Giant salamanders - May 16

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but we're going to talk about a RL animal altogether, since Marvel and co. are lying low for the rest of May. Therefore, where are we?

Let us talk about the cryptobranchid, or the giant, salamanders of Asia and North America, simply because they are in their own suborder. Pause

There are three suborders of the tailed amphibians, aka newts and salamanders, and the overwhelming majority of them belong to the Salamandroidea suborder; the only exceptions are the sirens of the south-east North America, (USA), and the aforementioned giant salamanders and their relatives, (more on them below).

The sirens’ differences from the rest of the salamanders are obvious: they are probably the most neotenic of all the tailed amphibians: not only they have external gills, but they also have only front legs – no hind ones. Pause.

Whereas in frogs and toads it is the hind legs that develop first, in newts and salamanders it is the front ones instead; plus, their tadpoles have external gills, while the frogs and toads acquire internal ones very quickly; the legless caecilians, the final group of the modern amphibians, also seem to have external gills, but they are much less known than the other two, so they will be mentioned only in passing – wait.

Getting back into the mists of time, the thing is that the modern amphibians only began to appear around the time of the K-T extinction 66 MYA; before then, especially during the Palaeozoic and the early Mesozoic, completely different groups of amphibians ruled. The thing is that while initially paleontologists went with a linear P.O.V. and proclaimed that amphibians evolved from the fish, and reptiles – from the amphibians, by now it is clear that these statements are much vaguer than scientists have initially imagined.

Yes, the initial land vertebrates have evolved from fish, (as there were not any other vertebrates), but these days scientists tend to classify those early semi-terrestrial semi-aquatic animals as ‘tetropods’ and prefer to differentiate them from the amphibians because of reasons. Ditto, right now the actual ancestors of the reptiles is unknown; the reptiles have appeared back in the Carboniferous, (as shown in ‘Walking with Monsters’, for example), though they were small at that time – about the size of the modern lizards on average, (but, again, they weren’t really related to the modern lizards and snakes at all); yet they were already differentiated from the amphibians. However…

However, for a while, in the late Paleozoic, there were the so-called reptilomorph amphibians – amphibians that had reptile-like traits in adults, but their young still had gills and lived in water… and why should not they? The amphibious way of life – when the young and the adults of the same species have different… everything and thus do not compete with each other – is clearly advantageous, as the amphibians’ evolutionary history, from the Devonian to Recent demonstrates; however…

However, somewhere along the line, things have diverged at least for some tailed amphibians, as they evolved neoteny, a condition where juvenile traits persist into sexual maturity. Actually, neoteny is present in several groups of animals, including insects, so let us for now focus on the tailed amphibians: for them, neoteny is when a species has both sexual maturity and external gills, (with the sirens going one-step further, as we already said). However, the giant salamanders are a different story.

Why? Because while they are mostly aquatic, (as the neotenic amphibians are), their adults lack external gills. Yes, their young hatch underwater, have external gills, eventually grow legs…but unlike the axolotl and the mudpuppies, their gills disappear with sexual maturity; instead, they grow skin folds and the like to extract oxygen from the water instead, which is a different story altogether – but what it is?

To recapitulate, metamorphosis came before neoteny – for a while, there was no obvious reason to evolve the latter, but when it did… either the giant salamanders were too late, apparently, as plenty of other salamander groups and subgroups had, and so the giant salamanders couldn’t ‘fit in’… other the giant salamanders were too early: they began to stick to a mostly fully aquatic lifecycle before the other salamanders evolved neoteny, and since there was no competition, they flat-out didn’t evolve it, as there was no need for it. What next?

While throughout Earth’s history there were plenty of giant salamander subgroups, right now, there are only three species around – one in North America, and the other two in Asia. The American hellbender is the smallest of the three – no bigger than 70 cm long, about the size of a small child at best… but the bigger species of North American mudpuppies don’t grow over 48-50 cm long, so, obviously there’s some other factor at work, since the Japanese giant salamander reaches 150 cm in length – the size of a small adult – and the Chinese species – reaches 180 cm, which is the size of an average adult instead. Pause.

Let us get into the ecology of the giant salamanders instead. While they might be vaguely associated with the crocodiles, they really are not. The crocodilians divide, among other ways, into two broad categories: narrow-snouted fish-eaters and broad-snouted ambush-hunters of land animals. By contrast, the giant salamanders live most of their life underwater, and they do not ambush land animals, yet their heads and snouts are shore and broad instead. Therefore, whom do they resemble instead?

Why, the catfish, and especially the wels catfish – one of the biggest freshwater catfish species of them all. Just as the giant salamanders, the wels catfish is active mainly at night; it hunts by swimming along the river bottom, sensing the prey with its whiskers and swallowing them whole. The giant salamanders’ don’t have such as advanced whiskers as the wels catfish does, but neither does the burbot, (another fish), and it does the same thing too, but being around 1 m 24 cm in length, (in the size range of the giant salamanders, cough), it just cannot compete with the wels catfish size-wise. Where are we?

Ah yes, entertaining my theory that the giant salamanders, (also known as the ‘primitive salamanders’ in some nomenclature, while the other, non-siren salamanders, are known as the ‘advanced salamanders’ instead), are the ecological analogues of the wels catfish instead. The hellbender lives in the Eastern United States, where there is not any natural analogue of the wels, and, again, it is the smallest living member of the cryptobranchids. The Japanese giant salamander lives alongside the Biwa catfish – a wels catfish variant… which is endemic to a single lake only, and the Amur catfish, which is around the size of a large burbot instead, so the Japanese giant salamander can handle it.

As for the Chinese salamander, this is where things get murky. These days, there are actually two species of this amphibian: the Chinese salamander proper, and the South China giant salamander; both species are critically endangered, (i.e., in a much worse state than their Japanese and U.S. cousins), and there may be more species of the giant salamander living there – they just have not been identified and confirmed by the scientists yet. Still, the Chinese giant salamander species’ complex is struggling – from habitat destruction, water pollution, harassment from humans, hybridization with the Japanese giant salamander…and maybe from the competition from the introduced wels catfish? Who knows!

One last thing. The kappa. In one of the RM episodes, our main man JW went to Japan to confront the Biwa catfish and the Japanese giant salamander, which he proclaimed to be the root behind the kappa legend. With all due respect, JW, but on this occasion you’re a flat-out wrong; the kappa was never depicted as even vaguely salamander-like, but as a turtle-like humanoid instead. Therefore, that is that.

For the moment, though, we are saying good-bye to the giant salamanders. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #10 - March 31

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and sometimes it sucks because of something that you have done – everything was more or less fine before, and then you do something stupid, and clog one of the sinks in your home. Idiot. Yeah, talking about dinosaurs is just what you need – not. End irony. Today I got to revisit another miniseries, called ‘Beast Legends’. It consisted of one six-episode season and was never rebooted. Why?

