J
So do a lot of actors, since most shows get cancelled in the first year or two.
Agreed, a lot of shows are canceled in a year or two, it really has no bearing on her what so ever, considering that some of her roles have been contributed to previous roles (Cameron for instance, is credited to be because Josh Friedman watched Serenity, but I could be wrong). I'll definitely have to check it out, I'm a fan of her work and it's good to see her get something after she's had to drop a project recently.
This is hot -- "It must be summer!" hehe!
That was the one about astronaut trainees at the Kennedy Space Center, right? Maybe it was carried on your local NBC affiliate, but it wasn't an NBC network show, it was first-run syndicated.
And Summer grabs onto the coattails of yet another show...
That is an incredibly strange thing to say. This is what actors do. If one role ends, they seek another. It's called trying to stay employed. If you lost a job, wouldn't you try to find another one?
Or "grab onto the coattails of yet another business."
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Jesus Christ in a chicken basket you have the insane ability to find a flaw in any post imaginable don't you?
This thread is about 15 posts and you've corrected three people already.
It's really not necessary. Just let some stuff go, OK?
And Summer grabs onto the coattails of yet another show...
I'd say this show is grabbing her coattails.
She's one of those actors with a fanbase who get cast in shows, particularly genre shows, partly on the assumption that she will bring a built-in audience with her.What else about this show has any promise? The premise is more than a tad sappy in that wretched Spielbergian way, and the lead actor is pretty much a nobody. James Frain as a (recurring?) villain sounds fun but he's hardly a household name.
How can you tell? She keeps being cast in robot roles. This is the first role I've seen her in where acting range might actually be called for.
What? She's only played one "robot role." Let's see, in her SF/fantasy career she's played:
A Russian ballerina trapped in time (Angel).
A gifted teenager driven mad by experiments to turn her into a psychic assassin and by the horrible secrets she learned (Firefly/Serenity).
A paranoid schizophrenic given mind-control powers by a faction from the future (The 4400).
A Terminator programmed to protect John Connor by any means necessary (The Sarah Connor Chronicles).
A future resistance member abducted by Skynet in order to be impersonated by said Terminator (TSCC).
A shy, neurotic neuroscientist with a ruthless streak (Dollhouse).
If anything, Summer Glau gets stereotyped more as "crazy" than "robot." And though most of her characters have eccentricity and/or superpowers in common, there's a lot of variation among them -- and within them, since we've seen most of her characters in a range of mental states. Indeed, one of the things almost all her characters have in common is mutability. River Tam bounced around from frightened kid to Delphic sage to cute eccentric to stone killer to loving sister. Tess Doerner went through various levels of sanity. Cameron Phillips assumed many roles and experimented with many behaviors as needed for her mission. Bennett Halvorsen started out mean and unstable but then revealed a charming, girlish shyness that was a complete surprise.
So I'll never understand why people say she lacks range. There's a big difference between having a characteristic type and having a lack of talent. She keeps getting the eccentric, strong-but-vulnerable roles because she's proven to be skilled at pulling that type of character off.
Fair enough. But that doesn't actually change anything in my post.
And I still find it interesting.
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
This guy's gotta have me on his ignore list.
Robotically crazy, then - as opposed to, say, Christopher-Lloyd-as-Doc Brown crazy or Ming the Merceless over-the-top crazy. There's a lot of varieties of crazy, but she's been cast in only a narrow range of that type. River was a "robot role" as far as I'm concerned. Ditto for The 4400, ditto for Dollhouse, and I haven't seen the other stuff.
And my point was not that she lacks range. Just the opposite - she hasn't had the opportunity to show all that much range, given the typecasting she's suffered. Enough with the fragile, emotionally stifled girl-child bullshit. Let's see a completely different role (and The Cape does seem to offer that, more of a loose-cannon wildcat type - I hope she drinks, swears and sleeps around. A lot.)
'Pears so.
I just have no idea what you're talking about here. All those characters were distinct, and I have no comprehension of how you're defining the word "robot" in this context, because the connotations I'm familiar with couldn't even remotely be applied to characters like Tess and Bennett, and rarely to River.
There was nothing fragile about Cameron. She was a hardcore killing machine, ruthless, calculating, cunning, manipulative, and far less naive than she initially appeared. And there was nothing emotionally stifled about River or Tess, especially River, who was generally quite uncensored in her emotional expression. Bennett, meanwhile, was flamboyantly neurotic, more in the "Doc Brown" direction you allude to, except when Topher showed up, when she turned into a completely different person. That's not a lack of range. She's shown plenty of range and has been far less typecast than a lot of other actors.
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