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Thoughts on MAX HEADROOM
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christopherl bennett
Jan 27, 2020, 3:26:11 PM1/27/20
to
I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from
Netflix. This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being
rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that it
was cancelled after only 13 episodes (out of 14 that were made). And it’s
certainly been acclaimed in the years since for its innovation. It was a
cyberpunk show just a few years after the term “cyberpunk” was coined — just
about the only case I know of where a television show was right on the cusp
of a new science-fictional development rather than lagging a decade or two
behind prose SF. It was prophetic in predicting broadcasting trends like a
proliferation of hundreds of channels, the 24-hour news cycle, the existence
of a global computer/entertainment network dominating people’s lives, and the
manipulation of the news by corporations. And it was daring for being a
network television show whose whole raison d’etre was to satirize and
critique television networks. Not to mention that it essentially launched
the career of genre stalwart Matt Frewer, who played the heroic journalist
Edison Carter and his computer-generated alter ego, Max Headroom.
(For those who aren’t in the know, in real life, Max Headroom was created as
a novel kind of host for a British music-video show. The idea was to use
something completely computer-generated rather than the usual human hosts, a
literal “talking head.” They didn’t have the CGI technology to pull that off
for real, so they put Matt Frewer in prosthetic makeup simulating the slick,
angular look of ’80s computer graphics and used editing tricks to make him
jerk and stu-stu-stutter so he’d appear artificial. In order to explain this
host character, they developed a pilot film set in a Blade Runner/Brazil-
inspired future in which investigative journalist Edison Carter was injured
in pursuit of a story and had his mind scanned and copied into a computer in
order to find out what he knew, creating Max, a duplicate of Edison’s mind
that was a little bit off and had a far more eccentric personality, as a
result of having the entirety of the world’s TV content pouring through his
mind, or some such thing. Basically he was a distillation of all TV, a
pastiche of slick TV pitchmen, simultaneously a child of and a critic of pop
culture. ABC executives saw the pilot and bought it as a US series, remaking
the pilot and recasting everyone except leads Frewer and Amanda Pays and
supporting player William Morgan Sheppard. Although Max was far more
successful as a music video/talk-show host and Coca-Cola pitchman.)
On seeing the show again after nearly a quarter-century, though, I find it
hasn’t aged well. It wasn’t as impressive as I remembered. The writing is
often sloppy. In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), Max’s
creator, spends much of the episode trying to kill Edison on orders from his
sleazy boss, which is what leads to Max’s creation in the first place. And
yet when Edison meets him later in the episode, this kid who was
sociopathically chuckling during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes
before suddenly says “I’m glad you didn’t die,” and for the rest of the
series, Bryce is Edison’s ally and tech support. Sure, he was occasionally
portrayed as amoral — a blatant example of the fictional stereotype of the
genius who’s a walking computer with no human feeling — but the total lack of
any consequences or even acknowledgment of his attempted homicide is very
awkward.
A lot about the show is very broad — the satire, the cartoony portrayal of
Max — and in hindsight it feels fairly crude. The portrayal of the
logistics of Edison’s job was awkward — it’s hard to believe that he could
just cut into any other programming with a “live and direct” story, or that
he’d so often go on the air without yet having a full picture of what he was
reporting on (although, admittedly, that doesn’t stop a lot of modern
telejournalists). And sometimes the writing is stilted in ways that you can
tell are the result of network executives having no faith in the intelligence
of the viewer. For instance, in one episode, the police enter a suspect’s
home and discover that she had an off switch on her television. The cops
react in shock to the fact, and one of them says “She’ll get twenty years for
that.” Any conscious viewer would understand at this point that in the world
of Max Headroom, it’s illegal to have an off switch on your TV. And yet we
then cut to another angle and hear the off-camera cop’s voiceover adding,
“Off switches are illegal!” As if the other cops he was talking to didn’t
already know that. Granted, that’s an instance of the show being held back
by its network, but there’s enough about the show’s own writing that doesn’t
work as well as it could.
In particular, for a show called Max Headroom, it isn’t generally about Max
Headroom. It would’ve been more accurate to call it Edison Carter. Sure,
there are episodes where they manage to make good use of Max as a character
or a concept — either someone wants to obtain Max’s unique technology for
some reason, or Max is the only one who can get into a bad guy’s system, or
Max is needed as a distraction. There’s one particularly good episode,
“Neurostim,” in which Edison’s relationship with Max has become strained but
Max is the only one who can save him from an addictive VR product, so they
have to have a meeting of minds and hash out their conflict (although it kind
of fizzles out at the end). But there are too many other episodes where Max
contributes nothing to the story beyond popping into a scene and making
wisecracks or pithy observations about the story’s events. Sometimes his
comments serve to address the theme of the episode, but sometimes they serve
no purpose but to give Max some screen time in a story that has nothing to do
with him.
Also, I have to say, I think Matt Frewer doesn’t work as well as a heroic
lead as he does as a quirky character actor. He was cast as Max first, of
course, and played Edison because of that. But he’s just a bit too gawky in
appearance and voice to be entirely convincing as a hard-hitting, ultra-
manly, fearless investigative reporter. Or rather, it’s not that he wasn’t
reasonably good in the role, it’s just that it didn’t feel like the right
role for him, that it didn’t let him do what he does best (although he had
Max for that). As for his leading lady Amanda Pays, she was very lovely and
had that wonderful throaty British contralto… but as I discovered when I
bought the DVD set of The Flash, she’s kind of one-note as an actress, never
really varying her delivery or showing much emotional range. So as lovely as
the timbre of her voice is, I tend to get tired of listening to her if I
watch too many episodes in a row.
Still, in the show’s defense, I guess a lot of the reason it doesn’t age well
is because it broke new ground that subsequent shows have built on and
expanded on. These days, we’ve grown used to TV shows mocking their own
networks — The Simpsons has spent a generation poking fun at the FOX network
— but at the time, it was daring and subversive. And if the future it
predicted seems quaint in some ways now, it’s only because so much of what it
predicted has become our everyday reality, just in a different form.
And a lot of its writing problems can be chalked up to growing pains as the
writers tried to figure out this new world and how to tell stories in it.
