Kingdom Hospital. Oh, the cheese!
Mar. 4th, 2004 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ealgylden"Copycat" just doesn't get any better on the repeat. Graham Spaulding is thoroughly repulsive, but he makes a good bad guy, so it's a pity to see him wasted in perhaps the weakest chapter yet of the ongoing Jack's Epic Saga of Angst and Pain, Oh Woe. Too many improbabilities, too many strained logical threads, too much, too bad.
I haven't seen Riget and I don't plan to seek it out (not a Lars von Trier fan here), but from what I've heard, Kingdom Hospital is, in comparison, either a pale shadow or a desecrated corpse. Imagine that, Stephen King producing schlock. But since I like schlock, I thought it was fairly fun. Not good, and certainly not scary, but funny (albeit not always intentionally) and cheesy. I'll give it a couple more weeks anyway. My bad movie watching muscles could use the workout.
My favorite thing about this show so far is the narrator (played by King himself, channeling Vincent Price through a layer of Cheez Whiz). He's so far over the top Edmund Hillary is jealous. His lines sound like they're borrowed from a spooky show aimed at kids, like the show-within-the-show about pirates in Garfield's Halloween or the Patrick Stewart narration in Nightmare Before Christmas. And florid? Yeah, a bit, maybe. "Perhaps the ground Kingdom Hospital stands on is still uneasy, for the cold and damp have returned." OooooOOOOOOoooooh! No, not... mildew! Or toward the end, when King gleefully glooms, "There's a price to be paid for the miraculous, and Blue Cross doesn't pay it." Dang, what a giggle-fit that one gave me. How he resisted adding a nice "booga booga booga!" to that, I'll never know.
Not too many Vancouver-based genre stalwarts have shown up yet, or at least not ones that I know. We've got Camier the Cleaner from Once a Thief and Clone Emily from Smallville, though, and I did hear a rumor that Peter Wingfield might show up later (please, please, please). Andrew McCarthy was surprisingly, seedily fun, as was Ed Begley Jr. (whose character is a freak, a huge, goofy freak), but so far all Bruce Davison has done is make me wish for his character's swift and messy death. It's not really his fault, though; TV Head Surgeons are always jerks. I'm not sure why Down's Syndrome would give one psychic powers, or what's the point of those two characters at all, since all they've done so far is tell us exactly what we've just seen, but we'll see. The famous-artist-squished-by-a-van King stand-in was a bit much, but who knows, maybe the payoff will be good. And his brain surgery was pretty darn amusing. Never thought I'd say that. Oh, and the operating theater looks like one of the sets from "Ariel," which was cool.
And there are talking animals. Lots of talking animals. Um. I did like the talking anteater, despite his horrible pun which was far too lame to be repeated here. All his punny sins were forgiven for the sake of one shot. It's a dark and stormy night, Artist-Squishing-Bad-Driver is hanging out at home, la la la, and there's the classic horror movie "someone's outside the window!" reveal. Only instead of SchwarzenAlien or the Paul-possessing Iceman or special-guest-star-of-the-week Tony Todd, we see... the anteater.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Man alive, the corniness of that shot alone will get me to watch next week. Sure, I'd be happier if the show were actually good, but then it's not like I expected it to be. I had no illusions to be dispelled here. Besides, it could be worse. It could be Tommyknockers.
Nicked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sffan:
Your Discordian Totem Animal is Buckminster The
Naked Mole Rat. Like Buckminster Fuller but
more naked and slimey.
Your Discordian Totem
brought to you by Quizilla
Wayhey, I'm Rufus! Naked mole rats always make me think of a Bill Nye the Science Guy show I saw ages ago. His "They're naked! And they're moooole ratssss!" ended up as a catch phrase among my college friends for a while because of it. We were fun, but no one ever said we were normal.
I haven't seen Riget and I don't plan to seek it out (not a Lars von Trier fan here), but from what I've heard, Kingdom Hospital is, in comparison, either a pale shadow or a desecrated corpse. Imagine that, Stephen King producing schlock. But since I like schlock, I thought it was fairly fun. Not good, and certainly not scary, but funny (albeit not always intentionally) and cheesy. I'll give it a couple more weeks anyway. My bad movie watching muscles could use the workout.
My favorite thing about this show so far is the narrator (played by King himself, channeling Vincent Price through a layer of Cheez Whiz). He's so far over the top Edmund Hillary is jealous. His lines sound like they're borrowed from a spooky show aimed at kids, like the show-within-the-show about pirates in Garfield's Halloween or the Patrick Stewart narration in Nightmare Before Christmas. And florid? Yeah, a bit, maybe. "Perhaps the ground Kingdom Hospital stands on is still uneasy, for the cold and damp have returned." OooooOOOOOOoooooh! No, not... mildew! Or toward the end, when King gleefully glooms, "There's a price to be paid for the miraculous, and Blue Cross doesn't pay it." Dang, what a giggle-fit that one gave me. How he resisted adding a nice "booga booga booga!" to that, I'll never know.
Not too many Vancouver-based genre stalwarts have shown up yet, or at least not ones that I know. We've got Camier the Cleaner from Once a Thief and Clone Emily from Smallville, though, and I did hear a rumor that Peter Wingfield might show up later (please, please, please). Andrew McCarthy was surprisingly, seedily fun, as was Ed Begley Jr. (whose character is a freak, a huge, goofy freak), but so far all Bruce Davison has done is make me wish for his character's swift and messy death. It's not really his fault, though; TV Head Surgeons are always jerks. I'm not sure why Down's Syndrome would give one psychic powers, or what's the point of those two characters at all, since all they've done so far is tell us exactly what we've just seen, but we'll see. The famous-artist-squished-by-a-van King stand-in was a bit much, but who knows, maybe the payoff will be good. And his brain surgery was pretty darn amusing. Never thought I'd say that. Oh, and the operating theater looks like one of the sets from "Ariel," which was cool.
And there are talking animals. Lots of talking animals. Um. I did like the talking anteater, despite his horrible pun which was far too lame to be repeated here. All his punny sins were forgiven for the sake of one shot. It's a dark and stormy night, Artist-Squishing-Bad-Driver is hanging out at home, la la la, and there's the classic horror movie "someone's outside the window!" reveal. Only instead of SchwarzenAlien or the Paul-possessing Iceman or special-guest-star-of-the-week Tony Todd, we see... the anteater.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
Man alive, the corniness of that shot alone will get me to watch next week. Sure, I'd be happier if the show were actually good, but then it's not like I expected it to be. I had no illusions to be dispelled here. Besides, it could be worse. It could be Tommyknockers.
Nicked from
sffan:Your Discordian Totem Animal is Buckminster The
Naked Mole Rat. Like Buckminster Fuller but
more naked and slimey.
Your Discordian Totem
brought to you by Quizilla
Wayhey, I'm Rufus! Naked mole rats always make me think of a Bill Nye the Science Guy show I saw ages ago. His "They're naked! And they're moooole ratssss!" ended up as a catch phrase among my college friends for a while because of it. We were fun, but no one ever said we were normal.
