Please don’t “dumb down” all broadcast media selections.

AT LAST – a show with incredibly interesting possibilities!!!! Yes, it had a Solaris/2001/Ridley Scott/Naked Sun feel, but additional fresh elements that could take it almost anywhere. I found it all captivating, and I want to see MORE!

What is reality?

I loved the way it flowed from Real life to Reality to VR (Matrix was great, but it started w/Star Trek) and back again with the same characters in each. Putting character favs aside I thought that the way they interacted kept you watching, especially when they would all talk over one another with several issues going at once.

There are so many paths running from the source here that need to be followed up on…the interpersonnal issues, the TV show (eh), the “is the reality real” scenario, Doomsday, and the VR “glitch”.

The glitch alone is a huge undertaking and could cover so much area. It was different for everyone; a molester, an assassin, a murderer (although interpreted by the character as a sort of re-birth), an OB/GYN doctor (hope of a child), and when the captain re-played his VR scene over to see what happened, he showed it continuing past death into the “light” and stars (definite reminder of Brainstorm when Christopher Walken plays someone’s death (brainwaves) into his own mind and lets it run past when that person’s brainwaves stopped, seeing what happens after we are truly dead).

Oh, I forgot to mention the whole “what are we doing here, where are we going and what is out there” path. For those who remember it, sort of along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey theme, and as long as I brought it up, Krubrik’s spacestation was what I thought of when I saw this one, no?

Yes, I’m showing my age. I tried to get some of my thoughts across without giving too much away. I really hope that SciFi picks this up…too many times really good shows are dropped because our society can’t handle anything thought provoking (yes, WAYYYY too dark and deep!).

Great visuals and music – yep, its way too dense and too good for mainstream TV in the 00s – how could it ever go fulltime?
Such potential, and such a shame – but Bab5 wouldn’t have survived if introduced today …

Of the flaws my main one is that it seems a bit weak that everyone would not notice the same asshole in their programs a lot sooner. I can’t think the ratings were any good for this. So lets just continue to wonder what if?

With respect to the racial thing, I thought they tried hard to show diversity. Whites, Asian, Black, Hispanic, a balance of genders, a gay couple, a character in a wheel chair, of the white characters many are ethnic. I think this approach is typical of Moore look at BSG.

Shame on NBC/Sci-Fi channel, shame on Fox for mucking with it. With the Leno move I can see where NBC wouldn’t do it but certainly Sci-Fi could find a spot for it. Oh wait they are too busy with WWF and shelving Eureka for Ghost Hunters and really bad made for tv films. A show like this would not increase their demographics and that seems to be what the fols there are after.

I’m sorry, but EVERYONE is racist, including you JB. You try to deny it, then you’re a racist AND a liar. You seem really focused on looking for minorities in shows and movies, almost obsessive. I’m sorry, but looking to fill roles based on if they are a minority, whether you’re for OR against it, is still racist. When I watch a show, I judge the character on how well they fill the role, not by what race they are. I’m a minority, but I really don’t care about how many people of my race is in a show or movie unless it would have made more sense but they didn’t for whatever reason, *cough*Last Airbender*cough*, but really, if I find something offensive or not to my liking, I simply don’t watch it or buy into it. It’s a free country, and I actually believe that unfortunately means people are free to be racist. Fighting racism with racism the other direction is still racism, that’s why I don’t believe in any of those stupid concepts…

Anyway, just watch the show and enjoy it for what it is. Or don’t watch it…

So much racism to analize, so little time…

There’s the ‘Supporting Negro’ category that we’ve had to deal with since Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for it in 1940 for her portrayal as Mammie in ‘Gone with the Wind’ (anybody else find it completely messed up that her character was actually NAMED after a specific stereotype? As time goes on, black actors were forced into supporting roles even when they were better actors than the white leads they shadowed (Will Smith in ‘Bagger Vance’, Bill Duke in ‘Predator’, Djimon in ‘Gladiator’, Morgan Freeman in category of movies where the only significant black character is the first to die Plus Almost all black movies that make it to the mainstream simply MUST involve at least two of the following: gangsters, sports, cheating black men, bitter black women, music, and Soul Food – the last item, which has a movie of the same name, is probably the most ridiculous of all. Do you think Tom Hanks would ever star in a movie called ‘Casserole’?

Let’s not forget, of course, those movies where minority roles are snatched away from minorities altogether and filled by whites. This used to be a category suffered almost exclusively by Native Americans in every movie from John Wayne’s ‘The Searchers’ to Daniel Day Lewis in ‘Last of the Mohicans’. Remember that ‘crying Indian’ from the Don’t Litter commercials? He was Sicilian. Black people, however, are being newly banged over the head with this category for the first time since the days of Al Jolson with Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal as a black man in ‘Tropic Thunder.’ I refuse to see this movie, because I know that as soon as I hear RDJ try to talk like a black person, I am going to go completely ape crap and stab myself with a fork.

This T.V. Show Virtuality is following the same road map as the other issues with movies and tv when it come to race just mentioned. Again Are there any Black Men in this show or in this protrayal of the future of Virtuality? We don’t know but sofar I ani’t seen any yet if this is supposed to be in the future with all this technology and spaceflights to other galaxcies.

I’m glad it did not have one thing or any other is it didn’t involve the typical monolithic cast of modern no-talent black actors: Taye Diggs, Sanaa Lathan, Morris Chesnut, Nia Long, Omar Epps, etc. Understanding WHY black films can’t break the shackles of stereotypical subjects is the most enraging reality of all: they simply wouldn’t work.

Anybody who needs proof that racism isn’t dead and that black people and white people are nowhere near being on equal social footing only needs to think to himself why black equivalents of historical epics (a black ‘Gladiator’), existential pieces (a black ‘The Truman Show’), non-musical/non-sports biographies (a black ‘Capote’), horror flicks (a black ‘Exorcist’), adventure films (a black ‘Indiana Jones’), or sci-fi (a black ‘Star Wars’) generally aren’t commercially viable – it’s because white people ain’t interested in that stuff.

http://thetvobesssed.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-virtuality-pilot.html

The only thing I actually “liked” was the proposed method of propulsion of the ship(which looked like it was dropping mini-nukes and then riding the blastfield but I think there may have been a few Issues with changing Momentum that quickly…)