The writing did get stronger and more consistent as the show went on, and
they overall managed to find more ways to integrate Max into the stories,
although he could’ve been left completely out of the final two episodes
without altering them materially.
It’s interesting to note, by the way, how many of this show’s cast members
went on to appear on various Star Trek series, or were already veterans of
the original series — regulars or near-regulars such as Frewer, George Coe,
W. Morgan Sheppard, and Concetta Tomei, recurring players like Sherman Howard
(billed as Howard Sherman), Rosalind Chao, and Andreas Katsulas, and guests
like Joseph Ruskin, John Winston, Robert O’Reilly, Lycia Naff, John Fleck,
James Greene, Gregory Itzin, and Jenette Goldstein. (And Lee Wilkof, one of
the semiregular Network 23 board members, did a role in a Trek audio book
once.) Once or twice, we got as many as five past or future Trek players in
one Max episode. Just thought I’d mention it…
Netflix. This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being
rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that it
was cancelled after only 13 episodes (out of 14 that were made). And it’s
certainly been acclaimed in the years since for its innovation. It was a
cyberpunk show just a few years after the term “cyberpunk” was coined — just
about the only case I know of where a television show was right on the cusp
of a new science-fictional development rather than lagging a decade or two
behind prose SF. It was prophetic in predicting broadcasting trends like a
proliferation of hundreds of channels, the 24-hour news cycle, the existence
of a global computer/entertainment network dominating people’s lives, and the
manipulation of the news by corporations. And it was daring for being a
network television show whose whole raison d’etre was to satirize and
critique television networks. Not to mention that it essentially launched
the career of genre stalwart Matt Frewer, who played the heroic journalist
Edison Carter and his computer-generated alter ego, Max Headroom.
(For those who aren’t in the know, in real life, Max Headroom was created as
a novel kind of host for a British music-video show. The idea was to use
something completely computer-generated rather than the usual human hosts, a
literal “talking head.” They didn’t have the CGI technology to pull that off
for real, so they put Matt Frewer in prosthetic makeup simulating the slick,
angular look of ’80s computer graphics and used editing tricks to make him
jerk and stu-stu-stutter so he’d appear artificial. In order to explain this
host character, they developed a pilot film set in a Blade Runner/Brazil-
inspired future in which investigative journalist Edison Carter was injured
in pursuit of a story and had his mind scanned and copied into a computer in
order to find out what he knew, creating Max, a duplicate of Edison’s mind
that was a little bit off and had a far more eccentric personality, as a
result of having the entirety of the world’s TV content pouring through his
mind, or some such thing. Basically he was a distillation of all TV, a
pastiche of slick TV pitchmen, simultaneously a child of and a critic of pop
culture. ABC executives saw the pilot and bought it as a US series, remaking
the pilot and recasting everyone except leads Frewer and Amanda Pays and
supporting player William Morgan Sheppard. Although Max was far more
successful as a music video/talk-show host and Coca-Cola pitchman.)
On seeing the show again after nearly a quarter-century, though, I find it
hasn’t aged well. It wasn’t as impressive as I remembered. The writing is
often sloppy. In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), Max’s
creator, spends much of the episode trying to kill Edison on orders from his
sleazy boss, which is what leads to Max’s creation in the first place. And
yet when Edison meets him later in the episode, this kid who was
sociopathically chuckling during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes
before suddenly says “I’m glad you didn’t die,” and for the rest of the
series, Bryce is Edison’s ally and tech support. Sure, he was occasionally
portrayed as amoral — a blatant example of the fictional stereotype of the
genius who’s a walking computer with no human feeling — but the total lack of
any consequences or even acknowledgment of his attempted homicide is very
awkward.
A lot about the show is very broad — the satire, the cartoony portrayal of
Max — and in hindsight it feels fairly crude. The portrayal of the
logistics of Edison’s job was awkward — it’s hard to believe that he could
just cut into any other programming with a “live and direct” story, or that
he’d so often go on the air without yet having a full picture of what he was
reporting on (although, admittedly, that doesn’t stop a lot of modern
telejournalists). And sometimes the writing is stilted in ways that you can
tell are the result of network executives having no faith in the intelligence
of the viewer. For instance, in one episode, the police enter a suspect’s
home and discover that she had an off switch on her television. The cops
react in shock to the fact, and one of them says “She’ll get twenty years for
that.” Any conscious viewer would understand at this point that in the world
of Max Headroom, it’s illegal to have an off switch on your TV. And yet we
then cut to another angle and hear the off-camera cop’s voiceover adding,
“Off switches are illegal!” As if the other cops he was talking to didn’t
already know that. Granted, that’s an instance of the show being held back
by its network, but there’s enough about the show’s own writing that doesn’t
work as well as it could.
In particular, for a show called Max Headroom, it isn’t generally about Max
Headroom. It would’ve been more accurate to call it Edison Carter. Sure,
there are episodes where they manage to make good use of Max as a character
or a concept — either someone wants to obtain Max’s unique technology for
some reason, or Max is the only one who can get into a bad guy’s system, or
Max is needed as a distraction. There’s one particularly good episode,
“Neurostim,” in which Edison’s relationship with Max has become strained but
Max is the only one who can save him from an addictive VR product, so they
have to have a meeting of minds and hash out their conflict (although it kind
of fizzles out at the end). But there are too many other episodes where Max
contributes nothing to the story beyond popping into a scene and making
wisecracks or pithy observations about the story’s events. Sometimes his
comments serve to address the theme of the episode, but sometimes they serve
no purpose but to give Max some screen time in a story that has nothing to do
with him.
Also, I have to say, I think Matt Frewer doesn’t work as well as a heroic
lead as he does as a quirky character actor. He was cast as Max first, of
course, and played Edison because of that. But he’s just a bit too gawky in
appearance and voice to be entirely convincing as a hard-hitting, ultra-
manly, fearless investigative reporter. Or rather, it’s not that he wasn’t
reasonably good in the role, it’s just that it didn’t feel like the right
role for him, that it didn’t let him do what he does best (although he had
Max for that). As for his leading lady Amanda Pays, she was very lovely and
had that wonderful throaty British contralto… but as I discovered when I
bought the DVD set of The Flash, she’s kind of one-note as an actress, never
really varying her delivery or showing much emotional range. So as lovely as
the timbre of her voice is, I tend to get tired of listening to her if I
watch too many episodes in a row.
