Scorpion is not a completely terrible show. But it seems that every time I watch it, I come away with at least two nits. The Season 2 finale, "Toby or Not Toby" (groan right off the bat), was no exception. An unstable former Scorpion team member, Mark Collins (Joshua Leonard), escapes the psych ward and predictably wants revenge.
Collins kidnaps Toby (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and traps him in a web of dental floss with a jar of acid just about to fall straight into his mouth. In order to rescue Toby, the rest of the team must piece the clues to together to figure out where Collins is holding Toby. Doing that involves Walter (Elyes Gabel) climbing a cellphone tower with a keytar in order to allow Sylvester (Ari Stidham) to narrow down Toby's location. Sure, I'll suspend my disbelief for now.
To be fair, it was a vicarious adrenaline rush to watch this life-or-death scenario in which the slightest mistake could cost Toby his life. When the team arrives and finds Toby captive in the floss web, they figure out something about tension and musical pitch to determine which strings of floss they can safely cut. The more you think about this particular plot point, the less sense it makes.
Supposedly the string with the highest pitch is the one that would drop the acid if cut. Okay, I'll buy that, at least I bought it as I was watching. So they pluck some strings and a lot of them have the same pitch. Here I had a problem. They don't all seem to be the same length, so how can they have the same pitch? Also, with this question it makes me wonder what exactly is providing the resonance for these strings to produce such clear tones.
Just in the nick of time, Happy (Jadyn Wong) makes it into the web and pushes Toby out of the way right before the acid drops. Apparently, Toby was about to propose to Happy before he was kidnapped, but Happy doesn't seem all that happy at the prospect.
Safely back at the Scorpion lair, Toby tells Happy that he will not say a question to her, that he'll sing it. Toby does sing a song, but after the song, he still says the question: "Will you marry me?" This is a nit because in this show almost every major character tries to be insufferably literal and precise in what they say.
Happy declines Toby's marriage proposal, and I guess maybe the show's fans will be on pins and needles over the summer as they wait to find out why; I sure won't, I probably won't even remember and I make no promises as to whether or not I'll watch the Season 3 premiere. There's also relationship drama for Walter and Paige (Katharine McPhee).
I guess I would have been okay with seeing Toby rescued with only three or four minutes left in the episode, instead of almost twenty, leaving little time for the shipper stuff. With Toby safe, the episode went from exciting to boring almost immediately. As Collins is hauled away, he seems less interested in revenge and more interested in making some dumb point about self-sufficiency (yawn).
I also found the talk of the consciousness transfer research and mind reading capabilities a little implausible, but the episode zipped along fast enough not to bother me too much with that.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Everything Sheldon's ever owned? I think not
Why am I still watching The Big Bang Theory!? It's a terrible show. Sheldon is even more obnoxious, and Raj is starting to really get on my nerves.
For a man with an eidetic memory, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) seems to forget a lot of things. In tonight's episode, "The Solder Excursion Diversion," Sheldon takes his girlfriend Amy (Mayim Bialik) to his "Fortress of Shame," a storage unit where he supposedly keeps all his material possessions that he no longer uses.
Supposedly Amy is now the only other person who knows about this storage unit, which is strange, considering that Amy had to drive him there and the storage unit supposedly contains items that predate Amy, when Leonard had to drive Sheldon around everywhere. This can be explained away, I suppose. Maybe the honest-to-a-fault Sheldon realized that Amy would appreciate the lie of his sharing this secret shame only with her.
But this other nit is a little more difficult to explain: remember the Season 3 episode in which thieves broke into the apartment Sheldon shares with Leonard and stole their "TV, two laptops, four external hard-drives, our PS2, our PS3, our X-Box, our X-Box 360, our classic Nintendo, our Super Nintendo, our Nintendo 64 and our Wii." They buy new things, and presumably the police doesn't recover any of what was stolen.
How do the things Sheldon shares with Leonard figure into the storage unit? Plus the golf ball Sheldon's brother threw at him when they were kids, how does that become one of Sheldon's possessions? And such a prized possession that he still can't bear to throw it away.
And the opening bit about Sheldon letting his computer deteriorate so much... yawn. I need to stop watching this show, it's terrible.
