Post by William T. Goat, Esq. on Dec 30, 2013 21:13:54 GMT -5
Season 1, Episode 3: Saturday on Sunset Boulevard
Original airdate: April 8, 1981
...And we're back! Sorry, folks, got sidetracked. Christmas snuck up on me; lots of last-minute shopping. Every year at this time, you say? I'll have to jot that down.
I've been relying a bit too much on plot summary. I'm going to try to resist that here. Less focus on dry details and more focus on the big picture. The most interesting thing about this episode is how it gives us a bit more insight into how the main characters view the world.
The Maguffin of this week's episode: a rich Italian heiress and her Russian chauffeur have fallen in love, and are defecting to the US while the KGB is after them both, to get their hands on her money or land or something. Whatever. (Ah, the 1980's, when every TV show plot somehow revolved around Russians and nukes.) Agent Carlisle (William Bogert, the dad from WarGames… yeah, that's the first thing I recognized him from) has arranged a rendezvous with the defectors to take them into protective custody, but two KGB agents show up with guns blazing. The two lovers get separated as they run away into the busy streets, and Carlisle returns to the Bureau empty-handed.
An early classroom scene shows Ralph trying to keep the attention of his bored students. They don't see how school is relevant to their lives. In their minds, it's them against "the system," and the system has already rejected them. The fact that they've been separated from the rest of the school is proof of that. Nothing they can learn in school will change the fact that they are outcasts. The scene is surprisingly intense, and Ralph seems genuinely rattled when the students suggest that maybe he's been assigned to teach them because the system has rejected him too.
Ralph gets a chance to change their minds when Bill brings him the aforementioned case of the week. Apparently, all FBI agents have to take a lie detector test, twice a year. He fails the test for the first time in his career, because when asked if anything unusual has happened to him lately, he says no. He refuses to talk about the aliens, Ralph, and the suit. He'll have to re-take the test in two days, and pass, or he's off the force. But Bill thinks that if he (with Ralph's help) can solve whatever big case the FBI is currently having trouble with--an assignment which his best frenemy at the Bureau, agent Carlisle, has already failed at--the lie detector results will be forgiven and forgotten.
I… don't think that quite makes sense. Especially since Bill doesn't even know what the case is yet. To solve that little problem, he recruits Ralph to break into the FBI headquarters and steal the case file.
Agent Carlisle gets a great scene, confronting Ralph as he crashes through the wall of the FBI file room. When Ralph asks for the case file, Carlisle shoots him, watches the bullet bounce around the room, then meekly hands over the file. The next day, Carlisle takes the lie detector test, and he's declared insane. (According to IMDB, he's going to be a recurring character next season; it will be interesting to see how the writers handle that.)
Ralph makes his rebuttal to his class--that individuals matter--by getting them involved in a search for the Russian guy. (They carry his photo around the relevant neighborhood and ask people if anyone has seen him. They split up and keep in contact via walkie-talkie.) This is also where we get insight into Ralph's way of looking at the world, which he explains to Tony, starting with "pick your friends carefully."
"…You can't predict what's gonna happen. All you can do is keep making yourself ready for the best things. Gotta aim high instead of low. That way, when the good things do come along, you're better equipped to cash in. When the bad things happen, you're better equipped to deal with it. And in the end, the quality of your life just keeps improving."
Sounds easier said than done to me, but I guess that's why the aliens picked Ralph to wear the superhero suit and not me.
Pam gets her big philosophy-of-life moment too: she explains to Rhonda how to attract a guy. BECHDEL TEST FAIL.
Ralph and Tony spot the Russian getting into a car… and the KGB agents following him in another car. They follow too, in the school van. When the Russian picks up the heiress, the KGB agents grab them both and start to drive away. While Ralph is taking too long to change into his suit (in a phone booth!), Pam uses her brain and pushes a dumpster into the escaping car's path. Yay! But in the scuffle that ensues when Ralph shows up, the heiress escapes, and the KGB gets Pam instead.
The closest that Bill comes to talking about his worldview is when the KGB agents phone him up and offer to trade Pam for the heiress. They name a rendezvous point, but Bill changes the terms, and hangs up before they can object. "You gotta deal from strength, Ralph," he says.
When I first watched this, Bill's behavior in this scene really bothered me. This isn't the first time Ralph has disagreed with Bill's methods, but this seemed out of character for Bill. He's always bragged about doing everything by the book, but I'm pretty sure this is not standard procedure when negotiating a hostage situation.
