I’m old enough to remember Duran Duran’s [first] rise to fame a couple of decades ago.
They’ve come and gone a few times since then, and I’ve gotten a great deal older. I’ve moved on, and they seem to be back again. Again.
I say again: I’ve moved on.
Yet when Duran Duran took the stage at Live Earth, I could name every single visible member of the band. And recognize — and name — the missing Taylor brother.
That’s sillyness.
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Some relationships are trouble from the start. Usually one or both parties realize this on the first date, and there isn’t a second. Sometimes, they try again: maybe it was just an off night, and the object of one’s desire is so, y’know, hot. So they try, fail, and then they pack it in. It’s no one’s fault. It’s not you, it’s me.
Some relationships drag on and on. Dating that goes nowhere. Marriage that leads to years of couples’ therapy. Sticking together out of spite.
Sometimes it’s fate. It can be perfect, but just not meant to be.
Sometimes, though… Sometimes you’re dating FOX. A horrible, abusive slut of a network. Everybody knows this, yet nobody seems to care. FOX will chew you up and spit you out, time after time after time. And yet you go back. You can’t help it. It’s got a power over you.
Ladies and gentlemen, submitted for your approval, the sad case of Nathan Fillion and the man-eating network.
To make things really pithy let’s say poor Nate’s Canadian — ’cause he is — and actually talented, too, as Canadians need to be to make it in Hollywood. Young, green, fresh-off-the-bus-from-Edmonton Nate first met FOX in 1998, when he landed a supporting role in Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. And things seemed to go well. Three seasons isn’t anything to shake a stick at, after all. Sure, they changed the title to Two Guys and a Girl for the third season, since the pizza place got all greedy and wanted higher billing. But it was a good show, in a good time slot, and it did well. Nathan was on his way, but now under the spell of FOX. FOX made it easy, too, by giving him little gifts, like a guest shot on King of the Hill, when Nathan would ask questions like, “Where is our relationship going?”
After FOX let Two Guys, [and] a Girl and a Pizza Place down gently came Firefly. You’ll have to forgive me. Firefly is hard for me to talk about. It’s still all so fresh.
Firefly was brilliant. Firefly was done by Joss Whedon and was perfect in just about every way. And FOX was jealous. FOX couldn’t have this. So FOX toyed with Nathan. Moved the nights around. Aired the episodes out of order. FOX eventually dumped our hero after a mere 12 episodes.
And that was that, you would think. Twelve episodes, five years ago.
But five years is a long time for a nasty master like FOX. It got hungry and then rang ol’ Nathan up for a booty call FOX called Drive. And Nathan, poor, misguided, lonely Nathan, answered.
He should’ve known better. He wasn’t hurting for FOX as much as FOX must have been hurting for him. He’d moved on. But FOX made promises. A series. An action series. A race. By Tim Minear, one of the Firefly guys. And on Monday night, leading into 24. So Nathan answered FOX’s invitation.
He got all dressed up. He loaded up his iPod with all the right reconciliation music, he put one foot in front of the other and sat down with FOX.
And got pretty seriously abused.
FOX had promised neutral ground. FOX had said, “Bring some friends for your own comfort,” but FOX hadn’t put their names on the guest list. FOX had said, “I just want to talk.”
But FOX had lied. FOX got Nathan drunk and took advantage of him. And was gone by sun-up having left a little cash on the dresser.
Four (4!) episodes. Three (3!) nights in two (2!) weeks. Of a show that it promoted poorly, wasn’t much of a premise anyway, and then turned out to be surprisingly good. And then poof! It was gone. In classic FOX style: no chance given.
So for Nathan’s own sake, I for one am hoping that the next time FOX’s number comes up on CallerID, he picks it up — doesn’t even say hello — and tells FOX to just forget all aboot him.
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It’s snowing in Vancouver today. We’ve known for several days that this would happen.
Watching some Seattle news last night, waiting for David Letterman to start, I was struck by just what an emergency snow can be. In the sensationalistic world of American network news, at any rate.
Seattle was in a panic last night. Is it going to snow? How much snow are we going to get? We have snowplows and sanding trucks and a double rotation of drivers ready to go in case it snows. See? Look at our snowplows! Look at the huge blades to push the snow out of the way!
People. It’s only snow. If it’s going to snow, have these things ready, yes. But should that be your top — and only — news story for a whole half hour?
I know that this coast doesn’t see much snow. And it’s wet and slippery and freezes easily because of our proximity to the ocean. But 3 cm of snow doesn’t constitute an emergency. Really.
But we’re not Seattle, and there wasn’t any local news on. So I flipped over to the Weather Network to find out what we could expect. With no pomp and no circumstance I got my answer. Between 3 and 5 cm. No special STORM WATCH! No SPECIAL REPORT!s on the state of our snow-readiness. Just a 60% probability of a little west-coast snow.
(I would like to point out that this post has nothing at all to do with Vancouver’s readiness (usually a little lacking) or how the drivers [don’t] change their driving habits when it falls and accidents happen aplenty. That’s a whole other topic.)
But, on the bright side, I watched almost a whole half hour of American news without having to hear about the tsunami. Because IT’S GOING TO SNOW!
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