Shameless, useless introduction
As someone who should have better things to do, I spend a lot of my time catching up on TV series that others have seen long ago, but I wanted to make some random observations.
First, a whimsical observation about the state of television these days. I’m someone who quit watching live TV years ago as my 300+ DVD collection would indicate. I also stream things, mostly because I want to do things on my schedule. Remember “Must See TV”? Nope, neither does anybody else. Those days are long gone. However, some streaming content now comes with commercials. If you binge an old TV series as is my wont, you’ll be treated to the same commercial dozens to hundreds of times a week. Back in the old days of TV, commercials used to be about cigarettes and alcohol. Yep kids, look it up. Your parents and grandparents lived in a different world from you. Now half of the commercials are about drugs—no not those kind, despite legalization pushes—prescription drugs. Almost all of these commercials seem to start with:
“If you have moderate to severe colitis, psoriasis, dontwanttotalkaboutitis….”
I’m sure the FDA makes them say that, but my question is, what lies at the other ends of the spectrum from moderate to severe? Nonexistent and terminal? Just askin’.
Blue Bloods
So what do I really want to talk about? Let’s start with Blue Bloods. I have vague memories of watching the first episode way back in 2010 and, finding out they were trying to get one of the main characters to go undercover to infiltrate a secret organization, we decided to skip it. My wife had an observation about any TV series whose reason to exist is a long-term quest for the super-secret big mystery. Don’t Watch It! Remember Lost? John Doe? Well, to be fair, nobody remembers that one. There have been many others, and they all end badly, in totally unsatisfying ways. In any case, that put us off. I now know that Blue Bloods polished off the big conspiracy after about 8 episodes or so instead of pushing it.
Blue Bloods is different and interesting on several levels. First, it’s the story of 4 generations of Irish Catholic New York law enforcement personnel (retired police commissioner, current police commissioner, police detective, beat cop (eventually sergeant but married to a beat cop), and assistant district attorney and their various children. Of course, after 14 years on the air, the young actors who were kids at the start of the show are now all grown up. Interestingly enough, Len Cariou who plays Tom Selleck’s father is only 6 years older than Selleck, but they sell it well. Every episode has at least one scene at Sunday dinner, a family tradition where all 4 generations gather every Sunday. Fittingly for an Irish Catholic family, each meal begins with a recitation of the pre-meal prayer known simply as Grace to Catholics. Each episode also consists of 4 sometimes intertwined story lines from beat cops, to detectives, to prosecutor, to commissioner. Refreshingly each of the 4 stories for the episode seem to revolve around some ethical/moral question. The series, now in its 14th season, doesn’t shy away from contemporary controversies from illegal immigration, to police-hating, with threats to defund the police, as well as false convictions, less than ethical police work, and catch-and-release District Attorney policies. The show deals with all these issues in much less histrionic fashion than the typical cop or legal show. As befits the world-view of a long-time law enforcement family, the characters naturally show a pro-law enforcement bias, but not to the level of caricature and propaganda that other shows frequently indulge in. I find it surprisingly good, and it’s still going on! From 2010 to 2024. Fascinating…, as Mr. Spock was known to say.
Star Trek: Discovery
Which brings me to Star Trek: Discovery. I’d just like to make a couple of observations about the show. The first is, oddly, about the credits. I realize it’s a show with elaborate make-up and special effects, but, on season 2 at least, the credits list 2 producers, 3 co-producers, 3 consulting producers, 5 executive producers, and 8 co-executive producers. Wow! I’m certainly no Hollywood insider, and Hollywood credits tend to be involved in union/guild politics, and deal-making, but it sounds a little overproduced to me. Just sayin’.