Well, for one thing, it was supposed to be a reboot by itself – of MonsterQuest, another show that ended a long time ago. MonsterQuest itself raises mixed feelings in my chest – it was a show about all sorts of cryptids; an episode would begin with a CGI depiction of the cryptid in question – an alien, a giant shark, Chupacabra, and beyond – and then for the next hour or so a group of experts would go someplace where the cryptid in question was seen most recently, and do everything in their power as to not to find anything at all that would upend the status quo. They would not just laze around, but everything they did was so perfunctory and minimal that it became evident eventually that they were just killing time there and making it look convincing.

By contrast, ‘River Monsters’, which also got cancelled, never had JW go for the minimal – rather, JW did his best to be, well, JW, and to sell his show as best as he could – which was pretty damn good. Sadly, in the latter seasons, ‘River Monsters’ jumped a shark that had little in common with real-life fish…and so I lost interest in it, sadly… Where do ‘Beast Legends’ fit?

They never did. Rather, each episode was dedicated to recreating one or another mythical monster – whether a potential cryptid, like the kraken or the Vietnamese analogue of a Yeti, or a pure myth, such as the gryphon episode. Why? Because it was the most well delivered. However, the reason as to why it was the most well-delivered was because the biggest part of the BL’s budget went into it, leaving the last two episodes, dedicated to the Native American thunderbird and a dragon, (eh, maybe more about it later), with much less cash. I am not saying that BL blew its’ budget on the gryphon episode, (named the ‘Winged Lion’, if I remember correctly), leaving the last two episodes with much less cash. Budget issues are important issues in production of TV series and movies, and it may be why BL vanished after a single season slash six episodes. It just never had a defined audience, a defined niche for itself. The gryphon episode was quite fun to watch though. Anything else?

Sadly, not. Unlike the dragon, which remains a popular mainstay in fantasy, the gryphon…also does, but is more secondary and less popular than the dragon is by far. Pity, because it is an impressive-looking mythical monster. And yes, part of the reason as to why I have watched the gryphon episode of BL is because we’ve talked about the Protoceratops in the past, and its’ fossils may’ve been a partial inspiration behind the gryphon myth, so I thought that I should mention this dino, (a distant cousin of the more famous Triceratops, remember?).

Another bit of trivia is that the gryphon was a primarily Middle Eastern s (Asian) mythical monster (yes, the Ancient Greeks and Romans had adopted it, but only slight), unlike the dragon, which was found on all continents, except for maybe Australia and New Zealand, and even there are some dragon-like creatures to be found in their myths… Gryphon and its relative the hippogriff could never top that.

…Yes, both gryphons and hippogriffs were featured in the MLP: FIM cartoon, but if the gryphons were depicted quite canonically, then the hippogriffs were shown to be shapeshifters of sorts, shifting between a bird-horse and a fish-horse mode, with the latter being named the hippocampus instead. 

Yeah, someone in MLP: FIM had hit the obscure mythical monsters quite hard, which brings us back to the gryphons – kind of. In one of the episodes, the viewers saw some sort of a one-eyed monster harassing the gryphons – it was supposedly an Arimaspian. In real life, the Arimaspians were a race of one-eyed humanoids who constantly fought with the gryphons over gold, which the gryphons hoarded just as the dragons did. Fair enough, though I do not know as to why the Arimaspians were not classified as just variant Cyclopes, but the MLP: FIM’s Arimaspian had distinctly goat- or ram-like features, especially the horns. This, again, implies, that the final season’s Discord-as-Grogar story arc was the result of some sort of a reboot, just a behind the scenes one. Well, fair enough, this cartoon incarnation of MLP: FIM is over now, and we just got the last bits to pick over in the form of various comics and what not. Anything else?

Nothing, save that I just might be turning back to DW after all this Middle East discussion that we did in regards to the gryphon. (Yes, the name can be spelled in several ways in the English language and all are correct. Live with it). Consequently, this is it for now, see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Best Laid Plans' - Jan 27

‘Best Laid Plans’… The latest AoS episode… Did it work?

Not really. The plans got derailed – of Mack and Yo-Yo, as well as of Kasius and Sinera, but-

But Sinera died. In a fight with Daisy, (though Deke helped – but more on Deke below). When compared to Kara’s death in S2, to Grant’s, the Malicks’, Hive’s deaths in S3, even AIDA in S4, you will realize that Sinera’s death was simply meaningless: she and Daisy were doing their best to kill each other, and Daisy accidentally won. That is it. No one will shed a tear for her, not even Kasius, who is apparently already busy on his next master plan, now that the xenomorphs (remember, in the previous episode?), and bombs have failed. Oh, and he has a seer as well!

…Let’s pause a bit. If Kasius has his own seer, and they’re real, and not a fraud as John Garrett had been back in S1, then Kasius should’ve known that Sinera is going to die out there, regardless of how formidable she is, and if he loved her, he would never let her go on her own. Evil does not mean incapable of loving – Grant and Kara, and Gideon Malick with his daughter showed that. (Sorry, but in canon S3 Grant did become a villain, alas, and he died as one – but he did bring Hive back to Earth at expense of his own life – not unlike a hero – and Hive did beat S.H.I.E.L.D. up better than Grant ever could. Talk about a pyrrhic victory!).

Back to Kasius, ahem. So he has a seer of his own, who may be a real deal. Given how AoS loves twists and turns, it just might be Virgil, who hadn’t died in the S5 premiere – remember him? This could be him coming back – or maybe it will be a cyborgnetic version of Lance Hunter; given how AoS loves its’ twists and turns, that is also possible.

Anything else? The sequel to ‘Deep Blue Sea’ is coming out this year. The original film was about a crazy doctor using mako sharks to develop a cure for cancer; it worked, but then sharks escaped during a storm and killed almost everyone, and getting killed themselves in the process. Basically, it was ‘Jaws’ meeting ‘Jurassic Park’ and producing a ‘Jurassic Shark’ kind of movie in the process. The most noteworthy part of DBS was that the movie used mako sharks rather than the more famous great whites, as the movie monsters. The sequel is using bull sharks instead – again, a less-known species than the great white…more or less. In ‘River Monsters’ series, (RM), the bull shark appeared fairly regularly, and while this species was smaller than the great white shark is, it was still a formidable species. Kudos to Darin Scott and co. for starring them in DBS2.

…Conversely, here is the thing. In the DBS2 trailer, the bull sharks were shown as pack hunters, a new and improved version of the old fish. That is not bad, but real life being what it is, there is already a carnivore who does it without any genetic editing – the killer whale. It is just as formidable a predator as any shark is, it has a more advanced brain than any shark does, and it is already a pack hunter, unlike most sharks…or, to be more precise, it is a better and more coordinated pack hunter than the sharks are…and it is much more adaptable than any shark species is, too. Why can’t it be a villain in a movie?

…Possibly because between the ‘Free Willy’ movie franchise and such films as ‘Blackfish’ that expose animal abuse of killer whales and similar species by humans, the killer whale or orca is just isn’t villain material; plus there are no confirmed attacks of humans by killer whales either, so there’s that.

