The WB, which merged with UPN to become The CW in 2006, has been revived — this time online. Our regular readers and my friends (OK, same thing), know I’m a big fan of a lot of old WB shows and like to reference which obscure WB show various actors have starred or guested on, so imagine my joy that I don’t have to spend money on DVDs to watch some of these guilty pleasures. The site actually launched back in the spring, but made its official debut Wednesday.

TheWB.com features a mix of new shows made for the Web and old favorites, such as Buffy, Angel, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, The O.C. and others (though oddly missing is Charmed). The streaming occasionally stutters, but is good quality overall.

I can’t say any of the new offerings, such as Sorority Forever or A Boy Wearing Makeup appeal to me, but they might to other people in the demo that the WB is trying to hit. And regardless of whether the new shows are any good, it’s nice to be able to view the WB classics online, anytime, for free.

In an attempt to appeal to today’s ADD youth, you can also do video mashups because what the world needs is more Smallville montages on YouTube about Clark and Lana’s doomed love story set to Josh Groban.

On the other hand, you can also set up viewing parties where people can watch the same video simultaneously and online chat at the same time, which is kind of cool and a nice chance to collectively groan at how badly some of the shows have aged.

Now if we can just get some of those not-so-classic WB shows (e.g. Black Sash), I’ll be in guilty pleasure heaven.

Sure, the CW canceled its original plans for the Aquaman TV series, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pay $2 to see the never-to-be-aired pilot episode on iTunes (motto: now serving your bad taste in TV as well as music). Oh goody.

But here’s the thing: It’s not the total suckfest I expected it to be. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not good. But honestly? It’s about on par with a lot of the crap that UPN and the WB aired on a regular basis. I guess CW is just more high class than that now.

Continue reading Prince of the high cheese

Well, the new Aquaman show on WB/CW is already off to a troubled start. Seems the lead actor (formerly Will Toale) has been recast. They have instead selected another shirtless guy—Justin Hartley of Passions.

In other casting news, Ving Rhames, despite being in the new Mission Impossible movie, is apparently looking for work and will play the lighthouse keeper who, if they stick to anything close to the Aquaman lore, will be a bit of a mentor to ol’ A.C. Denise Quinones will also be a series regular, though probably not still as the Avenging Angel character she recently played on Smallville.

Oh, and did I mention they’ve picked a name for the series?
Mercy Reef.

Have mercy indeed…

For the love of God, give this
man a job! He’s too poor
to afford a shirt!

We told you earlier about WB’s plans for the much-maligned Aquaman, now it seems they’ve picked their martyr. It’s little-known actor Will Toale.

He certainly seems to have the right look, and not in the “I’ve been taking steroids” way of the guy who played A.C. Curry/Aquaman on Smallville earlier this season. Of course, they were also trying to hire someone who had better acting skills and they seem to have gone for a guy who is mostly a model, so we’ll see how that works out. But Tom Welling was a model without much acting experience when he started doing Smallville, so maybe WB is just hoping to get lucky twice.

With the success of Smallville, and the series likely to reach its inevitable finale soon (Hey, even Clark Kent’s gotta grow up sometime), the WB is looking to the sea for its next hit. The object of its affection: Aquaman.

WB looks to hook
the marine mammal
demographic

Yes, the guy who was the subject of ridicule for so long seems to be making a comeback. WB has decided to forgo gay Aquaman (Superfriends) and the ridiculed Aquaman (Entourage) and, presumably, the DC Comics Aquaman who lost a hand, replaced it with a harpoon and then somehow got a hand made out of water. He will be similar to the Aquaman character who appeared on a recent episode of Smallville, though luckily he won’t be played by the same actor, who looked like he was on steroids.

I’m unsure if they’ll go into the backstory of being raised by a dolphin and being from Atlantis. But presumably, he will talk to ocean animals and swim a lot. I also assume that he will encounter a lot of bikini-clad women — this is the WB after all.

