It was a wonderful time to recharge, after a few weeks of more travel than I've been used to, and a few more coming up. I'm on a plane right now to DC to visit my best man Erik. Well, technically I'm going out to do some work for a hospital in Fredericksburg, but I'm looking at it as an excellent opportunity to see my good friend. Take these moments when they're given, I say.
I took my late evenings with the dogs at my feet, the kids asleep, the socks sorted, and I got caught up on some media: I finished up the first season of Homeland - a manchurian candidate like show that won Claire Danes the Golden Globe, and she earned it, for sure. Damian Lewis also was very good as a frustratingly opaque POW who may or may not have been turned by to a terrorist in captivity. I'll leave the plot points at that, because at least one dear reader is just 2 episodes in, and the DVDs will be released in a few weeks and I want the REST of you to consider watching it. WARNING: This is a showtime series, therefore there are boobies. Move past the boobies (nowhere near as many as Game of Thrones, btw), and you'll be in good thriller-land.
I read an interview with one of the creators of Homeland Alex Gansa - he was a showrunner for "24" for a season, so he knows how to build tension... but I can reveal in a spoiler free manner that Claire's character is certainly no Jack Bauer - I think she holds a gun about once in the show... but is no less destructive in her own way. Two things struck me about the interview - first was the fact they're set up for a season 2 (or more), which leaves me with an odd feeling: When the last moment of episode 12 flashed by, I thought "now THAT's an awesome way to end this". I felt like every character had a great arc - we saw everybody's low and high, and the "situation" played out well for 12 episodes - there was a strong arc... I just don't know how that can be done in a second season - and I'm not sure I want to know what happens next. But I suspect I WILL want to know before long...
The other thing I read was that while they had an overall arc for the series, that on and episode by episode basis they were pretty much making it up and seeing where it goes. He revealed that even on 24, when there was a mole, they usually picked the mole right near the end based on the person whose activities were most likely to have been mole like. That means they were counting on a mole existing, but didn't know WHO until the last minute.
This sits WRONG with me: I don't think it's too much to ask to have these things actually plotted and planned out... but apparently series television is a lot looser than that. I guess it comes down to my ultimate disappointment with X-Files, where it turns out they really had no cohesive overall arc - that they were making it up as they went, and in the end tried to retrofit a conspiracy into there... but there were many episodes that didn't gibe with the big picture - where a person who is later revealed to be a traitor actually risks his/her life to save the person they were secretly undermining...
In Homeland, I can vouch that they DID make it all make sense - there's no "hey but why did he then..." moment at all - it's very consistent, but almost in spite of itself. In the interview it's revealed that a very key plot point was established through improvisation... which was a bit amazing to me. On the other hand, I have to respect that even though they had an arc in place, they were able to start to refocus parts of the plan based on strengths you find in the people playing the characters.
I was thinking of this more with last night's Downton Abbey - a show that is quite wonderful, but the episode last night was just a bit of a turd, with the ridiculous "Martin Guerre/English Patient" subplot - you KNOW that wasn't in the big arc planning sessions.
My other media completion was Neal Stephenson's REAMDE, which I loved beyond all reason, despite the fact it took over 50 pages to truly HOOK me. But as I've written before, Stephenson meanders a bit before letting the story start to go: In his 3000-page Baroque trilogy, it takes fully 200 pages to find a plot accelerator. REAMDE deals with a virtual world, but also about Iowa farm people, Idaho survivalists, Russian mobsters (and former Spetznatz heroes), Chinese hackers and street vendors, Hungarian IT support, MI6 spies, and Islamic Jihadists. It really gets roaring.
What's fun is that the main villain is not so much a criminal mastermind as much as a very good situational improviser: He doesn't think more than one move in advance, and as such is unpredictable and unstoppable. You can't root for him - he's just too terrible - but he's FUN to read, which is a great thing.
And so, I got caught up on media, and will be dong REAL work for a while, I suppose. Sigh.
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