Surface

Back during the old days of the blog, there was no such thing as streaming movies. We had to do with Flash videos and endless buffering! The buffering! Many of the posts on Movies I Should Have Already Seen and the like I physically rented from local video stores or saw on TV. I did have DVD Netflix at one point but the queue was somewhat co-managed by my then girlfriend, now wife, so nuttiness was limited.

We now have streaming and what a great thing it is! Oh, and what a great thing it is that it happened now when I am 30 and have a family and mortgage and such. If this would have happened to a younger me then it would have crippled me. The sheer selection of movies, many of varying degrees of quality, that I no longer had to cart around or explain to the video store clerk. I can recall one of my last video rentals back home in PR. It included Fear Dot Com, Maria Full of Grace, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Insert your own gag. And, of course, the people I never talked to would find my comments on these films witty. With streaming, I can pick like I use to in the video store but never fear for returning them or lugging them. I also don't feel so bad stopping in the middle of boring films or movies that are just plain un-watchable if I stream them. I have the same problem with library books. I physically plucked this off the shelves and dragged it back home. I need to consume it!

Streaming also allows me to re-watch many shows from the past and realize that indeed these weren't that good (Many of the kids show I loved fit into this) or that these deserve a re-watch. I recently had an afternoon to kill (I don't work Mondays and watch my infant son those days) and re-watched Surface.

Must admit I did not watch this show during the actual run of late 2005 to 2006. I do remember there being endless commercials for it in the pre-show to movies (Regal First Look for those that go to such cinemas. I am sure other chains have similar things) during the summer of 2005. Surface came out about a year after Lost and I think all the other networks scrambled to green light sci-fi mystery type shows. Surface proves to be a decent little sci-fi show that has enough tech babble but also enough humanism to engage others. There are three main characters you can identify with and I must say that all three come across as dynamic and engaged. 

A no spoiler plot synopsis...strange happenings begin to occur across our oceans. Massive fish kills, weird weather, and a nuclear submarine goes missing. In each instance, there are reports of strange sea monsters. The plot unfurls the mystery through three main characters: Laura, Rich, and Miles. Laura is a marine biologist who saw one of the creatures while on a research trip. Rich is an insurance salesman whose brother dies during a scuba dive at the hands of one of the creatures and Miles is a teenager who finds one of the creatures and befriends it. Drama ensues as these three come together and we learn the origins of the animals and the governments bumbling efforts to control and exploit them.

Rich, played by Jay R. Ferguson, is my favorite due to the duality of his roles. As he gets closer to the truth, he gets closer to Laura and Miles, becoming a sort of family for him, but he does so at the expense of his actual family who just want things to get back to normal. He also plays a Southern man who isn't defined by either the negative or rosy stereotypes that plague that definition. He seems like truly a regular guy whose life is derailed by this spectacular fluke. I also like that this is a show where characters have to figure out how to pay for all their adventuring. I love X-Files, but yeah, didn't someone call Mulder and Scully out for all kinds of un-approved time off and travel expense?

Laura, played by Lake Bell, gets to be a real heroine who is intelligent, strong, and maternal while also having moments that challenge her. As mentioned above, when she goes broke due to some plot shenanigans she finds a job waitressing while also keeping the hunt for the monsters. I think a weaker show would have waited for a deus ex machina to justify her not doing anything. An, there are plenty of last minutes rescues in the 15 episodes, but I find this verisimilitude quite refreshing. Not so much a damsel in distress, but a main character who needs to deal with all this!

The show does a nice job of feeding a decent mix of regular resolution and new intrigue to keep you going. It was short lived (Canceled after one season. More on that below) and ended with loose threads, but you got a good sense of who/what these creatures were. The show also has a lot of skin, which makes sense for a show where much happens on the beach, but yeah. Lots of skin.  Network skin so don't get too excited but it has a pre Gossip Girl Leighton Meester and she is in a bikini a lot. And she has friends who also seem to live in bikinis. Cannot take credit for this line, but if you can't have nudity have gratuity!  I'm not complaining (I'm not made of stone, damn it!) but understand that in Surface fan service is when they put on clothes.

The show got canceled after one season due to ratings. I don't think NBC did it any favors because they cut the broadcast in two by airing five episodes and then re-airing the last ten after the 2006 Winter Olympics and their dreadful three weeks of trickle down schedule snafus. (Why the 2014 Olympics in Russia forced FX to delay Archer for 3 weeks is beyond me. FX isn't even in the NBC family!). Way to build and audience. The show also turns in the last few episodes by introducing a new semi main character (a girl friend for Miles) and going from a focus on the mystery to a focus on the government conspiracy.

I know it wasn't the plan to cancel it, but I am glad it did. The show ends with a whole new paradigm/world that we must live in. Few shows can survive total shifts/reboots and Surface would have become something completely different. The pitch for the second season would be the pitch for a whole new original series and we end on a cliff hanger, but at least one that has a bit of closure. Not something like the Sopranos ending where we go "What the hell!" Surface ends on more of "Oh my god!" This show would have made a great mini series. Knowing it just had one shot it could have tightened up some of the aspects and resolved the dangling plot threads while still ending on a satisfying bit of mystery and wonder. 

Word Play

The other day on CNN they mentioned how a criminal had "faked booby trapped" his home. What does "fake booby trap" mean? It should imply that it is not booby trapped and is safe. Or maybe it means that the traps have real setups but fake payoffs like a gun that does not fire bullets but a flag that says "BANG"" on it. You step on a spring and a recording of the fail noise from the Price is Right plays.  Or he installed them poorly? Is this like "reverse racism?" Or, "same difference," which used to drive a friends of mine bonkers in high school. It was just a two minute story I heard in passing while playing with the baby so who knows, but watch out for my un fake fake booby traps in the yard!

Snowcrash

As a younger man, I was fascinated by conspiracies. Blame The X-Files, but I started a "ParaScience" club in the 11th grade had many Fortean books and magazines to back me up. I am very grateful I grew out of this phase because this was back during the early Internet and I had spotty dial up at home. If this happened now then I would be lost in the very very dark places of the Internet shining up my tin foil hat.

People are no more stupid than before, but we do live in an age where it is very easy to find someone or something that agrees with you. If you don't like vaccines, then science be damned because we got all these websites. Something that has made its rounds on the Internet is the idea that snow that recently paralyzed Atlanta and the South was some sort of government plot. The nuts are not sure what but it has to with chemicals (indeed water is a chemical) and maybe these chemicals were thrown from the blackest of black helicopters.

If the government could produce such insidious material that falls like powder but laughs off flames then why hold off to try it on Atlanta. Mix it in with the oodles dumped on the MidWest to really see some long term effects. A loose box of ball bearings can shut down a freeway, but to slowly dust an unsuspecting populace with nano-snow. Evil genius.

Maybe they are already...