Soapbox: Zoom and Enhance and other crimes against reality

Okay I'm stepping up and calling out the film and TV folks on this one.

Maybe back in the day when folks couldn't watch show episodes online, couldn't set up wikipedias with every last detail of every moment and so on, it was okay to be sloppy with the details. But that day is long past and the time has come for writers etc to stop with this nonsense.

What nonsense is that. Well it falls into two categories. One is continuity errors. Screwing up details like characters age and such. Now that writer's assistants don't have to spend all afternoon photocopying script pages they can help write character histories etc and verify that the right information is used.

But the other one, the one that really irks me is making stuff up that violates reality. And most of the time it isn't necessary. It's more just sloppy and lazy.

In the season premiere of Person of Interest, for example, Reese refers to the book labeling as 'the Dewey Decimal System" but it isn't. It isn't even close. It's just some random system that probably dates back to before Dewey. So why not just call it 'shelving codes' or 'acquisition numbers'.

IP numbers are often given that aren't even in the numbers used in IPs. Why not just use real IP numbers say to the show's network home page or the city website for where the show takes place or depending on the show, perhaps a public interest site connected to the episode topic.

Phone numbers are another fun one. That old '555' trick wasn't as noticeable when folks couldn't rewatch shows but now its become a joke. Do as one might do with an IP and find a real number. Some shows have done it. Their stars have some big charity interest and their characters phone number actually calls whatever group they support

Using the wrong terms for various medical or forensic terms, totally unreal computer interfaces etc. The list goes on

But the big one, the one that has become something of a joke on the web and shows still pull off on a weekly basis is the classic "Zoom and Enhance". We've all seen it. It's a common one in police shows where they are looking at camera footage. It's all grainy etc and someone says they will enlarge it and clean it up. But it's always photo or video quality that is too poor to do anything with to get more information. My all time favorite is Enemy of the State. They are looking at Will Smith in a retail store and pull a magical 180 degree turn around to see his bag. WTF? How about "do we have a camera on the other side?" It's a high end store so there were probably cameras everywhere.

Seriously writers it's beyond time to clean up your acts. Get the facts, keep the straight and make your stuff make sense. We do notice and that kind of sloppy, lazy stuff can turn us off so much we turn off our TVs.

Soapbox: Why Apple's rumored TV rentals could be a great thing

Yesterday Apple, Inc announced Sept 1st as the date for their annual fall product shindig. While not on par with WWDC or their old MacWorld  fetes,  the Sept gig has for the past several years been when the company puts the focus on their ipod lineup and various associated products such as upgrades  to iTunes (both software and the various stores), the Apple TV and so on.

It is expected that this year they will give us the release date for the previously promised iOS 4.0 for the iPad as well as a stack of other goodies. Among the rumors are the elimination of the ipod shuffle in exchange for a new smaller, touchscreen Nano, a Touch with a front facing camera  for Facetime chatting and perhaps a back camera for photo taking  and a new, smaller Apple TV unit. But the big rumor getting a lot of talk around the blogosphere is Apple's long rumored attempts  to put themselves up as a competitor for Netflix, Hulu and even Cable itself. And while I don't particularly care one way or the other about most of the rumors, this last one has piqued my interest greatly.

The dominant scheme presented  in the rumors is the ability to rent a show (ie series) for a minimal cost per month, most often believed  to be $1. So for $1 a month you would have access to all episodes of say, Gray's Anatomy or Criminal Minds or the upcoming Hawaii 5-0  and so on. Now they don't say if its current season only or the entire library of episodes or even if Apple has plans to add to their library. But even if restricted to the most recent season of any currently airing title (and perhaps the entire library of titles currently not on the air), the notion is an exciting one. Episodes would be ad free just as they are on Netflix, but (if the rumors are to be believed) unlike Netflix they would not be streamed but would be timed files not unlike Apple's movie rentals. Using such a system  would allow a viewer to download and watch offline. Or even potentially start an episode on the computer and transfer it to an iDevice to continue to the end.

And a system like this could be potentially better for the consumers. Cable service is typically at least $50 a month just for the basics, adding a premium channel such as HBO or Showtime adds easily another $10 a month per channel. That's not to bad if one is a couch potato and just watches tons of tv all day and night but lets say that the average viewer watches 2 hours of tv a night, all seven nights a week. That's 14 hours of tv. Even if a couple of hours are sitcoms, we're looking at $20 tops under this alleged Apple scheme. Huge savings.

But the really exciting part of this idea, if it comes to fruition, is the implication that perhaps the networks are finally ready to take online viewing seriously. And by seriously, I mean to give credit to shows for their online viewership.  The Nielsen system is totally out of date and behind the times and yet it and the accompanying ad money is all that is used in the network 'make budget' schemes that judge whether a show will continue. Even the viewer numbers presented by the ratings are not correct as they are extrapolated from a sample that is based on the US Census and thus anywhere from 1 to 10 years out of date. Apple would conceivably be able to provide the networks with real viewer numbers based on how many people are 'subscribing' to an individual show, whether that number goes up or down each month, and even perhaps basic demographic information. And it would be real numbers, not some '100 sample viewers which would be 1 million viewers if our sample is correct' numbers.  Plus there is cash money attached to each show which could be theoretically added to a show's debt if the network was so inclined. And I hope they are.  The time has come to give shows all the credit they deserve. With luck, this is a step in the right direction.

