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[aadler]

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I didn’t return home (upstate) on Tuesday as intended, but I did get some writing done on “God Save the Queen”. Not a lot, but enough to say I’d done it and (one may hope) prompt me to keep it up.

No, I came home yesterday, to prepare for drill this weekend. And to check my progress on the Army physical fitness test. And to watch television.

APFT, better but still not great. I’m at 100% on sit-ups (of course, have been for weeks), and now past 90% on push-ups and continuing to get stronger. As for the two-mile run … good news, I made qualifying time after a substantial period of time off; bad news, it’s the worst I’d done since the middle of September. The APFT is this weekend, so I have two days to regain some lost margin. My legs were strong, didn’t give me any suggestion of weariness, but I have to work on my wind.

I’ll pass. I always do. But I have a chance here to SOF-qualify, and I want to do it. Army standards call for 60% overall to pass the APFT, but the units (like mine) included in Special Operations Forces prefer for all their people to pass at the 70% level. I had worked up to within 16 seconds of 70% on the run; today I was 49 seconds away. I’ll have to do a lot of improving fast.

Now, thoughts on television. Any potential spoilers hidden in the cuts.

First Cut — Jericho

Like many offerings in the new season, this show has clearly been influenced by Lost. I loved the series opener, found the second episode to be slower and less interesting, and tonight’s put us back toward that original track. I’d love to keep following this one for awhile, but I don’t give my loyalty cheaply. The show has to keep delivering.

As far as that goes:

• Nice, the mystery that is Hawkins. The implication is that he and his family had come to Jericho seeking anonymity and safety; further implication is that he has current or former intelligence background (he knows radiation safety protocols, can transcribe Morse code and recognize — or perhaps even understand — spoken Mandarin, he thinks tactically), and is in the habit of keeping that fact to himself. He comes across as a good guy, but nothing can be taken for granted.
• The deputy mayor, married to the doctor and fooling around with the sexy tavernkeeper. He seems to feel real loyalty to, and affection for, his wife, but he keeps going back to his bar-squeeze. And she allowed it, even after she’d seen that he was playing a double-game. He’s regarded in some circles, if not most, as having gotten his position through family, but he handled himself pretty well with the truculent good ol’ boys in the tavern (last week’s episode). Though I have little sympathy for adulterers, he has enough other qualities going for him that his influence could increase.
• The brooding-kid (orphaned now) and the snobbish teen-queen (likewise orphaned). Despite having been one, I feel no affinity for alienated outsiders, but — his mannerisms aside — every time he actually does something, it’s perfect for the moment. She … well, she showed signs of humanity, but let it lapse the moment her ‘peers’ showed up to forcibly re-establish the social structure. How long will it be before they learn that nobody gives a damn about the in-crowd anymore? That broody-boy has (or at least seems to have) a lot more to offer than any of them do unless they start changing right now? Though I don’t really think we’ll see the moment when their vanished elitism gets mashed into their faces, I would thoroughly enjoy it.
• The mayor’s other son, the lifelong screw-up, come to town in a failed attempt to borrow money and — since the moment the mushroom-cloud-that-used-to-be-Denver appeared — showing consistent leadership. Obvious remaining issues between him and his ex (despite her being engaged to someone who, though absent, was still alive at last word), equally obvious that there’s a connection building between him and the gal-on-the-bus. I prefer the latter, but the ex acquitted herself pretty well with the prison escapees out at the farm (also last week’s ep).
• The situation itself. Multiple cities gone, and nobody knows who did it. F16s and tanks spotted in a hurry, but nobody knows for what. Right now, Jericho is isolated and lacking any but the most fragmentary information … but that won’t stay the case forever, and new developments could change a lot.

As I said: the show has to keep delivering. There’s enough material there for the writers to do it, if they know their job. Let’s see if they do.

Close First Cut

Second Cut — Lost, Season 3

I like the fact that the show continues to expand, tries to keep doing what worked but without getting itself bound up in dead ends. Now we have several new and intriguing personalities and possibilities to think about, and I’m willing to stay with the journey for a while longer. I wouldn’t have minded seeing something about what was happening back in the original camp, but clearly that will come. Meanwhile, much to think about.

