netflix – All That Chazz: Your Brain Tickle Destination

TPOD RED CONTAGION use this one — Coming soon!

She Who Must Be Obeyed (AKA my wife) mentioned that the new move in appropriate terminology is to encourage physical distancing, not social distancing.

With COVID-19 rampaging across Earth, isolating is necessary. However, you need not feel alone. All in this together even if we’re apart, right? Some experts suggest reaching out to three people a day (electronically). Give a call to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. Check in, especially with the elderly, vulnerable neighbors or family members who are stuck, alone or at risk. Alone doesn’t have to be lonely. Making and maintaining social connections has even been shown to be good for our health. Stress and strife is something we need to tamp down as much as we can.

Don’t know what to say to people going through hard times? Often, all you need do is listen so they feel heard and seen. Other times, you may be able to help people at risk connect to services that can assist them.

Speaking of Reaching Out

Did you know that avid readers of my work have a private Facebook group where I hold forth on the doings of the day? It’s often jokes and occasionally it’s serious. I add excerpts from my work in progress, too.

Example? Here’s a snippet from the This Plague of Days prequel I’m working on now:

Armed only with the cane, Moira rushed toward the screams. She was still weak, but now that she’d survived the Sutr flu, she was determined to fight whatever came next. She did not spare a moment to tell Kevin Laughlin that she would return to his side. The dying have no time for lies.

For another taste from the group, here’s today’s post (a review of sorts):

Hey, Monday, you great looming beast full of threats, coffin nails, and bat wings. And hello, friends.

When we ran out of our addictive Tiger King supply, we watched Wild Wild Country on Netflix. Again, I am amazed at the sheer amount of footage narcissists require. If you know someone who records everything, there’s a good chance they killed somebody or they’re about to do something super shady that should land them in a prison cell.

Wild Wild Country has been out for a while. I’d given it a miss, but it is so watchable after you slog through the first episode. It’s about a cult that started out with high hopes. Then god complexes, bigotry, and government corruption get in the way. A utopian vision in rural Oregon slides from peace and love to AK-47s. It’s disappointing and teaches us a lesson we should have learned a long time ago: Don’t trust the feds.

There is so much fascinating nuance in these tales of downward spirals. I don’t watch a lot of true crime. I imagine that if you binge too much of it, it’s difficult to see the good in humanity. I know I often sound like a cynic, but they say every cynic is a disappointed idealist.

If you dig what I do, this is your invitation to join our happy little group of readers.

My whimsy + nice people = happy nonsense.

Find us at Fans of Robert Chazz Chute today.

Cheers!

~ Chazz

I started watching The Flash on Netflix as a stress reliever. I wasn’t too invested at first. In fact, given the names of the villains and the source material, I mistook the series for something breezy to help me chill out. I was wrong. Though much of the dialogue is jokey, the characters are earnest and there’s a whole lot of death going on for a CW show. The show is not just bubblegum for the eyes, after all. I picked up on a few details which made it better than I expected (and useful to writers.)

**Here’s what I learned from The Flash:**

1. The Art of the Cliffhanger

These writers are the masters of cliffhangers that advance the plot. If this were a novel, each chapter would be a page-turner. They often throw in a double cliffhanger.

It’s great for Netflix viewing because the narrative makes you want to surf straight into the next episode to find out what happens next. Someone will curse imaginatively and shout that they hate cliffhangers. I know. The details of dealing intelligently with cliffhangers is a blog post all its own. I’ll give that objection a short answer here, though: We’ve been trained by decades of serial television to endure cliffhangers. Everybody hates pop ups on websites, too. But they work.

BONUS ANSWER: Lots of people say they hate cliffhangers but they will be back after the obligatory performative rage quit. It wasn’t the cliffhangers that drove people to wander away from The Walking Dead. It was the brutality of Glen’s death and the relentlessly grim outlook that left viewers questioning the value of surviving the zombie apocalypse. Since the producers of The Walking Dead seem to be bringing hope back, I suspect the show will regain some viewers who walked away.

SIDE NOTE:

The Flash springs from comics, obviously. I used to collect comics but I didn’t understand the art of comic book writing very well until recently. I aspire to write a graphic novel based on some of my previously published work. In Words into Pictures by Brian Michael Bendis, the author points out that a truly well-written comic has a cliffhanger at every turn of the page. That could be twelve cliffhangers for one twenty-four page story! Writing comics suddenly sounds more daunting, doesn’t it?

2. Plot and Plan Long Story Arcs

On the surface, it was a little too easy to dismiss a show that kept hammering a couple of solutions hard: “Run, Barry, run!” and “Believe in yourself.” I began watching carelessly so I popped into the show midway through the first season, just for a taste. Later, after watching the rest of the run, I circled back to the beginning. That’s when it hit me how much forethought seems to be involved. I’m impressed.

There are seeds planted early on that grow to mighty trees later. In the first season, the camera pauses on a shot of a cage labeled Grodd. The gorilla is a fixture later but the writers don’t answer all questions immediately.

