Viral Content (30/03/2020): Lockdown

Well, it finally happened: Ireland has joined several other European countries in entering a state of semi-quarantine. I was actually starting to get my hopes up that it wouldn’t be necessary—the government’s forecast of 15,000 infections by the end of the month turned out to be hugely pessimistic and there were a few days last week where the rate of new infections was holding steady—but less than 24 hours after a grim assessment of the country’s ICU capacity (which basically concluded that there isn’t any) went public, the announcement was made.

In case this hasn’t happened yet where you live and you want some idea of what to expect, it’s actually not as restrictive as you might think. People are allowed to go up to two kilometres from their homes for exercise, which easily encompasses the usual route I go on for my daily stroll, and there’s no driving restrictions on traveling to buy food. We’re just not supposed to travel anywhere for non-essential reasons.

This is obviously kind of hard to enforce, and there so far hasn’t been any clear indication of what would happen to people who are egregiously breaking the rules. I passed a police checkpoint in the middle of my town earlier today, and it looked like drivers were just being asked where they were going.

It’s been kind of funny seeing people online freak out about the idea of being stuck in their homes for weeks on end, given that this has frequently been my experience over the last three years due to my neurological condition. I spent the month leading up to this not really going anywhere except for walks around my local area simply because I didn’t feel up to doing anything else.

You could say that I’m the perfect quarantine candidate. You could even go so far—and I’m not saying I’m doing this, but one could if so inclined—to suggest that I’m the best at staying at home for long periods of time. I’m better than everyone else in the world at it. It’s me.

Anyway, the pace of the pandemic internationally has taken off over the last week or so; total numbers of confirmed infections are now increasing by more than 100,00 in less than 48 hours and several countries are experiencing alarming numbers of deaths every day. We’re well into the phase of algorithmic growth, and now all we can do is wait for the peak.

But thanks to China and Italy, we know what that peak looks like. As grim as the situation is, the virus can be brought under control…as long as strong quarantine measures are taken. As of this writing the UK has quietly walked back the herd immunity plan I complained about last time, and someone finally managed to convince Trump that his plan of getting things back to normal by Easter was utterly ridiculous. Apart from edge cases like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, world leaders are finally taking this seriously.

That is, despite the efforts of a disturbingly large number of prominent capitalists, think tanks and business people, many of whom are really letting the mask slip and just straight up admitting that they value the economy more than people’s lives. I’m hopeful that when this is all over, people will remember that.

His Dark Materials Episode 08: Betrayal & Season 01 review

With its eighth and final episode, His Dark Materials moves into territory that fans have been waiting more than a decade for: the end of Northern Lights, which the 2007 movie bafflingly decided to save for the (never-made) next movie. The adaptation here isn’t perfect, but it offers a visually stunning rendition of the book’s infamous downer ending that doesn’t pull any punches and hits all the desired emotional beats, even if some of the creative choices weigh it down slightly.

Let’s address the biggest flaw first: Will’s story. I’ve flip-flopped back and forth over whether the decision to pull Subtle Knife material into the first season was a good or bad choice, and overall I have to lean, very slightly, towards the latter. Cutting between Lyra’s world and real-world London just overall doesn’t really work for me as someone who’s familiar with Lyra’s story without those impositions, and while it may well end up working in the second season’s favour, that’s not the season I’m reviewing.

I did say I’m leaning slightly towards the decision being a bad idea because I actually like how the Will-centric parts of the story were executed just fine; Amir Wilson in particular is very promising as a co-lead to join Dafne Keene. It’s just when it’s interspersed with the rest of the plot that it becomes a problem.

The show’s other flaw lies with the dialogue, which can occasionally get a little clunky, particularly when the characters need to deliver exposition. At times it’s warm and lively, while elsewhere it can feel artless and mechanical. This is a problem that crops up in the first episode and persists all the way through the series, probably due to the fact that Jack Thorne, primary writer of Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, wrote all eight episodes. He’s a lot better here, but I’m still glad that season two brought in more writers rather than relying solely on his somewhat inconsistent talents.

The dialogue issues go more noticeable in show’s second half; this, combined with some occasional—and relatively minor—pacing issues lead me to prefer the first four episodes to the ones that followed. In the early episodes the story feels more relaxed and has more time to stretch out, whereas later on I feel like it’s getting squeezed a bit by the necessity of hitting plot points and delivering information to the viewer (to be fair, some of this stems from the book, which is at times structured very oddly and feels like it was partially made up as it was being written).

Going back to this episode specifically, I appreciate that the series decided to depict Lyra crossing between worlds through a tear in the fabric of reality in a very quiet, sombre way. It would have been easy to go for a more adventrous, “epic” feel, and maybe that would have been more emotionally satisfying, but on balance I feel that the downbeat approach was truer to both the story itself and the tone that the series has so far been employing.

Actually, that kind of summarizes my feelings on the season as a whole: there were probably more purely entertaining ways to handle the source material that would have felt closer in tone and style to Northern Lights, but my approach to adaptations has always been that if I want to re-experience the original, I can just go back to it. The people handling His Dark Materials made some daring choices, and while not all of them landed, I appreciate the fact that they were taken. Roll on season two.

Blog Note

No episode analysis this time since it feels a bit redundant now that we’ve reached the end. Writing this post series, as much as I’ve enjoyed it, took a lot out of me due to my ongoing medical problems, so I’m going to take a whole month off blogging to recover. I’ll see you all at the end of January for more internet fun-times.

Polar Bear Shuffle

Just a quick note to say that due to health reasons, the final three posts in my award winning and critically acclaimed His Dark Materials TV reviews will be combined into one following the end of the season on the 23rd; that post will also serve as my overall review of the season as a whole.

Following that, I’ll likely be taking a month off from blogging of all kinds to recharge the batteries. See y’all next year!