Why Can't We Have A Decent Fantasy Show Part Duex

Earlier, I lamented the fact that our latest concesion to fantasy entertainment was Krod Mandoon and afterword, I felt that I'd given the show short shrift. After all, I'd only ever seen one or two episodes (hard to tell whether that premier was two episodes pasted together, or if it was actually a double length episode). It's bound to get better right?

So I decided that the least I could do was give it another shot and see if it wasn't worth following. So, I watched last night's episode hoping for something to move beyond what the pilot had given us, and I'm impressed to say that it succeeded in going well beyond what it was, just in the wrong direction. Such stunning lines as the "mage" talking about his companions "little brown starfish" really set the tone early on as the "plot" was a thinly veiled excuse for an extended encounter with a so called "bi-clops" (a pansexual cyclops that is) and the entire episode devolved into a running series of sex jokes about Aneka and her . . . ahem . . . experience culminating in her riding off with the rival love interest carting a 2 quart gourd full of lube.

I will say, though, that Dongalore's little side trek to "rescue" the woman he had abducted only a few days earlier out of love was relatively good in comparison.

This all makes me uneasy about the upcoming (hopefully by Christmas) A Game of Thrones television series produced by HBO who did a marvelous job with Rome. Hell, if this series can do for fantasy literature what Rome did for, well, Rome, then I at least will be very happy. I worry, though, that this will end up junked and destroyed by the fact that it's an unpopular genre that seems to play better as parody than straight.

All that, and judging by what HBO did to True Blood, a by all accounts decent novel series, it's possible and even likely that this might turn into plot with porn. Or, for the less charitable than me, porn with plot.

One good rumor about the whole project, though, is that Peter Dinklage is the most likely to play Tyrion Lannister, which is a good thing.

One can only hope.

Why Can't We Have A Decent Fantasy Show?

Well, in watching Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire over on Comedy Central here in the US, it's clear that the show is a shallow parody of a genre that its creators don't enjoy or are even particularly familiar with beyond the basest elements. Don't get me wrong, it was amusing in a puerile sort of way - tastless gay jokes, sex jokes, gay sex jokes, and the occasional slapstick prevail throughout - and I will probably end up watching at least the next few episodes if only to see what they do to abuse poor John Rhys Davies and Eliza Dushku.

What is more amusing to me - though also just as disheartening in its own way - is that the show seems to be as much, if not more so, a parody of fantasy gaming as it is about the fantasy genre as a whole. Certain scenes seem to be built around tropes of D&D and its ilk such as Loquasto's firing into melee (and frequently hitting his friend Krod), taking a mulligan (which seemed almost a direct reference to dice rolling in its own amusing way), and the death of General Arcadius (I spent at least 30 seconds there counting off hitpoints from miltiple crossbow bolts and a spear to the chest).

The end result is a somewhat watchable show if you can get past the parts that bother you - and there most certainly will be parts that will bother you whether it's the, let's be kind and call her "promiscuous" Aneka or the over the top Bruce whom just about everybody with common sense will find offensive once he tells you the two ways in which his lover, the General Arcadius, transmitted the prophecy that supposedly will drive the show's plot, and that can be genuinely amusing at times.

But in the end, I have to wonder why we have to settle for this kind of thing. Why is it that the only halfway decent fantasy movie to make it to the big screen since the terrible Lord of the Rings trilogy is Harry Potter? Harry Potter poorly adapted no less. Why is it that fantasy movies made for television are consigned to the likes of the absolute drek that the Sci-Fi Channel (or should I say SyFy?) produces that aren't even watchable when extremely drunk. The Sands of Oblivion springs to mind here.

Why is fantasy reduced to being the ghetto genre of the Science-Fiction ghetto? Why the hell can't we get a decent show or movie made that isn't a shallow parody or just plain old terrible?