Have you noticed that your favorite show has started to seem shallow, like it's not the vibrant 3-dimensional world you fell in love with? Or maybe your show has become such a twisted tangle of unresolved mysteries and dangling plot lines that you get lost just thinking about it. In either case, the problem is to do with the Subplot.

Subplots are an important part of every show. They allow for more than one story per episode, so you don't get bored with the main one, and extended subplots can be used to link episodes, forcing or enticing the viewer to tune in every week to get the whole story.

Remember the old episodes of the Simpsons? Each episode generally had two plots running side-by-side, a main plot and a subplot. Lisa tries to get into a fancy school and Homer adopts a goat. In the best case scenarios, the two plots would meet up near the end and resolve each other. Seinfeld was the best at this, where the two plots would converge in such a way as to be brilliantly surprising and so surprisingly obvious that you couldn't believe you hadn't seen it coming. This made their world seem more alive, like there was a lot more stuff going on.

But when comedy shows start to go bad, they lose the subplot. It's almost like they are so low on ideas, they can't afford to waste two plots on every episode. So you get a whole episode where Lisa does nothing but try to get into a fancy school and another episode where Homer does nothing but get a goat, AND THAT'S ALL THAT HAPPENS. Just 20 minutes of the same forced joke over and over.

Family Guy has only recently become guilty of this as well. Sure, Peter may go from one thing to another in an episode, like singing "Everybody knows that the Bird is the Word!" for a total of 3 minutes (I counted) and then hanging out with Jesus. But that's all that happens. No subplots involving Meg, or Chris or Stewie. They barely have any lines at all anymore, unless the entire show is about them, in which case you don't see any of the other characters. This is why that world seems so shallow and empty. It's like nothing else is going on in that world except what we are watching.

And as for live action or dramatic shows, the exact opposite holds true. You can usually tell that they've run out of ideas when the subplots TAKE OVER the whole show. This occurs when an entire season is comprised of ideas that would have made one good episode in the first season, but are now stretched out over six. This again is a sure sign that the writers have run out of ideas, and can't afford to waste an idea on just one episode.

Shows like Smallville, Lost and Desperate Housewives are the type this usually happens to. If you find that you can't remember where one episode ended and another began, or you can't explain what happened in this week's episode without explaining what happened in the last four, then your show is guilty of this sin.

Now, these are not meant to be hard and fast rules. They don't apply to ever show ever made. These are just patterns I have noticed among the shows I've watched. When I find that a show has stopped being enjoyable, I want to know why, and that's why I came up with these rules. What do you think? Do you know of any shows this has happened to?

People might not know this about me, since I'm decked out to hell and gone with Superman imagery, but I used to be very big into Dragonball Z. So big that I not only watched the shows and read the manga, but I started going way deeper into the story than anyone had and making connections that no one else had made before.

And so now, I've got so many ideas built up that I need to do something with them.

Anyway, here is the first few chapters of my first DB story, of which I hope there will be several. This one is a sequel, but they won't all be. I've got ideas for prequels, and side-stories and crazy crap no one has ever heard of before. But it all fits into the Toriyama-verse of Dragon Ball's creator Akira Toriyama.

So take a look if you have some time to kill, or you just like dbz, and let me know what you think.

www.fanfiction.net/s/4627868/1/Dragon_Ball_Omega

So I tuned into Bleach (the only anime I currently watch) a little early tonight, and I saw something that made me pretty sad. It was the end of Toonami. Not just them closing shop for the night, but Tom and all those little CGI robots packing up and saying goodbye. After 11 years, Tom told us, Toonami is gone for good.

That is so surreal to me. It's like the end of an era. 11 years. I was there when it all began. Back when Toonami started, and they were on weekdays after school. They showed stuff like Thundercats and the old 1940's Superman cartoon. After a while, they started showing anime, like Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z. And that's when things got good.

See, kids, back then, anime wasn't on every channel. It wasn't like today, where aisle after aisle at Best Buy is filled with anime. Same with bookstores and manga. The only game in town for those of us who knew what it was were shows like Sailor Moon and DBZ, which usually came on at like 6 a.m. Sunday mornings. But Toonami changed all that.