Still, in the show’s defense, I guess a lot of the reason it doesn’t age well
is because it broke new ground that subsequent shows have built on and
expanded on. These days, we’ve grown used to TV shows mocking their own
networks — The Simpsons has spent a generation poking fun at the FOX network
— but at the time, it was daring and subversive. And if the future it
predicted seems quaint in some ways now, it’s only because so much of what it
predicted has become our everyday reality, just in a different form.
And a lot of its writing problems can be chalked up to growing pains as the
writers tried to figure out this new world and how to tell stories in it.
The writing did get stronger and more consistent as the show went on, and
they overall managed to find more ways to integrate Max into the stories,
although he could’ve been left completely out of the final two episodes
without altering them materially.
It’s interesting to note, by the way, how many of this show’s cast members
went on to appear on various Star Trek series, or were already veterans of
the original series — regulars or near-regulars such as Frewer, George Coe,
W. Morgan Sheppard, and Concetta Tomei, recurring players like Sherman Howard
(billed as Howard Sherman), Rosalind Chao, and Andreas Katsulas, and guests
like Joseph Ruskin, John Winston, Robert O’Reilly, Lycia Naff, John Fleck,
James Greene, Gregory Itzin, and Jenette Goldstein. (And Lee Wilkof, one of
the semiregular Network 23 board members, did a role in a Trek audio book
once.) Once or twice, we got as many as five past or future Trek players in
one Max episode. Just thought I’d mention it…
Pinku Basudei
Jan 28, 2020, 11:34:50 AM1/28/20
to
On Mon, 27 Jan 2020 15:25:44 -0500
christopherl bennett <christoph...@wordpress.com> wrote:
> I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from
> Netflix. This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being
> rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that it
> was cancelled after only 13 episodes (out of 14 that were made). And it_s
christopherl bennett <christoph...@wordpress.com> wrote:
> I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from
> Netflix. This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being
> rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that it
> certainly been acclaimed in the years since for its innovation. It was a
> cyberpunk show just a few years after the term _cyberpunk_ was coined _ just
> about the only case I know of where a television show was right on the cusp
> of a new science-fictional development rather than lagging a decade or two
> behind prose SF.
(snip)
> of a new science-fictional development rather than lagging a decade or two
> behind prose SF.
Thanks for this indept look at a TV-series I knew almost nothing about. A great read!
--
/ Pinku
Arthur Lipscomb
Jan 29, 2020, 1:11:39 AM1/29/20
to
On 1/27/2020 12:25 PM, christopherl bennett wrote:
> I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from
> Netflix.
I bought the DVD set when it was released 10 years ago, but never got
> I recently rented the DVD set of the 1987 Max Headroom TV series from
> Netflix.
around to watching it. I guess I haven't watched the series since it
originally aired in the 80s.
This is a show I watched in its first run, and I remembered being
> rather fond of it, finding it innovative and enjoyable and regretting that it
> was cancelled after only 13 episodes (out of 14 that were made).
And it’s
> certainly been acclaimed in the years since for its innovation. It was a
> cyberpunk show just a few years after the term “cyberpunk” was coined — just
> about the only case I know of where a television show was right on the cusp
> of a new science-fictional development rather than lagging a decade or two
> behind prose SF. It was prophetic in predicting broadcasting trends like a
> proliferation of hundreds of channels, the 24-hour news cycle, the existence
> of a global computer/entertainment network dominating people’s lives, and the
> manipulation of the news by corporations. And it was daring for being a
> network television show whose whole raison d’etre was to satirize and
> critique television networks. Not to mention that it essentially launched
> the career of genre stalwart Matt Frewer, who played the heroic journalist
> Edison Carter and his computer-generated alter ego, Max Headroom.
>
> (For those who aren’t in the know, in real life, Max Headroom was created as
> a novel kind of host for a British music-video show. The idea was to use
> something completely computer-generated rather than the usual human hosts, a
> literal “talking head.” They didn’t have the CGI technology to pull that off
> for real, so they put Matt Frewer in prosthetic makeup simulating the slick,
> angular look of ’80s computer graphics and used editing tricks to make him
> jerk and stu-stu-stutter so he’d appear artificial.
thought it actually was primitive CGI.
In order to explain this
> host character, they developed a pilot film set in a Blade Runner/Brazil-
> inspired future in which investigative journalist Edison Carter was injured
> in pursuit of a story and had his mind scanned and copied into a computer in
> order to find out what he knew, creating Max, a duplicate of Edison’s mind
> that was a little bit off and had a far more eccentric personality, as a
> result of having the entirety of the world’s TV content pouring through his
> mind, or some such thing. Basically he was a distillation of all TV, a
> pastiche of slick TV pitchmen, simultaneously a child of and a critic of pop
> culture. ABC executives saw the pilot and bought it as a US series, remaking
> the pilot and recasting everyone except leads Frewer and Amanda Pays and
> supporting player William Morgan Sheppard. Although Max was far more
> successful as a music video/talk-show host and Coca-Cola pitchman.)
>
> On seeing the show again after nearly a quarter-century, though, I find it
> hasn’t aged well. It wasn’t as impressive as I remembered. The writing is
> often sloppy. In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), Max’s
> creator, spends much of the episode trying to kill Edison on orders from his
> sleazy boss, which is what leads to Max’s creation in the first place. And
> yet when Edison meets him later in the episode, this kid who was
> sociopathically chuckling during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes
> before suddenly says “I’m glad you didn’t die,” and for the rest of the
> series, Bryce is Edison’s ally and tech support.
I think I'd disagree that Frewer didn't work as the lead. That being
said, I do agree he works really well when he plays quirky characters.
