On the same day that I encouraged all of you out there to not be depressed by the television season ending, I watched some shows last night and was depressed that the season hadn rsquo;t ended yet. Frankly, what I saw looked awfully tired and made me think that the people behind the scenes need a rest.
First up, NBC rsquo;s ldquo;improvisational rdquo; comedy Thank God You rsquo;re Here.
Allegedly, this show drops an actor into a situation with a comedy troupe, the actor has no idea what rsquo;s happening and has to, therefore, do some improv. Well, Jason Alexander walked out onto a starship set last night and started to improvise, and kept being forced in one direction by the troupe. His improv led him to state that the show they were working on had been canceled (making the troupe into actors working on a show rather than the crew of a starship).
One of the troupe said something along the lines of ldquo;what he means is hellip; rdquo; and thereby dismissed the idea of a show within a show that Alexander put forth and put him on a path they wanted him to travel, not the path he was going down.
It quickly became clear that Alexander rsquo;s idea was dismissed so that the show could introduce an alien on a videoscreen. Eventually the alien boarded Alexander and his crew rsquo;s starship, and then proceeded to start a duel with Alexander.
Conveniently, the alien rsquo;s choice of weapon just happened to have a counterpart next to Alexander rsquo;s captain rsquo;s chair. Alexander, upon having the weapon pointed out to him, stated ldquo;oh, is that what that is. rdquo; If it hadn rsquo;t been readily apparent before, it was now mdash; it was going to make no difference what Alexander said or did to that point in the improv sketch, the members of the troupe were going to force this duel to occur, even if that meant gainsaying every remark from Alexander.
How is that improv? Isn rsquo;t improv rolling with the punches, being fluid, malleable, and going where the scene goes? I don rsquo;t get it, I just don rsquo;t.
And, speaking of not getting it, when Jack asked Sun last night about her pregnancy, why was she so suspicious? Have we forgotten that Jack rsquo;s a doctor? Has Sun forgotten that Jack rsquo;s a doctor?
Why, when Sun asked Jack why he was asking her about how she felt during the pregnancy, did Jack not respond: ldquo;I rsquo;m asking because I rsquo;m a doctor and want to make sure you rsquo;re okay. rdquo;
It is wholly irrelevant that Sun was right in her suspicions. If a doctor you know and that treats you and your friends asks you about a medical condition you have, why would you ever be suspicious of that?
The folks at Lost failed to establish any sort of reason for Sun to have her suspicions. Yes, Jack was gone for a week, held by the Others, but having lived in such close proximity with Jack for months, and having received medical attention from him before, why was she suspicious? The only answer is that the producers needed her to be suspicious in order to further the plot.
That rsquo;s a horrible answer, but it is the only available one.
The fact that the rest of the episode was so good and that everything moved on from that incident so well does help mitigate this bit of stupidity, but Lost prides itself on being smart, and this was stupid. Maybe I shouldn rsquo;t, but I expect better.
Listen, here rsquo;s what I rsquo;m going to recommend: after tonight (first night of the May Sweep by the way), let rsquo;s all take a deep breath, get a full three-day weekend rsquo;s worth of sleep, and pretend like some of this stuff never happened. We rsquo;ll not mention Thank God You rsquo;re Here ever again (until its cancellation anyway).
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