If this is Tuesday...

Then this post must be about 24.

As predicted, this is the annual "wait a minute...are you sure this show isn't called '6'" episode in which it appears, 50 minutes in, that resolution of the entire season's plot is at hand.

Compared to other seasons, though, it's a fairly weak twist that keeps the season going. (Virus taken by parties unknown; the trial was a ruse to enable the Override, and you top that with empty canisters and a flat threat?)

Cummings' version of the plot was certainly amusing, though. (I'm still waiting for my trans-Kosovo pipeline. We fought that war, and the moonbats promised us an oil pipeline. Where is it?)

Other notes: Audrey is as clearly marked for death now as anyone has ever been on any show.

Motif-Watch: two candidates in this episode: 1: The Media and Censorship, which may well be it, as one can reach backward into the prior episodes and spot this a few places, and 2: everyone's favorite classic motif, good old Injury-To-The-Eye.

Beep...Beep...Beep...

Always Remember...

(Last one on the Meme, turn the lights out.)

Moonlighting, Season 1

So, why did Moonlighting fail, exactly? I've passed the season mark in the 1st and 2nd season DVD set, so here are a few thoughts on the matter.

Back in the day, when the show was first airing, I distinctly recall hearing people talk about avoiding a 'Cheers Problem', which, in hindsight, sounds utterly silly. Cheers went 11 seasons; any show would be lucky to have it's problems. They kept the Sam-Diane relationship as the central focus for 5 full seasons, too, by allowing it to thread through a distinct stage for each of those seasons. (1. Sam pursuing Diane. 2. A relationship between them on Sam's terms. 3. The breakup's aftermath and their attempts to move on. 4. Diane pursuing Sam, and 5. A relationship between them on Diane's terms.)

I think that one of the main things that did go wrong was that the producers started to believe their own press; to think that the romance between David and Maddie was the sole reason for the show's popularity, and not that people are interested in them as a couple because the characters are drawn as witty, funny people. So when they inexplicably stripped away the episodic plot-fodder of the detective stories and the comedic content as well, people didn't care if these no-longer-interesting people were sleeping alone, with each other, or with random astronauts.

The second problem with the show, evident even in the early days, is a dearth of characters. "Two detectives and a secretary" works, just barely, in a strongly plot-driven series like Remmington Steele. When the plots aren't the point and you're aiming for character and humor, you need more. Lots more. Regular, recurring, all of the above. McGillicutty was a step in the right direction, but too little, too late.

Are hourlong comedies inherently doomed? Could be. Of course, doomed in this case means 'five year run, with immence popularity early on and a cultish following up to the bitter end' (See Ally McBeal, Northern Exposure...), which, well, a lot of shows should be so lucky. Let's see how Desperate Housewives is doing in 2009...

Open Question

An open question to anyone happening to pass this way (at this point, most probably by means of hitting the 'next blog' button somewhere out there):

What current practices or aspects of our current society will, 50 years in the future, be almost universally regarded as barbaric or nearly unforgivably evil?

Which parts of present society will be almost universally regarded as quaint and/or silly?

And which ones will be almost completely incomprehensible?

Feel free to respond any way you choose.

Lost, Season 1

Recently finished consuming, on DVD, the first season of last year's other mystery-based drama breakaway hit, Lost. Unlike Desperate Housewives, this show certainly doesn't overcompensate for the Twin Peaks factor and reveal everything by the finale, nosiree Bob...

Do they undercompensate, though? Too soon (for me) to tell. If Peaks had revealed the killer in the second season opener rather than waiting another six episodes, they'd have been in a lot better shape. Lost is at least revealing some of the mysteries in a fairly timely manner in season 1. So here's a report card of unresolved mysteries at season one's end. I'd say at least a third of these ought to be cleared out by 2.6 and two thirds by 2.24, and, presuming that there isn't a cheat and the main hatch mystery is revealed in 2.1, they'd be doing okay.
Update: Thought of a few more to add.

