Not an Olympics post – Revolution

I keep seeing commercials for the series Revolution, a JJ Abrams show scheduled for the fall.  I may watch this thing just to see how hilarious it is because from what I’ve seen in the commercials by my standards it is going to be awful.

It may be a well made show with decent scripts and great acting, but I doubt that would be enough for me to get past the problems with the premise.

If you want to enjoy the show without my observations ruining things for you just skip the rest of this post.  It’s also pretty long so if you don’t want to bother you should just skip it.

So you’re still here.  Let’s rant.  This is based only on the commercials but I really can’t not comment on this thing.

Apparently the show takes place 15 years after electricity has stopped working.  OK, I’ll give them that one for free.  Something has stopped electricity from working without affecting anything else – such as bioelectric activity which I suppose it could be argued that animals create electricity more than they use it.  Yeah, well, I’ll give them that one anyway.

But to me it looks like someone wanted to set a show in a future post-apocalyptic world without technology so they could have athletic young people riding horses, using swords and bows and arrows and generally looking awesome.  I can understand that, but they seem to have grabbed an idea to cause it as opposed to having an idea for what happened and then extrapolating a future from that.

Why do I say this, you ask?  Let’s start with the beginning as seen in the commercial.  There’s a jet airliner in a flat spin that crashes.  Why didn’t it just nose in?  Why is it spinning?  If it is crashing because the electricity failed then Why Are The Running Lights Still On?

And what’s with the bows and arrows and swords and horses?  Guns will still work without electricity.  Then there’s the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution – steam.  Steampunk is a big thing right now and they can’t imagine a steam powered car?  Something that actually existed – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Motor_Carriage_Company.  Not to mention trains and trucks and all sorts of things.  I might even be able to make a diesel engine work.  Also, gas lighting.

Then there’s the scene of people walking past Wrigley Field all overgrown and vine covered.  Sure, because in fifteen years no one has figured out how to cut the grass without electricity and the actual last ball park to install lights would never again host a baseball game if it had to be played in the daytime.  But all the cities seem to have been abandoned for some reason so, that broke baseball?  Whatever.

What about the effects of loss of life after such a catastrophic event, you ask?  That’s a fair question and one that should be asked before imagining this world.  Let’s say that aircraft, traffic and other accidents, lost ships at sea, deaths due to failed life support in hospitals and due to excessive heat and cold and general mayhem add up.  I’d say there would be at most 20% max loss of world population in the immediate aftermath – almost exclusively in industrialized nations.  In the following years I would estimate 30% to a maximum of 50% loss of population.

What would that do to the US?  It would give us the population that existed in the 1950s.  Not colonial levels; 1950s levels.  The country was not exactly deserted in the 1950s.  Sure it would take some effort to restore a working infrastructure and distribute food and other goods, but this is supposed to be 15 years later.  If anything we’d have functionally full employment.  All industry would require more human involvement, not to mention the military.  Of course there would be increased death rates due to illness and injury and the population would be younger, but horses instead of cars?  Well, maybe, but not exclusively.  And deserted cities?  I doubt it – at least, there would be cities even if the large metropolises were deserted though I think they would be scavenged for material and rebuilt in a usable form.

The population would undoubtedly be younger because health care would take a major hit and seniors and the disabled and chronically ill would not live long in that world.  Though I really doubt that everyone would be in their twenties.

High speed communication would be much more difficult, but not impossible.  No more satellite communication, or transcontinental or transoceanic for a while at least.  But in the late 19^th century, when steam powered trains were the norm, you could get across this country in less than a week.  That slows down communication but it doesn’t leave people cut off.  And what about fiber optics?  Why not use that to reproduce a telegraph service? 

Sure there would be initial problems and violence and confusion and chaotic times, but it wouldn’t be permanent and it would take a lot less than 15 years for signs of recovery to be apparent.

Mass transportation, mass communication, major industry, industrial farming, densely populated cities with street lights and police and fire departments and mail delivery and hospitals and all that stuff, all of that existed before the revolution of electricity at the end of the 19^th century.  The end of the 19^th century, that’s how far back this would take us.  Think about that.  Compared to today the technology was much less advanced but it wasn’t non-existent.  There was even air conditioning.  Aside from the telegraph we could reproduce everything that was around then without electricity.

So you can see how I would have a problem with a show that wants to use the loss of electricity as the cause for anything really dramatic 15 years after the event.  It would be less post-apocalyptic and more historical drama. 

Then there is the fact that everyone is dressed in new looking clothes, which means that somehow people have managed to learn how to build and operate looms, tan leather, make boots and shoes and the like.  It also looks like there are enough bowyers and fletchers around, maybe also people making katana and najinata as well, to keep people in weapons.  Plus they can distribute all of this stuff.  Yet they can’t cut the vines that have taken over all of the cities.

I suppose they’re using cars as planters because – well, there really is no reason for that.

People are also wearing eyeglasses.  They figured that out but not the rest.

Is there any chance that people are going to be raiding libraries and hoarding books to learn what they need to know to survive and flourish?  I doubt it.

And now I just saw another commercial that asks the important ridiculous questions: what if there were no medicine, no law, no police?

Right, because we all know that none of those things existed before electricity was being used.

Good grief.  If that isn’t just hyperbole thrown into a commercial – and even then it is just stupid – then this show is going to be worse than I thought.  And as you can tell I already thought that it was going to be pretty bad.

What will be a problem is weather because forecasting will be severely limited.

And now another commercial where people are armed and wearing new clothes with well repaired houses but you can see through the damn fence around their compound because it is made of uneven and unmatched twigs with no chinking or wattle or daub.  A five year old could do a better job.  Apparently everyone also forgot how to make walls.

