I am looking forward to Sendhil Ramamurthy’s upcoming movie like it’s no one’s business. Technically, it’s his first movie that looks like it could be… respectable. Erh. The tiny role as Biblical Adam in “In the Beginning” aside, his more… notable roles were in “Blind Dating”, “Love and Debate” and “Death, Deceit and Destiny Aboard the Orient Express”… yeah. Sendhil should avoid movies with “D”s in the title. The more “D”s, the worse it gets. (Hey, maybe we could edit the films together to create “Dating, Debate and Destiny Aboard the Orient Express”? In it, Sendhil would play the heir of a foreign country, who is the star of Harvard’s debate team, but during a trip on the Orient Express, his fiancée falls in love with a blind man…)

Anyway, if “D” is bad, then “A” is good. So let’s cross our fingers for “It’s A Wonderful Afterlife”, where Sendhil doesn’t play the mean Indian fiancé or the token turban-wearing minority friend or the spoilt foreign prince or his own evil twin… we hope…

I play a detective sergeant in the police who has been sent to work in the Southall office to investigate some murders that have been happening in the Asian community. I have to go undercover and find out who is committing the murders. People get implicated who I actually know and it becomes very difficult. I end up falling in love with one of the suspects. I don’t know if she did or didn’t commit the murders. [source]

Good news is: She didn’t. Bad news: her mom did.

An Indian mother (Shabana Azmi) wants to see her daughter (Goldy Notay) happily married, and somehow, this leads to a number of murders, apparantly involving quite creative methods… food-related,y the sounds of it. Actually, I’m getting the sense that this could be similar to Pushing Daisies in the whackiness department. It definitely sounds a little crazy, because said mother starts getting haunted by the ghosts of her victims, who must help her find a match for the girl before they can move on and be properly dead, or get reborn, or whatever they choose to do with their afterlife.

Sendhil and his sexy glasses between takes

Sendhil says that he will be playing the “straight man” admidst the craziness, but I hope he’ll get the opportunity to prove that he is quite a hilarious guy – as evidenced by audio commentaries, interviews and so on. However, considering that we were originally worried that his role would be small and inconsequential, I’m more than happy that now it looks like he’s the leading man, or rather – since the film seems to be from the perspective of the women – he’s the love interest?  It definitely appears to be a central role that would also make him the focus of articles, interviews, reviews… The film is in post-production now, and is said to come out in early April 2010. When will we see the trailer?

On nom nom.

Sendhil studied in England, and met his wife there, so returning to London also meant he could reconnect with old buddies. One of those is reportedly Jamie Sives, who will be in It’s A Wonderful Afterlife alongside Sendhil. There isn’t much info on his character, as far as I know, but he will play another police detective. And I’m grasping at straws here, but going by this blurry video here, he seems to wear his tie loose, which may of course mean nothing, but considering how very immaculate Sendhil’s character appears to dress – fine suit, clean-shaven, nice hair – there may be an interesting dynamic between the two characters. By this I mean, jokes will be made,fanfiction be written…

I only watched one movie with Jamie Sives, Love and Other Disasters. Also a romantic comedy set in London, this time with sexy Santiago Cabrera as the “straight man” love interest. With less pretence, it would have been a cool film. The way it is, it’s slightly annoying, but still fun and watchable thanks to mostly the supporting cast. Catherine Tate (who, by the way, claims not to have a crush on Sendhil Ramamurthy, thus essentially denying that she is human!) was the most memorable thing. The movie also features Gaius from Merlin in a small role. I like connections like this between movies and series.

But back to Afterlife!

[Gurinder Chadha] loves music in her films. Did she make you sing?
Sendhil Ramamurthy: “No singing. I did do some dancing. She likes to do the credits so it’s actually going to be a Bollywood-style version of ‘Staying Alive.’ It’s ‘Staying Alive’ but they did a Bollywood version of it.”
And do you do the John Travolta pose?
Sendhil Ramamurthy: “I’m afraid I do, I do.”
How long did it take her to convince you to do that?
Sendhil Ramamurthy: “Disturbingly little time, but I now regret it thoroughly.” [source]

I can see how his friends would mock him with this for the rest of eternity! I can also see animated .gifs of it appearing in every blog post about this movie… Do not regret it, Sendhil! Celebrate it!