• The Island

1. What's inside the hatch?
2. What is the monster?
3. Why are there Polar Bears in the Tropics? [maybe under Walt rather than The Island]
4. Where is it on a map?
5. Why is it undiscovered?
6. What is the power source for the transmission?
7. Who are the Others, and what is their agenda?
8. Why is the tide coming in so high and fast?
   

• The Plane

1. Why did it crash?
2. How did so many survive?
3. Where are the other survivors Boone contacted on the radio?

• Jack

1. How did his marriage end?
2. How does he keep a constant level of stubble without ever being either clean-shaven or developing a full beard?
3. What's up with the tattoo?
4. Where did his dad's body go?
   

• Kate

1. What was her initial crime all about?
2. What was the reason she ran away from home in the first place?
3. To whom was she married?
4. How did that turn out?
5. Why was she calling the Marshall at home?
   

• Locke

1. How did he become crippled?
2. How was he cured?
3. When did he acquire his mad skillz at hunting and survival?
4. Ditto his encyclopedic knowledge of trivia such as instantly identifying Nigerian Currency?
5. What happened after he stared at the beast?
6. What happened after the vault light turned on?
   

• Sawyer

1. What was the fiasco in Miami?
2. Why isn't he having nicotine withdrawl problems?
3. Why didn't anyone blame his headaches on above?
   

• Sayid

1. When and why did he leave Iraq? (Probably trailing Nadia, but how did he get that trail?)
   

• Charlie (No current mysteries with Charlie I can recall.)
  
• Claire

1. Why is Aaron's being raised by Claire so important?
   

• Hurley

1. What do the numbers mean?
2. Why was he in the mental institution?
3. How did he get the nickname?
   

• Jin and Sun

1. How did Sun's father find out Jin was planning to flee?
   

• Shannon and Boone (Nothing much here, either.)
  

1. Michael and Walt
2. Does Walt have the ability to control random events [Backgammon vs Hurley scene]?
3. Does Walt control the weather?
4. Does Walt have the ability to summon wildlife?
5. If so, is he responsible for the Polar Bears?
6. If so, when Rouseau mentioned 'Bears', was she thinking of more normal tropic-friendly species?
7. If he can do all these things, as well as perfectly throw a knife with positive visualization, is there anything he can't do? Is Walt, in fact, some kind of demigod?
   
8. Why do the Others want him?
   

• Rousseau

1. Who was Alix's father?
2. What happened to Alix after he was taken?
3. Is she crazy/how crazy is she, or were the rest of her crew actuall infected by something?
4. Why does she, living alone on a deserted island and coming from a culture comfortable with female body hair, shave her armpits smooth?

I'll revisit this after I watch season two. If anyone actually reading this has seen S2 so far and would like to give, in the comments, a tally of which of these are and aren't resolved by the current show, I'd be grateful...

Utterly Random Linkage:

DC/Marvel/Starwars/Transformer fanfic featuring hot planet-on-planet action.

Don't blame me, blame Kalinara.

Tuesday 24blogging

First, an assortment of links.

Second, on to the commentary. I have to say that I'm deeply enjoying the season 5 incidental music. The Ominous Beat of Tension; The Punched-Up Beat of Action; and the Violin Crescendo of Syncing Up to the Beeping Clock all get their jobs done admirably.

Thinking on that, though, it occurs to me that the producers didn't consider either Michelle or Palmer as being worthy of the Silent Countdown of Major Character Death. Which is sad.

Next week is one to watch; the previews make it fairly clear that they're doing their annual "shouldn't this season be called '6'" fakeout. My guess to the twist: they wrap up the Nerve Gas/White House mole plot quickly, mostly, but at the expense of China learning that Jack's Alive, and Jack spends the other 3/4 of the year running from Chinese agents and CTU people while trying to stop the Phase III of the first set of bad guys' plot that nobody else believes in. Could, of course, be wrong.

Light week.

Must recommend something today. Looking around. Ah. The Dresden Dolls. Their self-titled (REM ruined epinymous for everyone) CD is excellent. Heard their followup just got finished at the studio. Looking forward to it. Speaking in sentence fragments. Must stop.

