When I last wrote about my television addiction back in January, I had partly
written in the hope that by confessing my crimes, I could be purged of
them. Once I had confessed all, the hope
was my soul would be unburdened and I would be free to turn over a new leaf and
rid myself of my slothful habits.
Alas, it
was not to be. I didn’t magically lose
my addiction just by blogging about it.
And so,
since January, I regret to say that I’ve wasted many more hours of my life watching
TV.
Despite the
huge amount of TV I’ve been watching, it remains my ambition to give up TV, and
start fully living my life.
…Or that
failing, at the very least to redirect more of this time towards reading, which
may still be boring and solitary, but at least would improve my mind.
At the
moment, however, it remains only an ambition.
Instead, I keep turning on the television to fill my hours.
(In my
defense, I think most people watch a lot of TV when they live alone. When you live by yourself, in the evenings it
seems to quiet and eerie to just sit silently with a book, so I opt for the
sound and picture show of television.
And in the morning, the apartment also seems too quiet, and so there’s a
huge temptation to just turn on the TV some more. And of course in the afternoons…)
Well, my
philosophy is that if you watched it, you might as well admit it. So here is another post confessing all the
hours I wasted on TV, and giving my short capsule reviews on various shows.
(As with before, my viewing habits are limited entirely to what is available at the cheap DVD stores in Cambodia. There are shows that some
people have recommended to me that I haven’t been able to track down out here,
but this is what I did watch.)
Simon Schama: A
History of Britain
I’m a huge fan
of documentaries, and this one was very well done and well produced.
Also, added
to Monarchy and This Sceptred Isle, this show
helped to complete my education about Britain ’s long history.
When I
first started watching the show, I expected it to be another This Sceptred Isle—a show that would
methodically go through all the centuries of British history.
I was
slightly disappointed then when I realized that the series was skipping over
large parts of history entirely. The
series would chose on event to examine in detail, and then jump ahead 100 years
or so to the next event.
The English Civil War, for example, was very well done, but other interesting
events like the War of the Roses got skipped over completely.
Nonetheless,
it did a very good job with the stories that it did chose to focus on.
Oliver Stone’s Untold
History of the United States
Another history documentary.
This
documentary series is at times spectacular.
Oliver Stone is no stranger to cinematic storytelling, and, in the
earlier episodes especially, he brings all his storytelling abilities to this project. The archival footage, the dramatic music, and
the bold narration all contribute to the feel of watching something epic.
The first 5
or 6 episodes are examples of documentary history at its absolute finest.
The problem,
from an entertainment perspective at least, is in some of the later episodes
the editorializing gets in the way of the story telling. For example, the episode on the 1980s is less
a coherent narrative than it is just a list of all the reasons Reagan sucked. The episode on
George W. Bush is the same.
I don’t disagree with Oliver Stone’s politics, but the powerful
narrative thrust of the early episodes gets a bit muddled in the later
episodes.
Still,
inspite of the fact that the narrative quality of the series is not entirely
consistent over all 10 episodes, the high points of this series more than make
up for the low points. It’s well worth
checking out.
Sidenotes:
1). I’m not sure all this information has ever been in one
documentary series before. I remember having
to learn all my information about the untold history of the United States in piecemeal fashion. I learned one thing here, another thing
there, and just gradually accumulated knowledge.
Now it’s
possible to just watch this documentary, and in 10 short hours accumulate all
of this knowledge in one go. Which
brings me to my next point:
2) It’s really surprising they allowed this to be on
TV.
And 3). One last observation: Oliver Stone is famous for his
conspiracy theories in his movie JFK,
but fortunately he largely stays away from conspiracy theories in this
series. (He hints that relations between
Kennedy and the CIA were not good, but stops short of trying to explicitly
connect any dots.) In The Untold History of the United States,
Oliver Stone largely sticks to facts that, while they may not be largely
reported, are not contested. I think this series is credible.
(In my
youth I was on-board with some of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theories, but over time I’ve come to agree with Chomsky that spending too much
time speculating on unknowns is a waste of time. For Chomsky’s thoughts on why we shouldn’t
waste time speculating about conspiracy theories SEE HERE.)
I, Claudius
I didn’t
expect to see this 1976 BBC miniseries in the Cambodian DVD shops,
but I was very happy to stumble upon it.
Actually, I’ve
been wanting to get my hands this series for about 20 years now, ever since I read the book I, Claudius by Robert Graves back when I was 14.