Were you REALLY watching Lost

So the 6 season trek is over and the fall out has been going for about two weeks. And boy have folks been trashing the ending of the show Lost. Words like 'waste of time', 'utter crap' and a lot of WTFs are out there.

But one thing has stood out from these comments. The firm feeling that these folks weren't really watching the show they were given. They made assumptions about what the show was and are reacting to the fact they were wrong.

So what did they think the show was? Easy. They thought it was a fun filled sci-fi action show with a mysterious island that was either Atlantis, or some similar place that we would be told by the end of the movie. With monsters and magic that would all be explained at the end also. Someone would pop up and tell us that aliens were attracted to this place that could jump from spot to spot following leylines to points of convergence where the Earth's magnetic force was strongest, blah blah. That all that 'magic' stuff was really just way advanced alien tech. That this island was the fount of all the myths and legends from all the culturals of the world. Or some such.

Trouble is, none of that is really true. Okay that last point is a maybe. Because it fits with the actual story being told. Cultural anthropologists and such have already put forth the notion that all the various tales of the world are about the same thing just the details have been eroded over time like a massive game of 'gossip' (or you might have called it 'telephone' as a kid). So that point isn't too insane and fits with the notion of universality that is within the show.

So what, you curiously ask, was the real story of the show. Simple. It was about the very nature of life and the struggle of man to figure it all out.

We have a group of varied people from different walks of life, but ethically, financially etc whose personal journeys have converged at this point place and time. This is symbolic of how we encounter folks every day, be it the clerk at the gas station, or a future spouse. These particular folks are dead in a spiritual but not literal sense. Their lives are all topsy turvy and just plain messed up. They are so mired in all that stuff that they can't pull themselves out alone although they all perhaps tried (because they believed they had to).

The plane crash gives them a second chance. It wipes the slate clean (a tabula rasa). What happened in the past doesn't matter, only what they do. They can stay the same people or recreate themselves in this kind of spiritual limbo.

What is important isn't what happens but how they react to it. How the various events change them, mold them, teach them. How they learn that they are not each an island to themselves where what they do doesn't matter but in fact ripples out to affect others. Change them, for good or for bad. All the way until their very deaths. And on their journey they make such strong connections to these particular folks that even after death, their very souls reach out to find the connections again.

Now I know what you are saying. This is a load of crap. None of this is in the show. I'm just spinning it to justify wasting my time every week for the last 6 years. I contend that you are the one what is wrong. You got so wrapped up in your smoke monsters and conspiracies that you weren't paying attention to the vast number of clues hiding under the riddles. Because it was there.

Where?

Well for one, how about the names. John Locke, Rousseau, Hume to name a few. These were all philosophers and writers contemplating the human condition and the nature of society. Debates like whether society is good or evil and whether returning to the savage nature would be how you find the core of a person's true soul and personality. Do you think Christian Shepherd was chosen simply because it sounded good? Doubt it.

How about the myths and legends. Folks debated if the island was Atlantis, Eden, Mu, or even something predating all of those things and actually being the source of those stories. Religious references were drawn from both Western and Eastern sources. Even so called New Age sources. Mentions of things like "points of strong magnetic forces" draw to mind tales like the Australian legends of song lines and convergence points (which also appear in Native American tales). Mixing sources wasn't about the writers being sloppy or making things up as they went along but rather a goal of showing a universality the same as not having a white bread cast that all speaks English in perfect mid-west American accents.

Heck if you really look at the various character stories there are overlapping tales that fit (with varying degrees of perfection) into Joseph Campbell's monomyth of the hero's journey. According to Campbell, that journey is THE tale in mythology. The core story of understanding life itself.

And then there were hints within the show. Mentions of good versus evil, tabula rasa. Even the oft repeated "Live Together, Die Alone" mantra. These were not just bits of cheesy dialogue. The whole Dharma project, which was supposedly in part about understanding the trumped up Valenzetti Equation were about life, society and so on. The point of the equation was less about the values of the numbers and more about the idea that you could change the 'end of the world' by changing any of those values. Other parts of the Dharma project were about creating the perfect society, as part of changing that value in the equation as well as understanding the forces of the Island (which could be viewed as life itself and how sometimes those forces can change you for the better, or drag you down and destroy you)

I challenge everyone that threw up their hands in disgust at the ending of the show to stop and consider whether you were paying attention to all these such details or were just going from week to week waiting for them to name the Island or explain the numbers. And even perhaps to go back and watch the show again. Only this time REALLY watch the show. Ask yourself 'why that name?' and 'why those words'. 

And if you still think that it was just a load of utter crap that they made up from week to week with no clue where they were going with it like the hack no talent writers you currently think they are. Well we'll just have to put this on the list of things we agree to disagree about and never speak of it again.