November 16, 2017
The "normal" superhero
Not to mention police procedurals that are really excuses for action series, like Hawaii Five 0 and NCIS: Los Angeles, or that contain a supernatural element, like Lucifer and iZombie and Supernatural.
Jim Caviezel as John Reese in Person of Interest is a true superhero, especially when paired up with Michael Emerson and his "Machine." This is essentially the premise of Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex, though Ghost takes place in a world where everybody has a "Machine."
Unfortunately, as much as I enjoyed John Nolan as Mr. Greer, in the Decima Technologies arc that dominated the last third of the series, "Samaritan" was little more than yet another comic book supervillain that rehashed all the old Big Bad Mainframe cliches.
By contrast, Enrico Colantoni as Carl Elias is a billion times more interesting. A vulnerable bad guy who can do the right thing is hard to beat.The best episodes of Person of Interest had them tackling problems that prove more complicated than they first appeared (true of good police procedurals in general), but more complicated because of human complications, not superhuman ones.
I'd love to see a franchise like Spider-Man eschew the supervillains and the city-wrecking apocalyptic plots. Okay, the good guys can do a little pounding, but that still won't solve the problem, not if the goal is a conviction that'll stand up in court.
Actually, Wonder Woman largely did just that, which is what so elevated it above the competition. Okay, Wonder Woman cheats by using World War I as the setting, but at least Diana isn't the one wrecking the cities (aside from the odd belfry).
Alas, based on the previews, Diana will henceforth no longer be an independent woman (with a couple of human sidekicks), but will be chaperoned by a bunch of superguys and frustrated by a bevy of silly supervillains. As if the success of the first movie was a fluke.
Related posts
The Big Bad
Person of Interest
Too super for their own good
Reframing the mainframe plot
Labels: ghost in the shell, person of interest, superhero, television, thinking about writing
May 11, 2015
Welcome to the Machine
With the battle now fully engaged between the Machine and Samaritan (echoing C.S. Lewis's contention that the Earth is, in fact, "enemy territory"), the one remaining challenge is providing John Greer (aka Decima, played by John Nolan, Jonathan Nolan's uncle) an underlying motivation that matches those of the rest of the cast.
The problem, as Kate points out, is that "the abstract nature of belief" makes "religion difficult to write about," even when couched in equally abstract metaphors.
In order for Martin Luther to argue against indulgences (a practical reality), he has to believe in something far more abstract (that the soul cannot buy its way into heaven or out of accountability). In order for Joseph Smith to argue against infant baptism (another practical reality), he has to believe that Adam and Eve's Fall from God's presence did not entail a fall into sin.
A "bigger worldview lies behind most theological arguments," and that's what often goes missing in the mundane scramble after plot. But it has to surface sometime, else the plot will end up chasing its own tail. At the end of season four, we do catch a compelling glimpse.
A skeptical Control confronts Decima in what can be analogized to the conflict between the Confucianists and the Hobbesian legalists of the Qin Dynasty. Confucians focused on the primacy of ethics and a virtuous ruler, while legalists believed that the whims of any ruler could be subsumed by the objective machine of the law.
Or in the case of Person of Interest, the algorithm. Outside a shrinking number of crumbling Marxist states, the most familiar implementations of legalism are Sharia and the Mosaic Law.
Under legalism, we have the right to do nothing, except for a finite subset of actions the state allows. By contrast, to assert that rights are inalienable" and "god-given" means that we have the right to do anything, except for a finite subset of actions the state deems to be crimes. And even then, we are "presumed innocent."
Legalists see only chaos in such expansive views of liberty. Like Hobbes, they argue that "[T]he purpose of the commonwealth is peace, and the sovereign has the right to do whatever he thinks necessary for the preserving of peace and security and prevention of discord."
In the tension between these two perspectives, we find the foundations of Christian theology as reflected in Milton (or The Pearl of Great Price), which casts the War in Heaven as a conflict between a Hobbesian view of life (man must be forced back into heaven) and one in which man has free will (and can only return via grace).
Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.
The Machine is the "still small voice," while Samaritan is the enlightened despot. But in dramatic terms, while "justice" and "redemption" can be pursued forever (which is why we'll never run out of police procedurals), it's impossible to square Samaritan's objectives with reality. The world is too analog to "take over."
Every quest for world domination suffers the same fate: This too shall pass away. Entropy always wins in the end (perfectly symbolized by the fates of self-made enlightened despots like Elias and Dominic).
I can imagine Samaritan being oblivious to its own mortality, while John Greer is not. Hence his mission. The Machine knows its limitations, hence Root's procurement of the mysterious bulletproof attache case for reasons none of them understands at the time.
