Cogs can think.

I’ve been really enjoying “Threshold” this week. They started airing the show a few months ago on Dutch TV, but since I missed the first few episodes, I decided not to spend any time on it - despite the promos tickling my fancy. One of my best friends did get to see it, and he liked it.

So, I downloaded the entire season (the only one made) and I must say, I really enjoy it. Sure, it’s no Dead Like Me or even Lost, but it does its job of entertaining me, with enough suspense and development that make you want to watch the next episode. There are a few really good things about the show - for one, it’s not a soap opera like Lost is. It’s more like Dead Like Me in that each episode has a beginning, a storyline, and a conclusion - while also having several storylines that span all episodes, storylines that help you solve the mystery. I like such a structure better than I like the soap opera structure of Lost.

Another good thing about Threshold is that contrary to what is usually the case in alien invasion Hollywood stuff, there’s no Will Smith here that discovers the aliens, and learns how to deal with them and kill them in 90 Hollywood minutes, in a slick and stylish fashion. In Threshold, I’m now about 20 days into the start of the story, and they have learned only a few things about how to deal with this - and they learned these things in a way that I would think resembles real life: a bunch of weirdo scientist anti-heroes that by means of luck and gut-feeling find answers to their questions, through weeks and weeks of work. This gives this whole story a very authentic feel (insofar a story about an alien invasion can be authentic).

Another good thing is that the cover the Threshold team has fails numerous times. They are a small top-secret government team, but they are not invincible, nor are they ghosts. They are normal people, and make a lot of mistakes that lead to their covers being blown quite a few times, contrary to numerous similar Hollywood flicks where top-secret government agencies can do whatever they want, without anyone ever blowing their covers or making mistakes. Again, this failing on behalf of the Threshold team adds authenticity to the whole thing. Additionally, the political part of Threshold is also very interesting.

A final upside is the excellent humour in the show. The humour doesn’t come across as forced or scripted, but feels natural, and is generally used during moments where any stress needs to be relieved - like right after a dangerous situation. This, again, feels very natural, as using humour to blow off steam is a very common thing among humans (trust me, I know a thing or two on stressful situations - more than I bargained for in any case).

There are the usual crappy things in Threshold too, of course. Especially all the technological, computer and software stuff sounds ridiculous to someone like me, who knows quite a lot on these matters - but if I switch that knowledge off, and stoop to the level of normal people, I can easily see how even the computer and software stuff would make sense to normal people. Apart from that, you can also see that the budget wasn’t as high as on some other shows, but still, they seem to have managed pretty well.

So, definitely not the best show out there, but really, I have seen a lot of much, much worse shows that have continued for much longer than Threshold. Give Threshold a go, I’m sure you’ll like it.

Oh, and I totally dig Carla Gugino.