The Yin Blog

2010 TV roundup, part 1

I haven't watched the "Lost" finale yet (last night went to "The Celebrity Apprentice") and tonight is "24" time, so "Lost" will have to wait until Tuesday night . . . .

Meanwhile, it's been a week, and I'm still trying to understand how Parvati did not win "Survivor: Heroes v. Villains."  But before getting into that, I wanted to say that I thought this was by far and away my favorite season of "Survivor."  In the typical seasons, the first 1-5 episodes are kind of blah from the social interaction perspective because everyone is unknown, and it takes a while for tribal dynamics to become apparent.  With all-star seasons, on the other hand, that's not the case.  Add to that the bomb throwers, both expected (Russell) and unexpected (James), and it's an explosive mix.  I thought the season would have a let down once the Russell-Boston Rob feud ended with the latter being voted off (pre-jury, no less), but I was wrong.

Now, as to the ultimate result, I think Sandra is not as undeserving as I might have thought at the beginning of the season.  She did two things that impressed me: (1) finding the hidden immunity idol and, more importantly, keeping quiet about it; and (2) exploiting the jury's anti-Russell sentiment during the final Tribal Council.  Therefore, she did two things more than the previous season's winner (Natalie, over Russell) did.

However, to me, Parvati outplayed both Sandra and Russell.  I wasn't a Parvati fan before, as I find the "flirt with guys" strategy kind of annoying, but I have to concede that for this season, she displayed an incredible combination of challenge competence and uncanny skill at reading people.  The episode where she figured out that her friend Amanda was lying to her about being a target, and thereby using the 2 immunity idols she had to protect her vulnerable fellow villains was amazing.

Obviously, the jury had it out for her because of her tight alliance with Russell, so maybe there's not much she could have done.  I thought her "Russell was a dragon that I found and tamed as my pet" speech was pretty good, but maybe she should have spent more time assuaging the feelings of the jury members by saying something like, "Jury members, it wasn't personal when I conspired to get you voted out; it was entirely in self-defense, because I was constantly targeted.  Sandra likes to lie low and draw no attention, but I couldn't do that.  I had to protect myself by coming up with ways to vote off those who wanted to get rid of me.  It was all in self-defense."

Oh well, on to "Celebrity Apprentice."  Not much to say here, except that wow, that finale show sure is full of filler.  My wife had control of the remote for the show and skipped things more aggressively than I would have (I had to request rewind to hear from Rod Blago. . . .  Loved it when Trump asked who thought Rod was guilty, and Michael Johnson raised his hand).  I had predicted that the finale would be Sharon v. Holly, about which I was half-wrong (but I did have Bret in the final 3).  Both project managers did good jobs, so either one would have been fine as the winner -- unlike last season, which had the awful Joan Rivers beating Annie Duke in a totally egregious result.

V ended last week with a pretty strong episode in which our skies turn red, which is never a good thing.  There was ambiguity, which would have been good if the show had generated enough buzz to have people talking about it: did Marcus revive Joshua because Marcus is also 5th Column, or to torture Joshua for information?; do the Vs really have no natural emotions (odd that Anna expressed such rage, then) or has Anna been suppressing them through her "bliss"?  Of course, there was also stupidity: why did Ryan leave his girlfriend alone with the Vs, and then accept Anna's word that she had died in childbirth?; why did the priest effectively announce publicly that he was 5th Column with his sermon?

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"24" series finale is tonight, and "FlashForward" (thank goodness) on Thursday.  And "Burn Notice" starts up again next week!

Congrats to Jim Huffman!

Congratulations to my colleague Jim Huffman, who won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate last night!  Oregon's a pretty blue state (though it used to have moderate Republican Senators like Mark Hatfield), but if this is the year, with anti-incumbent moods in the air, to run against long-time Senator Ron Wyden.

To bar or not to bar . . . .

Since graduating from law school, I've lived in four states: California, Oklahoma, Iowa, and now Oregon.  I passed the California bar exam in 1995 (my admission year is 1996 because I put off getting admitted so as to avoid paying unnecessary bar dues) and got admitted to Iowa by motion in 2003.  I couldn't get admitted to Oklahoma by motion because Oklahoma didn't have reciprocity with California (and I hadn't been practicing for long enough anyway), but I did get admitted to the Tenth Circuit bar while I was out there.

Now that I'm in Oregon for the long haul, I've been wondering if I should get admitted to the Oregon Bar.  Like most states (but not Iowa), Oregon does not have reciprocity with California -- pretty much because California is obnoxious about not allowing anyone to get admitted by motion.  But it turns out that Oregon has a law teacher admission that's about as good: as long as you've been admitted to another state's bar, a full-time law professor at one of the three Oregon law schools can get admitted without taking the exam after teaching for one year.  I'm about to complete my first year (I consider it done when I turn in grades), so I could do this.

