This blog is a rant disguised as writing advice. Therefore, when I say “When you’re writing something, be sure to do your research”, what I really mean is “Man, don’t you hate TV shows that assume we’re all idiots?”

I realize that there is a necessary balancing act between too much research and flying by the seat of your pants. A story too concerned with 100% accuracy can often appear infodumpy, and if the writer includes too many details it can really bog down the pacing of a story. I also understand that you’re never going to make every reader/viewer happy. (If you’re ever looking for people who care too much about minutae, read the “Goofs” sections on IMDb. My favorite is this gem from Bourne Ultimatum: “In the opening minutes of the film, Bourne has his nightmare in Goa and goes to the bathroom. We hear the fluorescent lamp ballast (choke) buzzing at 60Hz, however if Bourne is in Goa, India like the film says then it should be buzzing at 50Hz.” Obviously, you’re never going to please these types of people.)

But, despite that caveat I want to firmly declare: there are times when you simply have to have your facts straight.

The most egregious genre (or, at least, the genre I’m thinking about at the moment) is cop shows. We Americans are raised from little kids to know what’s in the Constitution, and when we’re in the fifth grade we study the Bill of Rights, and we all know what an illegal search is. I’m not complaining about the little-known trivialities of police procedure–I’m complaining about when a cop breaks into someone’s house to search it. That’s illegal. They may find evidence that catches the bad guy, the TV show ends happily, and everyone in the audience is thinking “ALL THAT EVIDENCE IS GOING TO BE THROWN OUT OF COURT, YOU MORONS.”

This is likewise a problem when a cop beats a confession out of someone, which is done all the time in stupid cop shows, generally when something is time sensitive, like a bomb is going to go off, or a kidnappee is locked in a box somewhere. If a real cop did this, the criminal would sue, the cop would get demoted or fired, and the bad guy might not go to jail after all.

This drives me crazy.

Lots of cop shows get around this by making a private detective do the dirty work: they’re not cops, so they can do whatever they want! True, a private detective cannot perform an illegal search and seizure (because he can’t even perform legal search and siezure), but that private detective can definitely go to jail for breaking and entering. Of course, that would never happen, because the ultimate message of cop shows is: as long as the bad guy goes to jail, the ends justify the means. Beat up a criminal, break into a house, coerce a confession, entrap a suspect–that’s all okey dokey.

Which leads me to my real point: yes, we all know these laws, and yet we ignore them (with few notable exceptions) when it comes to our entertainment. Is this a sign of deep philosophical rumblings, where we Americans view our society with a kind of Old West justice–shoot first, ask questions later? Or is it, perhaps, that we catatonically gobble up any lazy piece of writing slapped on the screen?

(I know there’s a third option, which is “Sheesh, Rob! It’s escapism! Calm it down, fatboy!”  This, I suppose, is a valid point. It’s still apathetic–it assumes that escapism can only be found in lazy, crappy writing, when that is most definitely not the case. But I will concede that there are worse things in the world, like genocide, maybe.)

So, after all that, I guess my point is this: man, I hate Castle.

I find Fall TV to be an interesting phenomenon. We go into it expecting most of it to be terrible, and that most of the new shows will be canceled within a few months. Entertainment magazines and bloggers make predictions about what will be first on the chopping block. I understand all about Sturgeon’s Law (that 90% of everything is crud), but I still have to wonder why TV networks can get things so wrong so regularly. Is the answer just that making TV shows is really hard? Or is it that TV studios are really stupid?

Anyway, I’ve been watching more TV than I would like lately. Which is not to say that I don’t like watching TV, but that I haven’t been sleeping much this last week (due to a cold that didn’t let me breathe when I laid down, and also due to a baby who is currently for sale.) (Cheap!)

A few thoughts on the new season. I’ll quite likely spoil things without warning (or regret).

The Event

The premise of this show is surprisingly simple for being a big conspiracy show. There are two main plots: one has a twenty-something guy who’s trying to find his kidnapped girlfriend (whilst being framed for a murder), and the other has the President of the United States dealing with some aliens in an Alaskan prison. The aliens have powers, they look like humans, they’ve infiltrated society. And so on.

So, it’s going to be more long-form mystery/conspiracy stuff. The question is: will it be good, like the first season of Heroes, or will it suck, like all the other seasons of Heroes? Will it be layered and complex, like Lost, or will it be a cheap mystery/conspiracy knock-off, like FlashForward? My answer: almost certainly the latter.

Here’s the biggest problem with The Event: they don’t have enough ideas. The structure is great and fun, how they bounce around through the time line to see different things from different angles. But here’s the problem with that: the different viewpoints don’t reveal anything significantly different.

