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Mar. 5th, 2013 03:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI've been watching television.
Current television enthusiasms. There's Banshee, a freshman Showtime effort consisting largely of violence (pretty good) and sex (only sometimes good) and gloriously unrealistic plots (amusing even when they're bad) and things that annoy me, which are as described.
There's also Justified, which is an FX offering that has three and a half seasons in the can (so a larger body of work) and substantially better acting, writing and plot than Banshee. It also has things that annoy me but fewer of them than Banshee does.
Both shows have delightfully smirking protagonists more-or-less pretending to be the law. What can I say, I like smirking. Banshee's dude is a thief for real who is pretending to be a sheriff named Lucas Hood. Justified's dude is an actual Deputy U.S. Marshall, but his dad's a crook to the bone and I get the impression that Raylan himself does not mind shooting people. (He shoots a lot of people. If he didn't have a job where it was OK, or at least justifiable, to shoot people, this would be a much bigger problem for him.)
Banshee's dude is a man adrift in the world, uneasily at anchor in Banshee (the town) only because his piece lives there, under a new name and with a new husband. Justified's dude is made out of past and sense of place, operating in Kentucky and particularly in Harlan County because that is where he is from, where he is most at ease and where he (after season 1) chooses to be.
On the whole, Justified is the better show. I've been thinking about it, and the betterness of the show derives in large part from the underpinnings of the thing. In Justified, the bad guy, or at least the recurring nemesis (Boyd Crowder), is cast as counterpoint to Raylan Givens (our hero). They're set up to be compared to one another. They have similar backgrounds. (Both come from the county. Raylan's dad used to work for Boyd's dad and both dads were of the criminal variety.) They knew each other socially -- not exactly friends, but they dug coal together when they were young -- and they are not precisely enemies so much as they are representations of how a man turns out when the variable under study is "respects the law". It's like you rolled two characters, one Lawful (I hesitate to put Raylan down as "Lawful Good" -- he's more just Lawful.) and one... not so much. Otherwise, they're quite similar on the stats sheets. The show does a fine job of stringing Raylan and Boyd up in tension against each other and assorted other forces and this is one of the most entertaining things about it.
Banshee lacks the beautiful bone structure, the underpinning, that supports and defines Justified. In Banshee, our hero is in search of his best beloved, who is in Banshee. He, himself is being sought by Rabbit, from whom he stole diamonds (why don't criminals read about the diamond cartel and the absolutely shitty resale value of the things?) and a daughter (the piece). In the town of Banshee, he asserts justice, or his version thereof, against Kai Proctor, butcher and criminal overlord. Kai pursues criminal enterprises alongside the indian casino while Kai's niece is being shunned by the old order Amish, who are sort of tangentially stuffed into the show doing Kabuki Farming when exterior shots are required. Banshee as a whole is somewhat haphazardly constructed from elements that I am not entirely sure fit together into some sort of coherent whole. My overall impression of Banshee is that the authors took a bunch of kind of interesting things and jammed them together, hoping that interesting things would happen as a result. The show lacks... vision and coherence. (My standards for trashy television are actually kind of high.)
And so, then. There are things in both shows that are irritating. Banshee is filmed in North Carolina, so it at least looks east-coast-ish. (Near as I can tell, it's supposed to be in PA, sort of south of Harrisburg somewhere.) Setting notwithstanding, this show needs an Amish/Farming/RuralPA consultant. For example, in the most recent episode, it was early morning (sun was just rising up, misty light of dawn and all that) when Kai's niece was being shunned. In the fields, as she left, men were cutting hay with scythes. No. Typically they use horse-drawn sickle bar mowers, not scythes. (The mower is mechanically powered, the sickle bar driven by the wheels turning round and round as the horses pull the mower forward.) Secondly, even if they were hand-cutting the hay, nobody but nobody cuts hay first thing in the morning when the stuff is covered with dew and soaking wet. When it's hay cutting day, you have plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast with a second cup of coffee before you even start to round up the diesel fuel(1), the case of beer(2), the extra shear pins for the mower(3), and all the other crap you're going to need to cut the hay. This is because you are WAITING FOR THE DEW TO BURN OFF before you start to cut the hay down. Laying down a wet field is stupid, counterproductive, and makes for a crappier end product assuming you can even get it all the way dry once it's down. N00b error like that, it is as if the writers had never made hay, like, ever.
