December meme #4
Dec. 7th, 2014 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynMissed today's deadline by that much! Well, I'm still up, so I'm calling it today. roseveare said: Talk about the show Miracles. I remember that vid, so you're one of about three people I'm aware of that know this show.
Yeah, there were never very many of us, were there? I never understood that, because this show seemed so ripe for fannish interest, and there wasn't that much of a delay between the series ending and the DVD release, and it did show up on some other channel (Sci-Fi??) for a bit. But for some reason it never seemed to hit that spot that a lot of good short-lived series did.
Back then I was always one of the early adopters for the group of fans I hung out with--I'd go through TV Guide and EW and other magazines and make notes of which shows I wanted to catch. I'd heard that Greenberg, from Buffy and Angel, was working on this new show and though it sounded religious, which is SO not my thing, the horror aspect made me curious, and I made a point to catch the first episode. I was just blown away and immediately showed it to some of my friends, who were equally hooked. I knew right away I wanted to vid it. The visuals for the pilot were just so amazingly striking, it was so atmospheric and Skeet Ulrich was so hot and I'd always loved Angus MacFadyen. And they killed their lead in the first episode! I was just amazed by that. I mean, of course they wouldn't make him really truly most sincerely dead, but he was pretty much on the way out when Tommy healed him--and they killed the kid for real! That was not something I was at all used to seeing on a network TV show. That whole thing was just very daring.
Of course, all we got were those…what? Six episodes before they pulled it. And I still remember tuning in for the episode that never aired where Paul was sitting around in a car drinking whiskey out of the bottle in a white undershirt and his hair falling fetchingly in front of his eyes and leering evilly, and it not airing because they were talking about the possibility of what would become the war in Iraq. I was so angry because it was all this hot air about will we or won't we and I was missing Paul leering evilly! Of course, I honestly thought we wouldn't be so dumb as to go to war again, more fool me.
It was just such an interesting, complex show. They didn't shy away from hard topics, and I still remember when I got to see the episodes that never aired, how impressed I was by how many of them dealt with grief in the most honest terms, in very insightful ways. Their horror aspects also didn't feel like they were just pulled out of a box like most horror stories on TV do to me these days. I know that's one reason I never got into shows like Supernatural, because I just always felt like I've seen that a million times, and the stories on Miracles didn't make me feel that way. The lingered with me, some of them even kind of haunted me, and Paul was such a great center to all those stories, how emotionally wrapped up in other people's lives he became.
True to form, when I tried pimping it to the local crowd, that was when they aired the worst episode, which was always the case when I tried pimping things to people. But fortunately, we made Darkness, Darkness for Vividcon that year, and then people got a much, much better picture of what the show was about and how cool it was. I still have vid ideas for it, but outside of the one I made for Festivids two years ago, I haven't revisited them. I really should, because I think vids are a great way to bring people in to a small show like that, and one that's been off the air for so long.
It was just a perfect little show with great characters who change and grow, great horror stories and religious symbolism, and great visuals despite a clearly limited budget.
roseveare said: Talk about the show Miracles. I remember that vid, so you're one of about three people I'm aware of that know this show.Yeah, there were never very many of us, were there? I never understood that, because this show seemed so ripe for fannish interest, and there wasn't that much of a delay between the series ending and the DVD release, and it did show up on some other channel (Sci-Fi??) for a bit. But for some reason it never seemed to hit that spot that a lot of good short-lived series did.
Back then I was always one of the early adopters for the group of fans I hung out with--I'd go through TV Guide and EW and other magazines and make notes of which shows I wanted to catch. I'd heard that Greenberg, from Buffy and Angel, was working on this new show and though it sounded religious, which is SO not my thing, the horror aspect made me curious, and I made a point to catch the first episode. I was just blown away and immediately showed it to some of my friends, who were equally hooked. I knew right away I wanted to vid it. The visuals for the pilot were just so amazingly striking, it was so atmospheric and Skeet Ulrich was so hot and I'd always loved Angus MacFadyen. And they killed their lead in the first episode! I was just amazed by that. I mean, of course they wouldn't make him really truly most sincerely dead, but he was pretty much on the way out when Tommy healed him--and they killed the kid for real! That was not something I was at all used to seeing on a network TV show. That whole thing was just very daring.
Of course, all we got were those…what? Six episodes before they pulled it. And I still remember tuning in for the episode that never aired where Paul was sitting around in a car drinking whiskey out of the bottle in a white undershirt and his hair falling fetchingly in front of his eyes and leering evilly, and it not airing because they were talking about the possibility of what would become the war in Iraq. I was so angry because it was all this hot air about will we or won't we and I was missing Paul leering evilly! Of course, I honestly thought we wouldn't be so dumb as to go to war again, more fool me.
It was just such an interesting, complex show. They didn't shy away from hard topics, and I still remember when I got to see the episodes that never aired, how impressed I was by how many of them dealt with grief in the most honest terms, in very insightful ways. Their horror aspects also didn't feel like they were just pulled out of a box like most horror stories on TV do to me these days. I know that's one reason I never got into shows like Supernatural, because I just always felt like I've seen that a million times, and the stories on Miracles didn't make me feel that way. The lingered with me, some of them even kind of haunted me, and Paul was such a great center to all those stories, how emotionally wrapped up in other people's lives he became.
True to form, when I tried pimping it to the local crowd, that was when they aired the worst episode, which was always the case when I tried pimping things to people. But fortunately, we made Darkness, Darkness for Vividcon that year, and then people got a much, much better picture of what the show was about and how cool it was. I still have vid ideas for it, but outside of the one I made for Festivids two years ago, I haven't revisited them. I really should, because I think vids are a great way to bring people in to a small show like that, and one that's been off the air for so long.
It was just a perfect little show with great characters who change and grow, great horror stories and religious symbolism, and great visuals despite a clearly limited budget.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-12-07 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-07 05:44 pm (UTC)Loved all the characters in this one.
The other thing I love about this show you also hit on here. This one didn't pull the ghost stories and supernatural stuff out of nowhere, I mean, I read a lot in this subject matter in real life accounts of that and there was a lot this show did that drew directly from real accounts and reports of weirdness, most of the time they weren't randomly making things up, and because I was into that, I loved that part of it.
Even the crazy re-enactment/timeslip ep is actually based on real phenomenon, though it TV-ises it a lot. But there are accounts of people listening to real world war (can't remember which one) battles going on outside with markers to indicate what they were hearing. Just really fascinating. It's been a long time since I saw it so I'm struggling for other examples but I think I went through the whole thing at one point and could find parallels in nearly every ep from "real" reports of phenomena.
I need a rewatch now, I think. Yes.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:27 pm (UTC)Hey, if you do a rewatch, let me know. I'd love to have a rewatch buddy and see it again myself.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-07 11:01 am (UTC)But I'm not so into horror, which might be why I gave it a pass.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-07 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-08 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-09 10:38 pm (UTC)
Date: 2014-12-09 09:38 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2014-12-09 10:39 pm (UTC)