TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

Every single night
The same arrangement
I go out and fight the fight

Still I always feel
This strange estrangement
Nothing here is real
Nothing here is right

[...]

Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor?

I don’t want to be
Going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can’t even see if this is really me
And I just want to be alive

—-

Joss Whedon… expressing it better than me.. Stupid work.

Big congratulations to Vote For the Worst for having a huge week as one of the front-runners were knocked off Idol this week while a girl who forgot the words and forced the band to start over didn’t even make it into the bottom 3.

In case you missed it, Dave was cool enough to comment on my somewhat critical post and gets it… which is great. It appears I fell for the character (something which you’d think I’d be able to see through by now). It was amusing to listen to Randy complain that the show “turned into something of a popularity contest this week”. As if it’s ever actually been anything but. The Girl and I have this argument constantly. She insists it’s a singing competition. I insist (correctly) that (conservatively) 95% of the people watching the show wouldn’t know an out of tune note if it bashed them in the face. Most of them are voting on who’s cute or who they like the best. The show’s continuous insistence that they’re a singing competition while opening up the voting to a viewership made up of people who don’t know an A from a C is stupid.

Anyway, check it out… it’s like Christmas over there.

I am a an admitted Stephen King fan-boy going back to high school. I read IT back in seventh grade and, in retrospect, I’m kinda shocked my high school library had it. Not that I’m real up to what goes on in high school these days but it seems that a book with some of the coarsest language I’ve read in any King book along with the fact that the last few chapters contain a somewhat graphic description of a 12-year-old girl getting gangbanged by six 11- to 13-year-old guys does not seem like something good Godfearin’ folks would want in their middle or high school library.

Regardless, I read it and it remains one of my top 3 books of all time… so much so that I re-undertake the 1,100 pages every three or four years or so. When I saw a few years back that King was semi-unretiring after his self-imposed, post-Dark Tower retirement, I was excited. After reading Cell (which got an unfair rep for having a shitty ending… get an imagination people), I was more excited. It seemed like he was ready to ride in to the twilight writing the type of books that got him there in the first place.

Of course, the Lisey’s Story came out… which was a totally different direction than Cell. And now Duma Key kind of continues Lisey’s Story’s direction.

The Good

• Getting a story completely out of New England was a nice change of pace. The New England stories are getting almost TOO self-referential. I mean, at some point, wouldn’t the rest of the world kinda notice all the f*cked up, supernatural stuff going on in that part of the country? There are entire shows dedicated to finding out if supernatural stuff exists. Someone’s eventually going to notice the occassional armageddon that happens in Maine, right?
• This seems to be one of the occassional personal books that King writes. I’m not sure if I can explain it to someone who’s not a King reader, but every few years he puts out a book where the central character is very obviously an exaggeration of himself. Bag of Bones was one of these… I think IT was, too in some ways. This is one of these. I always like these books a little more than the random cast-off horror stories.
• Strangely, I didn’t hate this book by any means but I’m having a terrible time coming up with bullets for this section.

The Bad

• Since Cell, this is the 2nd book in King’s post-accident/Dark Tower career. It is now the second in a row where his themes have become very depressing. Maybe it’s just a natural progression for a guy who’s crested into the 2nd half of his life and who probably has death on his mind more often; but death has become a very prevalent theme in his books… People used to die in his books, but the death usually served a purpose of some sort - and very rarely were the deaths as depressing as they were now. Lisey’s Story is an entire book written about a widowed wife left behind by a husband who died too soon. This book has characters die with the main character having left issues with them unresolved. I know that’s how real death works sometimes, but it doesn’t make it any less depressing to read about.
• As King gets richer and richer and becomes farther removed from being an everyday dude, his characters become harder and harder to relate to. The main character in this book is a multi-millionaire who built a successful company and just has enough money such that he never has anything left to worry about and can just cruise down to Florida and rent a house on the Gulf for a year. He also has started to drop his political beliefs into his books more and more often. Yes, I get it. You went from young, idealistic liberal, skipped the step where you had to struggle and work for a soulless company and pay taxes to people who are too lazy to work, went right to uber-rich and now you think we should all pay as much in tax as you and everyone who thinks otherwise is a soulless ass. You hate Bush. We get it. (Aside: Can we stop with the Bush thing? It’s been almost eight years now. There’s nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said by everyone a billion times. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have both made careers on it. Enough already). Much like in music, I respect the guy’s opinion but I really don’t need it in my horror fiction, thanks. Reading and sports are distinctly my escape from the politics nonsense.
• I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad… but I went with bad. This might be the first book I’ve ever read where I found myself completely indifferent to the main character in every possible way. The book was written from the first person with his time on Duma Key being four years removed from when he was writing the memoir. I just found Edgar Freemantle completely uninteresting in any way. I felt bad for him as a guy whose life fell apart because he was unfortunate enough to be the victim of a horrible accident… but it also makes me wonder about his decisions in the first place. I mean, he married a woman who leaves him when he’s recovering from this horrible accident that scrambles his brain for a year. Almost every instance where this woman appears defines her as a complete shrew who was obviously cheating on him while he was laid up in the accident. In the divorce, he just gives her 60% of the contracting company that he built from scratch. I understand the desire to just put stuff behind you, but he just seems like a pushover to the point he’s almost pathetic.

