I feel an impulse to confess. I watch a really corny tv show called Roar. Shaun Cassidy is the brainiac who came up with a pseudo-Celtic version of Hercules. It's not smart and cute like Hercules, or clever and self-mocking like Xena, but it has a certain charm of its own. The lead character is just spiffy at smiling, looks great in leather and chainmail, has a very soft Australian accent marginally disguised as an Irish accent, and is generally watchable. I like him. It's hard to look good in silly braids, and packing a longsword. The sidekick is a tall, rangy, would-be Sean Connery in Celtic muttonchops and big tribal tattoos. Personally, I would have made him the lead, but the adolescents aren't meant to identify with him. There's a cool-looking archer chick, very Slavic with ice-blue eyes, and a wholly inexplicable black guy in dreads and a stupid outfit. I don't know what bright mind thought of casting him, he's a terrible actor. The bad guys are Romans, yay.
I hardly know why I like this show. Part of it is the attractive settings, the interactions of the characters, and the general goofiness of writers trying to combine genuine mythology (practically none), bad fantasy (rather a lot), and appalling dialogue (a boatload every show). I enjoy a good bad show every once in a while. But if it were just plain bad, I wouldn't have watched three shows in a row. I may yet give it up. There's just something about it that makes me keep hoping the writing's going to improve.
I think it plays into one of my personal trends. I seem to phase in and out of liking fantasy. I had my imagination altered forever by discovering Tolkien when I was 9. I sucked up vast loads of fantasy until I was 13 or so; then I found out about Heinlein, Bradbury, and Asimov. I turned into a hard-sf buff in my late teens. Change again: I got interested in the female and feminist writers of the 70's and 80's. I read tons of feminist and social sf. I kept up an interest in science fiction all this decade until around 1995 when I found out what wonderful stuff was being published over in the fantasy axis of the industry. So I'm currently ripe for the Hercules/Xena/Roar trend in tv. Which is not to say I don't read sf anymore. I do. I'm just trying to understand, perhaps fruitlessly, why my otherwise ascerbic editorial voice is murmuring, "Aw, look at the cute guy in chainmail." Sheesh. I hope the pendulum swings again soon, or I'll be too embarrassed to tell anyone what I watch.
Listen, if I ever start babbling about how great Sinbad is, just smack me around until I come to my senses. Thanks. You're a pal.
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