He was cast as Max first, of
> course, and played Edison because of that. But he’s just a bit too gawky in
> appearance and voice to be entirely convincing as a hard-hitting, ultra-
> manly, fearless investigative reporter. Or rather, it’s not that he wasn’t
> reasonably good in the role, it’s just that it didn’t feel like the right
> role for him, that it didn’t let him do what he does best (although he had
> Max for that). As for his leading lady Amanda Pays, she was very lovely and
> had that wonderful throaty British contralto… but as I discovered when I
> bought the DVD set of The Flash, she’s kind of one-note as an actress, never
> really varying her delivery or showing much emotional range.
Pays! :-/
So as lovely as
> the timbre of her voice is,
scenes people on both shows.
anim8rfsk
Jan 29, 2020, 1:46:34 AM1/29/20
to
Tue, 28 Jan 2020 23:11:34 -0700 Arthur Lipscomb<art...@alum.calberkeley.org>
wrote:
LOL, nope, big rubber mask - hence the sunglasses, to hide his all too human
eyes.
Nah. What you've got there is a list of actors willing to appear in sci-fi.
And they pretty much show up in everything. Naff is better known as the 3
breasted girl from Total Recall. Goldstein is better known as Vasquez in
Aliens or John's adoptive mom in T2.
--
Join your old RAT friends at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1688985234647266/
wrote:
eyes.
And they pretty much show up in everything. Naff is better known as the 3
breasted girl from Total Recall. Goldstein is better known as Vasquez in
Aliens or John's adoptive mom in T2.
--
Join your old RAT friends at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1688985234647266/
Ubiquitous
Jan 31, 2020, 8:04:32 AM1/31/20
to
used.
--
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.
Hikaru Ichijyo
Feb 2, 2020, 1:15:50 AM2/2/20
to
christopherl bennett <christoph...@wordpress.com> writes:
> It was prophetic in predicting broadcasting trends like a
> proliferation of hundreds of channels, the 24-hour news cycle, the existence
> of a global computer/entertainment network dominating people’s lives, and the
> manipulation of the news by corporations.
And let us not forget the broadcasters' obsession with keeping you from
> It was prophetic in predicting broadcasting trends like a
> proliferation of hundreds of channels, the 24-hour news cycle, the existence
> of a global computer/entertainment network dominating people’s lives, and the
> manipulation of the news by corporations.
switching channels, seen in the pilot episode about "blipverts." That
ended up manifesting in the real world just a few years later as MTV,
the TV network that managed to gain leadership of the whole recording
industry through playing rock music videos, decided that since videos
were only about three minutes long, you had too many opportunities to
change the channel, so they ditched the whole programming format that
made them famous and powerful in the first place to play game shows and
reality TV. Then they blamed the collapse of the pop/rock recording
industry on "piracy" and went on nonchalantly like nothing had happened,
all done over fear of channel-switching.
Also, the TV's with cameras that watch you in your living room was part
of a story that was made during a time when most people didn't yet know
what the Internet was, when there were no web browsers, and no
smartphones. It was natural to presume back then that if anything like
this would happen, it would use television as its medium, not a global
computer network (because only total nerds used those back then).
Today, everyone now carries around a computer that is always on, always
connected to the world network and the phone company, with a GPS
locater, a video camera, a microphone, access to all your data, and you
get all your communications and entertainment through it. Your life and
your identity are on your phone. If you encrypt anything, you do so on
the device, trusting the device's security to handle your keys. Both
corporations and governments use it to data-mine information from whole
populations, to know everything about them, not always so much
interested in specific people, but more often in broad trends in the
larger population, viewed from 10,000 feet so to speak. This is not
forced on you (for the most part). Everyone finds it so convenient and
social and hip and modern that they don't want to be left out. People
actually start to feel panicky when their smartphone isn't around. It
reminds me of something Murray said in one of the episodes, where there
was a television broadcast outage: "Without television, this city would
be ungovernable!" Substitute the Internet delivered to end users by
smartphone for "television," and you'll have pretty much what actually
ended up happening in real life not long after Max Headroom.
> inspired future in which investigative journalist Edison Carter was injured
> in pursuit of a story and had his mind scanned and copied into a computer in
> order to find out what he knew, creating Max, a duplicate of Edison’s mind
> that was a little bit off and had a far more eccentric personality, as a
> result of having the entirety of the world’s TV content pouring through his
> mind, or some such thing.
that had happened to the guy whose brain was copied just a few hours
earlier was his head smashing into a parking garage concrete barrier
that said "MAX HEADROOM 2.3m", not really ideal circumstances to be
having your mind duplicated into a computer. :)
After that, even after Edison recovered from his concussion, his
electronic copy was pretty much nuts.
> In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch (Chris Young), Max’s
> creator, spends much of the episode trying to kill Edison on orders from his
> sleazy boss, which is what leads to Max’s creation in the first place. And
> yet when Edison meets him later in the episode, this kid who was
> sociopathically chuckling during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes
> before suddenly says “I’m glad you didn’t die,” and for the rest of the
> series, Bryce is Edison’s ally and tech support. Sure, he was occasionally
> portrayed as amoral — a blatant example of the fictional stereotype of the
> genius who’s a walking computer with no human feeling — but the total lack of
> any consequences or even acknowledgment of his attempted homicide is very
> awkward.
dystopic world that people in this story live in, in which moral
consequences and outrage at wrongdoing (even their own) happens
sandwiched for a few minutes in between video chats and amnesia about
whatever happened prior to whatever we're doing at the moment -- a world
which sounds an awful lot like where we are now in real life.
I actually was very impressed with the show for not making a big deal
about Bryce's switching sides, because if he were real, he probably
wouldn't make a big fuss about it either, or have it even occur to him
that he should.
> In particular, for a show called Max Headroom, it isn’t generally about Max
> Headroom. It would’ve been more accurate to call it Edison Carter.
Headroom drops a serious critique of society and the coming smartphone
dystopia into a show that on the surface pretends to be about a silly
computer-generated head. That Edison Carter's character was more
important to the story than Max himself wasn't the half of it.
I actually think sort of thing is the reason it was cancelled so
quickly. Those who were getting something out of the show were people
like us who were probably generally surprised at how much depth it
turned out to have, once we actually saw what they'd done with it. On
the other hand, those who actually did expect something from the get-go
(real world network execs broadcasting the show, parents, etc.) weren't
expecting this, and it probably would have gotten its plug pulled even
quicker if it weren't so fairly inscrutable to those exact people.
