Cobb: Fall Season

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September 26, 2003

Fall Season

Many many years ago fall was a big deal. New cars, new football season, new grade in school, new TV shows.

Now is about the time for me to be watching Monday Night Football with my son. So this Monday we watched the Raiders get stomped for a quarter or so. It was an odd experience, since we are both gamers, to sit passively staring at the tube. Most of the time what goes on on the big screen in the living room is our doing, but having hands free to embrace was unusual. He likes football. Interesting.

Last night was interestingly weird. I was watching the new show 'Threat Matrix'. We watched it together until the spousal unit came in to rebraid his hair. I haven't watched a prime time show in a very long time and so I had to rely on my wife's reactions before I changed the channel. My boy is very good guys - bad guys oriented so I figured it was OK for him to watch what was essentially a cop show despite all the Hells and Damns peppering the doofus dialog. I told him that the bad guys were the ones selling drugs. But after a short time, the wife's nose got too screwy so I had to flip over to Survivor.

This week I watched the premiers of The West Wing and ER. They both seem so much slower than they used to be. Pumping up the emotion with slow speech and awkward silences. It doesn't quite work. Law and Order was excellent as usual. CSI was good but also full of gratuitous sexual snickering and innuendo.

These four, and probably others, are the verbal judo shows. But is the judo for its own sake or is it material to the subject? In ER, all the technical jargon and verbosity just so much nonsensical subtext for the drama. Notice the shots of the main characters with the patients out of frame. They mumble the jargon and eyeball the twisted bodies briefly, but all the emotion is in their looks towards each other. This formula is the same for The West Wing, but the jargon and fast talk a bit more integral, however it completely falls apart if you watch a re-run, as I have been doing recently on Bravo. With CSI, the integration is just right. There's not too much drama between the main characters and the technobabble serves to move the story along. It's a proper mystery show. With Law and Order, the dialog remains superb, there is no wasted effort and everything moves as it should, without a great deal of verbal frippery.

Even though I enjoy ripping it's 'desert of trust' formula, I look forward to this season's '24'. And I have been pleasantly surprised by the hilarity available on Spike TV. There is nothing so funny to me as the pratfalls of morons trying extreme street sports, or as on 'MXC' Japanese torture sports. The comics at Spike have overdubbed the Japanese language version of 'Almost Anything Goes' (which was based on an earlier Japanese stunt comedy / reality gameshow) and delivered a mix of American Gladiators, and Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Grab your gut and don't drink any milk. This stuff is sidesplittingly funny.

Posted by mbowen at September 26, 2003 08:19 AM

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