Do you remember the really terrible, two-part miniseries 10.5 that was broadcast in May 2004? The one with Kim Delaney? The one where some people were in a car with a sunroof on top and it got stuck in an earthquake fissure, and they were trying to get the doors open so that they could get out, even though there was a sunroof on top of the car? The one where it was clear that the filmmakers had watched waaaay too much 24? The one where the scientists decided that the best way to stop the earthquakes was to---get this---nuke the earthquake?

It was so awful, NBC naturally had to make a sequel. 10.5: Apocalypse will be broadcast on May 21 and 23 at 9:00 p.m. (EST).

Selections from Entertainment Weekly's review (May 19, 2006, Issue #877, written by Gillian Flynn):

So:

• North America is breaking in half.
• Earthquakes, eruptions, landslides, and floods
• Bad special effects
• Grade: D-

I'm there!

I'm morbidly curious, as is my way. But should I actually watch 10.5 first, to get into the right cheesy frame of mind (I failed to do this with Category 7: The End of the World)?

I did, for some reason, think 10.5 would be good. I sat through all four hours of it and was very disappointed that more main characters didn't die. Oh, it was awful.

When I heard there would be a sequal, I about jumped out of my skin. Out of horror, I must watch it. Out of even more horror, my precious Tony Almeida is going to be in it. I would watch it anyway, but I almost don't want to see the lows people will fall to after being killed off on 24.

I don't think it's necessary to see the original 10.5 to see the sequel. Some of the same ridiculous shallow characters are in the sequel, but I don't think you'll need to see the original to keep up with what's going on.
I haven't seen 10.5 since it originally showed on NBC, and I'm not going to bother watching it again before Apocalypse.

I can only hope we'll have the same great NBC intros that we had last time. It was awesome: they'd go to a commerical break and do the whole voiceover "You're watching 10.5 on NBC, brought to you by blah blah blah". But instead of showing you scenes you've already seen, they would show you clips of what's coming up!
So you go to a commercial break, and you see the senator (or govenor, or whatever that lady was) in the bathroom as the earthquake starts. So, when the movie comes back on, she walks into the bathroom. Was anyone SHOCKED when the earthquake started?

Oh, I've never been so excited about such horribly bad television!

Hm. Dean Cain in another pre-/post-apocalyptic movie?

And what level of badness are we expecting here?

Damn, Carlos Bernard is in this? Damn, now I have to check it out. Siiiigh. The things I do to see Tony Almeida. Sigh.

He's listed on IMDb as a cast member, but I have no idea how big his role is, but I think it's worth 4 hours of crap to see a little bit of Tony.
Hell, I've watched all of season five of 24! [/bitterness]

Thatnks for the heads up! 10.5 was so very awful that I am so there for this sequel!!

In case you're interested. They're repeating 10.5 on May 20th at 8pm on NBC.

Kim (beat) Delaney? I'm so there.

Matt Roush's review at TV Guide. On a "junk-food scale" he give it a 6.5.

What the hell, at least it'll look good in HD...

If I can sit through Locusts, I can surely make an effort to watch a sequel to a mini-movie that I enjoyed on some sort of train-wreck can't stop watching level. I wonder if we'll see more basketball games with the President. Three points!

You sat through Locusts? Did you sit through Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America also? If so, you might actually enjoy 10.5. You've got to have nerves of titanium to sit through this stuff! I have to say, I'm a wuss when it comes to made for TV movies. 10.5 is the only one I attempted to sit through. I couldn't even watch the previews for Locusts without changing the channel!

You are right about the train wreck though. It's like 7th Heaven, with better special effects.

Adding to the list of really bad movies we watch just for certain actors, I sat through Magma: Volcanic Disaster for 15 minutes of Reiko Aylesworth. I think I can handle this.

A "D-"! if that is not an invitation to watch I don't know what is. I do hope they use the whole split screen thing they did in the original, that made it just a bit more ridiculous. Also, dare I hope for another adventure in quicksand? I just hope I'm not building it up too much in my head.

ETA: I was kind of upset when this was pushed back from November 05 to May 06, but now am glad, because it's giving me something to look forward to on the crappy movie front.

Well, I did sit through Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy for Hunter Tylo in a tank top (though that...film...had other spectacularly bad attributes like helicopter #666). So I should be able to breeze through this.

I was going to watch it for her. But, somehow, it slipped my mind and I never got around to it. Sounds like I didn't miss much.

Review from New York magazine: 10.5: Apocalypse: "the disasters have more character than the characters"

Never has a trailer spoke so truly about a movie...
For everyone who hasn't seen the awesomely bad trailer, here's a nice pixelated trailer, doing the movie no extra justice.

Oh, damn. This is going to be a giant frigging block of government cheese.

<goes to set the DVR>

Review from Variety.

Ailing parents and a pregnant wife? Couldn't he have had the pregnant woman holding a basket of newborn puppies, too?

I'm glad to see that it looks like Carlos Bernard has a decent part in the movie. I've sat through enough crap for so little Tony this year.

