I have to admit that almost everything I wrote before was wrong. I am exaggerating, of course, but a couple of things I emphatically declared in that earlier post really are downright wrong.
The 4400 has maybe a day or two left and so I’ve been watching (mostly) two episodes a night to try to get a little farther into the series before it goes away. I do want to figure out what’s going on and it takes a certain intensity of purpose for me to make it to the end by the deadline. You might even say I am “binge watching.”
Such concentration meant that I hadn’t noticed the Reign has also returned to Netflix’s streaming, if only a for couple of days into September. I probably was treated to a little more warning than I noticed that I had. As I said, Season 4 of Reign had never gone away in the first place, so it has (for a month or two now) been sitting in my “continue watching” list even though I couldn’t actually “continue watching” from where I left off. The other day, though, I clicked on it and, lo and behold, I could, in fact, pick up right where I had stopped (towards the end of Season 1, if that is worth anything to you) – but only until September 4th.
I guess I should remain thankful. Last time around I felt a sense of gratitude that Netflix wasn’t going to “make” me watch something that I wasn’t sure I wanted endure. Once again, the company will soon relieve me of those burdens.
With respect to The 4400, there is a mathematical possibility that I can make it to the end of the all four seasons. In this, I’ve surprised myself. My judgement hasn’t changed – the show is decent enough but certainly not great. What it does and does pretty well, however, is present these vast mysteries throughout the series – setting up questions to which I really would like to know the answer. Will they give me the answers if I stick it out to the end? You may know the answer, but I do not. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll know sometime in the next 48 hours.
I continue to be surprised how The 4400 has “predicted” aspects of our current world. Bio-engineered genetic material that dramatically effects our health and welfare? Mandatory shots to counter the effects thereof (including a shocking amount of mis-, dis-, and mal- information)? How about a radical group that lays claim to a few blocks of Seattle and then secedes from the United States proper? The ever-present rumblings that a massive civil war is about to break out; definitely in the United States and maybe on a global scale? It’s close enough to give me a chuckle but not quite so accurate as to make me nervous. I do wonder, has life imitated art, art imitated life, or is this just an example of the assertion that if you live long enough you get to see everything?
I’ll say this, The 4400‘s version of societal upheaval gets better ratings from me than the 2019-2022 “unscripted reality” show exploring similar topics.
I’ve tried to express this multiple times, myself. Maybe Instapundit can make clear what I cannot seem to.
The above-linked quote would be treated as absurd by most of the population. Those in law enforcement would, I am imagining, be particularly incensed if you insisted their job was to protect the criminal. At best, folks might concede the statement is a cynical inverting of reality which might, nonetheless, have some merit at the margins.
Once you see it, though, I assert this is the fundamental truth of our civilization’s criminal justice system.
Criminal justice does exactly what the phrase says it is meant to do. It is a system designed to give any criminal exactly the punishment he deserves; neither more nor less. Judge too harshly and the government, itself, is seen as tyrannical or even criminal. Judge too lightly and the citizens will take the law into their own hands.
I have now, at long last, finished my reading of A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Barbara Tuchman centers her book around the person of Enguerrand de Coucy, a member of the nobility and important personage during the time she writes about. In today’s language, Coucy would be an A-lister, but not A+. He was not a King nor a blood relative to one. His name was unknown to me until I picked up Tuchman’s book. Yet… Coucy was heavily involved (sometimes uniquely so) in the major events of his time.
Tuchman’s story-telling winds down after the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. The battle of Christendom against the Ottomans put a quick end to the French-organized crusade intended to drive the Turks out of Europe. A+ listers, such as the future John, Duke of Burgundy, Philip of Artois, Count of Eu, and Boucicaut (a marshal of France) were captured while Jean de Vienne, Admiral of France, and other notables* were killed (along with thousands and thousands of regular people). Many others, Eu and Coucy included, died in captivity while waiting for their countrymen to arrange their ransom.
From the wargaming standpoint, this is an interesting battle. Embellishing upon Tuchman’s explanation, this is a case of too many cooks bespoiling a broth. Each of our A/A+-listers felt they should dictate strategy. Worse yet, most were, first and foremost, concerned about their own displays of gallantry, chivalry, and honor. Strategically, the French lords dismissed a defensive strategy so as to grab that greater glory. Operationally, they refused to consider and counter the movements of Bayezid’s Ottoman army, confident that no heathen army of any size would be a match for Christian knights. Tactically, they refused to heed the advice of King of Hungary (and future Holy Roman Emperor) Sigismund, who advised them not to waste their mounted knights against untrained Turkish cannon fodder.
