Why, SyFy, why oh why?

[tj_teejay]

Sometimes there are TV shows I watch where I ask myself afterwards why I kept watching them, because all rational thought defies the notion. One of them is SyFy's Helix -- a scientific fail-fest on so many levels.

Everything inside of me screams that the premise is total bogus, and the execution even more so. Still, the characters are halfway likeable, and like most everything else about the show, eye candy levels are in the mediocre range. The plot is somehow still mildly entertaining. But... the science is beyond terrible and couldn't be more unrealistic if they tried. (Cos, uh, you can't see viruses through light microscopes. Trust me on this, okay?)

There was a reason it was pretty much at the bottom of my to-watch list (or rather to-finish list). Seeing how most of my appointment shows are on hiatus, I was finally getting to that point where I was scraping at the bottom of the barrel. Hello there, Helix. I had not particularly missed you.

What still irks me to no end is that cheesy crap like this gets renewed while the good ones get canned. Same with Bitten, actually, which despite Greg Bryk I just couldn't warm to. Which is why that show is also still on the to-finish list. Looks like, sadly, the bottom of the barrel has more to offer. Where's the scraper again? *sigh*

On a more positive note, I did end up loving The Night Shift. Shame it only had eight episodes, but at least that one gets a second season too. And, yes, I know. It's been using every darn medical show cliché in the book, and there's nothing innovative or new about it. But give me a good old broken hero character, plenty of UST and Brendan Fehr on top of it, and I'm sold. Predictable me.

And while we're talking about Greg Bryk, there's more ReGenesis cast members popping up in current productions. If you're into gritty cop dramas with a realistic feel to it (at least as far as my lay person judgement goes), you should give 19-2 a chance. It stars Maxim Roy and Conrad Pla. I really liked it, although it's not a show that you walk away from with a smile on your face. And it gets a second season as well. Hooray!

Comments

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

Hee, Helix was pure crack! The whole thing was weirdness wrapped in an enigma that was never meant to make sense and the science was not even 'pseudo"... it was just pretending to be science. And yet I watched it too, in a similar "nothing left to watch, what now?" way. I hadn't heard it got renewed though. Makes sense, only in that it must have been pretty cheap to make. They were mostly trapped in a building or running around in some snow.

[tj-teejay.livejournal.com]

"Hey, let's cure cancer with a weird virus that turns people into zombies and its cure that happens to make people immortal by messing with their DNA." *slaps forehead* Yeah, shit, why hasn't anyone thought of that yet?! ;-P Crack indeed. It just irks me that a lot of people don't recognize that and take the science for granted.

Guess you're right, the show was probably rather cheap without (m)any outdoor location shoots. But it looks like that'll change in season 2, right?

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

I thought they were pretending to cure cancer, but instead were really finding a way to spread a nasty "zombie disease" and then be the only ones with the cure. But the chick turned out to be the daughter of the Asian scientist dude and so she was in fact immune like he and the other bad guys were. And they somehow found a way to pass on "her" genes to cure cancer. Not any more plausible, but slightly more sensible I suppose. Though where the evil immortals came from is still unanswered...which is I thought maybe was where S2 was heading.

(I am cringing that I watched it closely enough to type this.)

[tj-teejay.livejournal.com]

Truth be told, I only "watched" some of the episodes while doing the ironing, so some of the details might have gone straight over my head.

I think the Japanese dude (Hatake) developed the virus (Narvik-B) to alter DNA, possibly to change the telomers so that people live forever. What he didn't anticipate is that while the virus did that, it also infected people to turn them into those zombie-like creatures. He eventually also found a cure to reverse the zombie effect, but the immortality stayed.

I'm not sure how the spinal fluid transfer of the cured Narvik survivors can also cure other people's cancer without infecting them. A long-shot explanation could be that they possess a form of a virus that targets defective cells and eliminates them without causing any other bodily harm. But didn't that also pass along the immortal thingie? Because the young chick with the brain tumour suddenly had the light blue eyes, didn't she?

Gosh, I should have paid closer attention. And the science is still total BS, if you ask me.

As for the evil immortals, I guess the whole idea to create a virus that would let people live forever came from the Ilaria corporation that funded the whole project and made sure it was all conducted in a middle-of-nowhere station out on the ice. Making people immortal would be a humanity-changing ability, and of course they'd want to keep it under wraps before they have a way of making tons of money, once the science and procedure is halfway safe.

At least that's my take on it. Not sure if that makes any sense.