Unfamous, they have to put ailing parents, pregnant wives, and baskets of newborn puppies in for "emotions" between shit falling apart!
I'm sure we'll see at least two children crying as something almost falls on them and they are pulled out at the last second re: all stupid action movies

Review in The Hollywood Reporter, written by Barry Garron.

This is the same one they showed before isn't it?

No, that was just 10.5--no subtitle. They reran it last night on NBC. 10.5: Apocalypse is brand new schlock from the same people.

So they're saying Apocaylpse is gonna be worse than the original?
I truly don't know if it's possible. But I'm really excited for some really bad TV tonight!

Oooh, I hope they declare "Marshall Law" again.

To be fair. The miniseries was filmed way before the Tony incident on 24 was. The series was suppose to be shown in Nov but they postponed it until May.

Yeah, I do realize that. I've always hoped better for Tony than the lows of 10.5...but that's okay. I've just been riding the 24 Bitterness Train this season.
Even if Carlos Bernard wasn't in Apocalypse, I'd still watch it. 10.5 was addictive in a train wreck sort of way, watching the sequel is just necessary!

Unfortunately, Xtreme Biker Guy (that was a tone-setter if I ever saw one) didn't survive the first miniseries. Maybe in this one we'll get some guy parachuting off Mount Rushmore as it collapses...

Dare I dream?

I watched 10.5 last night and it was just as hilariously awful as I remembered it. 10.5: Apocalypse has some big fault lines to fill. If I remember correctly, the original had about 5 minutes of show and then 3 minutes of commercials and really pissed me off, hopefully this one isn't like that.

How many times can they destroy Mt. Rushmore and Las Vegas on NBC? It does seem like they are getting a bit repetitive.

My husband and I watched 10.5 last night as a spur-of-the-moment type thing. Honestly, til I came here I didn't know it was a rerun and that tonight's show is the main attraction.

But we had the best time! What a craptacular piece of drek it was!!! We're definately looking forward to Apocalypse! Bringing death and destruction and Bad TV to the red states!

Where do I begin? First, I LOVE the science here! A scientist has a hunch about something; then she goes out to collect data for five minutes from one location, and without even so much as taking time to analyze the data, she comes to a conclusion that we need to put five nuclear bombs 324 feet below the surface and blow them up! Yes, 324 feet at all 5 locations --- presumably, somehow the plates are all uniformly at the same depth down the entire coast! And the president goes along with it!

Then, of course, we note that the Space Needle appears to be made entirely of concrete, without a single piece of rebar in it to hold it up during an earthquake! Same with city hall in San Francisco! It's as if the billions and billions of dollars spent on seismic retrofitting in California never happened!

Gotta love the train being swallowed up! And then the fault STOPS! too cool!

What was the point of the bit about country music when the Dad and the Brat find the buried SUV? They're arguing about who can recognize country music? Would it have made a difference had it been rap, hiphop or maybe classic oldies?

Did I get it right that Beau Bridges hired his friends to be head of FEMA after the earthquake happened? Presumably there was no one in the position before?

And speaking of the head of FEMA - can it be true that the only person qualified to manually arm the nuclear bomb is the head of FEMA? No-one in the military is better suited to do this?

I also loved how the head of FEMA urges his son - an ER doctor and, of course, a first responder in a disaster - to abandon his duty!

And how is it that in a movie about a major disaster in two large American cities, we only see three dead people? The couple in the SUV and the governor's Rachel - we actually see no other deaths?

The "drama" in this film has everything to do with interpersonal relationships, politics and arguing about scientific theories and absolutely NOTHING about rescue and recovery - it makes sense now I know it was made before we had the lesson of Katrina. We have no scenes of police and firefighters, or people trapped in collapsed buidlings, or people trying to find their families. It's as if after the quake the dead are just dead, and Oh Well!

Does anyone other than me find it odd that the population of California seems to not include any Latino people?

There were a couple, IIRC. I imagine the majority were the CGI extras that disappeared in the background when the titular megaquake created the Gulf of California...

What is it with the the zoom on each shot of Tony Almeda? Its like the camera guy is testing the lens button.

The tectonic plates are reversing course? WTF?
This is too good to be true! It's like the movie was made to be snarked!

Chelsea Clinton is trying to hook up with Tony during a megaquake. But she only looks 15. He better be careful or Dateline will be waiting for him in his kitchen when he gets back.

<random snap-zoom>

Anakalia: "Science?"
Mr. Anakalia: "Camera Steady?"

The unSteadyCam was making me dizzy. I think they were trying for a "crazy" look, but it was just making me sick.

Oh Tony. How did it come to this? Terrible writing? Flirting with teenagers?
But you're still so hot!

Re: the sinkhole
police cars were blocking off the road so that other cars could drive into the sinkhole. But when the sinkhole started getting bigger and cars had "fallen in" the police cars that were blocking the way were still in front turned sideways...continuity is useless anyway.

OMG! JORDAN! AHHHH!! It was so not dramatic or sad or even a little bit unsurprising. It'll be even less surprising when he turns out alive later.