Sometimes, I lurk on TWoP in the forums. Sometimes, I wonder if they are making a conscious effort to be negative about everything that does not immediately and obviously go exactly in the direction that they favour. For example, Quinn and his plot gets called “useless” or “pointless” in a very angry manner, which is really odd because this episode made it very clear where this was leading. I really agree that Dexter has moments that look less like a natural part of the story as a whole, and more like a way to fill the series up, find something for every character to do, or whatever.The thing with Quinn definitely doesn’t belong there, though. I have no issue with it, but I know a lot of viewers have issues with Quinn’s mere existence, but this is getting ridiculous. Some complained that in 4×01, Quinn was being rewritten into a second Doakes. Except Quinn was not suspicious of Dexter because he got odd vibes from him, he was merely pissed off at him because Dexter screwed up at court. He was calling Dexter incompetent at his job, when Doakes had always respected Dexter’s ability to do his job.

This episode, Quinn complained to his journalist girlfriend about Dexter, and let it slip that Dexter and Agent Lundy were entertaining the idea that there is a serial killer in town. It’s glaringly obvious that this will drive the story forwards, and isn’t gratuitous in any way. There is going to be a newspaper article written, and who knows what this means. It could create a panic, it could tip off the killer.

Aside from that, while it is ironic to see both Dexter and Deb get annoyed by domestic life with their partners, Deb better come around and remember Anton is awesome for her. Like, not as old as her daddy, laid back enough to ground her, not a serial killer… There will obviously be drama down that road, with Lundy there… I’m not keen on it, I like to see Deb happy, and right now, she’s her own biggest problem.

I think it’s a nice choice to show us the Trinity Killer at work, while all the main characters have not even accidently shared scenes with him yet. The reveal the Skinner’s identity was a little anticlimactic (but probably realistic in its own way?) last season, so a different approach is much appreciated. The man sure has a weird MO… kills in pairs of threes, so far so good, but uses different methods every time. This time, it means he takes a middle-aged woman to an abandoned building and forces her to jump out of a window, making it look like a suicide… Only Lundy sees a connection to the previous murder, and only he believes it actually is another murder. I wonder how he figured out that there’s a serial killer at work in the first place…

Trinity dropped a little bit of ash to the ground next to his victim… and he seemed to be keeping an urn in his apartment or hotel room, so if the murders are somehow connected to a deceived person whose ashes he is spreading over decades and in creative ways… does that mean he’ll one day run out of ash? And stop? Eh, I guess it does not matter. If he kills in threes, then only one murder is left to happen anyway. In Miami, that is. Hmm.

What else? I cannot say how the other murder series  - the Vacation Murderers – will come into play yet, but it is sure a good reason why no one at the police is willing to entertain the idea of two murder series taking place at the same time. I hope Angel and Maria will be fine. I like them and people should not shoot at them.

Dexter’s domestic life and his boring neighbourhood: Maybe it’s highly time to put Dexter into a situation again where his lacking social skills become obvious. Yeah. Dexter feels cornered because a vandal keeps spray-painting stuff to walls, trashes things etc., ane the neighbours form a neighbourhood watch to catch him… obviously, Dexter isn’t keen on the idea and decides to find the vandal himself and scare the hell out of him. He suspects moody neighbour teen, but in the end it turns out that it was said teen’s father, who apparantly hates upper middle-class families with their nice lives and stuff. OK.

Dexter threatened the guy with something like “If you don’t stop what you’re doing, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to leave with your head in a bag. [pause] I already have the bag.”

THIS IS FUCKING HILARIOUS. It’s like from a Steven Seagal movie.

Finally, this sub-plot threatens to have some long-term consequences. When Dexter comes home after a job well done (a neighbour well-terrorized, a vandal well-cured…) he is for the n-th time surprised and blinded by the security lights that switch on as he approaches his house. For some reason, his reaction is on the dumb side, but probably illustrate his feeling of triumph over the neighbouthood watch threat: he smashes the lights in. What sucks? Rita sees him do it.

