Setting the Template: The Original Star Trek

The crew of the original Star Trek.

It’s too bad the makers of Star Trek Into Darkness didn’t actually pay attention to the TV series the new movie is based on. If they had they might have recognized that what made the original Star Trek so special was its originality. So why on earth did they decide to not only revisit the premise of the terrific season one episode “Space Seed” that introduced Khan (Ricardo Montalbán), a genetically altered super-solider, from the Starship Enterprise’s past, but also to crib so much of the excellent second movie in the Star Trek film franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which brought Khan back to face Captain Kirk and his crew anew? The result: a pale film, one that failed to do justice to the show and even the first new re-boot of Star Trek (2009).

What made the original TV series so lasting, I think, is that it really was like no science fiction series that came before. Prior to Star Trek’s debut in 1966 (it ran for three seasons until 1969), the few glimmers of intelligent science fiction on TV were manifest in the original Twilight Zone (1959-64) anthology show and little else. Thus when Gene Roddenberry conceived of the series, which he initially pitched to NBC as “a Wagon Train to the stars,” figuring the suits would respond better to the western TV show reference, he made sure it was an intelligent, complex show that spoke, in disguised futuristic science fiction terms, to the issues of its time, like racism, war and gender differences. So lasting was the show’s groundbreaking impact, in fact, including in its depiction of American television's first interracial (albeit tame) kiss, that when Nichelle Nichols, the African-American actress who played Lt. Uhura on the show, and whom I once had the great pleasure of meeting, mused about leaving it, none other than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. urged her to stay with Star Trek, citing Uhura’s value as a role model for young African-Americans.

The Luxury of Principle – The First Season of Star Trek: Discovery

Jason Isaacs and Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery.

Note: This piece contains spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. 

Admiral Cornwell: We do not have the luxury of principles.
Michael Burnham: That is all we have, Admiral. A year ago . . . I stood alone. I believed that our survival was more important than our principles. I was wrong.

– Season 1 finale, Star Trek: Discovery

Last Sunday, the explosive first season of Star Trek: Discovery came to an end. The series premiered on CBS All Access (and on CraveTV, in Canada) with a splash back in September. At the time, our own Justin Cummings wrote powerfully about the feature-length premiere episodes, which introduced us to this new Trek space, set a decade before the adventures of the Enterprise crew we know so well from the original Star Trek series. Other Star Trek series before it had war stories, some told over the course of multiple seasons, but Discovery showed up on a war footing right out of the gate. Those first two hours promised a darker, more morally ambiguous Trek story – Star Trek in extremis, so to speak. Now, 4.5 months and 15 episodes later, one thing is clear: it has been a heck of a journey, and Discovery has more than earned its place in the expansive Star Trek universe.

An Enterprising Venture: Seth McFarlane's The Orville

(from left) Scott Grimes, Mark Jackson, J. Lee, Seth MacFarlane and Adrianne Palicki in The Orville.

This review contains very minor spoilers for the first two episodes of Fox's The Orville.

Cards on the table: until I watched the second episode of The Orville, this review was looking like it was going to be a rant. Last week's premiere episode of Seth McFarlane's much-ballyhooed piss-take on the Star Trek franchise was a frustrating disappointment. Too mild to be a send-up and not original enough to fly on its own steam, the first hour of The Orville presaged a series with no idea what it was. It seemed more rip-off than either satire or homage – and I left feeling that the network was using the "spoof" label as window dressing for brazen creative laziness. But then I tuned into this Sunday's second episode and, with my expectations now suitably re-adjusted, I had a genuine blast. What a difference a week makes.

On The Cold Side of War – Star Trek: Discovery

Sonequa Martin-Green in Star Trek: Discovery.

Note: This piece contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery.

The world needs Star Trek now as much as it ever did.

I don’t need to enumerate the problems we’re facing in our communities and society at large, because your eyes and ears are full of them already. Something that’s largely absent from our feeds, though – unless you really dig for it – is a sense of hope, a promise that things could be better. That we, as human beings, could be better. This is the distilled essence of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision for Star Trek, and it often gets lost in new incarnations of the Trek mythos, wrapped up as they so often are in their own zeitgeists and styles and disparate audiences. Star Trek: Discovery, the new Trek for our new zeitgeist, stumbles in its own way towards that lofty ideal – but ultimately, I was left with that feeling of hope that I so desperately crave.

