By Jordan Carroll
Only the good shows die young
It always seems like the best shows have already been cancelled. Strangers with Candy, Twin Peaks, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, Black Adder, and Aeon Flux are all among my favorite shows, and they’re all gone. Right now, it looks like the show I’m currently obsessed with is on its way out. The show is Lexx and it shows on the Sci-Fi Channel at ungodly hours of the morning. Since Lexx was cancelled quite some time ago, I’m sure it will be taken off the air entirely within a year or so.
Lexx is an ingenious science fiction/ sex comedy centering around two slightly nihilistic parallel universes. The main characters include Stanley Tweedle, a cowardly ex-security guard who accidentally became captain of the Lexx; Xev, part love slave, part cluster lizard; Kai, last of the warrior-poets, now an undead assassin; 790, a love-smitten robot head; and the Lexx, a giant insectoid ship known to be the most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes. The crew travels through the universe searching for a new home, encountering space brothels, garbage planets, intergalactic deviants, and carnivorous plant-women along the way. More often than not, they are forced into acts of heroism in their eternal quest to get laid and find a place to stay.
The show would descend into purely juvenile humor if it weren’t for the great chemistry between the characters. 790 received the brainwashing portion of the love-slave conversion meant for Xev, so he is murderously obsessed with her. Xev, however, loves Kai, but can’t have him because he’s a reanimated corpse and therefore has no desires. Stanley Tweedle wants Xev, but she doesn’t want him because his cowardice caused the deaths of a hundred planets (though he insists it was only ninety-four). The Lexx itself just wants food, requiring the crew to stop every once in a while and allow it to devour a few countries.
Lexx began as a series of four movies, then evolved into a television show. The movies center on the origin of the crew and the crew’s struggle with a reincarnating evil known as His Divine Shadow, who created the Lexx and controls almost all of humanity. The second season, after the movies, is their battle with the remnants of the Divine Order and the perverse “bio-vizier” known as Mantrid. Afterwards, they become ensnared in the battle between the planets of Water and Fire, which may or may not be Heaven and Hell, respectively. In the final season, the Lexx stumbles upon Earth and finds that the nefarious Prince of Fire has reincarnated there.
Though the show can be uneven at times, I still think it’s better than most of what passes for television. The writing is clever and witty, never stooping to traditional science fiction conventions. There are no humans with funny noses or pointed ears pretending to be aliens. Nobody is ever entirely benevolent, selfless, or noble. The world is often dirty and flawed. Even the Nietzschean cosmology of the show is innovative.
It’s unfortunate that Lexx is disappearing while a thousand inane sitcoms, reality television shows, and soap operas remain. The only channel I still have faith in is Cartoon Network, which has Adult Swim on its side. Sci-Fi Channel and Comedy Central, on the other hand, have gone downhill. As the years progress, I watch television less and less. It’s hardly worth it anymore. The chaff outweighs all else. I think we’d all be better off just reading.
