GROUNDHOG DAY -- WHAT HAPPENS AFTER HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

 
To my mind, one of the enduring mysteries from movie-dom is this: What happens after the ending of the film "Groundhog Day"? 

On the surface of things, the answer is pretty obvious. TV weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) and his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) fall in love and live happily ever after. But the falling in love is a little lopsided, and I wonder if Phil ever tells Rita why.  

Here's the scoop. For the fourth year in a row, Phil is assigned to cover the Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania. He hates the gig, hates the town, and wants to split right after the festivities are over. Problem is, a blizzard comes in and traps Phil, along with Rita and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot) in town. Phil wakes up the next day, and it's Groundhog Day all over again. Same thing the next day and the day after that, as Phil finds himself caught in a time-loop, repeating Groundhog Day, February 2, over and over -- always waking up to the same horrible song ("I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher) on the clock radio. Everybody else is experiencing it for the first time, only for Phil is the day stuck on repeat. 

At first Phil is confused, then exhilarated by being able to act without consequences, then is driven to despair by his being unable to seduce Rita, much less make her fall in love with him, in one day's time. (The mordantly funny clip above is from Phil's worst moment of dejection.) Finally, after untold repetitions of Groundhog Day, he changes his bitter, selfish ways and uses the repetions to his advantage -- to learn French, to learn piano, to learn about everyone in town, and -- cue the cheesy soundtrack music -- how to love. His generosity and warmth and talents finally impress Rita, but in the meantime, Phil has learned that the point is not to "get" her but to live in the moment. This being a happily-ever-after movie, however, Phil not only gets to become a Zen master, but also escapes the time loop he's been trapped in and, presumably, wins Rita's heart as well. 

Now, Phil has learned about and fallen in love with Rita over the course of countless repetitions of the same day. Rita, however, is not stuck endlessly reliving a single day (or maybe she is, it's just in Phil's world), and has had only 24 hours to learn anything about Phil. She is impressed and happy, but is not the type to fall in love so quickly as all that.

So, the big question -- no doubt equal to the grand existential puzzles like "Why are we here?" -- is this: Does Phil tell Rita what happened, namely that he's been stuck repeating Groundhog Day for so long

Up until now, I've been torn mightily about this question. On the one hand, it seems obvious that of course he would tell her -- if they're going to live happily ever after, then "forever" is a pretty long time to keep that kind of important information secret. And then, does she believe him? Or would the revelation spoil the mystery of their love? Besides, Phil could make a mint off of a bestselling novelization of his life. 

On the other hand, how do you begin to say something like that? And if Phil doesn't tell her, what is she to think of the fact that Phil fell in love with her in what appears (to Rita) to be about as much time as it takes to do your grocery shopping and get your emissions checked? What kind of co-dependent fool becomes smitten so easily, and can you trust his feelings? 

Well, stop the presses: after seeing the film about a half-dozen times, I have come to the conclusion that Phil does tell Rita what happened. He gives a clue near the end of the film, when various townspeople thank Phil for one or another favor he's done for them that day (why not? he knows so much about everything going on, he might as well help a few folks out), Rita asks him what's going on. He says, "Would you like the long version, or the short one?" Before he can tell her, they are interrupted. That, in my professional opinion, is enough of a sign that he'll tell her in time.

Why take such pains over a seemingly small question like this? Well, clearly the indication is that Phil and Rita will live happily ever after -- but the clear blue sky of that happiness is clouded by the lopsidedness in their relationship and the question about how it got there. In any story, what happens before and after and around the contours of any story is a mystery -- and viewers (and readers) are left to wonder what lays outside. Except for now. About this movie. With just the one question. Take that, people who love ambiguous endings!

I sincerely hope I haven't killed the pleasant mystery by providing what I consider is the answer to film's greatest mystery. This is like Rosebud, only more so. Oh hey, one last thing. As you may have read, Punxsutawney Phil (the real life groundhog) has predicted 6 more weeks of winter. He has got to be stopped! (Phil Connors agrees, in the clip above.)

