Friday, March 09, 2007
John
8 comments
For some reason, TV executives seem to think that shows with ongoing storylines are bad. People would rather casually watch a string of standalone episodes rather than seeing a serialized plot drawn out over several episodes, seasons, or God forbid, the entire run of the show. Apparently, people who don't watch any given show regularly may sit down to watch one day, but rather than being drawn into the story, they're confused by the addition of a character than wasn't on when they last caught the show months earlier. Worried that they'll lose these casual viewers, they flood the schedule with filler episodes, significantly limiting the number of episodes devoted to the show's ongoing story arch and effectively pissing off all the people who actually tune in every week. Enough with the pointless filler episodes already! Screw the casual viewers, let them watch Dancing with the Stars or find out if they're smarter than a fifth-grader. My money's on "no."
The Dead Zone is a good example of this offense, specifically last year. There were eleven episodes last season, and maybe three of them had anything to do with the main storyline that they'd been building the previous four seasons. And they weren't even sure if the show was going to be picked up for another season; you'd think they'd try to wrap things up.
Why am I talking about this? Well, I've still got a Joe story coming. It even explains why I briefly saw him in another light, why I sort of dropped of the face of the Earth near the end of last year, and even the origins of the mysterious black smoke monster. But I've still got some fancy visual aids to go along with it that I haven't finished yet. So here's some filler.
The nurse from Brianna's school called yesterday. Brianna wasn't feeling well, so Michele got out of work early to pick her up. That meant I needed to find a ride home, so I emailed my mom and asked if she could pick me up. She wrote back that she would be at the eye doctor with my dad to pick out new glasses at 5:30, and to call her on her cell phone when I get to Braintree.
There's no phone service underground, so I always have to wait until we get out of the tunnel to make a phone call. All the stops after that are open-air, so I usually call when we're at the JFK stop to say I'll be in Braintree in about twenty minutes. Yesterday when I got out of the tunnel, I had a weird voicemail message. I listened to it twice, but I couldn't make out anything the guy was saying. It didn't help that the wheels thundering down the track and all the background noise all but drowned out the message, but it sounded to me like he was speaking a different language. A few months ago, I got a rambling, nearly two minute message in Arabic, so I thought this was another wrong number. When we got to JFK, I called my mom's phone. No answer. So I called my parents' house. No answer. Did she forget about me?
I decided to try Ryan's phone. But I didn't enter is number into my new phone yet and I couldn't remember it off the top of my head. I guess that's the danger of technology. When I was five, I could remember all kinds of numbers and dates, but now that we have these little devices that store all that information, at some point I just stopped memorizing all these new numbers because I had them stored on a computer. Curse you, technology!
Anyway, I had to call Michele to ask her to call Ryan, who of course gave me hell because I should have had his number in my phone and she put it in the day she got hers and it just went on like that. She called me back a few minutes later to say that Ryan told her Glenn left me a message to call his phone. So the indecipherable voicemail I got was actually my brother mumbling into the phone. Well that's the end of that mystery.
I did have Glenn's number in my phone, so I called and I heard my mom's voice. I said I was on the train. She said, "Yeah...?"
"Well, you're going to pick me up right?"
"What?"
"You are going to pick me up, right?"
"Who is this?"
"You know who this is! Are you going to pick me up?"
"Who do you think you're calling?"
I wasn't really in the mood for this. "Glenn's phone." I sighed.
"Sorry, you've got the wrong number."
"Fine. Whatever." I hung up, or hit END really, since you can't hang up a cell phone. Less than twenty seconds later, I got a call from Glenn's phone. It's my mom.
"Hi, sorry, I didn't realize my phone was dead so I had to use Glenn's. Where are you?"
"What?! I'm on the train. I just told you that!"
"No you didn't.
"Yes. I did. I just called you and told you where I was, and you were being all weird and joking around."
"You didn't call here."
"Yes I did! Just now. You said I had the wrong number. Ha Ha. Very funny."
"I swear you didn't call this number. We're sitting here at the eye doctor's."
"...Well then I guess I did have the wrong number. I thought you were just being a jerk. But I called Glenn's phone. I hit the speed dial. How did I get a wrong number?"
Yes, it seems when I entered Glenn's number when I was setting up the speed dial, one of the digits was wrong. Being a new phone, this was the first time I called his phone. And by sheer coincidence, the woman who picked up when I dialed the wrong number happened to sound a lot like my mom. I really thought she was trying to mess with me. My family does stuff like that.
No one really knew all the details of exactly what happened until we all were in the car (except my dad, who was left at the eye doctor's to decide where to have dinner. I went home and had cereal, so I don't know how that turned out for them.) My mom was glad that I couldn't understand Glenn's message, which was actually "Mom's phone is dead, call mine." Because to her, it sounded like "Mom's dead. Call me." I can see where that would have caused even more confusion.
