The Other Sandy

American Movie Classics just remade The Prisoner. With Jim Caviezel as Number Six. I'll give them Sir Ian McKellen as Number Two, but Jim Caviezel as Number Six? Sic 'em, Rover.

The pilot was unexpectedly fun. I'm not sure how they'll be able to sustain the premise for a whole season, but it was an interesting idea, and Christian Slater rocked the action scenes. It also had moments of terrific dialogue, which I am a major sucker for.

Grabbed from sgflutegirl. This one was a major test of my memory. I really had to wrack my brain to come up with five examples of a lot of these.

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A SciFi "original?" Not so much.

I wish I had something insightful to say by way of a review, but Flash Gordon was so flat and unmemorable, it really didn't make much of an impression on me. The characters have been adapted from the comics before in both film and television, so the creators of this show really should have tried harder to find some way to make their version stand out. Instead, nothing stood out--not one single thing. There were no attention grabbing characters, scenes, settings, actors, costumes, or bits of dialogue. Absolutely nothing caught my attention. Characters did things because the script required it, not because they had any motivation to do so. It was weirdly like a high school video production class project, but with better film stock.

Everything felt recycled. I've seen some of the props and locations used in other shows that shoot in Vancouver, and some of the actors were Vancouver regulars. The costumes for the people on Mongo looked like they were left over from another show, possibly in the 1980s. There was no cohesive feel to the costuming, like it was the product of a culture instead of a bunch of random things grabbed from the wardrobe department.

The show did make an effort to show us what an alien place Mongo was, though. The denizens of Mongo can easily be recognized as non-Earthlings by their incredibly stilted dialogue and even flatter acting.

The casting was kind of wonky, too. Flash Gordon did not look 26. I thought he was in his early 30s. The actress playing his mom looks like she's only about 10 years older than he is and nowhere near old enough to be his mother. Too many of the female characters looked alike. I was having a hard time telling them apart.

I usually try not to judge a show by its pilot because I've seen too many good shows with crappy pilots and too many good pilots turn into crappy shows, but this is one show that I think it's safe to take a pass on.

Jared Padalecki is hosting Ashton Kutcher's latest reality tripefest on MTV, Room 401. It sounds like a revival of Shannen Doherty's reality tripefest on SciFi a few years back, Scare Tactics, in which elaborate practical jokes are staged to scare the crap out of people who were volunteered for such treatment without their knowledge by their "friends." I really didn't want to watch it, and fortunately some kind soul edited together all of Jared's segments and posted them online.

Jared is really good at hosting things. He always comes across as personable and spontaneous, no matter how cheesy the script. He also co-hosted The CW's fall preview show last year, along with an actress I've never heard of and don't remember. Again, he came across as personable and spontaneous; the actress came across like she was doing a cold reading off a teleprompter.

At least Room 401 lists Supernatural along with Jared's name in the credits. Maybe it'll attract more viewers to Supernatural. We could use 'em. That show just does not get the attention it deserves outside of fandom.