For example: we knew that Leila (the aforementioned girlfriend) was kidnapped from her room on the cruise ship. The show had explained that, it had inferred that, and then we saw her with the kidnappers. But then we have a flashback where we get to watch it happen–for no reason whatsoever. Both of the episodes so far have been full of this kind of thing: flashbacks that reveal nothing, give no clues, no additional insights. It’s like they have 20 minutes of good material (well, “good” material) and then they have pad the rest of the hour with repeated, obvious fluff.

All of that said, I don’t hate the show and I’ll probably give it a few more weeks to find its feet before I give up. I don’t know why. I think it’s because the actors are likable. There’s nothing about the show that’s really making me mad–just making me sad. You’ve disappointed me, The Event. I expected more from you. I want you to think about what you’ve done. (Or not done.)

Survey says: I’ll give it another few episodes.

Hawaii Five-O

As the well-known theme music came on, my baby said “Gramma”. The point of this story is to show you how adorably cute my little baby is, and how obsessed my mother is–my parents’ NetFlix queue is an endless string of Hawaii Five-0 discs.

Despite that, I am not too familiar with the old show. I watched a few episodes, but not enough that I really knew all the characters. Which, it turns out, is just fine because the new show doesn’t have much to do with the old one.

One of my biggest pet peeves with cop shows is the complete disregard for reality. I’m not talking about nitpicky stuff about the details of police procedure–I’m talking about the big stuff that gets cases thrown out of court: illegal searches, beating up suspects for information, shooting indiscriminately. We, the viewing public, are not idiots–we know these basics of the law–and yet most cop shows (NCIS, Criminal Minds, Bones, Law and Order: SVU, CSI, etc) all ignore these things completely. And–SPOILERS!!!–so does Hawaii Five-0.

Here’s the really weird thing about the show: the characters are all bland stereotypes, especially the main character, Steve McGarrett. But Danno is really interesting. It amazes me that the same writers who created everything else also created him. (My guess: it has more to do with the actor than the writers.) (Neat trivia: the actor is James Caan’s son!)

Survey says: no thanks.

Chase

This is a show about US Marshals who are tracking down bad guys. The end. That’s all you need to know.

And actually, that’s just fine, because every time that they take a break from the plot to focus on the characters–such as the interaction between the marshals when they’re eating breakfast–makes me want the bad guys to shoot them all.

I missed the first episode, but the only redeeming quality to the second episode was the bad guy, played awesomely by Robert LaSardo. Alas, the bad guy was captured and won’t be in other episodes.

Survey says: Meh. I’ll probably treat this show like I treat Bones: if it’s on, and it’s late at night, and the remote is too far from my hand, I’ll watch it.

I think that’s all the new fall shows that I’ve watched so far. I’ll try to catch up on some of the others and blog again if any of them are any good. (Unlikely.)

What have you guys been watching?

A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post making fun of Lost. I had watched the first season, but gave up fairly early into the second when it appeared the writers weren’t really going to answer anything. I know that Lost fans will disagree, so I offer the disclaimer: yes, I know that they kinda, sorta explained things throughout the show and kinda, sorta explained everything at the end. But that doesn’t mean much to me, because I had given up on it by then. My complaint was not that the writers couldn’t surprise us with an explanation, but that it didn’t seem like they were planning on it. It felt weird for the sake of weird. It didn’t feel like an intricate mystery; it felt random.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’m revising Variant and one of my editor’s comments is that we need just a smidgen more explanation/foreshadowing/clues. Not too much–we don’t want to give all the mysteries away–but we need more than what’s there. It’s like my complaint with Lost: I don’t mind a difficult mystery, but I want to feel like it’s going somewhere. I want to be assured that there actually is an answer, and I just need another clue or two before I can figure it out.

I’ve always been fascinated by the questions that never get answered, and I think there’s a fine balance between not enough explanation and too much.

Back in high school I read The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux, but when I think back on it I rarely think about Raoul or Christine or even the Phantom. Instead, my favorite part is a tiny section of Chapter 20, where Raoul and The Persian are venturing down into the depths of the opera house:

Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them.

“Flat on your stomach!” whispered the Persian.

The two men lay flat on the floor.

They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.

They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat….

It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.

“Whew!” said the Persian. “We’ve had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers’ office.”

“Is it some one belonging to the theater police?” asked Raoul.

“It’s some one much worse than that!” replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.

And that’s it. That’s all we see of this “shade in the shade”. We’re left with the mystery: who could be “much worse” than the police, but somehow helpful to the opera? How is there a second mysterious figure lurking under the opera house, yet who is completely uninvolved in the current kidnapping and rescue?