Or Kai Proctor's slaughterhouse. We see them leading a steer in. There's a dude and a lead rope and a steer wearing a halter. The steer is very well halter-broke in that it walks carefully and sanely alongside the person leading it. This is not typical for meat steers. Most of them are not broke to lead. The only steers I know that are halter-broke are people's show steers, for the fair. Most steers are a little leery of people (because they're not handled that much beyond ordinary doctoring) and they do the lowered-head, sweeping look movements at suspicious humans. Steers mostly get into slaughterhouses by way of cattle chutes (frequently designed by Temple Grandin) and herding, not by being led, because leading politely is NOT A GENERIC STEER SKILL. It might well be someone's show-steer skill and quite possibly someone's "acting-steer" skill, but it's decidedly odd for a run of the mill 'eating steer'. Also, the steer in question was immaculately groomed (as per a show beef steer) because I guess it looks better on TV. Real steers, well, they're not immaculate.(4)
So. Banshee needs a consultant. How's Justified doing on that front? Justified is set in Kentucky. The Marshall's office is in Lexington and the jurisdiction includes Harlan, located in the south-eastern corner of the state. Unlike Banshee, which is not a real town, Lexington and Harlan are real places. Google maps says it's 149 miles, a 2 hr and 30 minute drive, from Lexington to Harlan, which should make going there take up the better part of the day. Popping down to Harlan from the Lexington office would be like sending my ass from Bedford to Baltimore (145 miles) all the damn time. Hell of a lot of driving, there, and I kind of feel it's glossed over, given the ease with which our hero runs down to Harlan. Also, as per last night's episode, they go "up" to Harlan from Lexington, which doesn't sound right. Harlan is to the southeast of Lexington. You would go "down" to Harlan from Lexington and "up" to Lexington from Harlan.
Justified is filmed somewhere in California. This is not a huge problem but sometimes there are scenery shots that are in no way believable as Kentucky. (The mountains are wrong, too pointy and dry. The trees are wrong, too much pine and the needles are too long. Things like yards and fields are not nearly green enough.) It's distracting.
I don't live in Kentucky and I don't think of myself as having a great source of "Kentucky-flavored accent" to hand. So, I was OK with the amount of drawl-y going on for our Harlan County, KY natives (Boyd, Eva, Raylan, Arlo, Bo, all the Bennets, etc.) until my cousin helpfully informed me that Lee (her father, whom I have met) was born and raised in Harlan County, KY. Assuming he is a representative example of the region, there is nowhere near enough drawl-y going on in the Justified dialogue. (There's a coal documentary called Harlan County, USA if you're interested in hearing how actual residents of the area sounded in the 70's. Segments of same are on YouTube. Diane Sawyer also did a segment on 'em (A Hidden America) that appears to be something of a lookit-the-hillbillies thing. I'll have to pull links to those a bit later once I've had time to round 'em up.)
When using snakes and telling me that they are timber rattlers (both canebrake and timber rattlers are C. horridus), one should be aware that rattlesnakes are sort of chunky-bodied buggers. They're almost portly, for a snake. They have BIG HEADS and LITTLE SKINNY NECKS. Like, there's an obvious neck region on them thangs. Taping rattles onto the tail of a slender snake that has a neck-sized head IS NOT GOING TO FOOL ANYONE. Also, rattlesnakes do not sound like you made them sound. It's not a maracas sound (it's a lot higher and buzzier) and it doesn't stop/start much, especially not after you've put the snake in a tackle box and schlepped it around the countryside a bit.
Probably I just need to fret less about my television. It's telling a story, not trying to be a documentary.
(1) Probably the Amish do not need diesel fuel to cut hay.
(2) Probably they don't need beer either, but the people I know do.
(3) Shear pins may actually be for the baler and not the mower.
(4) Real steers are not washed before they're slaughtered .
