I Love Christian Kane

[olivermoss]

I just wish he was on better shows.

After finishing Leverage, I've been watching the episodes of Angel he's on and that show is of ... uneven quality.



He's great on it, though, especially once they give the character more to do and less clothes. I need to finish that, but I am on the S5 episodes and S5 is just sort of awkward and bland.

I'm also watching The Librarians and as much as I love John Rogers (who was a creator/developer/head write on both Leverage and The Librarians) I struggle to get into it. I love John's writing and his habit of casting Christian as one part of a m/f/m trio of tightly bonded characters, but it's a bit too cartoony for me most of the time. Also, the third ep was a Christmas ep and that is a weird pull for a show still finding it's feet.

Leverage and The Librarians have a lot of the same talent/production on both shows but I love one and the other I only enjoy because having both Christian Kane and John Rogers involves makes me want to like it.

I still haven't gotten through all of Almost Paradise.

I adore him, his music, his stage fighting skills as a lot to the shows he's on, but damn he is on some shows that are either not great or not quite my vibe.

If you've never seen him perform or him talking about castmates this video is cute. Also, the annoying person getting in the way of the shot sometimes with a camera is me.

Comments

[james]

I kind of enjoyed The Librarians, but I could never shake the feeling it should have been a kid's show, like pre-teens. Certainly it was not nearly sophisticated (in terms of plot holes) to be for adults. Or like someone's fanfic got selected to be filmed, in terms of some really cool ideas, and some great individual scenes, and it treated a lot of topics very positively. But it was shallow as fuck and not meant to be examined.

I think one of my favorite eps was the D&D gang saves the world ep, if only because it did what those types of storylines never do, which was - the every day geeks JUMPED at the chance to do something weird, and they saved the world with skills they had normally, not esoteric 'I learned this for Ren Faire and only ten people can do this in the world.'

But I wish it had been deeper, and more complex.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, as much as I love the team who works on this, it's like they took their rough drafts of Doctor Who fanfic and filed the numbers off. One of Cassandra's lines is the name of a Doctor Who filk song and I don't think that's a co-incidence. I would think them basically doing an American Doctor Who would be great if ... if it just worked better. IIRC the show could only be made if John Rogers could write season 1 fast enough. I might spelunk for those tweets later to refresh my memory.

I love the video game episode because is actually shows a knowledge of video games and how gamers work. I died when Ezekiel realized he was in an escort mission and just locked the gang in a closet. That is a common MMORPG tactic.

I pretty much treat the whole show as if it's one bad episode or arc in a show I love. I love the characters, the vibe, the actors, the shooting locations ... it's just that most of the actual episodes are not good.

Angel

[oldtoadwoman]

"uneven quality" describes Angel well. Just went I'd given up on it for being complete crap, there'd be a great episode and then just when I got invested again there would be more crap.

Re: Angel

[olivermoss]

Part of the problem is that when you bring in someone like James Marsters who can bring intensity to any scene and ground any dialogue everything seems to click more.

James Marsters is like Michael Emerson, give him any scene and he can sell it. Michael Emerson's character on Lost kept getting people re-invested in that show. There's a reason he featured so heavily in the commercials in the final season.

Speaking of which, it looks like James is going to be in the new season of Leverage.

And yeah, they likely had some great guest writers.

[mistressofmuses]

I haven't ever seen any of The Librarians. I feel like I should like it... but sounds like I'd have to have the right "this is just brain popcorn" mentality for it. I think I'd have the same issues you're having with it, because I struggle with things that seem too cartoony when that's not part of the point.

I loved Buffy when I was younger, but never managed to get into Angel (and had forgotten Christian Kane was in it!)

[olivermoss]

I liked Angel at the start, but it has some super rough points. Somewhere in S3 I think is an episode so off the rails that a lot of people can't make it past that. Christian is a great bad guy on Angel, once they start to get the ball rolling with his character. He also sings on the show.

There are some great things about The Librarians, but yeah ... I hope it evens out after a few episodes.