Tales from the Commute

[moon_custafer]

1. On the subway car, guy was talking to his friend; I wasn’t really listening until I caught a bit that sounded like “Apparently he had these ice-blue eyes and was a crack shot.” That made me curious enough to pay attention, but the rest sounded like “blah blah blah regional issues blah.” Finally guessed that the guy was a historian discussing his research — there aren’t many other topics that are such a mix of “dry” and “they had to leave this part out of the movie because audiences would have thought it was a cliche/exaggeration.”

2. The woman next to me on the bus wasn’t having a good morning. Things kept falling out of her bag. Then she anxiously asked people if she could borrow a phone and called the person she was meeting, trying to figure out at what street she was supposed to get off. The man who’d lent her the phone pointed out that we were on an express bus and it wouldn’t stop at that intersection. “All right,” she said into the phone, “I’ll get off at Eglinton.” “We just passed Eglinton,” I said. She began frantically gathering her things, and I wondered for a moment if she was going to forget to give back the phone, and indeed if this whole thing had been a set-up to steal someone’s phone while maintaining plausible deniability of guilt if she didn’t make it off the bus without being stopped; but she gave the phone back. I hope she managed to link up with her friend.

3. I’m probably the last person to figure this out, but Life (2007-09) was basically The Count of Monte Cristo as a detective show, wasn’t it? ETA — googles it and yep, I’m the last person. It’s even possible I already knew this and simply forgot.
Further ETA — does this mean Crews’ cassette tape of “The Path to Zen” is the Abbe Faria?

Comments

[kore]

Life (2007-09) was basically The Count of Monte Cristo as a detective show, wasn’t it?

I didn't know that! //moves it further up queue

Also I thought it wasn't quite that old, yikes.

[moon_custafer]

For some reason it wasn’t “hero framed and sent to prison” or “a dozen years later circumstances set him free and he also comes into possession of a lot of money” that made the penny drop it – it was “he has a loyal ex-criminal sidekick and confidant.”

It was like the time I came across Dot and the Kangaroo on tv, and didn’t notice it was set in Australia until a lyrebird briefly appeared onscreen. In my defense, kangaroos are often whimsically tossed into stories as an exotic animal, but nobody’s going to show a lyrebird unless it’s actually pert of the setting, they’re just not famous enough.

[kore]

OH, THAT'S THE BIRD THAT CAN SOUND LIKE THE MOTOR DRIVE OF A CAMERA. T loves that bird. (Thank you David Attenborough)

[kore]

Lyrebird is also a dead ringer for Socrates's description of the Homeric rhapsodes, who can sound like anything.

[thisbluespirit]

I’m probably the last person to figure this out, but Life (2007-09) was basically The Count of Monte Cristo as a detective show, wasn’t it?

Oh, wow, is it really? I suppose it does have some similarities. (To be fair, I hadn't read the Count when I watched it and I haven't rewatched it since.)

[moon_custafer]

The main difference is that Life is framed as a mystery series – we and Crews, the Dantes figure, know he must have been deliberately framed for the murder of his friend and his friend’s wife – it’s unlikely there would have been that much circumstantial evidence by mere chance. However we don’t know who did it, so the two-season arc is about Crews trying to find out; we also don’t know, and Crews may not know either, what he’ll do when he *does* find out – will he go for all-out revenge?

The other difference of course is that as the Count, Dantes didn’t work as a homicide cop solving weekly cases *not* directly related to the main story.

Main point is, a lot of the show’s stylized, rule-of-cool > plausibility type of writing makes a lot more sense when you view it as an update of Dumas.

[thisbluespirit]

Main point is, a lot of the show’s stylized, rule-of-cool > plausibility type of writing makes a lot more sense when you view it as an update of Dumas.

I really will have to rewatch it now - when I can find out exactly what I did with S1, of course!