Tonight is Surface

[Angel Tarragon]

I enjoyed it to a dgree. Kind of lost about waht is going on, but hopefully episode two will clear some things up. It certainly looks interesting, and I am looking forward to future episodes. I'll be archiving this series as I'm not sure of its staying value.

 

[Arnwyn]

I enjoyed it a lot, and (so far) think it's the most interesting of the new "genre" shows I've seen so far this season (Threshold, Supernatural, and Surface). But then, I like underwater stuff.

Not too keen on the kid and his possible

Spoiler

cute little alien buddy

schtick.

 

[Ghostwind]

I'll give it another try, but what I saw didn't really capture my attention much. The gal who was cast as the scientist (used to be in Boston Legal) seems too cardboard cutout to me.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

So, for a hopefully long-running TV show, the best bet is probably to grab you with the high concept, but to quickly broaden out beyond dependance upon that concept.

That's the thing, though, I don't know how they can broaden out beyond the concept of Surface or Prison Break- by the nature of the shows (sea monsters, a prison break) and their titles, they seem to pretty much have locked themselves into a short-term idea. If they'd changed the titles to allow a broader interpretation, or not pinned the whole thing to one concept (say, Prison Break wasn't focused on the prison break, but this season in the prison that was just the main motivation of a group of inmates) they could stretch the shelf-life a bit.

Then again, it may well be that they aren't thinking long-term, multi-season shows, but high concept, one or two short seasons and then move on. It just seems to be a shift in the traditional tv production paradigm to me.

 

[Crothian]

What, like 7^th Heaven? That's actually what my wife was watching during the Surface time slot.

It was either How I meet Your Mom or Monday Night Football depending when the show was actually on.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Well I am giving Surface a chance, cause after this week.

No BSG, until January. Looks like I'll be putting Invasion on the watch list also. So, no Supernatural, No Threshold, yupe on Surface, and yupe on Invasion.

And oh, Commander and Chief, will be the only second non-fiction show besides 24, that I will be watching this year.

 

[Crothian]

It's on again tonight on Sci-Fi at 11

 

[Abraxas]

Surface- they're going to have to show the little alien/sea buggers pretty soon, and then what do you do? It seems like its just a horror movie that has been extended well beyond its 2 hours. I could see it working as a miniseries, but a whole series?

I'm hope the existance (and appearance) of the sea aliens isn't going to be a main plot point - why they are here and what they are doing are (hopefully) what the show will be about - in which case, if its any good, it will have some staying power.

I wish some of these shows would be made like Babylon 5 - decide what story you want to tell and plan for how many seasons you want to tell it in. That way you can some sort of conclusion, and not fall into the problems of an open ended slow death as nothing ever gets resolved.

Other than that, I'll keep watching cause I really like these sea monster shows.

 

[takyris]

Ouch.

Have watched the first 20 minutes on my fake Canadian-Tivo-like-box.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

It just depresses me sometimes to see a show with a budget that huge and writing that bad. They quite obviously pulled out all the stops -- filmed on location, evidently, non-stock footage of several ships, good CG as far as I can tell -- and yet they let dialogue like that make it past the first draft.

The old scientist guy? Annoying and needlessly cryptic. The kid? While he himself was no more objectionable than any Will Robinson-esque kid-meeting-alien, I wanted to have sea monsters flay the skin from just about everyone else in his scenes. Sassy diver-mom who threatens to cut the ear off her child's stuffed animal so she can go off and do her dive? I know I'm supposed to find her cute and loony, but I hope dad gets custody, and I was wishing that the sea monster could have eaten her craft, not just bumped it around a bit while doing the Star Trek IV whale-song-that-shorts-out-electronics shtick.

I'm giving it until the end of the current episode, but that's likely as far as I'll go.

EDIT: I know that this is a Lost-ripoff, but come on! It's like they decided to rip off Lost after hearing about it but not watching it. The biggest attraction of Lost is the writing -- there are all kinds of cool things in the show that don't involve wacky monsters at all, yet are still cool because of complex and well-realized characters. This show... well, if there's any justice, it'll go all Earth 2 on us in a hurry.

EDIT EDIT: Since I know that some folks here enjoyed the show, and would take hoping for its cancellation as a personal affront, I'd like to modify my opinion to "Hope it gets radically better writing, or, failing that, that it does quite well for itself without me ever having to watch it again and without its presence resulting in the cancellation of shows that I like."

 

[Desdichado]

I enjoyed it a lot, and (so far) think it's the most interesting of the new "genre" shows I've seen so far this season (Threshold, Supernatural, and Surface). But then, I like underwater stuff.

Huh. I thought it was the worst of the three by a noticable margin.

I'll watch all of them at least another week; none of them were as lame as, say, Point Pleasant, but Surface was definately the least appealing of the bunch to me. The characters were more annoying than interesting, the premise wasn't as intriguing, and the plot was plodding.

It could turn out to be a good show, but so far, I'm much more excited about, say, Supernatural than I am about this.