Episode 133 Morals

In plain English, these are the morals from Episode 133:

Will anyone be snowed by the evidence the police collect?

I have a couple of points to make with this one:

First, it's really starting to bug me this incessant use of the plot device where someone walks by at some critical moment and overhears something that puts another person or persons in coincidentally the worst possible light. I feel like this has been happening a lot lately, most prominently with Mac overhearing Billy at the worst possible times. He's often saying nice things about her, but those never get overheard. Now, one might say that it was essential to interesting plots to focus on things that create dissonance instead of things that create harmony, but there's nothing wrong with someone occasionally overhearing something reassuring and being lulled into too much of a sense of security, for example. There are other ways to play this.

Also, there are lots of little tidbits of evidence being left in this drug plot and I hope they're really going to dispose of them all rather than leave us hanging. What was that deal with the pencil being left at a public payphone after Larry made the "anonymous" call? Are we really to believe that the pencil was going to be important evidence? Or was that zoom-in on the pencil after the call just "lying" to us about the importance of the pencil? And also, we were cued to care about fingerprints by both the dialog and extreme care shown in some scenes where they handle the drugs, but there are other scenes where these guys (especially Matt/Carter) are openly fondling the evidence, and it's ridiculous to assume the cops won't pick up on that. And even though Larry's prints aren't on the drugs, they are all over Carter's house, so an association between those two would be easy to show, even without Trisha's help.

Besides Jordan, who else will be iced before Nick's saga is over?

I've been kind of missing Megan and thinking somehow she could come and save her sister. But there's this big rift between them, her boyfriend having been run over by Trisha. How to resolve that? Well, I finally thought of a way.

Is it true what they say--that snow news is good news?

If you're not in the storm area this week, this part of today's story perhaps wasn't your cup of tea. I hope you struggled through in spite of it. But in a sense, that's my whole problem with the snow breakins--they aren't sensitive to who's watching and who's not.

I've called the station to complain (and every other viewer should do the same, I think). Sometimes they show it in the middle of the night when it's been preempted during the day. But what I've been told repeatedly is that if they've aired even 15 seconds of the show, they're not going to repeat it later. The reason is, ironically, that the contract with whoever gets the royalties says that if it's interrupted, replaying it counts as a second broadcast, and more royalties have to get paid. I think there's irony here because who it ends up hurting is the actors, who don't get seen, and whose audience becomes frustrated and starts channel surfing (as happened most heavily in the days of the OJ hearings). But there's the dilemma for the broadcasters: to pay extra money to rebroadcast after an interruption or not? Well, this is my opinion column, so here's how I would dictate policy if I were magically put in charge:

I think that networks have a duty to judge the importance of breakin news vs the regularly scheduled soap. I think if the importance is not enough to justify the cost of paying extra fees to rebroadcast later, then the network should consider the possibility that breaking in wasn't that important in the first place. It may or may not be reasonable that they have to pay extra to rebroadcast, but they can use this "burden" to help them in their decision process.

And in no case should they break into a show to tell you something that a normal viewer won't reasonably be expected to act on between then and the 6pm news. For example, telling me there's snow outside is not interesting. Telling me there's snow coming is more interesting, because I may want to plan for that. Once the snow is on the ground, there are better pictures, but it's too late to do anything about it. Similarly, breaking in (as happened a couple of weeks ago) to tell me that someone accused in a local shooting has been arrested halfway across the country makes no sense. What am I going to do with that knowledge between now and the 6pm news? Rush to unlock my back door because I think this is the only possible threat to my home, and now that he's in custody, the world is safe? What if he's not the guy who did it? What if there are two murderers in the world? I can't do anything with that "news", and so I don't need it now. I can get it at 6pm when it's regularly scheduled.

But I'm dreaming. No one's going to put me in charge of those decisions.

And now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go shovel some snow so I don't miss my chance to sit around at the TV and see my soaps get interrupted to tell me its snowy out.

That's all for Episode 133's morals. Don't miss Episode 134 and its morals!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.