A New Story of a Man and His Car

In the past few years, there has been a trend within popular culture to revisit the past. To be honest, the trend has always been around, but it’s taken on a sense of urgency to the point where re-made versions of TV shows and movies have been shoved down the throats of viewing audiences with a limited amount of respect to the source material.

Last night, I caught the latest in the parade of re-makes, NBC’s updated version of Knight Rider. Considering the fairly predictable plot and inconsistencies with the original version, the show was actually watchable.

My biggest problem with the show was the voice of KITT. I was expecting to hear Will Arnett, which I had originally thought was a bad casting choice, but actually warmed up to. However, because of a non-complete clause, Arnett was replaced by Chris Knight himself, Val Kilmer. I didn’t think Kilmer was a bad choice, but at times, his voice had zero personality.

My other main problem was a scene which showed an instance in which the original KITT as superior to the new version. In last night’s movie, the bad guys hack into KITT, leading to the computer’s deactivation so Mike Traceur (pronounced Tracer, son of Michael Knight) can catch up to them using the car. Well, new KITT is not indestructible because the computer controls self-repairing nanotechnology, which means when the computer’s off, KITT can get scratched. Original recipe KITT had some type of molecular bonding which didn’t need a computer. Still, the nanobots in new KITT can also change the color of the paint, which is a good feature.

Despite my complaints, the show contained a decent serving of car chases and action. And the picture quality looked great–even more than usual fare on HD.

Seems like NBC is going to make this into a series for next season. As long as it isn’t up against Lost, I may watch.

King Tom

The Taste of Bauer

Those wacky Brits will drink anything.

From remote.lohudblogs.com:

if you travel to Britain, you can buy “24 CTU,” “a new citrus-flavored stimulation drink brand,” according to this report.

It’s from Cott Corp., “one of the world’s largest non-alcoholic beverage companies” offers the drink in both regular and diet, natch.

When I think 24, I really don’t think citrus flavoring. Maybe something more along the lines of Dr. Pepper with a touch of gunpowder. And what’s with the diet version of the drink? The last thing Jack Bauer needs is a drink with fewer calories and less sugar.

While I’m on the topic of 24, I read recently that the next season probably won’t air until January aught-nine. And at this point, I can’t really say that I care too much about that one way or the other. I was really disappointed with last season, and while I’d like to see the show return to its former glory, I don’t really expect that to happen.

I think that in the past few seasons, the show killed off too many fan-favorite characters, non-fan-favorite presidents and introduced way too many plot twists at the expense of future seasons. Even some things done storywise last year felt like they were re-hashes of previous years. And it’s hard to imagine them coming up with anything new.

Another reason I don’t think the show will return to its former levels of awesomeness is recent departure of co-creator Joel Surnow. I don’t know too much about what goes on behind the scenes of the show, but when you have one of the people responsible for the show’s early success leaving, that doesn’t seem like it could be a good thing.

Oh well, at least we have memories of Jack’s awesomeness.

King Tom

The path is clear

I have to admit, I watched part of the Super Bowl last night.

The Civee and I caught the last 10-15 minutes, but that was mostly because we were waiting for the new episode of House to start. As you may have guessed, the King is not a football fan.

But I suppose as people who aren’t practicing the religion in which they were raised say “oh, I was raised a Jedi,” I could say I was raised a Giants fan, so it was nice to see them come back and win. Even for a non football fan such as myself, it was an exciting few minutes, and I’m happy for those back home who are still celebrating the Giants win.

Now that that’s all over with, pitchers and catchers report in 10 days. Winter is almost over.

King Tom

Meanwhile, Back on the Island

After eight months, Lost is back and the King is content.

My mind is still buzzing from this episode (not to mention the drink or two I had with dinner prior to the clip show) and that’s a good thing. Tonight’s episode of Lost, The Beginning of the End brought multiple storylines together, advanced the occurences on the Island and went back to the future to show us the reprecussions of the choices made during tonight’s events.