For a man with an eidetic memory, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) seems to forget a lot of things. In tonight's episode, "The Solder Excursion Diversion," Sheldon takes his girlfriend Amy (Mayim Bialik) to his "Fortress of Shame," a storage unit where he supposedly keeps all his material possessions that he no longer uses.
Supposedly Amy is now the only other person who knows about this storage unit, which is strange, considering that Amy had to drive him there and the storage unit supposedly contains items that predate Amy, when Leonard had to drive Sheldon around everywhere. This can be explained away, I suppose. Maybe the honest-to-a-fault Sheldon realized that Amy would appreciate the lie of his sharing this secret shame only with her.
But this other nit is a little more difficult to explain: remember the Season 3 episode in which thieves broke into the apartment Sheldon shares with Leonard and stole their "TV, two laptops, four external hard-drives, our PS2, our PS3, our X-Box, our X-Box 360, our classic Nintendo, our Super Nintendo, our Nintendo 64 and our Wii." They buy new things, and presumably the police doesn't recover any of what was stolen.
How do the things Sheldon shares with Leonard figure into the storage unit? Plus the golf ball Sheldon's brother threw at him when they were kids, how does that become one of Sheldon's possessions? And such a prized possession that he still can't bear to throw it away.
And the opening bit about Sheldon letting his computer deteriorate so much... yawn. I need to stop watching this show, it's terrible.
Friday, January 8, 2016
George III's planet
The Big Bang Theory is still on and I'm still watching it. It's a terrible show for so many reasons that I won't go in-depth about here. According to a writer for Looper, "the scientific jokes rely on the audience's lack of understanding of the principles behind them." Well, sometimes this show fails on some fairly basic knowledge of science history.
Last night's episode, "The Sales Call Sublimation," gives a perfect example of that. The side story concerns Sheldon and Raj discovering an asteroid and getting to name it. It's a decision they will not take lightly, because Sheldon says that "Sir William Herschel didn't do Uranus any favors." Um, that doesn't sound exactly right.
It is true that William Herschel discovered that planet orbiting farther away than Saturn in 1781. But he named it "Georgium Sidus" in honor of King George III. If there was any doubt that Herschel should be knighted and named Astronomer Royal, that naming choice surely clinched it.
Of course if you know just a tiny bit about 18th century politics, you realize that that name didn't go over that well outside of England. Plus it didn't help that Herschel thought he discovered a comet. The German astronomer Elert Bode was among the first to realize that Herschel had in fact discovered a planet.
Arguing that there should be consistency with the names of the previously discovered planets, Bode eventually convinced the world to call it Uranus. Bode of course wasn't thinking about the potty humor of lazy sitcom writers, and I doubt he'd care if they had chosen to blame him instead of Herschel for that planet's supposedly poor name choice.
Wikipedia shouldn't be anyone's go-to source for anything, but if the writers had bothered to at least skim the Wikipedia article, they would have noticed a section titled "Naming." Maybe they would have had the bad luck to check Wikipedia at a time that particular article was vandalized. Which is unlikely, as Wikipedia's articles on the planets are maintained with almost as much care as the Big Bang articles.
Lastly, a very minor nit: Raj and Sheldon agree to call the asteroid "Amy," after Sheldon's girlfriend Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik). Seems kind of short to be the name of an object there are thousands of in our solar system. Though I don't know how long it would take for the International Astronomical Union to sign off on "00327 Amy" or whatever the final name wound up being.
Last night's episode, "The Sales Call Sublimation," gives a perfect example of that. The side story concerns Sheldon and Raj discovering an asteroid and getting to name it. It's a decision they will not take lightly, because Sheldon says that "Sir William Herschel didn't do Uranus any favors." Um, that doesn't sound exactly right.
It is true that William Herschel discovered that planet orbiting farther away than Saturn in 1781. But he named it "Georgium Sidus" in honor of King George III. If there was any doubt that Herschel should be knighted and named Astronomer Royal, that naming choice surely clinched it.
Of course if you know just a tiny bit about 18th century politics, you realize that that name didn't go over that well outside of England. Plus it didn't help that Herschel thought he discovered a comet. The German astronomer Elert Bode was among the first to realize that Herschel had in fact discovered a planet.
