commentary by Jas Faulkner, contributing editor
Sorry, Cap'n Mal! (2002 20th Century Fox)
It all started to go off the rails when a dozen or so writers from various new media sites agreed to spend the downtime between the regular season and the playoffs watching a show about a living spaceship manned (or wo-manned, as it were) by a crew of misfits on the lam. She couldn’t rememberthe name, but it would be easy enough to find since it was “the show that wasn’t Firefly”.
Okey dokey.
What happened next would set back sexual politics among my set of puck-mad freaks by at least a generation.
(2003 The Jim Henson Company)
The bulk of us found the show she meant. Farscape is an epic tale with deep themes, courageous characters, creatures with pedigrees from the Henson workshop and a budget as big as the alternative universe that served as a backdrop.
However, and isn’t there always a however? A ragtag crew consisting of five writers from smaller markets somehow wandered over to the wrong show. We ended up watching Lexx.
“Nononononononononononono!” wailed my friend on Skype, burying her face in the overlong sleeves of her goalie cut sweater bearing the logo of the Original Six team she covers. ” That show is…it’s awful. Lexx? Really? Lexx?
(2003 Echo Street Video)
Yes, Lexx, really. In retrospect, I am sure that the other four people who were part of the Canadian Sci-Fi Rebellion of 2012 were making a stand for a chance to see Xenia Seeberg’s, erm, assets. Me? In the parlance of geeks everywhere, I think Lexx kind of rules. In the four seasons worth of shows we watched, it managed to be both horrendous and so off the charts creative and surreal that the thought of not sticking around to see what would happen next might constitute a dearth of creativity and capacity for intellectual engagement on this side of the screen.
Lexx also serves as the perfect sci-fi analogy for this year’s playoffs.
Those of us who elected to stick around past the April sell-by date for the NHL were, for the most part, figuring on another two months of epic battles, clashes of titanic battalions of big damn heroes wearing the crests of storied franchises. We counted on huge explosions and mind bending landscapes and creatures that defied what we knew to be existent or even possible. We expected Han Solo and Captain Mal and Darth Vader.
Darth who? (2002 Global Television)
What we got was Stanely H. Tweedle and a bunch of smartypantsed people waiting for their moment.
Thing is, if you were one of those people, you know, the Farscape types who were doing all of the posturing about not caring? If you were one of those people, you missed out on some good hockey. You missed teams making historic runs for a less populated section of the bracket. You missed seeing breathtaking action on the ice by guys you might otherwise have overlooked. This is playoff hockey in an alternative universe. The cup will be raised either tonight or a few days from now, arguably by hands that belong to beings alien to many fans. Whether you stick around for it or not, and I sincerely hope you do, history will be made.
This article was originally published at: The Hockey Writers.
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