It reminds me of the reason the medieval surrealist painter Hieronymous
Bosch never suffered reprisals from the Inquisition for his -- to
them -- bizarre artworks. When the Church officials saw them, they
didn't know what they were even looking at. It's hard to put a coherent
objection forward when you don't know what the canvas you're looking at
is even supposed to be a picture of. I think this sort of thing
actually saved Max Headroom on the air for awhile. They didn't pull it
because they didn't understand what was going on well enough to be put
off by it.
The thing I always found so spooky about Max Headroom's dystopic
predictions, issued at the very end of the 1980's, were that they were
always shown with the caption on the screen saying "20 MINUTES INTO THE
FUTURE." Not centuries from now on some post-apocalyptic Earth
populated with mutants, not on another planet in a future where we've
developed interstellar travel, or any of those other typical scifi
settings you'd expect, but at the end of the 80's, plus add on maybe
another 20 minutes or so.
And isn't that more or less exactly what ended up happening? It felt
like the 80's media industry saying goodbye and goodnight, shortly
before someone came and turned out all the lights.
--
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself.
--Thomas Paine
Roger Blake
Feb 2, 2020, 7:20:45 PM2/2/20
to
On 2020-02-02, Hikaru Ichijyo <ich...@macross.sdf.jp> wrote:
> Today, everyone now carries around a computer that is always on, always
> connected to the world network and the phone company, with a GPS
> locater, a video camera, a microphone, access to all your data, and you
> get all your communications and entertainment through it. Your life and
> your identity are on your phone.
This is obviously some strange new usage of the word "everyone" that we
> Today, everyone now carries around a computer that is always on, always
> connected to the world network and the phone company, with a GPS
> locater, a video camera, a microphone, access to all your data, and you
> get all your communications and entertainment through it. Your life and
> your identity are on your phone.
were not previously familiar with.
I certainly don't carry around anything like that. For that matter
I know people who not only have no smartphone, they do not use the
internet either.
The lesson here is: speak for yourself, rather than ASSuming what
"everyone" is doing.
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)
The US Census vs. privacy -- http://censusfacts.info
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Clarke
Feb 2, 2020, 8:39:11 PM2/2/20
to
On Mon, 3 Feb 2020 00:20:29 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-02, Hikaru Ichijyo <ich...@macross.sdf.jp> wrote:
>> Today, everyone now carries around a computer that is always on, always
>> connected to the world network and the phone company, with a GPS
>> locater, a video camera, a microphone, access to all your data, and you
>> get all your communications and entertainment through it. Your life and
>> your identity are on your phone.
>
>This is obviously some strange new usage of the word "everyone" that we
>were not previously familiar with.
>
>I certainly don't carry around anything like that. For that matter
>I know people who not only have no smartphone, they do not use the
>internet either.
>
>The lesson here is: speak for yourself, rather than ASSuming what
> "everyone" is doing.
In the US they are rarities and generally older.
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-02, Hikaru Ichijyo <ich...@macross.sdf.jp> wrote:
>> Today, everyone now carries around a computer that is always on, always
>> connected to the world network and the phone company, with a GPS
>> locater, a video camera, a microphone, access to all your data, and you
>> get all your communications and entertainment through it. Your life and
>> your identity are on your phone.
>
>This is obviously some strange new usage of the word "everyone" that we
>were not previously familiar with.
>
>I certainly don't carry around anything like that. For that matter
>I know people who not only have no smartphone, they do not use the
>internet either.
>
>The lesson here is: speak for yourself, rather than ASSuming what
> "everyone" is doing.
81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
More than half of the over-65s own one.
Roger Blake
Feb 3, 2020, 7:42:21 AM2/3/20
to
On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>
> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
> More than half of the over-65s own one.
That is still not "everyone".
> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>
> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
> More than half of the over-65s own one.
Ninapenda Jibini
Feb 3, 2020, 10:02:48 AM2/3/20
to
Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in news:20200203073703
@news.eternal-september.org:
> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>
>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>
> That is still not "everyone".
>
It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
--
Terry Austin
Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
@news.eternal-september.org:
> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>
>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>
> That is still not "everyone".
>
--
Terry Austin
Proof that Alan Baker is a liar and a fool, and even stupider than
Lynn:
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Dimensional Traveler
Feb 3, 2020, 2:07:19 PM2/3/20
to
On 2/3/2020 7:02 AM, Ninapenda Jibini wrote:
> Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in news:20200203073703
> @news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>
>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>
>> That is still not "everyone".
>>
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>
Only in the 18-29 bracket.
> Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in news:20200203073703
> @news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>
>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>
>> That is still not "everyone".
>>
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>
--
"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"
Roger Blake
Feb 3, 2020, 4:58:13 PM2/3/20
to
On 2020-02-03, Ninapenda Jibini <taus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
If 81% own a smartphone, that means 19% do not. Being off by 19%
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
doesn't seem like a good approximation at all. (Perhaps this is
a strange new usage of that word as well, as it was for "everyone".)
J. Clarke
Feb 3, 2020, 7:43:09 PM2/3/20
to
On Mon, 3 Feb 2020 12:42:13 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>
>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>
>That is still not "everyone".
It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>
>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>
>That is still not "everyone".
"does not have".
Roger Blake
Feb 3, 2020, 7:58:53 PM2/3/20
to
On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
> "does not have".
I disagree entirely. You are attempting to rewrite the dictionary,
> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
> "does not have".
which clearly states:
----------------------------------------------------
everyone [ ev-ree-wuhn, -wuh n ]
pronoun
1. every person; everybody.
(https://www.dictionary.com/browse/everyone)
----------------------------------------------------
If one is going to make the claim that "everyone" is involved then
if 19% are *not* included, then clearly "everyone" is not. (Nearly half
of older folks are not included, yet you seem to think that "everyone"
has a smartphone? Nonsense.)
Words have meanings. In the instant case, "everyone" was clearly wrong.
If some want to trade the last vestige of their privacy for convenience
that is their choice to make. There is a significant minority that is not
willing to do so. "Everyone" does not have a smartphone. Not "everyone"
has their life on such a phone. The dictionary and statistics prove this
conclusively, and have the last word on this subject.
