H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Best lines tonight:
Sam: I'm the negotiator. Gene: I'll make you a hat.
- otherwise a bit weaker than previous episodes, I thought. Nice to see the return of Lee-from-Press-Gang as swaggering Lytton, though - it felt a bit like the news crew rumble from Ron Burgundy.
posted
Yeah, I think it's stretching a bit now. It was pretty great as a hostage drama, but the time-travel twist is either being played down, (no anachronism jokes this week -- though again, Sam is using terms they shouldn't recognise, like "gutted") or is becoming too familiar (you know the Singing Detective style flashback of silver buckles will come in at some point.)
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Yes, I agree with you, I've felt that they've paid less attention to the anachronistic word usage as the programme has gone on. For example, I remember Gene calling Sam a brainiac a few weeks ago, and there is no way in hell that term was in common currency in 1973. There was some obvious stuff last night in terms of the hostage negotiation process but they don't seem to pay as much attention to getting the day to day language right.
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
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I thought it just ran out of steam last night. The hostage situation was milked down to a wrinkly, empty, grey condom of a boob (a bit like this, see) which just dried up and died. I was actually, to coin 1970s terminology, gutted.
Tony Jordan said it was conceived as "CSI meets the Sweeney". I understand what he's getting at but, well, the John Simms character just doesn't feel that hi-tech in his methods. Granted he doesn't have access to a spectalmacogrophiser or lots of test tubes, pretty lab assistants and haunting electronic melodies (He does have The Who, though) but his mad CSI skillz seem to be based on saying "Don't beat the witness to death before he tells us the name of the murderer, science tells me it's better to get the name first."
Maybe the first few episodes have led me to expect too much from Life on Mars. It's just a bit of harmless fun, after all.
posted
I agree with both of you. The double-edged problem is that Sam Tyler has acclimatised (part of the fascination in episode 1 was how this guy copes with being in 1973 all of a sudden... now he's got mates, a local, a potential girlfriend) but still acts like a man out of time (staring off into space for flashbacks or mysterious bleeping, shouting at invisible doctors, using 21st century slang).
So on the one hand, there's no real culture clash anymore. Gene and Sam's methods aren't that different: Sam tries the softly-softly approach, Gene steams in, but that's partly just down to character, not period, and the programme is deliberately bringing them towards a common ground, as part of their bonding (Sam instructs Gene to punch the hostage-taker in the face / Gene comes out with some official-sounding double-chat for the journalists). While their building friendship is the show's emotional centre, it was more interesting when they were at odds.
On the other hand, we've got this "am I in a coma" enigma that's becoming very, very samey and forumulaic.
Someone on Barbelith suggested I was asking a pleasant high-concept cop show to be Twin Peaks -- I think the early episodes led me to believe this would be doing something a bit different.
quote:Originally posted by H1ppychick: For example, I remember Gene calling Sam a brainiac a few weeks ago, and there is no way in hell that term was in common currency in 1973.
No, I guess it would have been quite dated by as late as 1973.
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I remember flicking through Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's The Meaning Of Liff when it came out and thinking it was shite. I just stumbled across a few of their words here and they are now funny. Or my standards have plummeted. Hmm, wonder which.
ahenny - "The way people stand when examining other people's bookshelves."
adrigole - "The centerpiece of a merry-go-round on which the man with the tickets stands unnervingly still."
aigburth - "Any piece of readily identifiable anatomy found amongst cooked meat."
etc.
In most case these are things which actually really do need words to describe them, so it's quite a valuable book. Except that no one's likely to actually learn the words in the first place.
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I love love love the Meaning of Liff, and have the sort of geeky memory that remembers the words, and the definitions precisely as written. Imagine the joy of long journeys as I chortle 'Kettering: the marks left on your bottom or thighs after sunbathing on a wickerworkchair. *snicker*'. They just fly by.
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Skipwith - To bunnyhop down the stairs mid poo with your trousers and pants around your ankles to answer the phone when there is nobody else in the house.
Tunnyhop - A swift about turn mid Skipwith when you come to the sudden realization that there is in fact someone else in the house
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
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Cleftsnip: the involuntary spasm of the anus mid skipwith - just prior to a messy tunnyhop - when you come to the sudden realization that there is in fact someone else in the house
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Gronnychapel - the expression on the face of the other person in the house as they discover you mid-skipwith just as a cleftsnip takes hold and propels you into a particularly violent tunnyhop.
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I think that situation is covered now.
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
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Lucasize - The act of adding new canonical material to an existing body of work that detracts significantly from the original material. Examples include the new Star Wars movies and the Shadow Moon books (continuations of the movie Willow).
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
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ah cool
ninjular - 1. To be agile, like a ninja. 2. To have ninja-like movements.
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
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lol Jake - To attempt to open a car door from the outside at the very moment someone is unlocking it from the inside, resulting in a still-locked door. Example: "You're too anxious to get into the car, John. You just jaked the handle."
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quote:Originally posted by not...: lol Jake - To attempt to open a car door from the outside at the very moment someone is unlocking it from the inside, resulting in a still-locked door. Example: "You're too anxious to get into the car, John. You just jaked the handle."
My kids do that all the time. I'm thinking of rigging up some sort of anti-jakeing device, perhaps involving a high voltage of electricity. Enough to cause a semi-cleftsnip and require a ninjular evasion response.
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Hey come on now, Willow's a great film: all those midgets running around; the look on her little face when Willow's hideous dwarf bride realises her husband has returned; And all those little people, running around; Val Kilmer looking like you just know he was the biggest cnut ever ever ever as soon as the cameras stopped rolling; And those little folk running around with their little legs. And the midget guys. Hilarious.
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By the way Jones, they're taking me to moderator's court on Barbelith because I pasted in your comments about Life on Mars without asking. Sorry, man. It'll be the phantom zone for me, I expect.
posted
Don't think I read them before you edited them Anyway, I have said over there that they can delete my post if necessary... my aim was just to keep my toe in their discussions of the programme, but not type out my views on last night's episode twice, and to put my comments in the context of our discussion here. So, sorry if I was out of order to quote you.
NB I wasn't just pasting your comments -- I was pasting mine, but with yours and Hippychick's on either side so mine made sense.
posted
No, no you weren't out of order for posting the comments in. I've just read the Barbelith thread and you quoted my post after I edited it. So no worries.
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I don't know what the POLICY is. The stuff I edited out was probably not something I should have put on the internet in the first place. I changed it pretty quickly but I was just worried it had found its way to Barbelith before I edited.
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It's like the forum for the Barbelith moderators... where they discuss people who did wrong. I think we should have one too, for occasions like this
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: By the way Jones, they're taking me to moderator's court on Barbelith because I pasted in your comments about Life on Mars without asking. Sorry, man. It'll be the phantom zone for me, I expect.
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
Anyway, I have said over there that they can delete my post if necessary... my aim was just to keep my toe in their discussions of the programme, but not type out my views on last night's episode twice, and to put my comments in the context of our discussion here. So, sorry if I was out of order to quote you.![[Cool]](cool.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
I know what you're doing there.
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