• So now we get to start learning about the Others: not just one-dimensional villains, but a varied cast of personalities who, by their own statement, believe themselves to be the Good Guys. I remain unconvinced — killing innocents to get your way doesn’t strike me as Good-Guy behavior — but there are obvious rich revelations and relationships in store.
• Is Michael gone for good? I doubt the Others double-crossed him (if they wanted to break their word, they could have done it without giving him their boat), but I’d love to see that treacherous, murdering, self-justifying bastard get what was coming to him.
• Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, treated very differently at the beginning (though Kate and Sawyer are now in adjacent cages). Experimental protocol? Dictated by circumstances, as in the Others had to work with the imprisoning facilities available to them? Or even something so simple as each subject’s treatment being carried out by a different person, following his/her own inclinations? As with all else, wait and see.
• We saw with the second season that just being dead doesn’t mean a character won’t be seen again, and this continues. Flashbacks abound; Jack’s father, though retaining his original flaws, shows more character than we could see before (while Jack, at least this time through, seems somewhat less admirable). Who else will continue to contribute to the storyline, though currently deceased? Heck, will Locke’s father turn up on the island? Stranger things have happened.
• And, of course, though this is from last season’s end-episode, rather than from tonight’s: For the first time in two years — a bit over two months, from the castaways’ perspective — we saw the outside world in a non-flashback (the two guys calling from the Antarctic monitoring station, with the tycoon’s daughter taking their report). Will there be more of this? How much more can the series tolerate without losing internal dramatic tension? And where will these outside views lead us? Imagination runs wild.

For all its being so phenomenal at the beginning, Lost always struck me as having limited legs; how long could an audience be kept on the hook by a situation that demanded resolution? I retain my original misgivings, but the show has delivered for two years now, with intelligence and style, so there’s reason to hope it can continue to do so.

Close Second Cut

Third Cut — The Nine

This is another one that will stand or fall strictly on the writing. The opening gimmick is enough to catch the attention, but not to hold it without powerful follow-through. The first episode, of course, was devoted primarily to establishing the basic situation; what is done with it will develop on its own schedule, and — for now, at least — I’m inclined to stay with it, see where it leads us.

So, nine people were kept hostage in a bank for over two days, and all nine came out alive (though one died — or was pronounced dead — very shortly afterward). My own count has them as:

1. the bank manager
2. the bank manager’s daughter
3. the doctor
4. the doctor’s girlfriend
5. the bank teller who was shot
6. the bank teller (sister of #5) who wasn’t shot
7. the assistant DA
8. the cop
9. the nebish acclaimed as a hero

So, did I miss anybody?

My original thought was that the first season would carry us through the two days of the hostage drama, alluded to but never seen; sort of like 24, but in retrospect, and with twice as much time for material. Preview of next week’s ep makes it clear, however, that the retrospective revelations will be layered in with continuing events, current choices and behaviors being influenced by the intense shared experience. It seems to me that, IF this show survives for a second season, the relationships established during that initial experience, along with the events that come subsequently, will power continuing scripts. If possible, I’ll ride along with it for a bit. It could fizzle, or it could be really good.

Close Third Cut

I messed up Tuesday night, arranged to tape one show and watch another … but instead, taped and watched the same program. Bad enough in itself, but the one I’d meant to record, but lost, was the opener for Veronica Mars, Season 3. Several different intensity-levels of drat. I mess up like that every now and then — not much recently, because I was out of the country — but I wish this hadn’t been one of my bobbles. Now I have to check for any re-broadcasts, and I’m not really in good position to catch any such.

Still, I’m lookng forward to seeing how this goes. Veronica and crew in college. Think anyone learned from the less-than-outstanding move of Buffy & Friends to the university scene? I’m hopeful. The VM writing team has a good track record, and (if nothing else) they have the BtVS example to serve as warning.

Much to do before Saturday. Still need to work up a list of exactly what.

Comments

[aadler]

To me, the most horrific, chilling villains are the ones who perpetrate atrocities in the name of “the greater good.”

I’ll agree (from my own experience) that those of our enemies who are convinced of their own righteousness are far more fearsome than the ones we can see as simply self-serving. However, I have a powerful suspicion that, once we know the details of the Others’ agenda, there will be a substantial part of it that we can’t simply dismiss as wrong.

Michael hasn’t gotten past Sayid, Sun and Jin yet.

That’s something I hadn’t considered. I don’t really expect them to stop him, however. That situation strikes me as one to be held in reserve, and addressed later.

I’ve heard a rumor that they plan for this season to be the last season, with a definite ending in mind.

That’s actually a very interesting approach, and it would be refreshing to see someone pull it off. I always suspected, in the Tim Daly TV-remake of “the Fugitive”, that they were working steadily toward a planned conclusion, but that series didn’t last long enough for me to get my answer. Such an approach certainly has advantages over the standard practice of pushing a show far past the point where it’s ceased delivering what originally made it so popular. (Can anyone spell “X-Files”?)