To Boldly Go Where No Parody Has Gone Before: Galaxy Quest (1999)

What's disappointing about J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek film is that it feels less an inspired tribute to the original TV series than an attempt to simply exploit the fondness fans feel for it. While the new cast seems more at home in their parts than in the last one, Star Trek Into Darkness unfortunately is a cluttered action adventure. It also tries to clone itself from the superior Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but without the core of emotion that gave that film its special poignancy. The new film is intermittently entertaining, but Star Trek Into Darkness takes its title perhaps a little too literally. (The 3-D effects have a way of making the picture look like it was shot through sludge.) Abrams also gives the picture an obvious post-9/11 context, but it doesn't resonate in the same way The Wrath of Khan's literary allusions did. That's, in part, because Abrams explicitly imposes the War on Terror on the material of Into Darkness whereas A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick were thematically linked to the overall story of The Wrath of Khan. It would hardly be necessary for me to continually bring up The Wrath of Khan had Into Darkness not copied so much from it. But Abrams seems to want the cachet of the latter film without actually earning it. He's hoping that in using some of the same powerful scenes from Khan he will magically ignite his own picture. But they don't because Into Darkness lacks the sensibility to underscore the significance of what those scenes reveal about the characters. Which is why sometimes parody does better at capturing the appeal in a favourite TV show than the straight homage of Abrams' approach.

Tim Allen as Quincy Taggart

Galaxy Quest (1999) is that rare kind of parody that actually has the same affection for its subject as Into Darkness does, but director Dean Parisot and screenwriters David Howard and Robert Gordon create a genial, often hilarious lampoon that manages to get at the crux of why these space adventures have such a devotional audience. (Into Darkness merely caters to that devotion without reflecting on it.) Galaxy Quest doesn't even have to trash the genre to accomplish this task. It's a peppy comedy that instead redeems the love of the fan. Galaxy Quest isn't telling followers to get a life, as William Shatner once did to followers of Star Trek; it examines why this is a life. Tim Allen stars as actor Jason Nesmith, who played Commander Peter Quincy Taggart on 'Galaxy Quest.' Like Captain Kirk (William Shatner) of Star Trek, he's given to uttering such pontifically heroic lines as "Never give up, never surrender" when in imminent danger. Alan Rickman is Alexander Dane, a stylish Shakespearean actor who portrays Dr. Lazurus, a half-humanoid, half-reptilian alien. Dane is endlessly depressed that he is forever being identified with 'Galaxy Quest' rather than his higher calling. "I was an actor once," he is given to moan. Sigourney Weaver is the blond and bursting-at-the-chest Gwen DeMarco, who was the fictional ship's communications officer. Her biggest complaint is that fan magazines write "six paragraphs" on her boobs rather than her brawn. Tony Shalhoub, as actor Fred Kwan, is the unperturbed Tech Sergeant Chen.

Course Correction: Star Trek Beyond

Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek Beyond.

It may seem strange to say, but Star Trek Beyond is sort of the movie we need right now. In a month that has seen more atrocities committed than most of us can stomach, and the needless shooting of yet another black citizen in the U.S. just this week (and then the trailer, that almost felt like a response, for a Marvel Netflix series about an invincible black man), it’s encouraging to see that even our summer blockbusters have the good taste to be about unity, harmony, and hope. Even in the guise of fluffy escapism, Beyond is one of the pieces of entertainment out there right now that helps us address the problems we’re battling in the real world – the problems that prompted Roddenberry to create the brand in the first place. In that sense, Beyond feels the most like real Star Trek of any of these "nuTrek" films – and that also makes it the best of them, too.

The Future Looks Bright for Fox's Almost Human

Karl Urban and Michael Ealy stars in Fox's Almost Human

Good old fashioned fun is part of the recipe for the best new dramas of 2013. Sleepy Hollow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have already staked out that territory nicely (and, though it makes me feel a little dirty in admitting it, so has The Blacklist). And even though it came a little late to the party (premiering just three weeks ago), Fox's new science fiction crime police procedural Almost Human, is standing with the best of them. 

Almost Human has an ambitious concept on paper – a futuristic drama with high tech wizardry and self-aware androids – but at its heart it is a buddy cop show with consistently high production values and two engaging lead actors. Created by J.H. Wyman and produced by J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe), Almost Human is set in Los Angeles in 2048, in an era when advancements in technology have resulted in a corresponding increase in criminal activity. Our hero is Detective John Kennex (Karl Urban, Star Trek), who returns to the police force after emerging from a 17-month coma, which resulted from a botched raid that cost him his partner, one of his legs, and parts of his memory. Almost two years out of commission, he finds the station a very different place. Every cop is assigned a mandatory synthetic partner – rule-oriented and emotionless MX-model androids who seem to be watching the cops as much as watching out for them. With little patience for this new normal, Kennex quickly (and dramatically) dispatches his assigned android, and is then given a different kind of synthetic, one with more personality than the other models – and arguably with more personality than Kennex himself.

