Webisodes

I've been trying to watch the "webisodes" of Battlestar Galactica produced for the winter break. Let me go ahead and say it: watching webisodes sucks. Unless there are some substantial revisions to the format, I'm going to go ahead and declare the idea DOA.

Who ever thought that this was a good idea: you click on an episode, you watch a thirty-second commercial, you sit through a four-minute chunk of story, and then you have to go find the next episode in the list and repeat the process. Except this time, you've already seen the damn ad. And the first twenty seconds or so are the title screen and a recap of the last episode.

Let's go over that again: You spend a minute searching a list, watching the same advertisement and title screen, and then part of an episode you've already watched, all for a little bitty fragment of a story. No possible chance for immersion, only an irrepressibly irritating experience.

Have I mentioned that it's repetitive?

I applaud the networks for trying something new and innovative, and for actually trying to make use of the Internet. In an age where every big media corporation seems terrified of ones and zeroes, this is something laudable. We need more people trying new things.

I just hope they find different people.

Legend of the Seeker / Star Wars

So, on a whim, I decided to try and watch the pilot of Legend of the Seeker. It was on the front page of Hulu. Also: I was too tired to do much else.

Here's a synopsis:

Kahlan / Leia, a woman in a resistance movement, flees the Midlands / the Empire in search of a wizard, Zed / Obi Wan. Their ultimate hope is the plucky young hero Richard Cypher / Luke Skywalker, who has no knowledge of his past, taken from a mother who died in childbirth and hidden from a great evil. Unbeknownst to him, our hero is a Seeker / Jedi with supernatural powers and the wizard gives him a magic sword / lightsaber. Rushing home, out hero finds that the Bad Guys have burned his house and murdered his aunt and uncle / adopted father. Enraged, they set off to vanquish Darken Rahl / Darth Vader and save the land from Evil (with a big E).

I'm only about twenty minutes into it, but I'm just waiting for Rahl to deliver the line, "No, I am your father."