Tag: mini series

My Tribute to Diana of V

On By Michel McDonaldIn TVLeave a comment

I was totally devastated tonight during the season finale of V on ABC when Anna killed her mother Diana.  Why such devastation?  Well, let me take you back about 27 years…

It’s 1984 and my family lost our home.  Long story short, we had to move in with my aunt and with 10 people in the house, tv time was limited to whatever everyone agreed on in the living room.

The “V” Miniseries starts and the entire family watched the first part but not everyone was into it but my mom and I.  We watched it together in my parents bedroom and it was one of 2 things that really brought us together in a long time.  I was 14 and resentful of her for all of the abuse that I had to endure, really, I hated her.  I wanted to love her and this was our common ground.

We watched the entire mini-series together then V the Final Battle, which was sort of a second mini series, then they brought us V the TV Series and we watched that together every week.  The show ended with peace on all sides and although it gave us closure for the show, it ended our “thing” that we had going.  Life back to normal.

I have to admit that even though I was rooting for the fifth column, I was also rooting for Diana because she was just such an awesome character in the show.  Not just her hair but the dramatic look on her face every time the fifth column would foil her plans for victory.  The constant fight that she had with Lydia and, well, everyone.  She was very entertaining to me.

During the early 2000’s I hear rumors of a return of V.  The rumors that I heard were not a remake or a series but a movie, sort of a “V Returns” type of thing, you know like Superman Returns where it’s 25 or so years later.  I liked the idea of a return, prefer a series but I’ll take whatever I can get.

Summer 2009 comes and I hear from the futon critic website that ABC is bringing V back as a new series and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Naturally I watched it.  At first I wasn’t sure I liked it because it wasn’t exactly as it was in the 80’s but then I started thinking that I like it because it is a remake and the best way to remake an old show is to change everything.

I was very happy with the first season but then I heard rumor that Jane Badler was coming back to reprise her role as Diana.  What?  REALLY?  HAPPY!!!

I think she was great during her short time in the 2nd season so I was very heart-broken and devastated when Anna killed her in the middle of the season finale.  I didn’t expect the show to give her queendom back to her but I had hoped that she would have become a regular in the show again and not just a guest starring role.

I’m not truly convinced that Diana is dead, after all, Anna has brought some of her visitor friends back to life.  She brought Dale (Alan Tudyk) back (then Joshua killed him again lol) and she brought Marcus (Christopher Shyer) back.  I’m sure the fifth column could secretly take Diana’s body to a secret lab room and bring her back to life the way Anna brought those other people back to life.  The only true way to kill these new aliens is with a pill that dissolves the entire body.

This isn’t just a goodbye to Diana, this is a I will never forget you.  Not only how V brought my mother and I together before she passed away but because you talk to me on Twitter.  I will always be grateful for that, you have made my day, no, my lifetime.

This show means more to me than anyone will ever know and bringing back my favorite original character means even more than that so I thank the producers and writers for bringing my beloved Diana back to me, even though it was for a very short time.  You too have made my lifetime because I know that my mom was watching it with me every week just as we watched it together 27 years ago.  Thank you for bringing us back together one last time. </3

Updated to correct facts in the show that I missed, some nerd I turned out to be.

Wasn’t A Reader

On By Michel McDonaldIn BooksLeave a comment

When I was a kid my mom read stories to me sometimes.  Not all the time.  I do remember her reading those really thin books that you give to toddlers who can’t read and most of the page is all picture with a sentence at the top or bottom.  Those are about all she ever read to me.  I was never read from a thicker book with no pictures like Pinocchio or Moby Dick or whatever.  I’m not trying to put blame on my mother but I never was very much of a reader growing up.

Now my sister on the other hand was.  I can remember her being in her teens reading horror novels like Christine or Cujo.  I’m just picking names out of the hat.  I do remember my mom and my Aunt Betty reading V.C. Andrews books and my sister would read them after my mom and aunt.  But I never was really interested in reading.  My sister was an A student though and I had “learning disabilities” which later I found out was ADD when I was 26.  I mean really, if anyone or anything is to blame it’s that.

When I was 15 I would see my sister reading her V.C. Andrews novels and I wanted to feel a little like part of the crowd so I asked my mom if she would buy me the V novel and since I had already seen the mini series I already knew what would happen in the book so it made it easier to read.  I did only get halfway through the book though because I lost interest.  Not in the book but reading in general.

When I was 19 I bought the Back to the Future 2 and 3 paperback novels which were basically the movie verbatim.  I hadn’t yet seen the 2nd movie and the 3rd was in theaters so I wanted to read the 2nd book then rent the movie then read the 3rd book then go see it in theaters.  Unfortunately, by the time I was finished with the 3rd book the movie wasn’t in theaters anymore lol.  But eventually I did get to rent it when it went to VHS.

It did make me feel smart to read a book but that was the last book I read until I was 25.  I had bought a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel called Prophecies : Lost Slayer Serial novel Part 1 when Buffy was still on TV.  I mainly bought it because I was at Barnes and Noble with my aunt and uncle who are avid readers and I felt stupid so I bought a book.  I didn’t want to buy something expensive because I really didn’t have the money to blow on a book that I knew I would probably never read.  It sat in a box in my closet for years.

In December 2005 after Christmas I was going through my boxes looking for something and I came across this thin novel and I thought you know what, I’m going to tackle this.  I started reading it and I was hooked on it.  It certainly kept my interest and I read it all the way through and it only took me maybe an hour.  There were no hard words in there that I would either need a dictionary or a PHD to figure out what they meant.  So I told a friend of mine that I read it and then she bought a book that was all 4 parts in 1 book and I read it all the way through in a very small period of time.  I was hooked on reading finally.

Then I bought the Harry Potter books 1-5 box from Amazon and read them.  It probably took me 4 or 5 days each book which was fine by me, the longer the better.  But, the first 3 books were thinner than the rest and I read the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th one all in the same amount of time as the first 3 which meant that I was getting faster.

Unfortunately though Harry Potter ruined it for me because J.K. Rowling’s books were so easy to read that no other book could keep my interest.  I’d fall asleep while reading other books so I mainly gave up.

Now I’ve started on the Piers Anthony Xanth novels and those are pretty good and keep my interest.  I’ve bought so many books that I thought I’d read and never did so I’m going to try to tackle them all soon.