Next, a lot of the first season takes place among the Klingons. We all know Klingon makeup has gotten more elaborate over the decades, but I pity the poor actors who not only have to lose almost all of their facial features, but also, in the first season, spoke in Klingon, rendering vocal inflections mostly useless. How does someone use acting talent inside what amounts to a suit of armor while speaking a foreign language? At least in the second season, they lightened up and let the Klingon actors speak mostly in English, but the stiff makeup continues. Special shout-out should be given to Doug Jones who plays Saru, the Kelpien in makeup almost as heavy as the Klingons. He manages to portray his emotions appropriately as well as the small things like a gangling gait with arms loosely swinging side to side that always reminds the viewer that this is an alien and not just an actor in funny makeup.
Special kudos are also due for Sonequa Martin-Green who proves herself quite capable of carrying the show as well as William Shatner and Patrick Stewart ever did, even if she’s not given the role of captain. Also Michelle Yeoh is a wonder to behold in her dual role of wise, compassionate Federation captain and mentor to Martin-Green’s character, then equally convincing in the role of the ruthless sociopathic former Terran emperor. (Don’t ask me to explain. It’s Star Trek, Jake.) I find it interesting that the show (which is set a decade before Kirk’s Star Trek) makes use of a lot of the massive Star Trek lore. During the first two seasons, the show walked a tightrope wire, inventing new technology that they knew they would have to explain not existing 10 years later when the original show was set. They niftily solved this problem by just pushing the show irreversibly 900 years into the future, so they can basically do whatever they want.
One thing for the actors to celebrate about this version of Star Trek is that the characters are given significant growth and change through the scripts. Changes that last, rather than the notorious habit of 60’s episodic TV series like the original Trek for a character to go through a life-changing event in one episode and snap back to exactly who they were before, in the next episode.
I would be remiss not to congratulate the makers of Discovery on something else, something I wish were less remarkable. Did I mention that Sonequa Martin-Green is Black? No, I didn’t, because it’s irrelevant. Clearly, she’s the best actor for the job and has a marvelous range from young person, unsure of herself, to someone at peace with who she is, to confident, take-charge hero. She also plays (in a mirror universe) an extraordinarily ruthless version of herself and even an enraged hate-filled version. She has quite a range. Also, without lectures, or even noting it, the cast includes a male, committed homosexual couple in a very loving, nuanced relationship, and a young actress in a starring role who doesn’t fit the stereotypical perfect model body-type. In season three, they even introduced a teenager who goes by the pronouns they/them. Subversively to those who would object to such virtue signaling, it’s nothing of the sort, because the character actually carries all the memories of 6 prior lives of both sexes. (It’s a Star Trek thing—google Trill if you don’t already know, and really want to.) What’s remarkable about all these things in “woke” Hollywood is that they are totally unremarkable. I’ve not seen any cast members coming out and loudly proclaiming how they are landing crushing blows against the cis-normative patriarchy by these casting and writing choices. Because they’re not. They’re instead showing the universe according to Gene Roddenberry’s own original vision, where no one finds these things either abnormal or as something to celebrate. If you’re someone who really wants tolerance and acceptance of such things, this is how you go about it, showing your audience a good example, rather than haranguing them with lectures.
One other point of interest gleaned from my proximity to Hollywood. I attended WonderCon in Anaheim over Easter weekend. (Not my Easter weekend BTW. The Orthodox Catholic Church still uses the increasingly inaccurate Julian Calendar to calculate Easter or rather Pascha.) In addition to the ubiquitous discussions of AI and its impact, one of the things that the Hollywood insiders noted is that, in our world of streaming and subscription TV, the streaming bosses don’t actually care about how many viewers a show attracts. In fact some shows that attracted huge numbers of viewers were canceled after a trial run. Instead what “the suits” care about is how many new subscribers a show attracts to their service. In other words they rely on viewer inertia. Did you sign up for Hulu and Netflix 10 years ago and keep paying for them each month even though you haven’t found anything worthwhile to watch on them for years? Congratulations Sucker, you’ve just been conned, not out of your life savings, but out of 10 or 20 bucks a month. I wonder if ignoring your current customers and only caring about luring new ones is a truly sustainable business model?
Musings of a Restless Mind 