Six Degrees

[shadowkat]

I watched part of the old flick Six Degrees of Separation today, you know the one where Will Smith pretends to be Sidney Poiter's son and pulls this con job on all these rich people in NY? Well, one of the lead characters, the wife of a rich art dealer played by Stockard Channing, says the following to her daughter: "We are only seperated from each other by 6 people, six degrees. And each new person we meet is like opening another door to an adventure or new opportunity or something else. The Chinese Water Torture aspect of it though is finding the right six people..." I'd remembered the bit about being seperated by six degrees, what I'd forgotten was the last two sentences. How true. Where we end up in life really has a great deal to do with *who* we encounter on the way and how we interact with them. The film does an excellent job of illustrating this idea through how each character changes another character's life path in some small little way. So what happens if you meet the wrong six people? Or is that possible? Are we all where we were meant to end up? My friend BGItaly believes that while we do have free will - there is a plan, everything has a purpose, and fate does have a hand in it. I'm not sure about this to be honest.
Part of me wants to believe that - because it's oddly reassuring, the other doesn't - and thinks it's either random luck or happenstance.

Then tonight, while waiting for Alias to start, I was watching that reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", actually flipping between it and an animated version of "Lord of The Rings" by Ralph Baski(sp?) on Cartoon Network. I'd seen the Ralph Baski version of LoTR before, interesting animation style, came out in the 1980s - I think I saw it in the movie theater, can't remember. The conclusion was shown on Television about two years later -and was done by someone else. Liked it better before I saw Peter Jackson's version, which is understandable.

At any rate the Extreme Makeover show- is about a group of designers and carpenters going in and re-doing an impoverished family's house. The family sends an application in to ABC explaining their situation, ABC reviews it, decides if they are suitably needy and if they'll make good television (I'm sure) then sends this team in to redo the house in 7 days with a certain amount of money. The team arrives in an upscale bus. It's basically Trading Spaces meets Habitat for Humanity as organized by the Walt Disney Company (The family goes to a Walt Disney resort, all expenses paid under Disney's new "Magic Gathering" Group visit deal, while the team redoes their home with assistance from their neighbors. And we get to see footage of them living it up there - now if that's not marketing, I don't know what is. But hey, at least it's for a good cause.). Nice concept, made me a bit edgy though with all the marketing and rehearsed interviews, clearly audience manipulation. I hate being manipulated. Reality shows are in a nutshell "unscripted" TV, not "real" life. And all about finding those little emotional triggers to ensure you stick around. Television created by a marketing department. I'm not sure many people get that.

On the plus side, what hit me about this particular reality show was how the neighbors, the police, the firemen, all connected to help these people to get a new home. That seemed real. It was a suitably impoverished family - 8 kids who lost their parents within a week of each other, the two older kids - 21 and 23 (I think) came home to take care of the younger ones ranging from 12-18, because otherwise they'd be in Foster Homes. The house was a mess and under a heavy mortgage. The team came in and turned it into a dream home in 7 days. (Still skeptical of this, I have it on good authority that anything done in that amount of time does not wear well - so I think there's some manipulating going on behind the scenes - just like there is in Trading Spaces.) Did I like it? Not really - felt very manipulated by it to be honest. On the other hand, I was touched by how much the neighbors and community really wanted to help these people. (In that sense Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is far better than just about any other reality series on TV. Actually I can't think of one that comes close to it. Maybe Queer Eye for The Straight Guy does. All the others seem to be about hurting people, manipulating someone, or defeating someone in a competition, this one is genuinely about helping them.) How connected the people in the community felt to them and their level of compassion. It shocked the kids, who never expected any outsiders to really want to help *them* to this extent. Which is sad, I think. Because the truth is? Most people do genuinely want to help one another, they want to make others feel better, comfort them, love them, connect to them - it's figuring out how to do this that's so incredibly frustrating. A sort of Chinese Water Torture. Our society doesn't make it easy for us, does it? For some odd reason it still seems to be easier in our society to hurt than to help right now and that can't be good.


I did see the Alias finale. Not bad. Not great either. But considering the two episodes that came before, better than usual.



My difficulty with this season of Alias is the writers clearly did not know what they were doing. Granted most tv shows aren't that tightly plotted ahead of time - episodic shows certainly aren't. But Alias isn't episodic, it is serial. This requires that you at least have a clue what your plot arc is going to be, you don't write it and see where it goes. (Yes, that's how some of us write fanfic and novels so we shouldn't judge, but TV shows aren't novels, you don't get a chance to re-write all the chapters after you've the done the finale.)

This episode attempted to fill up some of those plot holes. Such as the whole dream bit about Sydney fighting Lauren and how Lauren was Syd's shadow self. That actually worked. Lauren as Syd's shadow followed all the way through - except that they made Lauren just a tad *too* evil at the end. I'm sorry but I had troubles buying Lauren would shoot Marshall at point blank range or anyone else. Knock them out maybe. It was too drastic. It also gave Vaughn an easy way out of a "moral" conudrum. Shame. The Lauren arc could have been far more interesting if they hadn't given into formulaic cliche - ie. make Lauren irredeemably evil, make it clear Vaughn had no choice but to kill her. At least Sark is still somewhat ambiguous, not by much, but more so than Lauren, he clearly loved her and was ashamed he gave her up. They could actually do something with Sark if they worked at it. There's the faintest outline of a fascinating character lurking there and I think, unlike Michael Varten, Douglas Sirk has the acting chomps to pull it off. Another character they should explore more is Weiss - underused actor, who is really interesting to watch on screen. Would love to see an episode around him.

But enough whining about what I wish Alias would do...
the other two plot threads don't quite work. The PAssenger storyline with Nadia and Sloan seems clunky in places and put together at the last minute. While it is certainly interesting and unpredictable - the unpredictability has to do with the fact that I'm pretty sure the writers haven't a clue what the relationship between these two should be or who Nadia is.
(I got the same feeling with Lauren actually.) The other storyline that feels clunky and redundant is the top secret file showing Daddy is manipulating Syd. We've done the "is Jack betraying/manipulating Syd or is he doing something else" story one too many times now, I think. I actually sort of like it - but only if he *really* turns out to be manipulating her.
A risk I doubt they'll take, since they didn't decide to have Sloan turn out to be her father out of fear of losing the Syd/Jack relationship. They aren't going to do anything that will destroy or hamper that relationship more than temporarily.
I understand why they went there though - too nice a writing parallel to pass up: Syd/Jack vs. Lauren/Peggy Lipton also ties nicely into Syd's dream of fighting Lauren who turns into herself. Lauren is Syd's dark side - clearly. The writers go overboard to tell this to the audience - no subletly here. They even have the two switch places at one point to get information. And it's Lauren who gives Sid the key to her own manipulation. Neat set-up, very intriguing, I'm just not sure I trust them to pull it off.

All in all, I enjoyed the episode more than last week's The Practice (horrible) or anything else on today. So I guess that says something.


In other news...finished a couple of items on my to do list.
The two resumes were completed or hashed out on Sat. Nearly drove me insane doing it but was done. Feeling a little better about them. Not alot but a little. Now working on my writing portfolio again. Wish I liked my writing samples better.

Comments

Six degrees might be a stretch

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

But...

My sister-in-law's (one degree of separation since I claim her as a friend) cousin (two degrees) was married by a family friend, a (now former) United States Senator (three degrees) which means everyone on my friends list here is within five degrees of separation of lots of interesting people such as Richard Nixon and US Attorney General John Ashcroft.