I've been rethinking it, and I think I fell for a bit of misdirection. Earlier in the episode, when he first tells Ralph and Pam at dinner about his failed lie detector test, Bill seems panicked. Even that small bit of dishonesty is new to him, and when Ralph points out that breaking into the FBI, stealing the file, and solving the case behind the Agency's back, is just trading one dishonesty for another, Bill can only silently squirm in response. It looks like it's being played for laughs; the guy with apparently unimpeachable moral values has been exposed as less-than-perfect, giving him Sheldon-Cooper-like levels of hilarious anxiety.
But now I think there's a real philosophical issue being raised here. If I may be allowed to get all VanDerWerffian: I was raised Catholic, and it didn't sit well with me. (I've considered writing about it in the "Things That Went Awry In Your Upbringing" thread, but I have to admit, my suffering was probably more my fault than my parents'.) I'm sure we all remember the first time we, as children, asked an adult to explain about war. "Don't grownups know that fighting is wrong?" "Well, yes, but it's not a perfect world, and there are situations where moral absolutes don't apply. Sometimes, war is necessary." I always got the impression that God demands unrealistic levels of perfection from His followers. That "sometimes war is necessary" wouldn't cut it with Him; there's always a morally perfect path out of any dilemma, and even if we can't see what it is, God will hold us accountable for failing to find it. There is only perfection or damnation, nothing in between.
With a mindset like that, doing your best still feels like failure. And that feeling makes it hard to care about doing your best. I think that's what's happening with Bill. He's already fallen short, so what's a few more sins? They won't matter in the end, especially if you do manage to find forgiveness. And at the end of the episode, after (spoiler) the good guys win and the bad guys lose, Bill is on the phone with his chief, offering to deliver the defectors to the FBI, in exchange for his lie detector results, plus a promise never to have to take the test again. He's literally begging for absolution.
On the other hand, Ralph never seems to face big moral dilemmas. Yes, he gets frustrated when the many sides of his life clash, but he's never really needed to compromise his value system. His innate idealism and optimism make him the perfect candidate to wear the suit. I think the thing that makes Superman stories so appealing--and Man of Steelsuch a disappointment--is that Superman isn't just physically perfect; he's morally perfect. He always finds the perfect path. Of course, doing the right thing every time is a lot easier when you're bulletproof.
Stray observations:
- The director must have told the actors playing the students to say "you know" a lot.
Original airdate: April 8, 1981
...And we're back! Sorry, folks, got sidetracked. Christmas snuck up on me; lots of last-minute shopping. Every year at this time, you say? I'll have to jot that down.
I've been relying a bit too much on plot summary. I'm going to try to resist that here. Less focus on dry details and more focus on the big picture. The most interesting thing about this episode is how it gives us a bit more insight into how the main characters view the world.
The Maguffin of this week's episode: a rich Italian heiress and her Russian chauffeur have fallen in love, and are defecting to the US while the KGB is after them both, to get their hands on her money or land or something. Whatever. (Ah, the 1980's, when every TV show plot somehow revolved around Russians and nukes.) Agent Carlisle (William Bogert, the dad from WarGames… yeah, that's the first thing I recognized him from) has arranged a rendezvous with the defectors to take them into protective custody, but two KGB agents show up with guns blazing. The two lovers get separated as they run away into the busy streets, and Carlisle returns to the Bureau empty-handed.
An early classroom scene shows Ralph trying to keep the attention of his bored students. They don't see how school is relevant to their lives. In their minds, it's them against "the system," and the system has already rejected them. The fact that they've been separated from the rest of the school is proof of that. Nothing they can learn in school will change the fact that they are outcasts. The scene is surprisingly intense, and Ralph seems genuinely rattled when the students suggest that maybe he's been assigned to teach them because the system has rejected him too.
Ralph gets a chance to change their minds when Bill brings him the aforementioned case of the week. Apparently, all FBI agents have to take a lie detector test, twice a year. He fails the test for the first time in his career, because when asked if anything unusual has happened to him lately, he says no. He refuses to talk about the aliens, Ralph, and the suit. He'll have to re-take the test in two days, and pass, or he's off the force. But Bill thinks that if he (with Ralph's help) can solve whatever big case the FBI is currently having trouble with--an assignment which his best frenemy at the Bureau, agent Carlisle, has already failed at--the lie detector results will be forgiven and forgotten.
I… don't think that quite makes sense. Especially since Bill doesn't even know what the case is yet. To solve that little problem, he recruits Ralph to break into the FBI headquarters and steal the case file.