Can it possibly work as a guilty pleasure?  Maybe I could see if it manages to not live up to my expectations and has plots that I can’t predict right now.  Maybe someone can convince me that I’m wrong.

This is a long and convoluted post not a long and comprehensive post so I did not cover every possibility and maybe they explain all of this somehow, but I think my main points are legitimate.

And what about lightning?

A long and meandering post – no, not this one

Up next one is of those posts that I’ve been holding on to.

In part because it may potentially ruin the fun in an upcoming TV show for some, in part because it is really long and probably boring and could only possibly matter to me so why the heck am I posting it, right?

Well, it may be entertaining, so, yeah, I’m posting it for entertainment value.

On second thought

Or whichever thought this is, I am going to shift the blame for the lack of quality of Olympics coverage.

It’s not the money it’s the technology.

Back when instant replay was cutting edge and getting 5 or 6 hours of coverage a day was a major accomplishment there was no thought given to this kind of hack editing of things.  The focus had to be on just getting the event broadcast.

These days they can easily jump back and forth between events and between different recordings or between live and recorded if that comes up.  The temptation is probably too much to resist.

London 2012 TV coverage

Even with all the problems it’s still not quite as bad as Seoul where Bryant Gumbel seemed to care more about getting his own face on TV than showing the Olympic competition.

I’m pretty sure that was also the Games where they showed a pre-recorded feature on an athlete Instead of the Live Race that was Being Run at That Very Moment!

Then they came back and showed the recording of the race. 

I mean really, who the hell does that?

Is it really what they say it is?

I know I can’t trust the NBC commentary because they may already know the outcome of any event. 

So when they tell me it’s a four way race for the women’s gymnastics gold between the US and Russia how do I know that’s true and not someone reliving some Cold War fantasy?

About one of those commercials

As you might have guessed I’ve been watching the Olympics in spite of the horrendous coverage.  So of course I get to enjoy the many commercials, among which have been some political ads.

There’s one praising Romney for his work on the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.  Contrary to the commercial and popular belief, the 2002 Winter Olympics were never in danger of not being held.  Two of the people running it were dumped because of what was called a scandal (it was just business as usual for the Olympics in any city but it made the news so there had to be some outrage) and Romney was brought in to run things.

But the International Olympic Committee had already said that they were committed to holding the Games in Salt Lake City.  There was never any question that they would be held there and on time.

They did need some more money and Romney was good at getting that.  So good that he managed to get $1.3 billion in US tax dollars.  Of that, almost $1.1 billion went for development around Salt Lake City not directly related to the games.  In other words: $250 million for the Olympics, $1.1 billion for developers in the Salt Lake City area.

Romney may have done a good job running the games – where, by the way, he told the athletes that they were only there because of all of the support they got from other people in their lives.  He may have done a good job, and from what I can tell he did what he was hired to do, but the 2002 Winter Olympics were paid for by US taxpayers.

Mitt Romney did what he seems to be very good at – spending other people’s money and taking a lot of credit.

Yes, I know that the commercial is not from Romney’s campaign but is from his supporters.  That doesn’t change the facts.  He ran the Winter Olympics, great, it’s not like he invented water or something.

Also yes, I am very Olympics focused at the moment which is why the other political commercials haven’t even registered with me.

Further, at the time I thought he did a good job, but let’s not get too excited.

Another Olympic rant

I know that I am seeing this through the lens of my own bias.  Still, it seems to me that when I was young there were fewer commercials.  Quality of coverage aside there just seemed to be fewer breaks.  I know that even in the days of my youth when I liked the coverage the network was trying to make a profit, but honestly, they just didn’t seem to have as many commercials. 

Some time in the 80s it all seemed to change from wanting to show the Olympics to wanting to produce an event.  Personally I think when a different network got to cover the Games they tried to show that they could do it better than ABC and to them better meant flashier.  Money is also a problem.  Of course the whole point of a TV network is profit, just like any corporation.  That’s fine.  I’m not complaining about that – except where it damages the product.  Namely the TV show.

I’d also lay some of blame on the Olympic Committee as well as the network.  I have no evidence but it seems to be less the Olympics these days and more The Olympics ™©®$$$$.  And naturally when you have to bid outrageous amounts to get the TV rights you have to make up the money to show a profit.  So there are more commercials because you can only charge so much per minute.

But since there are only so many natural places for a commercial break you have to manufacture them.  You edit and cut out parts of the events; show most of the US and only a few of the other countries’ athletes; take a break in the middle of a match and come back after a few goals have been scored; cut out the parts you think are boring.  After all, real or perceived, you have to cater to the American short attention span and what better way than to make it all one big highlight reel where more commercials can be squeezed in.

Actually, to me it feels more like a lot of commercials with a few sporting events squeezed in.

You can edit for time, cut and paste parts of events to fit your artificial narrative and show things out of sequence and modified for whatever reason.  But you lose the spontaneity and the progression of events that builds the tension and leads naturally to the climax at the end.  There is no end because you have no idea what happened when because it’s all out of order.  There’s more flash and less substance.

Rather than being compelling it’s disorienting.

Maybe I’m being too critical.  It isn’t possible to show everything when so much happens at the same time and watching the Olympics in real time can be tedious and boring.  It’s the nature of an event like that where there is so much going on concurrently but there is also so much down time and repetition. 

I’ll relent.  It’s an overwhelming spectacle that needs to be managed to make it comprehensible.   Maybe the experience can be improved with judicious editing.

Except that isn’t what’s going on here.  The editing is choppy.  And it’s so obvious that someone who likes to look at the women gymnasts – not competing, just look at them – produced this thing it isn’t even funny.  You get more shots from the profiles than of competition.  They have a theme song for crying out loud.

So edit, but do it better.  What we’re getting now is crap.