Aha, thanks for writing that out… this is the kind of thing I meant when I said that the details and execution meaned more to me than the series’ premise did. The whole interpersonal dynamic on the show rocked and I loved Jake and Diane’s characters. Lou and Kyle were also great but secondary to them and I’d rather forget Sarah, who was nothing more than a cardboard cut out to me, and not particularly attractive to boot.
I liked the NSA power rift, personally. I just thought it was introduced too early. Maybe if the show had been continued, it could have made a nice third season arc, after we grow to especially love the characters after getting to know them that much better. For example, what did we really know about Diane other than she’s hot and that she’s practically in love with Jake? Not much.
And by the way, viva, I believe there’s a writing campaign a la TOS going on right now to try and save the show or at least get the last four episodes aired so I’ll definitely write in to the retarded lobotomized monkeys running the programming there.
“We think Jake 2.0 is a really great show, and we’re going to give it a full season…”
(A piece of paper wafts across the desk.)
“… unless we get a pitch for a cheap show that appeals to the retarded fuckers who comprise 80% of the American public, because it has tits and ass in it!”
Ah yes, I have been on [The Enterprise Project since September. Been writing those network dorks every week, and writing and emailing all the sponsors as well. Actually, season 3 is already secured; we’re just trying to get Season 4 and maybe af few seasons beyond that as well. There is a big open letter project going on as well.
Yes, I am one of the biggest geeks around.
I wish I’d had the energy to devote to a Save Jake project, but I don’t know if I could have given any more.
UPN ought to be hanging on to strong shows like these, because they are the only things keeping it alive besides the Smackdown.
We see most of the characters through Jake’s eyes on the show. Sarah has been put on a pedestal and Jake never sees much more of her than a pretty face and nice body and all the rest of her characteristics are flattened out by his own infatuation. Mostly she is a memory of his time in college. I don’t think it is Sarah herself who is one-dimensional, but Jake’s perceptions of her. Jake and Diane are the most dynamic characters and as such we have the most attachment to them. Kyle and Lou are “still waters run deep” type characters. We’ve already caught glimpses into some of their past with the Chinese double-agent(a former lover of Kyle’s) and the General who commanded the Wolf Pack(served with Lou in Desert Storm). Those two characters clearly have depth, even if episodes haven’t explored it. I’ve already mentioned that I think Sarah’s lack of depth is due to Jake’s own biases. He never looks deeper.
I guess the power rift could have turned out good, but I’ve seen those kind of power struggles degenerate into huge ethical morasses where you can’t tell who is the good guy and who is the bad guy anymore. Jake is blackmailing the bosses with threats of giving away government secrets, the bosses are trying to get hooks into Jake so they can use him for thier own purposes, both are pretty slimy at this point. I just keep having flashbacks to the final seasons of A-Team and how Robert Vaughn’s character kept stringing the team along on mission after mission with promises of amnesty that he would invariably break. At some point you can’t even care about the guys getting jerked around anymore because they just keep walking into it.
I think Diane was developing very nicely. She’s got a nice conflict between her possibly/probably Florence-Nightengale feelings for Jake and her professionalism. Is what she feels for him real or a product of her sympathy for his plight and the closeness they share as a result of being part of this tiny group who shares his secret? She’s obviously as socially inept as Jake himself is(witness the way she fell for that guy who infiltrated the NSA to steal nanotechnology secrets) with the major difference being that she is much more aware of it than Jake is. She’s also got all the pressures of running one of the most advanced labs and programs in the world without the benefit of a peer group of virtually any kind. She takes this very seriously as evidenced by the way she freaks any time his vitals seem to fluctuate unexpectedly. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that she is a hottie(didn’t care for the treatment they gave her at the wedding make-over though). If there are genuine feelings for Jake in her character it will take some major struggles with herself before the rational side which would keep screaming “Florence Nightengale effect” at her would allow them to shine through. And then she’d have to overcome her professional objections and her own social ineptness as well.
No, if Jake and Diane were to become an item there is a very long road ahead of them. Of course almost any idiot can see that they’re the best match on the show so we’re all rooting for them. Seeing how much of an underdog they are when you think of everything they’d have to overcome to get together just makes me feel more attached to them as characters. YMMV of course.
If all these reality shows seem so attractive to the majority, we must have a bunch of dead heads in the USA. There are simply too many stupid reality shows that they are worth about as much as dirt. Of course as someone else mentioned, the execs like them because they are super cheap to produce and take no imagination except to encourage the participants to act like idiots to give the class of people that seems to enjoy that kind of stuff something to watch.
Then we have the trash talk shows and the regular talk shows and a gazillion judge shows. Bunch of garbage, but cheap to make. If all the REAL shows are replaced, network TV will go to pot. Then they sprinkle in comedy shows that are clone after clone of each other. Imagination has been thrown to the wind.
Rarely watch UPN anymore except for StarTrek, StarGate SG1 and the occasional Perry Mason show I might catch. Liked Jake 2.0 but didn’t think it was strong enough to hang in there because we have too many dead heads who want these stupid reality TV shows. The best show that UPN had was Star Trek TNG. Sure miss those series.