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Continuining on the okay, not great, not bad level: after the Gwen episode(s) and the Owen episode and the Ianto episode, we get the Jack episode. Which means poor Toshiko is the last one to get her own episode. Otoh, you know, Cordelia spent most of season 1 of BTVS with minimal characterisation until the invisible girl episode, so, who knows.
Anyway.
( Fairy Tale )
Something else I watched over the weekend: a German sitcom called "Türkisch für Anfänger" (= "Turkish for Beginners"). Which was douibly rare because a) I usually don't watch sitcoms, though I tried Scrubs a couple of years ago when they started showing it until the broadcasting times became too weird, and b) our German tv productions are often pretty dire. With exceptions; we've grown good with docudramas in the last decade. But not with comedy. However, this one, consisting of one season with twelve episodes, turned out to be charming, engaging, and actually funny (as opposed to forced laughs). I wouldn't put it on a level with Joss Whedon productions, but it shares one particular quality with them: starting with archetypes/clichés the audience is pretty famliar with and then twisting them into three-dimensional characters. In this case, you have the premise of a German therapist Doris (female, very much product of 60s and 70s) and a Turkish cop, Metin, (male), two children each, deciding to share living space after having had a love affair for a year. The main pov is of Lena, the therapist's bratty teenage daughter, who isn't at all that keen on this; you also have Yagnur, Metin's daughter, who's a strict Muslim partly in protest against her Dad, and Cem, the son, who is your typical obnoxious male adolescent with macho attitudes and not so hidden insecurities beneath them. The headwriter of the show is Turkish-German himself, and the other writers also hail from both cultures, which makes for scripts that while poking fun at both sides never patronize them. In an episode where Lena persuades Yagnur to go clubbing, for example, the cliché would have been for strict Yagnur to lose her inhibitions, but instead it's Lena who goes overboard and Yagnur who takes care of her (showing among other things that hey, a companion who doesn't drink alcohol just because everyone else does is useful). With a very few exceptions, the dialogues all manage to come across naturally, and both the young actors and the ones playing the parents are good, managing to do comedy going over the top. It has just come out on DVD, and is well worth aquiring.
****
And a BSG fanfic rec, spoilers up to the latest episode: Children of the Gods, one of the best takes on Gaius Baltar I have ever read.
Anyway.
( Fairy Tale )
Something else I watched over the weekend: a German sitcom called "Türkisch für Anfänger" (= "Turkish for Beginners"). Which was douibly rare because a) I usually don't watch sitcoms, though I tried Scrubs a couple of years ago when they started showing it until the broadcasting times became too weird, and b) our German tv productions are often pretty dire. With exceptions; we've grown good with docudramas in the last decade. But not with comedy. However, this one, consisting of one season with twelve episodes, turned out to be charming, engaging, and actually funny (as opposed to forced laughs). I wouldn't put it on a level with Joss Whedon productions, but it shares one particular quality with them: starting with archetypes/clichés the audience is pretty famliar with and then twisting them into three-dimensional characters. In this case, you have the premise of a German therapist Doris (female, very much product of 60s and 70s) and a Turkish cop, Metin, (male), two children each, deciding to share living space after having had a love affair for a year. The main pov is of Lena, the therapist's bratty teenage daughter, who isn't at all that keen on this; you also have Yagnur, Metin's daughter, who's a strict Muslim partly in protest against her Dad, and Cem, the son, who is your typical obnoxious male adolescent with macho attitudes and not so hidden insecurities beneath them. The headwriter of the show is Turkish-German himself, and the other writers also hail from both cultures, which makes for scripts that while poking fun at both sides never patronize them. In an episode where Lena persuades Yagnur to go clubbing, for example, the cliché would have been for strict Yagnur to lose her inhibitions, but instead it's Lena who goes overboard and Yagnur who takes care of her (showing among other things that hey, a companion who doesn't drink alcohol just because everyone else does is useful). With a very few exceptions, the dialogues all manage to come across naturally, and both the young actors and the ones playing the parents are good, managing to do comedy going over the top. It has just come out on DVD, and is well worth aquiring.
****
And a BSG fanfic rec, spoilers up to the latest episode: Children of the Gods, one of the best takes on Gaius Baltar I have ever read.