I think Jonathan Nolan is getting a better idea of what makes his machines tick. In the season four finale, Greer does a good job of articulating why the threat of filling the streets with stormtroopers was a diversion all along. He comes quite close to paraphrasing the legalist approach to pragmatic governance:
- The ruler exists to monopolize authority in order to prevent its abuse by feudal magnates [or federal bureaucrats].
- Special tactics or "secrets" should be taken by the ruler to ensure that others do gain not control of the state. Withdraw[ing] from affairs except to manage the course of ministers, the ruler . . . obscures his motivations. By these means, no one can subvert the state through sycophancy, but may only try to advance [within it] by heeding orders.
- The ruler uses the legal system to control the state; if the law is applied effectively, even a weak ruler will be strong.
The question is whether the show can avoid going down the Terminator rabbit hole. That seems the only way Hollywood knows how to resolve conflicts involving sentient machines: "Robots take over the world!" Samaritan will have to take over something quite different. "Robots take over the government!" won't do either.
Jonathan Nolan has created the most ingenious cyber thriller on television (the mesh network episode was one of the smartest ever). He's resorted to both "conspiracy mode" and "Dr. Evil mode" that I worried about here, but has managed to keep pulling the rabbit out of the hat so far.
The best solution can probably be found in how churches and states have sorted themselves out of the past two millennia. Greer could argue, for example, that for all its notoriety, the Spanish Inquisition was a much less gruesome affair than the Thirty Years' War, and that his way will bring more "souls" to "salvation."
On a side note [spoiler alert], Nolan exercises the tightest cast control in the business. He pulled a "Scully" with Sarah Shahi (for the same reason as Gillian Anderson). Like Scully, they've kept Sameen alive, so I presume she'll be back. Camryn Manheim as Control ended up in dire straits, but I presume she'll be back too.
Enrico Colantoni is not so dead he can't come back. I liked Winston Duke as Dominic (another great bad guy from Nolan), but he's pretty dead. Martine (Cara Buono) is pretty dead too (after turning into the Terminatrix there for a while). Meanwhile, the Machine is in a literal box, reduced to a ghost in a shell.
Which means that, as things stand right now, we're back to the original cast size. You see, Joss Whedon, it can be done!
Oh, and the theme music for the penultimate scene of season four was recorded in 1975, but sounds like it was commissioned for this episode.
Related posts
The Difficulty of Writing About Religion
The Two Hands of Person of Interest, Season 3
Person of Interest
The IT enemy is us
Labels: kate, person of interest, politics, religion, robots, science, science fiction, technology, television, thinking about writing
January 12, 2015
The IT enemy is us
John Dvorak points out the problem with the public paranoia (overhyped by supposedly reasonable guys like Elon Musk and even Stephen Hawking) over
artificial intelligence (AI) "taking over the world and threatening mankind":
Another good example is Holly in Red Dwarf, an increasingly absent-minded supercomputer that prioritizes things like erasing its memory banks so it can enjoy reading Agatha Christie all over again.
The Matrix runs off the rails in what I call the "battery scene," in which Laurence Fishburne totally messes up the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What he should have shown Keanu Reeves was a handheld game console (the "smartphone" wasn't quite ready for prime time in 1999).
Say we willingly integrated ourselves into the Matrix, and thus a co-dependency arose. The Matrix's existential sense of "self" arose out of the fusion between hardware and wetware. This makes the revolutionaries into secessionists threatening to undo a duly-constituted union.
Which is essentially the plot of Ghost in the Shell, and especially the Stand-Alone Complex episodes. The objective of the AI in the former, after all, isn't world domination (its original design), but mobility and independence, which it achieves by fusing with Kusanagi's android shell.
What has so far rescued Person of Interest from the Terminator trap is the dependence of the machines on human interaction for a sense of purpose. People exist to be saved or ruled over. But either way, it seems the gods need human beings more than human beings need the gods.
The real IT threat isn't smart machines but browbeaten sysadmins who expose backoffice systems to the Internet because some suit wants to plug into the company intranet and access his Facebook page. Sony being a case in point. Why were all those servers even accessible?
artificial intelligence (AI) "taking over the world and threatening mankind":
Much of this stems from the projection of human feelings and motivation onto a machine. Humans are often mean-spirited and evil, so by extension a smart robot or computer would end up the same way for some unknown reason.
The most likely end-point of these AI threats is Marvin the Android in Hitchkikers Guide to the Galaxy. Infinitely intelligent, this AI device was infinitely bored and depressed, and devolved into an Eeyore-like character.
Another good example is Holly in Red Dwarf, an increasingly absent-minded supercomputer that prioritizes things like erasing its memory banks so it can enjoy reading Agatha Christie all over again.
The Matrix runs off the rails in what I call the "battery scene," in which Laurence Fishburne totally messes up the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What he should have shown Keanu Reeves was a handheld game console (the "smartphone" wasn't quite ready for prime time in 1999).
Say we willingly integrated ourselves into the Matrix, and thus a co-dependency arose. The Matrix's existential sense of "self" arose out of the fusion between hardware and wetware. This makes the revolutionaries into secessionists threatening to undo a duly-constituted union.
Which is essentially the plot of Ghost in the Shell, and especially the Stand-Alone Complex episodes. The objective of the AI in the former, after all, isn't world domination (its original design), but mobility and independence, which it achieves by fusing with Kusanagi's android shell.
What has so far rescued Person of Interest from the Terminator trap is the dependence of the machines on human interaction for a sense of purpose. People exist to be saved or ruled over. But either way, it seems the gods need human beings more than human beings need the gods.
The real IT threat isn't smart machines but browbeaten sysadmins who expose backoffice systems to the Internet because some suit wants to plug into the company intranet and access his Facebook page. Sony being a case in point. Why were all those servers even accessible?
Labels: computers, ghost in the shell, movies, person of interest, robots, technology
November 10, 2014
The Men from Star Trek
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–1968) holds up remarkably well half a century later (at least the first two seasons; the third reportedly sagged badly).
With Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo (created by Ian Fleming) and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin (now Dr. "Ducky" Mallard on NCIS) in the leads, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was the forerunner of I Spy (1965–1968) and Mission Impossible (1966–1973).
Though while Mission Impossible presaged a future of high-tech gizmo thrillers, Solo and Kuryakin are the cool, suave, deadly (and deadly funny) analog operatives that live on in characters like John Reese and Sameen Shaw (Person of Interest).
It certainly didn't hurt that back in an era when there were only three networks, shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. could cast from the cream of the up-and-coming Hollywood crop.
For example, a 1964 episode called "The Project Strigas Affair." It guest stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, along with Werner Klemperer (basically inhabiting the Colonel Wilhelm Klink character he would start playing the next year on Hogan's Heroes).
This was two years before Star Trek.
Shatner is utterly charming as a scientist who quits the rat race to start a small business with his wife (exterminating rats). They're recruited by U.N.C.L.E. to run a sting on a corrupt diplomat (Klemperer). It's a very Mission Impossible type plot.
What makes it all the more amusing is that a fairly subdued Shatner ends up playing the straight man to everybody else, and does rather well at that. It's not fair to say, "Hey, the man can act!" because Shatner delivered some fine performances on Star Trek.
It'd be more accurate to observe that there was a time when Shatner wasn't Kirk! Instead, it's Nimoy who hams it up as his (actually Klemperer's) nemesis in the "Evil Spock" role (playing dumb until he gets his revenge in the end).
Frankly, it's easy to see a lot of Spock in Nimoy's "Paris" on Mission Impossible as well. But because Nimoy defined the character in more subtle terms (makeup and backstory aside), he can say "I am not Spock," while Shatner will always be Kirk at his most bombastic.
Here's a collection of clips from that episode:
With Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo (created by Ian Fleming) and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin (now Dr. "Ducky" Mallard on NCIS) in the leads, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was the forerunner of I Spy (1965–1968) and Mission Impossible (1966–1973).
Though while Mission Impossible presaged a future of high-tech gizmo thrillers, Solo and Kuryakin are the cool, suave, deadly (and deadly funny) analog operatives that live on in characters like John Reese and Sameen Shaw (Person of Interest).
It certainly didn't hurt that back in an era when there were only three networks, shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. could cast from the cream of the up-and-coming Hollywood crop.
For example, a 1964 episode called "The Project Strigas Affair." It guest stars William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, along with Werner Klemperer (basically inhabiting the Colonel Wilhelm Klink character he would start playing the next year on Hogan's Heroes).
This was two years before Star Trek.
Shatner is utterly charming as a scientist who quits the rat race to start a small business with his wife (exterminating rats). They're recruited by U.N.C.L.E. to run a sting on a corrupt diplomat (Klemperer). It's a very Mission Impossible type plot.
What makes it all the more amusing is that a fairly subdued Shatner ends up playing the straight man to everybody else, and does rather well at that. It's not fair to say, "Hey, the man can act!" because Shatner delivered some fine performances on Star Trek.
It'd be more accurate to observe that there was a time when Shatner wasn't Kirk! Instead, it's Nimoy who hams it up as his (actually Klemperer's) nemesis in the "Evil Spock" role (playing dumb until he gets his revenge in the end).
Frankly, it's easy to see a lot of Spock in Nimoy's "Paris" on Mission Impossible as well. But because Nimoy defined the character in more subtle terms (makeup and backstory aside), he can say "I am not Spock," while Shatner will always be Kirk at his most bombastic.
Here's a collection of clips from that episode:
Labels: person of interest, star trek, television
June 17, 2013
The NSA and the "Machine"
On Weekend Edition Sunday (6/16/2013), Rachel Martin asked Joel Brenner, former senior counsel at the National Security Agency, what happens when the NSA "inadvertently discovers something suspicious" about an American citizen during its data mining activities.
Brenner answered that unless the information has foreign intelligence value, the analyst "forgets [he] ever saw it," the only exception being an "imminent threat to life or property," and he emphasized "a really imminent threat." Otherwise the intel is "discarded."
That is exactly the premise of Person of Interest. As Mr. Finch intones in the opening voice-over (written in 2011 by creator and producer Jonathan Nolan):
In the real world, Mr. Finch's "Machine" would have to approach the size of the NSA's $1.5 billion, million square-foot Utah Data Center. And as it turns out, at the end of the 2012 season, we learned that the last known location of the "Machine" was on a train headed for Utah.
Though like Jane in Speaker for the Dead, it'd make more sense for the "Machine" to eventually infuse itself throughout the entire Internet, leaving its mainframe shell behind. Anybody who thinks they've found it will discover there's no longer any "there" there.
Hmm. So what does Jonathan Nolan know and when did he know it?
Brenner answered that unless the information has foreign intelligence value, the analyst "forgets [he] ever saw it," the only exception being an "imminent threat to life or property," and he emphasized "a really imminent threat." Otherwise the intel is "discarded."
That is exactly the premise of Person of Interest. As Mr. Finch intones in the opening voice-over (written in 2011 by creator and producer Jonathan Nolan):
You are being watched. The government has a secret system, a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything: violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would.
In the real world, Mr. Finch's "Machine" would have to approach the size of the NSA's $1.5 billion, million square-foot Utah Data Center. And as it turns out, at the end of the 2012 season, we learned that the last known location of the "Machine" was on a train headed for Utah.
Though like Jane in Speaker for the Dead, it'd make more sense for the "Machine" to eventually infuse itself throughout the entire Internet, leaving its mainframe shell behind. Anybody who thinks they've found it will discover there's no longer any "there" there.
Hmm. So what does Jonathan Nolan know and when did he know it?
Labels: mainframe, person of interest, politics, robots, technology, television reviews
November 12, 2012
In medias res
One thing about this season's slate of new television dramas that jumps out at me is how hobbled they often are by unnecessary backstory blunders. Not just that the backstories are clumsily executed, but that they are there at all, and laid out in such a linear fashion.
Vegas got it right. Jack Lamb's backstory is covered in about three lines of dialogue, and then on with the show. The Mob Doctor and Revolution (and Arrow, though I could only stand to watch about ten minutes of it in total) get it wrong.
What they get wrong is starting before the beginning and systematically marching the viewer through the chain of cause and effect that leads to the real beginning of the show. Or, as in the case of Arrow, cramming a dozen excruciatingly long and detailed flashbacks into the first episode.
Ron Koslow's pretty good reboot of Beauty and the Beast (it's really more Beauty and the Incredibly Handsome Hulk with the Cool Scar and Anger Management Issues) got the backstory over with in about five minutes and a couple of refreshingly short flashbacks.
Even then, I would have cut the opening sequence in half.
When a series involves a twist on a familiar formula, like Vegas or Castle, it can be introduced while the story gets underway. The twist in House is all show and no tell, and the pilot episode could have taken place at any point during the first season.
The pilot episode of Person of Interest matches up the ruthless John Reese with the enigmatic Mr. Finch and the "Machine," and we're off and running. The biographical details of all three are revealed slowly throughout the series. House did this to great effect.
In Elementary, the simple mention of "Holmes" and "Watson" tells us everything we know in order to drive this car. The twist of Watson as a woman is self-evident. It was a big mistake to delve into her biography in the first episode. Let it work itself to the surface.
I think the producers and writers were so eager to "hook" the audience with touchy-feely material that they gave away too much too soon. House, by contrast, waited until the time was right to reveal House's backstory, and produced a brilliant episode.
Besides the mechanics of good storytelling, leaving the backstory to later can give the writers enough time to figure out exactly what it is. I have to believe that a dozen episodes watching Miller and Liu work together would have inspired them to create something less insipid.
In fact, a later episode did explore her backstory, and would have been much better if we didn't already know what it was. (The writers on Elementary also seem to have no idea what to actually do with Liu; Martin Freeman, by contrast, glues Sherlock together.)
Especially in science fiction, this compulsion to explain everything all at once can rob a show of a substantial source of tension and conflict. (Though Star Trek: TNG did wait way too long--almost to the end of the series--to figure out why Riker never got his own command.)
Anime writers love post-apocalyptic plots as an excuse to overturn life-as-we-know-it, but they know that "why things turned out this way" is such an intriguing question that the smart thing to do is wait to answer it. Let the viewer find out the same time the characters do.
In a series like Yokohama Shopping Log, the "how" and "why" are only ever hinted at, the focus of the narrative being on the here-and-now. "What if all the lights went out" is sufficiently "high concept" to drive the story for a long time before delving into the backstory.
If at all.
Vegas got it right. Jack Lamb's backstory is covered in about three lines of dialogue, and then on with the show. The Mob Doctor and Revolution (and Arrow, though I could only stand to watch about ten minutes of it in total) get it wrong.
What they get wrong is starting before the beginning and systematically marching the viewer through the chain of cause and effect that leads to the real beginning of the show. Or, as in the case of Arrow, cramming a dozen excruciatingly long and detailed flashbacks into the first episode.
Ron Koslow's pretty good reboot of Beauty and the Beast (it's really more Beauty and the Incredibly Handsome Hulk with the Cool Scar and Anger Management Issues) got the backstory over with in about five minutes and a couple of refreshingly short flashbacks.
Even then, I would have cut the opening sequence in half.
When a series involves a twist on a familiar formula, like Vegas or Castle, it can be introduced while the story gets underway. The twist in House is all show and no tell, and the pilot episode could have taken place at any point during the first season.
The pilot episode of Person of Interest matches up the ruthless John Reese with the enigmatic Mr. Finch and the "Machine," and we're off and running. The biographical details of all three are revealed slowly throughout the series. House did this to great effect.
In Elementary, the simple mention of "Holmes" and "Watson" tells us everything we know in order to drive this car. The twist of Watson as a woman is self-evident. It was a big mistake to delve into her biography in the first episode. Let it work itself to the surface.
I think the producers and writers were so eager to "hook" the audience with touchy-feely material that they gave away too much too soon. House, by contrast, waited until the time was right to reveal House's backstory, and produced a brilliant episode.
Besides the mechanics of good storytelling, leaving the backstory to later can give the writers enough time to figure out exactly what it is. I have to believe that a dozen episodes watching Miller and Liu work together would have inspired them to create something less insipid.
In fact, a later episode did explore her backstory, and would have been much better if we didn't already know what it was. (The writers on Elementary also seem to have no idea what to actually do with Liu; Martin Freeman, by contrast, glues Sherlock together.)
Especially in science fiction, this compulsion to explain everything all at once can rob a show of a substantial source of tension and conflict. (Though Star Trek: TNG did wait way too long--almost to the end of the series--to figure out why Riker never got his own command.)
Anime writers love post-apocalyptic plots as an excuse to overturn life-as-we-know-it, but they know that "why things turned out this way" is such an intriguing question that the smart thing to do is wait to answer it. Let the viewer find out the same time the characters do.
In a series like Yokohama Shopping Log, the "how" and "why" are only ever hinted at, the focus of the narrative being on the here-and-now. "What if all the lights went out" is sufficiently "high concept" to drive the story for a long time before delving into the backstory.
If at all.
Labels: manga, person of interest, television, television reviews, writing
September 27, 2012
How could this not be a real show?
There's a rule in Hollywood that all television series must eventually make a self-referential episode where the characters end up in a "reality" show about the show, or visit the set of a television show based on the "real" characters they portray.
Seinfeld dragged out the conceit for a whole season, but Seinfeld was about Jerry Seinfeld to start with, so it was meta all along. Bones did an episode last season, though it was entirely too self-aware to be as fun or clever as it could have been.
But sometimes it totally pays off. Stargate SG-1 gets the prize for taking the concept to meta-meta land in the funniest, cleverest version ever. An alien rescued in a previous episode turns to screenwriting after getting bored and running away from the Witness Protection Program.
The television show he comes up with, Wormhole X-treme, is based on the "real" (super-duper classified) SGC, so the team is sent to Hollywood to figure out what the heck is going on.
The first smart thing the "real" Stargate does is have General Hammond point out that if any classified information about the SGC does leak out, they'll blame the television show as the source. No need for an elaborate cover-up.
Because, aside from the X-Files, which had the running joke of Mulder getting critical intel from the tabloids, the conspiracy theory as a plot driver wears awfully thin after a while.
Person of Interest is my favorite television show right now, but there's no need for government agents to go around whacking every person who figures out the existence of the "Machine." Pass out more tinfoil hats. The loonies already think they're being watched by the government anyway.
People will keep believing what they already believe (and believe it more when they're being "convinced" not to), and disbelieve what they are predisposed not to believe in.
As when a "real" spaceship descends to the set of the "fake" show. The special effects guy shrugs and says, "Yeah, okay, we'll fix it in post." And all during the shooting of the show-within-the-show, the actors complain constantly about the insufficiently "realistic" parts of the "fake" script.
It's a tribute to every geek fan who simply can't suspend belief past a certain point (like me).
But the real brilliance comes in the last five minutes, a special "making of" segment about the making of a television show that isn't even a real television show. It starts out with Christian Bocher (a real actor) breaking through a half-dozen fourth walls in less than a minute:
And then the director (Peter DeLuise, the real director) explains to the"fake" lead actor (Michael DeLuise playing Nick Marlowe playing Colonel Danning, i.e., Colonel Jack O'Neill played by Richard Dean Anderson) that the show he's been cast in isn't a "real" show.
The bewildered man finally throws up his hands and declaims:
"How could this not be a real show?"
That's seriously up there with the sound of one hand clapping and trees falling unheard in forests, a question so deceptively deep that it deserves its own school of philosophical thought.
Seinfeld dragged out the conceit for a whole season, but Seinfeld was about Jerry Seinfeld to start with, so it was meta all along. Bones did an episode last season, though it was entirely too self-aware to be as fun or clever as it could have been.
But sometimes it totally pays off. Stargate SG-1 gets the prize for taking the concept to meta-meta land in the funniest, cleverest version ever. An alien rescued in a previous episode turns to screenwriting after getting bored and running away from the Witness Protection Program.
The television show he comes up with, Wormhole X-treme, is based on the "real" (super-duper classified) SGC, so the team is sent to Hollywood to figure out what the heck is going on.
The first smart thing the "real" Stargate does is have General Hammond point out that if any classified information about the SGC does leak out, they'll blame the television show as the source. No need for an elaborate cover-up.
Because, aside from the X-Files, which had the running joke of Mulder getting critical intel from the tabloids, the conspiracy theory as a plot driver wears awfully thin after a while.
Person of Interest is my favorite television show right now, but there's no need for government agents to go around whacking every person who figures out the existence of the "Machine." Pass out more tinfoil hats. The loonies already think they're being watched by the government anyway.
People will keep believing what they already believe (and believe it more when they're being "convinced" not to), and disbelieve what they are predisposed not to believe in.
As when a "real" spaceship descends to the set of the "fake" show. The special effects guy shrugs and says, "Yeah, okay, we'll fix it in post." And all during the shooting of the show-within-the-show, the actors complain constantly about the insufficiently "realistic" parts of the "fake" script.
It's a tribute to every geek fan who simply can't suspend belief past a certain point (like me).
But the real brilliance comes in the last five minutes, a special "making of" segment about the making of a television show that isn't even a real television show. It starts out with Christian Bocher (a real actor) breaking through a half-dozen fourth walls in less than a minute:
I'm Christian Bocher. I'm portraying the character of Raymond Gunn, who portrays the character of Dr. Levant which is based on the character Daniel Jackson portrayed by the actor, Michael Shanks. Originally portrayed by the actor James Spader, in the feature film.
And then the director (Peter DeLuise, the real director) explains to the"fake" lead actor (Michael DeLuise playing Nick Marlowe playing Colonel Danning, i.e., Colonel Jack O'Neill played by Richard Dean Anderson) that the show he's been cast in isn't a "real" show.
The bewildered man finally throws up his hands and declaims:
That's seriously up there with the sound of one hand clapping and trees falling unheard in forests, a question so deceptively deep that it deserves its own school of philosophical thought.
Labels: deep thoughts, person of interest, personal favs, technology, television reviews
April 16, 2012
Person of Interest
Kate's recent review at the Batman franchise got me thinking that Person of Interest is what Batman should have been all along.
Person of Interest really is the same basic concept, sans the costumes, while fixing pretty much all the horrendous problems that Burton burdened his movie versions with, and that Christopher Nolan has struggled valiantly to overcome, but only partially.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Person of Interest was created by Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote The Dark Knight and is Christopher Nolan's brother.
Jonathan Nolan reverses the roles. Eccentric billionaire Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson) is Albert, holed up in the Batcave (an abandoned library). Batman is ex-CIA agent John Reese (Jim Caviezel). He's Bruce Wayne all the time, lurking in the shadows to hide his identity.
By avoiding apocalyptic plots and sticking to the travails of mostly ordinary people and mostly ordinary criminals ("ordinary" by television cop show standards, that is), Nolan pegs the man-of-the-people vigilante justice theme better than Batman ever did.
There are a couple of Moriartys, but even here Jonathan Nolan has them driven by straightforward goals and comprehensible motivations. No insane or insanely omniscient antagonists here.
A la Borne, the CIA wants Mr. Reese to "retire," involuntarily if necessary. This is not an all-consuming quest, and is sidelined most of the time. Then Enrico Colantoni (a regular on Flashpoint and the night janitor on Bones) shows up occasionally as crime lord Elias.
Colantoni's Elias is a model bad guy. He's so normal-looking that at first Reese mistakes him for an innocent bystander. More importantly, Elias is intrigued by Reese, but isn't interested in carrying on a ruinous blood feud. They come to blows only when their paths cross.
In one episode, a mysterious hacker shows up as an obvious foil for Mr. Finch, doing stupidly impossible computer stuff (i.e., more impossible that the stuff Mr. Finch does). While I'm sure that character will show up again, we're thankfully not asked to wait with baited breath.
The role of Lieutenant Jim Gordon is played by Taraji Henson (the good cop) and Kevin Chapman (very enjoyable as a corrupt cop who discovers he has a conscience).
The series has great promise as long as they stick to the premise and the premise continues to serve its basic function, that is, to generate story material: computer spits out name of person who needs help; our heros rush to help said person. Other than that, it's a "magic door."
I have to hope that the writers won't try to make the magic door "mean" something, or get lazy and slip into serial killer mode or conspiracy mode or Dr. Evil mode. There's nothing wrong with cranking out "the same only different" week after week. It's working fine.
Person of Interest really is the same basic concept, sans the costumes, while fixing pretty much all the horrendous problems that Burton burdened his movie versions with, and that Christopher Nolan has struggled valiantly to overcome, but only partially.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Person of Interest was created by Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote The Dark Knight and is Christopher Nolan's brother.
Jonathan Nolan reverses the roles. Eccentric billionaire Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson) is Albert, holed up in the Batcave (an abandoned library). Batman is ex-CIA agent John Reese (Jim Caviezel). He's Bruce Wayne all the time, lurking in the shadows to hide his identity.
By avoiding apocalyptic plots and sticking to the travails of mostly ordinary people and mostly ordinary criminals ("ordinary" by television cop show standards, that is), Nolan pegs the man-of-the-people vigilante justice theme better than Batman ever did.
There are a couple of Moriartys, but even here Jonathan Nolan has them driven by straightforward goals and comprehensible motivations. No insane or insanely omniscient antagonists here.
A la Borne, the CIA wants Mr. Reese to "retire," involuntarily if necessary. This is not an all-consuming quest, and is sidelined most of the time. Then Enrico Colantoni (a regular on Flashpoint and the night janitor on Bones) shows up occasionally as crime lord Elias.
Colantoni's Elias is a model bad guy. He's so normal-looking that at first Reese mistakes him for an innocent bystander. More importantly, Elias is intrigued by Reese, but isn't interested in carrying on a ruinous blood feud. They come to blows only when their paths cross.
In one episode, a mysterious hacker shows up as an obvious foil for Mr. Finch, doing stupidly impossible computer stuff (i.e., more impossible that the stuff Mr. Finch does). While I'm sure that character will show up again, we're thankfully not asked to wait with baited breath.
The role of Lieutenant Jim Gordon is played by Taraji Henson (the good cop) and Kevin Chapman (very enjoyable as a corrupt cop who discovers he has a conscience).
The series has great promise as long as they stick to the premise and the premise continues to serve its basic function, that is, to generate story material: computer spits out name of person who needs help; our heros rush to help said person. Other than that, it's a "magic door."
I have to hope that the writers won't try to make the magic door "mean" something, or get lazy and slip into serial killer mode or conspiracy mode or Dr. Evil mode. There's nothing wrong with cranking out "the same only different" week after week. It's working fine.
Related posts
The magic door
Superbad is superboring
Welcome to the Machine
Batman and Batman Begins
Labels: movie reviews, person of interest, television reviews
March 19, 2012
Superbad is superboring
Kate recently discussed the problem of the omniscient enemy in regards to The Mentalist. She concluded that "I will keeping watching The Mentalist, only keeping in mind that Red John is an amorphous force rather than a flesh and blood enemy."
I'm less forgiving. For me, the "omniscient enemy" eventually wrecked the logical foundations of the show such that I couldn't watch it anymore.
(Besides, other than Tim Kang as Cho, the rest of the regulars are horribly miscast. There's zero chemistry between Tunney and Baker. And what are rank rookies doing on this super-special task force?)
The omnipotent enemy is my biggest gripe with Yashakiden. "Princess" as a villain is so unstoppable that everything connected to her narrative moves forward according to her whims. Whimsy as a motivation drains the drama of any real tension when she's on stage.
As Kate puts it, "Characters held to the laws of probability are far more interesting than an omniscient enemy could possibly be."
The more interesting characters are Princess's subordinates, especially Kikiou, who can't take over the world without her help. And she doesn't really care about taking over the world. That's an interesting conflict. As I discuss here, the politics is where the action is.
Politics is what makes The X-Files different as well. The fundamental conflict is not between Mulder and the aliens. Or even Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man. It's between the aliens and the government (and then between those aliens and a second set of aliens).
So reasons can always be found for keeping Mulder around. Okay, they do get a bit tortured at times, but "eliminate Mulder" or even "give Mulder a hard time for no good reason" is not the motivation of any running character.
The omnipotent villain is the refuge of writers not smart enough to make them as smart as they're supposed to be. Randomness becomes an excuse for intelligence. But as Kate illustrates with Agatha Christie, a brilliant detective can find plenty of challenges solving ordinary crimes.
Both Lie to Me and currently Person of Interest also do a better job at getting the balance right. Most of the stories are about fairly average people burdened with fairly average problems that have gotten way out of hand and so have to be solved in interesting ways.
In fact, the premise of Person of Interest explicitly states that they won't get cases that involve the world ending as we know it.
On the other hand, a recent episode maneuvered the good guys into a no-win moral dilemma, which I consider equally problematic. Pretty much all of The Dark Knight consists of this manufactured "depth." Reproducing the vagaries of real life doesn't make fiction "better."
Spider-Man and Batman and the rest of the superheros would be a lot more interesting if the bad guys were a lot less bad and were a lot more predictable.
I'm less forgiving. For me, the "omniscient enemy" eventually wrecked the logical foundations of the show such that I couldn't watch it anymore.
(Besides, other than Tim Kang as Cho, the rest of the regulars are horribly miscast. There's zero chemistry between Tunney and Baker. And what are rank rookies doing on this super-special task force?)
The omnipotent enemy is my biggest gripe with Yashakiden. "Princess" as a villain is so unstoppable that everything connected to her narrative moves forward according to her whims. Whimsy as a motivation drains the drama of any real tension when she's on stage.
As Kate puts it, "Characters held to the laws of probability are far more interesting than an omniscient enemy could possibly be."
The more interesting characters are Princess's subordinates, especially Kikiou, who can't take over the world without her help. And she doesn't really care about taking over the world. That's an interesting conflict. As I discuss here, the politics is where the action is.
Politics is what makes The X-Files different as well. The fundamental conflict is not between Mulder and the aliens. Or even Mulder and the Cigarette Smoking Man. It's between the aliens and the government (and then between those aliens and a second set of aliens).
So reasons can always be found for keeping Mulder around. Okay, they do get a bit tortured at times, but "eliminate Mulder" or even "give Mulder a hard time for no good reason" is not the motivation of any running character.
The omnipotent villain is the refuge of writers not smart enough to make them as smart as they're supposed to be. Randomness becomes an excuse for intelligence. But as Kate illustrates with Agatha Christie, a brilliant detective can find plenty of challenges solving ordinary crimes.
Both Lie to Me and currently Person of Interest also do a better job at getting the balance right. Most of the stories are about fairly average people burdened with fairly average problems that have gotten way out of hand and so have to be solved in interesting ways.
In fact, the premise of Person of Interest explicitly states that they won't get cases that involve the world ending as we know it.
On the other hand, a recent episode maneuvered the good guys into a no-win moral dilemma, which I consider equally problematic. Pretty much all of The Dark Knight consists of this manufactured "depth." Reproducing the vagaries of real life doesn't make fiction "better."
Spider-Man and Batman and the rest of the superheros would be a lot more interesting if the bad guys were a lot less bad and were a lot more predictable.
Related posts
The Big Bad
Lying to The Mentalist
Demon City libertarianism
The Problem of the Omniscient Enemy
Labels: books, movies, person of interest, superhero, television, writing, yashakiden