It’s a scenario ripe for a half-a-dozen-or-so what-ifs.
Alas, the Battle of Nicopolis is not in my library of games; neither in the shipped “epic” scenarios for Field of Glory II: Medieval nor, yet, a user-made scenario. Given its import, maybe I should be waiting for the next DLC to see something about the Ottoman conquest of eastern Europe. As an aside, the relative paucity of user-made scenarios suggests to me that scenario creation, despite a very open and (mostly) accessible modding interface, is much more difficult than it would initially appear. Much more difficult, it would seem, than it was working with the original Field of Glory.
A bit of search-engining tells me that, in fact, still-active scenario creator stockwellpete did make a Nicopolis for the original FoG. I also notice that the (drop-box-based) availability of those old scenarios is no longer. This is just as well. When I picked up FoGII:Medieval, it was with the intent of forever severing my reliance on FoG for historical gaming. I am glad I was not tempted in this case.
As Lindsey Buckingham once (and twice) said, “I’m never going back again.”
Quick!
What FoGII:Medieval does have is something almost as interesting to me, now that I know what it all means.
– I know that campaign!
Less than a decade before the disaster at Nicopolis, the French nobility had a dry run. France and England were struggling to find peace in the Hundred Years War and, during the lull, France was implored to join Genoa in a crusade to purge Muslim pirates from the Caribbean by seizing their stronghold in modern day Tunisia. While FoGII doesn’t support the armies necessary for the Nicopolis Crusade it does allow random scenarios based on the Barbary Crusade.
– A Berber army tries to lift the siege
My quick take at a Barbary scenario with a Quick Battle produces something that feels relevant. With my French force I am facing (from a defensive position) a numerically superior Arab foe. My infantry in particular is outnumbered. Were I a French commander I would, nonetheless, have tremendous confidence in those mounted French knights, waiting to dominate the field. Granted they have this bad habit of charging off across the desert, breaking up my own force’s cohesion and leaving me exposed to that weaker but more numerous enemy. I won’t attempt to draw any deep conclusions with this battle as I’m quite sure there is no historical corollary. It was a nice find at just the right time.
A Distant King
At the same time I finished up A Distant Mirror, I am also just about finished reading A Once and Future King with my kid. Again it feels like dumb luck that led me to decide to read these two books at roughly the same time.
One of the last chapters of White’s book begins with an image of the aging lovers Lancelot and Guenevere sitting in a window, overlooking the English countryside. White uses that portrait to expound upon the Middle Ages and the misconceptions about it that we hold now, looking back (from the 1960s, but still…) Particularly he targets the idea that these were “dark ages” and the people of that time were unsophisticated, incompetent, or downright stupid. He does so by presenting brief illustrations of what the pair “might have seen” from their window.
He laughs at the idea that the “real” King Arthur might have lived circa 500 AD, at the fall of Rome, and further dismisses the idea that Sir Thomas Mallory might have been writing a contemporary story (Wars of the Roses, roughly). Instead, he places his story around about the beginning of Tuchman’s Distant Mirror, at the height of the chivalric ideals that she describes but before the black death which centers her work. In doing so, he writes of the “fictional” kings, dukes, popes, and barons that might nonetheless shed some light on Arthur and his times. With Tuchman’s history under my belt, I can understand that these fictional characters are the real deal. I even understand the name-drops of some of White’s more subtle jokes.
*One notable personage, assuming you subscribe to the Et tu Bluto history method, was Jean de Carrouges, who was killed on the field of battle. Only those of us who watched The Last Duel (or simply are better versed in their medieval history) perk up our ears at that.
What disappoints me is that I read it on the internet before I had a chance to figure it out for myself.
You see, I am currently watching The 4400 on Netflix; rushing to get it all in before it is removed from streaming at the end of August. This the original, four-season series I am talking about, not the 2021 reboot-as-lecture-on-systemic-racism* version. This is a series that has been at the edge of my consciousness from its beginning. I recall the link to Francis Ford Coppola** being pushed, by way the of the American Zoetrope production credit. The more I read about it (this being more than a decade ago, mind you) the less depth the show seemed to offer. Available on Netflix for a while now, it has been on my list to watch without me being seriously tempted to view it.
That, of course, changed when I realized that this might be my last chance to do so.
I made it through Season 1 and, knowing now the first (shortened) season’s big secret, decide to poke around a little on the internet. What I found was a connection between the 4400 (using its in-show terminology) and Scientology. It’s a connection that doesn’t become obvious until a couple of episodes into Season 2. As I said, once I got to the place where it was kind of obvious, I wish I hadn’t already read it. It would be interesting to know if that connection would be so clear to me without my already knowing what’s what ahead of time.