The Rest

King’s books are taking on a consistent feel since his Post Dark Tower books. If I’m being honest, the theme probably started in the final three Dark Tower books. They are heavilly laden with death, sadness, loss, and how people deal with them with a bit of random sci-fi filtered in. While I’m sure critics love this, it leaves me feeling like I’m not reading a King book. I don’t know that I need to read 600 page epics to tell me that getting old sucks. I’m pretty sure I already knew that.

I would probably be looking forward to the Dark Tower comics if I actually read comics anymore. I can’t even get myself to go get the Season 8 Buffy comics.

Mild recommendation.

It’s four am and I’m drunk in Boston. I just watched the series finale of Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time since I saw it on broadcast a thousand years ago. It still holds up as the best series finale of all time.

It might be the last trek episode that’s ever going to truly communicate the pure hope for the future that Gene Roddenberry embodied. It still holds up in a way that most shows don’t.

Thanks Gene.

When we last left our intrepid group of adventurers in Seattle we had just discovered that the federal government had determined how, exactly, the 4400 were given powers. The people from the future altered their bodies such that they produced a new neurotransmitter (promicin) which gave them super powers. The government then created a program to start injecting them with a chemical that blocked their bodies production of the chemical.

The third season opens with congressional hearings to put NTAC on trial for injecting United States citizens with a potentially lethal drug and with us discovering that the uber-baby born in season 2 has rapidly aged to about 20 by sucking the youth out of her mother… who dies by the end of the two part season premiere. The girl becomes a major plot point throughout the season. We discover that she is the anti-4400… somehow sent back in the womb of a 4400 with instructions to kill them all.

In a show or movie involving time travel, there always comes a point in which the story completely falls apart under normal suspension of disbelief. For The 4400, it happens in Season 3. Let’s start with a list:

1) During this season, we discover that it isn’t really that hard for the people from the future to take people out of the time line. One plot-line has them taking Maia away from the current time line and placing her and the other 4400 children further back in the time line. Afterwards, the episode makes references to new inventions and diseases that were cured that currently aren’t… the thought being that taking these kids and putting them further back made the world a better place (to really drive home the whole “ripple effect” thing for people who didn’t get it earlier). In another instance, Tom tries to commit suicide in an effort to communicate with the future. As he dives off a bridge with a noose around his neck, the future people pull him out. If this is the case, why all the shenanigans about taking people and sending them back where they don’t belong. Why not just send future people back and do it all in secret instead of creating a global panic about 4400 people with super powers?

2) We discover that there’s some other faction working against the 4400… this faction somehow impregnated Lily with a baby who would suck the life out of her mom and then go on to kill all the 4400. At some point, she is approached by an agent of this other team who tells her what her destiny is. Again… how, exactly, was this other crew able to create this baby and impregnate Lily under the noses of the other group? Are we supposed to believe that this group from the future can time travel but can’t figure out if a woman is pregnant?

3) We discover that the people from the future who took the 4400 originally can mind-wipe people. As mentioned above, they take Maia away and she’s only remembered passingly in dreams and visions. She’s wiped out of any photograph and no one remembers her. Again, if the people from the future have the ability to do this, doesn’t it stand to reason that they could just erase anyone they didn’t want from the time line? Or, if they wanted to send someone back who could unlock musical or artistic ability in people to just take them in the middle of the night, do it, and put them back so it’s less weird when a kid suddenly develops the ability to play violin? Or, at the very least, that the teacher isn’t arrested for abuse when she does it?