…Back to AoS? Not much left to say. The previous episode was largely all about the back story, filling the gaps for the viewers. This episode was all about action and moving into position – both by the agents and by Kasius and his forces. The final confrontation is about to begin, and AoS needs it: its’ numbers are growing, but are still low. Good luck to them!

…That’s it for this time; see you all soon!

Phelps vs. shark - July 24

Let us talk of Michael Phelps and his race with the great white shark.

Pause.

Yes, Shark Week is upon us, but I must confess that I was never its’ biggest fan, and this race just reminded me why.

Let us review its’ most important feature – Michael Phelps did race a great white shark, but it was a virtual one, not a real one. Moreover, yes, certainly, no one in their sane mind would race a great white shark in the wild if they can help it, and this is not something that can be arranged legally and on live TV, but-

However, what was the point of this program? AP had plenty of flaws, but what it did have, until recently, was RM with JW, and that was real life interaction of man and fish. Yes, it entertained people, but it also educated them, at least to a point, especially in the first few seasons. This – ‘Phelps vs. shark’ and beyond – is just entertainment; that, and a free ad, (but more on this later).

Now, if we are talking about a face-off with a virtual shark, we might as well bring forth AFO, and its’ episodes – ‘Saltwater Crocodile vs. Great White Shark’ and ‘Bull Shark vs. Hippopotamus’. I have discussed both of these episodes separately in the past, so here I’ll just point out again that for all of its’ flaws, AFO did its best to both educate and entertain; yes, at the end of the episode CGI’d animals (reptiles, fish) fought each other, but before that happened, AFO’s cast did its’ best to dissemble the two contestants (per episode), to depict (and to figure out) their fighting strategies; they did their best to depict their weapons in cast-iron replicas and etc. They genuinely tried to integrate computer graphics and real life, and that is quite tricky, you know?

For example, just few weeks ago I was at ROM – the Royal Ontario Museum - to look at their blue whale exhibit. It was wonderful, it rocked, and it tried to be ‘interactive’ – there were plenty of mini-videos, impromptu computer games, various thing that a person could touch…such as a Halloween-like costume of a krill. The krill are relatives of the prawns and shrimp that live in the open ocean and are eaten by the baleen whales (like the blue whale or the humpback, opposed to the dolphins, porpoises and sperm whales). That is fine, but how is dressing as an extra from SpongeBob franchise educates children about whales? And on the other hand, the actual exhibits – the actual blue whale skeleton, the replica skeletons of the prehistoric whales, the exhibits from the whaling eras – i.e. historical artefacts – aren’t interactive, actually, but are quite decidedly kept away from the public, you can look, but you can’t touch.

Ditto for other exhibits of ROM, such as the historical artefacts from India, China, Japan, Korea, etc. People could vote on which pieces they wanted to see, but they could not touch them. The interactions were limited, almost one-way, and it’s reasonable – the oils in human skin are damaging to bones and historical artefacts, ROM doesn’t want to lose its’ prized exhibits, so no touching, and what the public is left with is a bunch of second-best pieces, such as the depiction of whale dung on the floor. (Yeah, I am not kidding – there was a giant bright orange blob on the floor of the exhibit to simulate whale dung). Basically, like AFO, the Royal Ontario Museum tries to integrate reality with computer simulation (and more), and it still falls short; when I was returning home, I came across some house finches feeding on a tree. They were much more real than any of ROM’s exhibits, even if they were kind of small and hard to notice in the darkening summer evening…

Back to Shark Week? As such pieces as ‘Shark Vortex’ (aired earlier today) show, Discovery, (as opposed to AP), can air educational pieces – primarily educational pieces, for there was some entertainment as well, (but this is how it works), because-

Because there were real sharks in ‘Shark Vortex’, period. The footage of the mako, the great white, and the porbeagle sharks was real, and there was no to little CGI. The focus was on real life (and real life footage, yes). In ‘Phelps vs. great white’ the focus was on Phelps and how he raced virtual sharks; there was some footage of real life sharks – the great white, the hammerhead, the Caribbean reef sharks – but the main focus was on Phelps and his prowess. It is amazing, undoubtedly – Phelps is not famous for nothing – but he is not a shark, so…

So this idea of Discovery has actually backfired on them and Phelps, when they opened Shark Week with a promotional show of Phelps. So far, fans are unhappy with Phelps’ loss and with Phelps in general. If Phelps planned to make his alliance with Discovery to make himself famous, he did not succeed so well. Ah well, he is still one of the fastest swimming humans on the planet. Good luck to him!

This is it for this time; see you next time.

PS: And no, I haven’t forgotten about ‘Killjoys’ either; it’s just that so far there’s nothing to truly congratulate or criticize them on. So again – until next time.

Zuul the dinosaur

…And so, it is fifth of June already. Yay! In real life, my sister has graduated, and within the summer of 2017, she will have her new job. The two of us do not really get along, and this is all I am going to be talking about her here and now – not in the mood, not at all.

With RL off the table, what else is left there? Okay, there is the new nodosaur dinosaur that was (is?) talked about in May, and now June, of 2017. It is RL, actually, thus-

Thus the thing is that the official NG magazine article (June 2017) is almost downplaying the original excitement about the dinosaur from May. Take a look at the NG magazine archive, and find the October 2014 volume – it deals with Spinosaurus.

…Okay, no. We will actually try to avoid the JP franchise, movie or otherwise – as 2014-present showed, the RL Spinosaurus was a different animal from the one depicted in JP3, which is somewhat ironic, since I talked only last month about it – the RL Spinosaurus – fighting Tyrannosaurus and/or some Cretaceous carnosaur. Right. Here the thing is that back in October 2014 Spinosaurus got front-page coverage, it was the titular article of the volume, and now, in June 2017, this is not the case. The nodosaur is not the focus of the volume, the issue of why people lie is.

Again, so what? In addition, the NG has a point – nodosaurs are not as well-known as the theropod dinosaurs are. The article explains that they are cousins to Ankylosaurus (‘Walking with Dinosaurs’) and the like, but unlike the ankylosaurs in general (think Euoplocephalus, etc.) they had no tail club, but were more often spiked, as Sauropelta from ‘Monsters Resurrected’ was.

…Actually, things are slightly more complex than the lay people believe; apparently, aside from Stegosaurus and its part of the family, the armored dinosaurs consisted of three groups, not two – the ankylosaurs, the nodosaurs, and the polacantines. Polacanthus, from the already mentioned WWD, was a polacantine, not a nodosaur…and this is being disputed, the entire issue of ankylosaurs vs. nodosaurs vs polacantines. So far, scientists still do not know for sure which armored dinosaur belongs in which group, not 100%...

Back to Zuul. Yes, it was the name of one of the monsters in the initial original Ghostbusters movie, and it is the name of the new dinosaur. Only the article avoids this completely for reasons that are not obvious to the readers. Why? No, seriously, why? Has something gone wrong with the dinosaur study and now NG (and co?) are trying to downplay it? Is it something else? Curious minds want to know!

