John Walker's Electronic House

The t-shirt reads, “Cuter than Baby Jesus”.

As television (by which I of course mean US television, because good GRIEF there’s nothing else out there) winds down for the summer, it’s time to look back at the season gone, and see quite how right and wrong I was. Of course, EVERYTHING below contains enormous spoilers, and if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.

Shark – CBS

With remarkable prescience I announced regarding the House With Lawyers nonsense, “I can see it working if they don’t overplay the teenage daughter crap.” So that was a show I stopped watching once the teenage daughter crap took over entirely. How on earth it’s managed a full run, let alone being picked up for another season, is a mystery. Perhaps reaching into the extremities of the banal is the secret to television longevity. Whatever, no one with any sense is watching it. Which would explain the successful ratings.

Jericho – CBS

What’s wrong with me? 22 episodes of this ridiculous rubbish I watched. And it wasn’t until episode 19 that it got… not quite “good”, but close. It’s not that I saw the potential that was eventually touched on – I just assumed it would remain as idiotic throughout. And yet I couldn’t stop. Each week they’d find new ways to melodramatise the inane, treating a burning school story as if they were the first programme on television to have ever shown fire, and how people put it out. Relationships broke down and new ones started without a human being alive caring less. Oh no! Eric broke up with April! Who was April again? Oh, April’s dead? She was the one married to Eric? And so on. Nevermind the show’s only star, Skeet, and his groundbreaking off-again-off-again relationships with at least three characters. There was the sheer joy of the programme entirely forgetting characters, and then later desperately trying to make up excuses for their absence. There was the complete astonishment as nothing happened for episodes, then a flurry of activity presumably over sweeps. And then, for the last four episodes, WAR! Hooray! And it was quite fun. Finally everyone stopped keeping tedious secrets from each other and guns went bang. But it was too late. Amazingly enough, taking the show off air for three months was more than audiences were willing to wait between episodes – the idiots. And now, in my most ridiculous move, I’m disappointed it’s been cancelled. I repeat, what’s wrong with me?

Six Degrees – ABC

ABC’s treatment of Six Degrees was deeply peculiar. I really liked this show, despite its not being about very much at all. I liked that the relationships between the six main characters were so quietly established, and that even after however many episodes it survived, they still didn’t know each other despite the many coincidences and links. I liked that it ambled with its mysteries, as gentle as they were, and made the relationships more important. But most of all, it contained really fantastic acting. However, by taking it off air for over four months, and then starting it up again with almost no promotion and no recap for confused viewers, it was of course doomed to failure. Only lasting one more episode on its return, the remaining few have disappeared. Oddly, for a show so quiet and unimposing, I’d like to see a DVD release with the missing few, just to see how far they got.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip – NBC

Well, it’s dead forever now. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it ought to be. I think finding out that the decision to move the emphasis to the whiny, tedious relationships, almost completely forgetting about the TV show they were supposed to be making, was Sorkin’s own. I’m sure there was studio pressure, but he stated firmly that it was always his intention. Which proves that he never had the faintest idea what to do with the programme he’d created. Despite excellent acting, a great premise, and the sort of fantastic banter Sorkin can’t help but write, I think the real brilliance of Studio 60 might have been performed in our own heads. What the show could have been, what the show should have been, was bubbling potential in our minds, and was never really delivered. There were lovely episodes, and great moments. It was my favourite programme before Christmas. But ultimately, it was being made by people who didn’t know what to do with it, and as such the failure was inevitable. The last few episodes will be shown from this week onward, and I’ll watch them enthusiastically. It was great. It really was. But it should be judged by the high standards it announced for itself, and as such, a second season was never a great idea.

