I wasn’t sure what to write about this week. Then I read Martha’s column about Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and I watched the video. Then I read Denny’s column about what it takes to get hired. So I thought I might put my two cents in by telling you a bit about my experiences with success and failure.

When I graduated from high school back in the dark ages, I didn’t really have a clue what I wanted to do. No, that’s not it exactly. I knew I was going to college because… well, it was what was expected of nice Jewish girls of a certain economic class. I had some vague idea about going to medical school; mainly, I think now, because when I was young I would tell the adults who asked that I was going to be a neurosurgeon – they always laughed when I said that, that I distinctly remember – but don’t ask me why I picked that particular specialty. Maybe because of Ben Casey, or maybe because I just liked the sound of the word itself. Anyway, that autumn I would be off to Quinnipiac College – it wasn’t yet a university in 1971 – as a biology major, because that seemed a good idea for someone who wanted to be a doctor. Quinnipiac wasn’t even my first choice; that was Boston University and the College of Nursing.

My parents were proud of me.

My friends were impressed.

My boyfriend tried to warn me.

But me?

I was just along for the ride.

My first semester at Quinnipiac was a disaster. Besides the usual freshman blues, gaining 10+ pounds, and having a stick for a roommate, I hated my classes. It was all hard science and math, and my professors were incredibly boring. Except for English 101. My professor was a hippie and the textbook was the Playboy College Reader, and no, it did not contain the Playmates of the Months. It was chock full of the truly great and weird and fascinating articles, stories, and interviews found within Playboy – yes, they are really in there, folks. I read stories by Harlan Ellison and Isaac Asimov and Philip Roth. I read interviews with Alex Haley and Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. There were articles about the Vietnam War, Black Power, and Richard Nixon’s administration. My professor led us in fascinating discussions and I got to write some really cool papers on some really far out subjects.

Without telling my parents, I switched my major for the second semester to English with a minor in Women’s Studies. I took Introduction to Science Fiction and An American History of Women along with other rockin’ classes. I started to feel really good about myself – successful – and lost the 10+ pounds.

Then I came home for the summer and all hell broke loose.

“English?” my mother scoffed. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Women’s Studies?” my father yelled. “What, you need to go to school to learn how to be a woman?”

“You’re not going back,” they both said. “You’re going to go to work and learn the value of a dollar.”

To their eyes I was a failure.

And my mirror backed them up.

To be continued…

TUESDAY MORNING: Michael Davis’s Head Hurts

TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Emily S. Whitten’s Fangirl Tribulations

The challenge in producing a teen-centric horror television show is that it will inevitably be compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon was note perfect with the casting and theme of high school is a horror movie. It takes a brave showrunner to come up with a variation that avoids duplication and can withstand the comparison. MTV, once the home for teen centric music videos, has gone from reality television to scripted series so it made sense that sooner or later they’d dip a claw into the horror genre. What few expected was how successful they would be.

The 1985 Michal J. Fox comedy Teen Wolf was a largely entertaining film capitalizing on the actor’s immense popularity from NBC’s Family Ties and certainly had a theme worthy of adaptation into weekly television. In both the film and the series, a teen encounters a werewolf and becomes one. The world knows they exist thanks to countless movies so his presence isn’t necessarily as shocking as one would expect. The transformation also allows the lead character to explore his true nature as he suddenly goes from lacrosse-playing social outcast to exceptional guy. Still, he keeps his hairy alter ego a dark secret.

The series focuses on Scott McCall (Tyler Posey), a Beacon Hills High School student who becomes a werewolf and keeps it a secret with the exception of sharing the news with his best friend “Stiles” Stilinski (Dylan O’Brien). Together, they spend the first six episodes dealing with what this means and trying to find a cure, leading them to the poorly named Dr. Lycos. Meantime, they learn there is another werewolf lurking on the outskirts of town, Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin), with secrets of his own. The second story arc involves a threat from the beast known as the Alpha which explores the werewolf pack mentality which is a fresh take. (more…)

Spoiler Warning: In reviewing the second series on the BBC series Sherlock, I may discuss some plot points. If you haven’t seen it – and you should – and you want to remain unspoiled on plot twists, best skip this.

