Saturday, December 20, 2008

Babylon 5: not so cautious, not so optimistic

So the general rule for our tv watching these days is that we pretty much just watch tv series that are complete and available in their entirety on netflix. It turns out there are only a limited number of these. After a while you start considering things that have been on your "maybe" list for a while. One very big maybe for me has been Babylon 5. It shows up on all of these top 10 best scifi series lists and people rave about it having one of the best multi season story arcs. Ever.

Having heard that the first season is a bit weak and the things really start to get good in season 2 I asked my wife for some patience and and decided to dig in.

And, well, so far it's been worse than I could have imagined. Terrible set designs. Unbelievably bad diaglog. Very long in the tooth special effects. Unimaginitive aliens. Recycled scifi tropes. Wooden acting. And we are only two episodes away from season 2 starting. And I have to admit I'm really intrigued. Is there really any chance that things turn around *so* dramatically?

I'm a total fanboy for Farscape. In my opinion, the first season there was pretty weak (not Babylon 5 weak, but not great). And yet it slowly grew into one of my all time favorite series. And this was a show that had serious problems throughout but had some amazing highs to make up for it. So I do believe that things can turn around for B5 and that I will like it.

But man, this first season has been so extremely painful. I'm afraid my wife will get revenge on me by making me watch Sex in the City. Oh, god, the horror. The horror....

2 comments:

country mouse said...

season one was completely atrociously horribly bad. I don't know how it got past that first year. But season two through to the end...OMFG. It was stupendous. I would rank it right up there with firefly and Battle Star Galactica (second version)

dustbunny said...

I'm glad to hear that. We actually watched the first episode of season 2 last night and well, it was an improvement but still pretty weak. Clearly there is some Big Thing that's going to happen so I'll continue to reserve judgement until things get rolling.