Plight of the Fan Translator

When the UK audience got their first glimpse at Susan Boyle, they chuckled at her appearance and smirked when she spoke. But, when she began to sing, the audience at Britain’s Got Talent — and across the world, watched with mouths open in awe.

Watch the 47 year old church worker, turned overnight sensation shock you, just as she did the audience and judges, including Simon Cowell.

OK, this was quite the underdog story that caught my attention. There’ve actually been over 118 million cumulative hits on this video within the past two weeks… So what’s the big deal? Well, here walks out this 47 year old lady, a tad awkward, goofy, perfectly nice no doubt, but most likely was gonna make a fool of herself judging by her demeanor… or, so you thought… I too, just as the audience, was predicting/expecting failure and laughter to follow. She was all too easy to underestimate… But, who would’ve guessed she had quite a pair of lungs on her like that? Man, I haven’t seen something so interesting and captivating to watch like this in a long time. These talent shows are pretty awesome for moments like these, I gotta say!

Shock and awe: This church lady can sing
Frumpy 47-year-old stuns ‘Idol’ judge, catapults to sudden global celebrity
Will she be biggest YouTube hit ever?

Simon Cowell, the British-accented and sometimes condescending talent judge of television’s mega-hit program “American Idol,” is also one of the judges on “Britain’s Got Talent” who heard Boyle’s rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream.”

”I’m thrilled to bits for her,” Cowell told TV Guide. “That’s why I love making these shows. You can’t plan for it.”

Without a doubt, the absolute money shot is 2:00 minutes into the video where Simon’s eyebrows go up after Susan sings the first line, “I dreamed a dream in time gone by” making it abundantly clear she wasn’t going to be another trainwreck for the public’s amusement. Nope, quite the opposite in fact, much to everyone’s surprise…

Well, the rumor on the street is that FOX has terminated TSCC, a TV series that I recently have come to enjoy… I really hope the pessimists come out wrong, but the truth is that the ratings haven’t been good, at least the ones that count: Nielsen. It’s apparently done well when it comes to online viewership with sites like hulu.com, which is where I watched all of season 2, but unfortunately, this doesn’t count much as far as the bottom line is concerned. While typing this up, however, I did find an article that offered up some kind of hope: a scoop claiming that Halcyon and Warner Brothers have been quietly shopping TSCC around since the consensus, pretty much, is that FOX will be wiping its hands clean of this show… Negotiations are supposedly taking place with the SciFi channel so the show may continue on there, assuming ANY of this is accurate…

Anyway, I put up a pretty cool fan trailer if you’re unfamiliar with the series and some links where you can watch the season 2 finale, or what likely might be more accurately referred to as the series finale. Season 2, Episode 21’s “Born to Run” finale was pretty damn good and I wanted to direct some hits either to FOX’s site or hulu.com just in case it helps avoid the cancellation many of the chattering classes believe is coming. We’ll know for sure on May 18 though, when FOX announces its Fall schedule… (C’mon FOX, don’t forget the new Terminator 4: Salvation movie starring Christian Bale is due out this summer! If that’s a blockbuster and likely will be, surely it’d help the ratings of this series next time around, no?)

[SPOILER WARNING]
In this final episode, we learned for sure whose side the advanced, liquid metal, shape-shifting T-1001 model was on (played by Shirley Manson, of the Scottish band ‘Garbage’)… Her true agenda, motives, etc. was kept slightly ambiguous throughout the series by way of the fact that, well, she killed a lot of humans, and in some cases, rather creatively… Bottom line, it was a hell of a finale with plenty of action, and it left open many questions and possibilities; it definitely wasn’t written to be a series finale, that’s for sure. Anyhow, I invite you to watch it, if you would; it can’t hurt the chances of the show being saved.

(Unfortunately, you only get to watch these streamed episodes if your IP is of US origin; you’ll be blocked otherwise.)

http://www.fox.com/terminator/
http://www.fox.com/fod/play.php?sh=tscc – Season 2 Finale: “Born to Run”

http://www.hulu.com/terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67385/terminator-the-sarah-connor-chronicles-born-to-run#x-0,vepisode,1 – Season 2 Finale: “Born to Run”

This is the lovely Summer Glau of “Firefly” fame as well as the “Serenity” movie which was based on the same short-lived series. In TSCC, she plays a female terminator sent back to protect John Connor. Awwwww, isn’t she so cute there??