Alphabet TV - B is for.... Big Love

First off, Cinemania has my review of Unsolved. In the highly unlikely event you were contemplating seeing this fairly-obscure product of the Oklahoma University Moving Image Arts Programme, don't.

Second, on with Alphabet TV!

Though actually, I should probably clarify a couple other things about it first. One is, we're waaay ahead of where I'm writing in the alphabet - I've just been slack and busy by turns. The other is that we're not binge-watching things in the traditional sense. The rule of Alphabet TV is that we watch things a season at a time, at whatever season we're currently up to. So for the last post about American Horror Story I should really have clarified that I meant Season 1.

Now, though - B is for Big Love. In case you're not familiar with it, Big Love is a dramedy about Bill (Bill Paxton) who is a fundamentalist Mormon living the Principle (ie, polygamous marriage) undercover in mainstream LDS society in Utah with his three wives and all of their children (I've actually lost count of how many there are). We're currently up to Season 3, but in this case it's actually not super-important for you to know that.

Big Love is a weird show. On the one hand, the whole deceptive undercover element is pretty interesting - and the various ruses the family use to avoid detection are pretty clever, and when it reverts to essentially being a dramedy about family under pressure it's far from the worst one I've seen. On the other, the central conflict is between Bill and his friends (the "good" polygamists) and the ultra-fundamentalist compound of Juniper Creek where Bill was raised. That is, the conflict is between "good" polygamists and "evil" polygamists. Juniper Creek is definitely warped, but it almost feels like it needs to be in order for Bill to look ordinary and decent in contrast.

Bill attempts to treat his wives with respect and dignity, but his actual belief structure dictates that he is priest-king of his own house and that his wives and children are beholden to him as a result. It's a deeply misogynistic and patriarchal structure, and seeing the dictator attempt to be benign doesn't really change that. There are also troublesome elements of the history of Mormonism as a whole which briefly surface, then disappear without much attention. I'm thinking specifically of the overt racism in some of the early doctrines, which is raised by a random black walk-on character and never mentioned again.

That said, you don't have to  take the characters' beliefs on to enjoy the show. The acting is largely great - especially Harry Dean Stanton who brings a peculiar beauty and melancholy to the role of the head of the Juniper Creek compound - and the relationships between the characters play out in consistently interesting ways.

Maybe check it out, see what you think?

Ninjahobo pt 2 - Mr. Finch...

Right. I can't get on to the other things I want to talk about until I finish this, 'cos that's how my brain works.

So: Mr. Finch....

Well, I actually have fewer problems with him than I do with the Ninjahobo. For one thing, he at least looks right. My concern is mostly about his motivation.

In the original show, Mr. Finch is a millionaire genius who built a computer supersurveillance system for the US government and left himself a backdoor into it for entirely altruistic reasons.

The bit I have a problem with here is the altruism. It's not that I object to altruistic characters, it's just that government supersurveillance =/= altruism to my mind. Moreover, what kind of altruistic and naive genius (he'd need to be very naive to build a system like that for altruistic reasons) would then hire a ninjahobo? Surely there are more competent and functional individuals he could employ to be Batman for him? Bear in mind that he's very very rich - now money may not buy everything, but it'll surely buy you a very competent and discreet mercenary who isn't drunk and homeless - and buy their continued silence, for that matter.

No. Mr. Finch is not entirely altruistic. I don't know that his precise motivations matter - he may be a well-intentioned extremist, have a vendetta against some particular criminal organisation, or have a sort of classist hatred of criminals as "scum" - but he's definitely got an agenda. That agenda is why he goes with Ninjahobo - he wants someone who won't ask too many questions about why he's doing what he's doing, someone he feels he can manipulate reasonably easily.

"Manipulate" is the key word here. We've set up the kind of character in the refigured Ninjahobo who isn't really going to want to be Batman. He wants to be left alone to drink himself to death, and he's not afraid to seriously hurt people for that to happen. Now the original Ninjahobo Refuses the Call, to be sure - but our Ninjahobo would probably refuse it utterly. So how would Finch go about getting him onside?

Well, I think he'd probably engineer all the situations that Ninjahobo gets into until he agrees to start being ?Batman-for-hire. That first fight on the train? Set up by Finch. The situation immediately after the first refusal where Ninjahobo is made to believe someone's being murdered next door? Our Finch would have him eavesdrop or walk in on a real murder (or attempted murder) and see how he reacts. After he's gauged Ninjahobo's skills, he'll offer him money to do what he's already been doing.

This isn't too much of a stretch for a guy who builds computer supersurveillance systems, after all.