Speaking of minds, ‘River Monsters’ (RM) is over. For good. JW is done with the show and AP. This is seriously depressing. Now AP seems to be left with mainly such shows as ‘My Cat from Hell’ and ‘Tanked’. Such pet shows are not bad, but RM was better, period.

In other news – speaking of AP – I have re-watched the AFO episode ‘Croc vs. Shark’ again, and re-watched the DW episodes ‘Aztec Jaguar vs. Zande Warrior’ and ‘Vlad the Impaler vs. Sun Tzu’. Upon seeing them, I concluded that DW was a more complex show, simply because the human warfare was more complex than anything that animals – especially other vertebrate animals (as opposed to such invertebrates as ants, wasps and/or termites) – can come up with. That said, until the human warfare in question began to involve firearms for real, raw physical strength, dexterity, and endurance (‘toughness’) were even more crucial than how they are now – but that is another story.

Getting back to animals, their physical strength, dexterity and toughness…yes, this brings us back to Spinosaurus and Zuul/not Zuul. Yes, in many ways Spinosaurus was the more impressive dinosaur, but most of these ways were physical; behavior-wise I doubt that Spinosaurus was that more advanced in behaviour than a nodosaur – or a modern crocodile – was (is); Tyrannosaurus, it was implied once, wasn’t as intelligent as a domestic cat, but that’s an unfair comparison; cats are very clever, conniving creatures, and now that my own cat has died, (well, it died a while back, but still), we all miss it…

Back to the dinosaurs. Sorry about rumbling in the last paragraph; the truth is, as a semi-aquatic animal, Spinosaurus was probably one of the more intelligent theropods, relatively speaking. It had to be in order to survive in a complex, 3-D, aquatic lifestyle. By contrast, the armored dinosaurs did not live more complex lives than the modern rhinoceroses or buffalos do – they were strong, large, (relatively so), well-armored, capable of defence and attack, as ‘Jurassic Fight Club’ and ‘Monsters Resurrected’ showed in the past, but these shows, and especially JFC, are somewhat suspect when it comes to facts, but they have a point – Zuul (let’s call it this for now) would’ve had to deal with such carnivores as Acrocanthosaurus, which is a carnosaur, (remember?), meaning that while it was huge and strong, it just wasn’t evolved in the right way to deal with a proportionally small and tough and spiky dinosaur as Zuul or Sauropelta, (when compared to a sauropod like Paluxysaurus/Sauroposeidon, for example). Carnosaurs just did not have the right bite power to tackle ankylosaurs and nodosaurs, unlike the last of the tyrannosaurs – Tyrannosaurus and its’ Asian counterpart, Tarbosaurus – but that was another story.

As for the raptors, Zuul possibly had to deal not just with Deinonychus, but also with the biggest raptor known to scientists (for now) – Utahraptor. They were not as powerful as Acrocanthosaurus or the other carnosaurs, but they were intelligent. In addition, they hunted in packs. This made them dangerous to Zuul and its’ relatives, especially if the armored dinosaurs were young, or old, or sick, or wounded or weakened in some other way – just look at some of the footage from the modern African safaris for comparison…

Well, that’s for Zuul so far. Until next time!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Madame's Men - April 25

‘All the Madame’s Men’ was the 84^th, I believe, episode of AoS, and it marks a turning point, as the core characters are beginning to leave Madame Hydra’s/Aida’s world behind. This means, of course, a resolution of the entire ‘SkyeWard’ relationship, done in a manner to generate a lot of feels, and to leave SkyeWard fans happy…which is important for the AoS, for when Brett (Grant) returned to AoS, the show’s ratings went up. Looks like the ‘controversy’ gamble paid-off – sort of.

Of course, given the fact that we’re dealing with MCU there is still plenty of controversy, especially since in the comics, Captain America/Steve Rogers is (still) Hydra, and many people are angry about that because…reasons. With ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, ‘Guardians of the Galaxy II’ and even ‘Avengers: The Infinity War’ I and II in the wings, this sort of controversy can be an ambiguous sword – but we digress.

The point is that ‘SkyeWard’ was beautifully done, but it feels tacked on, a later addition, kind of like the mention of the departed Mr. Paxton, (John Garrett), was. As always, AoS has plenty of good ideas, new and old, but the way it is depicting them? It sucks. Unlike ‘APB’, whose main idea is meh, but the delivery is solid, or ‘Time After Time’- Oh, right, it was cancelled, never mind.

Or yes, do mind, thank you very much. First ‘Time’ got cancelled, while ‘APB’ made it to the season’s finale on one hand, and now ‘Powerless’ has also gotten cancelled, while ‘Making History’ seems still to be going. True, it has been reduced to 9 episodes from the original 13, but who knows? Maybe somebody somewhere was feeling superstitious? For otherwise, ‘History’ is much more lowbrow than ‘Powerless’ was, let alone ‘Time’, yet it hasn’t gotten cancelled – yet.

The above written awkward mini-rant is to point out that shows tend to be cancelled on an irrational basis and without rhyme or reason, and it sucks. To make it even worse, RM is in its final season, so yeah – after S9 wraps up, no more RM, period. The world of TV will be diminished…

Back to AoS? Yeah, ‘SkyeWard’ was put in to entice the fans/viewers, and it worked, (though S4 is still nowhere as badass as S1 & and S2 of AoS used to be), so I doubt that we will see Grant in S4 ever again, (though who knows? After S3, no one expected to see any of Dalton’s characters in AoS ever again either). Of course, this still leaves the issue of Trip hanging around – what kind of closure will he get, and there was still the matter of Bakshi: WTF did he come back?

…Bakshi was a Hydra member back in S2, who got killed by Simmons in the Arctic, and who had never been in contact with Radcliffe or Aida or Anton Ivanov/the Superior, not in canon or otherwise. So, how did he end up in the framework? Had Radcliffe and Aida Mk II, (this one) hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. files or something? In this case, they and their allies could have done much more damage than what we have seen in the LMD story arc. Instead, we seem to be dealing with a plot gap, (or a plot hole, whatever it is called), and also, before team Coulson, (including Ward), had stormed ‘Hydra Daily News’, cough, Bakshi had been briefly interacting with a somewhat Bobbi-like blonde, and Bobbi used to be undercover in Hydra… it would’ve been fun to see a framework Bobbi, yeah? However, that did not happen, alas…

(Speaking of Ivanov, WTF he is ‘The Superior’ now? Is his new ‘rank’ an adjective, a noun, a verb, etc.? In general, Marvel isn’t big on using ‘Superior’ as a noun, more as an adjective…and what, or who, Ivanov is superior to, or then? This is sort of like FH ‘Conqueror’ from the Knight faction – there wasn’t much active conquering going on in FH, which is part of its’ problem, but that is another story…)

So. Another good episode made by AoS S4, and ‘SkyeWard’ fans actually got the closure that they sought, so things are looking up. ‘Madame Hydra’ is moving into her endgame, as does AoS S4 in general. 

River Monsters and co. - March 27

Bad news on the horizon, I am afraid – ‘River Monsters’ (RM) is getting cancelled; S9 is going to be the final season.

