lots of out of date TV musings
So I’ve finally figured out why Penny dates Leonard in “Big Bang Theory.” (Why Leonard is dating Penny is fairly obvious) In the season three episode when they introduce Leonard’s mother, a world renown neuroscientist and psychiatrist, they establish that Penny has an “external locus of identity,” which means she judges others by how they see her. Leonard is the smartest man she knows (who hasn’t been driven crazy by it), thus Leonard’s approval comes to mean the most to her. She already knows she has the ‘approval’ of good looking men (which hasn’t gone well for her). If even a genius approves of her, it is like the ultimate stamp of approval. This was intensified after she realized that Leonard has other options, most prominently Raj’s sister.
In another “BBT” episode, Raj and Stuart threw an anti-Valentine’s Day party, and I found myself thinking about what would be good anti-Valentine’s Day party themes.
Maybe a marathon of television episodes reminding us that no relationship is better than a bad relationship; I can think of “BBT,” “Buffy,” “Black Books,” and “Six Feet Under” that would prove the point.
Maybe a Star Trek marathon, with either a Dominion War theme or a Khan theme (which would include the original Star Trek episode, “Wrath of Khan,” and “Into the Darkness”). Maybe a “Star Wars” marathon drinking game in which you have to take a shot whenever Lucas inserts a cliché because he couldn’t think of anything better for his characters to say or do. Maybe I should limit it to “Star Wars” clichés to prevent alcohol poisoning. Or maybe alcohol wouldn’t be a very good idea; alcohol would encourage the bashing of the gender rejecting us (I would have said opposite gender, but I’ve listened to lesbians ragging on women after one beer too many).
I know some people would prefer a “Borg” marathon, but the quality of Borg episodes declined dramatically over time, mostly because the writers couldn’t face the true alien nature of the aliens they’d created. I’ve seen collective consciousness aliens handled much better in written SF, which is another reason why if Hollywood didn’t have novels to steal ideas from, they’d have to invent novelists.
Which leads me to another train of thought. Books are low cost products and churned out a hundred times as fast as the high cost, high profit, low production rate movies. Imagine a hundred guys like me (or you) churning out ideas in fictional form, most of which won’t make money, but if your novel doesn’t sell, well, don’t quit your day job. But one of them does make a lot of money, Hollywood, being a high risk, high profit, situation uses book sales as test runs for fictional ideas and then pays copyright to the author for making it into a movie, or just takes the idea and has someone write a script (depending upon the importance of the title to sales, since “Lord of the Rings” will bring in customers, but “Inception,” while ripping all its ideas from cyberpunk and, according to a cracked.com article, a children’s cartoon, could stand on its own). It’s no different in principle than how Chinese companies will test out new products by having street venders hawk them and the best selling toys are then mass produced for the stores, except books came before movies.
In another “BBT” episode, Raj and Stuart threw an anti-Valentine’s Day party, and I found myself thinking about what would be good anti-Valentine’s Day party themes.
Maybe a marathon of television episodes reminding us that no relationship is better than a bad relationship; I can think of “BBT,” “Buffy,” “Black Books,” and “Six Feet Under” that would prove the point.
Maybe a Star Trek marathon, with either a Dominion War theme or a Khan theme (which would include the original Star Trek episode, “Wrath of Khan,” and “Into the Darkness”). Maybe a “Star Wars” marathon drinking game in which you have to take a shot whenever Lucas inserts a cliché because he couldn’t think of anything better for his characters to say or do. Maybe I should limit it to “Star Wars” clichés to prevent alcohol poisoning. Or maybe alcohol wouldn’t be a very good idea; alcohol would encourage the bashing of the gender rejecting us (I would have said opposite gender, but I’ve listened to lesbians ragging on women after one beer too many).
I know some people would prefer a “Borg” marathon, but the quality of Borg episodes declined dramatically over time, mostly because the writers couldn’t face the true alien nature of the aliens they’d created. I’ve seen collective consciousness aliens handled much better in written SF, which is another reason why if Hollywood didn’t have novels to steal ideas from, they’d have to invent novelists.
Which leads me to another train of thought. Books are low cost products and churned out a hundred times as fast as the high cost, high profit, low production rate movies. Imagine a hundred guys like me (or you) churning out ideas in fictional form, most of which won’t make money, but if your novel doesn’t sell, well, don’t quit your day job. But one of them does make a lot of money, Hollywood, being a high risk, high profit, situation uses book sales as test runs for fictional ideas and then pays copyright to the author for making it into a movie, or just takes the idea and has someone write a script (depending upon the importance of the title to sales, since “Lord of the Rings” will bring in customers, but “Inception,” while ripping all its ideas from cyberpunk and, according to a cracked.com article, a children’s cartoon, could stand on its own). It’s no different in principle than how Chinese companies will test out new products by having street venders hawk them and the best selling toys are then mass produced for the stores, except books came before movies.