Review: Dallas

This is a review of the new revival of Dallas, particularly as compared to the original show. I'm probably one of the few people of my generation to have seen every episode of Dallas. Seventeen seasons, three hundred and eighty episodes.

Obviously I find the show to have some appeal.

I'm not obsessive about it, by any means. Dallas is not the best thing ever. The plot developments are sometimes contrived, and sometimes it's just outright cheesy. But the old show did a pretty good job of holding my attention with its well-developed and well-acted characters. With moments like "Who Shot JR?" and the amazingly ballsy dream season, Dallas deserves its place in television history.

The occasional moment of eighties anachronism is pretty enjoyable, as well. The Ewings have car-phones as a sign of their incredible richness. One industrialist brags that when his computer chips are complete, each one will hold over ten thousand pieces of information. And, for a darker turn, Sue Ellen drinks like a fish her entire pregnancy and nobody says a word about the health of her baby.

This was clearly a show of its time.

The reason Dallas worked was because the characters had clear motivations, and the conflicts developed from their relationships. The Ewings are all family, they all love each other, but they all have different ideas about how to proceed. Same for the Barnes family, though of course it was much smaller. Almost every strange plot twist was either a response to real-world concerns (actors dying or leaving) or a means to give the characters something new to respond to.

The new Dallas ignores all that. When Pam left Bobby, he was months or years before he was ready to move on. But Christopher has gone through two serious relationships that ended badly in the last, what, less than a year of show-time? Plus finding out his mother died, which nobody has reacted to. Yet Christopher is ready to jump right in with yet another new girl. It would be okay if they were presenting it as the action of a hurt person who's reacting to terrible events in his life, but they're not. Heather is just someone for Christopher to bang for drummed-up conflict.

What does Christopher want, exactly? Family? Business success? I have no idea. How about John Ross? Emma? Pamela? Eleana? As far as I can tell, they all want money and revenge. There's nothing holding these people together, no bonds of family that force them into conflict. It would have been much simpler for John Ross to simply leave Southfork. I have no reason to think he cares about it as a place or a piece of his legacy, or about the people living there. JR cared. Why does John Ross?

Now, some characters aren't like that. Bobby and Sue Ellen, they're better, but that's because they were defined characters when the show started. JR was pretty well-done before he died, as well. Cliff, though, is a totally one-note character, which is a disservice to him. Cliff was often deeper than they're portraying him now.

And some of the plot points are just toally unbelievable.

• Christopher supposedly grew up with Drew and Eleana Ramos. But if that's so, how does nobody know who Joaquin is? He was raised as their sibling!
• At the end of the most recent episode, Drew has apparently set fire to Southfork, despite heightened security.
• The entire family has left alcoholic Sue Ellen home alone in a house full of unlocked liquor. After having done the same thing, repeatedly, in the eighties.
• Many people want revenge on the entire Ewing family for something JR did. As if they aren't all individuals who have taken their own actions over time. Most of the bad blood was against JR (or Jock, if you go back far enough), and they're both dead. I could see Bobby or Sue Ellen having enemies of old, and John Ross is clearly a schemer in his own right. But nobody seems to be blaming them for their own actions. It's all about what JR did to Papa Ramos, which is a straight-up copy of what Jock supposedly did to Digger Barnes.
• And these plotters feel a need to repeat their plans and motivations to each other every episode, just so we viewers aren't left behind... "How is it going?" "Wonderful! Soon we will have our revenge against the Ewing family for stealing our father's property and driving him to his death!" "Oh, right, I'd forgotten why we were doing all this..."
• Drew is instantly totally over his guilt at killing two unborn babies, and now back on a revenge kick.
• All these people involved in shady dealings seem totally unaware that everything they do could be recorded at any time.

I'm afraid I'm almost done with Dallas. It's been fun seeing a few old friends, but I'm not making any new ones. That's what it was going to take to make this revival work.

TN consumer tax form fail

Anyone tried to fill out a Tennessee consumer use tax return lately? Probably not, since it’s entirely voluntary. That might explain why it’s so horribly designed.

