Having just watched "Junebug" (so far, my favorite movie released in 2005, but Hawaii being what it is, I haven't yet seen some others that I expect to like a lot), we were reflecting on how over-rated "Crash" is. At this point, if you want to see characters that have truly complex moral struggles, you're far better off television than movies. It's no insight that many shows now have multi-episode and even multi-season story arcs that are too complex to understand on first viewing (oh, how I love "Deadwood"). With a new season of "The Sopranos" about to debut, I was reflecting on how supremely disappointed I'll be if the series does not end with a conclusive end for Tony (Christopher killing him and taking his place would be the classical ending, but I could accept anything that leaves that house of his empty (oh, and has a final shot of ducks flying with the guns of unseen hunters banging in the distance)....Where was I?)
But, I was thinking "What was first show that was designed to center around a multi-year story arc?" and, as far as I can recall, the answer is "Babylon 5."
We also watched "The Island" this week -- not nearly as bad as I had expected. Not great, but not bad at all. On the other hand, they've been playing "The Core" on one of the cable channels and I've caught about half an hour of it: where is "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" when you need them? There's a scene where the scientist is explaining the composition of the Earth and he holds up a sliced avocado (or perhaps a pear) and says "Say this is the Earth--" at which point I immediately guessed that the next line was "-- of course, the Earth is very much larger, but you knew that."