The Day I Quit Giving a Shit about ER

Also written while bored on an airplane.


I was a huge fan of the ER tv show from the first episode. A year or three ago we stopped watching. We’d been tapering down and found it less and less essential for years. I can tell you the episode of shark jump for me personally. It was when Carter went to Africa for the first time, and I think it exposed a moral failing of the show’s world view that I had never noticed before.

The storyline at the time involved Carter’s grandmother working to get him involved with the family foundation, ideally taking it over. Think Macarthur Foundation, that’s always what it seemed blatant to me that they were trying to evoke. Carter was ducking out on these responsibilities, refusing to return phone calls, etc. At some point, there was a conversation where he explained why he was going to Africa to treat patients rather than helm the charity. He said something like “I don’t want to spend my time with rich people, I want to help people.”

Now, a doctor wanting to expend the enormous commitment of time, energy and their soul to go to Africa and help is commendable and they should be praised to the rafters and encouraged. However, any doctor that is presenting with the Carter Dilemma and makes that choice is an irresponsible idiot. I daresay few MDs that do this are refusing to head a wealthy charity by their actions. To rephrase slightly the Carter speech, I heard it as “I don’t want to control the allocation of billions of dollars of charitable assets, I want to help people one by one in the Congo.” When you work out the calculus of good that can be done with either path, they differ by orders of magnitude. “I don’t want to help millions when I can help dozens” is the other way to phrase it.

So here’s the world view of ER in a nutshell (simplified a little, but still.) Any rogue maverick always has more value than any system. A doctor or med student who is sure of a fact and willing to risk a patient’s life on it outweighs any body of knowledge and procedures. The person who cares the hardest is always the most technically correct. Playing by the rules is for pussies.

After years of this show and its “medicine by machismo (or machisma)” I am so sick of it that I will never watch another episode again. I believe one person can and should make a positive difference for another person whenever and wherever possible. When you decline a unique and explicit opportunity to make a positive difference for a thousand because you are more comfortable with the one, you are just jacking around with the commonweal and failing big time.

Sharpe

All summer long, I’ve been watching the Sharpe TV movies that aired on BBC America. For years, I’ve been hearing from people in the science fiction tribe about how good these books and movies are. Other than one or two that were lost in a DVR flakeout, I saw every one of the films. I’ve never read any of the books. I went in with a certain set of expectations, which were kind of high and after having watched all the surving recordings my final conclusion is … ehhh. I didn’t hate them (as I did with the new Battlestar Galactica or new Doctor Who) but I definitely didn’t love them. The first two movies I liked more than the rest. It didn’t take very long to get highly formulaic. There will be nobleman officers, they will talk smack to Sharpe and in the end they will either be dead or grudgingly admit he’s a good officer. As fun as that is, the impact wears away the dozenth time.

I do kind of understand what the science fiction fans see in it. At its core, the Sharpe series is the original Star Trek. Sharpe is Kirk, and the various places they go around Spain and France and Portugal, every town is a planet. They beam in, Sharpe finds a pretty girl and gets laid, they solve the problem/win the battle and move on. Just like Star Trek, when a crewman you don’t recognize goes in, don’t get attached to them. When I saw the episode that had in the “Chosen Men” a new guy named Shillycorn, I knew what his fate held. Sure enough, 10 minutes later he had been hanged.

I cared just enough to keep watching. If I had disliked one or two of the episodes in the middle just a little more, I might have bailed. It was that close. I did like it when it got kind of swashbuckly. Some of the elements were enjoyable, such as the battle that turned on whether the soldiers could fire two rounds or three per minute. If two they would all be killed, if three they would win the battle. That kind of stuff I liked, but the farther in we got, the less there was and the more tedious each episode became. Perhaps some of the best bits of the latter episodes involved Sharpe at his worst as a person. There is a bit where Sharpe commits a personal betrayal of a huge magnitude against someone who has worked hard to save his life. The actor playing the betrayed friend sells the entire movie with one quarter-second change of expression. If there were more bits like that, I’d have liked it better. Let’s not even get into the last film, Sharpe’s Challenge which probably should have been left unmade. Sean Bean and Daragh O’Malley were just too old for that to be reasonable, the story sucked and the whole thing seemed lackluster. For a month BBC America billed it as a “triumphant return” but the thing itself was barely watchable and a poor finale to the series.

The best aspect of the whole series is a metaphorical one about the nature of leadership. At its heart, the message is that the difference between a good leader and a bad one is whether he (or she) will stand with you and not run when the bullets start flying. When a good leader stands firm, so will you. A lot of times, it is really that simple.

Overall, I’d give this series the most neutral recommendation possible. I don’t advise you watch it, I don’t advise you skip it. The TV show was such that I can’t imagine ever reading one of the books, even if I hear they are far superior. I don’t feel like my time was wasted, but I don’t feel gratified either. I give it a thumb completely sideways.

