Action packed.

It's Jane's half birthday! We have already obtained some cake to eat on her behalf.

She herself has recently had the opportunity to scarf both roast zucchini and bits of tamale, both of which she approves of very heartily. She was less interested in the potatoes that came with my brunch last Sunday, but then I didn't think they were very delicious, either. (There is a theme uniting these foods—can you spot it?)

So that would seem to mean that it is September of 2010. And yet apparently it is 1999, because I am currently in mourning over the fact that there will never be a second season (series) of Ultraviolet. It holds up surprisingly well.

Idris Elba remains very handsome.

The characters are a good and plausible mixture of clever and not, dispassionate and self interested, savvy and gullible, brainy and lummoxy, laudable and infuriating, with a pleasing balance across genders.

The phones, it must be admitted, are very large.

But the representation of what computers can do is shockingly realistic, especially for the era. I never saw anything remotely as real as this in anything that I was watching in 1998.

(That one features a nice underplayed eyeroll just before it, right after someone else says, snidely, "Good luck, by the way. He wiped everything.")

The metaphysics are well thought out and hang together neatly.

And they never actually say the word "vampire".

I even like the music. (Dammit! I see that an "Extended Version Of Ultraviolet Theme Music" was one of the special features on the DVD. If only I had realized before we sent it back to Netflix.)

Comments

[Drew]

Ha! It has been so long since I saw Ultraviolet that I had no clue that Idris Elba was in it. MIND BLOWN. Strangely, I actually caught a bit of this show when it was airing in the UK while I was staying in a youth hostel in London way back in 1998. I remember thinking it was pretty awesome at the time, luckily I randomly ran across the series 4 or 5 years later.

[ben]

"zucchini", "tamale" and "potato" all contain two occurrences of a single letter. Is that it?

[Emily]

Help! I can't spot the theme!

[redfox]

More data points: We gave her some bits of bread last night and I've got some tofu here that I'm considering. Also, there's a bit of a red herring feature with the zucchini.

[ben]

White or near-white?

[Yer Mum]

Peeled orange segments or other fruit sections would fit category, yes?

[redfox]

Ben is correct! While I realize that eventually I will have to face the reality of colored, staining foodmess, we can defer that day a bit longer yet.

[Parenthetical]

Oh man, it's been a long time since I saw Ultraviolet. I need to rewatch it, if only to see Stephen Moyer before he became Vampire Bill. (And also because I really enjoyed it the first time around!)