INSIDE STORIES PODCAST 16: SELECTIONS FROM "WORD OF MOUTH"

DOWNLOAD THE NEW EPISODE ON iTUNES HERE, OR LISTEN ONLINE HERE. 

Let us first state the obvious: George King is a pretty cool-looking cat. Wouldn't you say? That's him in the photo. I hope I look as cool as him when I grow up. Well, I hope that right now I look even half as groovy as him, but I have some serious doubts. Anyway, George King & Associates is an ad hoc group of filmmakers producing nonfiction films, television and radio programs; they also create informational and educational media for commercial and nonprofit clients.

Not long ago, I heard about George from a friend we have in common -- a friend who, when I told her about "Inside Stories," said I might be interested in a radio documentary series George produced in 1987. The three-part series is called "Word of Mouth," and it features great folks like Studs Terkel, Jackie Torrence, Corey Fischer and others, all talking about "Why Do People Tell Stories?" "Where Do Stories Come From?" and "Who Is Telling Stories Today?" 

George was kind enough to let me draw selected clips from the series for this new episode of "Inside Stories." I think you'll find it a blast from the past -- partly because some of the people in it have died, and because it totally predates the digital era; but I suspect you'll also find that it resonates today, thanks to its prescient, or in some cases timeless, qualities. For example, some of the speakers in the program talk about a renaissance of storytelling, and this is back in 1987! I've heard that same sentiment expressed repeatedly in the last 10-15 years -- with This American Life, and The Moth, and storytelling nights around the country. And that's not counting the many other ways we tell stories in everyday life. So please check out what the people in George's program have to say -- you may just be reminded that good storytelling never goes out of style.

Download the podcast episode on iTunes, listen online, or you can also listen to the complete "Word of Mouth" series on the website of George King & Associates.

ANGLES ON ALLEN GINSBERG'S HOWL

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..."


The first thing that strikes one upon reading Allen Ginsberg's epic 1955 poem "Howl," is that it really doesn't rhyme. It would have been much better had the poem started "I find the best minds" or "I saw the raw minds," or if it had paired "destroyed by madness" with a phrase such as "annoyed by sadness." Don't you think?

Okay, that's a ridiculous criticism. But perhaps only slightly more ridiculous than the criticism leveled against the publisher of the infamous poem in a 1957 obscenity trial. The attorney for the prosecution asked a professor testifying in defense of its literary merits to define the opening lines (cited above). The response, "Sir, you can't translate poetry into prose. That's why it's poetry." 

Seems obvious to me--the richness of any poetic or other artistic work lies in large part in its openness to interpretation. But then, given how many so-called Biblical "literalists" insist on a certain reading of scripture, this is clearly not a widely agreed-upon point. That's what makes it all the more exciting that "Howl," its author, and the obscenity trial against its publisher City Lights are the subject of a new film of the same name by multiple Oscar- and Emmy-winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. (Between them, they've made "The Times of Harvey Milk," "Common Threads," and other films on gay themes. The new film premiered at Sundance last week, and should be in theaters later this year.)

The interpretability of language -- poetic, political, and/or otherwise -- is evident in everything from the reaction to President Obama's speeches to legal arguments over the Framers' intent to any work of literary criticism. To see this issue dramatized by these filmmakers is pretty damn cool. And all the more so because at the film's center is, as film critic B. Ruby Rich writes in this insightful article, a pretty explicit poem, even by today's standards. For me, its explicitness is not just because of its ultra-homosexual nature ("who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed," in one of the cleaner passages), or its talk of mental illness and drug use. Rather, it's because the poem contains so many jagged urban images -- fantastic and surreal but so utterly recognizable that they lead you, the reader, to see them incarnated in everyday life.  

And how to dramatize an issue like literary criticism? The filmmaking duo of Epstein and Friedman have ingeniously woven together four strands: Ginsberg's original reading of the poem, dramatizations of the obscenity trial and an ultimately unpublished interview Ginsberg gave to a Time magazine reporter, as well as animated sequences. (Ginsberg is played by James Franco, in the clips above.) I was fortunate enough to be at a staged reading of the work-in-progress a couple years ago, in San Francisco, and the mix of storytelling styles -- even in the roughest of forms -- was thrilling. I haven't yet seen the finished film yet, but this earlier incarnation was a look into the value of art in the form of a courtroom drama.