I love this character–it works so well. First, it gives us an illusion of depth: there is much more going on below the opera than we previously thought–the phantom isn’t the only scary thing down there; he’s just part of a larger scary setting. And the unexplained mystery can be left unexplained: we’ll find out the phantom’s secrets in great detail, and our main plot will be resolved, but we’re not going to find out everything. Just like we talked about with Jaws, we’re not afraid of a big shark, we’re afraid of the unknown. So, even though the phantom eventually becomes known, there is still plenty of unknown to keep things creepy–and to keep us thinking and wondering.

On the other end of the Spectrum Of Unexplained Mysteries: Eric D. Snider wrote a great article about the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Anyone who’s seen the movie knows it’s cryptic and strange. The last time I saw it, I was about 14 and I don’t remember it making any sense at all. I’d be interested to watch it now and see how my perception of it has changed. In an interview, Stanley Kubrick, the director, stated that the mysteries should NEVER be explained:

How much would we appreciate La Gioconda [The Mona Lisa] today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: “This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten teeth” — or “because she’s hiding a secret from her lover.” It would shut off the viewer’s appreciation and shackle him to a “reality” other than his own. I don’t want that to happen to 2001.

So, we have all these differing degrees of mystery: Lost, where it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to get answers, but we (kinda, sorta) do; Phantom of the Opera, where the main mystery is completely and thoroughly explained, but other secrets lurk in the background; and “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where no answers are given and interpretation is left up to the viewer. (And, on the other end of the spectrum, we have stories like “The Sixth Sense”, where you learn The Big Secret, and say “OH! Well, that explains EVERYTHING!”)

And I bring all of this up to say: I’m still struggling with this stupid balance between Too Much Explanation and Not Enough Explanation. This revision is going very well except for this last issue. I think my editor and I are going to be discussing this in depth.

What are your thoughts? Do you like mysteries left hanging? Or do you like everything explained? What are your favorite examples?

In recent days I’ve watched two documentaries that have totally screwed up my life. I feel like all my life I’ve been merrily running stop signs, blissfully ignorant that I was running over puppies–puppies that give you cancer when they die. (I’m not so good with the analogies.)

The first documentary I watched was Food, Inc., a rather damning look at the food industry. It’s not a PETA-style video where they focus on the plight of animals–those sad, delicious animals–but instead this one talks about how the mass industrialization of the food industry is unhealthy, harmful to the environment, and possibly corrupt.

None of this came as an enormous shock to me; I briefly worked for ConAgra, a massive food conglomerate that was mentioned in the show. As such I’ve read lots and lots of studies about food additives and growing methods. And, for the most part, I was fine with it. There’s nothing particularly shocking in the statement: “Guess what! Food can make you fat/sick!” However, I was rather upset by the blatant corruption in the system: the former beef lobbyists who now run the FDA and the crazy laws that prohibit anyone from criticizing the food industry. (WHAT?)

Shortly after watching Food, Inc. I saw a related documentary, Super-Size Me, in which a healthy person eats only McDonald’s food, three meals a day, for a month. It was fun to watch as he got sicker and sicker, gaining 25 pounds in 30 days. It was fun to watch as he puked trying to eat a Super-Sized double quarterpounder meal (because he used to eat healthily and couldn’t handle the quantity of food). And it was embarrassing to think that I could fairly easily eat a super-sized double quarterpounder meal, because I’m a fatty.

Anyway, I imagine that I could have drowned my concerns in a pile of cheese fries, but I made the mistake of watching these shows with my wife, and we are now Living Healthy. In fact, just yesterday I bought couscous (if you can imagine) from Whole Foods (if you can imagine). (This was shortly after I bought Diet Coke at the regular grocery store.)

(Amusing note: my one major business success when I was at ConAgra was that I studied and recommended the discontinuing of Orville Redenbacher’s Organic Kernels. So… sorry about that, Whole Foods.)

I don’t imagine that my diet is going to change dramatically. I’ll eat out less, but I’m already eating out less (because the doctor hates me). More importantly, we’re going to try to ween our kids off of McDonalds. We hardly ever go there as it is, but it’s their favorite place on earth, surpassing church and Disneyland. Whenever we drive past they immediately announce they’re hungry.

It’s not that I don’t like healthy food. I quite like it. It’s just that I also like convenience, and healthy food is a pain in the neck. Subway (the only moderately healthy fast food) is lousy and all of their sandwiches taste the same. And salads at fast food places are, well, salads, and no amount of sad animals in confined spaces are going to make me like salads (unless they–the salads, not the animals–are sprinkled with bacon, which ruins the whole point).

I mentioned my predicament on Twitter and was immediately followed by a Vegan awareness campaign. I read their literature, and it appears that vegans don’t eat honey because it’s mean to bees. But I say that bees deserve whatever treatment they get. Maybe that should be my new food philosophy: only eat animals that are mean. Bees, lions, badgers, weasels.

I believe I’m going to start a new restaurant.