The series begins shooting early next year, probaby to premiere next fall. I’m guessing they’ll pick a relative unknown to play Aquaman, but if they do decide to go with the DC version with the harpoon hand, I’m pretty sure Buster from Arrested Development will be available soon…

Buffy The Vampire Slayer has been off the air for more than two years, but it continues to influence genre television. Last season, Alyson Hannigan appeared on Veronica Mars as Logan’s spoiled, bitchy sister. Unfortunately, she was woefully miscast, and Willow’s witchy charms were largely wasted.

Marsterpiece Theatre

Fortunately, it looks like another Buffy alum will be better used, as Charisma Carpenter will be voyaging to Mars for a stint as a bitchy trophy wife. It certainly seems like a more logical career path for Cordelia Chase than getting knocked up by Angel’s whiny son and giving birth to Firefly‘s Zoe, right?

In other casting news, it seems Smallville isn’t content merely cannibalizing Buffy‘s premise and characters, it’s now pillaging its actors. James Marsters will join the cast as Brainiac, a college professor who tries to turn Clark to the dark side. Now that’s some smart casting.

I was looking at some old reviews and forgot I used to organize them a different way, so I’m going to back to the old format. Try to contain your excitement.

[That would explain the spike in server activity. — Ed.]

Overview

In case you’ve been spending a lot of sleepless nights worrying since last week’s cliffhanger episode, don’t worry; Jonathan Kent is just fine. He’s in the hospital, but a lot of people have been there lately. (Must be a new set they want to show off.) But that’s not the point of the episode “Velocity.” The Fast and the Furious comes to Smallville — Pete “the Boss” Ross being the fast, and Clark “the Gent” Kent being the furious. (OK, I couldn’t really come up with anything that rhymed with Kent. Sue me.)

There’s street racing, which can never end well, and Clark continuing to feel guilty about everything in the world, including his dad’s heart attack. Lana discovers that Adam used to be Chad Nash, a guy who supposedly died. And Chloe and Lex continue their hunt for information on him, which leads them to a molecular biologist and some wacky blood platelets. We’ve taken a definite X-Files turn.

Super strengths

I have to admit, as weird as the thing with Adam is getting, I am kind of curious as to what’s going on. And I haven’t heard Clark and Lana have some drawn out speech about their feelings and trust in quite awhile. Thank God.

When I saw last week’s preview for this episode, I rolled my eyes and groaned. I hate when they do themed episodes, especially because I wanted to know when the hell Pete became a racecar driver. But to the show’s credit, they did give some reasoning behind it. Pete’s speech about always being in Clark’s shadow and wanting to find something he’s good at actually seemed justified, seeing as how he never does crap in any of the episodes. And I was also skeptical about how come no one had ever busted this street racing gang, seeing as how it’s a small town and there were a lot of people watching the races. But they later mentioned that Dante has a deputy in his pocket, which, while not totally convincing, made me a little less skeptical.

Super Weaknesses

I don’t know why everyone is so excited about Pete and his driving. It’s not his driving that’s winning the races, it’s the fact that his car is tricked out with a kryptonite booster. (Yes, apparently kryptonite can fuel cars. Is there anything this stuff can’t do?!?) All Pete has to do is keep from driving off the road. At the end, Dante’s car explodes from underneath for no reason, causing the crash that kills him (sorry for ruining the surprise if you haven’t seen the episode). Why does it explode, you may ask? A good question. Speaking of mysteries, how does Lana find out about Adam’s dead alter ego, Chad Nash? Chloe and Lex, who can usually find an unrealistic amount of info on people, haven’t stumbled across this, but Lana can somehow find it purely from finding out that he’s from Oklahoma? Uh-huhhh …

Misc.

Though I’m happy that Pete, the perpetual sidekick and token character, finally gets the spotlight, we find out that he’s kind of an asshole. First he threatens to reveal Clark’s secret if Clark doesn’t keep the street racing under wraps, then he lies to Clark and then he practically blames Clark for his problems and demands that he rob an ATM to get Pete the money he needs to pay off his debt to Dante. What a crappy friend.