By the time I was ten I had read all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I love the characters, I love the settings, and I’ve watched many of the movie and TV incarnations of the world’s most famous detective. Basil Rathbone was my initiation to the cinematic Holmes and, for a long time, he was indelible. My major gripe with the Rathbone Holmes movies was that, with only the exception of one or two, they were all set in the era in which they were made, the 30s and 40s, and had little to do with the actual stories. I wanted the gaslight and the London fog; I wanted the deerstalker cap and the horse drawn carriages and the steam locomotives. The era was as important to me as the characters.

So – as you might guess – when I heard that the BBC was doing a new Holmes series (simply called Sherlock) and setting it in contemporary times, I was not keen. I would have given it a miss except that I learned that one of the co-creators was Steven Moffat (along with Mark Gatiss). I’ve loved Moffat’s work on Doctor Who as both writer and show runner; bright, intelligent, witty writing with vivid characters and real heart. I couldn’t resist looking at the new show and I was so glad I did.

The first series was brilliant and it absolutely worked. The creators obviously know the source material and respect it. In the original Conan Doyle stories, Dr. Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. In the update – Doctor Watson is a former Army doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan. (How times don’t change.) In the original, Watson wrote up his adventures with Holmes as stories published in magazines. In the update, he writes them up as part of his blog.

The series is aided immensely by the two leads – Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor Watson. In case you don’t know, Cumberbatch is slated to play (if rumors are correct) the villain in the next Star Trek movie and Freeman will be Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The chemistry between them as Holmes and Watson is terrific.

Each series has consisted of three ninety-minute episodes and the first series ended in a cliffhanger. Holmes had confronted his nemesis, James “Jimmy” Moriarty; Watson has a vest full of explosives strapped on to him and Holmes has three snipers homed in on him. A complete death trap! How will they escape?

The second series updates/adapts three of the better-known stories in the Holmes canon: A Scandal in Bohemia becomes A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hound of the Baskervilles becomes The Hounds of Baskerville, and The Final Problem becomes The Reichenbach Fall.

The first introduced Irene Adler, The Woman in the Holmes canon, an actress who went up against Holmes over some compromising letters involving the royal family and she proved to be a complete match for the sleuth. In the remake, she’s a dominatrix who has compromising photos of a (female) member of the Royal Family on her cell phone. When Holmes calls on Adler, she greets him in the nude which leaves the Great Detective somewhat flummoxed and he can’t deduce anything from her because she isn’t wearing any clothes.

Oh, and Holmes himself winds up in the Royal Palace wrapped only in a bedsheet. This is not your great-great -grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.

The Hounds of the Baskervilles deals with a possible spectral hound from hell threatening the life of Holmes’ client. The episode, The Hounds of Baskerville has that element but also brings in secret military testing and conspiracies. Changing “Hound” to “Hounds” is not just clever; it really ties to the secret at the heart of the mystery.

In the original “The Final Solution,” Doyle attempted to kill off Holmes by having him plummet down the Reichenbach Falls with his arch-enemy, Professor James Moriarty. In this new version, Moriarty is out to destroy his enemy and his enemy’s reputation. It also ends with what appears to be Holmes’ fall to his death although the very final shot of the episode reveals Holmes still alive. The question that needs to be answered is – how? Hopefully, that will be answered in the third season of Sherlock whenever they get around to making it.

Performances throughout are first rate, as are the production values. It doesn’t make the series perfect. They get out of the first season’s cliffhanger by having Moriarty getting a phone call and walking away. Not satisfying. I also found the conceptualization and performance of Moriarty (by Andrew Scott) too over the top. It was Moriarty as Heath Ledger’s Joker. I don’t mind a different interpretation that works, such as Lara Pulver’s Irene Adler, but Moriarty as giggling sociopath didn’t work for me.

