The LXD and the Onlne Cheat Machine

Hulu's having a rough time right now. The amount of new material that's available on all 37,029 channels is thin enough in early July under any circumstances, and what little is there is delayed and unavailable, sometimes for weeks at a time. Then there's this whole "Hulu Plus" thing which -- in spite of Hulu's half-hearted marketing efforts -- implies that all the really GOOD stuff is now going to be hidden behind a $9.99/month firewall. Pretty difficult sale when you've already acclimated your zillions of audience to unlimited free watching, AND you seem to be offering next to nothing for the $120/year (the same shows only more of them, no really decent original content you can't find elsewhere, no real sense of curating or inter-mediation ... AND you get to keep watching the ads!  Yay!).

And now there's LXD. 

Look, we have nothing against dance shows. More power to 'em. But if they're all that popular to begin with, why do they have to be disguised as a superhero web series?  

Even a fairly careful viewing of the LXD promos on Hulu and the episodes themselves make you think this is a professionally produced (if shallow) knock-off of Heroes or X-Men. This "legion" of "extraordinary young people" finding each other and fighting against an "uprising of evil."  Lots of black leather and dangerous looks. And at least two of the jumping jacks in the promo shot (see above) look like they're flying. It's so convincing, in fact, that you don't really know until the last word of the mysterious narrator's opening speech: "A Legion ... of Extraordinary ... Dancers."  "What?" you say, and whack the side of your laptop.  "Extraordinary What?" And the story that follows: a young boy who suddenly jumps and turns like a demon, a flash-forward to his high school years, where he abruptly blossoms in a rave-level dance-off ... it's dark comic-book stuff, except he's dancing instead of bursting into flame or shooting power-beams out his eyes. All to disguise some really very good, very flashy, dancing.  (And there's even a weird and funny cameo by one of the guys from Stars' recently canceled Party Down that's worth the 15-minute investment all by itself.)

Hulu ... don't do this. It already looks like you're pulling a bait-and-switch with Hulu Plus. You're already pawning off old (and often canceled) BBC shows and long-dead off-network series because you can't get much of anything else at the moment.  Don't make matters worse by confusing dance fans and disappointing f&sf fans with something like LXD. Puh-leeze. 

 

It Would Be Easy to Say "The Gates" Sucks ... TOO Easy

We are not difficult to please. Truly we aren't. We just ask that the premises of Rush-y TV shows make a teeny, tiny, even microscopic amount of sense before the producers and networks spend skillions of dollars to foist them on the general public.

We're sure all the people involved with The Gates are perfectly nice and dedicated and hard-working. Rhona Mitra is hot, Ron Grillo of Prison Break is earnest, and we will watch Chandra West do pretty much anything any time ... but the sad fact is, the premise of this "daylight horror" series makes absolutely no sense, and the net result is a mishmosh of uninvolving and whiny pseudo-sinister that should've been titled Transylvania 90210.

The Gates is a gated community, lovely and tranquil in a Desperate Housewives kind'a way. It has its share of coy beauties (of both sexes), hormonal teens, and behind-closed-doors secret liaisons, but here's the kicker: many of the long-time residents are actually vampires. Or werewolves. Or shapeshifters. Or witches. Or succubi. Or other supernaturalish creatures n human form, hiding in plain sight (and quite comfortably, too, thank you).

As a fifty-word pitch, that might seem almost interesting.  Almost. To some. But as even the pilot episode shows, you think about it for five extra seconds and the concepts begins to crack and crumble like an overbaked snickernoodle. 

Why, for instance, would creatures that have no real connection to each other-- in fact, seem to have some inborn interracial enmity -- congregate in one li'l town, no matter how luxurious it might be? In rival city-states, maybe, but chockablock side-by-side in the same neighborhood? They don't even like each other. What's more, why would creatures who had spent generations running and hiding from the rest of civilization make themselves such an easy target by clumping together?  Better to be the only vampire (lycanthrope, succubus, whatever) in town, eh?  And assuming, for the moment, there was some really good reason to be there in the first place, why the HELL would you put yourself in a community that's completely covered in closed-circuit security cameras that record your every (evil) move?  Aren't you trying to hide? And worst of all -- why employ a local police department that ISN'T in on the secret?  The guy who created this Subivision of the Damned did it specifically to provide a 'safe place' for the weird among us -- he says so, straight up, in the first episode. So what actually create and pay your own do-it-hourself Van Helsings ... and give them guns?? 

It don't make a lick o' sense.

Really: a gated community being taken over by supernatural beasties, maybe. King made it work with a small New England town, way back when in 'Salem's Lot, and Fido and Shawn of the Dead did it with zombies, but only for laughs. Twilight? Uh .. okay. Yeah, sure. Maybe this whole idea, wth all the pretty young people doing kissy-face across the faerie subcultures, owes more to Stephane Meyer than Stephen King.  But at base? It's just a bad idea, even for a summer show.

We've gven it two episodes.  That's enough.