Battlestar Galactica – SciFi Channel

Excellent bonkers ending, pissing everyone off by including a Bob Dylan song for no reason and then leaving everyone else to try and make up excuses. Five new Cylons, non of whom should have been, which will make for some fun, if rather desperate writing next season, and Starbuck! Hooray! Even the cast and crew were tricked into believing she was really dead. Which makes them great big twits, as it was fairly obvious she wouldn’t be. But seriously, they went crazy trying to convince everyone, with Katee Sackhoff (a name that sounds like a protest to fire the famous Baywatch star) even auditioning for parts in other shows. Loonies. Really great stuff, constantly entertaining, often moving, and featuring lots of exciting things blowing up in space. Amen.

Help Me Help You – NBC

So here I was really wrong. The fabulous pilot turned out to be a fluke, and I stopped watching only a couple of episodes before it was cancelled.

How I Met Your Mother – NBC EDITED

The premise, in case you’ve not seen this, is that thirty years in the future, a father is telling his teenage children the story of how he met their mother. 48 episodes in, and Ted and Robyn have finally broken up. The writers told wicked lies in interviews, saying they intended to keep them together for the foreseeable future, but the season finale did otherwise. And as nicely as possible. Marshall and Lily, the other couple, finally got married at the end of the second run, and the wedding got everything right. They seemed to tease the audience by setting up a typical sitcom wedding, with everything wackily going wrong, and then in a splendid bait and switch, turned it into a beautiful and romantic moment. Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, remains ideal, his character never softening, always resorting to being the bastard. In fact, the writers say they think he’s become a bit too nice of late, supporting Lily and Marshall’s marriage, and plan to drag him down again for season 3. Consistently funny, and impressively inventive with its format, it’s unquestionably the only decent multiple camera sitcom on TV at the moment. Muddling time, flashing forward, and being remarkably rude (apparently they watch Two And A Half Men very closely, and then if they get away with anything risque, the HIMYM writers protest that they should be able to too), it’s great every week.

Heroes – NBC (Big spoilers)

The unquestionable success of the year, Heroes has managed something very rare indeed. It’s a huge ratings hit, critical success, AND a really damned good programme. I learned why recently, after reading an interview with creator Tim Kring. It turns out he has no interest in science fiction or comic books at all. Instead, he knows the ingredients for making good television, saw a marketable opportunity, and then here’s the non-soulless part: hired people who do care about science fiction and comic books to write it. If Kring doesn’t get something they’ve written, or finds it too obscure, it’s nixed. It means they’re creating a proper superhero show that’s open to everyone. The writers are full on geeks, hiding comic references throughout that I don’t even want to get, but they’re there for those who do. Characters who were meant to be one-offs have proven hit successes and stayed on to become incredibly important players (like Claire’s dad) (I have no idea what happened with Zach, and don’t much care), showing a will to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses, and adapt.

I think the other reason for Heroes power as a series is the real danger that anyone could die at any time. Because they do. Big, exciting characters are constantly falling, or having their brains eaten. It’s unlike most superhero fiction where you feel patronised by the pretence that Superman might be in any real danger. Here they are, and likely as not, they’ll not survive. Keeping Silar alive at the end, I’ve decided, is a good idea, as he was too good a baddie to lose. Losing Peter and Nathan was a horrible shock. (I love Kring’s answer as to why Peter couldn’t just fly up on his own: “You know, theoretically you’re not supposed to be thinking about that.”) I’m especially intrigued to learn more about the Watchmen… I mean previous generation of the current heroes, and their past, and how they got to a place where they believed slaughtering millions of people was the only route to mankind’s salvation.

And unlike silly people, I think Origins is a great idea. Instead of breaking the show up into lumps (Heroes never really recovered from its second hiatus), there will be one mid-season break of six weeks, during which Heroes: Origins will show, featuring the emergence of six new characters, from whom viewers can choose which should survive to season 3. And yes, the public are idiots, but let’s hope that they pick six excellent choices so it doesn’t matter which gets through.