I'm not sure why I would do this, although I think I might like to take on a Ninth Circuit federal criminal appeal or habeas petition pro bono if I could work out legal malpractice liability issues, and I'd either need to get admitted to Oregon or reactivate my California membership for my Ninth Circuit admission to be valid.

On the downside, the law prof admission still requires paying the hefty $850 application fee; and active dues in Oregon are even MORE expensive than those in California, which I didn't think was possible!

Maybe Jack Bauer should wear a hooded robe and carry a scythe in the "24" movie

In the history of television, has any character intentionally killed more people than Jack Bauer has?   I mean, seriously . . . .

Okay, Stephen Saunders (the British terrorist in season 3 of "24") did kill several hundred people when he had his followers infect the residents of a downtown L.A. hotel with the lethal Cordelia virus.  And the nuclear engineer terrorist in season 6 of "24" killed something like 12,000 people when he set off a suitcase nuke in Valencia, California (home to Magic Mountain!).

Apart from those two, the only other person I can think of would be Captain Picard, during the time he was assimilated by the Borg and became Locutus; as Locutus, he directed the attack against Starfleet that crippled most of the star fleet and left thousands dead at the star Wolf 359.

UPDATE: Someone has actually kept count!  We're at 266 across all eight days so far.  300 seems out of reach, but I suppose Jack could bomb a building full of bad guys or something.

FlashForward cancelled, V renewed -- perfect!

ABC had two high-profile sci-fi series this past season, "FlashForward" and "V."  Both were serialized dramas with heavy pre-season promotion.  "FlashForward" was based very loosely on the novel of the same name by Canadian author Robert Sawyer and posits a world-wide "blackout" in which everyone loses consciousness at the exact same time for 2 minutes, 17 seconds, during which they experience a glimpse of their future in exactly six months.  Except for some people, who experienced no vision at all, suggesting that they're dead in six months.  The Los Angeles FBI office puts together a team to unravel the cause of the FlashForward and to determine if it can be altered.

"V" was a remake of the deliciously campy 1980s miniseries (and sequel and subsequent TV series) about first contact with the Visitors, technologically advanced aliens who bear amazing gifts to humans.  They look human, but in reality, they're lizard-like creatures.  And they want to strip the Earth of our water and resources.  And eat us.  For a teenage guy, nothing on free TV could ever have beaten the scene where a human teenager gives birth to a baby lizard-thing!

Anyway, I instructed my TiVo to record both series, and my wife and I have watched both, generally on the same night they air, but we've been waiting just for "FlashForward" to get non-renewed so the story can end, whereas we wanted "V" to come back.  That in fact is what ABC is doing (though "V"'s renewal is only for 13 episodes, not the usual 22.)  So the news is perfect for us.

Still, why did we have such different reactions to the shows?  "V" is not without flaws, and "FlashForward" had a terrific premise -- so terrific in fact that I bought the Sawyer book back in the fall and read it just to see one explanation of the flashforward.

It seems to me that "FlashForward" aimed VERY HIGH but didn't come close to hitting its target, whereas "V" aimed quite a bit lower and succeeded.  (Still waiting for the lizard baby, though.) Obviously, all things being equal, you'd want a show that aims high and succeeds, like "Lost," but those are few and far between.  A show that aims high and misses, but not by too much, is pretty good, but so too is a show that doesn't aim as high but nails it (like "Prison Break," seasons 1-2).

The problem for me with "FlashForward" is that it was so horrendously executed -- of the cast, the only ones who are remotely watchable are Dominic Monaghan (sometimes) and maybe John Cho. Everyone else is just bland or annoying, and not annoying in a good way (like Sawyer on "Lost").

I mean, if we put it in Olympic ice skating terms, "V" is the skater who avoids the seriously hard jumps and puts in a relatively flawless, safe routine.  It pales next to the "James Bond" routine by that South Korean skater, but it's still okay.  "FlashForward" is the skater who tries to do four triple-triple jumps and collapses into a bloody wreck in the middle of the rink.  I'll watch that (hey, I never claimed to have high taste), but it's not something I want to come back the next season.

My prediction for the final two of "The Celebrity Apprentice"

Today is Saturday, a day before the mass firing tomorrow on "The Celebrity Apprentice," when Donald Trump is going to fire one of the five remaining celebrities at the beginning of the show, put the other four through interviews with Joan Rivers and season 1 winner Bill Rancic, then fire two more.  Wow, that's a lot of "you're fired"s coming up.