They put anime on in the middle of the day, where we could easily find it. And not just old anime, they brought in new stuff we had never seen before. Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo. For years, Toonami was the only game in town. They MADE after-school cartoons. Life was good.

But, like they say, nothing gold can stay.

See, anime was great because it was a refuge for those of us who still loved cartoons, but were tired of kid's stuff. Anime treated us like adults (or at least like teenagers). But ignorance is bliss. See, to show anime in such a visible location as weekdays after school, Toonami had to make a few concessions. They had to heavily edit some of their shows to make them acceptable. No squirting blood, no nudity, no profanity. And, of course, once we found out what we where missing, a lot of us were ticked.

See, it was fine when we didn't know. Heck, some of us could already tell (clearly those bathing suits were digitally pasted on) but we could live with it. And frankly, I didn't need to see little Gohan's "Little Gohan" to enjoy the show. I understood that some things just aren't acceptable on American TV. I got that. My major argument was "Yes, it's edited, but we're still getting a good deal. In Japan episodes come out once a week. Here we get them 5 times a week. Can you imagine waiting a whole week between Dragonball Z episodes where all they do is stare at each other? That'd be brutal. It's quantity over quality."

But then, they moved Toonami to Saturdays. So now we got heavily edited anime only once a week. No sale. I moved on to other things.

It's funny how things change. Showing an anime on TV used to practically be like having a license to print money. Now all I see on Adult Swim is those guys complaining that no one watches their anime.

Anime helped build Cartoon Network, and now it's treated like a second-class citizen. Oh, well. Life goes on. I guess I'm just a sentimental guy. I always think back on stuff. Toonami did a lot for me, even when they screwed up. When they first got the new DBZ's, it was 75 episodes. After that, they started milking it, only showing like 30 episodes a season. I used to get so mad. "They put a six month wait in-between a two-part episode and call it a Cliffhanger. Jerks!" But all that meant was that I would buy the DBZ videos when they came out, and share them with my friends. And my school was blessed with a disproportionate amount of hot girls who really liked anime. That's how I got my girlfriend, who I'm still with. We met and bonded because of our love of anime back in high school.

So thanks Toonami. Thanks for the good times, and even the bad times, because they are just as important. So good luck Tom! I think I'll got find that old tape I recorded the first season of DBZ on, complete with the original Toonami credits, and "Fat Astronaut Tom." Take care, space cowboy!

So according to Warners Bros, they weren't pleased withe how Superman Returns worked out, and looks like they have finally decided to scrap the "Returns" universe and start over, like the new Hulk film.

This seems to have a lot to do with "The Dark Knight" raising the bar in terms of production value and box office returns. But that is kind of what worries me.

See, the new Batman movies have done so well because (1) They are true to the characters and (2) They are being done by people who understand the characters and their world and are able to push them up to the next level without completely changing them.

From what I hear, the people in charge want to do a Superman movie that is more like the Batman films, dark and brooding. I think that is a terrible idea.

Some people argue that they aren't planning to make Superman himself dark and brooding, but simply tell a dark story with Superman as the counterpoint.

Either way, Superman is not a dark and brooding character. Neither he nor his world are steeped in Darkness. That's Batman's bag. To make Superman more like Batman would just dilute the character.

What they need to do is find talented people who love, respect and understand SUPERMAN and HIS world. And let them do a movie. While I wasn't a fan of what Superman Returns brought to the character, and I'm excited at the idea of a fresh start, I'm worried that this may be a case of "Out of the Frying Pan, and Into the Fire."

You can read the article here: www.superherohype.com/news/supermannews.php?id=7609

Well, I turned 24 today, despite my best efforts. Today I received:

3 Indiana Jones Novels

Superman: Man of Steel Vol 2

Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks Vol 1

Clerks the Movie DVD

All in all a good haul. I went out looking for Jonny Quest, the complete first season, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so that was a bit of a bummer. But what can you do? At least it gives me something to keep looking for. Good Times.

So my girlfriend finally bugged me enought that I started up a deviant art account.

I've been drawing for years, and so I started posting some of my stuff there.

