Hello Fellow Travelers!
There is this program my spouse really likes on SHOWTIME called "Homeland". It's dark and has actors I mostly like and is about spies and the C.I.A. I never really liked it and it is too convoluted even for me. Is the Clare Danes character crazier or saner than everyone else at the CIA? Is she having obsessive fantasies about Brody or is she just a little slutty? Did Clare Danes move back in with her TV Dad for a month? A year? And why? Did she move in because she was unhinged by the CIA and needed supervision from her father (the always compelling character actor James Rebhorn you know him, he was the go-to guy in the 90's when a movie needed a weasely, bad guy. Here he is very sympathetic, just a concerned Dad.)or did she live with Dad because she was unemployed? And why did she go rushing back to the CIA when Mandy Pantinkin said he believed her? Then she's nuttier than a fruitcake and brushes old Dad(and presumably most of her meds) off on her way out the door. Is she psychotic? Is it just a tough job market? And the POW/Congressman Brody Dude, what's his deal? Is he a real American who cracked under torture after eight years of being a POW? Or was he a terrorist all along? The fact that he looks a little like my spouse just adds to my confusion. Are Brody's wife and kids moles or dupes? You know I like a complex storyline as much as anyone,and I mean anyone! I keep track of Dexter, some of the Housewives Real or not, The Good Wife (?), Boardwalk Empire, Weeds, True Blood, The Simpsons - and that's just Sunday!
I feel like life is complicated enough. Case in point: The Petraeus Sex Scandal. At first, it was just another, garden variety extramarital affair. A famous general having an inappropriate relationship with his biographer; regrettable but not original or unusual. General is exposed and even though he hasn't seen his paramour in months he tenders his resignation because he says it's the honorable thing to do and the President accepts resignation. Sad but fairly predictable, right? Business as usual, right? Wrong!
Every day since Gen. Petraeus did resign there has been a new character added or some new circumstance that is really distracting and not even remotely connected to the President or National Security or really to even to Petraeus himself. I say, "Poor General Petraeus" because by all accounts he's a good guy, trying (Or who tried) to do a good job as a General and then at the CIA(If you can do a "good anything" there he was doing it), and what will he be remembered for? Fooling around with his biographer, that's what.
Like that irritating spy show my beloved is so fond of, these Petraeus details and associated men and women leave me with more questions than answers. When did the CIA know that 4 Americans were killed by an act of terrorism? Who is that military guy? The other one. What does Ambassador Rice have to do with anything? See what I mean? I barely grasp the real-life situations that comprise our news. I can't absorb fictional stories that are as pointless and fuzzy as what I get on TV and the internet as news. Life is ambiguous. People can be ambiguous, I get that. I need my TV to be instructive or at the very least, entertaining, not ambiguous.
There is this program my spouse really likes on SHOWTIME called "Homeland". It's dark and has actors I mostly like and is about spies and the C.I.A. I never really liked it and it is too convoluted even for me. Is the Clare Danes character crazier or saner than everyone else at the CIA? Is she having obsessive fantasies about Brody or is she just a little slutty? Did Clare Danes move back in with her TV Dad for a month? A year? And why? Did she move in because she was unhinged by the CIA and needed supervision from her father (the always compelling character actor James Rebhorn you know him, he was the go-to guy in the 90's when a movie needed a weasely, bad guy. Here he is very sympathetic, just a concerned Dad.)or did she live with Dad because she was unemployed? And why did she go rushing back to the CIA when Mandy Pantinkin said he believed her? Then she's nuttier than a fruitcake and brushes old Dad(and presumably most of her meds) off on her way out the door. Is she psychotic? Is it just a tough job market? And the POW/Congressman Brody Dude, what's his deal? Is he a real American who cracked under torture after eight years of being a POW? Or was he a terrorist all along? The fact that he looks a little like my spouse just adds to my confusion. Are Brody's wife and kids moles or dupes? You know I like a complex storyline as much as anyone,and I mean anyone! I keep track of Dexter, some of the Housewives Real or not, The Good Wife (?), Boardwalk Empire, Weeds, True Blood, The Simpsons - and that's just Sunday!
I feel like life is complicated enough. Case in point: The Petraeus Sex Scandal. At first, it was just another, garden variety extramarital affair. A famous general having an inappropriate relationship with his biographer; regrettable but not original or unusual. General is exposed and even though he hasn't seen his paramour in months he tenders his resignation because he says it's the honorable thing to do and the President accepts resignation. Sad but fairly predictable, right? Business as usual, right? Wrong!
Every day since Gen. Petraeus did resign there has been a new character added or some new circumstance that is really distracting and not even remotely connected to the President or National Security or really to even to Petraeus himself. I say, "Poor General Petraeus" because by all accounts he's a good guy, trying (Or who tried) to do a good job as a General and then at the CIA(If you can do a "good anything" there he was doing it), and what will he be remembered for? Fooling around with his biographer, that's what.
Like that irritating spy show my beloved is so fond of, these Petraeus details and associated men and women leave me with more questions than answers. When did the CIA know that 4 Americans were killed by an act of terrorism? Who is that military guy? The other one. What does Ambassador Rice have to do with anything? See what I mean? I barely grasp the real-life situations that comprise our news. I can't absorb fictional stories that are as pointless and fuzzy as what I get on TV and the internet as news. Life is ambiguous. People can be ambiguous, I get that. I need my TV to be instructive or at the very least, entertaining, not ambiguous.
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