On one hand, everything must end, and I honestly feel that RM should have finished by S7 or S8, when it jumped the shark by going out to sea. (Until S8 it stuck only with freshwater monsters, remember?) On the other, what will Animal Planet offer as a replacement? ‘The Zoo’ is a good show, (although I feel that it is focusing too much on daily lives of zoo vets), but it isn’t a good equivalent/replacement; the various pet shows? ‘Tanked’? Do not make me laugh. These days, AP is all about pets and domestic/domesticated animals; ‘RM’ went out into the wild, into the remote corners of the world, as the various Nat Geo Wild programs do – you know, ‘Wild Borneo’, ‘Wild Scotland’, etc.? With ‘RM’ gone from AP, it will be an end of an era, and in a sad way.

But then again, lately the TV shows seem to be on the sad/disappointing end of things in general. ‘The Catch’, for example, has subtly revamped itself: it got rid of all the same-sex/interracial couples and is now a straightforward crime drama full of humor, drama and sex…yeah, it is still good, but the same-sex/interracial couple angle set it apart from the other mystery dramas and with them largely gone, ‘The Catch’ is more generic than it was in S1. It is still fun to watch, but somehow S1 of it was more intense and powerful – but maybe it is just me.

And moreover, ‘The Catch’ is still rather better than ‘Powerless’, which is suffering from chronic unpredictability: maybe it’s just Canada, but it has been airing irregularly, with intervals of one, two or maybe even more weeks between the episodes. What gives? It wants to be a solely U.S. TV show? Then why air in Canada at all? ‘Powerless’ has found its footing as a TV show, but due to the gaps between the episodes, it may have problems.

These gaps, mid-season breaks and the like can be trickier to implement in a show than it may look like. ‘Blindspot’ handled its mid-season hiatus well enough, but it clearly has a precise, concise and clear game plan in regards to plot development, and character development, and etc., so that it can recover, or rather – it has recovered from the latest hiatus well enough.

AoS…initially, the info that Grant is coming back, as a guest star, was very exciting, but by now the excitement is gone and the old battle lines are probably getting drawn: people who love him and those who hate him, and the two groups don’t get along. AoS should probably resolve the issue of Grant being a part of AoS for good in S4, or else the controversy that his character is creating, on top of the controversies about Hydra and Steve vs. Tony vs. Bucky may cause much worse backlash than what AoS needs – it needed to continue with the Ghost Rider and co., to make a new start with the Reyes brothers, and the new director, (i.e. Mace), and the Watchdogs…etc.

Well, okay, it did not need to, but… But the fact is that after the S3 finale AoS had direction problems on top of everything else. In the first 3 seasons there was clear-cut progression, as S.H.I.E.L.D. dealt with aliens/InHumans and Hydra (the organization) in various proportions, culminating in Hive, an alien/InHuman who was also in charge of Hydra by default. S.H.I.E.L.D., (or rather – Lincoln), destroyed Hive forever, ending S3 openly – Coulson was no longer in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Daisy seemed to have turned vigilante; etc. The road to move on into the future was clear. So what happened next?

We all know as to what happened next. S4, which began with the Ghost Rider mini-arc and a clean break from the previous seasons, is concluding where it began – with Grant Ward, and Hydra, and etc. The only question is why? Clearly, the matter of finances is there, (S4 AoS is much more frugal than the S3 AoS was), but it doesn’t really explain everything; rather than bringing back Dalton, they could’ve just continued with Luna all the way instead – between the Ghost Rider, and the Watchdogs, and the occasional InHuman, and even the LMDs, they could’ve created a genuinely original and new S4…and instead they created a chimera of old and new…and not in a good way…

Or, you know, if it was simply a matter of cash and it was cheaper to work with Dalton than with Luna, then they should’ve just worked with Dalton from the start, (somehow, but still), and not gotten involved with Luna, period. If you do not have enough cash to make a good AoS/Ghost Rider ‘crossover’…then do not. Just stick with the tried and tested and remain within the budget; otherwise, you will still fail…

Okay, AoS is not returning to the TV screens until the next month, so let us talk about Marvel’s ‘The Defenders’ instead. The last of them, ‘Iron Fist’, was released on Netflix in March 2017 and it had plenty of its own flak, considering that the titular character was played by the ‘Game of Thrones’ Flower Knight. You know what? The fan base knew about this long before March 2017, so it was not a surprise – or a problem. The problem is that ‘Iron Fist’ is strongly influenced by DC’s ‘Arrow’ the TV show, especially the first season – but we have discussed this in the past.

What next? First, there was ‘Daredevil’, who introduced several of Marvel’s B-string characters: the titular hero, the Kingpin, (Wilson Fisk), the Punisher, Electra…and the Hand. It also has two seasons under its’ belt now, making it a showrunner and the front man for the defenders’ team. Then – ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘Luke Cage’, which introduced their titular heroes and gave variety to the usual cast of Marvel’s heroes as a woman – an abused woman – and an Afro-American man from NYC. That alone balanced out the whatever flaws JJ and LC had (as shows), and then came ‘Iron Fist’, and while it was reasonable to expect the titular character to be an Asian, or an Asian-American man, in the comics he isn’t, not really, so live with the Flower Knight in the role of a warrior monk, people!

…Of course, it does not really help that the defenders’ team moved into their endgame as well, with the all four of the defenders, (plus their allies), square off against the Hand and its’ ninjas, because, well, they do need a good and worthy opponent. The Kingpin is still in the big house, so why not ninjas? It works. ‘The Defenders’, just like ‘Blindspot’, have a clear plan progression in sight, while AoS does not. AoS’ ‘Ghost Rider’ mini-arc tapped into the vigilante ideas’ pool a-la ‘The Defenders’, and it could’ve stayed there or moved on with the Ghost Rider, but it didn’t, but rather returned to its old haunts – and the problems associated with them.

So: RM is moving into its final season, ‘Blindspot’ is going strong, as do ‘The Defenders’, ‘The Catch’…isn’t as strong as it used to, and neither is 'Powerless'; and AoS will have problems when it returns in April or so. That is it for now, see you next time!

For Honor V - Jan 13

…Apparently, Nintendo switch came out today. I do not know what the commotion is, but there you have it.

‘For Honor’ is starting beta testing. Neat. Let us be honest with each other: ‘For Honor’ is a straightforward war game; unlike the latest ‘Civilization’ game, (released back in 2016), which offers something for everyone, ‘For Honor’ is a war, strategy and tactics, game. If you like this sort of thing, then you should like ‘For Honor’; if you do not, then no. Some of the earlier ads of the game mentioned a greater universe: lords and ladies, a regal (or imperial) court of some sort, but the bulk of it all? The fighters take it; ‘For Honor’ has already revealed 9 of the original 12, and the latest 3 consist of the shugoku, designed to be a living tank, much more powerful than the raider (of the Vikings) or the conqueror (of the Knights) are, but also much more slow. He is armed with a kanabo, an iron-studded club, designed to break shields and armor, (especially that of the other Samurais), but he is also very slow; perhaps he is the slowest character of them all.