The Trouble With Avatar (Part Two)

When I write about Hollywood not getting science fiction right, I should point out that I am mainly referring to the movies, which by necessity have to compress portraits of complex futures / societies into roughly two hour movies, though Avatar was longer than that. By comparison, successful SF series, i.e.: Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Star Trek, etc., have the scope to delve into depictions of the future in more depth. That doesn’t mean that movies can’t do so, as well, but generally the people behind most SF films today aren’t making that attempt to deliver complexity and depth to the scenarios they offer us on screen.

Wizard World Toronto Comic Con: Where Subculture Becomes Community

Comic Cons: fun for the whole family (Photo by Krystle Burkholder)

I’ve long wanted to attend a Comic Con, but the prospect of going to San Diego has always been too expensive, and Toronto’s epic Fan Expo runs in late August when I am invariably out of town. So when the opportunity came to attend Toronto’s Wizard World Comic Con this past weekend, I jumped at the chance. But I have to confess that – despite my long-standing desire – I had little idea of what the event might actually be like.

When I first found out that I was going to Wizard World, a friend of mine described to me his experience of Fan Expo as being like “a party at the end of the world.” I haven’t had the chance to ask him precisely what he meant by this, but the description immediately called to mind the last episode the most recent season of Doctor Who which aired this past September. In that episode, we find The Doctor stranded on Earth at a point when time itself has collapsed and flattened, resulting in a scenario in which all of history is essentially happening at once: Winston Churchill and Cleopatra hold high-level summits and Roman centurions have to negotiate with flying dinosaurs. In my mind, this is what the Con promised – a world without boundaries, a place of all things and all times, all at once. And on that level Wizard World didn’t disappoint. I wandered the floor of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre amidst Imperial Stormtroopers having cigarettes with Warrior Princesses, Ghostbusters and pirates standing in line for pulled pork sandwiches, and an array of tiny Darth Vaders and Iron Men drinking apple juice from their sippy cups. The feel on the floor – among the kiosks selling an endless assortment of Big Bang Theory t-shirts, Star Wars figurines, graphic novels, and medieval weaponry – was of an unapologetic and unselfconscious celebration of all things nerdy. Fandom, without prejudice. And, to be honest, it was awesome. After all, how many places are there in the world where you can bring young children and buy a broadsword?

Photo by Mark Clamen

But in one significant way my friend’s description didn’t quite hold, and my weekend was all the better for it: this convention – unlike the 80,000-plus population of Fan Expo – was less like a party at the end of the world than a "meet and greet" at the end of the world. There was all the content but little of the overwhelming chaos I actually expected to find, and which I honestly wasn’t looking forward to. (I’m no fan of crushing crowds, and even less of interminable lines.) And if the experience didn’t rise to that intensity, it is to Wizard World’s credit. They organized an event large enough to do justice to the full scope of all the overlapping subcultures (from comic books, to classic television, video games, and film; from the subtle and elegant artistry of the comic industry, to the giddy pleasure of faux medieval battles and pillowed swordplay) without losing the humanity of all involved. There was an intimacy to this weekend’s event that was as much a draw as the celebrity headliners.

Continuum: The New Politics of Time Travel

Rachel Nichols stars in Continuum on Showcase

I’m a sucker for time travel stories. My first favourite film was Terry Gilliam’s wildly surreal Time Bandits: I was taken to see it for my 11th birthday, and can still vividly recall the delight I felt leaving the theatre that afternoon.  And I’m certainly not alone in my enthusiasm. There is something uniquely compelling about the time travel conceit, and there’s a good reason why it remains one of the more popular subjects in science fiction literature, film, and television. Time travel plots are eminently adaptable – they can be ridiculous or grave, simplistic or painfully complex. They can be camp (Time Bandits), philosophical (La Jetée), juvenile (Hot Tub Time Machine), geeky (Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel), or can just plain mess with your head (Primer). From the giddy fun of the Back to the Future trilogy, to the patently movie-of-the-week quality of The Philadelphia Experiment, to the smash and grab Snipes/Stallone vehicle Demolition Man, I have eagerly consumed them all. The Harlan Ellison-authored original Star Trek classic “City on the Edge of Forever” set the standard for me at an early age – somehow covering many of the light and heavy aspects of time travel in one brief hour of television. But when it comes to series television, the results have been more hit and miss. From the Time Bandits-inspired, delightfully cheesy, perhaps rightfully short-lived Voyagers!, to the more human-centred (and often sublime) Quantum Leap almost a decade later,  the too-quickly-cancelled Journeyman on NBC, and the BBC’s magnificent Life on Mars, time travel is a challenging format for a continuing series. And so when Showcase premiered its new science fiction/police drama Continuum in late May 2012, I made sure to tune in.

