Saturday, October 10, 2009
Promises Broken, Promises Kept
Before the new season started there were two shows I was most looking forward to. Those were/are Glee on Fox Wednesdays and Flashforward on ABC Thursdays.
Glee has kept its promise of being the funniest new show of the season. The characters are wonderful, from the main kids, to the background kids, to the teachers, and even the crazy wife. The story is moving along very fast. They could easy drag things out but they are really pushing the story on with the Invitationals, the upcoming Sectionals, and the Regionals off at some point in the season. I'm super excited that Cindi Lightballoon is now directly involved Glee. I really hope she sings sometime. And I can never get enough of the mohawk guy. He is delicious. This show exceeded expections and kept its promise of being awesome.
Then there is Flashforward. This promised to be am engaging mystery show that the whole world wound experience together. After three episodes I'm ready to drop this. I'll give it another chance since Charlie is joining the cast in the next episode or the one after. So before I get to the whole causality problem, the show is just boring. As I always say, it's the characters that make a show interesting. None of the FBI characters are interesting. Dr. Penny isn't interesting. The alcoholic utility guy looking for his daughter isn't interesting. All boring. What happened to the babysitter and the suicidal doctor? They had potential. The black fiance seemed interesting but she's only been in one episode. The next topic is the disaster cleanup and recovery. First up I don't think every building would be slightly damaged. I think some buildings would be undamaged, some would have some damage, and some would have burned down. With the streets impassable and dozens of fires going, at least one high-rise would have a big fire that would have burned all day to the point of structural failure. Twenty years ago the tallest building in L.A. at the time had a fire that lasted four hours and nearly took down the building. It was in real danger or shearing off the upper floor. It took 64 fire companies to battle this fire. In the chaos in the day of the blackouts it's far more likely that dozens of fires would have destroyed a lot of buildings around the world, not just L.A. And the cleanup seemed to happen very quick. The alcoholic utility guy would be working 16 hours shifts to fix all the problems. He wouldn't have time to get fill out exhumation paperwork much less hang around a bar in the middle of the day. I lived in Northridge during the 1994 quake and there was debris (mostly from fallen cement fences) on the streets for months. The time it would take to clear up every single freeway and major streets in L.A. would take weeks. It's not just a big accident, it's every mile of every freeway and every block in every direction. There's no plan in place for that kind of cleanup. It would take a few days to just come up with a plan. On to the investigation. It seems like the only people in the government investigating the incident is a same team in Los Angeles. There should be every government and military agency working on it. They should be a small team, not the leaders in the investigation.
But the causality issue is the biggest problem. If I had a vision of the future I would be very interested in seeing if it came true or not. And as the date and time became more known from the mosaic experiences, I would be very interested in that date/time. I wouldn't go about as business as usual. I'd be hanging out at a party celebrating a flash forward party. I wouldn't be in the bathroom. I wouldn't be having an ultrasound (who has those at 10pm?). I wouldn't be in a morning staff meeting in London. I wouldn't be at my own wedding. So either the future is what it is because I knew it was coming or the future is a possibility that could change. I know I would try to change it just because I could.
If I was running the show I would have kept at least the first few episodes heartpounding exciting. I'd start each episode with different disaster scenes from the blackout. I'd have characters that were interesting. I'd make the causality more of an issue. I'd spend more time to the clean-up effort instead of the far to slow moving investigation. And then I make the investigation more interesting. I'll give the show one more episode before I drop it.
Glee has kept its promise of being the funniest new show of the season. The characters are wonderful, from the main kids, to the background kids, to the teachers, and even the crazy wife. The story is moving along very fast. They could easy drag things out but they are really pushing the story on with the Invitationals, the upcoming Sectionals, and the Regionals off at some point in the season. I'm super excited that Cindi Lightballoon is now directly involved Glee. I really hope she sings sometime. And I can never get enough of the mohawk guy. He is delicious. This show exceeded expections and kept its promise of being awesome.Then there is Flashforward. This promised to be am engaging mystery show that the whole world wound experience together. After three episodes I'm ready to drop this. I'll give it another chance since Charlie is joining the cast in the next episode or the one after. So before I get to the whole causality problem, the show is just boring. As I always say, it's the characters that make a show interesting. None of the FBI characters are interesting. Dr. Penny isn't interesting. The alcoholic utility guy looking for his daughter isn't interesting. All boring. What happened to the babysitter and the suicidal doctor? They had potential. The black fiance seemed interesting but she's only been in one episode. The next topic is the disaster cleanup and recovery. First up I don't think every building would be slightly damaged. I think some buildings would be undamaged, some would have some damage, and some would have burned down. With the streets impassable and dozens of fires going, at least one high-rise would have a big fire that would have burned all day to the point of structural failure. Twenty years ago the tallest building in L.A. at the time had a fire that lasted four hours and nearly took down the building. It was in real danger or shearing off the upper floor. It took 64 fire companies to battle this fire. In the chaos in the day of the blackouts it's far more likely that dozens of fires would have destroyed a lot of buildings around the world, not just L.A. And the cleanup seemed to happen very quick. The alcoholic utility guy would be working 16 hours shifts to fix all the problems. He wouldn't have time to get fill out exhumation paperwork much less hang around a bar in the middle of the day. I lived in Northridge during the 1994 quake and there was debris (mostly from fallen cement fences) on the streets for months. The time it would take to clear up every single freeway and major streets in L.A. would take weeks. It's not just a big accident, it's every mile of every freeway and every block in every direction. There's no plan in place for that kind of cleanup. It would take a few days to just come up with a plan. On to the investigation. It seems like the only people in the government investigating the incident is a same team in Los Angeles. There should be every government and military agency working on it. They should be a small team, not the leaders in the investigation.
But the causality issue is the biggest problem. If I had a vision of the future I would be very interested in seeing if it came true or not. And as the date and time became more known from the mosaic experiences, I would be very interested in that date/time. I wouldn't go about as business as usual. I'd be hanging out at a party celebrating a flash forward party. I wouldn't be in the bathroom. I wouldn't be having an ultrasound (who has those at 10pm?). I wouldn't be in a morning staff meeting in London. I wouldn't be at my own wedding. So either the future is what it is because I knew it was coming or the future is a possibility that could change. I know I would try to change it just because I could.If I was running the show I would have kept at least the first few episodes heartpounding exciting. I'd start each episode with different disaster scenes from the blackout. I'd have characters that were interesting. I'd make the causality more of an issue. I'd spend more time to the clean-up effort instead of the far to slow moving investigation. And then I make the investigation more interesting. I'll give the show one more episode before I drop it.
Labels: Flashforward, Glee