Funny how Dexter is both serialized and episodic. It’s a clever structure, I think, to have overarching storylines and developments, but still have every episode also contain a main plot that starts at the start of the episode, and ends at its end. Dexter has always (or often) been like that, especially in Season 1, I believe. I’m not saying it makes the show perfect, but it sure makes things more satisfying, and the episodes themselves more memorable. That having said… neighbourhood watch plot wasn’t the most exciting. I preferred the prior episode’s hunt-for-the-corpse.

Sanctuary… this show has the potential to be campy fun, thanks to a couple of gleefully whacky ideas, but somehow, the creators also think their show needs a serious, dramatic side. No, no, no. The show’s other problem last season was its racism.  It’s sad to see that a show that does such a conscious effort to have Strong Female Characters doesn’t give a fuck about the other important kind of equality. Sadly, the amount of women notwithstanding, Sanctuary’s best characters are the guys, and those aren’t even entirely orginal characters, they are merely original takes on famous historical or fictional characters, most prominently Jack the Ripper and Nikola Tesla (who is here a narcissistic wannabe vampire overlord!). The season picks up a few months after the end of Season 1, and with the same problem they had back then: the Cabal has kidnapped Ashley, and turned her into their brainwashed puppet. Especially Helen is desperate to rescue her, and travels around the world together with ex-husband and ex-killer John aka Jack the Ripper. This only serves to give us a green screen Cairo with a worm eating heavily-accented monster Egyptian. Oh, sorry, “abnormal“, not monster. *rolls eyes*

Eventually, the Sanctuary team discover that the Company has stolen the files on an old British government project, where they experimented on orphans in order to produce… uh… flawless DNA. Pure DNA, free of any “abnormal” traits. Helen assures us she thinks such a probject is despicable, but I have to wonder about a show whose mythology works under the assumption that there is such a thing as “flawless” DNA. That there is an objective normalcy. Because the experiments did create six such orphans, and the Cabal is kidnapping them. In the end, it turns out that their plan was to overwrite their DNA data with Ashley’s to have not one, but several mindless superpowered killing machines. Because their… erh… flawless DNA somehow means they are also… blank slates… oh whut.

To Sanctuary’s credit, these six orphans include people of colour, I think three, so at least there is no toughtless implication that only white people are flawless, normal, whatever. Sadly, this also means that 3/4 of the show’s people of colour are impersonal killing machines. The Cabal also only got to kidnap five out the six. One was rescued in time by the Sanctuary. A white woman, of course, although her role has so far amounted to absolutely nothing. No idea where they brought her, hoe she is doing. Maybe they will talk to her next episode. Maybe not.

Actually, it cracks me up because they sent Jack the Ripper, of all people, to pick her up. And he walks up to her and she is all: “what are you doing in my horse stables wtf” and he just slowly says “Today is your lucky day…” See, this show can be hilarious.

The episode’s final scene has the Cabal’s leader, who in this season has a Cruella deVil-inspired madwoman haircut, order her blackclad six man kill squad to destroy the Sanctuary!!!! And this emotionless team of six, in complete unison, turn around. Towards a window. Erh. Why?

A lot of time is spent on how a deranged creepy scientist woman performs the brainwashing, personality-wiping procedure on poor Ashley. After a while, it got repetitive. And since Ashley was already brainwashed before these scenes, I never really felt much suspence.

In the end, the Sanctuary team can track down brainwashed eeeevil Ashley. You can tell because her eyes are now orange. Then she grows vampire fangs. I had plastic ones that looked better than that, when I was a kid. Sanctuary’s strength does not lie with the special effects. Sometimes, less is more.

