Strange conversations

Last night, I left the cinema at 8.30 after yet another film, and called the SO.

"Hi, dear, just leaving, should be back in 30 minutes, maybe 40."

"Ah," the SO said. "I've just been dragged into BG."

"Oh," said I, in surprise. "Have they not killed Durchest yet?"

"Well, Ez just pinged me and asked if I could help out, so I guess they're having trouble."

"They must be having trouble," I said, "that was set up for 6.30. Who have you got?" The SO listed off some of the usual familiar names. "Well," I said, "I'll head back, and he should be dead by the time I get there. See you soon."

And then I put my phone back into my bag, and suddenly thought about how my end of the conversation sounded as I strolled down the street, without the context of a LOTRO raid.

On Television

Slasher friends have been trying to convince me for a long time to watch Supernatural. I had seen a couple of episodes of Supernatural, and left with the impression that it was a boring monster of the week show, and no thank you.

More recently, some of the SO's geek friends began telling him he should watch Supernatural. I said no, it's crap. The SO's friends insisted that it gets good. So we equipped ourselves with the first season of Supernatural, and a carefully hand-picked-by-the-geeks list of the episodes that were worth watching, because they were good, or related to the arc plot. Over the last couple of weeks, we watched 11 episodes of Supernatural's first season.

Conclusions: A 'good' episode of Supernatural is like a mediocre episode of the X-Files. After one particular episode, I remarked to the SO that it was like watching the Persuaders, only in the Persuaders the fact that they're incompetent is a joke, and in Supernatural we're supposed to take these morons seriously. The plots are utterly predictable, and vary from dull to annoying. The dialogue is trite.

The SO and I are unanimous: we're not prepared to sit through any more of this drivel just because the arc plot might get interesting round about season four. We were willing to stare through a few bad episodes of Spartacus: Blood and Sand with the assurance that it got interesting at ep 4 or 5, and were very glad we did. But writers - if it takes three series for your show to become bearable, sorry, we're long gone.


In stark contrast, last night we caught up with episode 3.10 of Breaking Bad (while watching Supernatural, we got a couple of weeks behind). It's a bottle story, in which two people talk about the long term plot and try to kill a fly. And it's mesmerising. It's awe-inspiring, how tense and involving that incredibly simple piece of television is. This was a series that grabbed me by the soul in episode one, just like The Wire or Pushing Daisies did, and they don't let go. Forget Supernatural, we're about to give Treme a whirl, with high hopes. And people - if you know any other series, new or old, as good as Breaking Bad or Pushing Daisies, you'll be telling me, right?