Torchwood Again

So I'm now five episodes into season two and my impressions after the season premier have so far not been disappointed.  This season is just so much better than the first one.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate Owen Harper?  He is so good.  I loved him in "Meat," and he is just the most adorable little dork in "Adam."  So good.

I'm appreciating that we're getting more background story on Jack.  He's such a complex and interesting character and you could have shows about him forever and still not know everything.  I really hope we get to find out what happened in the two years that the Time Agency erased his memories.

I also like Gwen a lot more this season.  She's really pulling together as a character that I can like.

Also Ianto!  Now that he's actually an important character they had to give him a personality, and he's funny! I love it.  Funny is good.

There are still some inconsistencies that bother me, like Ianto's wishy-washy love life.  He went from being so depressed about Lisa and in constant distress about it, to being in love with Jack, to in "Adam" still being upset about Lisa.  I mean.  I know time passed and he moved on but still hasn't completely let go and that makes sense but I guess because we don't see a whole lot of that progression, it's a little jarring when it does come up.  The same is also true of Tosh, who, one episode, is crazy about a soldier who gets unfrozen four times a year, and then in the next one she's falling all over herself to make Owen  sandwich.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I saw this movie with some friends about a week ago and I have been meaning to write about it ever since.  As you can see from my discussion of... everything else I write about here, I'm not much for reviews, but I do like to share my thoughts.

This was kind of a strange movie, in my opinion.  I've never seen Planet of the Apes or any of the other movies in the franchise, so for me it's kind of a standalone thing.  It just didn't seem to flow quite right.  Basically it was separated into three distinct parts.

The first part would be entitled "James Franco and His Adorable Pet Ape are Adorable," and was character development of motives on the part of Franco's character.

The second part is "Tom Felton is a Dick and Caesar Gets Pissed," which was character development on the part of Caesar and his motives.

The third part is "Apes Learn to Talk and Then Fuck Shit Up," which is exactly what it sounds like.

So the first part and the second part flowed together pretty logically, but then the third part came and I wasn't really sure quite way the apes were being so violent or what they were really trying to accomplish and it was all a little bit confusing.

That said, the first two thirds were a pretty good movie, and anything starring James Franco and Tom Felton can't be too bad, right?

More Torchwood

I made it through to the end of season one.  I have to say that the finale was pretty disappointing.

"Oh look, bad shit is happening and we can't stop it."
"Hey, we're having visions telling us to do this... it must be the right thing to do, even though it's what caused the problem in the first place."
"Oh look, that thing we did made things worse."
"Now that we've made things worse, though, we can easily stop it in about 5 seconds because Jack is immortal."
"Oh no, Jack's really dead."
"Oh no, actually he's not."

I don't know, I guess I was just looking for a little more suspense, and excitement.  It was very... mundane.  Predictable.  I was not impressed.

I have, however, seen the premier of season two, and I was very impressed by it.  I think it was the best episode of the show so far.  Clever enemies!  Fast-paced plot!  More about Jack's past!  I think I actually have hope for this show now.

Torchwood Update

I'm almost finished season one of Torchwood.  I'm up to "Combat," which means there are only two episodes left in the season.  It feels like it's taken a really long time, but that's okay.  I don't really feel like doing episode analyses, but here are some random thoughts:

I really liked the Gwen/Owen relationship, and I'm sad that it's over now.  I think it was partly because Owen was so sweet toward Gwen compared with how he is toward everyone else, and that really won me over.

I'm never sure whether or not I like Gwen.  She's kind of useless and has a tendency to do things wrong, but in a way that makes her more real.  On the other hand, she does often disobey/challenge Jack, and as she showed in "Combat," she doesn't take shit from her boyfriend, either, so I do respect that about her.

I can't decide about Tosh either.  In "Greeks Bearing Gifts," the only episode where we really learned anything about her, we discovered that she was always the one to feel left out and unliked by the others, and she is overwhelmed by work and sensitive and... basically a combination of Ianto and Gwen.

I'm excited to see what sort of crazy season finale RTD dreamed up for this show... will it compare to the Doctor Who tearjerkers?  I guess I'll find out within the next few days!

Pottermore

Yesterday I managed to get into early entry of Pottermore.  I was pretty excited about that because I was sure that all the crazy die-hard fans would be eager beavers and beat me to it by a million years, but apparently I lucked out.

I've had this strange relationship with Harry Potter I lately, by which I guess mostly that the movies never really did it for me.  I never even got around to seeing part one of Deathly Hallows.  I would have liked to have seen part two, but I didn't have anyone to go with, so that didn't happen.  I consoled myself by rereading it, and it was as good as I remembered (I got through it in a day and a half, and I was at work one of those days, so obviously the books haven't lost their power to captivate me), but I just haven't really felt the magic since four years ago.

Pottermore excites me, though.  It's book-based.  It's things out of JK Rowling's head that we didn't know before.  That's pretty amazing.  I'm hoping that it lives up to all the hype.

My username is QueenWizard10, although I sort of regret that now.  All of my other options were really shitty things where the two words didn't go together at all.  This was the only one that read as an actual phrase and didn't sound like shit, and I was in a hurry because I didn't know if there was still a chance that they would run out of spots and I'd get rejected halfway through registration and also I was at work and I was trying to be quick about it.  But now I have regrets because QueenWizard is just so so pretentious and everyone might think I'm a horrendous bitch and hate me forever.

Oh well.  Nothing to do now but sit back and wait for my Welcome email.