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You will, of course, recall Containment, America/The CW’s remake of Belgium’s Cordon. Episode two was on last night and within the first few seconds I was laughing.
Oh dear. Quoting Socrates. Well, to be exact quoting a slightly loose translation of section 42a of Plato’s Apology, which is an account of Socrates’ trial, in which Plato says Socrates said:
ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἤδη ὥρα ἀπιέναι, ἐμοὶ μὲν ἀποθανουμένῳ, ὑμῖν δὲ βιωσομένοις: ὁπότεροι δὲ ἡμῶν ἔρχονται ἐπὶ ἄμεινον πρᾶγμα, ἄδηλον παντὶ πλὴν ἢ τῷ θεῷ.
θεῷ, there, referring to Zeus, of course, but I guess the all-American Containment wasn’t going there.
So why was I laughing? Because it reminds me of Joe Queenan’s America (aka Red Lobster, White Trash, & the Blue Lagoon), in which he deliberately decides to read all the worst books, watch the worst movies, eat the worst food, attend the worst events, etc that America and Americana have to offer.
This includes reading Tom Clancy novels. He notes that Clancy and similarly bad authors all have a habit of quoting much better authors at the beginning of books and even chapters of books in order to give their sub-standard works an intellectual veneer that makes them seem better than they are.
I’m going to start calling these quotes ‘Containment moments’ from now on.
As a brief aside, Queenan suggests it might be an idea to return the favour of the ‘Containment moment’ and preface classic works of literature with quotes from lesser authors, imagining, for example, what would happen if a play of Shakespeare’s was preceded with:
The Hughes 500D is an extremely quiet helicopter due to sound baffles in the Allison 250-C20B engine.
Tom Clancy
That would be aces.
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It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever.
I spent most of the weekend not watching a lot of things I was supposed to be watching, instead watching season one of Daredevil again – it’s so much better than the second season, which is starting to feel more disappointing with every passing day. But that doesn’t mean I’m not up to date. It just means I still haven’t watched Ófærð (Trapped) yet.
Elsewhere, I’ve reviewed Containment (US: The CW; UK: E4) and passed a third-episode verdict on The Detour (US: TBS). I’ll be passing a third-episode verdict on Game on Silence either tomorrow or Wednesday. That means that after the jump, we’ll have a look at the latest episodes of The Americans, Banshee, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Limitless, Lopez, Lucifer and The Tunnel (Tunnel), as well as the season finale of Supergirl. HBO’s also just brought back Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley , so I’ll be looking over them, too.
But first, a movie:
Bridge of Spies (2015) (iTunes)
Slightly soporific Spielberg biopic of Cold War lawyer James B Donovan (Tom Hanks), who defended notorious spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), and ended up helping in negotiations in Berlin to exchange Abel for U2 pilot Gary Powers. He does that by talking about the Constitution and what it is to be American. All solidly made but that summary is really all you need to know, in what is basically a not very subtle commentary on post-9/11 US attitudes to human rights, treating enemy combatants civilly, etc. If you do watch it, don’t be surprised that there’s a chunk in the middle in German without subtitles, as that’s deliberate. Don’t worry – they’re just talking about how expensive his coat is.
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