First, it has to be done online; there’s no paper version. That’s OK, but only if you do online stuff right. Second, there’s no way to save your work; you type in a huge amount of information, lose your browser session and have to start over. Third, all the data has to be formatted to an absurd degree. Cents have to be in a separate field from dollars, entered as a two-digit amount. Years have to be two-two-four digits. Miss one, and it won't accept your form, but also won't point out your mistake! Fourth, you have to enter a separate line item for every purchase. If you want to add a number of purchases all at one time, too bad; you have to do that one by one.

Oh, and they don’t take Visa, of all things. Say what you want about whether this kind of tax should or should not exist. But speaking as an engineer, if you’re going to do something, it should be done well.

Review: Man of Steel

The short version: Man of Steel is an excellent attempt at a Superman movie.

First, the world-building. Krypton is more fully realized here than I've ever seen it. The series of events leading to Kal's departure for Earth is coherent, and efficiently tells us how Krypton came to its final state. The fights at the beginning give us a clear sense that this is a world that's dying, not just eight guys standing around in a crystal chamber. And the history Jor-El gives us later tells us something of why Krypton, the best of Krypton, was worth saving. Krypton as a world makes Jor-El's motivations believable.

Krypton as a world also makes Zod's motivations believable. This is not a moustache-twirling characature out for world domination because powah!!! Zod is a man who has lost his home, and is desperate, not for revenge, but to save what he can. Zod's motivations here are not self-serving, and if his priorities were just a little different he'd be a hero. This is a man with no choice; this is the kind of man that results when you take away choice. Zod is, essentially, a machine. But you'd never know it from the acting, which is top-notch all the way through.

Earth is also built as a believable world, particularly by Clark's interactions with humans. Through him we see people, all of them, as a mixture of good and bad. From the military to Pete Ross, nobody's a generic obstacle, nobody's a cheerleader. Everyone we see is a person, with hope and fear, not really that different from Clark.

There's more realism here than one would expect from a Superman movie, and it works nicely. The use of a crashed colony ship as a sort of Fortress of Solitude is a nice touch, neatly eliminating the unbelievable magic tech used to create it. Lois meeting Kal-El and figuring out he's Clark by backtracking him is a good introduction to the character of Lois, and her relationship to Clark. Having her know his secret from the start is also good. And the addition of the Codex in particular is a creative touch. It gives Zod reason to come to Earth, and gives Kal-El himself additional weight.

Now what's wrong with this movie? The entire last act! We have this excellent setup, great conflict for Superman against a worthy opponent, and what's the resolution? Superman just has to punch something hard enough. A machine, Kryptonians, something. During none of the fight to save the world did Superman have to show any intelligence at all. And neither did his enemies! His opponents were as un-injurable as he was, but did either ever try something creative? No! "Well, throwing you through a massive exploding silo and into the road at the speed of sound didn't so much as scratch you. Maybe if I punch you through another half-dozen buildings I'll slow you down!" I mean, really, people. Try the heat vision, try threatening a valuable asset, try something besides "punch harder"!

So after all that backstory, all that world-building, all we ended up with was a fake-looking inconsequential fight scene. That battle would have killed literally hundreds of thousands of people! And there's not a hint that anyone cared.

Hollywood has become a strange place lately. (Moreso.) We have these wonderfully-written movies that really care about the source material, and take creative risks with it. We have the special effects technology and budgets necessary to put on the screen literally anything you want. Yet somehow these seem to fight each other. We saw the same thing in Star Trek Into Darkness, where the mostly-excellent story fell completely apart when it was time for the big fight. But that's another review.

There are other minor flaws with Man of Steel. For their attempts to handle it well, the "secret identity" front is a mess. The General is actively trying to figure out who he is, and Superman outright tells him he's from Kansas and is 33 years old! How many 33-year-old white males of approximately this height and build, presumably lacking a birth certificate, can there be in a state of less than three million people? Maybe 50,000? I bet you the military would go through every one of those by hand to find this guy.

That little joke at the end where the female Captain tells the general that Superman is "kinda hot"? Yeah, that should have been dropped from the final edit. Insultingly unprofessional.

I won't be buying this movie, and I won't be watching it again. I'm glad I saw it, but I won't recommend it to others. I wish we lived in a world where recuts, serious all-out modifications of movies like this, were a thing. This movie could be a great film, on par with Nolan's Batman movies, if only they'd come up with a good resolution. As it is, it's a mish-mash, and the end ruins the start.