What happens when you change someone’s future? If you save one person’s life, will that end up hurting other people later on? The implications of Clark’s ability to help others are interesting and weighty matters addressed in a fairly average episode, “Hereafter.”

Jordan Cross can see the moment people die if he touches them. This allows him to predict the death of the school’s track coach, which Clark manages to prevent, much to the dismay of the suicidal coach. (His daughter was killed recently and he blames himself.) Jordan is astounded because he and his father have tried to prevent other people’s deaths before but have never been able to do so. Jordan thinks this is connected with his vision of Clark, which he says was unending, as if Clark never dies. But the vision involves a CGI cape similar to the one in the opening sequence of Lois and Clark, so perhaps he was predicting that series’ sudden demise.

At any rate, Clark and Jordan set out to find Megan, whose death Jordan has seen. However, he was unable to stop her from leaving school. Strangely, getting all hysterical, making a scene and demanding to walk a girl home does not encourage her to listen to you. Hmm, perhaps I need to change my dating strategy after all … So Clark and Jordan walk to her house, only to find that she’s been kidnapped. Jordan runs away when his dad threatens to pull him out of school and runs to — where else? — the school. He runs into Adam (more on him later) and Lana. Lana touches him and, unlike his earlier vision of her dying in old age, he sees a much sooner death. He freaks out, as he tends to do, right before a guy knocks him out and kidnaps Lana.

After Jordan wakes up and finds Clark, they realize that it’s the track coach who has kidnapped the girls because he now blames them for the death of his daughter. Apparently, no one at the hospital thought it would be a good idea to have the suicidal guy undergo some sort of observation or psych exam before just letting him go. So he sets a building on fire with all three of them in it. As is apt to happen in Smallville, Clark arrives just in time. Or maybe not. As large as the fire has gotten by the time they arrive, I really think smoke inhalation would already have killed Megan and Lana, but they seem pretty much fine. Jordan and Clark free them, but the coach gets ahold of Jordan as they’re leaving. Clark goes back in for Jordan and pulls him out just in time before the building explodes. Not just a little explosion. A big explosion. Apparently, besides the shrine to his dead daughter, the coach was also keeping large stockpiles of dynamite there. Clark must administer CPR to Jordan to revive him. After being returning from the brink of death, Jordan discovers he has lost his premonitions.

On the Adam front, Chloe sees him using a needle at school and gets suspicious. She and Lex begin investigating a little. Thus far, we’ve discovered that he knows martial arts, computer hacking, how to play some difficult piano pieces, he has an exemplary school record, all of his teachers laud his praises (but in the same words, as if scripted to do so), he has some wicked nightmares that involve yelling and breaking things, and he keeps a vial of something under his bed. Oh, and Jordan says he’s died before. Wacky.

The episode ends with Clark taking some cookies to dear old Dad. Clark discovers his dad lying on the ground. I’m pretty sure there are some FCC rules that require a slow-motion shot of a dropped item whenever someone in a TV show discovers a loved one dead or dying. This is no exception and we get a close-up of the falling cookie plate. Jonathan has had a heart attack and mutters something. I imagine his life is flashing before his eyes, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s an old episode of The Dukes of Hazzard. At any rate, time is always of the essence when heart attacks occur, so Clark yells for help, and the episode ends. Man, if only they had some quick way to get him to a hospital. Not just a quick way, but a super quick way. That would probably be helpful. Man, if only …

Just when you thought spam was the only thing to fear when opening up your e-mail account, Smallville makes us realize just how much we have to fear from technology that instantly brainwashes us to become killers. Sure …

As we found out last episode, Chloe was fired from the Daily Planet, where they all have flat screen monitors and the latest in technology. (Puh-lease … the newspaper I work at still uses Netscape 4.0; I’m lucky I still don’t have to put the individual letters on the printing press.) But before she goes, she tips off her editor about a story on Summerholt, a research institute that’s been doing some pretty shady things with people’s brains. And so the cliché of the reporter hunted down to prevent her from writing an expose begins.