Hikaru Ichijyo
Feb 3, 2020, 8:55:18 PM2/3/20
to
Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> writes:
> On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
>> "does not have".
>
[...]
> On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
>> "does not have".
>
>
> Words have meanings. In the instant case, "everyone" was clearly wrong.
>
> If some want to trade the last vestige of their privacy for convenience
> that is their choice to make. There is a significant minority that is not
> willing to do so. "Everyone" does not have a smartphone. Not "everyone"
> has their life on such a phone. The dictionary and statistics prove this
> conclusively, and have the last word on this subject.
surely there's been enough ado about whether "everyone" needs to really
mean EVERYONE, up until now, but...
Wow. Pedantic, just a little?
Ok, anyway, that post was just supposed to be some of my thoughts on Max
Headroom, information privacy, the show's prophetic dystopian
predictions, and other stuff. Duly noted that most adults in developed
Western countries does not equal everyone (though with current adoption
trends being what they are, we're headed to where it will literally be
everyone pretty soon).
You know I've actually seen street parking meters in my city that scan
your smartphone to bill you. You know how you park in those public
spots if you don't use one? You don't. It's just assumed that if
you're not a complete caveman, of course, you use a smartphone. This
trend will only continue as time goes on, and that's really all I was
saying, though perhaps without enough precision of language.
J. Clarke
Feb 3, 2020, 11:30:28 PM2/3/20
to
On Tue, 4 Feb 2020 00:58:49 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
>> "does not have".
>
>I disagree entirely. You are attempting to rewrite the dictionary,
>which clearly states:
>
>----------------------------------------------------
> everyone [ ev-ree-wuhn, -wuh?n ]
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's close enough that the default assumption is "has" rather than
>> "does not have".
>
>I disagree entirely. You are attempting to rewrite the dictionary,
>which clearly states:
>
>----------------------------------------------------
> pronoun
> 1. every person; everybody.
>
> (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/everyone)
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>If one is going to make the claim that "everyone" is involved then
>if 19% are *not* included, then clearly "everyone" is not. (Nearly half
>of older folks are not included, yet you seem to think that "everyone"
>has a smartphone? Nonsense.)
>
>Words have meanings. In the instant case, "everyone" was clearly wrong.
>
>If some want to trade the last vestige of their privacy for convenience
>that is their choice to make. There is a significant minority that is not
>willing to do so. "Everyone" does not have a smartphone. Not "everyone"
>has their life on such a phone. The dictionary and statistics prove this
>conclusively, and have the last word on this subject.
I am assuming that I am dealing with a normal person and not some
> 1. every person; everybody.
>
> (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/everyone)
>----------------------------------------------------
>
>If one is going to make the claim that "everyone" is involved then
>if 19% are *not* included, then clearly "everyone" is not. (Nearly half
>of older folks are not included, yet you seem to think that "everyone"
>has a smartphone? Nonsense.)
>
>Words have meanings. In the instant case, "everyone" was clearly wrong.
>
>If some want to trade the last vestige of their privacy for convenience
>that is their choice to make. There is a significant minority that is not
>willing to do so. "Everyone" does not have a smartphone. Not "everyone"
>has their life on such a phone. The dictionary and statistics prove this
>conclusively, and have the last word on this subject.
pedantic nutjob who would take exception to the assertion that
"everyone has hair" on the basis that there is some rare and obscure
medical condition that leads to the complete absence of hair in a
human being.
Roger Blake
Feb 4, 2020, 8:33:55 AM2/4/20
to
talking about a "rare and obscure" condition. We are talking about a
technological gadget which many people for one reason or another choose
not to buy into.
However, to answer your non-sequitur, in point of fact it is highly
unlikely that 19% of human beings have no hair at all, or that nearly
half of senior citizens have no hair at all. There is no reasonable
comparison to be made between such an assertion and the matter at hand.
As a more realistic counter example for the United States, perhaps you
believe that since the majority racial group in the U.S. is Caucasian,
"everyone" in the U.S. is white? In fact taking whites from all
backgrounds, including Hispanic whites, we're talking within a few
percent of the statistics on cell phone ownership. That makes this a
true real-life example rather than your hairless fantasy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
So would you say it is a fair statement that "everyone" in the United
States is white? That would logically follow from your accepted definition
of the word.
The fact is of course that a significant number of exceptions would
preclude the use of the term "everyone" to any reasonable person no
matter what the topic. Nor would a reasonable person contiue to erect
ever more bizarre defenses to something which is demonstrably not true.
J. Clarke
Feb 4, 2020, 6:21:41 PM2/4/20
to
On Tue, 4 Feb 2020 13:33:51 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am assuming that I am dealing with a normal person and not some
>> pedantic nutjob who would take exception to the assertion that
>> "everyone has hair" on the basis that there is some rare and obscure
>> medical condition that leads to the complete absence of hair in a
>> human being.
>
>Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
Oh, to Hell with it.
<rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote:
>On 2020-02-04, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am assuming that I am dealing with a normal person and not some
>> pedantic nutjob who would take exception to the assertion that
>> "everyone has hair" on the basis that there is some rare and obscure
>> medical condition that leads to the complete absence of hair in a
>> human being.
>
>Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
<plonk>
Dimensional Traveler
Feb 4, 2020, 8:40:42 PM2/4/20
to
On 2/3/2020 7:02 AM, Ninapenda Jibini wrote:
> Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in news:20200203073703
> @news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>
>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>
>> That is still not "everyone".
>>
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>
> @news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>
>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one smartphone.
>>> 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29 own one.
>>> 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own one.
>>> 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>
>> That is still not "everyone".
>>
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>
Roger Blake
Feb 4, 2020, 8:42:45 PM2/4/20
to
On 2020-02-03, Ninapenda Jibini <taus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
If 81% own a smartphone, that means 19% do not. Being off by 19%
doesn't seem like a good approximation at all. (Perhaps this is
a strange new usage of that word as well, as it was for "everyone".)
doesn't seem like a good approximation at all. (Perhaps this is
a strange new usage of that word as well, as it was for "everyone".)