A science and sci-fi writer/journalist went so far as to confirm the connection. At a Comic-Con party, Annalee Newitz approached (co-) creator Scott Peters with the direct question, are the apparent references to Scientology intentional? Peters responded, “Oh yeah, it’s about that just a little bit. The Scientologists never came after us, though.” Plausible deniability is key to navigating today’s highly-litigious society.
From a technical perspective, I have to admire The 4400. It does rely heavily on the cliffhanger ending which, as I explained, I find a bit of a crutch. Nonetheless you have to admit it works – making you eager to come back for more. Look at the four-season big picture and this concept is a near perfect fit for the episodic series format.
The basic premise means that there are 4,400 different stories that can be told, one per episode (that will get you well over 300 years of content – I did the math). On top of that, there is the “big mystery” -why did all this abduction and return happen? That, combined with the stories of the main characters (some 4400 and some not), provides the seasonal and series “arc” that seems so critical these days. If that weren’t enough, each individual story fits into what the show calls the “ripple effect.” Each individual was included in the 4400 for a purpose. That purpose, however, may not yet be apparent in that individual’s episode – that is, it may only emerge after further information revealed in future episodes.
Fitting perfectly the broadcast (or rather cable) TV format, each episode can be (in many ways) a stand alone story even as everything (maybe) ties in with the bigger concept. It gives the viewer a good weekly experience while, each time, enticing them to continue on for weeks, months, and years. You can also control week-to-week pacing by adding in more or fewer stories into a given weekly allotment. If I were constructing a screenwriting class for TV series, I’d be tempted to use this one as a case study.
Art, however, is not about technique. Nor is an under-the-radar poke at Scientology worth an Emmy. The proof of this pudding needs to be the story itself – as least to a large extent. Science fiction tends to struggle when brought to the small screen. For all of its good points, I’m just not finding this to be must-see TV. Yes, its good enough to keep me chasing that end-of-August deadline but, well, I’m just not that excited.
I haven’t read (or even found) much critical review – professional articles are more of the glorified press-release style. The “crowd sourcing” ratings seem to recommend this show with both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes scoring it highly. The Netflix DVD ranks it a respectable 3.8 but, for me, it lowers that to a 3.4.
Once again, Netflix’s AI may have proven themselves to know me better than I know myself.
*OK, I have no idea about the new series. I haven’t read more than two sentences by way of summary or review, much less actually seen anything. It does seem really strange to remake a moderately-successful series so soon after the original. I’m going to assume the shift in availability of the old has something to do with the distribution of the new.
**As far as I can tell, there is no link between the Coppolas (father or daughter) and the creative work on this show. That is, unless you count the verbatim scene from The Godfather inserted about half-way through Season 2. I didn’t need to read about THAT on the internet before I caught it.
I badmouth streaming services, but I do so in a way that assumes it is obvious what I have against them. I’ll elaborate a bit on my last snide remark.
When I first chose to avail myself of Netflix streaming, it was simply a substitute for Netflix DVD rentals through the mail. That, in turn, was a substitute for the likes of Blockbuster and their local competitors. On the shelves of these stores you expected to find pretty much any movie (or TV series, I suppose) you wanted to see – assuming it had already aged enough to become available in the home video market. One’s mileage varied wildly, of course, with some rental stores being better than others.
As streaming matured, Netflix became a substitute for cable itself. Netflix was, at the time, as good or better as any brick-and-mortal rental business when it came to movie selection and was breaking new ground by including off-the-air TV series (who wants to relive Friends via another complete run-through?) Before the flood* of original, bespoke, and contractually-exclusive content, I could watch almost any “network” or “cable” TV show I wanted to watch, provided I had the patience to wait for it to come out on DVD.
Hulu earns more than its share of my ire because it was one of the first to disrupt that system.
I seem to recall that its early iteration was a handful of first-run, NBC programs which cost money plus a lump of what we used to call “reruns” available for free. I may be wrong. But even at its most appealing, Hulu seemed like a bad bargain. If Netflix was a lower-cost substitute for cable TV, then Hulu was a substitute for but a single channel. To make matters worse, that channel is one of the “big three.” I’ve been conditioned for decades to see the likes of HBO and Showtime as “premium content” but ABC, NBC, and CBS have always been free to anyone with an antennae and some patience. This is as it should remain!