My one quibble with the project at the time was that the drama was not as pitched as it could be; that's not only because we know (or can deduce) the outcome of the trial -- of course 1950s straightjacket culture did not constrain this thunderous, bursting poem -- but because the prosecution's side was so patently weak. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman are documentarians, so they're hardly ones to alter source material like that. As exciting as the amalgam of styles was, I found myself wanting the anti-Howl side to be pumped up a little bit, so there would be at least some question about who would win. Even lacking this suspense, however, the staged reading and samples of the animation pointed to a film that would allow this electric poem and its historical moment to charge viewers more than 50 years later. 

LET'S GET REAL -- THE EIGHTH UNBELIEVABLE SEASON OF "24"

 
It doesn't take a national security expert to know that hands-free phone calling makes it easier to coordinate special ops. But no one appears to have told that to Jack Bauer and the other counter-terrorist agents on the hit FOX series "24"--entering its 8th season tonight--who rarely use Bluetooth or other telephone headsets while driving. You'd think that 20 months in a Chinese prison--from which Jack emerged a couple seasons ago--would have left him ample time to meditate on more effective phone usage. Apparently not. Which is all to say, sometimes "24" is just too ludicrous to believe. 

Maybe that's not such a bad thing, since each season of the show dramatizes a terrorist attack that unfolds over the course of 24 hours--until now, always in Los Angeles, poor Los Angeles--and you want to watch it with more distance than you would watch news about a real attack. 

Phones are just the tip of the unbelievable iceberg. Jack Bauer can often get wherever he's going in L.A. in about 10 minutes, with minimal traffic. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I thought cars were kind of a big thing there. And for being so well trained, CTU staff seem to be lacking in common sense. In season two, Jack Bauer's daughter and underling, Kim, decides that the critical hours before a biological weapons attack would be the perfect time to have a heart-to-heart chat with her dad about the co-worker she's dating. Further complicating matters that season is Chloe, the communications specialist who finds time in her busy day to have a babysitter swing by with an infant and occupy the office with an "are you my mommy?" drama. Such goofs prompt the boss to say, with only the mildest tone of disapprobation, "Let's try to ease up on the mistakes for the rest of the night, as there are millions of lives depending on this." 

Fortunately for those millions, the counter-terrorist agents in Jack's organization are able to organize complex operations in the time in would normally take to tie your shoe. In under an hour, they set up a video monitoring system at the workplace of a suspected terrorist's daughter, drug her, and replace her with Kim in costume. Agents recover from wounds at a speed you'd only see otherwise on Star Trek. Jack Bauer can go full-tilt for 24 hours without eating, drinking, using the bathroom, or yawning, much less sleeping--unless you consider the "nap" he once took when he was tortured until his heart stopped. After a defibrillator treatment, he was back to climbing drainpipes in hot pursuit of subjects. Such high-pitched happenings make for good drama, but still, the more that "24" asks us to suspend disbelief, the harder it is to keep us in suspense. 

Details aside, there's the really incredible stuff. In season one, terrorists bring down a planeload of people so that an assassin can assume the identity of one of its passengers, a photographer en route to document presidential candidate David Palmer, whom they want to kill; wouldn't it have been easier just to shoot the guy? Palmer is elected, and in the next season, after one terrorist attach, his vice president and cabinet rush to override him and launch a counter-attack against a possibly innocent country. If that weren't ridiculous enough, we see that the agresssors are controlled by a conspiracy of oil interests. To fight them, Palmer relies almost exclusively on the counsel of one person, whose main political experience is being Palmer's younger brother. Evidently, that was enough to propel the younger Palmer into the presidency, which position he occupied several seasons ago. 

Once you finish an episode, you realize that maybe it isn't quite so crazy after all. Preposterous as the specifics of "24" may be (and ill-informed and loathsome as its politics often are), the bigger questions of terror, the use of torture, political dynasties, and power all feel uncomfortably plausible. Thankfully, the new season strains credulity so much that we can relax and enjoy the show: it takes place in New York City. Honestly--an attack in New York City? How unbelievable is that? 

