the guy sacked, I'll be honest with you.)

All is well with the world now though, because whatever caused the drought has been fixed and my last little excursion netted me a copy. So it'll not be long now until I;m singing Cas' praises with the rest of you. Or, you know, slagging him off; I'm a contrary bastard you know. Until then, in a blatant and cynical atempt to drag in views, have a picture of him. You're welcome.


WHEN I was blasting through the first 3 seasons of this show, and ruminating on what I'd write on this here blog about it, I asked a couple of questions on my beloved twitter. I figured, the show has a lot of very dedicated fans online, I may as well attempt to tap into that and cater the blog visuals accordingly; every view counts, right? The first question I asked was which of the two Winchester Brothers was considered hottest by the ladies (or gay men, I don't discriminate). The answer surprised me in it's vehemence, because I didn't get a single reply favouring Sam (Jared Padalecki). Bit of an ego blow for him, I'd think, if he ever, you know, gave a shit about a tiny little 5 minute poll on a twitter account with no folowers. Dean (Jensen Ackles) on the other hand; he'd get trampled in the rush. In the end I featured both of them anyway; it seemed wrong not to.

The 2nd question was whether people would rather see a picture of the iconic Impala, or a picture of Jeffrey Dean Morgan? If it's possible, the response was even more emphatic. And so, as a parting treat, to say thank you for reading this waffle, I give thee:

Daddy Winchester

A Good Show, A Bad Show and an I Don't Really Know Yet Show

So, while I saw bits and pieces of these shows as a child the Quest is not satisfied with such lackluster performance and I am engaged in a full, chronological rewatch on DVD to fill in the (many) blanks. Said rewatch has now seen me reach the end of Season 3 and as such the halfway point of the series as a whole; an opportune time, one might think, for a little well thought out, constructive criticism of the kind I am justly famed for. Hah!

CHILDHOOD. A time in all of our lives when we are awestruck by pretty colours and loud noises and need nothing else to entertain us; a time when our critical faculties are about as finely tuned as Channel 5 circa 1998; a time when it doesn't matter how utterly dire a show is so long as it's trippy enough to hypnotise you while your parents argue in the back yard about whose turn it is to lie to the landlord (although that may just have been me). Except that, despite what most adults think (which is odd, because weren't they children themselves once?), that's not really the case is it? I for one have some very clear memories of watching TV and thinking that it was just embarrassing, (especially in the post Tyler Butterworth days*), but by the same token I have been very pleasantly surprised to find that most of the shows which I remember as being good have in fact aged very gracefully when I've returned to them as an adult. X-Men is no exception.


Terrible animation - watch those wild gesticulations as characters get angry; I swear Wolverine is crouching to go No.2 when he's in growly accusation mode - and voice acting from the 'shout everything at the top of your lungs regardless of context' school of acting, mean that the show is VERY MUCH an acquired taste but stick with it and you are rewarded with some really rather good superhero action adventure stories that aren't afraid to tackle the big issues - Magnetos childhood as a Jew during the Holocaust and Morphs post traumatic stress are just two examples - while still remembering to be entertaining.

Now, as I confessed here, I'm no real expert on mainstream superhero comics, but even a relative philistine such as myself is going to recognise the likes of 'Days of Future Past' and 'The Phoenix Saga/Dark Phoenix'. This, coupled with onscreen acknowledgments for comic book writers on many episodes, leads me to believe that this show is likely far more faithful to the comics that spawned it than the fans would have had any cause to expect, or even hope. Which, while good for said fans, was a bit of a gamble for the producers, given that the comics in question are very long running with complex months, years, even decades long storylines behind them. To try to transfer that to the screen in a way that didn't bore the kids must have been a challenge. Luckily, a challenge they were more than up to the task of meeting.

I've gotten the impression from somewhere, I'm not sure where, that the show becomes a lot less serialised from this point on, devolving into the more standard episodic structure that you would expect from a Saturday morning cartoon of that era. I'm not sure how happy I am about that, to be honest, but we'll see how it goes; these writers have earned enough good will from me that I'm not going to write them off without a fair crack of the whip. It'll be a while before I find out though.

YES, I AM TAKING A BREAK, (the halfway point seemed as good as any) to make an attempt to get a little bit caught up on a show some of you may have heard of called Supernatural.

Currently in it's 87th season I am slightly behind in that I have only ever seen the first and if I'm honest I can't remember a thing about it. So I've started from scratch and am currently chugging my way through the first season.

It's a little early to say, but first impressions are that I'm going to enjoy it, so long as it breaks out of the anthology rut and develops a decent story arc and support cast. I'm assured that it does and indeed I've already seen some signs of it as I delve into the back half of the season so signs are positive.

I'll talk more about this show next time, when I should have finished off at least the first season.

I KNOW IT'S SLIGHTLY LESS THAN TOPICAL NOW, as the show has been off the air for a few weeks, but this blog has been inactive so now's my first chance to say it; Camelot was a proper turkey wasn't it? I talked about my first impressions of it here and to be honest I'm disappointed in those who told me it improved because it blatantly did not. It carried on in the same bland, uninspired and frankly, boring way right up to the final cringeworthy twist. (I joked about Arthur/Morgan incest when the pilot aired, mocking the shows desperate shock tactics. I didn't think they'd ever actually do it.)

While I never actively celebrate a shows cancellation - every show has it's fans and who am I to deprive them - I'm certainly not going to shed any tears over this one either. Hopefully, the talented members of the cast can look on this as a lucky escape and move on to better things quite quickly. And if I could only think of any talented members of the cast I'd name them.

That's your whack from me for this here edition of The Impossible Quest. I'll be back, hopefully next week, with an in depth look at Supernatural. Until then, Go Away (c. Charlie Brooker)