Writer Harlan Ellison: He Has A Mouth, and He Will Scream

Writer Harlan Ellison turns 78 today and if you don’t know who he is, you should. I mention his birthday, as well, because he’s dying, or at least that’s what he told The Daily Page in an interview in September 2010, just before his appearance at a science fiction convention in Wisconsin, reportedly his last public appearance. "The truth of what's going on here is that I'm dying," says Ellison, by phone. “I'm like the Wicked Witch of the West – I'm melting. I began to sense it back in January. By that time, I had agreed to do the convention. And I said, I can make it. I can make it. My wife has instructions that the instant I die, she has to burn all the unfinished stories. And there may be a hundred unfinished stories in this house, maybe more than that. There's three quarters of a novel ... When I'm gone, that's it. What's down on the paper, it says 'The End,' that's it. 'Cause right now I'm busy writing the end of the longest story I've ever written, which is me."

Now it’s not for me to question Ellison’s comments – as of this writing, he’s still around nearly two years later – and his health problems are likely quite serious – he had a crucial heart bypass operation in 1996. Nor has he published an original collection of stories since Slippage in 1997 (Troublemakers, his 2001 collection was mostly made up of previously published material with new introductions aimed at a younger demographic who likely didn’t know his work.) But this is not what this post is all about. It’s a celebration of one of America ’s most unique, uncompromising and fascinating talents, who’s been a constant in my life since high school.

He's Not Dead Yet!: Harlan Ellison's 7 Against Chaos

Writer Harlan Ellison’s not dead yet. In a piece I wrote about Ellison last year in Critics at Large, and in reference to his statement in September 2010 that he was dying, I speculated, only half jokingly, that he was still alive because the Angel of Death was scared to try and take him. The truth, as indicated in a recent interview on the cultural Vulture web site, entitled "Harlan Ellison Isn't Dead Yet," turns out to be somewhat more prosaic. Harlan, who is now 79, has been suffering from some physical ailments and emotional ones, too, which had laid him low for a long while, with only the odd short story (the Nebula ward winning "How Interesting: A Tiny Man") to his credit. But fans of the man and his work can rejoice. His first full length work since his fine short story collection Slippage (1997) has surfaced, in the form of a graphic novel. Harlan Ellison’s 7 Against Chaos (DC Comics) is an often riveting tribute, in many ways, to his formative influences as a writer.

Boldly Go: Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty, created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, recently completed its 2nd season on the Cartoon Network.

Although animated series Rick and Morty wrapped up its second season in October of 2015, the cult hit has recently moved to a new, coveted time slot on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim on Sunday nights at 11:30pm. It’s been renewed for a third season with a yet to be announced air date, estimated somewhere between late 2016 and mid-2017. In the interim, incorporating Justin Roiland (Gravity Falls) and Dan Harmon’s (Community) madcap cartoon show into your Sunday viewing schedule is a worthwhile investment of time. Arguably the cleverest cartoon series currently in production, Rick and Morty is full of bold jokes, intelligent writing, and just enough heart to keep it anchored without becoming saccharine.

Comedy at Its Highest Peak: The Big Bang Theory

The cast of The Big Bang Theory

Note: The following contains Spoilers

Two of the best American comedies on television, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family, come from very different sitcom traditions. But they also cross over in interesting ways. The Big Bang Theory (CBS), which begins its sixth season on Thursday, Sept. 27, features an old fashioned laugh track, uses two cameras, and is a studio shot comedy in the vein of The Honeymooners, All in the Family and Frasier. Modern Family (ABC), which heads into its fourth season on Wednesday September 26, and which I’ll write about next week, eschews the laugh track, is filmed on real locations and is more in the naturalistic vein of M*A*S*H and Mad About You. Yet The Big Bang Theory still boasts the kind of sharp wit and subtle jokes that makes it quite contemporary in tone; and Modern Family has a decided penchant for slapstick, spit takes and pratfalls. Both shows are very funny and, in their own ways, unique comedies.

