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I’m going to preface all of this by stating on the record: any TV series that can seamlessly incorporate the meme “Let’s do this. LEEROY JENKINS!!!” into the plot gets an extra star from me on that basis alone.

Before we go there, however, let’s talk about Amazon Prime.

Cancel culture, in both real and imagined forms, has been going strong for at least for at least a dozen years now. I can recall a heated argument, at the beginning of that stretch, over one of Google’s algorithms – perhaps for search or, more likely, for YouTube. One side was trying to argue that the company was clearly suppressing any speech and discussion that did not lean liberal enough. The other side of the debate pointed out that the Alphabet company is in it to make money and that they will not be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Years on, we might revisit that argument with some new information, but that is not really my point here today. The point I want to make is that it is easy to define and defend multiple interpretations of the same data, particularly when it comes to intent. Back then, both sides of the argument had plausibility. We also tend to see the data from how those data intersect with our own lives*. Let’s, today, shift away from Google and over to Amazon.

I read almost daily about the utter failure that is Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Or is it its success that I am reading about? It is hard to say. Not five minutes ago, I picked up an Amazon package from my porch and it is wrapped in an ad pushing their new streaming series. What is not in doubt is that Amazon has placed a mighty big bet on this one show. I’ve recently read, from a more level-headed and mainstream source, that Amazon dropped a billion dollars making The Rings of Power and that their future in self-developed content for Prime streaming may hinge on how well it performs.

Is it performing? That I don’t know. I’m reading a lot of negativity and a bunch of social media griping about how awful it is. I’m also seeing a big push (especially from celebrities and other “influencers”) to argue that the negativity is simply a racist attack and, in fact, there is a really good show here. Professional reviews are mixed but do seem to lean towards the latter. I even have been reading the posts of a high school friend who is complaining bitterly about the series even as he watches episode after episode. Isn’t that last one a success in Amazon’s eyes? I don’t know that either.

Whatever the case, it is easy to take away from this all that Amazon and its urban, west-coast culture is truly trying to impose its values on the rest of us. Tolkien fans be damned; Amazon is going to force us to accept the unacceptable and, in doing so, make the world a little less racist and homophobic. But is this true? Does clicking on an Amazon Prime Original Series automatically set you up for some envelope-pushing culture shock, at least when it comes to us flyover-country rubes?

I told you how I enjoyed watching Reacher and, one would think, I wouldn’t have found that on Amazon Prime. Not if they were actively trying to force me into a new era of woke content. Is it just possible that they produce a range of content, the “political” or cultural distribution of which roughly reflects the sensibilities of their paying subscribers? Maybe so, maybe so.

Big picture aside, the miniseries The Terminal List is, to my eye, a show for “the rest of us.” The hero is a warrior and a patriot, a Navy SEAL commander, and his heroics consist of mostly shooting people in the head using a range of fine-looking weaponry. A woke elf he is not.

For just one example of how to make a gun-oriented show for gun people, the weapons and tactics are included without being explained. If you have military experience, maybe you know what an EFP is and why (producer and lead-actor) Chris Pratt’s Reece wants one (and why his friends don’t want him to use it). If you’re like me, you needed to look it up later, an exercise that enhanced the film’s experience. Likewise, weaponry glimpsed for a few seconds provides hours of secondary entertainment for the fanatics. The show is chock full of expensive rifles, pistols, and tactical gear. It’s almost like 8 hours of paid advertising, except that it takes some real work to match on screen images with product order forms.

After release, The Terminal List immediately zoomed to the top 10 for Amazon content and then beyond – Nielsen ratings calculation of some 2000 years of combined viewing time placed it at #3 for all streaming services in the weeks following its availability**.

The fact that this is “original content” makes it hard to get any objective ratings. For The Terminal List, the Rotten Tomatoes site, which I rarely use, seems informative. The “tomatometer,” which averages critical reviews, gives only a 39% – not good. Restrict it to “top critics,” and you’re down to 26%. Most seem to complain about the length of the story when told as a miniseries. Some pans are even overtly political. So if it was so bad, why was it so popular? Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all – it seems that the score from my fellow viewers is more like 95%.

Well then.

So you’ve probably already guessed that I liked this one and you’ll have been right. I liked it so much, I’ve just ordered*** the first book in the series upon which the show is based. Yes, it’s a bit one dimensional, as is this whole genre of vengeance porn. Who knows, in forty years we may look back on these fantastical stories filmed with “gritty realism” as silly – as silly as The A-Team looks today. The fact is, I love this stuff as casual entertainment and, as such, I take it for what it is. It’s a fantasy, a forbidden fantasy even, but that’s entertainment. Heck, I’m old enough to have enjoyed The A-Team back in 1984. Don’t hate me.

Game pairing: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [N].

– Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com

*See the argument (which, honestly, I’ve all but ignored) about whether CNN has gone all-in right wing and must be abandoned by the left shortly after much of the right did the same thing for the opposite reason.

**I’m going to throw in here that all eight episodes of this miniseries were released simultaneously. This is also counter to the Wheel of Time/Lord of the Rings model of doling out the content one episode at time.

***Could this be one of the models for Amazon’s streaming business? You watch a show for “free” and then order some $75 dollars worth of books upon which the show was based? Or is it the $500 in “tactical” gear that the show made me want to purchase? Food for thought.