I have, through sources I’ve sworn not to reveal, attained the first spoileriffic image from what I can only assume is season 2 of Fox’s The Following. Maybe they shot the beginning of season 2 at the end of season 1?

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Now that I’ve confirmed how much ass NBC’s Hannibal kicks -a lot- and I’ve settled into a morbid fascination with A&E’s Bates Motel, I find myself wondering how these two very different shows can sustain themselves in the long run. Ratings-wise things are looking good for both horror prequel series and that means that we’re no longer looking at a stunt gimmick or a one-off side story. We’re bunkering in for a regular series and, we can only assume, an end game.

Hannibal mastermind, Bryan Fuller, made some comments recently to EW.com regarding the show’s longevity and his plans for the characters from Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon novel:

“It really is a love story, for lack of a better description, between these two characters,” Fuller says. “As Hannibal has said [to Graham] in a couple of the movies, ‘You’re a lot more like me than you realize.’ We’ll get to the bottom of exactly what that means over the course of the first two seasons. But we’re taking our sweet precious time.”

Hannibal will also be unusual because it’s planned as a 13-episode-per-season show. So though the drama won’t rush Hannibal’s story, it also won’t feel like its padded with throwaway episodes either.

“Doing a cable model on network television gives us the opportunity not to dally in our storytelling because we have a lot of real estate to cover,” Fuller says. “I pitched a seven-season arc including stories from various [Thomas Harris] books.”

 

Even as a two season 13 episode run it’s hard to imagine but seven, that’s formidable. How long can you really drag out a story which has only minor pressure release points before people realize that the big finale is predestined and will never offer a surprise? That all a prequel series can really do is pave the road with psychos and what ifs that dilute the narrative and distract from the piece moving? Having watched the first two episodes of Hannibal, in which two such Lecter-caliber psychos are dispatched, I’m going to say… they can do it really stylishly. With living corpse mushroom gardens and other things to make you hate life.

You don’t want to know where the Olive Garden gets the mushrooms for their never-ending salad…

Bates Motel is taking a different approach. This is Carlton Cuse from LOST in the EP seat we’re talking about, he won’t have a plan. That’s not his style. He’ll say he has a plan…ish, but he doesn’t and the show may be all the better for it because although it takes pains to remind the audience of its source material through visual, sound, dialogue and acting cues, it’s a show better enjoyed if you just forget all that hooey. I think what they’ve made is one big giant what if fantasy world version of Norman Bates based on several questions completely unrelated to Psycho like; What if Norman Bates solved mysteries like the Hardy Boys? What if he had a hottie older half brother who basically played his mirror opposite; the James Dean-like rebel to his Goody Two Shoes Mama’s Boy? What if the town the motel was in was populated by corrupt city officials, quirky Twin Peaks weirdoes and psycho killers like him? I mean, this goes completely against all the things that make Psycho work like the idea that the kindly innkeeper in a small town could be one of history’s greatest monsters but what if that didn’t matter because it was all too much fun to care if it worked?

DylMan Shippers… start your engines!

The issue both series face is one of trajectory. We know where we’re going because, no matter how much they change or add to the plot, in order to land their ending they have to launch from a predetermined location which we can trace back like the dotted lines of an Angry Bird. In that case the only thing in the creator’s control is the speed of the ship and the background that we  see on the way to our destination. This isn’t like an adaptation of a novel where people are expecting specific plot or character moments, the anticipation of which is half the fun -Hannibal is based off of 5 pages in Harris’ Red Dragon novel. No, this is about characters we know don’t die, a pay off we know isn’t coming, and trying to find new revelations in moments that inform events that sit fully formed in our heads. It can be done. New details can add new insight into these characters, just by way of the casting and performances we can come to understand them in interesting new ways. But by not changing the perspective of the story, by not giving us someone new to root for or ponder the fate of, they’ve set us up for a lot of “watch checking” which is a shame considering how fantastically they’ve built these worlds and how much I’m enjoying the insanity so far.

In the grand pantheon of stupid ideas, I would have thought a Psycho prequel that moves the action to 2013 would be chief among them but god help me I enjoyed the shit out of Bates Motel.

Just one of the many babes on “The Norman Conquest.” Also, ewww.

This TV season in particular is set to become the psycho-killerest in history with not only Bates Motel dusting off the Norman Bates saga for another go, but none other than Bryan Fuller tackling America’s favorite cannibal,  Hannibal Lecter (and for network TV no less.) Then lest we forget, Kevin Bacon slumming it on Fox’s The Following, which in its first season has already set the bar for silly serial killering the likes of which Dexter could only darkly dream of. But I belabor a simple point, Bates Motel has mad potential to be both the most intense and silliest of these silly, horrible shows that I continue to watch in spite of myself. I am the problem, after all.

Yet, the strangest thing about the show has nothing to do with the psycho-killer-to-be, and everything to do with Norman’s instantaneous status in town as a total chick magnet.

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Is the government covering up a vast zombie apocalypse conspiracy? Is a local NJ survival traning course actually an Umbrella recruitment center? Won’t someone think of the poor zombies!? Find your answers and more in this video I produced.

If ever there is a stuck (or cut) pig, you know who not to call now. Give me something with paper thin skin any day.

Overall I’d have to say it was a pretty bitchin’ day and I got to add a shit ton of firearms to my list of “I feel comfortable shooting something with that” guns. Not that I would harm anything that wasn’t trying to scarf my brains.

Anyway if you’re in NJ, you gotta check them out. Any German Inus out there, lemme know if you saw me acting like a zombie with some blonde German TV host on Germany’s own ARD. I made a total dummkopf of myself in the very best way.

Zombie Survival Course

I don’t often get a chance to share my work with my beloved inus but since someone uploaded our story/food segment on The King of Shish Kabob to the webs, I highly recommend you check it out below.

Makes you hungry huh? btws, they have jawesome (jaw-droppingly awesome) hummus.

There’s no commentary needed on this video. I adore Kristen Bell.

IWP is growing up.

Not only has Nick Strang-Wolf become “a regular cast member” but these new episodes from November and December, some of our best and weirdest yet, mark the end of an era. IWP has moved on from its rotation on the electronic community bulletin board and graduated to a place on our flagship news magazine show. That means every two weeks at the end of the program New Jerseyans everywhere can tune in for our latest adventures in the idiot realm and to, presumably see themselves “on the TeeVee!” IWP is now being shot in 16:9 widescreen 24p with a new scenefile that gives it a more cinematic look and feel. There’s a new open, a logo and lower thirds. It’s all a step forward even if I’ll miss some of the ideas we leave behind.

The biggest news of course is that I probably won’t be uploading future episodes here because soon our official Optimum Local website will go live and you’ll be able to watch new episodes as they become available from anywhere in the country. As with anything new, people are fearful and shaking torches at the new day’s dawn so who knows what content will get to the web and when. All I know is, I’m printing out 8 x 10 glossies as we speak and readying myself for “the crush” of adoring fans. Well, not really but I can’t wait till I can share this stuff with a much bigger audience. On to Phase Two!

The IWP episodes from October are now available in the For the Eye section of Works. In addition to Super Power which went viral. There’s also two episodes featuring me as a zombie. In one of them I marched in a Columbus Day parade and terrified the little children. It was wicked fun.

So IWP made it to the grandest stage of them all… by which I mean the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fansite Equestria Daily. We’re the top news item! Click on the Video called Mr. PonyMan and tremble in terror… and delight, but mostly terror.

If a picture speaks a thousand words…

…Then this one is an encyclopedia series on mental health issues.