Silver-Age Smallville, Part II

More comments on Season 4:
I got a kick out of the college football episode, not for the story itself, but for the fact that they named the villian 'Geoff Johns' and referred to him by his full name every time they possibly could. Usually to say something bad...

As for the actual season metaplot...meh. Starts out by completely failing to pay off the 3rd season finale. Continues by introducing the stones/elements business which is apparently simultaneously of the utmost possible importance and able to be subordinated to whatever minor problem of the week comes along. Gives Lana far too much screen time. And more-or-less abandons the 'Is Jor-El evil? Or is it really Zod pretending to be Jor-El' meta-metaplot of the first 3 seasons.

Probably it for now, that is.

Blogroll time: David Brin. And Alternate History

And up onto the Blogroll goes another person way to my political left (at least in current late-stage BDS form, that is), David Brin. Most recently, going gaga over Gore's latest gushing. But before that, speculating on a rather odd Utopian vision of what the world might have been like had 2000 gone the other way.

Which is an interesting question to think about. First off, there are many different ways that it could have transpired, each of which would generate different domestic political landscapes. If Gore had had enough votes to take FL from the first count onward (the 'butterfly-ballot-minus' option), the GOP would be, more or less, where it was in '96 and '98 for some time further. If things procede as they did in our timeline all the way up to the Supreme Court, which rules the other way and orders a recount that gives Gore a narrow margin of victory, you get the 'stolen election' meme on the other foot, at least as strong and widespread. You could get that, even worse, in scenarios involving the Florida legislature sending a separate block of electors, decisions in the House, and/or rogue electors.

Foreign policy could go different ways as well, of course. Assuming the the success of the 9/11 conspiritors was more inevitable than contingent and thus that butterfly effects from any historical change don't prevent it from happening, how does Gore respond? My suspicion is the same way Bush did, initially, which is to say with war with Afghanistan, but I don't see the 'Rumsfeld Doctrine' small-mobile-forces appealing to a Gore SecDef. So probably a Schwartzkopf Doctrine overwhelming force approach; hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, with most of them still there nation-building years later. Coin-flip as to whether Osama is killed with a body found or if he's able to keep releasing Seldon tapes every so often, at least as many US military casualties as we've had in Afghanistan and Iraq together but at less political cost. And no action against Iraq other than perhaps a round of airstrikes or two.

So that takes us to '04. Next question: who does the GOP run for president, and does that person win? On the one hand, the electorate would likely be just as culturally 'red-state' in the red states, and the 'blue-staters' likely quite dissatisfied with Gore's limited progress on those issues. On the other, the 'War on Terror' issue doesn't play out nearly as well for the GOP at this point; any proposed action would require first 'cutting and running' in Afghanistan, or massive increases in the size of the military...

Smallville: The Silver Age I

Finished up Smallville's fourth season recently. Some good Superboy storyage to be found there, to be sure. The most striking thing I notice, compared to the previous seasons, was the birthing of a very silver-age comics mentality, from name drops for the Flash and Mxyztplk, repeated amnesia, possession, or personality change, and classic SA gags like the broken scissors, or Chloe taking on the classic Pete Ross position of 'person who knows Clark's secret identity, but Clark doesn't know that (she) knows, and works to protect both secrets'. Although I missed having Pete Ross around himself, Chloe in the classic version of the story niche worked a lot better than Pete-knowing-all did. The whole silver-agey-ness had me thinking 'Argo City' during the entire finale, which will probably turn out wrong, and 'Mon-El' as a second guess, also unlikely. Will probably blog more on Smallville V4.

On question, though: if the entire town had been evacuated, with several hours notice, what the hell was a fully loaded oil truck doing other than consuming special effects budget that won't roll over to the next season?

Tuesday 24blogging

Unlike some other people, I don't think that Data Mining is going to be the 5th season's major motif. My guess, just from the first four hours, is that it will be kidnapping and hostages this year around, although I could be wrong. It took a lot longer than 4 hours for season three's suicide motif to emerge and it was the strongest theme of any season so far.

