Six Feet Under

Well, I just watched the last episode. I watched the whole series on my digital recording machine. It is one of the best series I have ever seen, artfully written with exquisite production and acting.

The series follows a family of funeral directors. They serve as the perfect vehicle for exploring life and death.

The show is focused on one unalterable fact. We will all die. The opening of every show has a person living their life, then dieing. A roller blader is hit by a car. An elderly woman dies in bed. A baby dies in one episode. Sometimes it suprises you who dies. For instance in one episode a man is lighting a match over an oven. He has the gas running and a telemarketer calls. While the man is talking to the telemarketer and lighting the match over the gas oven the telemarketer is killed by a disgruntled employee on the rampage. It shows how random death is, how it strikes in unexpected ways, often making no sense, following rules of it's own.

In fact, every major character in the show dies.

As much as I love it, I am kind of glad it is over. I was getting a little Goth Watching it.

McLaughlin Group

I love this show because everyone is yelling and screaming at each other about politics. I just wonder why they don't sit around with beer, though clearly they have plenty of coffee.

Special Session

Keep up with Texas politics. The Texas Legislature has a big effect on our lives. Yet there is only one political talk show that focuses exclusively on the Texas Legislature. Special Session with host Paul Steckler is seen on Public Television.

Star Wars, Clone Wars

Nice cartoon from the creator of Samurai Jack. Terrific battle scenes and some background on the Clone Wars that Star Wars fans shouldn't miss.

Battlestar Galictica (21st century version)

A thriving interplanetary civilization is destroyed by their own creation, artificial life forms known as the Cylons. This is not that cheesy 80's version of Battlestar Galactica. It is gritty, in your gut action. Giant fleets are completely decimated. The only survivors are a few random lucky ships and an out of date "Battlestar"that was so old the Cylons couldn't use their jamming technology on it.

The acting is what really makes this worth watching. You can see how scared these people are as they watch billions of humans on a host of planets destroyed in moments. We see a low ranking cabinat member find out that she is suddenly President. But by that time there are fewer than 50,000 humans alive.

Edward James Olmos is one of my favorite actors. He plays the calm but tough Captain Adama, who although shaken, provides the crew with strength.One of the most remarkable characters is the woman who plays Starbuck. She is feminine, but quite guy like at times. She is kind of sleezy. It is hard to believe that a petite cute blond could be sleezy, but she pulls it off.Characters are neither good nor bad, but kind of grey. The greyest of all is Dr. Baltar. You never quite know where he stands, in fact he doesn't.

The special effects, music and documentary style filming all support this strong cast as does a compelling plot with a lot to think about. But even if you don't want to ponder, there is enough action in the fast paced battle scenes to keep it from being boring.My only problem is there aren't enough episodes.

Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex

An action packed spicy anime, with some deep poetic and philosophic undertones. The opening scene to every episode captures these seemingly incompatible themes. An athletic woman diving from the top of a building and landing a hundred stories down on a spider shaped robot that she anhilates with a burst of pistol shots; then the scene changes to a dream of her as a child crushing a doll. As I watched it closer and closer, and saw a few episodes I realized this show puts some pretty profound thoughts into it's sizzling storielines.

The main character is an hauntingly beautiful cybernetic woman (the Major) who leads a special branch of the Japanese police/army. Quite a few episodes show her and her team fighting criminals with their extrordinary abilities. The plot moves towards a confrontation with "the laughing man" and that is where things start to get complicated.

We start to realize that these "people" are largely made of mechanical parts. Even their brains are wired to futuristic cybernetic Internet. So the question starts to be, what makes one human? If people started connecting to computers in networks would it become hard to distinguish where the individual begins and ends? And could these individuals connecting their conciousness spin off other independant "stand alone" complexes that exist independant of the original makers.

And these "people" who have more mechanical than natural parts start to seek a connection to their humanity. For instance the Major wears a watch she has owned before her first mechanical body. It is her connection to time which passes differently when your body isn't decaying.

Pondering the lyrics lyrics to the haunting opening song brings it all back to this theme. When does our spirit live? Is there a Ghost in the Shell?

And that is the way this show is. You can watch the sexy Cybercop chase bad guys and enjoy that, and/or blow your mind thinking about the potential for cybernetic independant consciousness.