this week's Numb3rs...

[ratcreature]

Is it just me or are the action scenes in Numb3rs exceptionally boring and are getting actually worse as time goes on?

I usually like action. I mean, I like well choreographed fight scenes better than shootings, and space battles better than car chases, but normally I enjoy all kinds of action scenes and don't have the urge to fast forward through them or to play Tetris, not even during somewhat gratuitous or lengthy action sequences. Case in point, I actually liked the car and helicopter chases in The Sentinel, though I seemed to be somewhat in the minority in the fandom. But the action scenes in this week's Numb3rs episode bored me silly.

Also shouldn't the FBI have computer crime specialists and technicians handling traces and such? Why did they employ an outside mathematician consultant and a grad student to do that kind of work? That didn't really made sense to me.

Comments

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

I have to agree about the action sequences. I'm not a major fan of them generally, but sometimes, they work.

Part of what's bugging me about the action sequences on Numb3rs lately is that, as I'm watching them, I feel a lot like I'm sitting through something designed for someone else's enjoyment. Like... it feels like a "demographic moment" to me, like a ploy designed to pull in the crucial male audience. And, um, I think that's what it's for. I think that these last few eps have been about, "We've been renewed, we have our first year DVD out, and now we're bummed we only have a 40% male audience and we want more boys."

So we get ridiculously long and loud gunfests and proof-positive that the guys are all Real Men who fuck women, and... gah, y'know?

As for the specialists, Charlie is Superman. Does Superman have assistants?

Yeah.

[ratcreature]

For me the problem of the action sequences in Numb3rs is deeper than that they feel tacked on for demographic reasons. It's that the Numb3rs people are really bad at them somehow.

I'm not a film critic so it's hard for me to pin down why I find them so boring, but it's more than that they aren't the kind of really cool action sequences that advance characterization and make sense for the plot, they just aren't engaging or "pretty" in themselves either (the latter in quotes because it is somewhat weird to describe violence as pretty, but that's the effect a lot of it evokes when I watch, just something cool to look at).

I think in a way action sequences are a lot like sex scenes (in slash stories and elsewhere) in that they feel easily tacked on and unnecessary, and very few are truly essential, however they work as candy for a significant part of the audience. And unlike most sex scenes which I skim action usually does work like that for me. So unlike you I don't tend to have that "not made for me" reaction.

I mean there's a reason why my brother asked me to watch Blade II with him when his then girlfriend refused to go to that (and I hadn't even seen the first one, and I thought the movie was kind of awful, but I enjoyed the constant killing and gore well enough). I'll sit happily through two hours with no real plot or characterization for action, killing and violence as long as it works as eye candy. Shootings have a harder time to grab me than some other kinds of action, but the couple of minutes in a tv show rarely *bore* me, you know? I usually *like* looking at gratuitous fictional violence.

And apparently Charlie needs at least Amita (and I really hope the FBI at least pays her well for all the hours she helps Charlie out, and that she doesn't just hang around unofficially because she's supposed to have a crush or whatever...)

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Sorry--I wasn't at all clear about my thinking, I think.

I guess I'd say that yes, sex scenes and violence scenes are all, in some ways gratuitous, but there are levels of that, as to whether they feel tacked on or not, and whether they feel like they somehow fit in with a general aesthetic of the show/film or not.

Tarantino's violence, like them or not, have a look that's distinctive. Tony Scott's True Romance has an absolutely fabulous shootout scene with down pillows exploding everywhere, and it's just amazing to watch--chaos turned all floaty and surreal. The famous chase scene in the French Connection is famous for a reason. Queer as Folk has sex scenes that, while gratuitous in that they aren't, strictly speaking, necessary, are also stylish, stylized, and visually interesting beyond the fact that many of us find ATG fucking interesting. Sex and violence without style are just boring.

The kinds of things we've seen lately in terms of the violence on Numb3rs feel tacked on, to me, like the jumps the skaters have been doing at the Olympics lately--done strictly for points, and now separate from the dance and artistry of the whole.

And I think that someone, somewhere (in demographics land) decided that on Numb3rs "we need more men and they like guns and so we'll have guns." And if they nuance that, it's just "more, longer, bigger" and not, well, interesting. If they'd done that with architecture and lighting--decided "we need a house and some lights," we'd have a house and lights instead of the glowey golden woody upper-middle class beauty of that Craftsman home (fetish fetish fetish).

Anyway--I didn't mean to suggest that I was a chick who didn't appreciate violence. Just that this feels like it was done to get a male audience (who was assumed to like a wham, bam approach rather than a long, slow, artistic fuck *g*).