Defying Gravity 1×8 “Love, Honor, Obey” review
September 14th, 2009
The following contains spoilers through the episode “Love, Honor, Obey,” originally broadcast 9/13/09.
Just over a month later, ABC might have just aired its final episode of “Defying Gravity.” It’s a little confusing, in some respects, because the season was planned to have twelve episodes, and clearly, eight does not equal twelve, and how the episode ends, it seems like we’re right back to that other failed sci-fi show this summer, the pilot-sized ‘Virtuality,’ which also had to settle for ending just as things were really going to get interesting. Still, technically speaking, it was called a “season finale,” which in network parlance doesn’t actually preclude the chance it’ll never be seen again. Bad ratings, I get it. But if you’ve got to go, best to do it in style, right?
Defying Gravity 1×7 “Fear” review
September 7th, 2009
The following contains spoilers through “Fear,” originally broadcast 9/6/09.
There’s something kind of privileged about watching an unheralded, underrated series, especially when there’s a good chance that you won’t be watching it for long. ‘Defying Gravity,’ along with ‘Merlin,’ hasn’t exactly been your traditional network series this summer, airing as a joint international venture, so poor ratings and the probability that it won’t return or finish out a promising, multiyear lifespan doesn’t quite have the same inevitability as, say, ABC’s remake of ‘Life on Mars’ this past season, which had an opportunity to fill out a whole season before receiving a definitive plug. Instead, whatever its fate, D2G at least gets an extended run, one that can sustain, for as long as it lasts, the admiration of those who are watching, wherever they are.
Defying Gravity 1×6 “Bacon” review
August 31st, 2009
The following contains spoilers through the episode “Bacon,” originally broadcast 8/30/09.
This is how I know, in case you were wondering, just how involved with D2G I’ve become: last week I stumbled upon a movie Laura Harris (the lovely Zoe Barnes) had made with James Callis (my favorite actor from ‘Battlestar Galactica’), ‘Merlin and the Book of Beats,’ and bought it sight unseen. I learned on the back of the package that Harris had apparently been featured in the series ‘Dead Like Me,’ and by complete coincidence had my first experience watching that show just a few days later. Making personal connections, such as they are, with the actors means I’ve really begun to see this show as something special. (I also saw Ron Livingston in ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife,’ but I’ll whisper that one in case anyone wonders if I’m manly enough to depend on listening to in these reviews.)
Defying Gravity 1×5 “Rubicon” review
August 25th, 2009
The following contains spoilers through the episode “Rubicon,” originally broadcast 8/23/09.
Whatever ABC was doing with its preview last week, the show obviously had other ideas. For those who watched it, maybe they agreed with Ted Shaw’s decision to withhold the truth of the mission from Maddux Donner. Then again, I suppose this might have been a great opportunity to join the millions who, well, aren’t watching (despite the network’s routine “it’s a hit” attitude in the ads). For me, though, the episode was yet another affirmation that watching D2G (my clever acronym for ‘Defying Gravity’ that combines the logo with last week’s pet phrase I’ll be using for the remainder of my time writing about it, no matter how long that is; once again, though, ABC has its own opinions, running a preview for the new season of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ instead of a sneak for next week’s episode) is hardly a mistake, at least on my part.
Defying Gravity 1×4 “H2IK” review
August 17th, 2009
The following includes spoilers through “H2IK,” originally broadcast 8/16/09.
The numbers are in for the first three episodes, and they certainly don’t look all that great. ‘Defying Gravity’ will likely have its run this year and that’ll be it (unless you’re Canadian, because the numbers look better there). The complaints, as mirrored at this very site by my colleague forst, are that the series is just too soapy. Oh, and maybe that serialized television may have run its course. The signs have certainly been there for years: ‘Lost’ frustrated fans when they quickly realized they’d really have to watch everything to figure out what was going on. ‘Heroes’ couldn’t even sustain interest, after a while, over the course of a half-season arc. ‘Battlestar Galactica’ promised a series arc about a “plan” at the beginning of every episode, but never bothered with that at all, so naturally fans were quite happy to sustain their devotion to it. Next episode, ‘Defying Gravity’ (yeah, five episodes in) is poised to deliver the goods on the mysterious Beta. These days, fans have already waited too long! At a time when procedural and reality shows have demonstrated a rank ability to sustain interest week after week and the only sitcom to register any significant audience is loathed by critics, now might be the time to wonder if ambition is a death sentence, gimmicks are better than real quality, and the best days of television are slipping into the past.
Defying Gravity 1×3 “Threshold” review
August 10th, 2009
The following includes spoilers through “Threshold,” originally broadcast 8/9/09.
The most crucial thing about any new series is how well its initial pretensions hold up past the first episode. In a way, viewers of ‘Defying Gravity’ had a sneak peak of that on debut night, when the second episode was aired directly after the first. But the true test is when those viewers have to wait the week for a new one, as they would normally have to for a weekly series. Does the show have something interesting, or just a minimal supply of curiosity that can’t be sustained? Being a serialized drama, ‘Defying Gravity’ has already assumed that viewers will answer in the affirmative, and the network seems to have agreed, because otherwise there would have been very little point in airing back-to-back episodes last week (except for an accelerated schedule, which NBC has been doing to a certain extent with ‘Merlin’ this summer). “Threshold” isn’t the first regular episode, but it might as well be; it’s the first opportunity in three hours for the creators to sit back and take a more expansive look at itself, and at least as far as this reviewer is concerned, it was worth it.
ABC’s Defying Gravity Too Soapy
August 10th, 2009
Waterloo reviewed the first two episodes of ABC’s Defying Gravity last week and was quite positive in his comments. The third episode aired last night and I have to say that I can’t stand the way the show focuses so heavily on soap opera. Much of last night’s episode involved the astronauts-in-training (in the past) being given special “HALO” patches that supposedly suppress sexual urges. Before long, a group of women have bet a group of men that they can’t overcome the patch and get it up.
Maybe that’s what prospective astronauts would really do, I don’t know. I do know that the episode didn’t need to waste twenty minutes introducing the patches, setting up the competition and carrying out the competition.
Defying Gravity review
August 3rd, 2009
Based on 1×1 “Pilot” and 1×2 “Natural Selection,” originally broadcast on 8/2/09.
On the heels of the low-budget, small release summer treat ‘Moon’ and this summer’s earlier glimpse of a similar, aborted television series called ‘Virtuality,’ ‘Defying Gravity’ makes at least one thing clear: it’s finally affordable to do astronauts on a near-casual basis in Hollywood. This comes at an extremely interesting point, since the space race is forty years old, numerous disasters have all but put exploration on hold, and the best we’ve got is an International Space Station doing phantom laps in orbit, and while that’s excellent for world cooperation, it also means that NASA is far from the relevant entity it once was. In this show, the controlling organization, in 2052, is the ISO. Ten years ago it went to Mars. That certainly seems ambitious to a modern audience, which is strange, because back in the day, everyone was predicting a future that was more ambitious as a matter of course. ABC concluded its run of ‘Life on Mars’ this year by revealing Sam Tyler was on his own space mission, and if that was a modest experience, ‘Defying Gravity’ is all about goosing everyone back into the spirit of adventure that once so visibly drove us to the moon.
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