Here are the remaining five:

chef Curtis Stone

Poison lead singer Bret Michaels

music manager Sharon Osbourne

actress Holly Robinson Peete

former WWE star Maria Kanellis

My prediction is that either Curtis or Maria gets fired right away.  Both have been pretty good team players but neither one has really stood out on any particular task as indispensable.  In fact, although I've been watching the show regularly, I had to look up on the Wikipedia to remind myself that Maria was still on the show, which is not a good sign for her.

Next, whichever of Curtis or Maria survived the initial cut will get bounced after the interviews, along with Bret Michaels.  I've actually found Bret to be both entertaining and effective on the show, which is an unusual combination.  Usually the entertaining celebrities are the trainwrecks, like Dennis Rodman from last season.  But Bret's interviews have been self-deprecating and funny.  However, there were big danger signs from the end of the last episode, where Trump almost fired Bret for seeming indifferent.

Meanwhile, both Sharon and Holly have displayed a lot of fiery passion on the show, which Trump likes.

Finally, since this is the Celebrity edition and Trump isn't really hiring anyone, how the finalists do on the final task probably has very little impact, if any, on who he chooses as the winner.  (If it did, there's no way he would've picked Joan Rivers over Annie Duke last season.)  So I'll go out on a limb and predict that he picks Sharon Osbourne as the winner, as she's closer to his generation.

"24" and torture porn

(spoilers for the 5/10/10 episode of "24" . . . .)

Maybe I've become wussified after a relatively benign season 7 and season 8 in regards to torture, but I found Jack Bauer's interrogation of the Russian agent during this week's episode extremely revolting, and my wife was basically averting her eyes during much of it.  

To recap, Jack discovered that a Russian intelligence agent was part of the successful plot to assassinate IRK President Hassan (whom Jack had sworn to protect).  Moreover, this Russian agent Pavel was also the assassin who killed Jack's new lover, Renee Walker.  So it was not hard to predict pain and suffering in Pavel's future, once Jack captured him and sought to determine the identities of his superiors.

What ensued was extremely graphic torture, even by "24" standards.  (In fact, I'm going to describe it, so if you don't have a strong stomach, you may want to skip this paragraph, if not this entire blog entry.)  The detention site was some sort of workroom, so Jack had plenty of tools and building equipment.  Having secured the Russian agent, Jack first used a pair of pliers to grab hold of the suspect's lower belly (which is where Renee was shot), squeezing and then ripping out a chunk of flesh.  When Pavel then boasted that he had indeed killed Jack's "bitch," Jack went a bit nuts and headbutted Pavel, then kept punching him in the face repeatedly until he knocked Pavel unconscious.  That necessitated smelling salts, at which point Jack took out his switchblade and started cutting Pavel's chest.  Pavel continued to claim that he acted alone.  Jack then sprayed some kind of oil on the open wounds, which caused Pavel to scream in agony.  But Pavel still refused to talk.  So Jack lit a blowtorch and told Pavel, "You think you know about pain?  You don't know anything" and proceeded to roast Pavel's belly (and possibly his groin too!).  The burning took place below the TV screen, but there was visible smoke wafting upward.  When that still would not get Pavel to talk, Jack seemed lost . . . .  Then Jack noticed Pavel's cell phone was missing its SIM card, and Jack figured that Pavel must have swallowed it.  You can guess what happened next . . . .  Yes, disembowelment.

Sheesh.  I mean, we've seen Jack torture people before.  Lots of them.  But for me, this was the most disturbing torture scene in "24" history since season 2, when Jack was tortured (to death!) by bad guys.  (That involved tasers, knives, and a soldering iron.)

What made this scene so nasty?  For one thing, Jack really seemed out of control, whereas in past scenes, he's been intense but seemingly in control.  You never got the feeling that Jack enjoyed torturing before, it was just necessary.  Here, though, understandably upset about the murder of his lover, Jack was brutally sadistic.  (Kiefer Sutherland did a great job acting in this scene.)

Also, the stakes seemed quite different.  "24" has thrived on the ticking time bomb scenario, where Jack tortures bad guys to find out where a nuclear bomb is hidden.  In this season, though, it's about unraveling the conspiracy behind an already completed political assassination.  The imminence just isn't there.  That's not to say that torture is necessarily justified in the ticking time bomb scenario; maybe it's not.  But if it's not justified there, it certainly isn't justified here, for what is really retrospective law enforcement.

But as disturbing as this scene was, it made me realize that "24" has never had the courage to live up to its torture porn tendencies.  I suppose much of this is driven by broadcast network standards -- in other words, what Fox thinks it can get away with showing on regular over-the-air TV -- but it has the effect of minimizing the horrible nature of what Jack Bauer does.  What I mean is that Jack does these horrible things to people, but the visual impact of it is blunted, and since we're not the ones being tortured, our empathic sensation is largely limited to hearing the subjects scream in pain.  That's bad, but nowhere near as bad as what it would be if Jack were really as desperate as the scenes suggest.