Round up

House has been mostly excellent, with only a couple of weak episodes (including last week’s, which should have been so much more). The real strength of the third season was taking House from a grumpy-but-brilliant physician, to a sociopathic bastard. Characters have even started to refer to him as “evil”. Gone are the extremely silly episodes of the past where he’s got some daft motivation for saving a patient, his only remaining interest being the opportunity to experiment, win an argument, or improve his own health. It’s dark, man. But it’s so good. My Name Is Earl remains too preachy, but somehow always funny. Scrubs’ best days are clearly in the past, but that doesn’t stop it being very entertaining most weeks. The Kim storyline was very awkwardly told, and not much of a season finale. And please, God, don’t let the continuing (as it’s been renewed for a seventh run) story be that JD and Kim stay together for the sake of the unborn baby. A loveless marriage at the centre of a sitcom may have worked for Married With Children – I don’t see it succeeding here. Bones is the same as it ever was – fun, silly, and gross. Love it. Doctor Who has been a ceaseless series of barely watchable shite. Please, someone fire RTD. And 30 Rock has been renewed, proving that there is no Television God.

Thanks to Kim for the link.

TV reaches its absolute zenith this summer.

It can only go downhill from here.

Going through US Immigration is something I do with frightening regularity. Normally this is for work, where I’ve developed intricate skills for surviving the confusing ordeal. Under US Immigration laws, one is allowed into the country for a maximum of 90 days, either on business or, as it’s now so eloquently known, not business. For business, you’re only allowed in if you’re not going to earn any money while you’re there. By the nature of my job, this is the case, and as such I have no need for a visa. This, however, doesn’t stop the customs officers from putting journalists in cells and deporting them, so it’s all a little bit scary. I’ve never had a single problem though, and find it all relatively smooth, so long as I stress “writer”, rather than “evil spying reporter”.

(Aside: My first time through customs for work, I stared at the form in confusion (not even the green one asking if I’m a Nazi) and had no idea whether the tick “business” or “pleasure” (as the form said back then). I tried to explain thie situation to the large, menacing looking man with the gun on his hip in a blustered, Hugh-Grant-a-like British muddle, how I had no idea which to choose. He sighed wearily at me, and ticked business, and then glanced to the right. I’d not noticed the field for “male/female”. Without lifting his head he raised his eyes toward me, curled his nose and drawled, “Are you not sure about this one either?”)

So you need to know that Chicago is a city of divisions. As a recent television episode of This American Life noted, Chicago is so segregated that demographers had to invent a new term to describe it: hyper-segregation. There really are areas which are white, those that are black, another Hispanic, and so on. One of the more trivial divisions is the North/South divide over baseball. The North, by tradition, supports the Cubs. The South the White Sox. However, for reasons even I don’t understand, my team is the Sox, despite my Chicago hosts having always lived nearer the top than the bottom. So, as ever, I was wearing my White Sox cap as I entered the country. I got to a customs desk in astonishing time, thanks to the sudden decision by O’Hare airport to employ more than two customs officers at once, and explained that I was here on holiday.

The officer asked me to remove my cap for the photo they now take every time you visit the US (as well as collecting fingerprints), and then added, “You don’t want to wear that around me.”

“Oh no!” I replied. “You’re not a Cubs fan, are you?” He grimly nodded a yes. “I’m doomed!” I said too enthusiastically.

Thinking I should engratiate myself with him now, I added, “I might be going to see the Cubs play while I’m here.”

“See them lose, you mean.”

Then he complained to me about how awful they were, and stamped my passport.

Since then, the Cubs are currently riding a five game winning streak, getting their winning average over 500, which is better than the Sox can muster. So there you go, Mr Grumpy Customs Guy, cheer up.

I was chatting to my sister via instant message, gently mocking her for her daft fear of the potential reality of movie monsters. To worry about zombies smashing the windows and eating her brains, at 27 years old, seems just daft. Then she delivered her winning blow.

“It all started when a certain someone told me there were wolves in the trees at Newlands Corner.”

