And now for the dreaded words no one ever wants to hear – “We have to talk.”
There’s an old cliché of a person looking over his house, or his garage, or his workspace and sighing, “I’ve got to get organized.” Well, that time has come for me. For years, I’ve been letting the clutter build up in my house, promising over and over that “Someday, I’ll go through all this and get rid of the junk and keep only the good stuff.” A short time ago, I tried to copy one of my old camcorder tapes, only to find to my horror that it was full of static when I played it back. I only have the one recorder. I’ve bought a cleaner/demagnetizer but I’m afraid to try it. If it works – great. If not, have I lost all that irreplaceable footage from neglect? That was a wake-up call for me. It’s time for me to do what I’ve been promising for years and go through all my stuff, save the good stuff and toss the junk. To do that, I have to get rid of all my distractions and unfortunately, this is one of them. I’ve enjoyed being a part of this group for almost exactly five years now, but I have to go now. I’m posting this in all the series I was reviewing lately, so I’ll briefly cover each.
Blake’s 7 – Before I decided on this major change, I was just going to drop out of this one show. I politely waited until the first season was over to do it. It’s an interesting show, but to finish it would require a whole year of my life and that wasn’t what I signed up for when I joined the group. Plus as I know, Blake will be gone at the end of season 2 and then Avon will be in charge which seems beyond comprehension. Maybe someday, I’ll go back and finish it without the reviewing but it’s not that big a deal to me. At least I know now what it was all about.
Catweazle – I was hoping I could finish this one up, especially since it’s only a half-hour show. But since season 1 ended on a finale-like episode, it seemed a good place to stop – especially since I was almost done with Welcome to Paradox. Catweazle had its moments and was beginning to improve but I never got into it the way some of the others obviously did. I’m more likely to try to go back and finish this someday, especially since it’s shorter. I am curious how the show changed in the second season. Someone already spilled the beans about who won’t be in the second season, so at least I know he doesn’t go back where he was before.
Welcome to Paradox – I’m glad to have made it to the end of this show. I hung in there since it was only for 13 weeks. For the most part it was interesting and most of the stories were at least good – only a couple were bad to me. I’ll still run the numbers for you before I go.
Overall, it’s been a wonderful experience these past five years. I’ve seen lots of shows I’d never have seen otherwise. I ended up getting NETFLIX partly because of this group. I finally had an excuse to finish EARTH 2. Watching CAPRICA made me curious about BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA and I finally managed to get through that on my own. I enjoy watching Brit Morgan guest starring on any show now because I remember her from THE MIDDLEMAN. And so on.
It was always fun to debate whether an episode was good or bad. Everyone was able to give their opinions without being rude. No one ever called another reviewer stupid. The closest thing to a real fight I got into was when someone insisted I couldn’t use the phrase “tontine story” if the story didn’t involve an actual tontine. I’d thought of doing a paragraph full of phrases like “Shaggy dog story”, “fish story” and other such phrases to disprove the point. But by then we’d moved on to the next episode and it was all forgotten.
People came and went as we travelled along. We still hear from some like dtmuller, but not from others. I’ll try to check in on you guys occasionally in the future just to see how you’re doing. I hope there are enough group members to keep the Sages going. If not, it was a noble effort. And our reviews are still out there for others to read – even the IMDB ones which thankfully some sites like “filmboards,com” have managed to preserve. I wish everyone the best of luck in whatever journeys life still holds for you. And may all your decisions be wise ones.
