Firefly: Gone, But Not Forgotten

A long overdue rant of Greg Bates

"You know, FOX turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I barely noticed."

~Marge Simpson

You may ask me, "Greg, why do you bother?" You may ask me, "Greg, wasn't Firefly just another TV show?" You may ask yourself, "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! My God, what have I done?" Sorry. It's been, oh... five months, I think, since the cancellation of the undoubtedly best new show of the season, Firefly. And in all that time, i've never been able to write a rant about why FOX has finally set itself onto the long road to becoming a footnote in TV's shiny history book. So, here goes nothing.

Joss Whedon's latest brainchild, the TV show Firefly was one of the most brilliant hybrids of its class, blending elements of contemporary drama, science fiction, and old-school Westerns. I first watched this show for two reasons. First, it had Jewel Staite on it. Second, I had to for a Media Analysis project. The difference was clear. When writing about Enterprise, my paragraphs were stubby blasphemies. I wrote pages on episodes of Firefly. So, how could such an excellent show be cancelled?

Because it's on the FOX Network, dummy! Firefly was mishandled from the start. It was marketed as a zany space-comedy, alienating its early viewers. It was thrust into the infamous Friday time-slot, one which has not produced a hit in 4 years and used to contain Dark Angel, a show which attracts similar people. DA's cancellation was blamed on the Whedon syndicate, and a large section of the core fan base was ostracized.

Then there's the showing itself. FOX demanded that Whedon show the episodes out of any concievable order, showing the dismal "Train Job" rather than the excellently produced two-hour pilot episode. FOX then proceeded to delay episodes for Major League Baseball, and not advertise episodes. As a result, even hardened fans like myself missed episodes.

And what episodes they were! Even the crappiest of these gems would put an uncancellable sitcom (Like Good Morning, Miami) to SHAME! Episodes with dirt-farmers and prostitutes, or weird doctors who make people bleed from every orifice are just some of the dark ideas Joss devised for the show. But don't be fooled, Firefly was one of the most comic shows around. Shown especially in Adam Baldwin's portrayl of Jayne, a hick bounty hunter who in one episode discovers himself to be a folk hero, was one of the funniest actors in a show this season.

Now, I won't go so far as to say FOX engineered a consipiracy to remove this show(yes, i will). It's a conspiracy! Look, there's two many well-concieved measures to be coincedental. Cancelling the show on the same night the pilot finally aired? A stroke of evil genius. Maybe FOX scrapped the show to make more room for quality entertainment like Man vs. Beast and Married by America. Too many times have I exclaimed while watching FOX: "They cancelled Firefly for this? Gorramit!" Well, not the gorramit, but FOX is two steps away from becoming the Reality TV Network. All they have to do now is cancel 24 and to elect Bill Gates their CEO. But they already have!

As for the rest of us, dissatisfied with the network which always chooses style over substance (e.g. Fastlane), there's no hope. Sci-Fi and UPN have already passed on Firefly. Let's just hope the next gem of a show to arrive doesn't get launched on the shifting, sinking sands of the desolate FOX Network.

For More Firefly: FireflyFans.Net

MTV Botches Celebration of Metal Gods; Nation not Surprised

A rant of Greg Bates

Five Minutes. That's about all that was good and kind about the May 6th broadcast of MtvICON: Metallica. I personally watched this depressing monument to Heavy Metal because it happened to be about my favorite band, and because it promised "A special perfomance by Metallica!" So of course, a friend and I tuned in to the madness.

Here's the blow-by-blow.

First, Sum 41 came on, doing an incredibly whiny rendition of For Whom the Bell Tolls, then as Metallica entered the arena, jumped into Enter Sandman with no discernable problem. They even played a solo, which I recognized was from Master of Puppets. (You're going to get tired of these italicised song names before too long.) Next came what's-her-face Pressly(i know), who i'm sure has never heard a Metallica song, who gave a very "State of the Union" like speech. After every line, there was massive applause by hordes of screaming metalheads.

The long, Behind The Music-y segments were alright, basically a continuation of the Load/Reload Days. Interestingly, neither Load nor Reload were spoken of. Let us forget them. Oh, and the sections which they showed the lyrics was the best. Gee, now America finally knows the chorus to Enter Sandman! Because, as we all know, no one could figure out that gibberish before MTV came along.

The musical covers were mainly butcherings of classic 'Tallica songs. Avril Lavigne did "Fuel". While we all love to look at Avril, she's not the kind of girl who can really sing as Hetfield, particularly on a song like Fuel. If she had stood up there and looked pretty while the band played the instrumental version(Fuel for Fire, you've probably heard it on NASCAR), it would have been the best performance, because Avril's back-up band was right on target with the riffs. The guy from Stained (sorry, Staind, hehe) played Nothing Else Matters exactly like his 'Outside', with no fingerpicking or difficult moves. As a result, it was about 2 minutes long.

The most depressing moment, to be sure, was Snoop Doggy Dog's rap version of "Sad But True", during which he stood on stage for about a minute making a complete idiot of himself. He looked like he was having fun though, as he was certainly high. He even forgot the words at one point and began chanting "Bounce, Bounce" over and over again. Het wouldn't even stand up after this was over. I'll contrast this with the best performance, that of comedian Jim Bruer. He came on stage and did a dead-on Hetfield impression while singing a metal version of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands" with '-ah' added onto every other word and an occasional yelling of "Show me!", pitch perfect with that of Battery during the S&M concert. Truly funny.

Korn raped One, effectively removing all the solos and ruining the vocals with that guy's whiny voice. Limp Bizkit, who I really don't like, did a VERY good "Sanitarium", which cut the least out of any of the songs. Not bad at all. My friend and I even made the best of the bad performances with a little MSTing. During every cover, i'd point to the drummer and go, "He's a better drummer than Lars." Finally, during the medley, I just picked out random folks from the audience.

Then, the big moment arrived. Metallica took the stage with new Bassist Rob Trujillo (If there was just one reason to watch the show, it was to find out his last name is pronounced "True-Hee-Low"). They played a massive 5 or 6 minute medley of their fastest and best live songs, including "Blackened", "Battery", "Hit the Lights", and the chanting section of "Creeping Death". This was awesome, as fans and celebs alike were all chanting along: "DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!" What a country.

But Metallica wouldn't die, as much as MTV would like to use the space to promote the next Linkin Park clone. James (or Jaymz) made a short speech, and then the band launched into a brand new song, which we'd all find out later was called "Frantic". Just as the song hit the first verse, however, the credits began to roll.

"What!?!?!?" I shouted. "I thought this was two hours long!"

But it wasn't. In fact, MTV really had to cut it short, because they had a very important re-run of Punk'd to run! AAAAAAAAAAHHHH! Stupid MTV DIEDIEDIE! Ah. Good to have gotten that out of my system.

So, in short, catch the MtvICON of Metallica sometime when it replays. Or just download the medley off Kazaa. That and this rant are really all you need.

For an alternate view, read about MtvICON at Encyclopedia Metallica