Her first assailant is Clark, who tries to mow her down with his truck. They try to make it a surprise that Clark is the one who almost runs her over, only revealing who he is at the last second before the credits, but we all know what the Kents’ truck looks like, so the surprise was pretty lost on me.

Later, Lana takes an axe and some kick-ass moves to Chloe in the middle of school. And it’s a great fight. I admit, with my love of Buffy and Alias, I’m partial to women with a good spin kick, but it’s a fun fight to see. They do the slo-mo thing once, and it’s when Chloe finally gets in a good punch to Lana. Admittedly, that was good to see, but there were some much cooler things the special effect could have been used for. Anyway, the fight spills into the girls’ locker room and Lana is about to go Lizzy Borden on Chloe, when Adam (who had accompanied Lana to school for some reason) comes in to save the day with his own brand of kung fu. Although Lana kind of kicks his ass, Chloe manages to knock her unconscious for a second, rendering her normal and non-homicidal again. Darn.

But this brings up an interesting question? We find that the e-mails are triggering some sort of hypnosis that commands people to kill, but what stops it? The woman who kills the Daily Planet guy with a pencil in the ear (everyone say it with me: “eeewww”) comes to her senses once the deed is done, which makes sense. With everyone else, it seems to be when they’re knocked out, but that means that Jonathan got knocked out by a bale of hay (wuss) and Clark got knocked out when his truck slammed into whatever it slammed into. And I don’t think Clark can get knocked out. So I’m a little confused, but since I don’t think instantaneous binary brainwashing is remotely plausible in the first place, maybe I’m being a bit picky.

Anyhow, the Smallville gang, including Adam, get together and eventually figure out that the e-mails are coming from Summerholt grad Molly, which prompts the question: Why are so many hot women evil? It’s a tragedy. But apparently the cancellation of the short-lived WB series Black Sash, has led her to send these e-mails to the good people of Smallville, using Chloe’s address book, which she took off Chloe’s hard drive, which she stole from LutherCorp, which had repossessed Chloe’s school computers. In the process of figuring all this out, we find that Lana’s new boy toy, Adam, is not only a good fighter, but a computer hacking whiz. These secret skills can only mean one thing: Eventually, Adam will turn out to be evil. Although the Buffy theory of dating has already proved that main characters cannot have normal relationships with anyone. Or relationships with anyone normal, at any rate.

So to wrap up what’s getting to be a long review, Clark tracks down Molly using superhearing to listen to a cell phone conversation (apparently the audience is not smart enough to know when Clark tilts his head and hears voices that he’s using his superhearing; we have to be shown a CG version of his ear drum vibrating). But Molly has already sent an e-mail out to Clark’s parents instructing them to kill Chloe, and luckily, they just happened to be checking their e-mail at that exact moment and were both reading it. So Clark runs to the farm to save Chloe, though runs into some problems because apparently brainwashed Jonathan was smart enough to bring kryptonite. But, as I said before, Chloe lets loose with the hay bales, and our hero lives to fight another day.

At the end of the episode, Lex approaches the doctor from the research institute wanting his memory back in exchange for keeping the lid on Chloe’s story. And Lana rents the space above the Talon to Adam. This will make Lana’s walk of shame to work in the mornings much shorter.

Props for the Lana-Chloe fight, although it’s a lucky thing that no one had a sharp pencil, since apparently that’s a much more effective weapon than cars, axes, chains, etc. Most of this episode was a little out there, although it was fun to see Adam get his digs in at Clark. And look, I went for an entire review without calling him Pretty Boy.