When trying to rescue the orphans, the team also ran into a new character, Kate. Kate is a person of colour, and as such, morally inferiour to the white main characters. This is a Sanctuary rule. The show is yet to have a person of colour in a recurring role of any importance who is not a bad guy, or somehow shady, or needs to be put into his or her place.  Kate is a ruthless freelancer who cooperated with the Cabal. She is captured by the Sanctuary team, but tricks into resident werewolf nerd Henry with a rather transparent “oops-I-dropped-the-candybar-between-my-legs-and-my-hands-are-bound-what-will-you-dooooo?” tricks. I am sure even Henry saw that escape coming, but he fell for it anyway… There was a scene like that in Hunter X Hunter.

After her escape, Kate is screwed over by the Cabal, who try to assassinate her. You got to give it to them, they don’t fuss around. Injured, Kate makes her way to the Sanctuary, and will in all likeliness fill the spot of sassy kick-ass girl in the absence of Ashley – and Clara. She might be fun, the actress is likeable and, well, the show needs some diversity. If only she hadn’t been introduced as a villain, you know… but it’s better than being that unnamed African American guy, who died after two episodes.

Kate also seems to be set up as a love interest for Henry, not Will. That could be cute, or it could go nowhere, like the last time there was a hint at a love interest for Henry. Funnily, like Kate, that was with an Indian woman.

I’m surprised that Clara is not with the Sanctuary anymore – she is now at the London Sanctuary, but still officially dating Will. Why they constantly have to rotate these characters, I have no idea. Every third episode last season seemed to introduce a new girl for Will to flirt with. And he’s still boring as hell. They… never actually gave his character any form of development. In this episode, he was entirely pointless and unmemorable. I cannot even remember what he did, aside chatting with his girlfriend on the internet, while vampire Tesla was standing a few steps away, encouraging him to take a break and travel to London…

Tesla is, admidst this silliness, my POV character. I appreciate his attempts to talk Will into GOING AWAY, and I liked him calling him “Dr. Expendable”. Tesla is written as obnoxious, and that makes him much less obnoxious than, for example, Helen, who is written as super intelligent and cool and a Strong Female Character, and has a stupid smug British accent.

Tesla expositions that he has worked hard on a cure for the virus from last season finale, and has travelled the world to give it to all “abnormals”. That’s that storyline wrapped up then! He says only Bigfoot refuses to take his medicine, and he takes this personally. Will testily says something to the effect of: “It’s not all about you!” and indeed it isn’t. It’s about Bigfoot. Who is dying. Painfully. But Will doesn’t say that, and indeed, the only person aside Tesla for whom Bigfoot is of interest this episode is Henry. Of course, Henry and Bigfoot are BFFs, and I have the sneaking suspicion they’ll kill Bigfoot to use it as a character-development moment for Henry, who has been struggling to accept his werewolf nature.

Bigfoot’s reasoning for not taking the medicine is asinine and ridiculous and sounds like the writers were trying to come up with something. Basically, he says his people would disown him if he took a cure that was produced by humans. Firstly, it was not produced by humans, it was produced by a vampire. Secondly, according to Tesla, other “abnormals” had no issue taking the medcine. Thirdly, Bigfoot has been Helen’s servant for years, he is wearing human clothes and seldomly ever (or maybe never?) even leaves the Sanctuary building – wouldn’t that already count as a betrayal of his people? Why does he suddenly care? Whatever!

I was wondering if they’d kill off Bigfoot now that Jack the Ripper is around more. They are both played by Christopher Heyerdahl…

What annoys me most is that no one aside Henry really cares about Bigfoot. Meh. I care about Bigfoot. He and Vampire Tesla are my reason for watching. Plus, that elusive hope of Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes maybe sharing the screen in a flashback. I need my Joe/Methos reunion!

I’m never really sure what I expect Dexter to be like, as a show. It keeps me entertained and never downright pisses me off, like many shows I watch or have watched, so I guess I don’t mind when it takes me a few episodes to get a sense of where the current season is going? Bwahaha, that sounds bad. I am merely confused. It’s obvious that the first two seasons had the tightest scripts and just created more suspense. They probably also used the best ideas you can use for that kind of story: The origin story coupled with a creepy whodunit, and the story where Dexter himself becomes the hunted. Compared to this, it’s much harder to sum up the idea behind Season 3 in a matter that’s to the point. Two episodes into Season 4, the same applies to the new and possible second-to-last season. Dexter and Rita are married and have a baby: Dexter is sleep-deprived and makes more mistakes than he can afford. He screws up at a court hearing, and a killer walks free (for a while), which causes Quinn to be extremely angry at Dexter. But then Dexter sees how Quinn steals money from a crime scene, and while Dexter is too busy with his own problems to bother telling anyone, Quinn gets antsy and does a 180° in Attitude Towards Dexter.