4) We discover that the people who made the 4400 know about Isabelle and what she’s been sent back to do. But, again, we established earlier that they could come back and remove Maia from the time line and make it so no one remembered her. Yet, somehow they can’t do it to this girl. Even if you wanted to explain it as something along the lines of “she’s some weird anti-4400 messiah and they can’t affect her”, they could still have removed her mother before she was born and preventing her from ever being born. Instead of doing this, they give Tom Riley a syringe full of some mysterious green goo with the instructions to inject her. Now, we’ve established that they can send people back… pretty much any time anywhere. But instead of doing something silly like, I don’t know, sending an agent back who could do it without question, they give it to Tom who doesn’t want to kill a girl who’s done nothing wrong yet. Or even better, sending an agent back to appear right behind her and doing it before she has a chance to react. Why are future plans designed by Rube Goldberg?

5) Biggest and foremost: if the time travelers can just do stuff to the time line, why are they relying on people who have no idea what’s going on to do it? Why wouldn’t they, you know, just go back and do shit? Why do they need all these extra people to show up in a flash and deal with panic and government intervention? Wouldn’t it be a million times more efficient to just do it Terminator style and send specific people back for specific missions? I mean, hell, in this world the time travelers can even go back once their work is done. They’re not even stuck in the past to pollute the time line further than it already is.

There isn’t much left to say about the show at this point because this season is more of the same. The characters are mostly annoying while the government and news response continues to be perfect. You have a congressional hearing where a member of NTAC tells the people that they injected these people with inhibiting drugs for the good of National Security. The people eat it up while completely ignoring the abject wrongness of it. In fact, if you told me this entire show was written to be a statement on the Patriot Act, I’d totally believe it.

The Holy Crap! moment of the season comes when we find out that Jordan Collier, who was shot and killed by Tom Riley’s son is, in fact, alive. His body vanished after his death and we discover that he’s been walking the Earth. While this is going on, both the government and The 4400 are in a race to “invent” synthetic promicin. The government program is national defense, of course, while The 4400 continue to do it to unlock the Inner 4400 in us all. As it turns out, synthetic promicin is only 50% effective. In half the people, it gives them a super power. In the other half of the people, it kills them. Once we discover that Collier is alive, we find he’s been walking “for decades” to spread the message of The 4400. If you’d like to change which religion you think they are “symbolizing” in this season, just choose the one that had a messiah killed who later came back to life. The only difference is that Collier spreads his gospel after he’s resurrected… not before.

The season closes with Collier giving the promicin injections to his army of the downtrodden with instructions to disperse them across the country to anyone who wants them, making sure they know the risks and rules of injecting themselves with the drug. The season closes with the viewer at home being offered a syringe of promicin.

The last season comes out in May. I guess I’ll give it a watch just to get the closure. At this point, recommendation to avoid.

After the debacle that was Opening Day at Shea I promised myself that I was going to take some time and not go to any games for a while. My co-worker promptly found under face-value tickets on eBay for Johan Santana’s first Shea start on Saturday packaged with tickets to the Mets/Nationals game on Tuesday. So, we ended up getting another 2 games for $20. I mean, I can’t be held responsible for deals like those.

Saturday’s game was…… not good. Santana surrendered an early 2-run lead giving up 3 home runs and striking out 7 over 6.6 IP. He then left the mound to a chorus of Shea Stadium boos. I’ve been to two games now and thus far Santana, Aaron Heilman, Luis Castillo, Jose Reyes, and Scott Schoenweis have all received their share of fan hate. Shea has become a terribly contentious environment and it’s no wonder why the Mets record last season was better on the road.

Now, I understand the fans are bristling. I understand we’ve spent an entire off-season listening to how badly we bombed last season. I understand we’ve had yet another entire winter listening to barbs from fans of that other team. The problem is this: we take the barbs from the other fans but we shouldn’t be bringing those things into the stadium. Look, Shea is the one place where everyone wants the same thing. We want the Mets to do well. There are no Yankee fans mocking your epic failure last year in Shea. It should be a positive environment for the home team… that’s why it’s called home-field advantage. Creating a hostile relationship with your new ace in his first home start is not good. Of all of the things I hate about being a New York Sports’ fan, the booing of your home players is the worst. It doesn’t solve anything and it leads to a team having a better road record than home record and missing the playoffs by one game.

