Amiram Hayardeny’s BigMouth

Not the end you think.  I was actually referring to the end of a TV show.

For quite some time, maybe as long as a full year, friends have been telling me about a “must see” TV show.  The level of enthusiasm was somewhere between excited and lunatic.  And while curiosity is my middle name, I took my time.  After all House had a few more patients to be rude to, and Start Trek had a few more places to visit in the Delta Quadrant.  But curiosity, as it may imply, does its job picking at the brain to the point where you actually go to the video store, see the show and decide to actually get it.  The first season only though.  I never thought that multiple seasons should be purchased upfront, before the quality, interest, added value can be established.

But truthfully, I wasn’t that excited.  The name of the show implied a lot of noise, for a singular event.  If you wish, a two year buildup of a storm that ends up in a single shower.  Tons of smoke and ashes ending up in a single small, minor eruption of a volcano.  Get the drift?

Prison Break, by definition is the act of, well, let me think how to say it, breaking out of prison.  It’s a one time thing.  You get into prison, and you break out.  I believe that the show actually aired three years ago, counting about twenty two episodes per season, I assumed that it meant a volcanic storm.  A major buildup for something next to nothing.  So my expectations weren’t very high to begin with.

After cleaning the fish tank, watering the plants, pumping the cornered bicycle with a manual pump, and washing the clean dishes, I ran out of excuses, and Dorit and I sat down to watch the pilot.

It was a grand moment.  We felt like we are part of some mysterious, obscure cult, which secretly convenes after the children went to sleep to watch something suspenseful and intriguing.  I wasn’t disappointed.  As it turns out, though, I ran out of luck.  The worst possible scenario happened.  I thought it was boring.  Dorit loved it.  We have to watch it.  As we enjoy each other’s company, parting during prime time is not an option.

There are many shows that I like.  Many shows I don’t, but at least I understand why other people like them.  For the life of me I don’t understand why people like this show.  Is it the squinting that happens once every two minutes, when the leading character surveys his surroundings trying to make sense of it?  Is it just the prison setting?  The conspiracy?  The script is shallow, predictable, and as full of holes as Swiss cheese.  A funny error (I think it’s an error anyway) is a VHS videotape of the “murder”.  The tape is watched multiple times, and each time, the subtitle “rec” is shown as part of the tape.  Now, I’m not a professional photographer, but as far as I know the “rec” subtitle only shows on the monitor while you’re recording, but it doesn’t show on the tape.  By the way, if you choose to watch the tape on the camera itself, the subtitle would say “play”…

I like to watch shows with objectives.  Shows that present a problem, a bug if you will, whether it’s a murder, or a sickness, or even a new race of aliens in the Betazoid System.  The plot continues as multiple reasonings are used, possible solutions are presented and scrapped, and then, finally, in a climactic scene, the actual solution is presented.  What’s the point in a problem that continues on and on and on, for multiple seasons?  And as for the question in the title?  Lets guess.  The brother on death row is put to death, while the other brother gets out on parole and marries the lawyer.  Right.  Let me guess again.  They run away, for two seasons they dodge the secret service, until finally their innocence is proven on the fourth season.  One of the brothers marries the lawyer.  End of story until the next bore is released.

I guess I’ll have to make up for it with more popcorn…

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David Cook. I told you. As I said just a few weeks ago: I will get his CDs, and wait in line for a conert ticket. David Cook rocks!

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Strange as it may sound, CNN is being sued by the Chinese people. A group of fourteen Chinese lawyers filed a lawsuit in a Beijing court against CNN and commentator Jack Cafferty. According to the lawsuit, Cafferty had made insulting and derogatory comments about the Chinese people. Among other comments, Cafferty had said: “We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart”, “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years”.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/23/content_6638727.htm

For one, I strongly disagree with Mr. Cafferty. I think he’s playing deaf and dumb. Wal-Mart has such incredible buying power in China, that it’s able to convince (or rather twist the hands of) manufacturers to sell at unacceptable prices, possibly knowing that quality will undoubtedly be compromised. Wal-Mart also has the power to demand quality, and refuse to accept poisonous pet food or lead painted toys. The responsibility is with Wal-Mart, and some Americans who insist on low prices regardless of quality. Stereotyping a whole people as “goons” and “thugs” is unacceptable, particularly when you know many, and particularly when it’s done by a globally watched TV network. CNN is NOT an objective observer and reporter. It SIDES, it promotes, it sometimes DRIVES events.

So Mr. Cafferty is wrong, for starters. But he hides his big tongue and sharp teeth behind the “freedom of speech”, which is a good legal cover, but a bad moral one.

But this is common. Some reporters make a comment, they watch the consequences and they move on. I remember clearly when I was growing up, I used to see “apologies” in the paper. The inside column of page 11, right between the obituaries, and the library opening time, there was an “apology”, for ruining a person’s life, accusing him, wrongly, of something he’d never do. But would they pick up the pieces? Walk to the store with him to help him take the glares? Escort his kids to school? Wipe his mother’s tears? Pay his alimony bills? Of course not. The are on to the next story.

The media should have responsibility. There should be some major consequences to untrue reporting. But not only. I would love to see some punishment, when the media drives an event that turns really bad. An interesting example would be South Africa. Indeed, I was one kid who growing up screamed and yelled along with Bono: “Free South Africa”. I believe Apartheid was terrible. I still do. But I can’t ignore the fact that life expectancy in South Africa is one of the lowest in the world - a man making it to 45 in South Africa has beaten the odds. Making it there without carrying HIV is outright miraculous. Being well educated on top of that with a reasonable income and a good career horizon is as likely as being hit by a lightning rod twice at the same spot, in the summer, in the desert…

Does Bono care now that infant mortality went up, life expectancy down, GDP down, HIV up? I doubt it. He’s freeing Tibet now.

The media is important, if they were doing their jobs - reporting situations. But if, just for the sake of the argument, they were doing more - like siding with one side, supporting, promoting, driving events, then we’re in deep shit. The reason? Simple: nobody elected them to run our lives. Media driven societies are nothing but dictatorships in democracies clothes.

China isn’t perfect. Nobody is. China isn’t so bad either. Don’t let anyone decide for you, and let me assure you, the media is siding, and what you’re seeing on the news, is partial at best.

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