The only thing The Beginning of the End didn’t do was answer questions about the mythology of the show, which I didn’t mind too much because of (a) my state of mind and (b) the fact that Lost is back on the air. Continue reading “Meanwhile, Back on the Island” →

King Tom

Forcing a Case of Mistaken Identity

This afternoon, I was waiting for a table at the usual location of the Thursday hour of me. A gentleman came up to me and the conversation went something like this:

Older Gentleman: Mike?
Me: Excuse me?
Older Gentleman: You’re Mike, right?
Me: No.
Older Gentleman: Oh wait, no, not Mike, Morgan…?
Me: No, that’s not me either. (Invisible thought balloon above my head: Not even close. Do I look like a Morgan? Or Mike Morgan?)
Older Gentleman: You don’t work at the hospital?
Me: No, I don’t. (Still wondering how he got me confused with someone named Morgan).
Older Gentleman: (clearly dejected) I’m sorry. I thought you were a friend of a friend. Works at a hospital.

Usually, I don’t mind it when someone mistakes me for someone else. And sometimes I feel bad for letting them down. For instance, if someone thinks I’m their long lost friend who they haven’t seen in a long time, and I’m not that person, I feel bad for them. But it just gets a little weird when someone is insistent that you are someone you are clearly not. Like they’re trying to shoehorn you into an identity and pulling out every link they can to get you to be who they want you to be.

It’s happened to me a few times, the most notable of which wasn’t actually that bad. About 10 years ago, I was in a bar/restaurant in Jersey when a group of drunk guys came up to me, asking me if I was Mats Sundin. They were extremely insistent that I was, to the point where I had to tell them I was just to get them to go away. I then turned to one of my associates and asked “who the hell is Matt’s son Dean”?

King Tom

T-Minus One Day and Counting

The long-awaited season four premiere of Lost is tomorrow. Naturally, the King is excited.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the show- not so much spoilers, but there’s been a lot of press about the show itself. Partly because the season three finale left everyone wanting more, partly because of the writers strike and partly because ABC is marketing the show smartly for once. My point is, there’s been a lot written lately about Lost. And one particular blog entry has addressed a long-standing pet peeve of mine. Alan Sepinwall, TV critic for the Star-Ledger writes about a Q-n-A session with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof:

QUESTION: Question for the producers and I guess maybe for Matthew [Fox]. I’m wondering why whenever Jack is placed in a position where he can ask things of The Others, he always asks such terrible questions? I mean asking Juliet what she and Ben talked about doesn’t seem that useful either to him or to us.

DAMON LINDELOF: Since Matthew is not responsible for what Jack says, he has to unfortunately in some cases execute our best version of it. As writers, the questions that the characters are asking on the show is always a slippery slope. We find ourselves saying, “We’d be asking much better questions, too.” Unfortunately, if Jack asked the questions that we wanted him to, The Others would answer none of them. So you would just have him asking a string of questions with Michael [Emerson] sort of looking back at him stoically, which probably would not be that interesting to watch. He asks the questions that at least he has an opportunity of getting an answer out of them.

That was precisely the issue that bothered me most about the first three-quarters of last season. Too many Lostie and Other moments with zero questioning or information sharing. I understand what Damon’s saying- that Ben wouldn’t tell Jack anything. But even if they had set that up early on, with Ben telling Jack that he’s not going to answer his questions, that would have helped a lot.

And one other thing–I watched the re-run of last year’s season finale and realized something. I wasn’t a fan of the ‘how Jack got his tatoos’ episode. But in a way, that flashback set up the premise of the season finale. Because we were shown that Jack went to Thailand and didn’t have a good time, the opening shot of a dissheveled Jack on an airplane seemed plausible. And therefore, made (me at least think) it possible that the rest of the episode’s flash—-s were after the Jack in Thailand episode.

Oh well, enough talk about the past. The future is tomorrow.

King Tom

It begins again

Over the past few weeks, ABC has released specially-produced LOST clips, or Missing Pieces, to maintain excitement about the show, despite the most unreasonable hiatus in TV history. The clips have shown parts of the series storyline that, to this point, have remained unexplored.

With Season Four of Lost starting this Thursday, today’s release was the last of the series. And it’s pretty damn good. Don’t worry- there aren’t any spoilers about the new season. Linkage courtesy of DarkUFO:

Thursday can’t get here fast enough.

King Tom