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TV: Vagrant Philosophy, Or, If a Plot Doesn't Make a Turn, Does Anybody Care?
Thu, 13 Oct 2005

And when I say vagrant philosopher I refer to the esteemed streetside ranters -- those colourful homeless figures standing on a box outside your nearest shopping mall, barking out when the end of the world will occur. They're usually just running on at the mouth until they've driven everyone away.. like bloggers one might say ;) Well, on the off chance I've not driven everyone away with my incessant prattlings-on about retro-gaming I offer something else today :)

We follow a few TV shows these days -- not too many since theres not a lot of really good television on at all -- but a couple shows. For instance, Lost is a little interesting, but we've started to lose our fancy... perhaps we were intrigued until the summer break and now we've lost it? Desparate Housewiveswas also interesting.. until last season ended.

We were pretty interested in Desparate Housewives for a little while -- sure, it was a little soap-opera-ey, but with hints of murder and abduction and other intrigue we got hooked. But then hint or fact would pop in show after show with little being resolved. It kept our interest for a little while, but with literally dozens of things left hanging... over the summer we just started to forget what was going on and lose interest. Lost is similar -- drawing out a few specific plotlines for months at a time (just show us whats in the bloody hatch already!) and filling your heard with side plots and factoids that never close up -- its like a bad adventure game. "Open hatch" - the hatch is locked; "explode hatch" - the hatch is too strong. "Throw television out window."

These shows were not the first, either; both my wife and I never watched the X-Files -- at least, more than a show or two; here we have an entire series that would open up questions each episode, and never close any of them. To me, it just seemed as if the authors were half paid - beginning a story (or any endeaver) is easy, but following through consistently -- thats the meat.

Perhaps even The Matrix movies did this - a little of the old 'leave them hanging', though I suppose Matrix more got bitten by the old 'last installment overshadows the prior installment', whereby a weaker latter film obscures the greatness of a prior film. (Imagine if you caught a new 4th Indiana Jones movie and found out he was a gay hemopheliac? Not that theres anything wrong with either attribute of course, but suddenly you'd remember the Indiana series as terrible despite their overall greatness. Normal people will remember the Matrix as a good action flick, but the series as a whole ... too nerdy for them to follow with not enough substance beyond fight scenes.) While no hard core science fiction by any means, Darth Vader goes bad - we know he's bad because he kills the children and gets his limbs chopped off. Sure, you can do a sequal and leave a few things open (will there ever be a Star Wars IV?), but I think you need to tidy up a little after yourself.

So theres my post -- we've lost interest in Desparate Housewives; we're losing interest in Lost. Sure I liked Xena but we needn't be that obvious.. but maybe the story arcs should be measured in weeks or maybe months. We're busy people, we're stressed out -- we don't need to wait an entire year to find out the hatch is full of ... more goddamn questions.

Goddamn hatches.

To summarize - no more wishy washy bits; cut to the chase. Give us an ending. Doesn't have to be 'the earth explodes', but give us something to chew on, would ya?

Spoilers!

Alright, with Lost.. theres dozens of questions. If the bunker is 20 or 30 years old as suggested, how was there enogh food for one operator to survive all that time? And _milk_? Push a button every hour? Come on -- software is good at pushing buttons on a timer, so it must be a psych experiment. Polar bears? Fine. But 'black ghostly smoke' and 'chains that grab you by the feet and suck you into the ground'? Those are things (Dr. Evil devices) we know will _never_ be resolved.. just factoids forever left hanging because someone thought it was neat after long ago forgetting what their core story was. Evil choker-Canadians? Child stealing Beachcombers? People starting fires on the other side of the island? Crashed Columbian drugplanes? Giant monsters tht crush trees and chase characters, but not one character can be bothered to tell another what they saw.. or Crom forbid.. they show _us_ what the frickin' monster looks like?

The authors need to read some classic mysteries; go read up some Arthur Conan Doyle and get back to us -- they knew enough to leave some meat on the bones so the reader could have a chance at piecing things together if he was on top of his game and had a little creativity. Here we're thrown conflicting tidbit after tidbit, half maguffins - tricks to throw you aside - without ever really giving you a chance to figure it out. Bah!

Definition of Maguffin

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