I know I'm a Superman-guy here, but all of the art I have up now is from Dragon Ball. But that's just because I have to go find my Superman art. I know it's around here somewhere...

Anyway, please go check it out, and let me know what you think.

http://s-shield.deviantart.com/

If the link doesn't work, sorry. I suck at that.

Okay, so I'm on the Smallville forum for the first time in like 6 months, because frankly it's dead and I can't figure out why. And I post a new thread about this character, Dax-Ur, a Kryptonian who has been living on Earth for 100 years and is currently living a peacful life thanks to the superpower-nullifying effects of Blue Kryptonite. My statement was that his situation was similar to Clark's in Superman II. Dax-Ur is powerless, married, and has a young son. In Superman II, Clark gave up his powers to be with Lois, and in Superman Returns, we see that they had a son, who has powers even though his dad was powerless at the time of conception, because Clark was still a Kryptonian, just a weak one, like Dax-Ur.

I asked if anyone thought that meant Dax-Ur's son, Max, may develop powers like Lois's son in Superman Returns.

My post was deleted and I was given a TOS warning for posting spoilers. The episode is 3 weeks old! In what universe is that spoiler material? If I mention that Lex is bald, is that a spoiler too?

Son of a gun, I can see why the Smallville forums are currently devoid of any half-way interesting conversation if this is what's going on. What is happening to Tv.com?

So the other day, I'm playing around on my profile, and I notice a new icon - a crown, telling me I'm an editor for a show. Needless to say, I was pretty surprised.

After a little research, I found it is for Superman The Animated Series. I guess that makes sense, since out of the show's 54 episodes, I wrote the recaps for something like 35 of them. That scored me major points on that show, and now that the previous editor retired, I'm now in charge.

It's kind of funny that I'd be made editor for that particular show in retrospect. Obviously my Icon and Banner show how much I like the works of Bruce Timm, the man in charge of the DCAU. Also, the Superman TAS forum was where I made my first ever post, and it's also where I accidentally made my 1,000th as well. So it's almost like it was meant to be.

I must say, it is nice to look back at the first, very long-winded post, and see "Editor" under my name. It's nice to come full circle.

So anyway, just thought I'd share that. So you all around.

p.s. So, do they not tell you when you become an editor on purpose? It's not like some kind of test, is it? Like, if you don't notice you are an editor on your own, you probably don't have what it takes to be one?

So, I recieved my second ever TOS today.

The reason: Appearently I'm responsible for alerting the greater world to the existence of YouTube.

It seems I posted that one could watch the Bleach anime movie there, complete with subtitles and everything. I didn't give any links, I just mentioned that it was up there now.

So I have to assume that because of my post, DVD sales of the movie plummeted and now the makers of the movie are filing for bankruptcy, and Tite Kubo, the creator of the series, has committed sucide as a result.

Of course, there is always the possibility that some people already knew of the existence of YouTube from other sources such as the internet, television, print media, word of mouth, etc.

What do you think?

I figure it's about time for a new blog. Unfortunetly, I've nothing interesting to say. So I guess I'll just ramble for a bit.

Back when Spider-Man 3 came out in theaters I wrote up the outline for a review of the movie complete with spoilers, so I kept waiting and put off writing and posting it because I didn't want to spoil things for anyone. Maybe when it comes out on DVD at the end of the month, I'll finally post my massive, in-depth review. Now I just need to go searching through all my other writings to find it.

Smallville's doing pretty good lately (hope I don't jinx it). I've written reviews for every episode this season. I also wrote reviews for every single episode last season. I went back and looked at some of my old reviews, and I'm amazed by how short they are by comparison. Like literally 1/10 the size of my current ones. I've grown long winded in my old age.

So Cartoon Network has stopped showing Bleach, an anime I like. I was thinking the other day how similar Bleach is to Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children. I made a mental list of several character and situation parallells. Maybe I'll post them as a blog one day.

Thanks for letting me ramble. It's early on Sunday morning right now, so I'm still a little fuzzy. I though I didn't have anything to say, but looking back on this post, I see I've got ideas for at least two interesting blogs. Maybe I'll work on those later. Take care of yourselves.