It’s worth noting that Hulu, in its initial form (whatever that was, independent of my own recollections) was not financially successful. It fell short of the projected revenue, a miscalculation which may well have resulted in the subsequent elimination of the “free” portion of its service. Hulu’s paid content, too, underwent a series of price increases which now places it, by my reckoning, into that “premium” category.
It is also notable that a substantial** share in Hulu was acquired by Disney when they bought control of Fox.
Disney puts the “pee” in Premium content.
Perhaps it only becomes clear when you have children but Disney has long put up significant barriers to consumer choice. Let’s say your child is at just the right age to enjoy an ancient Disney cartoon from the 1950s – Snow White, maybe. Then you find out that Snow White is “in the vault,” and you can neither buy nor rent the video until Disney decides the time is right for them. Maybe that time will finally come but only after your daughter is 4 years older and hates princesses. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and speculate that their policies may no longer be as I remember them. Additional avenues for tight content control via streaming means they could make their shows more available more often. Or not… I stay away from the Disney Corporation as much as I can.
In any case, Hulu, Apple TV+, and the Disney channels are, within my own mind, the embodiments of evil when it comes to streaming. Yes, it is “market forces” that are pushing us to less, worse, and more expensive entertainment options but I associate the worst of it with these guys.
*I wrote before that I think the Great Streaming Wars were to begin in earnest in 2019 but were substantially derailed by the wuhu flu.
**Current data suggests that control is 2/3rds Disney and 1/3 Comcast (the latter through their purchase of NBC).
For several postsnow, I’ve hinted at a problem I’ve had with the interface within Campaign Series: Vietnam. I’ve said I wanted to do a little more before I report it – an approach that has left any blog readers wondering what the heck I’m talking about. At the same time, I’ve realized that the development team for Campaign Series: Vietnam responds at least as fast (i.e. nearly instantaneously) to my blog posts as they do to forum issues. Since it’s easy for me and I am, fundamentally, a lazy man, I’m just going to go ahead and post everything I know about this issue so far.
The way I’ve always played that games in this series (not to mention many other games) is by using the “Next Unit” button to help guide me through each turn. This allows me to make sure I’m not forgetting about any of my far-flung-yet-available units and, once I get into the groove, it provides a logical structure with which to move predictably from hot-spot to hot-spot. It may not be the optimal way to play but it is easy. As I said, I am fundamentally a lazy man.
Up until now, through all games in this series, hitting the “Next Unit” button (or, the “N” hotkey) at the start of each turn takes me to one of the units. Repeating the action visits all the available units on the “board.”
Since the first update, things have changed. The fact is, I’m still not quite sure how it works now.
– Really? All of them? How can I be sure?
Sometimes the button works how I expect it to. Other times, it says the “next” button’s function is unavailable without a current unit selected. In still other cases, it cycles through a set of units, but only at a sub-unit (company, battalion, otherwise?) level. Picking a different initial unit sets the game to cycling through a different subset of units, presumably the subset to which the initially-selected unit belongs. Maybe picking the right something will take me back to the top level for the way I’ve always used it.
Sometimes, I seem to be able to switch from one mode to another. As a matter of fact, if I knew how to select the “scope” of the Next button, I’d considered this a welcomed feature. I’ve yet to figure that out though.
I still feel bad about being so lazy but what is now done is done.
– Additional screenshot. Sometimes I get this error message (at the bottom)
This morning I woke* to an article (WSJ natch) about Netflix’s scramble to imbue their features with paid advertising. They need the money and they need it fast yet they’ve got nobody in house with the experience to make it happen.
The night before I was watching an episode of Ekaterina on Amazon Prime’s streaming. They’ve been running ads on their basic Prime subscription for a while now but what used to be annoying has become considerably less so.
The current method has them, before queuing up a movie or a new episode, run a single ad for a current or soon-to-be-released Amazon original production. That ad can be watched or skipped as desired and, if skipped, you go straight to the show, no more fuss or bother. There is some repetition but, even with a pretty heavy schedule of Amazon watching over the last few weeks, I saw a good mix of different offerings. I even watched many of them – let’s say more than half – although rarely more than once.
The fact is, I kind of like watching previews, especially when it’s for something that I might just be interested in.
So, yeah, about last night. The ad that came up was for A League of Their Own. I thought to myself, isn’t that cute – I just watched that movie. Continuing along with the preview, though, I began to realize although this really looked like A League of Their Own (1992), it was not A League of Their Own (1992). Sure enough, when the ad ran its course, it indicated to me that I should look forward to watching A League of Their Own, the series, an exclusive coming to Amazon Prime.