Quinn being a bit shady isn’t a new concept. Last season, there was Yuki’s Internal Affairs investigation, but most importantly there was how Quinn tricked Anton into working as a CI for him. It’s definitely true that Quinn isn’t always playing by the rules, but where this will factor in the big picture, I don’t know. Quinn definitely pays more attenton to Dexter this season than he did the last, and that may cause some complication along the way.

Hurrying home after a kill, Dexter falls asleep on the wheel and has an accident. He isn’t injured severely, but suffers amnesia, and realizes he doesn’t remember where he put the body. Was it in the car? Nope. Was it thrown out and is lying somewhere, waiting to be discovered? Or did he store it somewhere to pick up when he had time to dispose of it properly? It is always fun to see Dexter struggle.

Maria and Angel: I’m not sure why they are now a couple. It has to have a reason. Now, I love both these characters, and I think if they’re happy together, I should be happy. Why they want to keep their relationship a secret, I don’t know. I’m sure no one will care much. Even if it goes against some law enforcement dating rule I’m unaware of, everybody at the homicide division has violated his or her share of regulations, often with the knowledge of their colleagues and superiors.

Actually, what I like least was that flatly-written dialogue that established that Angel and Gianna broke up. Maybe it was more flatly-acted than flatly-written… there was a joke in the scene, but that guy Angel was talking to, yeah, probably not the strongest actor ever.

The Trinity Killer: Lundy is back! He’s back, retired and hunting a serial killer, whom he dubbed the Trinity Killer because he kills in threes. And has done so for at least thirty years without arousing too much suspicion, meaning that Dexter is officially impressed. Lundy is weird… he really seems to have a thing for Dexter, the way he is looking at him and all… careful, Dexter! He only likes you for your lab…!

The Trinity Killer himself is nicely creepy. While the identity of the first season’s killer was left a mystery until a dramatic reveal later, we get to see the man do his killing right from the start… well, this spares us a half-assed whodunit like in Season 3, which never got interesting because… yeah, why anyway?

Other than kickstart the Trinity plot, Lundy also serves to make Deb’s life slightly more complicated. Of course, she loves Anton and she better not let that old man get between them… but Lundy’s return at least confuses her. I guess there are some things left unresolved. Better resolve them. I like how Deb went from Lundy from Anton, it illustrates how she overcomes her daddy issues: Lundy is a reliable cop like her father, and probably the same age as her father. Anton is the opposite in character (but also nice) and a CI that Deb had an affair with. Which is against the rules. She learns from Dexter that her father also had an affair with a CI, so she has finally managed to be more like her father, indeed. Haha.

Deb wants to know who her dad slept with: Deb is slowly working her way through her father’s CI files. Maybe the speed is unrealistic. It’s been months and she hasn’t even looked at the names on all the files? I… guess she was busy? Through her investigations, Deb might come dangerously close to the truth about Dexter. This is the plot I’m most interested in. The files regarding Dexter’s past have been destroyed, but how much information does the file on his mother contain? It will without a doubt be enough to make Deb figure out the connection to Brian Moser, her serial killer ex, but will she also find out that Dexter is Brian’s brother? Oh, the uncertainty!

The other murder series: “The Vacation Murderers”, formerly known as the “Vacation Robbers”: Other than keeping the police department busy, I don’t see how this is important yet. A murder series targeting tourists is of course something that takes priority, maybe even over the chase for a serial killer that only Lundy  thinks exists. Oh, I miss Mohinder. Lundy even built himself a map with strings to be more like Mohinder.

Other than that, I kind of miss Miguel’s wife. Her name slipped my mind, but… she was a cool friend for Rita. Maybe her role as a vampire on True Blood kept her away? In any case, I hope Julie Benz gave her vampire acting tips.

