Two weeks ago, ABC Network launched it’s new show, “Flash Forward”, in which the whole world blacks out for exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds. During this black out, the people have visions of their futures from about six months later, and they now must deal with what they know (or don’t know) is coming. I’m not going to say too much more, just in case you’ve stumbled across this by accident, and just aren’t caught up on things yet. If this is the case, you should probably visit http://www.hulu.com, and watch the first two episodes before continuing your reading.
So remember how yesterday I said that I had been in Twitter’s dungeon? Well, as it turns out, being there has its benefits. It’s interesting to see people’s reactions to events as they unfold. The trend that I noticed with the people I was following was that they were confused, and therefore turned off by the show’s premier, one young man saying, “I am so done with Flash Forward.”
Why is this so? Why are people so confused by this show? After all, it’s not the first story dealing with cataclysmic events. The Stand, Break Out, any of the Scifi channel’s Nature Unleashed movies–they all deal with this kind of thing. I think the biggest reason is that the first episode was so chaotic.
There were so many things going on at the same time: The FBI’s trying to investigate, the show’s main characters are trying to cope with the fact that (a) they have lost time and have no idea where it went, and (b) what they saw–or didn’t see, in the case of at least one FBI agent. Also, “Flash Forward” is what Jerome Stern, author of Making Shapely Fiction, would call a “Once in a Blue Moon” story; the reader must accept that, for the duration of the story, what the author is saying is true, and they’d better put down the book–change the channel–if they can’t get on board with that. In other words, the viewer must accept that there has been a black out, and people have seen their futures.
One thing the first episode did do was to depict the right level of chaos for something of that magnitude. People generally seemed to be turned off by this, not knowing where the episode was leading up to. The same man from earlier said something to the affect of he was going to be seriously pissed if the episode didn’t have some kind of epic ending, what my Advanced Fiction teacher, Professor Hill (Nathan to his students–me, too, I just want him to sound a bit more credible here), what have called a cookie, or the thing that makes the story worth reading or watching.
“Flash Forward” failed to do this because it is, essentially, a novel for television, a phrase first used by Stephen King for the promotion of his mini series, “Storm of the Century”. These novels for television are sometimes the best stories, but people tend to have short attention spans. It’s a shame because the second episode of the show is very revealing, but they’ve already lost a lot of people, and it is possible that the show could be canceled–a damn shame, since it’s very original. In other words, people should stick to watching the show before passing judgment. And that’s your cookie for this post. Do with it as you wish.
Archive for October, 2009
Nickoomba’s Back! … In Force
October 7, 2009Ye Gods! It’s been forever since I’ve updated this thing. That’s mostly because I’ve been bound and gagged in the dungeon of that technilogical beast they call Twitter. For those of you who aren’t already, follow me at http://twitter.com/nickoomba. Anyway, Twitter’s wonderful from the communications major standpoint. It’s the one place where many people from all over the world can come together. For all you who still think Facebook and Myspace is the thing to do … Seriously?
Oh, yeah. There’s school, too. Classes are boring this semester. I’ve got Principles of Rhetoric and Argumentation, which is okay, but it’s an 8:00 in the morning class; Gender Communication is an interesting course, but I don’t really like reading the book for it; Ethics in Theory and Practice is a class that is only interesting to the most boring of philosophers; Theories of Human Communication is both boring and taught by a man that makes the Gods look humble. Speaking of Gender Communication, here’s something that all one of my loyal readers should find interesting.
I’ve been on Twitter for about 3 months now. During this time, I’ve talked to many people, and talked to a few of those on MSN. So I was talking to this guy on MSN, and he asks me what I’m wearing. I tell him I’m a muscle shirt and jeans and sandals, and he’s turned on by the fact that I’m wearing a muscle shirt, so I think he’s gay–not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just feels weird if you’ve never gone through that before. So I didn’t talk to him for a while, and then one night he asks me to describe myself, so I do. I tell him I have brown hair and eyes, I’m somewhat hairy, medium build, about five foot 7+1/2, and I have some manboobs going–and I do. They’re not ginormous or anything, but they’re there, and I can hide my dragon talisman in them if I lay down in just the right position.
At this point, he asks me if I’m a woman or a man. I tell him I’m a man. Apparently, not only did he think I was a woman, but almost 90% of my followers at that time thought so, too.
Now. Keeping in mind that I’m in a gender communication class, it’s only natural for me to want to know how these people got this impression. Never got a straight answer on that, but here’s the really cool part. In our text, there are people who are transgendered, meaning they have stereotypical traits of both males and females. I was particular taken with the idea, but only thought of it as an ideal for myself, since I thought I had traits from both sides anyway, but I never dreamed that I had achieved this state without even trying. So taken was I with this fact, that for the next 4 weeks, I went around proudly announcing to people that I was a transgendered individual. This, as you can already imagine, got many snickers from people. Only after going through about 5 or chapters of the book did I remember that another more acceptible term for my state of mind or being is androgyny, or androgynous.
And on that note, folks, it is apparent that I am back. In full force. DAMN! Does it feel good not to have a character limit.
