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By Don Kaye
Special to MSN TV
The day gets off to a good start with a relatively sane and fascinating interview with the Mythbusters. Now well into their seventh year on the Discovery Channel, Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage and the rest of their team continue to find new scientific ways to either prove or debunk a whole range of urban legends, Internet rumors and the like. Savage is the geekier of the two (he got to Comic-Con earlier and has actually been walking around the show in disguise), while Hyneman is more reserved but also admits to picking up what the Comic-Con vibe is all about.
As for whether "Mythbusters," which deals in what you could basically call reality checks, fits into a convention that's centered around escaping from reality and plunging headlong into fantasy, Hyneman says, "I think that we do what we do with such a sense of fun and enthusiasm that we're not putting anyone down. We're putting things in perspective and having fun playing with them." Savage adds, "Comic-Con has gone beyond any genre at this point. It's reflects the state of the culture, and 'Mythbusters' is part of that lexicon."
The pair reveals that team member Kari Byron is out on maternity leave and will be replaced by automotive expert Jessi Combs for 10 episodes or so. They also reveal that they've finally mastered one experiment, "Bullet Dropped vs. Fired," which they've tried to crack for a long time and that it will air this fall. It revolves around the notion that a bullet dropped will hit the ground at the same time as a bullet fired from a gun. The results? They're not telling, of course. As for how long "Mythbusters" can continue and thrive, Savage says they have a working list of around 160 myths still to get their treatment, "and it keeps growing."
From meeting the "Mythbusters" guys at the Marriott next door to the convention center, I stroll past that monstrous structure and head to the Hilton Bayfront, which is hosting several panels today. I don't know if that's happened in the recent past, but it's a troubling trend if the Comic-Con programming is actually growing beyond the walls of its massive headquarters. I stop for some lunch in the restaurant, which faces the water behind the hotel, and watch as "Star Trek" and "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto, sitting at an outside table, politely shakes the hands and takes pictures with fans who happen to be passing by. Looks like stardom hasn't spoiled him.
I plant myself in the Hilton's Indigo Ballroom for the panel on the SyFy (I can't get used to writing that, but anyway) series "Sanctuary." The show in some ways is an alternate take on the "X-Men" premise, postulating that there exist numerous human beings with odd, dangerous or superior powers. A success for SyFy, the show has a second season on the way, and healthy ratings plus critical acclaim seem to point toward continued growth for the program, which is actually rather beautifully shot and artfully conceived.
Next was something that even its producers admitted was an outlier for Comic-Con: a brand new episode of the Fox series "Glee." According to the spokesperson on the stage (whose name I miss), "a lot of people at Fox weren't sure if Comic-Con fans would come to watch 'Glee,'" but again, the size of the audience in the room pretty much disproves that, not to mention a preponderance of "Glee" T-shirts in the house. The pilot episode aired in May after "American Idol" to mixed reviews and an audience of around 10 million viewers, and it seems from the noise as if most of them are here.
The episode we see -- which will air this September -- is my own first exposure to "Glee" and I wonder for a few minutes exactly what it is doing at Comic-Con. It seems basically to be a hybrid of "Election" and "High School Musical," with sharp, satirical, sometimes politically incorrect and occasionally dark examinations of human behavior interspersed with vibrant and even provocative musical numbers. This latter element could be a cause for concern, as the segment screened here featured two numbers in which high-school characters gyrate in a pretty sexualized fashion. I'm no prude, but a lot of people might get queasy at teens doing this. The show is funny, though, and the cast has its highs and lows, with Jane Lynch as the school's militantly conservative coach a particularly hilarious standout.
I will say that its original, irreverent and even sometimes subversive tone does make it work at least indirectly within the confines of Comic-Con. Will audiences get the joke? We'll see this fall.
Back to the convention center now, to talk to the creators of "Fringe" and the cast of "V." The "Fringe" panel itself offers up only a small clip of the second season, which will premiere on September 17th. Sitting down with the press backstage, creators Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci, along with executive producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman, are naturally hesitant to reveal any details of the upcoming new season, but do reveal that Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) will come back from -- slight spoiler -- the parallel universe she found herself in at the end of season one, and that the show will continue to feature standalone stories while building a mythology and arc in the background. Kurtzman says, "When the mythology becomes bigger than the characters, then you're in trouble."
They also say that the world of the show will "get bigger" as a result of revealing that there is a parallel universe, mad scientist Walter Bishop (John Noble) will "get out more," and "Star Trek" legend Leonard Nimoy, who appeared as mysterious corporate chieftain William Bell in the last scene of season one, will return to the show "as often as he wants," with Orci joking, "And if he wants to write and direct too, that's fine with us."
Down the hall in Ballroom 20, the pilot for the reimagining of the classic 1983 miniseries "V" is being shown for the first time anywhere, amid much speculation about what the thing is going to look like. The story deals with the arrival of seemingly benign aliens on Earth who claim to be here to help humankind, but who of course have a sinister ulterior motive. Early reports suggest that the true nature of the alien menace becomes apparent in the very first episode, which would seem to diffuse some of the tension that the original built up so nicely.
Nonetheless, five of the principal cast members are on hand to talk about "V," including "Lost" cast member Elizabeth Mitchell, "4400" actor Joel Gretsch, "Firefly" veteran Morena Baccarin, plus Morris Chestnut and Scott Wolf. All of them say that the new show pays tribute to the '83 classic -- which is still imprinted on many fans' memories after a quarter-century -- but that the original's allegorical references to World War II are replaced by a more modern subtext about the state of the world today and the threats facing humankind. Asked why the show has had enough lasting power to warrant a remake, Wolf says, "I think most of us feel it's pretty improbable that we are the only living beings in the universe, and once you believe in that, it's a short step to ask, 'What would they want?'"
Finally, interviews over, it's back to Ballroom 20 to catch the "True Blood" panel and surprisingly the line moves relatively quickly this late in the day. Not surprisingly, the hall is almost standing room only -- the audience for "True Blood" has grown a lot since the show premiered last year -- but even before it went on the air there were legions of fans at Comic-Con 2008 who had read Charlaine Harris' series of books and were curious about the show. This year it's more of a victory lap for Harris and show creator Alan Ball, who are joined onstage by cast members Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Rutina Wesley, Nelsan Ellis, Sam Trammell, Michelle Forbes, Alexander Skarsgard and Deborah Ann Woll.
I have a few more comments about "True Blood" here, with the big news being that the show will be back for a third season. Ball is a born entertainer on the panel (some of the actors are more reticent), and he deftly fields most of the fan questions, which revolve around how the series will dovetail with the many novels in Harris' series (the theory is that each season is based on one novel, although I suspect that a lot of liberties are taken), whether certain characters will be introduced, and most importantly, if the long-awaited love triangle between Sookie (Paquin), vampire Bill (Moyer) and vampire "sheriff" Eric (Skarsgard) will occur. As I said on the blog, the show itself has its ups and downs -- there's often a little too much story happening on any given episode -- but Ball cannot be underestimated and the material has a lot of (un)life in it.
And that's it for Saturday. There's a massive masquerade contest taking place in the convention center tonight, a Radikal Publishing party at the Hard Rock Hotel (with Kiss rumored to be playing) and then we get up and do it again one more time.