Back when season 4 was ending, my own idea for 'what to do next', involved an evil twin Jack Bauer, which is what I suspect that they're heading for this year. Be more fun than doctored surveilance video, at least. Although my own idea had Jack doing more and more and more extreme and eventually outright evil stuff during the first four hours, and then have the last scene reveal the real Jack locked away in a Chinese prison...

The Pizza Theory of Taxation

Okay, say me, you, and Bill Gates are ordering a pizza. The bill comes out to $15. Now, it's quite clear that there's only one fair way to split the bill: each of us pays five bucks.

Is there any real reason that buying a government should be significantly different from buying a pizza? I can't see any, myself.

Ah, but wait, my imaginary interlocutor interjects Bill Gates has, like, a huge amount of money. Which means that he's getting more out of the whole law enforcement side of government that's protecting his property. Which is like him ending up eating nine slices all my himself and only leaving three for us to fight over. So of course he should pay more.

Except that, no. What the government is protecting is our life, liberty, and property. And either one of those two are immeasurably more valuable than any conceivable amount of property. [And nobody here would be so inegalitarian as to suggest that Mr. Gates' life or liberty is worth more than either of ours.] So when summing up what we're getting for our government dollar; how much pizza we're consuming, we each get 20 gajillion units worth of life, 20 gajillion more of liberty, and a comparitively much smaller amount of property in the mix. So the difference in total consumption between us and Mr. Gates is utterly negligible. Maybe he takes one pepperoni that was on the edge between one of our pieces and his and not cut all the way through.

(So this would seem to argue for a poll tax. [in the 'fixed dollar amount per head' sense, not the 'fee required before you get to vote' one] But I'll concede enough to the Willie Suttonist argument to go as far as a flat percentage tax on income over a minimum living expenses deduction. Except that, were I running the zoo, I'd be wanting to tax something other than income. But that's a whole 'nother rant.)

Hey,

Is the Absorbascon really not on my blogroll yet?

Is now.

Geekery: 5 and 1/2 Mini-rants about the Modern-Age Superman.

(Defining 'Modern-Age' as Byrne's Man of Steel onward, of course.)
1. Krypton ought to be a place of wonders; something the loss of which makes the universe inutterably poorer; not some sterile-glass dystopia that the galaxy is best rid of.

2. Byrne didn't do away with Superboy; he did away with Superman. If John and Martha Kent are still alive, you're telling stories about Superboy, no matter how old or married he may happen to get.

3. Lex Luthor is supposed to be a tragic figure in Superman's life, one of the few humans he could relate to as an equal and someone who could, but for a combination of pride and happenstance, have been his greatest friend and ally. If you turn Luthor into the Kingpin on Atkins, you miss the entire point of the character.

4. Superman doesn't kill. Period. Because his parents taught him better. And he has to live up to their memory. Parents that are still around to forgive him undermine this. See #2.

5. 'Last Son of Krypton' is no more important a descriptor for the character than 'Strange Visitor From Another Planet.' Keeping a fundamental alienness to the character, making him Kal-El playing the roles, alternatingly, of Clark Kent and Superman, (rather than having him be Clark Kent inside playing the role of Superman), is more important that systematically eliminating Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, Kandor, etc. Especially if people are just going to wind up putting them back anyway.

(This is not to say that the Silver/Bronze-age version Superman wasn't deeply flawed. There were some mighty problems with the character that needed fixing in 1985. The problem is that Byrne went about fixing them in something that is close to the most wrong manner possible, ripping from the concept not only everything that was needlessly baroque and unworkable but also everything that was remotely unique and charming. What was left behind was less Superman than GenericSuperHero, fit only to thrash around for a few years before being bludgeoned to death by GenericSuperVillian in 22 pages of splash panels.)

Mini-Snark

Started through George R. R. Martin's A Feast for Crows for the second time through, this time with the audiobook version. Brief and instant comment: Not liking the new reader, not at all. It's always disorienting when the reader changes in mid-series, especially in genre works where the assignment of accents/voices to characters is arbitrary and gets shuffled in the process. But at least the guy who did the first three had a large pool of accents and voices to work with; so far this John Lee fellow's only variable is how much he dials a Scottish accent up or down.

