It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

Call me a product of my generation, but I’m a chronic multi-tasker.  I can’t watch television or movies without doing something else.  I’m always cleaning, working out, crocheting, or writing blog entries that should have been up hours ago.  Which means I wind up listening to more than I “watch.”  Which is maybe where this list comes from.  Or maybe I just like guys with nice voices.  Who knows?  This is my personal list, not a collective production of It’s my TV, It’s My Peanut Butter.  While they’re fairly consistently my top five, the order shifts around a bit depending on my mood.  Note these are speaking voices, not singing voices.  That’s a whole other list.

1.  Avery Brooks. It is a travesty beyond travesties that StarTrek: Deep Space Nine did not have a voice over in the opening credits.  Yes, it would have been awkward to rework the whole thing from the first two Trek series so that it was about a thing that stays put instead of has voyages to seek out new life and new civilizations and yadda, yadda.  But seriously?  They wasted the opportunity to have that voice sensuously intoning whatever over dramatic music and pretty images of space.  He could have been reading a recipe for marzipan and I guarantee you female viewership would have gone up.  I’m a weirdo among Trekkies in that DS9 may well be my favorite series (again, depends on the day, sometimes its TNG.  Note I waited till Cammy was out of the country to say that because she considers it a sacrilege.) and while Picard was clearly the best “captain” I think it’s undeniable that Sisko was the bigger badass.  And the voice was a big part of it.  I generally feel like DS9 should have ended a season earlier than it did, but season 7 has avoided being stricken from my memory for two things.  One of those is Sisko singing.  The other is a pair of white baseball pants.  If you’ve seen them, they need no explanation (no, they aren’t on Sisko).

2.  Sean Connery. Yeah, I’m a sucker for the accent.  And the attitude.  And the being that damned hot while being old enough to collect social security (or whatever the Brits have).  Admittedly Saturday Night Lives Sean Connery parody has become almost indistinguishable from the real thing in my mind, but whatever.  Favorite line ever?  A strange choice:  “If I have to wear a suit, she has to wear a bra” from Playing by Heart.  A line that would not be nearly so funny in any other voice.

3.  James Earl Jones. Do I need to explain this one?  Didn’t think so.

4.  Carlo Rota. Yeah, it’s the accent thing again.  And the tone.  Cammy was really the one to point this out to me, but I would listen to this man read the phone book for hours.  Physically, he doesn’t do much for me.  But that voice?  Mmmmm…. Momma like!  And if I could get him to say one one of those Yassir-isms to me like “My flower” or something, I could die a happy woman.

5.  Jeremy Irons. Another accent.  Yes, it’s a theme. I’m okay with it.  I’ll admit it was The Lion King that introduced me to him.  He is deliciously evil sounding.  My friend Megan once said, “Evil looks good.  It’s kind of the whole point of evil.”  Let me tell you, evil sounds good too.  But he sounds good as a good guy too.  I melt every time I watch The Mission.  Every time he says that line about “If you’re right, and might makes right, then love has no place in this world.  And it may be so, it may be so.  But I can’t live in a world like that, Rodrigo.”  I become a puddle.  I know, it’s a well written line and would take an idiot to fuck it up, but Mr. Irons knocks it out of the park.

6.  Antonio Banderas. BONUS!  Because I left him off my list and can’t believe it.  But can’t bring myself to bump anyone either.  Yes, another accent.  At least I have variety in my accents.  But damn!  His accent is intermittently delectable and hysterical.  And by hysterical I mean listen to his version of “Oh What a Circus” and hear how he says “hysterical.”  Make sure you aren’t drinking anything.

Today marks the 30th Anniversary of perhaps the most notorious cliffhanger in television history:  On Dallas J.R. Ewing was shot by an unknown assailant and “Who shot J.R.?” became entered into the colloquial lexicon forever.  I don’t remember That episode–if I watched it it would have had to have been in a past life.  But I do love me a good cliffhanger.  And by love I mean hate with a passion.  And enjoy every second of.  Because I’m a horrible masochist.

*Warning, the rest of this blog entry will contain spoilers for episodes of various series that aired some time ago.  If you’re one of those who is still slowly working your way though Star Trek: The Next Generation or some other series, trying your darndest not to find out what will happen in the end, I apologize.  If you watch your shows within a year of their broadcast, you should be fine.* (later blog entry to come on expiration dates for spoilers)

So what are your favorite cliffhangers?

A friend of mine once declared the end of The Two Towers (the book, not the movie) to be the greatest cliffhanger in history.  It didn’t do it for me.  If memory serves (my copy of TTT is at the parents house) the novel ends with Frodo being carried off by the orcs.  A good cliffhanger, I’ll grant you, but I’ve read too many epics and epic like tales to have believed for a second Frodo wouldn’t be found.  Only way he was going to die before the end would be if it was a heroic act of self sacrifice.  But it helped that Return of the King was on the bookshelf and I only had to walk across the room to find out what happened.

This makes me wonder, does there have to be genuine fear or uncertainty of the outcome for a cliffhanger to be effective?  I’m not sure there does.

One of my favorite cliffhangers is the end of season 1 of Farscape.  Crais takes off with Talyn, Moya starbursts away, John and D’argo are stranded out in open space, D’argo’s unconscious and Aeryn can’t get to them.  Damn!  (For added info on the impact of this cliffhanger on my psyche, I got hooked on Farscape in Peru where they were about a season behind us.  This cliffhanger was the last episode I saw there, then I came home to find the US in the middle of season 2.  I knew things had worked out, but it was a long while before I found out how.)  Now I didn’t think for a second they were going to kill off half the cast, but I didn’t know but what they might kill one or two.  And I was on the edge of my seat in the wrong hemisphere.

The final episode of Farscape would have made an excellent cliffhanger if the show hadn’t been canceled, turning it instead into the Worst Show Ending Ever.  (I realize it was eventually resolved by the less than stellar Peacekeeper Wars, but that doesn’t kill the sting)

I enjoyed the season 1 “Who’s at the door?” cliffhanger on Veronica Mars even if it was a little silly.

Whatever season of the X-Files it was that ended with Mulder disappearing and Scully being knocked-up was kind of fun in a fangirl “Squee”y kind of way.

Battlestar Galactica had an interesting take on cliffhangers.  They ended Season 2, for example, by jumping forward a year.  All of a sudden Apollo was fat, Starbuck had bad hair, and the cylons were invading.  We were left wondering not only, “What the hell is going to happen?” but also “What the hell happened?”  Double cliffhanger.  Nice.

There are a group of cliffhangers I wish I could have been a part of.  Star Trek:  The Next Generation in “Best of Both Worlds: Part 1″ I wish I could have been there for that moment when we saw Borg!Picard.  (I’ve seen this moment, but only years down the road, knowing what was going to happen)  Back in 1990 I can only imagine the thrill of the “WTF?” the audience was feeling.

So yeah, cliffhangers, the evil thing that the television gods do to us and we thank them for it.