Newlands Corner was a local place filled with grassy hills ideal for rolypolying down, and woods perfect for losing your sister’s Aerobe within the high branches. We went there quite regularly with our parents, suited as it was to picnics, bike riding (especially the amazing deep craters in the woods caused by WW2 bombing – thanks Nazis for your excellent bike courses!) and the consumption of long-begged-for ice creams. I have no recollection of ever telling Catherine that there were wolves there. But apparently I did.

“[It was] when we were little. I remember cutting through the trees at Newlands Corner to get back to the path that leads to the carpark, hearing a rustling and you telling me it was a wolf and mum and dad telling you off. Then you told me that Woofle [my favourite toy – a dog glove puppet] would turn into a werewolf on a full moon and I told you he wouldn’t and you said I was right but there were werewolves out there and then you howled until I cried. Then you howled just too scare whenever you got the opportunity.”

My response to this revelation is confusing. I feel equal measures of guilt and pride. I do feel terrible to know that mean-spirited comments made under the age of 10 could have such a long-lasting, and apparently debilitating effect. But I also feel rather strongly that I met my responsibilities as an older brother with respectable vim. Surely we all have to have someone in our lives who is required to instill a fear of imaginary baddies in our tiny brains? I was recalling yesterday about my mad terror of catching rabies, after a school friend had told me all about how one of its more peculiar symptoms was a fear of water. Such a bizarre ailment was more than I could comprehend, and I became convinced that the only means by which I might ever die would be nuclear war, or a rabid dog bite. So surely I was only fulfilling my necessary brotherly duties for Catherine?

This, unfortunately, opened the gates for other forgotten childhood crimes. Apparently, a few years later, Phillip Kett (a very bad influence on me throughout my adolescence) and I told my sister to ask my mum what a blowjob was. I remember this incident arriving after Phillip said it in front of her, and my not wanting to explain. I think Catherine recalls it as all being much more malicious.

And then I mentioned the Boggle Crime. I was sure we’d already been over this. So much so that I even mentioned it in a review a while back.

“Boggle is perhaps most orientated for a single-player mode. I don’t have to have an opponent when challenging myself to extract as many words as I can from the grid of sixteen letters. In fact, after the way I treated my little sister as a child, I shouldn’t be allowed opponents. She would look up from furiously scribbling down words and ask, “How do you spell ‘COUNT’?” and I would tell her and then say, “But there’s no point in you writing that down now, cos I have it.” And she so naively would comply. Oh god, I feel terrible. I deserve this version of the game to be such a complete mess.”

I hadn’t told her.

“I’m slightly humiliated. When I read it, I can picture me sat on your bedroom floor desperate to find a word longer than 4 letters so you won’t take the piss out of me!”

And there, there’s no pride at all. It’s horrible to remember the abuse of power of being a bigger brother. It’s something over which I have no control. I can’t go back and not be pointlessly mean to my sister now I know not to. I can’t make sure she only has happy memories of our relationship. But I was a child too. It’s so unpleasant to realise now that she looked up to me, and that my brotherly horridness had a reaching effect. Although she reassures me that overall I was a decent brother.

I love my sister very much. It’s nice to say so.

(I should add, in the interests of balance, her greatest childhood crime. At an age far too young to be so ingenious, she would stand at the top of the stairs and shout, “Ow! John! Stop it! That hurts! Stop hitting me!” and then burst into tears and run into her bedroom. An angry parent would come into my room, where I sat innocently, bemused, and would be shouted at, and then moreso for “lying” about it. That racket lasted the good part of a year before she was rumbled).

I’ve come over all multimedia.

PC Gamer have officially launched their shiny new podcast, the first episode featuring cuddly little me. It’s remarkably fun. I fear that I might be a bit boring. (And in the game).

And I appear very briefly in the latest EGTV, sounding remarkably positive about a game for which I feel only apathy. Editing, eh?

There are regions of Chicago for which I am not nearly hip enough. I have been introduced to them by those who qualify, and then have naughtily snuck back to enjoy their wares privately, despite falling woefully short of the requirements.

