The Fire Ant Gazette - A Midland, Texas Blog

Random TV Questions
Category: TV & Radio...
Posted Friday, April 15, 2005 at 09:41 AM [GMT-6]

The following questions have been accumulating like dryer lint, gradually but effectively blocking my normal cognitive processes...and, believe me, I don't need any additional challenges in this area. Thus, I pose them to you as a way of cleaning the trap.

Where would today's crime-related dramas get their ideas if they couldn't use DNA as a crutch? Makes you wonder how Perry Mason ever solved a single stinkin' crime.

What was Sonic's ad agency thinking when they replaced the two Mormon guys with the new husband-and-wife (apparently) spokescouple? The guy is unctuously mindless in a way that allows jurors to righteously consider justifiable homicide as a defense, and the woman obviously can't wait to kill her agent for booking this lame gig. Surely Sonic's marketing strategy isn't designed to generate such murderous thoughts in its customers, but these are strange days we're living in.

Speaking of strange days, we missed the premier of NBC's "Revelations" on Wednesday night, but caught it on the rebound via CNBC last night. It wasn't so bad as to be painful (other than the unfortunate timing of having a sub-plot involving the decision to pull the plug on a child in a "persistent vegetative state" and who, unfortunately for the ACLU-types, kept showing annoying signs of life) but that might have been an improvement over the general reaction of "huh?" If this "limited series" is really supposed to be a dramatization of the end-times prophecies documented in the Book of Revelation (note to TV producers: the Bible book's name isn't pluralized, but I'm sure you know that), the writers might want to actually, you know, read the book. Because as far as I could tell, they went to BibleGateway.com and pulled a dozen scriptures at random for "atmosphere" and called it a day. I have no idea who the target audience is, but perhaps anyone who thinks "The DaVinci Code" is a scholarly work will also be edified by "Revelations."

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Comments

we missed the premier of NBC's "Revelations"

We have the first 6 hours on DVD....a present from Grace Hill Media. Stop by and pick it up if you like.....

Posted by: Wallace-Midland Texas at April 15, 2005 10:36 AM

Does it get any better? A higher-resolution version of a lame program is still just a lame program.

Posted by: Eric at April 15, 2005 10:56 AM

Where would today's crime-related dramas get their ideas if they couldn't use DNA as a crutch?

Real, honest to gosh, straight from the dumbest crook in the land's hands, fingerprints?

What was Sonic's ad agency thinking ...

Is this a commercial? Since we got a TiVo, we never see those things.

Posted by: Kyle Hasselbacher at April 15, 2005 11:03 AM

Is this a commercial?

I think it's a parody of a commercial. Unfortunately, there's not a big market for such things.

Posted by: Eric at April 15, 2005 11:12 AM

Eric, re: (note to TV producers: the Bible book's name isn't pluralized, but I'm sure you know that)

May, I offer an insider's - I work at an NBC-affiliate here, in West Texas - comment about the show's title?

The title does not refer exclusively to the name of the Book of Revelation in the Bible. The title also refers to the experience of one of the series' protagonists (played by Bill Pullman), who is described as "an astrophysicist whose certainty that all worldly events can be explained by Science ..."

That certainty is challenged by the series' other major protagonist ( a nun played by Natascha McElhone) who leads him on a journey through the unfamiliar world of faith.

While on that journey, his experiences of what was, to him, unknown or known-but-rejected in the past, are 'revelations' ... from which the series also draws its title.

A small point, I realize ... but it was one I was able to address.

As for the rest, there are other, deeper points in your post concerning the scriptwriters' ineptitude with the subject matter that I may not be able to address so well ... but I can try, if you'd like.

Posted by: Jeff at April 16, 2005 12:45 PM

Jeff, my comment wasn't solely in response to the name of the program. I might have misunderstood or heard something incorrectly, but I'd swear that one of the characters in the program referred to the "book of Revelations."

In any event, you know me...just trying to stir up trouble! ;-)

Posted by: Eric at April 16, 2005 01:04 PM

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