(This piece was published in a slightly different form in the San Francisco Examiner 1/20/07, view it here.) 

BIG STORIES MADE SMALL

I'm super excited about a play (or a sort of hand-performance) and film I just saw, both of which suggest how a grand-scale, even epic story can be told in miniature. 

First, "Flooding With Love for the Kid," a 2009 micro-budget film adaptation of the novel "First Blood," which was the inspiration for the Rambo movies. Zachary Oberzan designed, shot, edited and directed the whole thing by himself. More unusual is the fact that he also plays all two dozen roles himself -- everyone from a waitress, to a police chief, to the drifter he arrests and who then breaks free, to the police dogs and people who go searching for him, and others. The real kicker, however, is that the film was shot entirely in his 220-square-foot New York City apartment. On a budget of under $100. Oberzan employs a bluescreen to create certain backgrounds, but effectively uses lighting, sound effects, and simple props to suggest a forest (sticks strewn about, or affixed to a floor lamp), a diner (sounds of silverware clinking against plates), or, most remarkably, a helicopter chasing Rambo off a cliff (a window fan turning some makeshift helicopter blades, with two chairs in front for the pilot and cop, and Oberzan's loft bed filling in for the cliff). I was impressed by Oberzan's design solutions, but even more so by the fact that the film actually worked as drama -- aside from a few parts that dragged, I found myself invested in the action.

No less so than by "Space Panorama," a kind of hand-play created and performed by Andrew Dawson. Dressed in black and standing in front of a table draped in black cloth and tilted towards the audience, Dawson tells the story of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing -- using only his hands and upper torso, with narration and a musical score from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony played over the theatre's sound system. It makes perfect sense that Dawson was trained in mime, and also works (or moonlights, you might say) as a hand model. He creates some thoroughly cinematic effects with those magic fingers of his. In one such scene, he switches back and forth between "close-ups" and "wide shots" of the rocket launch. Close-ups were done by gesturing dramatically to indicate the massive rocket lifting off, and sweeping his hands wildly against the tabletop to suggest the explosion of smoke and flame as the propulsion units fire; the wide shots he achieved by forming a triangle with his fingers to indicate the rocket tip, which he has move through space just slowly enough to indicate vast distances. With the simplest gestures, he indicates a whale, or the splash-down of the astronauts back on Earth. He lip-synchs JFK's pledge to put a man on the moon, puts on a cartoonish smile to play the role of a bus driver transporting the astronauts to the Apollo 11, or leans back and flips a few imaginary switches to assume the role of an astronaut at the control panel. (That piece was commissioned more than 20 years ago, but he still performs it occasionally. Check out the links above for more info.)

In both cases, these performers used tiny spaces and limited movement to convey the grandest actions. And, except for some neat editing tricks used for the film, they're both excellent examples of how to use low-tech effects. More proof that whole worlds -- to say nothing of moons -- can fit inside our hands, our apartments, or these heads of ours that are no bigger than a gallon jug of milk.

...UNTIL NEXT TIME

"I have been the mother of seven children, the most beautiful and most loved of whom lies buried near my Cincinnati residence. It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learnt what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her." That's Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1851, on the death of her son Charley, and the inspiration for her antislavery novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

Whether or not Stowe really felt the same anguish as a slave mother is debatable. I doubt it. But she was an abolitionist, and did use her own grief to connect with the loss that slave mothers felt regularly. In writing the book, she told a friend that she aimed "to hold up in the most lifelike and graphic manner possible Slavery, its reverses, changes and the negro character." This is from an essay by Beverly Lowry on "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in the recently-released anthology, "A New Literary History of America," edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. To "hold up ... Slavery" for examination, Stowe used the central character of Eliza, who flees North with her baby to save him from bondage. 

