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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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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.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

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.

But he doesn’t.


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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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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