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TV Review - The Ark episode 9 "The Painful Way"
March 31, 2023
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For most of my life I’ve been an active watcher of television. While everyone else is admiring the new toy, I’m studying the exploded schematic and taking it apart to see how it all fits together. I didn’t just watch TV and movies; I learned the actors names, trained my eye to judge when something was made by the picture quality, and later began to notice the story elements.

It’s just how my brain is wired.

So it’s very rare that I get so involved in a story that I feel anything along with the characters. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I love the stupidest action movies. There’s nothing in analyze. All they offer are fantastic, and often complex, flights of imagination. It’s been a long time since I’ve shared in a character’s experience on a heart level.

The ninth episode of The Ark, “The Painful Way,” was a rare exception.

Remember last week, when they only had a few minutes do decide if they wanted to test the FTL drive or else they’d run out of fuel? And then it didn’t work? Yeah, that’s all waved away. In the opening few minutes William Trust (rhymes with Elon Musk) tells us he’s figured out the problem, and the time shifting replenished their fuel supply. Magic! But before they can take off for their new home planet, Alicia runs in to say that Ark 15 (which nearly destroyed them and killed everyone on Ark 3 save Kelly) is waiting for them.

But once again, Trust has a solution.

It seems that he’s also had time to develop a shield to protect them from Ark 15’s weapon. Of course, there’s no way to test it. Rather than risk a confrontation, Garnet and Brice decide to add two years onto their trip and change course for the next habitable planet. And that’s where things get interesting. Helena Trust takes on a condescending attitude, and pulls her husband’s strings, moving him to lock down the ship until Garnet agrees to go to the original planet.

We see how petty the Trusts are. 

The crew is justifiably upset and I shared in their indignation. For the first time, I didn’t see someone like Helena as a piece in a puzzle, but as a person I loathed. Alicia outsmarts them and bypasses the lock, so Helena uses Cat to stage a mutiny. With Garnet, Brice, and Felix drugged and then locked in a storage room, Lane is free to take command and put the ship back on course. 

Despicable.

When Brice wakes up he has an emotional meltdown. He has a disease, thanks to one of William Trust’s (rhymes with Elon Musk) failed experiments. If they went to the more distant planet, he’d die before they reached it. Now he’s going to die when Ark 15 destroys him and everyone else. Garnet wasn’t aware of his condition, and when he finally breaks she grabs him in a comforting embrace. It was a true, honest, beautiful moment.

I felt that too. 

Meanwhile, Kelly is staging her own rebellion. We all knew she was evil. Now we see just how bad she really is. 

I won’t go into the rest of episode except to say that, as usual, the problem of the week is swiftly resolved. Now I really want to dig into is what The Ark seems to be saying. Felix’s homosexuality aside, this is currently the least woke show on television. Garnet is a strong woman who can take down any dude in a fight, sure. But it’s explained that she’s genetically modified. More importantly, she’s still a woman. Brice oozes masculinity, even when he finally breaks. 

There are no lies here.

The reason William Trust (rhymes with Elon Musk) is able to hold such sway over people isn’t just because he’s the most brilliant engineer in the galaxy (he says so), but because of the hero worship he inspires. It seems he’s done some great things, but he’s also done unforgivable things. There’s a strong argument being made against idolizing anyone. Democracy is praised, monarchy is evil, and anarchy isn’t an option. 

Is Trust an Elon Musk or a Donald Trump? You decide. 

Either way, what makes The Ark special is that it’s willing to say things that no other show is even willing to suggest. Every challenge is designed to show something about the characters, finally breaking them out of their initial stereotypes and making them people we can care about. And the fact that while they’re fighting for survival they’re having a good time, should give us all a little hope. 

 

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Alien (1979) Movie Review

It'd been about 20 years since I last saw Alien, and then it was only because a roommate demanded it of me. I've never gone further into the franchise.

We've been trained to go into every movie as if it's an amusement park. There was a time (and Alien is a prime example) when movies were approached as art exhibits. Yes, Alien has moments of horror. But it's not primarily a horror film designed to carry us on visceral reactions. Instead, it's a finely tuned suspense movie.

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It's not that you need to be "media literate" to appreciate Alien. The media literate person will look at the opening of the movie and note how the camera floats through the empty ship while the crew is asleep to give us, the viewers, the sense of intruding where we don't belong. If that's your thing, I'm right there with you. Most people don't want to be media literate, and that's a good thing.

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Why Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope' is More Relevant Now than Ever

When I first saw Rope, as a young college student, I didn't really appreciate it. Sure, the illusion of the 82 minute continuous shot was impressive. Watching the "perfect" murder fall in on itself was satisfying. But now, having lived some life, and especially in light of recent events, Rope is more poignant than ever.

Rope was Hitchcock's first color film and is based on a play, which was in turn inspired by actual events. Two gay men attempt to commit the perfect murder, and then ghoulishly host a dinner party at the scene of the crime, going so far as to serve the meal on the trunk in which the body is hidden.

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If you haven't seen Rope, or not seen it recently, it's worth watching now.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

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It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

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Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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