Arguing that there should be consistency with the names of the previously discovered planets, Bode eventually convinced the world to call it Uranus. Bode of course wasn't thinking about the potty humor of lazy sitcom writers, and I doubt he'd care if they had chosen to blame him instead of Herschel for that planet's supposedly poor name choice.
Wikipedia shouldn't be anyone's go-to source for anything, but if the writers had bothered to at least skim the Wikipedia article, they would have noticed a section titled "Naming." Maybe they would have had the bad luck to check Wikipedia at a time that particular article was vandalized. Which is unlikely, as Wikipedia's articles on the planets are maintained with almost as much care as the Big Bang articles.
Lastly, a very minor nit: Raj and Sheldon agree to call the asteroid "Amy," after Sheldon's girlfriend Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik). Seems kind of short to be the name of an object there are thousands of in our solar system. Though I don't know how long it would take for the International Astronomical Union to sign off on "00327 Amy" or whatever the final name wound up being.
the scientific jokes rely on the audience’s lack of understanding of the principles behind them
Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/
Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/
the scientific jokes rely on the audience’s lack of understanding of the principles behind them.
Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/
Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/
Thursday, January 7, 2016
The nitpickers awaken
By now you've probably read Seth Abramson's column "40 Unforgivable Plot Holes in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'" and Matt Grunger's blistering rebuttal, or excuse-making for J. J. Abrams, depending on your viewpoint. There has been a lot of discussion as to what a plot hole is, how it differs from a coincidence, and so on and so forth.
But the problem is that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is a movie way too concerned with maintaining a breakneck pace and setting up questions for later movies to answer that it doesn't stand very well on its own, nor does it stand very well as a logical continuation of what has gone on in the previous two trilogies.
So it's no fun to nitpick this latest installment. After nitpicking this movie, or after defending this movie against the nitpickers, do you feel like you're talking about some great movie that will stand the test of time in the same way as A New Hope and Empire strikes back? I sure don't.
But the problem is that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is a movie way too concerned with maintaining a breakneck pace and setting up questions for later movies to answer that it doesn't stand very well on its own, nor does it stand very well as a logical continuation of what has gone on in the previous two trilogies.
So it's no fun to nitpick this latest installment. After nitpicking this movie, or after defending this movie against the nitpickers, do you feel like you're talking about some great movie that will stand the test of time in the same way as A New Hope and Empire strikes back? I sure don't.
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Do you feel like a big man, Cult of Dusty?
Yesterday, YouTube star Cult of Dusty posted a video ripping Ahmed Mohammed to shreds. As in Ahmed Mohammed, the 14-year-old boy who brought a clock to school and set off a racist overreaction that made national news headlines. Do you feel like a big man, Cult of Dusty, beating up on a little boy? I am not impressed by a kid disassembling and reassembling a clock, either, but surely I have bigger people to beat up on than some little boy.
Yeah, yeah, I know, his main point is supposedly that liberals are just so damn gullible. Maybe Ahmed Mohammed wasn't actually trying to impress his teacher, maybe he was baiting them into overreacting in a racist, Islamaphobic way. Well, guess what, he succeeded! If liberals really are so damn gullible, surely there are ways to prove it that don't involve soiling a little boy's reputation to the max.
Children overstate their accomplishments all the time. One of my nephews, a 15-year-old boy, told me a few months ago that he is an officer in the United States Army. "Good for you," I replied. How was I supposed to reply to that? If I was Cult of Dusty, my response would have gone something like this: "No, you're not an officer in the United States Army. You're someone who has done well in a pretend military unit, which is not much of an accomplishment because most other people in that pretend military unit are fatsos and weaklings looking for a way out of gym class."
Of course my nephew is white, so he gets the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. He could probably go to an elementary school openly carrying an automatic rifle and no one would think he's there to shoot up the place, like, you know, some other young white men have done in the past twenty years. But a young Arab boy brings a reassembled clock to school? Let's all rush to judgement and jump to the conclusion that he must be a terrorist.
Yeah, yeah, I know, his main point is supposedly that liberals are just so damn gullible. Maybe Ahmed Mohammed wasn't actually trying to impress his teacher, maybe he was baiting them into overreacting in a racist, Islamaphobic way. Well, guess what, he succeeded! If liberals really are so damn gullible, surely there are ways to prove it that don't involve soiling a little boy's reputation to the max.