Consider some notable torture scenes from the years:

Syed Ali (season 2) -- tied down to a chair, beaten in the face, fingers broken (breaks when he thinks Jack has ordered one of his kids murdered, and the other is next)

Marie Warner (season 2) -- denied painkillers after having been shot in the arm while being apprehended

Nina Myers (season 3) -- given neuroinflammatory drugs (not by Jack)

Michael Amador (season 3) -- held down by Jack's partner, palm slashed with knife

Paul Raines (season 4) -- zapped by Jack's homemade taser (electrical wires in power cord ripped from lamp)

Joe Prado (season 4) -- fingers broken

Graham Bauer (season 6) -- plastic bag over face, neuroinflammatory drugs

These are all vicious deeds, but they don't have much visual impact.  The neuroinflammatory drugs, for example, are simply some guy hooking up an IV and then fiddling with some dials, and then the suspect starts yelling in pain.

Now compare those acts to the torture that Jack threatens Walt Cummings with in season 5.  Cummings is the chief of staff who's been conspiring with the terrorists to bring VX gas into the U.S.; when he won't tell Jack where the VX gas is headed, Jack -- in front of the President, no less -- knocks Cummings down, gets him in a chokehold, and then pulls out a knife, threatening to gouge out Cummings' eyes if he won't talk.  Cummings quickly talks -- as would I!

Now, eye gouging is really nasty stuff, and it would have ghastly visual impact if Jack went through with it.  This is what I mean by saying the torture that he has inflicted doesn't have visual impact.  We see him do it, and then when he's done, the imagery recedes, because at most, there's a bloody nose and/or face, and most of us have seen something like that.  But eyes gouged out?!? Yikes!

Yet, if Jack is desperate enough to be using a blowtorch on someone (ugh), why wouldn't he be willing to threaten the eye gouging again?  He even had his switchblade handy!

I think the answer is that it would be too revolting to show on TV.  And while I'm glad that I wasn't revolted anymore than I already was, in a way, I feel like the show is taking an easy way out.  Jack Bauer does monstrous things, but he's not a monster (though it was pretty close the other night), even though maybe in his circumstances, he really should be.

For those interested in more on "24" and torture, I discuss this in more detail in the first part of this article: Jack Bauer Syndrome: Hollywood's Depiction of National Security.  (And as an added bonus, I have a new essay posted that looks at how Hollywood has depicted Arabs, Muslims, and Arab-Americans in terrorism movies and TV shows, both pre- and post-9/11: Through a Screen Darkly: Hollywood as a Measure of Discrimination Against Arabs and Muslims.)

Waterboarding and swimmers

While watching an earlier episode of "24" where traitorous CTU analyst Dana Walsh gets waterboarded by some private military contractors working for the ex-President, it occurred to me that Walsh is played by actress Katee Sackhoff, who apparently was quite a serious swimmer through high school.  I got to wondering, is there any evidence that accomplished swimmers can endure waterboarding longer than non-swimmers?

As I understand it, waterboarding activates certain physiological reflexes to simulate the sensation of drowning (or, maybe, to induce partial drowning).  Do swimmers have better control over those reflexes? 

Oops, innumeracy in the Oregonian!

In a news story about how Multnomah County, Oregon, is "uniquely toxic" for racial minorities, the Oregonian made the following assertion:

Minorities in Multnomah County fare worse on measures such as child poverty, rent burden, incomes and education than minorities in King County, Wash., (home to Seattle) which has a slightly higher number of minorities.

Um . . . hold on a moment.  King County had a 2000 population of 1.7 million people, while Multnomah County's 2000 population was 660,000 people.  So if King County has only slightly more minorities than Multnomah County despite having almost three times as many people, it would mean that Multnomah County is WAY more racially diverse.  But that's clearly not the case.

Obviously, what the news story meant to say is that King County has a slightly higher percentage of minorities, not absolute number of minorities.

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Maybe Rahm Emanuel is onto something. . . .

Ann Althouse has declared that it's "talk like Rahm Emanuel day":

Come on, everybody! It's exciting. It's liberating.

Somebody not talking straight to you?

"Take your f***ing tampon out and tell me what you have to say."

Funny enough, Rahm might be onto something.  I was watching "Mythbusters" last night on my TiVo, and one of the myths they tested was whether cursing increases pain tolerance.  The test involved seeing how long you could keep your hand in a bowl of ice cold water before it was too much to bear (the control), followed by the same test except that you were supposed to curse.

The result?  On average, the test subjects kept their hands in the ice cold water 30% longer if they were cursing!

I've never worked in politics, but it does seem like it would be mighty painful.  Maybe this explains why Rahm is so successful?