One Million Moms Goes After Olive Garden Over Fox's Lucifer Show

This has been all over much of the comics-related geek media, but the organization known as One Million Moms has targeted restaurant chain The Olive Garden over its sponsorship of the new Fox TV show Lucifer. Lucifer the TV show is in turn based upon the successful Vertigo Comics comic that itself spun out of the even more successful Sandman comic by Neil Gaiman and a variety of artists.

This organization has previously attempted boycotts against the 21st century when they fought against a gay male character in Archie Comics, railed against both Marvel and DC Comics for including gay characters in their children's entertainment and an "adult" version of The Muppets.

One thing that you will note that is in common with all of this organization's "campaigns" would be a lack of success. I think that is is interesting that they target The Olive Garden, while leaving both Fox and DC Comics (parent company of publisher Vertigo Comics alone). Part of this is because Fox was targeted when the show was announced...to a resounding lack of success...and DC Comics have been target any number of times by anti-diversity groups (also to a resounding lack of success).

The thing is that inside of the geek communities, we have similar regressive elements to deal with. We have to deal with misogyny from within our communities, most particularly those people who think that they are being helpful to "lady gamers." Every community has its share of stupid, but perhaps because of social fallacies, they get a gimme because "he's a nice guy" or "you just don't know him" or any other number of reasons. As a middle-aged white guy, it is particularly dismaying to see so much of this coming from my particular demographic. I will admit that I have not always been the most enlightened of people, and that I have made mistakes, but it would scare me if I still held beliefs now that I held in my childhood, or even 20 or 30 years ago.

The slurs against gays that were once considered okay, are not okay. Treating woman as if they need guidance from men is not okay. Being an ass to someone because of the color of their skin, or because of their belief system is not okay. More and more anymore, I wonder why it seems that so many people are still struggling with the idea that people are just people. Yes, it is easier to hold onto old views, old ideas, but fighting against the changes in the world, or better saying that people who are against your archaic views are the actual problems, isn't going to magically roll things back and make it 1972 again.

Fanaticism, regardless of the group that it comes from, is not pleasant. We need to do better, we need to treat people better than this.

Constantine And Flash Pilots Leaked To The Internet

So, this week the pilot episodes for the upcoming The Flash and Constantine series were leaked to the internet. They are easy enough to find, if you are so inclined. This post is going to talk about these pilots, so if you don't want to know anything until they air...click away now.

CW's The Tomorrow People Pilot Episode

There is a lot of pre-judging that goes on in the geek "community" towards shows on the CW Network. True, there's a lot of crap on the network, but it is television and there's a lot of crap everywhere. However, the existence of crap doesn't mean that everything is crap. I've never quite understood the feelings of vocal segments of the geek "community" towards the network, particularly when most of them claim to not even watch the programming. That is something that I really don't understand. I suspect that a lot of these feelings come from CW's programming targeting a younger demographic, other than these "communities."

Regardless of the sour grapes, I have been excited because a favorite show from my childhood is getting a revamp from the network: The Tomorrow People. I have been excited about this show since I heard about it during the summer. I hoped that it would honor the original program, while at the same time making it into something contemporary and relevant to audiences today. Like I said on someone's Facebook feed last night, who really wants to see a show about pacifistic space hippies nowadays? The original UK version of The Tomorrow People was a wonderful show that inspired my childhood (and a long time love of psionics in role-playing games as well), however I don't want my nostalgia for the past to get in the way of something new and wonderful in its own way. Nostalgia can be as much of a curse with fandoms, causing people to be conservative and want the exact same thing out of new revamps that they got out of the originals. I'm not the same kid who watched reruns of the show on Nickelodeon back in the early 80s, and I don't want the exact same show. I want an homage, yes, but I want something new and spectacular as well.

Guess what? I got that last night as I watched the pilot of the new version of The Tomorrow People. I loved the show. This is the best revamp of an SF show since Christopher Eccleston pulled on a leather jacket to become the Ninth Doctor. 

We still have the basics of the original show: a conflict between Homo Superior and Homo Sapiens, the Tomorrow People being unable to kill, and a talking computer named Tim. To be honest, I didn't even expect all of these things out of the episode. I certainly didn't expect that Tim would be in the new show. That bit made me particularly happy.

Yes, the violence is a bit more than in the original series. While unable to kill, the Tomorrow People can still get into fights and beat the crap out of other people. To be honest, the fact that they can do that is a bit less dickish of a plot element than the "kids" keeping around some "saps" to do a bit of the old ultraviolence on their behalf.

I really want to talk about Mark Pellegrino's and speculate about what I hope that the character will be, but that is too much of a spoiler...so I will wait. I will likely talk about that character and my hopes on our next Geeky Voices Carry podcast regardless. By then I'll also have a few episodes of the show under my belt to discuss, so if you want to hear more of my opinions in a more spoiler-laden environment, you'll have to wait until then.

Overall, I liked the show. The pilot turned out to be much better than I expected it to be, and I will keep watching. The CW has delivered a show that is an homage to the original, while creating its own thing at the same time. It is new and fresh, with new spins on the ideas, while still be reverent to the source. I recommend watching this show, and I really think that the people who won't watch CW just because it is CW need to get over themselves because they are missing a great new show.