But changing the way names of major characters are pronounced is unforgivable. "Seer-Say"? One of these guys is wrong, here, and Martin or his editors should have caught it...

Getting Desperate...

So, first season of Desperate Housewives.

First thing to note is that the exec. producer of that show does excellent commentary. Almost as good as Whedon and his Buffy/Angel/Firefly cohorts.

Second thing is that in the commentary of the final episode, he mentions wanting to avoid the mistakes of Twin Peaks, and make sure that the mystery does in fact pay off. This is a good lesson to learn, certainly; would that, say, Nowhere Man had taken it to heart. But I think that he's overcompensating for Twin Peaks: far, far too much was wrapped up in the finale. We pretty much know everything there is to know about all of these people at this point. Sure, there's the Applewhites moving in, but they can hardly add new neighbors forever until the end of time. The show worked because of the three-fold convergance of mystery, soap, and comedy, and It'll remain to be seen if it can replace that first leg or manage to balance for long on just the two remaining...

And the third thing is that, like Seinfeld, keeping a cast full of generally horrible people in the sympathy of the audience depends on surrounding them with people who are even more awful than they, and by the end of the season, many of the supposed protagonists in danger of losing all likability whatsoever. And meanwhile, Edie keeps coming across better than the supposed mains...

24 Season 4

Recurring Motif's in a 24 Season:
Obviously: Season 4->Torture
Even more obviously: Season 3->Suicide
What about Seasons 1 and 2?
2->Fear works fairly well. And 1->Betrayal serves, although you could argue that 1 didn't need a seasonal motif other than the novelty of the format. Which would free up 'Betrayal' as a Motif for Seasion 5...

Blogroll:Lee Goldberg

Another site to add to the blogroll; A Writer's Life an entertaining blog from Lee Goldberg a writer who's actual books I oughtta get around to reading someday; always good for a few posts and/or links. Today with news that Kevin J. Anderson is, in posthumous collaboration with Vogt's unfinished manuscript, finishing The Slan Hunters. Interesting enough.

Coyote Frontier

Was good. Rush post today, so little else to say. Read the other two books of Allan Steele's Coyote trilogy first, of course.

Baxter? I hardly...wait, that doesn't make any sense...

Okay, back to the main business. Stephen Baxter's latest, Transcendent. Back a few years ago, when he was writing the Manifold series, I described Baxter as a talented writer of Nihilist Science Fiction. Which does hold, although more for that series and some of his earlier-but-non-Xeelee work than for this series. My current view of Baxter is that he is excellent at turning extremely stupid ideas into good science fiction.

In Manifold one of those ideas is in fact one of the canonical 'so silly you need to be extremely well-educated to believe it'; that of the Carter Catastrophe. In his latest cycle of books (All three Destiny's Children Books so far; Coalescent, Exultant, and Transcendent, and also the stand-alone before that, Evolution), the idea is that human populations are likely to, under certain fairly likely evolutionary pressures in evolution-friendly timescales, lose their big brains and linguistic intelligences that go with it.

(The problem with said idea is that even if one does accept arguendo that the community or species would be better off without making the metabolic investment in big, intelligent brains, you still can't get there because the individuals are the unit on which evolution is going to happen, and brains are just too darn useful in intra-species competition to give up on that scale. The arms race between the capacity to lie and the capacity to detect lies is pretty muhc irrevocable locked-in, and so human breeds are more likely to die off under the weight of their antler-like brains than to back down. At least when Vonnegut used the same concept he had a plausible bottleneck event to let it happen...)

Still, good science fiction, though.

Extremely Lazy Blogging

Just a quick post to fill the day: I notice that Doritos has gone back to calling the chips 'Nacho Cheese' and 'Cool Ranch' again. The switch between that and the comparative forms 'Nacho Cheesier' and 'Cooler Ranch', which sounds like a thermos day-camp of some kind seems to be every two or three years.

Of course, it's not like the could do anything with my current favored flavor. Not going to try 'Black Pepper Jacker', I don't think.

(I did warn of extreme lazy blogging, didn't I?)