And I have a concern. As I’ve said, the writing on this series is very clever and, for me, enjoyably so. There’s such a thing, however, as being too clever and that’s the trap into which Sherlock could easily fall – and that would be a more deadly trap than anything Moriarty could devise. The series so far has skirted the edge of it but it could easily step over and, sometimes, you don’t know how far is too far until you’ve gone too far.

All that said, I think this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes to be one of the best ever, constantly and consistently entertaining. It has intelligence and it has passion and it captures the essence of what made the Holmes stories work. The changes make us see the stories in a fresh way. I’m looking forward to the next season – which will be whenever our two main actors come back from Middle Earth, where no one has gone before.

MONDAY: MORNING WITH MINDY

This past weekend I decided to place my vote (that’s “Dollar Bills” to DC’s Bob Wayne) for The Avengers for a second time. I did it first and foremost to teach Liam Neeson a lesson: If you don’t know the movie adaptation of a board game is a bad idea, maybe you need a new agent. Second to that, I personally wanted to see the film again to revel in Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the Hulk. If there were to be a single break-out star (pun intended) of the film, Bruce Banner certainly was it. For many who saw The Avengers, this is a shared sentiment. So, this begs us to ask the dudes at the House of Mouse… What’s next for the spinach-hued smasher?

If we are to believe the internet (and when has that ever led us down the wrong path?), The Hulk will next appear on the small screen via ABC. The network is pursuing a reboot of the once powerful series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferigno. If this is to be true… I throw myself on the mercy of Mickey. Don’t do it.

Simply put? The Hulk begs for bigger and better treatment. The old series did last five seasons, and featured a few TV movies (co-starring Daredevil and Thor no less!), but this was long before the days of CGI. Long before the Hulk decimated Harlem. Or flew into the upper atmosphere on the nose of a fighter jet. Not that the recent movie Hulks have been perfect mind you, but they put poor old Lou out to pasture pretty quickly when it comes to conveying the size and power of the Incredible Hulk.

If Marvel/ABC ponies up enough dough to downsize the Hulk to the boob tube, it would certainly provide the interest of advertisers and the public at large to watch. But even with an HBO budget for a series, could today’s special effect houses handle the behemoth? In a word… no.

The fluidity of the Hulk within the Avengers was, as many fans agree, the first time the character didn’t feel entirely too fake to enjoy. Ang Lee’s monstrosity lumbered around the fabricated sets like a big baby throwing a tantrum. Louis Leterrier’s Hulk (who obviously did way more cardio than Ruffalo’s) fared better, but was more Max Headroom than Golum by comparison to the most recent iteration. While CGI and effect houses have certainly improved their efforts on TV, do yourself a favor: Watch the best episode of Heroes, Smallville, or Sharktopus Vs. Crocasaurus. Then go back and watch the Avengers. I’ll wait for you. Go on. Done? Now tell me that the scene-eating Hulk would be done any justice on a fraction of the budget that went into creating him on the big screen.

Don’t get me wrong, kiddos. For the chance to see Mark Ruffalo take the character on in a weekly serial, I’d be DVR’ing that series faster than Jeph Loeb could crap out a comic book. And while a TV show would obviously focus on Banner more than the titular titan, when it would come time to Hulk out, we’d get only a poor representation of what we know the character could be. And if they were to regress back to hiring a bodybuilder to smash cardboard walls? Well, who amongst us would not scoff as we wrote anonymous hatespew across the message boards?

If we can agree that Ruffalo’s Banner is following the Incredible Hulk movie of 2008, then we must know that there was an amazing set-up left for the sequel. Samuel Sterns was shown at the end of the film getting dosed by Banner’s blood/chemical sludge. His head began to throb and pulsate, and a creepy smile crawls across his face. Obviously meant as a wink and a nudge to the Leader, one of the Hulk’s better villains. With Ruffalo’s Banner perfectly balancing the line of intelligence and pent-up rage, only the movie screen can truly do the character justice in a battle with another gamma irradiated foe. Relegated to a lesser medium (in terms of only the effect work mind you), the Incredible Hulk might only come across the Credible Hulk.

I say make S.H.I.E.L.D. the TV show, and let Hulk continue to smash the box office.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander