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9. May 2011 by admin.
The other day I found myself watching Coal, a reality TV show about life in a West Virginia coal mine. For a couple of hours, it was engaging television, as we saw the rigors and practical problems of digging coal out of the ground. The miners themselves are practical, salt-of-the-earth types, a reminder that we’re not yet a nation of empty airheads. They speak with West Virginia accents, but I guess their parents told them not to mumble, so they’re actually more intelligible than many characters on TV.i
I remember an illustration of a coal mine from my third-grade social studies textbook. It showed a little electric railroad operating in the mine to bring the workers in and the coal out. The mine in Coal isn’t like that: the passages are about 3.5 feet tall, so everyone must walk stooped over. The vehicles are electric, but there is no railroad. There is very little infrastructure to speak of: most of the electricity for the equipment comes from a cantankerous generator in a trailer.
The mine isn’t run by a big company. The ‘president’ of the company leases the mine site from some unnamed source, and then has the challenge of generating enough cash flow to pay the lease, as well as the employees and other costs of running the business. In any case, big companies don’t run coal mines by digging tunnels underground anymore. They just dig and blast from the surface, making a really big hole, and then take the coal out.
I wonder about the economics of running a mine as the basis for a TV show. Given the dollar figures that they discuss, I would have expected that the fees paid by the TV producers would relieve a lot of the financial pressures on the mining business, and the payment to the employees would mean a significant boost to their paychecks. But what sort of deal did they actually make?
It’s engaging television, and I’ll probably watch it again. But it says something about our country that people doing hard work and actually producing something is now unusual enough to merit a TV show.
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2. March 2009 by admin.
Posted in New York City, Television, Money | No Comments »
7. June 2008 by admin.
My wife and I went to see the new Sex and the City movie today. All the reviews of it that I’ve seen to date considered it either wonderful or horrible. My sense of it was somewhere in between: it isn’t a cinematic masterpiece, but it’s a good light entertainment. It would have been better if it were cut about twenty minutes shorter, but I can’t complain too hard: today was the first seriously hot day of the year in New York City, and it was good to sit in an air-conditioned movie theater.
My wife introduced me to the TV series when we got married. If I had watched it when I was a lonely single guy, I would have hated it: how could I find a decent companion when women were like that? But ensconced in a happy marriage, the women of Sex in the City seemed unreal: they lived under different laws of relationship physics than the rest of us, and their situations were entertaining when it happened to them, but in the real world, we wouldn’t do things like that.
The TV series got formulaic after a while, and came to a reasonable end in 2004. The movie represents a continuation of the story a few years hence, and a chance to answer the one thing that I never understood:
What does Carrie see in Mr. Big?
Throughout the entire television series, Carrie Bradshaw, the lead character, is irretrievably attracted to ‘Mr. Big,’ but I could never understand why: Big is a self-absorbed asshole with a fear of commitment.
In the movie, Carrie and Big have been living together, and decide to get married so coldly that the theater had to shut off the air conditioning to prevent frostbite among the audience. You might have thought that a few years with his true love would have softened Big, but no: he’s still a self-absorbed asshole. If he were as unsure of himself in his working life as in his relationship with Carrie, he’d be a total loser instead of a bigshot construction executive. Later, he backs out of his own wedding, and we’re not surprised.
In the end, it’s all resolved, and yes, Carrie and Big get married. (I don’t think I’ve given away much: in this case, the journey is more interesting than the destination.) But the groundwork is there for a sequel, say 3-4 years hence, when they get divorced….
Posted in Movies, Television | No Comments »
2. June 2008 by admin.
This weekend, I watched the remake of The Andromeda Strain on A&E. When the original came out in the early 1970s, I thought it was way cool: crack scientists in a secret underground lab, trying to understand an actual (if microbial) creature from outer space. I was curious how it got transformed for our time.
First, the story has been retuned to our current mania for death and destruction. In the original, Andromeda did almost all of its killing before the picture started: we drive around the town of Piedmont and wonder what how everyone died at once. But in the new version, Andromeda is the Energizer Bunny of microbes: we see it kill again and again. The odd thing is that its victims only die after they have passed it to someone else. Later, it kills plants, as well. We’re supposed to believe that Andromeda is intelligent, that it has been sent across billions of miles over at least some number of years with hostile intent. Mostly, I think the scriptwriters are just lazy.
In the original, the military may have had their sinister intentions, but they were secondary to the scientists. Now we see them blundering about throughout the picture (and getting killed): they’re not only evil, they’re stupid as well. The unspoken message: they will not protect you. Meanwhile, the handsome young journalist slips through their fingers. We’re rooting for him, of course, but it’s yet another dimension of military ineptitude.
Another change was to adapt the story to our mania for instant communication. Originally, the scientists were holed up in their top-secret lab, and part of the story turned on a lapse of communication due to a trivial failure of a Teletype machine. In the current version, the scientists are on the phone half the time, even talking to our handsome journalist. What part of ‘top-secret laboratory’ do these people not understand?
Finally, in the original, the key to disarm the atomic self-destruct device is turned over to one of the scientists because he’s a single male, and the Odd Man Hypothesis suggests that single males are most likely to make the correct decision in such matters. We never knew anything about his personal life beyond that, and didn’t think anything further about it. In the current version, it’s impressed on us that the Odd Man is gay.
When I was eleven, the original Andromeda Strain was a shining illustration in the power of reason and logic, although I didn’t put it in those terms back then: it was just really cool. Even though the scientists in the new version do manage to save the world, it’s a pale imitation of the original.
Posted in Television, Fearmongering | No Comments »
28. May 2008 by admin.
The Memorial Day weekend was somewhat of a lost weekend for me. No, I didn’t get drunk: instead I indulged in my secret vice, reality television.
I have been bitterly disappointed by the state of televised entertainment. I would love to watch the tube and get a good laugh, but situation comedies are populated by clueless buffoons who prattle on about pointless idiocies. The last network TV program that I made time in my schedule for was The Apprentice. At first, it was an object lesson in how to succeed in business: the characters were driven to do their best because they wanted–really wanted–to work for Donald Trump. But then it came to be about the personalities, then the alleged deprivations of sleeping in a tent. In its final incarnation before they pulled the plug, the original strivers were replaced by indifferent celebrities who were playing for charity.
So I spent the last weekend watching The Deadliest Catch, the saga of Alaskan crab fishermen. No buffoons; no idiocies; just the drama, humor, and, yes, glory of good hard work. When I was a kid, the airwaves were full of stories of adventures and characters who were not dysfunctional.
Today, such characters are the province of science-fiction series, as well as Deadliest Catch and its kin: Ax Men, Ice Road Truckers, The Alaska Experiment, and America’s Port. Besides the drama of accomplishing something worthwhile, the reality shows include animations illustrating the details of fishing or logging or whatever.
Today is Wednesday, the night of my newest vice, ABC’s Wife Swap. Sometimes I go out on an evening walk with my wife and miss it, but I’ll watch it if I’m home. I want to rail at it as child abuse, but it’s strangely compelling. Perhaps it’s that the producers select two couples that are polar opposites: super slackers vs. anal-retentive achievers. With such extreme parents–of either stripe–exposing the children to something different can only be an improvement. OK, it’s formulaic, but it works.
But then, so is Deadliest Catch: launch the pots into the water, wait a bit, throw the hook, and then pause just before the contents of the pot come into view….
Back to politics and whatever tomorrow!
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