I understand the Met fan wanted the team to get off to a fast start and prove they were unaffected by last year. But forcing the team to press like it’s August in April is not good. Booing a guy off the mound in his first home start after he handed the team two excellent road starts is stupid. Booing Schoenweis or Heilman as they’re coming in to the game is stupid. It’s not going to make the team play better. The Met fan is creating a hostile, poisonous home environment for a team that really needs to play well at home in a division where any of three teams can legitimately take the title. Citizen’s Bank Park - in Philadelphia, one of the most contentious, vile sports’ cities for visitors in the country - is a more welcoming home environment for the Mets’ than Shea. Think about that for a minute. When the Mets play in Citizen’s Bank Park, there is a strong contingent of Mets fans. They occasionally start pro-Mets chants. THAT is more welcoming than Shea. How does this help the team? Congratulations, twits… you’re booing your own team and making them worse. But hey, you paid for your ticket. Who cares if they win or not as long as you get drunk, boo, and giggle with your boy ‘dat joo showed ‘dem bums.

Now, I’m not saying there’s never a good time to voice displeasure… but we went through this 2 years ago with Beltran. Beltran got booed after striking out on Opening Day. Santana just got booed for 6.2 IP, 7K, 2BB, 4ER. That’s not a boo-able line, you idiots.

Here’s the difference: even though the Yankees are currently 6-7, the Yankee fan understands that it’s April. The Met fan doesn’t. The Met fan wanted the team to be 10-1 right now after sweeping the Phillies and the Braves. They’ve set up this completely unrealistic need to play .750 baseball all season. They’ve turned on Scott Schoenweis already and he’s given up exactly one earned run. Now, I did complain last week about their bullpen problems, but I’m at least willing to give them a chance to get going. I don’t want to go to Shea and watch a team that doesn’t even want to be there because their fans are awful. Why would you make your team not want to play at home? What does that help?

Stop being unrealistic, you dummies.

I’m sitting in the new apartment… spring hit about two days ago. Spring in New York is very strange. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I walked out the front door to go to work and I needed a winter jacket. There was still a bite in the air and I could still see my breath. I got home from work on Wednesday and it was still cold.

Thursday morning, I left for work with my winter jacket on and it was spring. There was still a chill in the air but it was muted. Kinda like there was a little taste of it left in the breeze because it wasn’t quite ready to let go yet. When I got home from work, lilacs had started to bloom and it was spring. It happens that quickly.

Tonight, I’m sitting here and a thunderstorm came in off the river. It’s the first heavy thunderstorm since we moved to the new place. In the old place, we could watch thunderstorms come up the river. I miss that. I’m a thunderstorm nut. My parents have an enclosed front porch where I used to sit out and watch and listen to thunderstorms. I love everything about them: the noise, the creepy strobe light effect of a crash of lightning, watching lightning rods strike things far away. There’s even a smell. There is a type of breeze that you only get during a thunderstorm… it’s a gentle wind that is thisclose to being strong and violent, but it isn’t. There’s a smell of nature that rides in on a storm. When I lived in the old apartment, I was able to watch gigantic, unobstructed bolts of lightning strike the water. I could crack the window and get the breeze fresh off the river. This apartment barely gets the breeze because of it’s layout… and I can’t see anything but my neighbor’s apartment.

This apartment sucks.

As most who read this know: I watch American Idol.

As some who read this know: I love Vote For The Worst. This was the site that got some buzz last year because they were being blamed/credited for Sanjaya’s continued run on the show. I never liked the site because I though the two guys were particularly funny (they’re not) or particularly fresh (they aren’t)… I love it because it’s a decently written blog whose writers have mastered the Internet art of pretending you are much, much bigger than you are.

We at the wrestling site have been doing this for years. If you pretend you’re bigger than you are, people buy it. If you tell everyone that your “cutting edge game rating system” is fairer and more balanced than GamePro’s, there are people who will believe you. As long as you come up with some reasonable explanation for why, there are always anti-establishment types who will latch on, agree with you, and treat your words like gospel. This was the entire basis for the video game site’s rating system. “We rate average games 5.0 out of 10 instead of 7.5 out of 10 because we’re anti-industry, man. We’re not selling our ratings for schwag, man.” It works.