(Robert
Graves actually wrote two books about the life of Claudius: I, Claudius, and the sequel Claudius the God. I never went on to read Claudius the God because our school library didn’t have it, but I,Claudius made a big impression on me. The BBC miniseries covers both books.)
Considering
how old this series is, it holds up remarkably well, and in my opinion is every
bit as interesting to watch as more recent historical dramas.
It also
shows how great historical fiction about ancient Rome can be produced on a small budget.
And a final
bonus: I, Claudius has some great
famous actors in it: Brian Blessed, John Rhys-Davies, and for Star Trek fans, a young
(well…younger) Patrick Stewart playing Sejanus.
Roots: The Next
Generation
I was first introduced to Roots when my 5th grade school teacher
showed us the first couple episodes.
It wasn’t
until years later, when I was in Japan , that I finally got my hands
on the whole series. (The Japanese video
rental store near my town had the series in stock—in English with Japanese
subtitles.)
But I’ve
never had an opportunity to watch Roots:
The Next Generation until now when I stumbled upon it at a DVD store in Cambodia .
Before I
watched this series, I had always assumed that Roots: The Next Generation was just an attempt to milk more money
off of the original Roots. But I was mistaken. This is the ending of the story, and without
this sequel the series would not have been complete.
Roots:
The Next Generation came out in 1979 just 2 years after the original Roots, and it picks up right where the
original Roots left off. And it completes the goal of the TV series
which, like the book, is to follow Alex Haley’s family tree all the way from Africa to the present day.
I suspect
what happened is that the book got split into two different TV shows for
economic reasons—the TV company wasn’t willing to commit to the whole story
until it knew it had an audience, and only after the success of the original Roots did they agree to complete the
story.
But now
that the whole series has been produced, they should really just stop selling
it separately as Roots and Roots: The Next Generation and instead
put box up both DVDs together into one package and sell the whole thing as Roots, because it really is just one
continuous story.
The TV show
is from 1979, and has a lot of the hallmarks of television drama
from the late 1970s/early 1980s that strike us as cheesy today—over-acting,
overly dramatic music that swells up at the end of each episode just as a
character looks off into the distance and says some sort of dramatic line, a
complete lack of any subtlety, et cetera.
And yet,
inspite of all its flaws, it’s still incredibly addictive to watch. The cheesy 70s television drama still has a strong narrative appeal, and I found
myself getting sucked in episode after episode and unable to pull myself away
from my couch. (I guess it was not for
nothing that Roots was one of the the most
watched mini-series in American television history.)
All the
famous actors who participated in the series also make it fun to watch: Peter
Fonda, Marlon Brando, James Earl Jones, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis.
The White Queen
…And then
low behold, I’m walking around the DVD shop, and I see that
they actually have gone ahead and made a TV series based on the War of the
Roses. (All I had to do was ask for it
apparently.)
This series
only covers the tail end of the War of the Roses, so I guess I’m still waiting
for the epic series that would trace the entirety of the conflict from the
beginning to the end. But it was still
good history for what I got.
Now, I know
this series got pretty terrible reviews [See Wikipedia. Also the avclub article]. And yes, a lot of the acting could have been better.
And yes, the pacing also should have
been better. (Some events that really
should have received more dramatic importance—like the death of King Henry VI—just
got muddled through very quickly).
But, for
all its flaws, I still found this series fascinating to watch.
If you don’t
like history, you should probably stay away from this series. But if you’re a history geek like I am, then
you’ll be willing to forgive a lot of bad acting for a good historical story,
and inspite of everything I found the underlying story fascinating.
It’s a
complicated part of British history, and they did a very good job of trying to
provide some sort of narrative to it. It
is also interesting to compare their portrayal of Richard III with Shakespeare’s play. Roughly the same events
happen, but they put a very different interpretation on the motivations of the
characters.
Michael Moore’s The
Awful Truth
This wasn’t my
first encounter with The Awful Truth. I’ve seen it before back in the day. But when I saw the DVDs in the store, I
decided to buy them and work through the series again anyway.
Parts of The Awful Truth I remembered very
well. Parts of it I didn’t remember at
all. (I’m not sure if that’s because I
never saw the whole thing, or if it’s just because my memory is so lousy). But anyway, I’ve now
worked my way through the entire season.
Like most
liberals, I have a lot of ambivalence towards Michael Moore (something - I’ve- expressed in this blog before). I sympathize with his politics, but I believe
that anything that misinforms or misleads does a disservice to the political
discourse.