If Stowe sought to engender sympathy for slaves on the part of her (mostly white) readers, then she succeeded in part because her story first appeared in serialized form. That's the intriguing contention of Beverly Lowry, who notes that 41 installments of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared in the antislavery newsweekly "National Era" between 1851 and 1852. An astounding (for the time) 50,000 people read the story weekly, and its run helped increase the magazine's subscription list from 15,000 to 19,000. 

Lowry contends: "Because it is the very nature of serialization to stir up our impatience and to put our nerves on edge as we wait for the next episode, perhaps people then had time to imagine what it was like to be a slave, to feel what enslaved people felt, in particular a mother whose child was snatched from her arms and sold away.

"And as the story continued and readers waited to find out what happened next, the outrage of a nation was stirred beyond frustration and anger, into action. Say what we will in today's terms about Mrs. Stowe and her sketches. She did what she could at the time. And people paid attention." 

True enough, "Say what we will" about the story -- and goodness knows that people have said plenty over the course of nearly 160 years about its literary shortcomings and racist characterizations. Still and all, whatever power "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had to move people on its merits and in its time was, I'm inclined to agree, increased by its appearing in serial form. Suspense -- when we wait to find out what happens next -- is a state of wonder, anticipation, and speculation. In between installments of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," readers may have learned to appreciate the characters, and been prompted to imagine other futures for them to live into.  

Btw, here's a fascinating online multi-media archive, "Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture," which features historical notes, interpretive essays, film clips, songs, drawings and other materials about the novel and its place in U.S. cultural history.

INSIDE STORIES PODCAST 15: "LIVING IN EMERGENCY" FILMMAKER

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE ONLINE HERE, OR BETTER YET SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE PODCAST ON iTUNES HERE.

This time on the podcast, a conversation with Mark Hopkins, director of "Living in Emergency," a fly-on-the-wall documentary film that follows four "Doctors Without Borders"  volunteers in Liberia and Congo as they struggle to provide critical medical care in the face of poor infrastructure, war, and their own personal limitations. The film has been short-listed for an Oscar Award for best feature documentary, and with good reason: it's a compelling portrait of the work of MSF (the French initials of the organization). Hopkins discusses the importance of being independent, how he chose whom to feature, and how he structured the film to connect with audiences.

Humanitarian work holds a certain romance -- heroically dodging bullets and performing surgery to save the lives that no one else would. There's more than a whiff of colonialism to that romance, the white savior healing the wounded African. But that's not this film. Instead, "Living in Emergency" provides an unvarnished look at the day-to-day operations of this handful of MSF's 25,000+ workers worldwide. They yell at each other. They do their jobs. They dance off their frustration. They disrespect the national (in-country) staff. They wonder if they want to continue the work. All the daily goings-on add up to a greater whole in the film, especially when you consider the enormous needs of people around the world -- 2 billion without access to essential medical care. 

Visit the film's website for information on how to see it, or the organization's website to learn more about volunteering in medical or nonmedical positions.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS -- NO PODCAST THIS WEEK

Hello blog readers and podcast listeners --

I'm visiting family, and don't have a podcast episode today. Keep your ears peeled (and your iTunes set) for the next podcast episode on January 10.

If you don't already subscribe to the free podcast, please click here to subscribe on iTunes. It comes out on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of every month. And as for February, well, gosh, we'll just have to wait and see!

Happy new year!

Paul

IN MEMORIAM -- FICTIONAL FRIENDS WE'VE LOST THIS YEAR

As 2009 draws to a close, it's a fitting time to remember the loved ones we've lost this year. Whether it's the faceless billions killed in one or another global apocalypse, or a single caring doctor who sacrificed herself to save her friends, they touched our lives in ways that words can't begin to describe. And yet words are all we have to pay tribute to just some of the colorful characters who've passed on in 2009. Just because they didn't exist in three dimensions doesn't mean they weren't every bit as important to us as other public figures who squirmed out of this mortal coil in the past 12 months. Join me in thanking, honoring and remembering our fictional friends.

