They say that one picture is worth thousand snarky remarks. Well, let us do so. On the left is Max von Sydow as Emperor Ming the Merciless in movie “Flash ‘AAAH-HAAAA!
HE SAVED THE U-NI-VERSE!’ Gordon” and, if you don’t know this, you should be stripped of all of your geek privileges and you should immediately turn over your internet porn collection, D&D dice and Star Trek costumes. On the right side is guy looking like an extra from “Prisoner of Zenda”. That’s Emperor Ming as re-imagined in SciFi Channel’s latest project – TV series “Flash Gordon“. Now, not that there’s anything wrong with Anthony Hope’s novel but – as Sax Rohmer amply proved - you just can’t surpass the sheer badassery of evil bold Oriental with a goatee.
I know it’s wrong to judge TV series harshly after seeing only a couple of episodes but… Let me put it this way: in the first two and a half hours of “Flash Gordon”, main characters spend only about 30 minutes on planet Mongo. Rest of the time they run around some provincial American backwater because apparently that’s how producers imagine “space” in the “space opera” to look like. Episodes mostly consist of various creatures of the week getting to Earth using the starga-… the porta-… the Rift from Mongo - No sexy spaceships here, folks! - and Gordon & friends then try to catch and contain them before they wreck havoc. So, it’s kinda like “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”, except it sucks.
There’s the unfunny black sidekick – that time-honored cliche of bad entertainment; Hans Zarkoff that has been mutated from lovable batshit-crazy scientist into a greasy cat piss man; and Prince Baylin who became a Princess played by Karen Cliché. No, wait! That’s actually cool!
While we’re at the subject of ladies, one cannot but think of “Flash Gordon” as just another in the long line of geek humiliations devised for all those sexy girls who despised them in high school and dreamt about becoming famous. Well, now they can: they just have to play roles of half-naked aliens, utter embarrassing lines like “What is this… te-le-vision thing?” and have sweaty nerds on SF conventions peeking down their cleavage.
Aaah! Sweet revenge!
Anyway, most of the cast acts as if on Novocaine, but maybe they’re just fazed-out from reading the unbearably dull scripts. Eric Johnson has that bland blond all-American look necessary for the role of Flash and he seems to know his way around punchlines, so he’s OK. As long as you forget he’s supposed to be Zarkoff, Jody Racicot is also fun as a Lone Gunmen-type conspiracy nut. The rest of the cast is pretty much bland – from almost unnervingly similar Karen Cliché and Anna van Hooft to Gordon’s mum who is maybe 10 or 15 years older than him. Maybe the characters will develop over the season, but I’m not sure will I stay around to actually see that.
Victoria Beckham will be appearing on ABC’s prime time show Ugly Betty. Ex and current Spice Girl will be appearing as herself and playing a celebrity bridesmaid. This is her first primetime roll since her move to Hollywood; and although Mrs. David Beckham still insists she has no desire to launch an acting career, this just might be a best way of seeing this plan through. After watching her NBC special, in which she intended to preset herself as a funny soccer mom and ended up looking like stuck-up alien bitch, this just might be a perfect chance to seal her acting career once and for all.