The peacekeeper is the shugoku’s complete opposite; s/he is an assassin, modeled on the titular character of ‘Assassin’s Creed’ movie and video games; the peacekeeper has no armor, and is armed with a long and short-bladed swords. Very fast, but very vulnerable to direct hits.

Finally, the warlord might be something of the Vikings’ counterpart of the shugoku. S/he is armed with a shield and a longsword combo, making him more like the conqueror of the Knights than anyone else. This two-weapon combo makes the warlord a very efficient fighter, and-

And, for the obvious reasons, ‘For Honor’ has reminded me of DW the TV show. ‘Deadliest Warrior’ S1 had introduced the Viking, the Samurai and the Knight, as well as most of their weapons, (used in the game). So far, most of the PCs’ weapons are melee weapons, and yes, their DW counterparts in the show had used them. The only other way that ‘For Honor’ could’ve made its’ universe more like DW would be by including a fourth group – say, Spartans or Pirates or someone similar – in their universe. Maybe if the beta testing of ‘For Honor’ proves to be successful, then-

Finally, RM is also coming back in 2017. I do not know how I feel about this. The first seasons were amazing, but then RM, including JW himself, jumped the shark last year by going out to sea. RM just does not feel true like its original self anymore; maybe it is time to pull the plug – but given that it is a TV show, and a successful one at that, it will probably be around for few more seasons instead.

PS: What is up with Ronda Rousey? Lately rumors about her are vague and negative. Pity. She was a very impressive presence in the UFC and the like.

Egyptian myths & etc take 2 - Nov 27

So the second episode of ‘The Librarians’, S3. As I expected, they continue to run amok over the Egyptian mythology – what gives? In the season’s opening, they appeared to have confused Apep with Set; now, as I suspected, they have thrown Anubis into the mix.

First, who was Anubis? Anubis was an Egyptian god of the dead; a gatekeeper and a subordinate of Osiris, who was its’ ruler. Think Charon from the Greeks, but with a good deal more of responsibilities and oomph. Unlike the various monotheists, the pagans – Egyptians and Greco-Romans at least – put their entire afterlife into the underworld, and that was okay. For the Greeks and the Romans most of their dead spent the eternity on the asphodel fields in a limbo of sorts; for the Egyptians, if you were not good enough to live in paradise, Ammut, the devourer of souls, would devour you and that would be the end. Appropriately, Ammut was a creature that was part lion, part crocodile, part hippopotamus – the Egyptians knew just what creatures they feared, and they had very healthy imagination.

…This is all very good, but what did it have to do with werewolves? The short answer is – nothing at all. The Egyptians did not have werewolves, because there are no wolves in Africa, not even in the ancient times. There are so-called ‘Ethiopian wolves’, but these are more like jackals, and jackals are the Old World’s answer to the coyote, not the wolf. They just are not as scary as wolves are, not on the obvious level at least. Basically, when ‘The Librarians’ decided to tie lycanthropy to ancient Egypt and throw good old Anubis into the mix, they had no ties with the real-life Egyptian mythology and just came with something of their own, out of the blue.

Again, this is no problem, it is just strange behavior for a normally professional and precise show – seriously, the folks over ‘The Librarians’ and TNT in general were too lazy to read Rick Riordan’s ‘Kane Chronicles’ trilogy? Who knows…?

In other news, while ‘The Librarians’ appear to be revamping their show in general, possibly for the ratings, ‘River Monsters’ (RM) is coming back in 2017. Sadly, I find much less excited about it than before. For a long while, approximately for the first six or seven seasons, RM was awesome; now, it is still very good, but it has clearly jumped the shark. JW rocks, but he has exhausted his potential in exchange for ratings, and now it shows. S8 of RM has ended with a whimper, and it was focusing on marine life, rather than the freshwater one. RM still works, obviously, but it is equally obvious that it has jumped the shark and no matter what it will do, it will be unable to change this state of affairs.

Finally, AoS is returning this Tuesday, so yay. Of course, Arrowverse is launching its’ own major four-shows ‘crossover’, so Marvel, AoS and MCU are still the underdogs in the realm of television, but perhaps the expanding ‘Defenders’ can do something about this balance…

Therefore, until next week, then!

AFO: Sperm whale vs. giant squid - July 20

The final episode of AFO, (but no, this is not the final time that I will talk about this series and shows that are similar to it), was something special indeed – ‘sperm whale vs. giant squid’! Wow!

Indeed, and for several reasons. Not unlike the ‘polar bear vs. walrus’ or ‘African lion vs. Nile crocodile’, the ‘sperm whale vs. giant squid’ episode was based on real life footage – as much as possible, for, unlike the African savanna or even the Arctic, the ocean depths still aren’t readily assessable to the humanity – and that is where the sperm whale and the giant squid dwell.

Next? The giant squid, (and its’ cousin, the colossal squid, of which even less is known than about the giant squid proper), is a squid, of course, meaning that it is a mollusk, a close relative to the smaller species of squid, octopi and cuttlefishes, and a distant relative of the snail, the mussel, the oyster and the nudibranch. The sperm whale, meanwhile, is a toothed whale, meaning that it is, technically, a dolphin, and its’ closest relatives are the so-called pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale, each being a fraction of the sperm whale’s size. They are shy, timid, retiring creatures who don’t behave anything as the sperm whale does, and some scientists, who specialize in classification of animals, wonder if the three species of sperm whales are actually related to each other or not. But for now, they are classified together, period.

What of the actual face-off? People who traveled the seas saw the sperm whale fight the giant squid irregularly, but they did see it. Plus, many sperm whales, especially the bulls, show the scars caused and created by the beaks and sucker-claws of squids, (though not just the giant ones), so the battles between the two orders of animals happen on a regular basis – the humans just usually aren’t there to see them.

And when they do, it is one of the biggest, not just the rarest, spectacles on Earth – the Biblical Leviathan battles the Kraken of the pagan Norse myths! Ladies and gentlemen, make your bets!

(Note: Jormungandr the World Serpent, while also a Norse monster, is not the Kraken. The two are separate entities, and when ‘Clash of the Gods’ TV series tried to rationalize Jormungandr as the Kraken/giant squid alongside Scylla of the Greek myths, it didn’t work. However, there are reasons why ‘Clash’ failed and did not go beyond a single season, and this is one of them.)

