Daniel's TV Blog

Flash Gordon premiered on the SciFi Channel last week. Episode 2 is on tonight. I did not have high expectations for this, and it failed to meet even those. Oh, it's bad. The acting is abysmal, and I'm usually soft on bad acting. Also bad: the writing, the characters, the technology, and the entire premise. The thing that got me the most was when Flash went to visit the grave of his father who died "13 years ago," the year on the grave stone showed 1992. That would have been 15 years ago. Then there's the marathon he won for the third year in a row. I guess no one comes from out of town to run in the local Baltimore area marathon and he never got sponsored to go to a bigger marathon. And why is the son of a physics professor working in a garage without a college degree? Now I haven't even gotten to the mysterious rifts in time and space that connect Earth to another Earth-like planet, just outside the only city on that planet. It's very convenient. Flash must stop the evil forces of Ming each week and keep things hidden from the public and the government, lest they panic and try to force open more rifts, respectively. The only bright spot in the show is the alien female bounty hunter who gets trapped on Earth and will assumably join forces with Flash and his gang. She is a new character to the Flash stories.

It's just bad so hopefully it will get the boot off of Friday night before it brings down the whole network.