Current television enthusiasms. There's Banshee, a freshman Showtime effort consisting largely of violence (pretty good) and sex (only sometimes good) and gloriously unrealistic plots (amusing even when they're bad) and things that annoy me, which are as described.
There's also Justified, which is an FX offering that has three and a half seasons in the can (so a larger body of work) and substantially better acting, writing and plot than Banshee. It also has things that annoy me but fewer of them than Banshee does.
Both shows have delightfully smirking protagonists more-or-less pretending to be the law. What can I say, I like smirking. Banshee's dude is a thief for real who is pretending to be a sheriff named Lucas Hood. Justified's dude is an actual Deputy U.S. Marshall, but his dad's a crook to the bone and I get the impression that Raylan himself does not mind shooting people. (He shoots a lot of people. If he didn't have a job where it was OK, or at least justifiable, to shoot people, this would be a much bigger problem for him.)
Banshee's dude is a man adrift in the world, uneasily at anchor in Banshee (the town) only because his piece lives there, under a new name and with a new husband. Justified's dude is made out of past and sense of place, operating in Kentucky and particularly in Harlan County because that is where he is from, where he is most at ease and where he (after season 1) chooses to be.
On the whole, Justified is the better show. I've been thinking about it, and the betterness of the show derives in large part from the underpinnings of the thing. In Justified, the bad guy, or at least the recurring nemesis (Boyd Crowder), is cast as counterpoint to Raylan Givens (our hero). They're set up to be compared to one another. They have similar backgrounds. (Both come from the county. Raylan's dad used to work for Boyd's dad and both dads were of the criminal variety.) They knew each other socially -- not exactly friends, but they dug coal together when they were young -- and they are not precisely enemies so much as they are representations of how a man turns out when the variable under study is "respects the law". It's like you rolled two characters, one Lawful (I hesitate to put Raylan down as "Lawful Good" -- he's more just Lawful.) and one... not so much. Otherwise, they're quite similar on the stats sheets. The show does a fine job of stringing Raylan and Boyd up in tension against each other and assorted other forces and this is one of the most entertaining things about it.
Banshee lacks the beautiful bone structure, the underpinning, that supports and defines Justified. In Banshee, our hero is in search of his best beloved, who is in Banshee. He, himself is being sought by Rabbit, from whom he stole diamonds (why don't criminals read about the diamond cartel and the absolutely shitty resale value of the things?) and a daughter (the piece). In the town of Banshee, he asserts justice, or his version thereof, against Kai Proctor, butcher and criminal overlord. Kai pursues criminal enterprises alongside the indian casino while Kai's niece is being shunned by the old order Amish, who are sort of tangentially stuffed into the show doing Kabuki Farming when exterior shots are required. Banshee as a whole is somewhat haphazardly constructed from elements that I am not entirely sure fit together into some sort of coherent whole. My overall impression of Banshee is that the authors took a bunch of kind of interesting things and jammed them together, hoping that interesting things would happen as a result. The show lacks... vision and coherence. (My standards for trashy television are actually kind of high.)
And so, then. There are things in both shows that are irritating. Banshee is filmed in North Carolina, so it at least looks east-coast-ish. (Near as I can tell, it's supposed to be in PA, sort of south of Harrisburg somewhere.) Setting notwithstanding, this show needs an Amish/Farming/RuralPA consultant. For example, in the most recent episode, it was early morning (sun was just rising up, misty light of dawn and all that) when Kai's niece was being shunned. In the fields, as she left, men were cutting hay with scythes. No. Typically they use horse-drawn sickle bar mowers, not scythes. (The mower is mechanically powered, the sickle bar driven by the wheels turning round and round as the horses pull the mower forward.) Secondly, even if they were hand-cutting the hay, nobody but nobody cuts hay first thing in the morning when the stuff is covered with dew and soaking wet. When it's hay cutting day, you have plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast with a second cup of coffee before you even start to round up the diesel fuel(1), the case of beer(2), the extra shear pins for the mower(3), and all the other crap you're going to need to cut the hay. This is because you are WAITING FOR THE DEW TO BURN OFF before you start to cut the hay down. Laying down a wet field is stupid, counterproductive, and makes for a crappier end product assuming you can even get it all the way dry once it's down. N00b error like that, it is as if the writers had never made hay, like, ever.