Where does this leave AFO? Well, they know that the sperm whales usually win this fight, so they adjust their CGI face-off accordingly. Their approach was to technically define and experiment with the physical properties of the two combatants, and this was what they did in their last episode. Since the sperm whale and the giant squid have nothing in common, the result was an epic (in scale) examination of the two combatants, because you cannot really compare the sperm whale to the giant squid: the two have nothing in common, not even convergent evolution! As such, AFO’s approach to their combatants transformed from a comparison into a study, two separate studies of the duo, with the show’s scientists studying and figuring out how each element of either combatants would fit into the face-off. AFO had plenty of authenticity and realism in it, and the last episode had showed it to the max. The major aspects of the sperm whale and the giant squid were shown in the most professional light possible…

Yet AFO got cancelled. Well, that is life. JFC, too, lasted for only 12 episodes and 1 season. The aforementioned ‘Clash’ – for just 10 episodes. ‘Beast Legends’, which also featured the Kraken as one of its monsters – 6. AFO didn’t do so poorly in the long run, when you think about; ‘Beast Legends’ wasn’t exactly a bad show in itself, but it was still worse than ‘MonsterQuest’, and RM is a better show still, (though lately it may be preparing to jump a different shark)… yet this is another story that we will talk about at another time.

As for the sperm whale and the giant squid in the real world? They are still around, though the human-based pollution of the environment, as well as of the global oceans and seas in particular, is slowly killing them off; the sperm whales have to deal with the issue of whaling too – nowadays it is less intense than how it was in the centuries past, but it is still there, and still a problem. People are trying to resolve it, (as well as the pollution issue), but with mixed success. I, for one, hope that in the future, they will succeed, before all that is left of the sperm whale and giant squid are live footage and CGI.

Animal Face-off: Polar Bear vs. Walrus - July 7

With AoS on the leave until September, my blog suffers from a small hiatus of reviews. There were River Monsters, but, sadly, they have jumped the metaphorical shark – the last season, (one of the shortest ones yet), was committed to ‘mysteries of the deep’…

Okay, make no mistake – JW is still the man, and RM is still heads ahead of the swill that had been aired on ‘Shark Week’, for example, but compared to the previous seasons, ones that were focusing on proper fishing rather than something reminiscent of MonsterQuest, (which wasn’t a bad show in itself, but RW is still the better one), RM has certainly jumped the shark…and left the rivers for the ocean. It should rename itself, then, since it no longer deals with the rivers, and other bodies of freshwater, eh?

…That said, the main issue with the S8 of RM is the abruptness and shortness of the season – clearly it is not as popular as it once was, and perhaps it is time to end it, on a high note, before it is ended on a low one instead – but we got distracted. There are other good shows airing on the TV at the moment – the first season of ‘Preacher’, the second season of ‘Killjoys’ and of ‘Dark Matter’, the latest season of ‘Mistresses’ – but none of them are so intense as AoS, or AC (‘Agent Carter’) had been, which, considering that AoS isn’t all that great itself lately, is just sad.

(Of course, this isn’t just the TV – the movies too seem to suffer from something similar, and lately they are even scrapping their plans for various sequels, they are trying to achieve something original…so, we’ll have to see how it works.)

In any case, while I have been enjoying the new shows, I still went out to look for some old favorites of mine, including AFO, (‘Animal Face-Off’). It was a very good show back in the 2004, and certainly no less, (and no more) scientific than ‘Shark Week’ had been, for example. (And still is – ‘Shark Week’, that is). Sadly, after a single season, it got cancelled, but that is another story – you can still see it online even now, so let us not bitch too much about it.

Therefore, the episode I watched today was ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’, and the polar bear lost. Why? AFO, (being the sort of show that it was), has actually given the answer, (indirectly), to its audience, especially to those who had been paying attention to all the experiments done on (any given) episode.

What is a polar bear? It is a predator, a mammal of the order ‘Carnivora’. As such, basically, it is a typical carnivore, with teeth-studded jaws and powerful paws, armed with formidable claws. Like other bears (brown and black, for example), it uses paws to subdue its prey and teeth and jaws to dismember and eat it. If you compare skulls of a bear, (regardless if it is polar, grizzly, or black), and a weasel (short-tailed, long-tailed, etc.), and some other carnivore (or even their relatives, fur seals and sea lions), the skulls will be quite similar, especially if you look pass the differences in sizes and size-related differences. (This fact hints at the fact that weasels and bears are related to each other, however distantly, but we are not talking biological classification now.)

Put otherwise, a polar bear has a standard tool kit of a carnivore, not counting its’ size and strength. A walrus has not. It has a very different kit - one that is suited for defence, including against polar bears in question.

Technically, a walrus is a pinniped, not a carnivore, but the two orders of mammals are closely related to each other, BTW. Diet-wise, a walrus would eat shellfish and similar creatures rather than anything else, but in the past, there was some (anecdotal) evidence of orphaned walruses growing up to be more active hunters – of seals and similar sea life. I.e., it does have some mental hardware to be as formidable as a polar bear is, and perhaps even more so.

Moreover… as it was said before, the polar bear is a typical carnivorous mammal; it is also the biggest carnivorous mammal on Earth in the modern times and it is the top mammalian predator in the Arctic (not counting the killer whale, but the killer whale doesn’t live in the Arctic all the time – the polar bear does). It preys mostly on seals, but it will eat anything else, from the lemming (a small, vole-like rodent of the north) to the walrus in question – and everything else, alive or dead, in between. Sometimes it even captures the belugas and the narwhals – a northern species of toothed whales… The walrus has evolved precisely to stand-up to it. It has specifically evolved to be powerful enough to fend-off a polar bear – the big size, the thick armor of blubber, and the tusks: the polar bear’s presence was a powerful factor in the walrus’s evolution.

Yes, the evolution went both ways, and the polar bear, especially in theory, can take down a walrus…but it would rather eat something else. A ringed seal, or a harp seal, or a bearded seal…for example, not a walrus. Anything else but a walrus, really. And when the polar bear does charge a walrus, it is usually a cow or a calf – not a bull in its prime, as it was on AFO. A fight between a polar bear and a walrus is a long and exhaustive affair, unlike what AFO has shown, and moreover, the walrus has a better motivation (usually) - it is fighting for its like, unlike the polar bear...until the last few decades, when the global warming changed everything. 

…To add injury to insult, AFO has shown a polar bear hunt a walrus live, from footage that would later shown, (in 2006), on David Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ TV series. There, a polar bear did attack a walrus – and the walrus got away, while wounding the polar bear very badly in the process (it died later on). I.e., polar bears tend to attack walruses only from desperation, and usually they lose. Usually, because lately the global warming had hit both them and walruses very badly; with the pack ice melting, both animals are being increasingly driven to the shoreline, where the polar bears have an advantage, especially in speed. If you ever see a TV program called ‘Polar Bear Battlefield’, you will see a pack of summer-weakened walruses being successfully overrun by equally hungry polar bears – and the bears won.

Polar bears and walruses have lived alongside each other for several thousand years at least, and have learned to coexist with each other within the cold Arctic Ocean and the adjoining tundra. Now humans are changing this balance of power – and both species are the losers. Let us reverse this disturbing trend of global warming – before it is too late.

May 27 - What's up

What is new?

1) “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” S2 is over. By now all of the couples have split up: Skye has become a full agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. while Grant is firmly Hydra once more; Melinda appears to have gone back to her ex, leaving Coulson behind; and Simmons was eaten by an alien rock, while Fitz wasn’t – so it is anyone’s guess in figuring out how it will go in S3. But for now, “Agents” are over. (If you not count an occasional fanfic, that is).