Ellie Fredricksen, devoted wife who sacrificed her dreams for a balloon salesman

Ellie Fredricksen, born circa 1930, died of natural causes on May 29. As a young girl, Mrs. Fredricksen aspired to be an explorer. She met her kindred spirit and future husband Carl on a neighborhood expedition when they were both children; they bonded over a shared admiration for the famed explorer Charles Muntz, who discovered Paradise Falls in South America. The Fredricksens dreamed of traveling one day to that fabled land, but in fact barely made it out of their own neighborhood throughout the course of their long and supposedly happy marriage. Underneath the cheerful exterior lay a piercing regret, say Mrs. Fredricksen's friends. Even as she kept a scrapbook documenting the mundane pleasures of married life, Mrs. Fredricksen reportedly cursed her choice of husband, a man who attained no greater station in life than that of a balloon salesman. Friends blame Mr. Fredricksen for his wife's death, and consider it a bitter irony that it was only after his wife's passing that he carried out the dream of going to Paradise Falls. (Up)

Man, survivor of global apocalypse and symbol of human resilience, succumbs to disease, again

 
Man, of unknown age, died December 2 of this year on the Coast. Man was famous for embodying the strength of the human spirit. He had survived the apocalypse that claimed the lives of billions of people, including his wife, Wife, nee Woman. In an effort to escape the grim prospects at Home after the global cataclysm, Man took his son, Boy, on a trip to the Coast. It was to be their last vacation together. After successfully avoiding or killing several Bad Guys bent on enslaving or cannibalizing them, the father-son team reached their destination in what pre-apocalypse might have gained them a slot on the Amazing Race. With his illusions crushed by finding the Coast every bit as desolate and uninhabitable as the miles of terrain they just covered, Man succumbed to despair and illness. Boy was placed in foster care with some Good Guys who happened along the Road after Man's death. (Editor's note: Man had died previously in 2006 in print, and was resurrected and killed again this year on celluloid.) (The Road)

Amanda Grayson, teacher, and mother of galaxy's most famous interspecies logician

More than 6 billion lives were cut tragically short this year, 2258, when the planet Vulcan imploded, the result of a Romulan revenge plot.  Amanda Grayson, an Earthling expatriate and former teacher, was among those killed as she awaited rescue on an ill-fated cliff, which collapsed in the seconds before she was to be beamed to safety. She is survived by her husband Sarek, an astrophysicist and the Vulcan Ambassador to the United Federation of Planets, and her son Spock, the half-Human, half-Vulcan logician and First Officer of the Starship Enterprise. The Lady Amanda, as she was commonly called in Vulcan society, died at other times in alternate realities, such as in a shuttle accident at Lunaport soon after Spock's alternate-reality death in 2239. In yet another reality, Amanda happily lived to help Spock get in touch with his human side, after the latter's death and rebirth. She will be sorely, or perhaps just logically, missed. (Photo: Winona Ryder in Star Trek)


President Thomas Wilson, calmed TV viewers as world came to an end

President Thomas Wilson died this year, 2012, in the tsunami that destroyed a large swath of the east coast of the United States. The tsunami was but one of the many catastrophes worldwide that were brought about by a rapid increase in the temperature of the Earth's core, in turn caused by neutrinos from a massive solar flare in 2009. Not much is known about President Wilson, other than that he was avuncular and in perhaps advanced middle age or early-mid old age. He was one of the first African American Presidents of the U.S., standing on the shoulders of such giants as Presidents Douglas Tilman, Tom Beck, David Palmer, Wayne Palmer, and others. Wilson will likely be remembered for his bravery in foregoing rescue and instead remaining in Washington, D.C. to calm what was left of a doomed nation with these now-famous words of consolation: "Today we are one family." This insufferable sentimentalist is survived by his smoking hot daughter Laura, who is likely to help repopulate the planet with her equally handsome new romantic partner, the geologist Adrian Helmsley. Helmsley was the first to sound the alarm about the impending disaster, not counting the ancient Mayans who supposedly but not really saw this shit coming down the pike many hundreds of years ago. Props to the Mayans, and to President Wilson. (2012)

