TV Is Dead; Long Live TV

My wife and I have lived without a television set for some years. Yet we watch quite a few television programs online. Within the last couple weeks, we've watched the latest episode of Dollhouse at Hulu (and the sixth episode is the best yet), the first two episodes of Castle (starring another of Joss Whedon's stars, Nathan Fillion, in a pretty good show from ABC), and the pilots of Buck Rogers, The Incredible Hulk, and Airwolf, all three childhood favorites.

After we ditched our TV we relied largely on Netflix to watch television shows that had come out on disk. Just tonight we watched a classic movie, Time After Time (in which H. G. Wells chases Jack the Ripper to 1979), online through Netflix, which also offers many television shows online.

The local television news stations offer much of their video online as well. And of course individuals and organizations can make available video for practically no marginal cost through YouTube.

The online viewing quality is sometimes superb though sometimes jumpy (especially through Netflix). I get the idea, then, that the main trouble is with the software rather than with the bandwidth. (A note to TV stations: people won't be as willing to watch your shows if you make us download a bunch of BS "protection" software that screws with our machines.)

We've watched television shows on iTunes, but at $1.99 a pop we'd usually prefer to "pay" for our viewing by watching cheesy ads.

I am just stunned by the rapid progress of online video. I still remember watching Tron at my first VHS party. It was a huge, rented machine that popped open from the top, daring us to insert the video tape. (Tron came out in 1982, about a decade before the World Wide Web took off.)

Given the advantages of being able to watch the show I want to watch when I want to watch it, I don't see how the online video industry will do anything other than explode in growth. I don't need cable, I don't need specialized recording machines. I just need my Mac and my Comcast internet connection. (Comcast also offers cable TV, which I'm rarely tempted to purchase.)

I hate TV, but I love (some) television. I wonder how long it will take for the total integration of media.

(Don't) Lie to Me

On a friend's recommendation, my wife and I started watching Lie to Me, the new Fox show starring Tim Roth. Last night we watched through the sixth episode, the latest one. I really like this show.

The premise is that Roth's character (Cal Lightman) and his colleagues are experts at reading emotional expressions. A smile, a hand gesture, a shrug reveals the truth -- or a lie. Lightman's firm hires itself out to government agencies, corporations, and individuals who need to get to the bottom of something, be it a criminal allegation or doubt of a book's authenticity. One of the show's fun gimmicks is to compare the expression of a character with that of a famous person -- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George Bush, O. J. Simpson -- to indicate the universality of some expressions.

The show is "based on the real-life scientific discoveries of Paul Ekman," a psychologist who studies emotional responses. The show also has obvious moral implications: it shows that lying in a misguided attempt to gain values pits one against reality and causes internal conflicts (a lesson I also learned the hard way when I was young and dumb).

The show's big challenge is that its actors must convincingly mimic expressions of deception and of truth. This is sometimes done awkwardly or too obviously. It also points to a limitation of the psychology: if actors can mimic these expressions, can't real liars do it, too, at least sometimes?

Thankfully, Lie to Me does not present emotional detection as some sort of formula or as anything that is obvious. A person's uncoached, authentic responses can say a lot about the person's emotional state. But emotions are highly complex, and expressions of it are physical. So is a smooth forehead an indication of an emotion or of Botox? And detecting a lie, for instance, says little about what the person is lying about. Lightman is as much an investigator as he is a psychologist, and reading expressions is only his most obvious and specialized tool for getting to the truth.

One interesting point is that Lightman sometimes lies to his subjects in order to provoke emotional responses, pointing to the legitimate distinction between dishonesty and the broader category of deception. (One need not tell the truth to a criminal wanting to know the location of his would-be victim, for instance.)

So, while Lie to Me presents some interesting paradoxes of deception, its broader theme is the power of honesty.

Dollhouse

Joss Whedon's new television show, Dollhouse premiered last Friday, and the first episode is now available online. I've seen it twice, and it held my interest both times. Whedon is obviously planting the seeds for a lot of backstory and plot lines, including the apparently criminal mistake made by the lead character, known as Echo once she enters the Dollhouse. (Eliza Dushka of Buffy the Vampire fame plays Echo.) The first episode also hints at something interesting -- and disturbing -- in the past of a doctor at the facility played by Amy Acker, another of Whedon's top finds from Angel.

What is the Dollhouse? It's an illegal operation that signs up semi-willing participants to have their personalities erased so that they can be reprogrammed for particular missions -- er, "engagements" -- ranging from high-end escort services to mercenary-type actions. In the first episode, Echo helps negotiate the release of a kidnapped girl.

I'm looking forward to more. Just don't screw it up, Fox. By the way, Universal, where are the Serenity sequels? If you get your marketing act together, I'm confident two additional films would make money, especially now that the stars are better-known actors.

On a completely unrelated note, we watched Blindness, an awful, terrible, grotesque little film to be avoided at all costs.