mariness

Enjoyed it, but was left with a definite sense of Meh. Ok, the show gave us the quippy dialogue, the requisite "We are sponsored by Disney, here are some toys," bits, the requisite "We are sponsored by Disney, here are some quotes, along with a quick mention of Harry Potter so we don't sound too self-absorbed here," and a flying car (yay) and a broken newspaper stand (as I noted on Twitter, it's always the poor innocent newspaper stands that end up suffering the most in these things) and some little flying robots (more yay) and admitted at last what we've all been thinking: regardless of Thor's actual divine status, Chris Hemsworth has the arms of a god. (You could almost hear viewers respond with, "So, this means more than one shirtless scene in the upcoming Thor 2 flick, right?" I also liked the way the show admitted that blowing up most of New York is a pretty traumatic event even if Everybody Except the Architecture was mostly saved by a group of Kinda Scary People even if one of them is really Perfectly Chiseled.

Two problems, though: one, what with introducing all of the new characters and S.H.I.E.L.D. and catching us up and hinting at Dire Things and allowing all of the geeks to shout SHEPHERD BOOK AND GUNN ARE BACK and on the same show together, the main storyline felt incredibly rushed and unearned -- not the fault of the actors, but the fault of the timeline. Hopefully, now that the intros and info dumping are sorta over, the show can avoid that.

The real long term problem, however, is with two of the leads: Grant Ward (played by Brett Dalton), who is bland, bland, bland, without a hint of quirkiness or gloom or nobility or anything, really, to make him interesting, and Skye (Chloe Bennett) who is quirky and irritating. The show wants us to think they have instant UST and thus DRAMA but it's just not there.

It's a pilot, so we'll see, and it has a flying car, so I'll tune in again, and hope that either we spend less time with Ward and Skye, or they get more interesting, or both.

I have to confess: I wanted them.

A picture appeared in virtually every comic book I saw, showing the smiling faces of a family of Sea Monkeys, who looked like some tortured set of mermaids created by a demented wizard. I knew the real sea monkeys would look nothing like that picture - I'd seen pictures of fish and insects and dinosaurs with strange head shapes, but none of those walked on two legs and the dinosaurs were gone. But still, I desperately wanted to know what they were. Did they really look like monkeys? Or little fish? Could they really be trained? Could I have happiness in a bowl?

The problem was, we lived in Italy, and the few comic books we had always came a few months later, brought over by parents on business trips to the States. Which created other issues; our parents kept bringing back Batman, and we wanted Spider-man. Issues were eagerly and fiercely traded on the back of the bus, with everyone hunched over the comic to see what had happened to Spider-Man next. It wasn't that we disliked Batman, mind you -- this was in the Brave and the Bold days, when Batman did a lot of orbiting around earth and teaming up with various other superheroes to prevent people from setting off nuclear bombs which was all kinda cool. But Spider-Man was funny. I also wanted more Supergirl comics, because Supergirl was blonde, like me, and a girl, but unlike me, she could do absolutely anything she wanted to -- fly, punch holes through space satellites, whatever -- and what she apparently wanted to do (in the Brave and the Bold days) was solve mysteries and stop bad guys, which was awesome. Later, I grew impatient with the perfection and superstrength (and questioned why anyone would choose to punch out satellites while wearing a skating costume), but at the time, I wanted to be Supergirl. I still wanted to fly, even if my flying lessons a few years back had not gone at all well for anyone concerned. I caught glimpses of other girls in the comics, too, but not many of them (and for some reason, our parents never seemed to bring back Wonder Woman comics, or if they did, the comics were so unmemorable that they have slipped my mind).

In this fantasy universe, anything could be true. Even Sea Monkeys. But at the same time, girls weren't flying into space and punching space satellites. So I looked at the Sea Monkeys, and wondered. I made up little tales, little explanations.

I had no way of ordering them from Italy, none. And even when we returned to the U.S., I had no way of getting the postal order together to pay for the Sea Monkeys. Instead, we got a worm (this was not approved of) and then a hamster (more approved of) and then a dog. The dog couldn't exactly do tricks - he meant well, but was a Dog of Little Brain - but he was soft and furry and playful and he actually found just the sight of me coming down the stairs marvelously exciting, and I figured I would never find out what Sea Monkeys actually were.

"Brine shrimp," explained someone in college.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I was crushed."

Only later did I realize that brine shrimp are actually awesomely cool and beautiful critters. But that's another post.

This is the astonishing, and genuinely shocking story, of the man who almost got the world to understand the magic of brine shrimp. Read to the end.