I have received my DVD collection Man From U.N.C.L.E. briefcase and it has immediately become the most precious thing I own.
It comes with little commentaries in the back from fans (who then became TV critics, zine runners, academics) so they’re able to be brutally honest about the behind-the-scenes mayhem and also use words you generally don’t get from home boxsets in 2004 like ‘fandom.’ Obviously, I think the packaging is dope but I finally bit the bullet and bought the thing because I was seriously craving Man From UNCLE and because my computer is still at the shop I didn’t want to pay twice per episode for Amazon streaming and the DVDs I knew I would eventually get anyway. Good to have the physical media in my hands forevveeeerrrr.
I’ve had three ongoing media threads this week. The first, and closest to work, is a light rewatch of Jamie-era Doctor Who. I say light because I’m reading transcripts of missing episodes and skipping to Jamie scenes. It’s mostly research and fact-checking for my Quiz of Rassilon round that I’m hosting next month. This time around I’m really seeing how they set up Jamie to be kind of Ben’s romantic rival for Polly and often pair him with female characters who are interested him beyond the kid-friendly light flirting that usually happens in the TARDIS. He really kind of comes off as a ladies man, and while that never goes away, exactly, his constant trust and loyalty to the Doctor eventually kind of backgrounds those aspects. He’s attached to the Doctor’s hip so he’s never fully ‘distracted.’ Also, Faceless Ones takes a lot from Hard Day’s Night! It’s three years after the fact, but they repeat the newspaper gag, Jamie’s hair goes from parted and wild to moptop and shaggy, and there’s the whole sense of running around the airport going ape. The next serial features an actual song of the Beatles in the background of a soda shop, so even though they had been featured prominently in the show years ago, I feel like this is really when their effect on ‘youth media’ was felt.
The second thread was catching up on previous episodes of The Vow and now anxiously awaiting the new episodes. There’s a whole slew of things to say about true crime and it’s true that it very easily goes into exploitation but I think there are some interesting aspects of character study docuseries. Watching The Vow may not be very Good Person of me but I made an exception for this one because Allison Mack played one of my favorite characters in all of media. I idolized Chloe Sullivan growing up and although I know the difference between actor and character, I still feel a fondness for the person who did a lot of work to bring that character to life. Part of it is shock at the brainwashing of smart, bright, talented people and part of it is knowing that with this particular program, I could easily have fallen in. I’m not shy about how much I enjoy talking about the enneagram or value using tarot or any number of slightly non-scientific ways of exploring the self and personality. This program directly targeted and exploited that. I even think, some time in 2009, I went looking for what Mack was up to and found a video of her talking to Raniere (it pops up in ep 4) and because it made me go all smooth brain with the way they were only vaguely talking about concepts, I simply went “ok her brand of feminism doesn’t line up with mine but good for her” and moved on. It’s just….such a weird intersection of interests and twisting of the way people can believe they are making personal sacrifices for the greater good.
Finally, Blindspot. Oh, Blindspot. I’m glad this is a day late and I was able to start the second season before writing because the stance the first season often took was rough. The show is insanely entertaining and I either enjoy or at least tolerate most of the characters. The plotting of the first season was also really tight and it was nice to see so many payoffs throughout the year. And yet. So many of the threats were rooted in foreigners (to the extent that at one point a hack was identified because the hackers wrote English as though it were a second language and then for the rest of the episode spoke perfect English), so much of the show was about the sacrifices the FBI made to keep Americans safe, there were SO MANY guns and AK-47s and stylistic choices likening being in the field in America to war movies like Sicario and Hurt Locker. At least the second season started off the bat acknowledging that America is super corrupt and something has to be done. Honestly, Sandstorm’s methods are awful but when Roman laid out the mission statement of “the public is being cheated we need to burn it all to the ground to rebuild” I was like “fair enough.” It’s much more interesting to have both sides have questionable motives and orders, playing against one another, then the narrative of “FBI is unimpeachable and here to keep you safe.” Even though the second season began in Sept 2016, before the election and certainly way after people began getting antsy about it, I wonder how much of the rework is due to mounting political anxieties. What a different world 2015 was.