Jammer's Reviews

Hello, fans of Jammer's Blog & Reviews. Hopefully there are still some of you left out there. Long hiatuses can be bad for retaining your audience. One can at least partially ascribe the rating woes of Caprica to that reason after a mid-season break of some six-plus months. (Not to mention the very long time between the initial pilot movie's release on DVD to when the series premiered in the first place. Syfy's baffling scheduling of BSG and Caprica prolonged air dates at the expense of rational sense.)

So it was announced today that Caprica has been canceled by Syfy.

Ironically, I had just started to catch up on Caprica last week. Mrs. Jammer and I watched three episodes in one night as part of our process of clearing the DVR of stuff that had piled up in the weeks before and during our wedding and honeymoon (which were both great, by the way). Caprica had followed a Boardwalk Empire marathon.

I had planned to watch yesterday's Caprica tonight (and still might), and I was devising in my head a catch-up plan for the reviews, which were going to employ some serious shortcuts in the interest of getting back up to date quickly.

That all, however, seems to be moot now.

I see little point in reviewing the remaining episodes of a canceled series, especially since the series has been pulled from Syfy's schedule and will not air its remaining season-one episodes until sometime in 2011, assuming they get burned off at all.

I also wasn't sure what exactly those reviews were going to say. Caprica is (well, was) a nice-looking and intriguing series with Big Ideas that was competently acted and produced. But it was also a show that had a lot of plot lines and characters but not a lot of certainty as to which of those plots and characters truly mattered. And, of course, there was something about the show that was so deadly serious and melodramatic without having the sort of immediate emotional and visceral edge that made BSG so great.

I liked how great the constant, ominous, moody rain in "Retribution" looked, for example, but there was absolutely no way I couldn't have started a review of that episode with anything but, "It was a dark and stormy night." Caprica often plays like Sophoclean angst where people's fates are preordained and what's happening on the screen are convoluted morality plays rather than vivid storytelling and characterization.

Anyway, feel free to discuss any and all of Caprica in the commenting space below, as reviews will not likely be forthcoming now that the show is toast.

So what does that mean for Jammer's Blog & Reviews? Well, for one, it finally means that for the first time in a long time, I have no currently-airing series on the books. And thus I've run out of excuses not to turn back to TNG, finally, at long, long last.

I am still settling into my newlywed life and Mrs. Jammer and I are doing a lot of stuff around the house. But I'm guessing that we will get into our new routines fairly soon, and I will be able to gradually work TNG back into my schedule after two and a half years of having it sit on the back burner (actually off the stove completely, to be honest). And, of course, I'll get back into a habit of blogging again, about various television and other topics.

So I'll see you again soon, my faithful readers — those of you still hanging around, that is.

Like this site? Support it by buying Jammer a coffee.

◄ Season Index