As Sanjaya was making his run last year, VFTW claimed victory every week. They ignored the fact that Howard Stern picked up the gimmick and that Sanjaya was making weekly appearances on The Soup… every week Sanjaya stayed was a victory for VFTW. I was very happy this season to see them pick up where they left off. As the voting started, every time one of their picks made it through, it was a victory. When they failed, the show was fixed. After all, The Producers couldn’t let a VFTW pick make it through to the next round.

The problem is: the site kinda/sorta blew its load last season.

After they realized the site was really having no effect on the voting this season since no other outlets picked it up, they changed their strategy. Instead of picking the worst (or most trainwrecky entertaining) person in the competition (which Sanjaya unquestionably was last season) they picked one of the contenders who was almost the worst… but one who would probably get through a few weeks so they could continue to claim victory. The first week they chose the gravelly voiced blues girl who, while bad, was certainly not going to be the first one kicked off. The week after she left they moved on to Kristy, who also is not remotely close to the worst. She is a standard bad “new” country. Not someone who is going to win the competition, but certainly one who is going to stick around for a while. Their about one step from choosing the front-runner, claiming they’re the worst, and riding that pony to the top. The other problem: the reviewers just kinda stopped being funny.

They have two different guys that recap the show every week. One of them (Dave) reviews the show with the dire insistence that everyone sucks and watching the show is a waste of his time. The other (Chan) is much fairer. The main problem with Dave is there are only so many ways you can say “Paula is drunk” and “Simon and Ryan have the gays” and “everything sucks and they should all blow me” before it stops being funny. The main problem with Chan is that he grades the show as if it’s looking for the next Bob Dylan. It’s not. It’s looking for the most marketable pop star out of a field of 24.

Example: Two weeks ago Kristy Lee Cook chose to sing “Proud To Be An American” (you know the song “and I’m proud to be an American cuz at least I know I’m free. And I’ll never forget the men who died who gave that right to me”). Simon called it one of the most brilliant song choices he’s heard in years. And he’s right; the song is catchy, appeals to a very specific audience, and is almost impossible for the judges to criticize. One of the two VFTW recappers, Chan, responds with:

GRADE: D — Simon pisses away all of his credibility by declaring this an awesome song choice, and one of the “most clever song choices in years.” Holy crap, what is Simon smoking tonight? If Simon believes that America wants hokey, fake patriotic swill songs like this then I have a kick to the testes with his name on it. Simon as ZERO musical taste.

What this guy seems to forget is that America, in fact, does want hokey, fake patriotic songs to sing along to. The biggest country star in the known universe is Toby Keith. Notice, sometime, the names of the songs on a Toby Keith album. And to say the guy has ZERO musical taste borders on retarded. To date, American Idol is responsible for something like 50 million albums sold, 8 Grammys, an Oscar, and some retarded number of other awards. The guy is looking for pop stars… not Pink Floyd.

However, full credit goes to them again this week as Kristy Lee Cook finds herself surviving another week. Even though she isn’t remotely the worst… nor was she in the bottom 3… VFTW claims victory. The fans are happy. The writers are happy. Everyone’s healthy.

At some point, one does have to realize what American Idol is trying to do. It’s not trying to find the next great rock band - it’s trying to find the next Kelly Clarkson.

I originally started writing this column after I got back from Opening Day. It was the first baseball game I’ve ever left early. There was no plan in place to go… I didn’t have any interest in overspending for Opening Day tickets like I did last year. Future reference… $120 is too much to spend on any baseball game that isn’t a Game 7. I got up that morning fully intending to spend the day at work. Then, an 11:30 am call came in from The Machine. I don’t remember word-for-word but it was something along the lines of “There’s only 8 left in the 36er and we have an extra ticket. $66. How long does it take you to get here?”

I had a momentary inner struggle until realizing I would hate myself if I turned down a ticket to the final Opening Day at Shea. So after a cursory attempt to make sure no one missed me at work, I hopped on the train.

They lost after jumping out to an early 2-run lead. The bullpen surrendered 3 in the 7th and another 2 in the 8th. I realized I’d rather get the train early and get back than deal with the foot traffic getting to the subway. Somehow, every ticket I get is on the third base side. If you picture Shea as a giant clock where center field is noon, my seats were 11. The exit to get to the subway is at 2. Since the new stadium takes up all of 12, you have to walk all the way around the bottom of the clock to get to the subway. I figured I’d get out when the foot traffic was light.

