The Culture of the Now

Last night, I was able to watch a little more than half of the third episode of the show "Fringe".

I was probably okay with it, even with the gross image of the mad scientist (one of the good guys!) drilling a hole into a patient's head with a little electric drill. Did I mention the total lack of anesthesia? Consent forms? A sterile environment?

Yeah. Let's just have a hole drilled in a guy's head right now, and worry about way bad infection later on. Oy.

Apparently it all took place in one 24-hour period. Hmm, the lead investigator never goes home to sleep, never changes her clothes, runs hither and yon all day long and is just fine chasing down a bad guy and pointing a gun at him.

Um. And no pesky internal affairs asking how the bad guy got away from her (he committed suicide by stepping in front of a speeding bus).

So. She's still chipper at the end of the day, after witnessing one murder and one suicide, having drawn her gun and been ready to shoot (Condition Red, I believe). She doesn't need any down time or a drink or a a couple of pills. No, she just wants the mad scientist's son to play her a little Bach on the piano. In the lab.

"Nah," he says. "Bach is too stuffy. What you need is some jazz." And he starts noodling around, playing a version of a jazz standard (Someone to Watch Over Me, maybe?).

I wanted to kick the smug son-of-a-bitch in the balls. The show's writers and almost certainly the producers just made their allegiance to the current hipster generation known.

Hipster? You know, the generation that doesn't like anything that was created before their tastes were formed, decided, jelled.

I suppose it's actually more of an attitude than a generation, but it's an attitude that dismisses history as irrelevant, favors appearance over substance, the culture of the now over civilization.

Had the investigator stopped (shot) the piano player and insisted on her Bach, I would have been thrilled! To see a character with values other than those of the culture of now and to see her maintain, defend, demand those values would have been wonderful.

As it is, "Fringe" is just another stupid show.

Last night on TV

I haven't watched TV on a regular basis for quite some time, because I've gotten out of the habit. But last night I had the time and I watched some or most of three shows:

Supernatural, on the WB

Invasion, on CBS

and Law and Order: SUV, on NBC

So what did I think?

In no particular order:

Law and Order has been telling grim fairy tales for a long time, and is now targeting younger and younger teens as its audience.

Plus the usual liberal kool-aid...

(But remember there's no media bias!)

Supernatural is chasing the X-Files audience...scary enough without being stupid about it, worth another look I suppose.

But Invasion left me dumbfounded. In last night's episode, the good guys chase a rich man's beautiful wife because she's pregnant with an alien baby. (That's bad.)

In the end, she's reported dead (missed how) and the team blows up her expensive, beautiful house. The final shot of that was a good guy walking (walking!) away from the house, down the slope, as the house explodes in the background--no distress, no fear, no remorse, no doubt. (That's good.)

What the--?

Okay, if the slasher movies of the '70s and '80s taught us all anything, it's that having sex kills.

So bad SF of the '00s teaches us that...we learned nothing?

Secondly, the good guys are, um, dweebs. Biologist Girl (Carla Gugino) spent all her time pursuing a Ph.D., Computer Guy 1 lacks social skills (just a guess), Computer Guy 2 is a dwarf with an on-line gambling problem, Charles Dutton is big and black, and the token white guy is very unmemorable.

Nobody on the good guys seems to have sex.

Indeed, they are concerned--obsessed--with people who do have sex.

That is, the bad guys. Well, bad girl in last night's episode.

She's beautiful, sexy, strong, smart, seemingly one step ahead of the team, and married to a rich, powerful older man.

God, this sounds like high school: The cheerleader and the football captain, in other words.

And the nerds completely destroy the hot girl who's having sex--kill her and burn her house to the ground.

So the slashers are the good guys, out to keep anyone from having sex?

I don't watch TV anymore on a regular basis...