2) The latest season of “River Monsters”. Make no mistake – I like this show and I like JW. Compared to the other shows on both “Animal Planet” and “Discovery Channel”, RM is certainly hardcore – dealing with nature, exotic and foreign countries, and even showing some forensic science, especially in the earlier seasons. But even now, when compared to other shows on AP, which don’t have animals in them per se (i.e. “Tanked”) or show them in a very specific light (i.e. “Too Cute”), RM is still amazing! ...sadly, it still has to end.

Let me elaborate. On MLP: FIM there is Pinkie Pie, who loves to throw parties, but does not know when to stop (that is her weakness, so to speak) them. RM is like that. Certainly, JW loves the benefits, the prestige, et cetera that it brings him, but enough is enough. He has exhausted the topic, for the seasons of RM are becoming shorter and shorter, with more spectacle and less science, which is not good – not to mention that in the reputed RM S8 JW plans to focus on sea fish instead, thus defeating the actual concept of his show instead. JW, it was a great show while it lasted, but it still must end – if not with a bang, then with a whimper, but still end...

3) And as for MLP: FIM itself, so far it is rather interesting, even as it is determined to return the villains from the previous MLP cartoon incarnation – Tirek, Smooze... Now, of course, there are the Arimaspians, who appear to be based at least in part on Grogan, another villain from the past – but that is not THE interesting part.

THE interesting part is that the entire Arimaspian/Gryphon conflict was taken straight from the classical Greeks, who had both of their monsters in their mythos. The gryphons are, of course, the gryphons, while their enemies were a mythical race of one-eyed people – just think Cyclopes, but human-sized. The Arimaspians constantly tried to steal the gold from the Gryphons..., which brings us back to MLP: FIM. Interesting, no?

...Anyways, this is for this time – “Agents” are “Agents”; RM is getting too successful for its own good; and MLP: FIM is actually using real-life mythology for its episodes. Until next time!

Update: Jan 17, 2013

It is almost the middle of winter, so it is time for me to update my blog – I have not done this for a long while now. 

What was going on in my life? Due to some political turbulence, a new construction site has been started and abandoned halfway between my apartment building and a local park, so there was a sudden influx of birds in my neighborhood – nuthatches, woodpeckers, even a juvenile hawk (I think). This was very exciting for me, though not for the local grey squirrels, which have to deal now both with these newcomers and with some new squirrels, mainly red, so the fights between these rodents are more common now.

P: NW, meanwhile, is still on hiatus (it will be returning next week, though, if nothing goes wrong), though watching the marathon back in December on Space was fun, as contrasted to Spike.

Now, Spike is the channel that once hosted shows such as “1000 ways to die”, “CSI”, “Tattoo Artist”, and of course “Deadliest Warrior”. Sadly, most of them (such DW, 1000 and “CSI”) have ended one way or another, a fact that does not stop Spike from showing them over and over again. I am not sure if this TV channel has some issues with Rogers’ cable company, but there is little new material, other than the “Joe Schmo show” and the upcoming Bellator MMA special. Clearly, Spike has problems securing new material lately, which makes me wonder for how much longer it will last.

As for DW and its own issues, well... I like harping on them, and that is not quite fair. For example, take the S3 episode “Indian Ghurkhas vs. French Foreign Legion”. In the original run, it had been released as a double feature with the last episode, “Vampires vs. Zombies”, and was overshadowed by it as well. Now that I could see this on its own, I was more impressed. The weapon testing was fair, the team members’ performance was above average, and the weapons provided were clearly in a good (to put it lightly) condition.

That said, the previous seasons and their episodes, (like “Jesse James vs. Al Capone” ep), did not have such expensive props as the S3 did, and they were still OK. This makes me wonder that DW may have gone bankrupt because of the financial overdraft, as well as the issues with Richard Daly (who was not a Green Beret after all), and the pro-American bias, as evident in American-related S3 episodes, especially the “US Army Rangers vs. NKSOF” episode, Winning the match by 0.5% is a sort of a hair-splitting approach that is not well liked by most audiences.

Still, “Indian Ghurkhas vs. French Foreign Legion” did not have such issues, and as such, I can appreciate it as a good episode in a show that had gone slightly downhill before it died – but it does not explain why all that the Spike is showing are marathons of shows from the past...

The second marathon I watched was on Discovery – that of the “River Monsters” series. Unlike DW, this show has gone for 4 seasons in a row, and a number of specials, so I honestly think that it will go on in the future for at least one or two more seasons.

As far as nature shows goes, RM focuses on Jeremy Wade, the master angler, who goes around the world (mostly to the tropics of Asia, Africa and South America) seeking various monstrous fish of those waters. In the episode “The Mutilator” he went to Papua New Guinea to expose the detrimental effect of the red-bellied pacu (the omnivorous relative of the piranhas) on the local environment. In the episode “Pack of Teeth”, he went to South Africa to prove that the African tigerfish (another relative of the piranhas) were dangerous pack hunters even to humans, let alone to the other fish. And in the episode “Chainsaw Predator” he went to Australia to try to capture the local freshwater sawfish and to see if it was truly dangerous to humans.

In other words, RM is more than just about fishing; it also often addresses various scientific and environmental issues that are connected with fishing, of course, but also to the greater picture of the human encroachment on the environment, you know? Plus, JW tends not to kill its prey, unlike the characters in such shows as “Swamp People”. I do not have anything against “Swamp People”, I just like RM better.

That said, RM did have its share of problem episodes. “Asian Slayer” was downright frustrating, as JW went out and caught nothing, overwhelming his audience with various background animals and native customs instead. “Cold Blooded Horror” had JW mistakenly equalize the giant Japanese salamander with the local water spirit, the kappa, even though kappa’s depictions usually show it as a terrapin-monkey hybrid instead. (It doesn’t even have a remotely salamander-like feature, like an oar-like tail, so WTF?)

Finally, the month of January 2013 showed the premiere of S3 of “Lost Girl”. Basically, it is about a succubus who has discovered her true people (other Fae) in the beginning of S1 and has been struggling to fit-in there ever since. Like so many Showcase shows, “Lost Girl” has a strong mystery genre element as well as a strong element of a gothic romance, as Bo (the succubus) is trying to figure out her relationships with Dr. Lauren (a human) and detective Dyson (a werewolf). When “Lost Girl” does not go over the top with the romance, it is quite fun to watch; when it does, then it’s a soap opera where some of its members tend to sprout new body parts or whatever when they get emotional. For now “Lost Girl” manages to keep the soap under control, so I am enjoying it quite a bit.

(Speaking of soap operas, the squirrels outside are beginning to settle down somewhat – maybe they can learn to get along, unlike, say, Bo and Tamsin, LG’s latest new cast member. But I would not bet on it.)

Conclusion: Spike is having problems, DW had issues but now it became an enjoyable blast from the past, RM still is a fun show, and “Lost Girl” too is fun to watch. Oh, and P: NW is coming back on January 22, 2013, apparently, so life is getting better in the TV land.