Children overstate their accomplishments all the time. One of my nephews, a 15-year-old boy, told me a few months ago that he is an officer in the United States Army. "Good for you," I replied. How was I supposed to reply to that? If I was Cult of Dusty, my response would have gone something like this: "No, you're not an officer in the United States Army. You're someone who has done well in a pretend military unit, which is not much of an accomplishment because most other people in that pretend military unit are fatsos and weaklings looking for a way out of gym class."
Of course my nephew is white, so he gets the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things. He could probably go to an elementary school openly carrying an automatic rifle and no one would think he's there to shoot up the place, like, you know, some other young white men have done in the past twenty years. But a young Arab boy brings a reassembled clock to school? Let's all rush to judgement and jump to the conclusion that he must be a terrorist.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
The Hungarian artist who writes personal inscriptions in English
In our white male privilege, we often forget or ignore many little details. For example, that women can own art, and also that everybody knows English but it's not everybody's first language. Well, not everybody, but a significant majority of people in the world know at least a little English, which is more than we can say for a language like Nahuatl or Slovak.
There is a good illustration of this in an early episode of White Collar, Lisa's favorite show. The Season 1 episode "The Portrait" is about a painting, Young Girl with Locket, by Haustenburg, stolen at least twice before the episode begins. The first theft occurred at some point prior to 1967, when Walter (Peter McRobbie) from the Channing Museum ignores Haustenberg's will and an inscription on the back of the painting ("to my dearest Julianna, keep this forever"), and puts it into the Channing's collection instead of giving it to Haustenberg's illegitimate daughter Julianna. In 1967, Julianna somehow took the painting out of the Channing.
Fast forward to 2009 (I'm assuming episodes of this show are contemporaneous with their original airdates). Julianna Laszlo (Kim Shaw), the great-granddaughter of Haustenburg, owned the painting until it was stolen out of her house. FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and felon-turned-consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) are on the case. As arrogant forgers go, Neal Caffrey is one of the most likable. After various twists and turns, Neal winds up in possession of the painting and knowledge of to whom the painting rightfully belongs, and he keeps both of these to himself until notorious loan shark Gerard Dorsett (Michael Crane) threatens the life of Taryn Vandersant (Deanna Russo), who had earlier helped Peter and Neal.
Neal confesses to Peter that he has the painting, and agrees to give it up so that Gerard can be busted and Taryn can be safe. But Neal knows that Peter, as an agent of an organization that enforces white male privilege, is duty-bound to return the painting to the Channing. However, Neal has a trick up his sleeve. He deliberately makes a forgery of the painting good enough to fool the casual observer but not a museum expert like Walter.
When Peter hands Walter the painting, he believes he's handing over the genuine original, but gets worried as Walter just keeps looking and looking at the painting. Walter turns it over, and instead of seeing Haustenburg's inscription, sees a special message from Neal:
Walter is forced to accept the painting as authentic.
It's a brilliant episode of a very good show. However, I have some nits (which is of course the point of this blog). First of all, why was Haustenburg's inscription in English? Shouldn't it be in Hungarian? Or did Haustenburg foresee that the inscription needed to be intelligible to a dishonest museum curator and a forger with a heart of gold in New York? Unless maybe the title girl with the locket was born in England or in America (Julianna Laszlo does say that Haustenburg had a family in Hungary, which doesn't rule out a love child anywhere in the world). Also, how exactly is it that the painting came to be in the possession of the Channing? How could Neal be so sure Walter was the one who read the original inscription and chose to ignore it?
My fellow nitpickers at WhiteCollarLexicon.com have a few more nits, including: why does Dorsett try to sell the painting to an art gallery in the same city in which it was stolen?
There is a good illustration of this in an early episode of White Collar, Lisa's favorite show. The Season 1 episode "The Portrait" is about a painting, Young Girl with Locket, by Haustenburg, stolen at least twice before the episode begins. The first theft occurred at some point prior to 1967, when Walter (Peter McRobbie) from the Channing Museum ignores Haustenberg's will and an inscription on the back of the painting ("to my dearest Julianna, keep this forever"), and puts it into the Channing's collection instead of giving it to Haustenberg's illegitimate daughter Julianna. In 1967, Julianna somehow took the painting out of the Channing.