Not particularly good, but entertaining rom-com that fails the hardest whenever it’s trying to be meta. Has some good parts, though, but the main reason to check it out, for me, was boredom and:

Then other familiar faces showed up.

(Well, I can’t say I know her, but it’s funny trivia?)

Obviously, I have been neglecting this blog because it had a relatively sharp focus on that show, but now I feel almost like deleting the previous posts… There’s nothing to take its place, either, so the blog is not exactly in use.

I still really like THIS.

I was pleased how easy it was to fit the text into this chapter. I… I think I even kept the characters in-character. I mean… maybe? On the other hand, I was clearly projecting at the same time. Dr. Peaberry is bringing up Mylar and expecting some kind of reaction from Ash, possibly because she’s wondering if Mylar doesn’t hit too close to home for Ash, since it can be described with “son of scientist suffers greatly at the hands of the monster that his father created”, although the similarities end there. I enjoy comparing stuff.

Bla bla bla. What should I post about here? TV? Maybe a good plan.

The two small bowls. I have those.  I often use them for tea eggs and the like, espcially the smaller, red one. This was the first time I noticed IKEA props on Dollhouse. But it’s not like I am paying sharp attention to the props on this show… It just fails too badly at whatever it’s trying to do to be worth the effort. I’ve seen this episode referred to as good and even as great, but it only seems that way because the first five episodes have been so irrelevant and pointless. I don’t think I watch any more, unless they get, say, Michael E. Rodgers to guest-star. (I even watched “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” for the man…) Sick and tired of the Dolls’ strained “innocence”; of de Witt’s never-ending smug smile as she smugly strides through her office and smugly says smug things.  And Topher can take his self-important technobabbles and shove them up his ass. Or maybe he can get his cutesy pig-tailed Asian assistent to do that for him, since that’s what she’s apparantly there for.

There’s something I realize now after watching Being Human, a couple of things that come on my “What makes good TV” list. Because I really enjoyed Being Human more than I enjoyed anything in a long time, and more than I was expecting to enjoy it – seriously! It feels good to watch something with a different motivation than snark.

I could snark about it, too. Sure! There are probably some flaws, but they don’t matter very much because the story as a whole is coherent. When it’s obvious that the show has a purpose and an underlying sense and theme, and everything is leading somewhere and nothing is random, I get a sense of security and trust that is necessary to really enjoy a show.

a) You get a sense of the setting. The house is like a fourth protagonist. It plays a role and has character and continuity. I realize I’m a huge fan of little details and paying attention to the most idiotic things, and with Being Human, it’s cups, for example.With the house treated like that, the show is grounded in reality and normalcy. You can really believe that this is the place where these people live.

[Removed: Rant about the bad and inconsistent and half-hearted characterization of Mohinder's apartment in the last two seasons of Heroes.]

b) No CGI for the werewolf, omg!!! I don’t think I ever found any werewolf believable-looking, but between the two last werewolves I saw, the one in Being Human wins any day of the week. Good old animatronic puppets!!! It may still look fake, but it looks real at the same time, probably because it IS real, the model really exists in all its fake furry glory.

In case you wonder, the other werewolf I saw was the one in Sanctuary. Didn’t look like a wolf. CGI. Looked like 1996. Looked like a hairless wolf monkey because they didn’t even bother designing the hair. I guess that’d have been impossible on their budget, but then why choose CGI? I applaud Being Human for choosing a method that is not only within their budget but also looks decent. Everything else looks like you don’t actually give a damn what your own show looks like in the end, but

One of these days I’ll rant about Sanctuary.

Conclusion: I enjoy bright colours and nice clothes. Also details, and a lot of characterization can be done that way, through clothes, set design and allll the tiny little things in between. That’s makes something feel alive and real and therefore worth my time.

Now I will make a new header that doesn’t feature Heroes anymore. I am grateful for Heroes in a way, because it gave the world Sendhil Ramamurthy, and god knows the world needs Sendhil Ramamurthy.