Studio 60

I’ve seen the commercials for the upcoming Studio 60 series and heard the hype about it, and I have a one word reaction: “Yaaaaaawn.” I’m one of those people who thought the West Wing was good in parts but I never worshipped it and never found it great. Frequently I found it too annoying and I didn’t even watch the last few seasons, bailing even before Sorkin left. My problem with Sorkin is the overwhelming cutesiness and writerliness of his shows. I never ever for one second believe these are real characters. I can always hear Sorkin behind the actor and see his hand working the gears. I just get tired of it.

I have no plans to watch this show. It’s funny that podcasters and bloggers catch shit about talking about their own medium too much, but half of all network TV shows are about TV shows.

Update: I’d been curious why all these people are commenting on a several weeks old post about how unenticing I found the promos for this TV show. Turns out this post is on the first page of the Google search for “Studio 60”, right below the link to the official site for the show. I was as good as my word and passed on the show last night because I truly don’t care. Whereas most people find Sorkin’s involvement a selling point, to me it is a hurdle to be overcome. I don’t want to listen to lots of rapid-fire bon mots and long impassioned monologues that are oh-so-clever and oh-so-cute. I got sick of that by the second season of the West Wing. People seem to like it and more power to them, but I opt out of this particular self-referential solipstistic exercise.

This all proves there is no justice. If I’m going to get this kind of traffic from Google, I wish it pertained to a subject I care about rather than this one, of which I am already sick.

Leno

I saw Jay Leno do his standup act in the late 80’s when he played at Georgia State University. I thought he was gut-bustingly funny, even funnier than George Carlin who played Georgia Tech around the same time. Nowadays, though, I can’t watch him for 30 seconds without turning off the TV. Has he just become a glib auto-pilot hack, or have I become a surly crank? I guess both might be true.

My Enthusiasm is Curbed

As much as I enjoyed Seinfeld, having now watched a number of the episodes there is no doubt in my mind that Curb Your Enthusiasm is a far funnier show. The chef with Tourette’s episode with the “I am Spartacus” swearing moment might be the funniest scene of TV I’ve ever seen. Forget Lucy shoving chocolates in her mouth, that’s not even a grin on my scale. Larry David reigns supreme.

(Un)Reality

I had been drifting downward in my network TV watching over the last few years. With the rise of the reality show, I’m out. There is not one reality show I give a shit about, and every single new one that’s been announced in the last year just makes me cringe and/or throw up a little in my mouth. Every time I think they’ve hit bottom, they find a new bottom and then they feed on it. What the current spate of programming is doing is motivating me to get a MythTV box set up and work out the system to make vlogs easily viewable on my TV. Either that, or convince me to take the time to figure out a good distro to flash onto my underutilized Sharp Zaurus to watch videos on it.

Doctor Who

I’m watching episode #4 of the 2005 Doctor Who series. I’ve heard good things about this, and for the umpteenth time I take the contrarian view. Either I or everyone else has gone crazy. I’ve stuck it out for four episodes, but I don’t think I can take any more. I liked the character as a kid across the Pertwee, Baker and Davison versions. I like Eccleston as an actor (thought he was fantastic in 28 Days Later) and yet … this show isn’t doing it for me. Despite the larger budget and better effects, it does not interest me. Note that this is exactly the same way I feel about the modern Battlestar Galactica It looks better, is much slicker and yet feels empty, vapid and soulless — and that seems to bother no one but me.

I tried to watch the 90’s TV movie version about a year back, and erased it from the DVR after 30 minutes. I’ve stuck with this longer than that, but I’m hovering on the brink of erasing the season pass. Watching it feels like work, and I now feel like I’ve fulfilled my obligation to give it a fair shake. Luckily, I still have 10 episodes of Firefly to fall back on. God help me when I run out of those. Nothing like modern scifi TV to make you feel like you are on the desert island.

I see from the coming attraction that Daleks are in the next episode. I’ll give it one more chance, if for no other reason to hear “Exterminate! Exterminate!” Don’t screw this up, Doctor.

Update: Rogers does not agree. Honestly, I wish I liked this and am hoping the Daleks episode does it for me. If only for nostalgia’s sake, it would be great to be enthusiastic about this show after almost 20 years away.

Academy Snores

Dear god are the academy awards boring this year. It would be much more entertaining if Jon Stewart just did three hours of standup. I’m watching my built up queue of vlogs instead because I can’t stand it anymore.

I think you can deduce everything you need to know by the fact that they rush the award winners in their speeches, but seem to have all kinds of time for innumerable tedious montages about things like the fact that once movies were made about tough guys, or sometimes they are about real people. Hollywood is willing to make the time to jerk itself off.

Update: Ken Levine weighs in with a great quote:

Oh, and one other thing while I’m ranting. All through the show the Academy’s message was bludgeonly clear – see movies on the big screen not on DVD’s. So what do they do? Show montages all night long of classic movies that are ONLY available on DVD. When was the last time you saw KEY LARGO at your local Cineplex?

Monarch of the Glen

Out of the blue one day I happened across Monarch of the Glen on BBC America and I started taping it. I freely admit it isn’t a great show in an absolute sense. It’s pure melodramatic soap opera, broadly written and acted for the most part. For some reason, though, it’s hitting the spot right now. I’m enjoying the Scottish landscapes and the frothy personal stuff. The last week has definitely left me in the market for unchallenging escapist fare.

CNBC Finale

So the piece aired yesterday, I saw part of it and then my recording cut off right as Robbie Trencheny showed up since it went past the 5:00:00 cutoff from my PVR. It was OK. They showed a screen capture of my blog and then one short on camera quote from me in the part I saw. I don’t know if I was in the last part. Did anyone out there manage to get this captured and digitized? I hear the the post-clip chat amongst the CNBC anchors was interesting but I didn’t get any of that.

Old Media

So, after two days of playing hide and seek with CNBC, I find that I have lost interest in trying to get the segment about PME. That’s right, I no longer care that much about a piece that I was interviewed on camera for! This is a good example of why I fall the way I do in the new media / old media spectrum. Making us conform to it and sifting through what they do in order to see what we want really really sucks. I wonder if the old guard actually understand that people get fed up with this stuff? In a world after TiVo and IP TV, this “come to us at a specific time and we’ll show you what we want to then unless we choose not to” thing bites.

Michael Geoghegan says they are now saying 1 PM PST/ 4 PM EST today. If someone finds this piece and digitizes the segment, please let me know and I’ll post a link to the file. I may or may not bother trying to find it on my TV anymore. Can there be a better capsule summary about the culture clash in media styles than just trying to watch this segment? A year ago I might not have been so hardcore in my attitude but after getting the media I want when and where I want it for so long, I find that I really and truly hate the old model.

Imagine if they edited two versions, the couple minute piece to run over the air, and then a longer piece with the interviews that didn’t fit from the original one. They could even put short ads in it, making it kind of a mini-program and then put the whole magilla online. It doesn’t detract from the casual viewers running across it during the broadcast, but for those really interested in the subject it would be of a lot of use. They’ve already got that material in the can, all it would take is a little more editing time and some server space and bandwidth. It’s a no-brainer to me. CNBC, hop on the train. It’s at your station and the doors are open, but at some point it’s heading down the track with or without you.

CNBC Update

According to Michael Geoghegan, the CNBC piece from PME will be today on “Closing Bell” between 4 and 5 PM EST. I’ll be taping it and can get the audio off of it, but have no way to do the video. Can anyone in the nerdosphere capture that?

Update: To clarify, I’m wondering if anyone can capture this and snip it down to an MPEG or MOV of just the PME segment. I should be watching it for myself

$40 a day

We’re watching this show with Rachel Ray, “$40 a Day” on the Food Network. I’ve heard about this show and seen her recently on Letterman but never actually seen it before today. We watched the one about Charleston since we’re close and will be visiting there sooner or later. Now we are watching the one about Atlanta to see places that we are familiar with. I can tell you this, she is so incredibly annoying that I think two episodes are the most I’ll ever be able to take. This is one of those cases where everyone seems to love her, but the charms are lost on me.

IP TV

I have farted around with Fire ANT a little lately, mostly watching videos from Rocketboom and Eric Rice. As I played with it, I thought to myself “Self, you know what would be cool? If there was a way to do this from within MythTV such that downloaded shows just entered the recorded list along with all the stuff taped from TV.” I did a Google search for such a thing when I first thought about it, but didn’t see anything promising.

Today I did the search again, but went down many pages. Turns out there is such a thing, it just doesn’t have a lot of Google juice. The project is named Torrentocracy, and it does look pretty cool. What this says to me is that I need to get a Hauppage TV card, dumpster dive me an old PC and finally set up a Myth box. I’m happy with my cable company supplied DVR which is, like, less than the cost of the subscription to TiVo and has two digital cable tuners in it. Still, MythTV seems to be so cool as to require playing with it anyway.

PS – Every single time I blog a link to the FireANT project, I look at their URL and think “Anti Snot TV? WTF? Oh yeah, Ant Is Not TV.”

Post-Shark

Last night’s episode of ER with Cynthia Nixon as a stroke victim who was paralyzed and unable to speak but speaking to the audience via voiceover was pretty bad. I mean, really really bad. Like, never-watch-this-series-again bad. The concept was interesting in getting into the head of an ER victim, but the execution was atrocious. It basically turned into a Look Who’s Talking movie, but with a stroke disfigured face rather than a baby’s. It was sappy in all the wrong ways, uncomfortable in all the wrong ways, treacly when it was trying for funny, funny when it was trying for profound. It just plain sucked. Wow. I’ve been willing to stop watching the series for a while now, and now here’s a durned good reason. It basically lacks everything I once liked about it a decade ago. I think this show needs to be retired.

Napster’s Bogus Ads

The Napster ads on the Superbowl were the lowest rated of the pack. Setting aside the bogusness of the argument (an iPod doesn’t have to be full, most people have enough CDs to mostly fill one up, etc etc), I watched the ad and it really really sucked. It was 5 seconds of panning across a crowd and then 25 seconds of holding up a cardboard sign of their print ad. Dear god, someone got paid for creating this? They paid millions of dollars to air this? The ad looks exactly like the kind of thing that a teenager creates when they do their class project on the bus ride to school. One suspects they forgot to actually create an ad until Friday afternoon.