So...they don't call the president to let him know that the man he was working directly with died, but they call the local news station?

You know what makes this movie so great? I just realized what it is. It's that every other line is a promo line. You could take almost all of the lines from this movie and make a good promo (though it wouldn't make the movie any better). no one talks like that.

thank you previews. Now I don't need to bother seeing the second half.

10.5: Apocalypse, starring the mysteriously puffy Kim Delaney and the even puffier Dean Cain.... dum dum dummmm....

Hee! Good one!

Snerk!! You mean . . . there was some other reason for making this crap?!!! I thought they did it just for us TWoP'ers!

Uh oh!! I think the writers of this are trying to channel Jack Bauer on 24. Estranged (geologist?) dad sez to estranged (geologist?) daughter: "we don't have a lot of time here!" And of course, he'll probably die in a blaze of fucking glory as he tries to help said daughter, who wanted his help earlier and whose offer dad snubbed.

Did Kim Delaney really not know that helicopter was going to plunge into the Hoover Dam? Please. I turned to this dreck at 10 pm, and I knew that was gonna happen!!!

This show is much more fun and less painful if you watch while drinking something. Anything.

Is there really one more night of this? They're kidding, right?

A lot of the crap in this show reminded me of 24. Particularly the man Daddy!Hill was playing poker with (looked just like Edgar Stiles), Kim Delany's hair (like Michelle Dessler-Almeida's), and how people speak in promos. Except, on 24, they don't do it constantly.

And the promo for the second half was perhaps the most openly blatant

<random snap-zoom>

promo I've seen in a long, long time. "We know it's cheese, you know it's cheese, so just shut up and watch it."

On a positive note...puffy Kim Delaney is pretty hot.

I didn't understand that either. Then they showed the cars in the sinkhole and I thought well they must have been there because of the initial collapse, but that doesn't mesh with her story of cars falling as the movement we began to see happen occur. Plus, if those were there from the initial collapse the dust would have been settled enough to see them in there, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to ChopperLady. I think I'm trying to rationalize it because it is such a glaring error. I best stop trying to rationalize things in a movie where North America will be broken in two.

I do think I enjoyed the original more than this one. The original had a more campy feel to it, it was more stupid dramatic than this cheesey action piece. Where were the split-screens? Where was the quicksand? Where was the dramatic gubernatorial addresses??? This was just missing all the beauty of the first one.

What is with every television show or movie having a scene involving Texas Hold'em? I get it, the game is popular, maybe if it served a purpose I would have less of a problem with it, but nope, I can't find a purpose.

Something tells me that Superman is going to die for his little brother in an act of stupid heroics in the future, and that the First Daughter may bite the big one so we can see a heartfelt last conversation between her and her parents and I won't care in either case.

Another thing that bothered me, if that guy who devised the theory of the big tectonic plate crunch knew there was going to be a seismic event in LV soon, why did he step foot in an elevator? That just doesn't seem wise. Also if the plates are crunching, why haven't we heard anything from other plates on Earth? Why just the N. American plate?

What the hell happen to Kim. I couldn't even watch one scene thru...kept switching to HBO. Her face was really freaking me out. Not that it was any different from the abrievated version from last night. Didn't she have kids or am I dreaming? Very possible but...

THANK you! That was bugging the hell out of me. Jeez. Also bugging the hell out of me is Dean Cain's necklace. Dude, put it away. In what universe are we supposed to buy that Dean Cain and Oliver Hudson could possibly be related?

Well, in the same world where nuclear bombs can stop earthquakes, I guess. God, I love this shit. I mean, people keep giving me crap for watching these movies, and I keep telling them, you don't understand the sheer AWESOMENESS of a bad disaster movie.

Also agreeing about the first daughter looking 12. I mean, I checked IMDB, and the actress actually is 22 or so, but still. Trying to hook her up with hot Dr. Tony is just creepy.

I am upset that they killed off the one person I liked (Jordan), but in a miniseries this cheesy, I'm not yet willing to admit he's dead. It's like a soap opera; if there ain't a body, he ain't dead. And sometimes even if there is a body, he ain't dead.

That's what I wanna know. It's like Pangea only affects the US?

I also agree that Apocalpyse doesn't have the same feel as 10.5 did. It's pretty bad, but it wasn't as "campy" as AgentX put it. Hopefully it'll get "better" on Tuesday!

My favorite part was right when Hoover Dam collapsed and it cut to Kim Delaney, who said "another major landmark is about to be destroyed." HAAA! I always love how the real victims of apocalyptic disasters are not people, but recognizable landmarks.

And Jordan...sigh..."the dam's about to burst, I'm going in for a closer look." Absolutely brilliant.

That's what I do all the time. "That fire looks hot, let me just stick my hand in there to double check."

Word. And I also call bullshit on the boiling water coming over the Hoover Dam. That's a hell of a lot of water ...

You know, I'm not going to attempt to apply logic to this movie. What was I thinking?