On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> My valentine to a terrific series that is most likely leaving the > airwaves after six seasons. > > http://www.tvornottv.net/2010/03/11/final-numbers/ > I wasn't sure if there would be spoilers, so I avoided reading it until I saw the last two episodes on my TiVo. I am less annoyed than Kevin be the "3" (and there are clever puns, but they are not the obvious ones made by newspaper columnists and TV news anchors - see Andy Zaltzman at The Bugle), but he may have written the truest sentence ever conceived about a television show: "Amita Ramanujan (played skillfully by Navi Rawat) is the most appealing female character in the history of television." It was not predictable that a drama about using math to fight crime would spawn such a great female character - but one of the nice legacies of this show is of a beautiful, confident, socially masterful female math genius. Kevin is also right that the show avoided simplistic dichotomies - while one theme was the difference between the two brothers, they didn't make one a genius and the other an idiot, or one strong and the other weak. Don is not a genius, but he is clearly intelligent, and plausibly comes from the same gene pool that produced his genius brother. I don't think that Judd Hirsch's character in Independence Day with borderline racist or anti-Semitic (it was stereotypical - but then that whole movie was just about stereotypes), but I do think that Hirsch really put a nice cherry on top of his career with this role. His character provided a nice glue to the show, Hirsch brought a lot of added value. The weakness of this show was in its other female leads - aside from Amita I don't think they really connected with any of them. For me one of the unanswered mysteries of this show is why Lloyd left at the end of season 1 - she may have developed into a more interesting character. ** -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