One such place is a coffee shop in Wicker Park (well, let’s face it, the whole of Wicker Park is somewhere I shouldn’t really be) called Earwax. See, by name alone it should be obvious to any that someone of my nature – not geek enough, not cool enough, not street enough, not skater enough, not smart enough, nor dumb enough to fit into any appropriate niche – should be keeping well away. Of course, I want to visit such a place. And not because it’s hip – that, if anything, makes me feel uncomfortable. I want to visit it for it’s peculiar combination of dingy lighting and brightly coloured furniture, the generous service and the decent food and drink. I like that it’s so odd-looking, but it’s that very odd-looking-ness that renders it hip beyond my means.

As I sit facing the open front of the store, watching the sort of people walking past who really ought to be in such an area, I notice that the music playing is Devendra Banhart. I’ve not heard this particular album (but since he releases about five a day, that’s not too surprising), and I concoct the plan that I could ask my extremely hip waitress whether this is Devendra Banhart. I’d be slightly unsure, and she’d say, “Yes! It is! You recognised Devendra Banhart, who is a hip singer, and as such are now welcomed into our fold as one of the Hip People.” She would then tell the other staff that I was now to be recognised as hip, and I would presumably receive some sort of appropriate in-house discount.

Another member of the staff put out some napkins on a table near mine. I looked at him, then back at my book, then back at him again certain that something was wrong.

This man was no more hip than I. If anything, he was more plain, more implanted in the background than I could claim – how could he possibly have the sheer cheek to have a job here? Here in Earwax, in Wicker Park?

And then I realised. This man – this genius – was beyond anything my simple mind could grasp. His presentation, his lack of hip, was a carefully cultivated style, perfected over years, until he had reached this zenith of an anti-hip appearance. He was, by far, the most hip man in the area. He was their king.

I didn’t ask about the music, but instead paid my bill and left.

I’m on a television set.

That’s not strictly true, in as much as it’s a lie. I’m in a Chicago high school, sat in the corner of the room while Kim teaches an English class. And yet, I feel as though I’m on a television set.

You would think that there would be enough in common between schooling across the Atlantic that a classroom would feel like a classroom, but despite all the commonalities, there’s still something completely distinctive, alien even, about the American High School Experience.

Long, stretching corridors lined with tall, thin lockers are set dressings for a high school drama, rather than objects appearing anywhere in real life. There’s school, and then there’s pretend American school from off of the telly. To step inside this doesn’t shatter the mythology and reveal it as reality, but rather absorb you into the mythology itself.

Somewhere, between the bells ringing and the class immediately leaping out from behind their individual desks while the teacher shouts last minute instructions over the ruckas, and loud intercom buzzers preceding drawled announcements for such-and-such to go to the principal’s office, there has to be a blonde teenage private investigator solving intricate crimes, and a floppy-shirted disgruntled girl dying her hair red and lusting after Jordan Catalano. It’s certain that the unnaturally giant fifteen year old boys strolling on their way to football practise will be taking part in a game against the local rivals which they will be losing until the final few minutes, when their grumpy, overweight coach comes up with a new tactic that’s so crazy it just might work.

The class banter, lively and impressively funny, is surely scripted. They are the cleverly constructed lines from a writer who later plans for their wit to be used in the face of surly vampires or young superheroes. And which of these students are going to meet grisly and unpleasant deaths at the blade of a cloaked, crazed and perhaps supernatural killer?

How peculiar for this cast of extras to be seemingly unaware of their Truman-like existence, believing themselves to be studying here for a reason, seeing their existence reaching college, and then even regular adult life, rather than the early cancellation that inevitably awaits. Or perhaps these will be the lucky ones, seeing their stereotyped roles re-realised in a college setting, with even their principal coming along to run a local bar.

I’m off to the capital city of America, Chicago, to check on my royal grounds.

I’ll be back a week Friday, but completely available by email.

If I owe you work, QUICK! Look over there! For quite a long time!