Ninapenda Jibini
Feb 4, 2020, 10:26:38 PM2/4/20
to
Dimensional Traveler <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote in
news:r00r16$ioj$1...@dont-email.me:
> On 2/3/2020 7:02 AM, Ninapenda Jibini wrote:
>> Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in
>> news:20200203073703 @news.eternal-september.org:
>>
>>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>>
>>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one
>>>> smartphone. 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29
>>>> own one. 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own
>>>> one. 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>>
>>> That is still not "everyone".
>>>
>> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>>
> Only in the 18-29 bracket.
>
Depends on how much you torture the definition of the word.
news:r00r16$ioj$1...@dont-email.me:
> On 2/3/2020 7:02 AM, Ninapenda Jibini wrote:
>> Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in
>> news:20200203073703 @news.eternal-september.org:
>>
>>> On 2020-02-03, J Clarke <jclarke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> In the US they are rarities and generally older.
>>>>
>>>> 81 percent of the adult population owns at least one
>>>> smartphone. 96 percent of the population between 18 and 29
>>>> own one. 92 percent of the population between 30 and 49 own
>>>> one. 79 percent of the population between 50 and 64 own one.
>>>> More than half of the over-65s own one.
>>>
>>> That is still not "everyone".
>>>
>> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>>
> Only in the 18-29 bracket.
>
Ninapenda Jibini
Feb 4, 2020, 10:27:30 PM2/4/20
to
Roger Blake <rogb...@iname.invalid> wrote in
news:2020020...@news.eternal-september.org:
> On 2020-02-03, Ninapenda Jibini <taus...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It is, however, a pretty good approximation.
>
> If 81% own a smartphone, that means 19% do not. Being off by 19%
> doesn't seem like a good approximation at all. (Perhaps this is
> a strange new usage of that word as well, as it was for
> "everyone".)
>
certianly.
Micky DuPree
Feb 11, 2020, 8:55:31 AM2/11/20
to
In article <r0nh11$h0h$1...@dont-email.me>, christopherl bennett
that most of the scripts weren't all that well realized even at the
time. Though I haven't seen it since the '80s, I remember thinking when
the series was over that if I was going to recommend it to my TV-loving
friends, I'd recommend only two episodes: "Blipverts" (the pilot) and
the fourth episode, "Security Systems." The rest had some interesting
concepts, a good scene here or there, maybe a clever line or two, but
overall the other episodes didn't gel so well.
> The writing is often sloppy. In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch
> (Chris Young), Max's creator, spends much of the episode trying to
> kill Edison on orders from his sleazy boss, which is what leads to
> Max's creation in the first place. And yet when Edison meets him
> later in the episode, this kid who was sociopathically chuckling
> during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes before suddenly
> says "I'm glad you didn't die," and for the rest of the series, Bryce
> is Edison's ally and tech support. Sure, he was occasionally
> portrayed as amoral - a blatant example of the fictional stereotype of
> the genius who's a walking computer with no human feeling - but the
thing, I think Bryce was supposed to be even younger than he looked,
though I can't remember if they ever gave his age on the show. He
wasn't portrayed as one of those kids who was a sociopath from birth,
but seemingly as someone who was deprived of emotional attachment and
moral guidance. Once he was introduced to Edison and his team, he
started to get some of both, and liked what he was getting. I think
Edison and Theora took him at this level, that of an unfinished human
being.
> The portrayal of the logistics of Edison's job was awkward - it's hard
2) Max's ability to get inside the network's software, and 3) Edison's
high ratings when he pulled these stunts, which by the rules of the
network, made him almost untouchable? Also, at some point, he got the
network head on his side or something? (It's been, wow, over 30 years.)
> In particular, for a show called Max Headroom, it isn't generally
> about Max Headroom. It would've been more accurate to call it Edison
> Carter.
There's the classic argument of why did Shakespeare title a play _Julius
Caesar_ when it's really more about Brutus, and Caesar dies in the middle
act.
You also may be taking the title too literally. If you take it
figuratively, it may be a commentary on how hard Edison was trying to get
away with the maximum that he could on Network 23, or even a
meta-commentary on how the show's producers were testing how much they
could get away with before getting clobbered by their lack of clearance/
headroom from ABC.
Besides, it didn't bother me. I liked Edison a lot better than Max.
> Also, I have to say, I think Matt Frewer doesn't work as well as a
> heroic lead as he does as a quirky character actor. He was cast as
> Max first, of course, and played Edison because of that. But he's
> just a bit too gawky in appearance and voice to be entirely convincing
> as a hard-hitting, ultra-manly, fearless investigative reporter.
It worked for me precisely because he wasn't a cookie-cutter leading
man. Those guys are practically interchangeable, they're so bland. You
might as well say Darren McGavin was too quirky and garrulous to be the
hero of _The Night Stalker_.
> As for his leading lady Amanda Pays, she was very lovely and had that
> wonderful throaty British contralto but as I discovered when I bought
> the DVD set of The Flash, she's kind of one-note as an actress, never
> really varying her delivery or showing much emotional range. So as
> lovely as the timbre of her voice is, I tend to get tired of listening
> to her if I watch too many episodes in a row.
I can't speak to her other roles, but I thought she was well cast on
_Max_. Any female character who doesn't lose her shit under pressure,
wring her hands over her personal life, or cry all the time works
reasonably well for me.
> Still, in the show's defense, I guess a lot of the reason it doesn't
> age well is because it broke new ground that subsequent shows have
> built on and expanded on. These days, we've grown used to TV shows
> mocking their own networks - The Simpsons has spent a generation
> poking fun at the FOX network - but at the time, it was daring and
concepts aren't as daring by today's standards, and some of the more
remarkable technical aspects are no longer fresh and new. The editing
was extraordinarily fast for its time, undoubtedly influenced by MTV,
and it's been my conviction, though I've never read any interviews by
the producers, that it was the first series deliberately edited with the
idea in mind that viewers were going to record the episodes with their
VCRs, back up if they couldn't quite make something out, and freeze
individual frames to see what was going by too quickly for them to read
or assimilate.