Agent Carlisle gets a great scene, confronting Ralph as he crashes through the wall of the FBI file room. When Ralph asks for the case file, Carlisle shoots him, watches the bullet bounce around the room, then meekly hands over the file. The next day, Carlisle takes the lie detector test, and he's declared insane. (According to IMDB, he's going to be a recurring character next season; it will be interesting to see how the writers handle that.)
Ralph makes his rebuttal to his class--that individuals matter--by getting them involved in a search for the Russian guy. (They carry his photo around the relevant neighborhood and ask people if anyone has seen him. They split up and keep in contact via walkie-talkie.) This is also where we get insight into Ralph's way of looking at the world, which he explains to Tony, starting with "pick your friends carefully."
"…You can't predict what's gonna happen. All you can do is keep making yourself ready for the best things. Gotta aim high instead of low. That way, when the good things do come along, you're better equipped to cash in. When the bad things happen, you're better equipped to deal with it. And in the end, the quality of your life just keeps improving."
Sounds easier said than done to me, but I guess that's why the aliens picked Ralph to wear the superhero suit and not me.
Pam gets her big philosophy-of-life moment too: she explains to Rhonda how to attract a guy. BECHDEL TEST FAIL.
Ralph and Tony spot the Russian getting into a car… and the KGB agents following him in another car. They follow too, in the school van. When the Russian picks up the heiress, the KGB agents grab them both and start to drive away. While Ralph is taking too long to change into his suit (in a phone booth!), Pam uses her brain and pushes a dumpster into the escaping car's path. Yay! But in the scuffle that ensues when Ralph shows up, the heiress escapes, and the KGB gets Pam instead.
The closest that Bill comes to talking about his worldview is when the KGB agents phone him up and offer to trade Pam for the heiress. They name a rendezvous point, but Bill changes the terms, and hangs up before they can object. "You gotta deal from strength, Ralph," he says.
When I first watched this, Bill's behavior in this scene really bothered me. This isn't the first time Ralph has disagreed with Bill's methods, but this seemed out of character for Bill. He's always bragged about doing everything by the book, but I'm pretty sure this is not standard procedure when negotiating a hostage situation.
I've been rethinking it, and I think I fell for a bit of misdirection. Earlier in the episode, when he first tells Ralph and Pam at dinner about his failed lie detector test, Bill seems panicked. Even that small bit of dishonesty is new to him, and when Ralph points out that breaking into the FBI, stealing the file, and solving the case behind the Agency's back, is just trading one dishonesty for another, Bill can only silently squirm in response. It looks like it's being played for laughs; the guy with apparently unimpeachable moral values has been exposed as less-than-perfect, giving him Sheldon-Cooper-like levels of hilarious anxiety.
But now I think there's a real philosophical issue being raised here. If I may be allowed to get all VanDerWerffian: I was raised Catholic, and it didn't sit well with me. (I've considered writing about it in the "Things That Went Awry In Your Upbringing" thread, but I have to admit, my suffering was probably more my fault than my parents'.) I'm sure we all remember the first time we, as children, asked an adult to explain about war. "Don't grownups know that fighting is wrong?" "Well, yes, but it's not a perfect world, and there are situations where moral absolutes don't apply. Sometimes, war is necessary." I always got the impression that God demands unrealistic levels of perfection from His followers. That "sometimes war is necessary" wouldn't cut it with Him; there's always a morally perfect path out of any dilemma, and even if we can't see what it is, God will hold us accountable for failing to find it. There is only perfection or damnation, nothing in between.
With a mindset like that, doing your best still feels like failure. And that feeling makes it hard to care about doing your best. I think that's what's happening with Bill. He's already fallen short, so what's a few more sins? They won't matter in the end, especially if you do manage to find forgiveness. And at the end of the episode, after (spoiler) the good guys win and the bad guys lose, Bill is on the phone with his chief, offering to deliver the defectors to the FBI, in exchange for his lie detector results, plus a promise never to have to take the test again. He's literally begging for absolution.
On the other hand, Ralph never seems to face big moral dilemmas. Yes, he gets frustrated when the many sides of his life clash, but he's never really needed to compromise his value system. His innate idealism and optimism make him the perfect candidate to wear the suit. I think the thing that makes Superman stories so appealing--and Man of Steelsuch a disappointment--is that Superman isn't just physically perfect; he's morally perfect. He always finds the perfect path. Of course, doing the right thing every time is a lot easier when you're bulletproof.
Stray observations:
- The director must have told the actors playing the students to say "you know" a lot.