(The extent
to which Michael Moore’s movies are misleading is always a source of
controversy. Part of the problem is that
most of the right-wing hatchet men who attack Moore ’s
movies are seldom any more honest than Moore
is, and this leads to a lot of claims and counterclaims that just make my head
spin.)
However,
the great thing about The Awful Truth
is that it isn’t a documentary—it’s just pure political theater, so you don’t
need to worry about fact checking it, you just enjoy the theater. Michael Moore does some great political
stunts like getting throat cancer victims to sing Christmas carols at Philip
Morris, for instance. Or driving around
a Sodom mobile to
every state where sodomy is still illegal.
In the
course of the show, Michael Moore of course manages to really piss off a lot of
rich and powerful people—making me a little bit suspicious about the fact that
the show was mysteriously cancelled after two seasons despite getting good
ratings.
And yet, much
of the format of The Awful Truth—sending
correspondents out to conduct satirical interviews with people who don’t
realize they’re being satirized until it’s too late—is what The Daily Show is still
doing.
And in
fact, considering The Daily Show manages to produce 4 episodes a
week (compared to The Awful Truth’s
12 episodes a season) The Daily Show
is arguably doing Michael Moore’s job a lot more efficiently than Michael Moore
ever did.
Carnivale
I watched this because Whisky Prajer strongly recommended it to me after my last post confessing all the TV shows I’ve wasted my life on.
I’ve got
mixed feelings about this show.
On the one
hand, the general idea is really cool.
And, at
least in terms of just creating an atmosphere, Carnivale does a great job of mixing in a magical fantasy element
with the real events of the 1930s.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening credits:
Furthermore,
I think it was an interesting idea to try and re-imagine the life of Father
Coughlin (W) and the pro-fascist forces as part of a
wider spiritual battle between good and evil.
But the
pacing of this show just killed me.
I can
handle a mystery getting teased out for an episode or two before it’s
resolution, but when a mystery is just endlessly teased out and never resolved,
then I start to get impatient. And when
the writers seem intent on adding just more mysteries and questions while
appearing to forget about the ones they’ve already introduced, then I just get
frustrated.
This may
just be a personality preference. I like
nice neat logical stories where everything ties up neatly at the end. Furthermore, if I’m forced to choose between
the two, I generally prefer story to atmosphere. People who have different personalities than
mine will probably enjoy Carnivale
more than I did.
For Whisky’s
take on Carnivale—SEE HERE.
Another
interesting link is this article: Carnivale Broke My Heart. (Link via
Whisky.)
House of Cards
I had high hopes for this
series. I love political dramas, and I’m
a big fan of Kevin Spacey.
Alas, I
regret to say that the series was awful.
So awful, in fact, that I didn’t even bother finishing the last few
episodes. (What was the point? None of the characters seemed at all like
real people, and I the plot was obviously manufactured and contrived.)
The AVclub has an excellent rundown of all this show episode by episode, and I
basically find myself in agreement with their analysis of all the show’s
faults.
The Newsroom
I first
started watching this show because it was recommended by the magazine Asia Life, one of the
expat magazines out here in Cambodia .
I was only
a few episodes in before I started wondering what in the world the editors of Asia Life were thinking. The show was so cheesy, and so contrived, and
just…well, ridiculous really.
And yet,
despite all the problems with the show—despite the cheesy soap opera
relationships, the contrived plot points, and the arrogant 20/20 hindsight
smugly applied to every news event, I still found myself watching episode after
episode.
Aaron
Sorkin may mess up a lot of things, but he still understands the
mechanics of screenwriting very well.
Each episode may be terrible objectively if you focus on the plot, but
Aaron Sorkin still knows how to keep the dialogue snappy and he
knows how to keep the forward momentum of the story going. So the show may be terrible, but it never
really gets boring. And, I have to
confess that even while I was rolling my eyes at how cheesy the plot was, I
still kept watching it.
Also, if
you’re a political junky, then all the political diatribes mixed-in with the
soap opera drama is another guilty pleasure.
On several of the polemical speeches throughout the series, I think
Sorkin did a very good job of sticking it to the Republican Party.
Of course
when Sorkin bashes causes I’m sympathetic to, like Occupy Wall Street, then I
enjoy it a lot less, but I guess that’s just my liberal bias double-standard
showing through. (I think actually there’s actually good case to be made for
the strength of a grass roots bottom up leaderless movement. But the straw-men Occupy Wall Street
characters that Sorkin created were never able to give a good defense for
this.)
Link of the Day
A Brief Interview with Noam Chomsky on Anarchy, Civilization and Technology
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