Or Kai Proctor's slaughterhouse. We see them leading a steer in. There's a dude and a lead rope and a steer wearing a halter. The steer is very well halter-broke in that it walks carefully and sanely alongside the person leading it. This is not typical for meat steers. Most of them are not broke to lead. The only steers I know that are halter-broke are people's show steers, for the fair. Most steers are a little leery of people (because they're not handled that much beyond ordinary doctoring) and they do the lowered-head, sweeping look movements at suspicious humans. Steers mostly get into slaughterhouses by way of cattle chutes (frequently designed by Temple Grandin) and herding, not by being led, because leading politely is NOT A GENERIC STEER SKILL. It might well be someone's show-steer skill and quite possibly someone's "acting-steer" skill, but it's decidedly odd for a run of the mill 'eating steer'. Also, the steer in question was immaculately groomed (as per a show beef steer) because I guess it looks better on TV. Real steers, well, they're not immaculate.(4)
So. Banshee needs a consultant. How's Justified doing on that front? Justified is set in Kentucky. The Marshall's office is in Lexington and the jurisdiction includes Harlan, located in the south-eastern corner of the state. Unlike Banshee, which is not a real town, Lexington and Harlan are real places. Google maps says it's 149 miles, a 2 hr and 30 minute drive, from Lexington to Harlan, which should make going there take up the better part of the day. Popping down to Harlan from the Lexington office would be like sending my ass from Bedford to Baltimore (145 miles) all the damn time. Hell of a lot of driving, there, and I kind of feel it's glossed over, given the ease with which our hero runs down to Harlan. Also, as per last night's episode, they go "up" to Harlan from Lexington, which doesn't sound right. Harlan is to the southeast of Lexington. You would go "down" to Harlan from Lexington and "up" to Lexington from Harlan.
Justified is filmed somewhere in California. This is not a huge problem but sometimes there are scenery shots that are in no way believable as Kentucky. (The mountains are wrong, too pointy and dry. The trees are wrong, too much pine and the needles are too long. Things like yards and fields are not nearly green enough.) It's distracting.
I don't live in Kentucky and I don't think of myself as having a great source of "Kentucky-flavored accent" to hand. So, I was OK with the amount of drawl-y going on for our Harlan County, KY natives (Boyd, Eva, Raylan, Arlo, Bo, all the Bennets, etc.) until my cousin helpfully informed me that Lee (her father, whom I have met) was born and raised in Harlan County, KY. Assuming he is a representative example of the region, there is nowhere near enough drawl-y going on in the Justified dialogue. (There's a coal documentary called Harlan County, USA if you're interested in hearing how actual residents of the area sounded in the 70's. Segments of same are on YouTube. Diane Sawyer also did a segment on 'em (A Hidden America) that appears to be something of a lookit-the-hillbillies thing. I'll have to pull links to those a bit later once I've had time to round 'em up.)
When using snakes and telling me that they are timber rattlers (both canebrake and timber rattlers are C. horridus), one should be aware that rattlesnakes are sort of chunky-bodied buggers. They're almost portly, for a snake. They have BIG HEADS and LITTLE SKINNY NECKS. Like, there's an obvious neck region on them thangs. Taping rattles onto the tail of a slender snake that has a neck-sized head IS NOT GOING TO FOOL ANYONE. Also, rattlesnakes do not sound like you made them sound. It's not a maracas sound (it's a lot higher and buzzier) and it doesn't stop/start much, especially not after you've put the snake in a tackle box and schlepped it around the countryside a bit.
Probably I just need to fret less about my television. It's telling a story, not trying to be a documentary.
(1) Probably the Amish do not need diesel fuel to cut hay.
(2) Probably they don't need beer either, but the people I know do.
(3) Shear pins may actually be for the baler and not the mower.
(4) Real steers are not washed before they're slaughtered .
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Date: 2013-03-06 02:20 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2013-03-06 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-07 02:38 am (UTC)Time and space has no dominion over the requirements of a writing staff on a weekly serial deadline.