The Morning After: Return to O.Z.

I liked the first episode. I have been to busy though to watch the other two the last few nights. Class and Heroes got in the way. Thank god for DVR!

I think it has potential. It feels like this was paced as one long story and then edited into the three miniseries-sized bites rather than three specific chunks. If that's a good thing or not, I'm still trying to determine.

There's a huge universe in this (no doubt in attempt to live up to the legacy of the original Oz stories), and I don't feel like I'm being forced to hear about it all like it was a bad fanfic.

So far, so good.

I watched it all the way through....

and it just got worse and worse with each passing minute -- by the time the last hour came around, it was so amateurish I couldn't believe it.

"Favorite" moments -- when the "rebels" attack the castle, there were two short shots with a "captain of the guard" that were just so unbelievable bad I have to assume that the actor involved was related to the producers or something.

(and someone really should explain why DG went looking for the emerald in the first place, since if it remained hidden, the bad stuff couldn't happen anyway. I thought maybe at some point, the whole 'quest for the emerald' would be justified, but it never was -- I mean, all they had to say was that DG needed the emerald to get the bad witch out of her sister's body and that if the witch wasn't ejected before the end of the eclipse, her sister would die, and the whole thing would have at least made some sense...)

really, really bad. Next time, I'll listen to your advice...

I stuck with it all the way through, and enjoyed it up till about the last hour or so. After that, I started ticking off the cliches as they were fulfilled. It actually felt to me like it should have been longer - the last hour was really rushed and trite.

Still though, I loved the atmosphere, the look of the thing, and the risks that they were willing to take. It takes bravery to tamper with a classic.

I think DG went looking for the emerald for the same reason the hero always goes looking for the quest object - to keep the bad guys from getting it, or maybe to fulfill the prophecy.

Now if they only do a better job with The Diamond Age...*prays hard*