Dr. Juliet Burke, nee Carlson, presumed dead in nuclear explosion

Juliet Burke, a former fertility doctor with the Medical Research Laboratory at Miami Central University and later for The Others, was presumed killed when she detonated a hydrogen bomb in order to prompt a rupture in the time-space continuum. Earlier in her career, Burke's successful treatment of her sister's cancer attracted the attention of Mittelos Bioscience. Only when her domineering and unfaithful husband Edmund was run over by bus, under suspicious circumstances, did Dr. Burke feel liberated enough to accept a job offer from the firm. She was assigned to work on an uncharted island with apparent curative powers, and her desires to return home were frustrated. She and her colleagues were named "The Others" by the survivors of a plane crash on the Island, and relations between the two groups were marked by frequent hostilities, kidnapping, imprisonment, and the excessive pursing of lips. Dr. Burke, however, gained the trust of at least one of the survivors, and, after an otherworldly set of events, became key to their survival. Then, after being transported back in time to 1974, she became a mechanic with the Dharma Initiative, an experimental research community on the Island. In an effort to save her friends trapped in a bizarre game of time-space hopscotch, Dr. Burke detonated a hydrogen bomb. The incident is thought to have killed Dr. Burke, at least in the present dimension, but some theorists believe she was transported to another dimension, or may exist in several other dimensions. That is, dimensions other than the TV screen.  (Lost, with credit to Lostpedia page for some information. Photo by ABC Television.)

SHERLOCK HOLMES -- DRUG USER, GENIUS, AND INGRATE

Using my keen powers of observation, I have come to believe that Sherlock Holmes is a terrible ingrate. 

How else to describe someone who berates the narrative skill of Dr. Watson, his faithful chronicler and friend of so many years? Watson, who has made written accounts of the great majority of Holmes' cases. Watson, who assists Holmes in any investigation at the drop of a hat, or even the mere suggestion of the drop of a hat! Read no further than "A Scandal in Bohemia," in which Watson cheerfully obliges the famed detective's request for his cooperation, which requires that he break the law and risk arrest. "I shall be delighted," Watson says.

To be fair, it must be said that Watson -- loyal pal though he may be -- is not the master logician that Holmes is. Holmes continually impresses his friend by deducing a person's job, travel destinations, diet, faithfulness in marriage, state of mind or daily goings-on from such simple things as a hat, a sleeve (one of Holmes's fixations), a fingernail, or "the great issues that may hang from a bootlace," as he says in "A Case of Identity." You'd think that Watson would get used to Holmes' fantastic abilities, but evidently not; it seems that every time Holmes deduces something the rest of us would miss, Watson exclaims with fresh astonishment, "How on earth-----!" or some such thing.
 
Still and all, it is Watson's unending capacity for surprise -- borne though it may be of dim wits -- that make him Holmes' ideal chronicler, his "Boswell," as Holmes himself has put it. Were Holmes to relate his own sleuthing, it would surely be a dreadful bore, reading more like a forensics textbook than anything else. Instead, we have Dr. Watson's literate, funny, and altogether entertaining accounts of the cases. Dr. Watson has made Sherlock Holmes! Without Watson, Holmes would have been a successful but by no means celebrated detective.

And yet, after all this, Sherlock Holmes insists on playing the literary critic. Get a load of this preposterous tirade from "The Copper Beeches." "You have erred, perhaps, in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record  that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about a thing." Watson rightfully defends his efforts, saying "that I have done you full justice in the matter." Sock it to him, Doc! You've done a great job!

Still undeterred, Holmes continues, "You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales." That's the thanks he gives his friend and chronicler for turning him into the most famous detective in all of English literature. Bug off, Sherlock, you creep! You go solve the crimes, and let Watson do the literary heavy-lifting. 
 
Hell, I'm tempted to boycott the new Sherlock Holmes movie, in hopes of drawing attention to this heinous miscarriage of literary justice. Perhaps readers of this blog will do the same.

(P.S. The above likeness of Watson (left) and Holmes (right) by Sidney Paget only proves my point: the detective's arrogant bearing, his inconsiderate use of tobacco -- or one of any number of other substances he was known to use -- in company, mark him as an unworthy subject for the attentions of Watson, who here appears to be justly saddened by the neglect and ingratitude of this supposed "friend.")