If you’ve ever taken a writing class or watched comment threads devolve into insanity, you’ve seen someone demand that all the answers come front loaded and quickly. Long story arcs are for readers and viewers who like a little mystery. Quick answers are for impatient people who aren’t losing themselves to the narrative (AKA not in the reading/viewing demographic. If you’re into it, you’ll wait.)

I’m guessing that since the creators of the TV show had decades of original material to draw from, they could plot and plan far ahead using the source material. Sometimes you can get there the way Breaking Bad found their ending: pantsing it. Still, I do appreciate that the creators of The Flash appear to have planned well ahead (even if they didn’t).

3. The Art of Raising Stakes

After saving the planet (or at least Central City) from utter destruction over and over, you might finish a season of The Flash and think: Where can they go from here? The villains get even more interesting as the series progresses. They become more dangerous and meaner. The characters you’ve grown to love, or at least like, suffer more. When the hero is up against a villain and you’re thinking that the good guys can’t possibly win, you’ve got a compelling story.

SIDE NOTE: You know that famous hallway fight scene in Daredevil? Of course, you do. On The Flash, Neil Sandilands as The Thinker has a scene where he uses a conglomeration of powers to take out a SWAT team that is epic. When they composed that epic fight scene, I’m sure they had the Daredevil scene in mind. It’s a lot of fun.

4. Fearlessness

The Flash is a series that isn’t afraid to be complex. You know a time travel plot is difficult to deal with when you have actors drawing timelines and flowcharts as if they’re teaching metaphysical physics. But they’re also brave enough to be silly and good for them for having fun with it. If Christopher Nolan had more of a sense of humor, he could be the greatest director of his generation instead of one of the greatest.

With The Flash‘s multiverse packed with so many versions of one character, it is a joy to see Tom Cavanaugh play Harrison Wells et al in many hilarious iterations. He goes from cold and deadly to a stereotypically comedic German scientist to Matthew McConaughey parody to a French detective named Sherloque. When Vibe charges off to save the day, Tom Cavanaugh gets to deliver the gleeful line: “Good luck storming the castle!” Classic!

SIDE NOTE: The actor Tom Cavanaugh is a Canadian national treasure. Candice Patton is so gorgeous I’m not absolutely positive she is real. She might be CGI.

BACK TO THE POINT, ROB:

I appreciate The Flash‘s flexibility of tone so much. Too many shows (and books) have one note and hit it as if they’re playing triangle in the high school’s junior band. I want ups and downs and loops on my story’s roller coaster. The Flash delivers. As a guy who dared to include whales as part of the solution to a zombie apocalypse, I love that.

5. Heart and Relatability.

It’s interesting to see how the characters have evolved on The Flash. When the series begins, Jesse L. Martin plays Detective Joe West a little like he’s still NYPD Detective Ed Green on Law & Order. Later, we learn he’s a big softie. In his first appearance, Wentworth Miller plays bad guy Leonard Snart more seriously. Later on, his portrayal is looser, more fun and unexpected. It’s as if the show runner took the actor aside and said, “Have more fun with it.” And so we have more fun watching.

I love James Bond movies and I read all the books, too. However, that character is so iconic, he doesn’t change. He could be an android programmed with a very narrow range of emotions and a list of one-liners. I like when fiction is more connected and characters develop over time. History affects the future (or on The Flash, the future can rewrite the past).

Characters develop and change on this show. They don’t have to change much to be compelling but their ability to change over time makes them human and relatable. The transformation doesn’t have to be a preachy, “I learned this” moment, either. When Cisco hates Barry for a while, he doesn’t really have a big “I forgive you” moment. He just does what we all do when a good friend pisses us off: We get over it eventually.

What makes a hero? Barry Allen believes in empathy and the willingness to sacrifice. What’s more interesting is that he does not save the world alone. Unlike most other superheroes, he can’t do it alone. That’s where the heart of the show comes through. They’re friends. They’re family. They get annoyed with each other but love keeps them together and in the fight for the rest of us.

I know. It’s just a TV show and some of the lesser villains can be childish. However, this moment in history feels like a great time to be childlike. We need more empathy and hope. This is a great time for love so strong it keeps us together despite the fact that sometimes we hate each other.

We all want to be heroes but we can’t do it alone. I love the writing life, but sometimes I feel very disconnected from our current reality. I came to The Flash looking for a distraction from the endless scroll of bad news in my news feed. I grew to appreciate the writing. Then I forgot about the mechanics, left my stress behind and simply enjoyed watching the show. I didn’t expect to become a fan but I did.

P.S. I saw Grant Gustin on Glee before he sang on The Flash. Yes, the star of the show sure can sing. The musical team-up with Supergirl star, Melissa Benoist was a delight. However, the actor who plays Cisco is a singer as well as an actor. Carlos Valdes oozes charm all over the place. The show made it to its 100th episode on December 4th. I hope Carlos gets to sing a bunch on the show before The Flash finishes its run.