Wednesday, January 30, 2008

• Currently Watching: Now & Again

  As you may or may not know, one of my hobbies is digging up shows posted on YouTube or other video hosting sites. The discovery that such a thing is possible has given me the chance to see fan-subtitled anime that hasn't officially made it to this country yet, get Doctor Who right after they get it in the UK rather than waiting a million years till it trickles down to us poor Americans, and discover or rediscover old shows long dead.
  
  In this last category falls the show Now & Again, a modern-day-setting sci-fi that ran for only 22 episodes in 1999 and 2000. The main character is a normal man, Michael Wiseman (John Goodman), who is hit by a subway train and whose brain is placed in a man-made superhuman body (Eric Close) under the control and funding of the government. He is offered a choice by project leader Doctor Morris (played by Dennis Haysbert of The Unit and those AllState commercials): continue living, on their terms and their rules in this body that they own, or die like he would have anyway if they hadn't been there to harvest his mind. Obviously he chooses the former (else we wouldn't have a show or, at any rate, he wouldn't be the main character), which proves to be a problem as the government's rules entail never again making contact with his wife and teenage daughter. Each episode has two storylines which occasionally converge: what's going on with Michael, and what's going on with his family.
  
  Now this show of course had its flaws (the basic premise of a government-owned superhuman being unoriginal, for one), but it also had heart... it had heart in spades. It was great fun while it ran, a real disappointment when it was cancelled, exciting to rediscover, and another disappointement when I finished the 22nd episode again the other day.
  
  I'm not exactly sure what this post is about, besides commemorating my disappointment that there isn't any more of this show to be had. I've written before about the feeling of finishing a tv or book series... and how, despite it, while I'm in the midst of a given series I can't wait till I've reached the end. The other thing I was thinking about was how sad it was that Now & Again isn't listed on Xangazon and probably isn't even available on DVD... and what a wonderful thing YouTube is. If I ever met its maker, I would give him a cookie.
  
  

  • 9:48 AM
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