There’s a new TV show on Sunday nights – “American Odyssey” on NBC. With multiple plot lines, and a conspiracy at its heart, it’s compelling television.
Like all TV, you have to suspend belief in parts of it. Given how interesting the show is though, it’s sad that they don’t inject a bit more reality into scenes that could easily use them.
In one of the recent episodes, for example, the main character gets into a fight. Odelle is attacked by mercenaries, and she fights them off with chops, kicks, flips and punches. I can buy that – she’s U.S. military-trained and knows how to handle herself physically.
It stretches the bounds of belief afterwards. Odelle gets pounded in the back with a weapon. That knocks her down into the desert dust. She and her traveling companion get saved from the mercenaries by a character who has tracked them.
I’m still with it until this point. What I don’t get is how she hops into this modified jeep-pickup and it’s like nothing ever happened. She doesn’t hold her back in pain. No grimacing. She does walk like she’s just been beat up.
Get the crap beat out of you, dust yourself off and move on. I get it. It’s TV (or the movies). We all have to play pretend make-believe. There’s not a single show you can watch without accepting certain premises. Otherwise you’d never buy the story.
Still, can we please get a bit more reality? In this case, you could have Odelle create a makeshift wrap of some kind to cinch around her back that limits her mobility. We’ll forget about it by the next week, so it doesn’t have to stay on forever, but at least give some lip service to the injuries that would occur when someone gets knocked around.
My personal favorite when it comes to suspending belief so that you can go along with the fiction in front of you was “Transformers II.” I enjoyed the first “Transformers” movie. Not so, the second. It lacked plot, fell back on the smash ‘um up routine, and as the characters got beat up and tossed around, they never limped, got dirty or scarred up. In short, it was unbelievable.
When theater you watch becomes unbelievable, it also becomes unwatchable. You want to vomit. You decide to leave the room. You shake your head and roll your eyes.
After coming out of “Transformers II,” I remember running into a friend and his family. He was pumped. He asked what I thought of the movie, and I mentioned the negatives and why I didn’t like it. He looked at me like I’d landed from Saturn and had five noses on my face.
Some people suspend belief better than others. They want to believe, so they do. They don’t question how 15 minutes in real time can be the 15 seconds of a stick of lit dynamite burning down. Or how the cop chasing the bad guy can run through four intersections, leap cars, dodge bullets and still catch the criminal without breathing hard or saying afterwards, “Dang, my feet sure hurt in these dress shoes.”
It’s probably too much to ask television and movies to include lines or scenes like that. The audience would say, “That would never happen in real life.” They’re right.
That’s because the situation would never occur in the first place. When was the last time you saw a police person running through your neighborhood, corral the burglar, and cuff him? If it does, but his chest isn’t heaving to pump air down his lungs, you’ll know it’s just a movie or TV show.
Like all TV, you have to suspend belief in parts of it. Given how interesting the show is though, it’s sad that they don’t inject a bit more reality into scenes that could easily use them.
In one of the recent episodes, for example, the main character gets into a fight. Odelle is attacked by mercenaries, and she fights them off with chops, kicks, flips and punches. I can buy that – she’s U.S. military-trained and knows how to handle herself physically.
It stretches the bounds of belief afterwards. Odelle gets pounded in the back with a weapon. That knocks her down into the desert dust. She and her traveling companion get saved from the mercenaries by a character who has tracked them.
I’m still with it until this point. What I don’t get is how she hops into this modified jeep-pickup and it’s like nothing ever happened. She doesn’t hold her back in pain. No grimacing. She does walk like she’s just been beat up.
Get the crap beat out of you, dust yourself off and move on. I get it. It’s TV (or the movies). We all have to play pretend make-believe. There’s not a single show you can watch without accepting certain premises. Otherwise you’d never buy the story.
Still, can we please get a bit more reality? In this case, you could have Odelle create a makeshift wrap of some kind to cinch around her back that limits her mobility. We’ll forget about it by the next week, so it doesn’t have to stay on forever, but at least give some lip service to the injuries that would occur when someone gets knocked around.
My personal favorite when it comes to suspending belief so that you can go along with the fiction in front of you was “Transformers II.” I enjoyed the first “Transformers” movie. Not so, the second. It lacked plot, fell back on the smash ‘um up routine, and as the characters got beat up and tossed around, they never limped, got dirty or scarred up. In short, it was unbelievable.
When theater you watch becomes unbelievable, it also becomes unwatchable. You want to vomit. You decide to leave the room. You shake your head and roll your eyes.
After coming out of “Transformers II,” I remember running into a friend and his family. He was pumped. He asked what I thought of the movie, and I mentioned the negatives and why I didn’t like it. He looked at me like I’d landed from Saturn and had five noses on my face.
Some people suspend belief better than others. They want to believe, so they do. They don’t question how 15 minutes in real time can be the 15 seconds of a stick of lit dynamite burning down. Or how the cop chasing the bad guy can run through four intersections, leap cars, dodge bullets and still catch the criminal without breathing hard or saying afterwards, “Dang, my feet sure hurt in these dress shoes.”
It’s probably too much to ask television and movies to include lines or scenes like that. The audience would say, “That would never happen in real life.” They’re right.
That’s because the situation would never occur in the first place. When was the last time you saw a police person running through your neighborhood, corral the burglar, and cuff him? If it does, but his chest isn’t heaving to pump air down his lungs, you’ll know it’s just a movie or TV show.