Fast forward to 2009 (I'm assuming episodes of this show are contemporaneous with their original airdates). Julianna Laszlo (Kim Shaw), the great-granddaughter of Haustenburg, owned the painting until it was stolen out of her house. FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and felon-turned-consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) are on the case. As arrogant forgers go, Neal Caffrey is one of the most likable. After various twists and turns, Neal winds up in possession of the painting and knowledge of to whom the painting rightfully belongs, and he keeps both of these to himself until notorious loan shark Gerard Dorsett (Michael Crane) threatens the life of Taryn Vandersant (Deanna Russo), who had earlier helped Peter and Neal.
Neal confesses to Peter that he has the painting, and agrees to give it up so that Gerard can be busted and Taryn can be safe. But Neal knows that Peter, as an agent of an organization that enforces white male privilege, is duty-bound to return the painting to the Channing. However, Neal has a trick up his sleeve. He deliberately makes a forgery of the painting good enough to fool the casual observer but not a museum expert like Walter.
When Peter hands Walter the painting, he believes he's handing over the genuine original, but gets worried as Walter just keeps looking and looking at the painting. Walter turns it over, and instead of seeing Haustenburg's inscription, sees a special message from Neal:
My dear Walter, I know what you saw here last time. NC
Walter is forced to accept the painting as authentic.
It's a brilliant episode of a very good show. However, I have some nits (which is of course the point of this blog). First of all, why was Haustenburg's inscription in English? Shouldn't it be in Hungarian? Or did Haustenburg foresee that the inscription needed to be intelligible to a dishonest museum curator and a forger with a heart of gold in New York? Unless maybe the title girl with the locket was born in England or in America (Julianna Laszlo does say that Haustenburg had a family in Hungary, which doesn't rule out a love child anywhere in the world). Also, how exactly is it that the painting came to be in the possession of the Channing? How could Neal be so sure Walter was the one who read the original inscription and chose to ignore it?
My fellow nitpickers at WhiteCollarLexicon.com have a few more nits, including: why does Dorsett try to sell the painting to an art gallery in the same city in which it was stolen?
Friday, November 7, 2014
Metronome lost in the whiplash
I just got around to seeing Whiplash, a movie the critics are raving about as "exhilarating," "outstanding" and "electrifying." But I just want to go yell at writer-director Damien Chazelle: "Do you know what a [expletive] metronome is? Maybe if I stick one up your [expletive] you'll be [expletive]ing quarter notes for the rest of your miserable uncle-[expletive]ing life! Maybe I should also stick a jazz history book up in there while I'm at it!"
As Drill Sergeant Fletcher (J. K. Simmons) berates the young drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) about his failure to keep proper tempo, yell-asking "Are you rushing or dragging?", he points to the metronome marking at the top of the chart, but it doesn't occur to anyone to take out a metronome to see what the real tempo is supposed to be. If it's so important to have your music conservatory professor yelling at the student, the results of the metronome comparison leave plenty of room for further berating: if it turns out Andrew had the right tempo after all, Fletcher could just berate him for not sticking to his guts.
But I'm a nitpicker, not a critic. There are much more fundamental problems with this movie than forgetting a piece of technology or fumbling a music history factoid. J. R. Jones hits the nail on the head with his review in the Chicago Reader.
As Drill Sergeant Fletcher (J. K. Simmons) berates the young drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) about his failure to keep proper tempo, yell-asking "Are you rushing or dragging?", he points to the metronome marking at the top of the chart, but it doesn't occur to anyone to take out a metronome to see what the real tempo is supposed to be. If it's so important to have your music conservatory professor yelling at the student, the results of the metronome comparison leave plenty of room for further berating: if it turns out Andrew had the right tempo after all, Fletcher could just berate him for not sticking to his guts.
But I'm a nitpicker, not a critic. There are much more fundamental problems with this movie than forgetting a piece of technology or fumbling a music history factoid. J. R. Jones hits the nail on the head with his review in the Chicago Reader.
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