All else being equal, maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. But all is not equal in this unfair and inequitable world. When I was writing that earlier post, I came across some commentary about the all-white cast who played in that Penny Marshall production. The producers WANTED to be more inclusive but the fact that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League did NOT accept blacks prevented them from doing so.
Had I not read that, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about the racial angle of the upcoming series. HAVING read that, I left convinced that including said ahistorical diversity is a worse sin than lacking it. Of course, I also commented that the current generation (be it producers, screenwriters, or audience) might have trouble digesting that 1992 sentiment about what is right and what is wrong when reconciling our culture’s historic sins.
There is, of course, the counter argument. Cranking up the inequity makes the story all the more relevant to today’s audience, does it not? The original film was a feel good comedy that played fast and loose with the historical facts. Should I really be bothered by a little more fast and a little more loose?
I shouldn’t base opinions entirely on previews (I know, I know) but I am very unlikely to watch this series given what I’ve seen so far. If that preview wasn’t bad enough, the summary (as posted to Wikipedia) says the new show will follow “the league and its players as they fight to keep it alive through close games, injuries, sexual awakenings and road trips across a rapidly changing U.S.”
Will it be a nostalgic look, warts and all, at a dynamic time in our nation’s history – the emergence of the U.S. as a “superpower” to be followed decades of economic and cultural world domination as viewed through baseball? Or will it be a superball of intersectionality meant to lecture us on how the more things change, the more they remain the same. Which show does the Amazon audience want to see?
I guess I’ll find out next time Amazon Prime is due up for a rate increase.
The clock ran out* on The Americans via Amazon. Apparently the whole series is now going to be available only through a Hulu subscription. I don’t want one of those. In fact, I’m not sure if I even want my Netflix subscription any more. I’ll refrain from adding to that gripe until another time, though.
Said removal, however, frees me up to watch Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great at my leisure. I am very thankful that Mr. Mead put this show into the right context for me. As I hinted before, the show at first glance looks awfully soapy and probably would feel that way were I watching without the WSJ guidance. It lacks the gravitas I’d demand from a purely-historical drama and the history-as-romance angle has a lot of trouble, as such things do any time we Americans watch a foreign production, making that cultural jump.
In fact, I’d be surprised that this could be considered good TV romance to the eyes of modern Russians, but I’m in no position to judge that. Contrast with the productions from Turkey, India, Iran, etc., which in many ways reflect a set cinematic cultural values that are now a couple of American generations in the past. Do any viewers, American, Russian, or otherwise, accept this love at-or-before first sight story line? We can contrast with Reign and its modernization of teen***-love for a guess at how Hollywood might have treated it. In fact, if I were willing to pay for Hulu, I might give their 2020 take (staring Elle Fanning in the titular role) a gander. Per Wikipedia, The Great: An Occasionally True Story is a “satirical black comedy-drama” and per IMDb, it does it better than the Russian version. Yet, there are some things that I will not do. Buying Hulu is one of them.
Let us get back to the show at hand.
When I view Ekaterina within Mead’s framework, it begins to look so much more interesting. Think of it not as a costume/period drama nor is it a “docudrama,” but rather as allegory for today’s Russia and her ambitions. We are told the story of a Czarina** who is forced to reign as an empress among kings and other lesser men. Those Europeans look down their noses at her, despite the vastness of her domain relative to theirs. Should she accept being judged on Western terms, only to be found wanting? Or should she demand she be judged on Russia’s own terms?
What to make, also in terms of allegory, of the transformation of Prussian princess into Russian Grand Duchess through a change of name and religious conversion. With it, Catherine’s allegiance shifts completely and permanently. Is it in the story because it is (more or less) true? Or is it meant to be a statement about the Greater Russian Empire being greater than the Russians themselves?
Let’s also be truthful, since we are all friends here. The political intrigues of betrayal and murder followed by the swift and terrible justice of an absolute ruler – this stuff keeps me watching and engaged. I use the term “soap opera” as a pejorative but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy such productions if I watched them, now does it?
*I made it almost to the end of Season 2. It amused me that Oliver North wrote the story for the episode about covert Contra training camps in the United States (and a Soviet operation to expose them). I may have to take back some of what I said about a lack of realism.
**I’m not specifically referring to either Elizabeth nor Catherine but, well, to Putin and his ilk. In this show, we begin with Elisabeth wielding imperator.
***Then Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg first met her second cousin, the future Peter III of Russia and her future husband, when she was 10 years old. That meeting, for the show, is postponed until 1744, when Friederike traveled to Russia for her betrothal, when she was 15. (Hungarian actress Marina Aleksandrova was already thirty when she played the teen).