I started writing this after work. I ended up staying until 9ish to make up the hours. After the last two wins, I’ve softened a bit, but not much. All of the points still stand. And no, I’m not panicking by any stretch… but I don’t think it’s too early to be concerned by things that remain unaddressed.

In all honestly, if the Mets hadn’t landed Johan Santana at the last minute their offseason would have been a joke. Even still, they shored up their starting pitching for the foreseeable future but that has dubious value when you can’t hold a lead in the 7th, 8th, and 9th. In the the much ballyhooed 17-game stretch last season the Mets went 5-12. Of the 12 games they lost, 6 were given up by the bullpen. There are two possible arguments for this; 1) they were tired at the end of a long season. 2) they suck. Since they have picked up this season exactly where they left off (at current count, surrendering four leads and getting the loss in 2 of them) I have to go with suck.

But, I may have said, never fear. We have a major-league ready 2nd baseman. Sure we traded the entirety of the Zephyrs to the Twins for one guy… but at the very least we have a 25-year-old, speedy, major-league ready right-handed bat on the bench that we could trade to someone for a couple of developmental bull-pen arms. Maybe we can get those guys ready by the end of the season, right?

Right?

Oh… or we could place him on waivers and give him to the Braves.

For nothing.

Not even one of those racially-sensitive foam tomahawks?

Really?

The Mets, who have nothing in their bullpen or farm system right now sent one of their only remaining chips to the Braves… outright. And management wonders why fans are questioning their moves? I understand Gotay was out of options, but maybe the team should have thought about the fact they signed a 32-year-old Luis Castillo to a four-year deal after he had BOTH of his knees operated on in the off-season. Don’t get me wrong, I like Castillo. I think $6M/year is perfectly fair for him… but maybe keeping a 25-year-old bench player in reserve for the inevitable injury might not have been a bad idea? Or, at the very least, send me a prospect or two. Don’t just send him to a division rival outright. I don’t know if I can properly express my disbelief at this move.

Then comes the big question. Is it time to get a new manager? I’m a patient guy when it comes to changing managers or coaches. I think I was the last guy in the City of New York to support Tom Coughlin… but I’m starting to wonder a bit if Willie Randolph is cut out to be the skipper. Now, I unerstand there are different arguments as to the affect a manager can have on a game… for me, a manager has four jobs.

1) Make the proper tactical decisions. Know what guys are available on the other team’s bench, know who they can hit, know who they can’t hit, know where they tend to hit the ball, etc.

2) Keep the team focused. Know how to shake them out of losing streaks. Light a fire when you have to. Much like a coach who gets a technical foul called on him on purpose… a manager needs to know what motivates his players and keep them motivated. A good indication to this is your record in must-win games. Down 0-2 in a series to a division rival? Make sure the guys aren’t looking for a plane out of town the next day. Willie’s record in must win games is, at best, dubious.

3) Know what keeps all 25 guys on your roster motivated. Know what egos need to be stroked. Know what guys need to be abused. Know which guys are too sensitive to be abused.

4) Take media bullets so your players don’t have to.

If a manager can’t do all of those things, he’s not that great a manager. Willie has a tendency to make lots of head-scratching tactical decisions. Last year, he screwed up his bench so badly that he had to put in Tom Glavine as a pinch hitter. On opening day, he pulled Oliver Perez after 5.6 IP to hand the ball to Joe Smith to get one out. One would think if you are going to do that, you’d be pulling the trigger to get out someone more fearsome than Pedro Feliz. He doesn’t seem to be that awesome at pulling the team back on course. The only problem with this is that I can’t even follow my own rule. I can’t name a reasonable replacement because they let Manny Acta go to Washington.

Now, to be fair… they beat the Phillies the last two, but the bull-pen tried their level best to blow both games. The Mets are going to have dire, dire issues this season if they can’t straighten the bull-pen out. The worst part: they don’t really have any bargaining chips left to address it.

Because I have OCD when it comes to finishing TV Serieses that I start, I let the Netflix Queue continue on to The 4400 Season Two. After the eight episodes of Season One, my thoughts on the series were a resounding “meh.” The show had mediocre acting, a storyline that Marvel Comics has been telling for about 40 years, and hit-or-miss characters are mostly miss. Toward the end, the parallels to Scientology, Billy Campbell’s Jordan Collier, the dead-on nailing of how every division of the United States (from homeland security, to CNN, to the conservative talk show hosts, to everyday joes on the street) would react to this happening was enough to get me to watch season two.