When The Big Bang Theory debuted in 2007, it did seem like a long shot for ratings success, even though it was the creation of Chuck Lorre, who had already scored big with Two and a Half Men (a crass comedy decidedly inferior to The Big Bang Theory in every way). After all, who but a bunch of science fiction obsessed nerds would want to watch a show about people like that? But Lorre was onto something. He realized that thirty years after Star Wars, SF, fantasy and gaming had so penetrated the popular culture that there would be quite a lot of interest in its goings-on from the outside world. Not to mention, the series offered one strong female character that functioned as the fulcrum for the guys and their shtick and provided  a ‘normal’ counterpart to the male oriented geek brigade (There are now three women on the show.) Five years on, The Big Bang Theory is an enormous hit (some 16 million American viewers, up 23% from the year before) and a smooth running ensemble, with not a weak link among the cast.

X-Ceptional – X-Men: Days of Future Past

In my review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I made a point of mentioning I was a fan of the X-Men series, and it should also be noted that I’ve enjoyed the X-Men film franchise since its fresh-faced beginnings in 2000. It’s a series that seems to be improving with age, recovering from severe stumbles like X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) to finally hit its stride only, what – six, seven films in? Except for the excellent X-Men: First Class (2011), I think the strongest of the franchise were the original two films, both directed by Bryan Singer. Singer returns to the helm for the latest installment, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and I think with all this bearing in mind, it’s safe to say that on entirely its own merits, X-Men: DoFP is a fine superhero action film, and in the context of its own series, it’s nothing short of brilliant.

Hell On Wheels: AMC’s New Western Falls Flat

Anson Mount stars in AMC's Hell On Wheels

As I watched the first episode of Hell On Wheels this past Sunday night, I slowly began to realize that I was feeling something I had never before felt while watching the premiere of an AMC original dramatic series: I was bored. Reviewing a show based only on its first episode is a risky business, though I do generally feel less guilty about it when it comes to cable shows, with their relatively short seasons and high production values. (The first episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead – which premiered almost exactly a year ago – told me everything I needed to know about the show and gave me every reason to keep watching.) And, much to the misfortune of AMC’s new series, I fear the first episode of Hell On Wheels is equally representative of the series as a whole.

Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I don’t think they were unrealistic. AMC had given us a string of ambitious, structurally and morally complex, shows over the past few years (Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead), and I suppose I’ve gotten spoiled. Add to that that Hell On Wheels is the first major Western to appear on television since Deadwood went off the air in 2006, and you’ve got a recipe for disappointment. Perhaps the inevitable comparisons with Deadwood are unfair – after all Deadwood is as much a Western as The Wire is a police procedural, and there are few shows in the entire history of television that would survive the comparison. But Hell On Wheels, to its own detriment, invites the comparison: with a hero who can barely contain his seething anger, a recently widowed city woman, its lawless, frontier community setting, and its monologuing Machiavellian villain. And speaking for this one viewer, it was difficult to keep memories of Deadwood from rearing up.

Just Possibly: ABC's Kevin (Probably) Saves the World

Chloe East and Jason Ritter in ABC's Kevin (Probably) Saves the World.

Yvette: In every generation since the dawn of man, there are 36 righteous souls in the world. And they protect humanity by merely existing. Now there's only one. You, Kevin . . . you are the last of the righteous. 

Kevin: Cool.

The last network series Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters brought us was Reaper, in 2007. Telling the story of a slacker-turned-devil’s helper, Reaper was a blast for the two seasons it ran on the CW. It was cartoonish, noisy, and profane – and hardly had a redemptive bone in its body. Fazekas and Butters’s new fantasy series, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, premiered on ABC last Tuesday, and one thing needs to be said right off the bat: it is nothing like Reaper. Beyond the broad plot of a sad-sack man-boy given a tacitly epic mission that shakes up his mundane existence (a thumbnail that could just as easily describe Chuck), Kevin is as earnest as Reaper was caustic – and, moreover, comes with an unapologetic and often compelling message of hope.

Starship Joyride: Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

Chances are you've heard of Guardians of the Galaxy, or at least seen its characters splashed on huge billboards or across the side of a bus. Marvel has poured massive, unconcealed energy and cash into the marketing campaign for this film, making a hard and unmistakable push to recreate the success of its previous smash hit, The Avengers. Comparisons to that film, as well as Star Wars, Serenity, and many other similar ensemble feel-good cosmic fantasy blockbusters are inevitable. And I feel confident in saying that, if you're a fan of those types of film, you'd be unwise to ignore the ads: Guardians is fun, hilarious, action-packed, and I can't wait to see it again. Seriously, do you need someone to go with? Send me a message, I'm in.

