Tightly Wound

Buyer's Remorse

Call it buyer's remorse: those moments when I realize that being an English major has utterly ruined my ability to enjoy anything without analyzing the hell out of it, driving myself crazy, and then missing the point of the entertainment entirely. Of course, being a blog-addict in an election year has only added fuel to the already blazing inferno of "What EXACTLY Did They Mean By That," but the English major provided both the tinder and the spark long ago. It's not enough for me to watch newscasts with my mind set on "dowsing rod" in order to glean the newsperson's "agenda," oh no, now it's bleeding over into my prime time geek fare, and it's Ruining. My. Life.

This Sunday evening I was enjoying my Tivo'd episode of The 4400. So far this show has managed an interesting blend of old fashioned mystery solving with a big dose of X-Files "the (larger) truth is out there," and since everyone's already down with the Aliens Exist thing we're not wasting time or insulting a character's intelligence by forcing her to be sceptical in the face of empirical evidence (problem with Scully, much, BAW? Why, yes. Thanks for asking.). This makes me happy.

However, because as a recovering English major I can never be truly happy unless I've probed the "meta," I find myself concentrating on the meaning of the Homeland Security office and its head guy. Yes, I suppose that Homeland Security would be the appropriate department to handle 4400 returned alien abductees were this situation to become reality. Okay, so no whiff of "being topical and sticking it to the Man" there. Moving on.

One of the subplots involves a reporter with more than a passing resemblance both physically and in terms of reporting style to Fox's Rita Cosby. This woman keeps broadcasting items that the Department Head would prefer she didn't, for valid reasons like a) Avoiding public panic and possible attacks on the 4400, b) It's interfering with the agents' ability to do their work. Plus, this reporter once leaked the name of a valuable witness in a case the Department Head (Dennis Ryland, played by Peter Coyote) was working on for the FBI, and he has a personal grudge.

Okay. Fast foward to a meeting between Ryland and the reporter in which he asks her to lay off and she says no in a particularly annoying and smirky way. Ryland lets her go, then calls a meeting with her producer in which he says that thanks to the Patriot Act, he no longer has to get permission to tap phones and basically make their lives hell. We like to call this Hardball, and it doesn't involve that goober Chris Matthews. I got all tingly inside, because here's where my inner English major went all haywire.

Reporter as a bad guy, check. Cipher for a Fox News reporter? This fits with my suspicions regarding Hollywood attitudes toward Rupert Murdoch. Plus, I like Ryland, and the writers have taken some pains to make him human and mostly likeable.

But now we have Ryland Crushing Dissent with the Patriot Act, another Hollywood bugaboo. And yet, as a viewer I was pleased as punch that he put the smack down on the Rita wannabe. So what's the deal? Who's the Evil Bad Guy here? Quien es mas malo? We're being put in the position of rooting for abuse of the Patriot Act to crush the dissent of a Fox reporter? Will there be sympathy for the reporter later? Is this some sort of bizarro-world republican/republican smackdown where we must choose between the lesser of two obvious evils? Are the writers similarly confused? Have I had too much Shiraz? I sat in my La-Z-Boy recliner, wineglass in hand, and examined my inner struggle. Because God knows, we English majors can't even be conflicted without writing a freaking dissertation on every emotional nuance contained therein.

Is it possible that a TV show in 2004 is less interested in an agenda than in telling a story using the societal conventions at hand? Is it possible that the election year is finally beginning to get to me and I'm cracking under the strain? Finally, is it possible that I am wasting entirely too much mental energy looking for Michael Moore in a late-summer replacement piece of fluff on the USA Network?

Please hurry up, November. I'm on my last legs, here. And I don't even want to think about what will happen when I watch this week's episode of Rescue Me.

Posted by Big Arm Woman at July 30, 2004 10:11 AM