It begins about six months after the close of season one. We discover that Homeland Security has created a smaller division called the National Threat Assessment Command (NTAC) to deal with the 4400. Also, Agent Skouris has adopted the pre-cognitive Maya as a daughter. Tom Baldwin’s son Kyle has recovered from his coma and is getting ready to start college. Jordan Collier has created a 4400 Center in Seattle as most of the 4400 have settled around Seattle.

This season’s over-arcing storyline is the growth of the 4400 (for lack of a better word) religion. Collier recruited Shawn (the kid whose hands can heal) as his miracle worker. Shawn can heal any disease just by laying his hands on the person. He begins curing cancer and rare, terminal diseases. Collier isn’t allowing him to do this out of the goodness of his heart. The people he is healing are being carefully selected for their ability to help fund the 4400 Centers. They are carefully selected politicians and members of the press who can help get Collier’s word out there. When word of Shawn’s healing powers get out, people start coming to the center in droves. Coupled with the release of Collier’s book 4400 and Counting, he begins holding press conferences promising to “unlock the 4400 in all of us.” People begin to come to the center, donate money, and take classes. Collier begins to preach a certain type of lifestyle… one devoid of mind-affecting, psychological drugs, and promoting certain diets and healthy eating. The people who come to the center are given levels (called keys). A new person entering the center is Key One. Later, after some indeterminate amount of work, their level is raised to Key Two. Celebrities are encouraged to join the center and are given escalated status and pushed through the ranks to expand their influence. Shawn, in particular, is encouraged to avoid his family because “they wouldn’t understand what we’re trying to accomplish here.”

Any of this sounding familiar?

In another part of the state, Lily Tyler has given birth to her baby Isabelle and they remain on the run from both Collier’s group and from the government. You see, all of the 4400 have to take regular trips to the NTAC Medical Center so they can be examined for various health problems and, you know, special powers. Ones who don’t make their normal appointments are collected by NTAC. The baby is inexplicably like… two years old… but believe it or not, this might not be completely unintentional.

The problem I’m finding with this series is that it’s really hard to root for the characters I know I’m supposed to be rooting for. Richard and Lily have a really annoying dynamic together. Tom’s son (the kid from the first season who spent four years in a coma) is extremely annoying. To a point I understand that he went to sleep at 17 and woke up 21… so he’s still developmentally a teenage, but he stomps around the house and complains that his father works too much. His father, who last season was going to the hospital every single day to visit him in a coma now is suddenly ignoring him entirely and forgetting to send tuition checks to colleges. Kyle’s mother, who left his father, seems to have zero interest in maintaining a relationship with her back from the dead son.

Also, they almost go TOO far out of their way to make the point that everyone who isn’t a 4400 hates the 4400. I do understand that if people were suddenly inserted into the word with Superpowers that there would be a faction of people who felt it was their god-given duty to track them down and execute them. But things like Lily being in a store where a man is passing out flyers calling the 4400 the scourges of Satan who then recognizes her as one and proceeds to track Richard, Lily, and the baby through the woods with shotguns border on the edge of reason. Their end (which came when the baby, Isabelle forced them to shoot themselves) was also a bit crazy. In an even further bit of crazy, Lily and Richard move on after the hunt down fiasco to temporarily settle with another 4400. They then go to a dinner party where they meet some non-4400s and they discover Richard was taken from Korea and he was one of the first black pilots in the US Military. This makes one of the other black dinner guests angry and it later leads to an exchange where he asks Richard “how many boots did you have to lick before they made you a pilot”… which just seems crazy to me.

I’ve never been subject to a show with such oddly disparate writing skills. On one hand, the overall, natural progression of what would actually happen is spot on. On the other hands, the characters are terrible. As this season finishes up, the 4400 discover that the government has known along what was causing their powers and their “necessary check-ups” have been an excuse to inject them with a serum that prevents the body from developing the powers. The problem with this is that it starts making them sick. As news of this starts to leak out, a terrorist cell of 4400s develops.

Now that I’m more than halfway through, I guess I’ll finish this, but I won’t be happy about it.