I can’t remember when I last reviewed Smallville, but I know I stopped watching it after last season’s finale, when Clark threw a red-kryptonite-induced super tantrum. I’d had about all I could stand of that drama queen and swore off the show. But then I got bored one Wednesday night and decided to watch. I caught the rerun of “Extinction,” which was actually not too bad. And then I found out that some people actually read what I write and, even more shocking, miss my long-winded diatribes about Smallville. Just goes to show the Internet really is fully of crazies. But in order to appease my adoring fans, and just because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ll do my best to review the show that first made Kristin Kreuk a household name. (Well, my household at least.)

Apparently since I’ve been gone, Clark went to Metropolis and behaved badly until Jonathan got temporary superpowers and beat his son into submission, presumably taking away the red kryptonite. (No, I don’t understand how Jonathan could be given superpowers by Jor-El. Just go with it.) After what I’m sure was a lengthy grounding by his parents, Clark got shot by a kryptonite bullet, met Perry White before he got involved with AA, did a wacky time travel thing with Lana, and continued to keep the girl of his dreams at arm’s length. Lex survived his plane crash, only to find out some deep dirt on dear old dad. Lionel convinced everyone Lex was crazy and had him put in a mental hospital. And somehow along the way, he found out Clark’s secret. Lana got stomped by a horse. Chloe and Pete continued to do the things that ignored characters do. (Although Lionel does still have Chloe investigating Clark for him.) And Ma and Pa Kent continued to give out wise, heartwarming advice.

In “Asylum,” I have to admit I really liked the opening sequence before the credits. Clark walks through the asylum to meet Lex and runs into a bunch of guys from his past that he’s had committed — the Home Improvement kid that can split himself into two people (still just as gross to see the second time around), the freak-killer and that guy that temporarily stole Clark’s powers. There’s a heartwarming meeting with Lex that ends with Lex going ballistic when Clark won’t break him out, and then later Lex tries to escape. And you really do feel bad for the guy when he doesn’t make it. The rest of the episode revolves around Clark’s efforts to free Lex. Mostly this involves him typing on a computer. Seriously, what is he doing? Going to AskJeeves.com and typing, “How can I free Lex?” Apparently, Clark is a superhacker or something because I don’t know how he’s getting the information he’s getting. Eventually, he goes to the asylum to break Lex out, but his former enemies ambush him. (Except the freak-killer, who gets killed by … well, the freaks, of course.) Clark gets his powers stolen and gets thrown around a bit before using the kryptonite against his attacker and taking his powers back.

Meanwhile, Lionel decides to erase Lex’s memory using electroshock therapy. He succeeds in the end, and you can’t help but cringe a little when it happens. Electric shock is not pretty. But by the end of the episode, Lex seems to be back to his normal, happy self with no memory of the past few months. Michael Rosenbaum plays the whole episode brilliantly — swinging from calm to crazy in the asylum and appearing healthy at the end with just a hint of creepiness. Kudos to him. John Glover also does a great job as Lionel and making you think for a second that he might really care about his son before ripping away any doubt you had that he’s one twisted dude.

Lana uses physical therapy to get back on her feet and in the process meets a guy named Adam, who is wearing more makeup than Lana. It’s über-weird. They fight at first, but you know the sparks will soon fly and by the end of the episode they’re friends with potential for more. Clark and Lana aren’t really speaking anymore, which while sad, helps us avoid the weekly conversations of:

Lana: “Whatever your secret is, Clark. You can tell me. I’ll be OK with it. I promise.”

Clark: “No. I have no secrets. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m afraid you would hate me if you found out.”

Lana: “But I just said I wouldn’t hate you. Really, I’d be OK with it.”

Clark: “No. I must remain stoic and emotionally strong. Like … a man of steel. Ah, yes. That’s a clever self-reference. Besides, it’s a superhero thing. We must always be alone because we’re different. … Not that I’m a superhero. I’m just saying.”

Lana: “Fine. Whatever, Clark. I’m going to go find a man who will open up to me … and give me makeup tips.”

Maybe I’m soft from having been gone for so long, but I kind of liked this episode overall. Maybe this won’t be as painful as I feared …