Eckhardt--THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE!

Hey y'all,

As I've now hit the halfway point in my Deep Space Nine reviews and have managed to keep the things (generally) ticking along at the proper schedule and it'll finish well . . .sometime this year, assuming all goes forward as it should.

But I was thinking "Well, what shall we do for next year?" And I looked over my DVD collection and came up with the following options:

BABYLON 5--I guess this would be the democratic response to Deep Space Nine, huh? There are people who will never let go of the Great B5/DS9 debate, riddled through as it is with all sorts of nonsense about who ripped off what and all that. I am not one of those people--I feel like having two good shows running at the same time is fantastic--it means that there's a real vitality to what you're doing and you're mining a rich vein. And they were two good shows with a lot of similarities, and many differences, too.

PROS: This is the show that started the trend for Myth Arcs on TV. 5 seasons (I won't be doing the pilot because I don't own it and frankly, it's kinda naff) seasons mean I will finish it before I age visibly. Makes for interesting comparison/contrast with this year's show.

CONS: The gut-wrenching horror Season 5; follow-up series have not fared so well (see below); near the end JMS of Back Then becomes JMS of Nowadays, which is not a good thing.

CRUSADE--The follow-up series to Babylon 5, but no worries, you don't have to do the first to get anything out of it. The crew of the Uchū Senkan Excalibur has to find a cure for a plague. If they don't, in just five years, all life on Earth will disappear. Notable for having a very rocky start, and being canceled before it even aired in one of the first big-time Internet kerfuffles I remembered experiencing. Has never really been followed up on--we're getting the scripts published only now, which contain all the episodes they maybe shoulda got done rather than the pissing contest that gave us what we got. It's . . .a failure, but an extraordinarily interesting one to me.

PROS: 13 episodes means I could bang it out in a month and change, even including the scripts for the good episodes, which I would do; Plenty of opportunities for Star Blazers references; Having Lumbergh from Office Space being the captain of the ship gives me plenty of chances to reference Office Space; Also, I probably actually have meaningful things to say about this one, and Crusade is seldom (never) covered, so it has the advantage of being unplowed ground.

CONS: No one in their right minds would vote for this one, they would probably vote for Babylon 5.

MAD MEN [Seasons 1-3]--Y'all know this one--hell, it still gets hits, and damn if I know why. In the world of advertising in the 1960s, Don Draper grapples with existential angst and looks sad a lot. Also: smoking!

PROS: We'd fill in the three seasons previous; it's a known quantity; innate sexiness of Jon Hamm may bleed over to the Prattle and make it the Sexiest Comic Blog Alive, even though Mad Men is not a comic and the Prattle is probably barely a comics blog.

CONS: It's kind of spoiled already because we did 4, and when series 5 starts last year, I will be covering it to, and it would probably end up being a bit of a muddle; plus, it feels a little like ticking off boxes.

DEADWOOD--Might this be the most profane show since Man Slams Hand In Car Door? Might be. Town in the American west in the 1870s used as a macrocosm for creation of America, meditation on notions of "scoiety." Probably the darkest of all the series I could possibly do, certainly one of the densest in terms of characters and thickness of plotting and stuff. Apparently it had something like 1.4 instances per minute of the word "fuck," which I find amazing. Not that they say it that much--hell, I do better than that every day--I'm just amazed someone measured it.

PROS: Densely plotted; dark tone of the show really fits with the spirit of this place some days; allows me to indulge in astoundingly profane rants even more than I do already.

CONS: Season 3's theatre group subplot and overall lack of resolution still causes me mixed emotions; Will not go any further toward my goal of being less of potty-mouth this year; pretty much everyone on the internet has analyzed this already and what the hell else could I possibly add (er, not that's ever stopped me before)

COWBOY BEBOP--It's anime for people who don't like anime. Morally compromised characters wander around in various adventures stuffed with allusions to French films, Bruce Lee movies, and in one case, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. No, really. Lighthearted romp at first transcends the sum of its influences and becomes rather affecting ultimately.

PROS: It would be me an impetus to play my DVDs, because I haven't in so long; soundtrack rocks damn near everything possible to rock, and gives me licence to pepper the reviews with song clips; length of the show is reasonable; and has Welsh Corgis in it and I like Welsh Corgis.

CONS: A.V. Club's already doing it, but again--when did that stop me?

I thought I'd let you guys decide what I do next, so leave your answer in the comments and let me know which show we do for 2012. This way it guarantees content (because apparently I can keep to a schedule better than I thought) and it seems like you the reader have a voice in things, and really, opening it up to vote gives me an idea of how many people are actually reading this thing.

Plus it's a year away, and it's never bad to plan ahead, I guess. Vote away, y'all!