Misery Loves Company: Shalom Auslander's Happyish

Steve Coogan in Showtime's Happyish.

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."

– Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)

"Damn it Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

– James T. Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Last winter, Shalom Auslander's dark comedy Happyish had its tragic 15 minutes, as a minor footnote to the shocking death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. Just two weeks earlier, the Hoffman-starring Happyish had been picked up by Showtime for its 2015 season. Without its star, the new comedy's future was in question. Eight months later, it was announced that Steve Coogan (The Trip, the Oscar-nominated Philomena, and of course the BBC's "Alan Partridge") would replace Hoffman in the show's central role, and the series would be retooled around the British actor. On April 5th, the series premiered – with a rewritten and reshot first episode – to a decidedly lacklustre critical reception. I don't know how Hoffman would have inhabited the role, but Coogan is perfectly cast as the recently 44-year-old Thom Paine, a Manhattan ad man suffering overlapping midlife and existential crises, and depression. The first episode of the series also introduces us to the show's ensemble of unhappy and variably unlikeable characters, including Paine's equally depressed but more explosively angry wife Lee (Kathryn Hahn, Crossing Jordan, Parks and Recreation), Paine's resigned-yet-philosophical friend Dani (Ellen Barkin, The Big Easy), and his broken, alcoholic boss and best friend, Jonathan (Bradley Whitford, The West Wing).

If you are familiar with Auslander from his radio appearances on NPR's This American Life and CBC Radio's Wiretap, or his 2007 memoir Foreskin's Lament, you will not be surprised by the tone or content of Happyish. (If you haven't heard of Auslander, a brief peak at the landing page of his personal website will probably tell you all you need to know about his outlook.) Early episodes of the season were rather heavy on the "-ish" and rather short on the "Happy," and it is easy to appreciate the response they generated. In all truth, even with such a strong cast and with recurring appearances of persecuted Keebler elves in Paine's externalized unconscious, Happyish is not groundbreaking television, and its premiere episode had all of its failings on full display. But those charmed by Auslander's uniquely bitter voice (he penned all 10 of the season's episodes) and who survived until the season finale two weeks ago will have experienced an oftentimes poignant, always pointed, and regularly thoughtful reflection on modern malaise.

A Dull Captain America; A Thunderous Thor

Growing up, my preference in comic books was always geared towards the Marvel Comics universe and not the D.C. Comics’ one. With the exception of the Justice League of America and Batman, I felt that the adventures of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Captain America, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and The Mighty Thor, with their colourful villains, complex protagonists and the grittiness of a thinly disguised Earth, trumped the mostly bland D.C. heroes and heroines. That includes, I must confess, Superman and Wonder Woman. Batman, though, with his dark psychological back story (his parents murdered before his eyes) and its nuanced present (where Gotham City’s attitude towards its costumed protector was profoundly ambivalent) seemed more in line with Marvel's layered complexity. And the first two Batman movies, Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), both directed by Tim Burton, certainly were impressive achievements. So was the masterful Superman 2 (1980) and aspects of Superman (1978). Over the years, however, most of the many Marvel film adaptations, with one notable exception, never quite jelled into fine or memorable movies, though their cinematic ingredients ought to have ensured otherwise.

The exception was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2 (2004), which coalesced into a finely acted and directed tale. It perfectly captured Peter Parker’s conflicted nature: a normal teenager trying to balance a work and love life with the responsibility he considered that he owed his late Uncle Ben. In the story, he had to cope with the intense guilt brought on because he failed to use his superpowers to save Ben out of the sheer selfishness of not getting involved in the affairs of man. The rest of the Marvel movies, including the first and third Spider-Man flicks, fell short of that masterpiece. Filmmakers either picked some of the duller Marvel superheroes, Daredevil (2002) and Iron Man (2007), to adapt to the screen, or the directors botched the projects (Fantastic Four (2005)) or both (Iron Man). A few of the movies, the provocative first Hulk (2003), directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Bryan Singer’s well-acted and well-characterized X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003) fell somewhere in the qualitative middle. The summer of 2011 marks a revamp of the X-Men franchise (X-Men: First Class, a prequel to the previous movies, which I have not seen) and the premiere of both Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, which opens today. Despite its faithfulness to its source material, Captain America: The First Avenger is one of the most innocuous and forgettable of all the Marvel movies.