> And a lot of its writing problems can be chalked up to growing pains
> as the writers tried to figure out this new world and how to tell
> stories in it. The writing did get stronger and more consistent as
> the show went on, and they overall managed to find more ways to
> integrate Max into the stories, although he couldve been left
It wasn't getting better. I think that once they had launched their
high-concept show, they started running out of ways to include both SF
elements and engrossing plots.
-Micky
<christoph...@wordpress.com> writes:
> On seeing the show again after nearly a quarter-century, though, I
> find it hasn't aged well. It wasn't as impressive as I remembered.
While I appreciated the vision they were trying to express, I thought
> On seeing the show again after nearly a quarter-century, though, I
> find it hasn't aged well. It wasn't as impressive as I remembered.
that most of the scripts weren't all that well realized even at the
time. Though I haven't seen it since the '80s, I remember thinking when
the series was over that if I was going to recommend it to my TV-loving
friends, I'd recommend only two episodes: "Blipverts" (the pilot) and
the fourth episode, "Security Systems." The rest had some interesting
concepts, a good scene here or there, maybe a clever line or two, but
overall the other episodes didn't gel so well.
> The writing is often sloppy. In the pilot, teen genius Bryce Lynch
> (Chris Young), Max's creator, spends much of the episode trying to
> kill Edison on orders from his sleazy boss, which is what leads to
> Max's creation in the first place. And yet when Edison meets him
> later in the episode, this kid who was sociopathically chuckling
> during his attempted murder of Edison mere minutes before suddenly
> says "I'm glad you didn't die," and for the rest of the series, Bryce
> is Edison's ally and tech support. Sure, he was occasionally
> the genius who's a walking computer with no human feeling - but the
> total lack of any consequences or even acknowledgment of his attempted
> homicide is very awkward.
That one I didn't find to be sloppy, but actually interesting. For one
> homicide is very awkward.
thing, I think Bryce was supposed to be even younger than he looked,
though I can't remember if they ever gave his age on the show. He
wasn't portrayed as one of those kids who was a sociopath from birth,
but seemingly as someone who was deprived of emotional attachment and
moral guidance. Once he was introduced to Edison and his team, he
started to get some of both, and liked what he was getting. I think
Edison and Theora took him at this level, that of an unfinished human
being.
> The portrayal of the logistics of Edison's job was awkward - it's hard
> to believe that he could just cut into any other programming with a
> "live and direct" story, or that he'd so often go on the air without
> yet having a full picture of what he was reporting on (although,
> admittedly, that doesn't stop a lot of modern telejournalists).
Wasn't that partly due to 1) Bryce's ability to interfere on his behalf,
> "live and direct" story, or that he'd so often go on the air without
> yet having a full picture of what he was reporting on (although,
> admittedly, that doesn't stop a lot of modern telejournalists).
2) Max's ability to get inside the network's software, and 3) Edison's
high ratings when he pulled these stunts, which by the rules of the
network, made him almost untouchable? Also, at some point, he got the
network head on his side or something? (It's been, wow, over 30 years.)
> In particular, for a show called Max Headroom, it isn't generally
> about Max Headroom. It would've been more accurate to call it Edison
> Carter.
Caesar_ when it's really more about Brutus, and Caesar dies in the middle
act.
You also may be taking the title too literally. If you take it
figuratively, it may be a commentary on how hard Edison was trying to get
away with the maximum that he could on Network 23, or even a
meta-commentary on how the show's producers were testing how much they
could get away with before getting clobbered by their lack of clearance/
headroom from ABC.
Besides, it didn't bother me. I liked Edison a lot better than Max.
> Also, I have to say, I think Matt Frewer doesn't work as well as a
> heroic lead as he does as a quirky character actor. He was cast as
> Max first, of course, and played Edison because of that. But he's
> just a bit too gawky in appearance and voice to be entirely convincing
> as a hard-hitting, ultra-manly, fearless investigative reporter.
man. Those guys are practically interchangeable, they're so bland. You
might as well say Darren McGavin was too quirky and garrulous to be the
hero of _The Night Stalker_.
> As for his leading lady Amanda Pays, she was very lovely and had that
> wonderful throaty British contralto but as I discovered when I bought
> the DVD set of The Flash, she's kind of one-note as an actress, never
> really varying her delivery or showing much emotional range. So as
> lovely as the timbre of her voice is, I tend to get tired of listening
> to her if I watch too many episodes in a row.
_Max_. Any female character who doesn't lose her shit under pressure,
wring her hands over her personal life, or cry all the time works
reasonably well for me.
> Still, in the show's defense, I guess a lot of the reason it doesn't
> age well is because it broke new ground that subsequent shows have
> built on and expanded on. These days, we've grown used to TV shows
> poking fun at the FOX network - but at the time, it was daring and
> subversive. And if the future it predicted seems quaint in some ways
> now, it's only because so much of what it predicted has become our
> everyday reality, just in a different form.
The scripts weren't all that great even back in the day, but yeah, the
> now, it's only because so much of what it predicted has become our
> everyday reality, just in a different form.
concepts aren't as daring by today's standards, and some of the more
remarkable technical aspects are no longer fresh and new. The editing
was extraordinarily fast for its time, undoubtedly influenced by MTV,
and it's been my conviction, though I've never read any interviews by
the producers, that it was the first series deliberately edited with the
idea in mind that viewers were going to record the episodes with their
VCRs, back up if they couldn't quite make something out, and freeze
individual frames to see what was going by too quickly for them to read
or assimilate.
> And a lot of its writing problems can be chalked up to growing pains
> as the writers tried to figure out this new world and how to tell
> stories in it. The writing did get stronger and more consistent as
> the show went on, and they overall managed to find more ways to
> completely out of the final two episodes without altering them
> materially.
I completely disagree here. The best episodes were #1 & #4 out of 14.
> materially.
It wasn't getting better. I think that once they had launched their
high-concept show, they started running out of ways to include both SF
elements and engrossing plots.
-Micky
superkuh
Feb 12, 2020, 6:58:58 PM2/12/20
to
The only thing I, or most people currently under 40 years of age,
remember is that Chicago television hack where the dude impersonated the
Max Headroom style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion
remember is that Chicago television hack where the dude impersonated the
Max Headroom style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion
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