Dexter Ex Machina

Dexter Morgan is Hannibal Lecter if Hannibal Lecter was a vegan puppy dog. Ostensibly asking questions about morality and justice, the second season of Dexter, which finished in the UK last night, began weak, got stronger as it went along, and ended up throwing away a lot of the progress it had made in a meldoramatic blaze. If you've not yet seen the second season finale, read no further. If you've not yet seen any of it, skip it altogether, and instead watch Pushing Daisies (for something that gets the stylisation/tone equation correct), The Shield (for a truly brain-shaking and thrilling exploration of the effects of corruption and moral confusion on the justice system) and Manhunter (for Will Graham cursing his quarry out, and for Brian Cox being amoral and weird and wonderful).


Funny I should mention spoilers. When The British Invasion aired in the US last year, I mistakenly heard that Dexter killed Doakes, and so watching the lead-up to the finale was seen through that lens. It meant that, for the first time since the show started, we began rooting for Doakes, and were pleased to see Erik King move on from his reliance on Blue Steel (jumping past Le Tigre and going straight for Magnum). It also made us restless to get to that moment, even if we had begun to dread it, as Dexter explored his options through his preferred medium of pretentious voiceover, which sucked all suspense out of the No Way Out style plot. I'm not going to criticise the show for not ratcheting the tension up more, because I wonder if that was even the intention of the showrunners, but it suffered by comparison with the third season of, yes, The Shield, which we were watching at the same time we were watching the second season of Dexter. As Vic Mackey and the Strike Team dodged their colleagues for fifteen stunning and nerve-wracking episodes, all while exploring the consequences of their corruption, Dexter could only look anaemic in comparison (pun sort of intended).


What's worse, while the Strike Team suffer terrible emotional consequences for their actions, Dexter dodges a bullet in an unfortunately silly fashion. The fiery death of Doakes inspired many conflicting emotions in us (possibly a first for the show, which usually just irritates us): relief, as having Doakes killed by Dexter would push our anti-hero over a moral line we could never forgive; frustration, as being killed by Dexter would have been the boldest thing done on the show yet and would have shown some real courage on the part of the showrunners; slack-jawed astonishment, as even though Lila's mental process had been set up with great care throughout the season, it was still an outrageous cheat to take Doakes' ultimate fate from Dexter and place it in her hands. To follow that up with a series of coincidences leading up to a melodramatic kidnap plot, not to mention the godawful and ill-judged in-show recreation of the wonderful title sequence, and the unintentionally silly Satanic Baptism/Rebirth visual of a newly re-purposed Dexter bursting through a conveniently flimsy wall, was utterly exasperating.

That's before we get to the plot stasis of the show which is a regrettable side-effect of the success of the show. While it would be nice to see the show end on a properly bleak note for a show out someone who, despite his cuddliness, is a fucking serial killer for crying out loud, we're always going to see Dexter fudge his moral challenges and do the "right" thing. Killing the people who understand him best (his brother and Lila) might seem like a big deal on a surface level, but it's always done in such a way as to present no challenge to his morals, with the extra consequence of making him seem like a martyr by sacrificing his own peace of mind through the act of murdering the "right" person instead of keeping these monsters around for company. That said, kudos for allowing Dexter to see that the one person he thought understood him, his adoptive father, was actually disgusted by him. Having him face the fact that he really is a monster with a nice line in self-serving justification was one of the things this season did really well.


By this point in the show it's become apparent that the show can be seen two different ways. If you're willing to forgive Dexter his murderous ways, the show is all about following him on a journey of self-discovery, trying to fit in and learn how to feel like he belongs, all while he struggles with his impulses, trying to transform them into a productive act, even when faced with complications. This new Dexter might have finally understood what it is to feel, instead of being a blank slate, which is the first real character progression the show has had. However, if you don't buy into it, it's a bunch of pointless plate spinning. Dexter might make speeches about how he's not operating by the Code of Harry by the time the season finishes, and the next season might mark a notable departure from his past, but to be uncharitable for a moment, though his modus operandi seemed to be slightly different while killing Lila, he's still punishing a murderer, thus keeping the show running for a while linger. This season hinted at pushing Dexter into breaking the code, but at the last second he was saved by a British deus ex machina with a annoying way of talking.

That he killed her and then seemed to embrace family life is only an incremental change from what he was like before, i.e. someone who would have killed her and then tried to fake having a happy family life. Again, I'm curious to see how it plays out, but this new Dexter is only known to us so far through portentous narration. A finale like this needed to see a more visual, dramatic expression of his new nature for us to feel any sense of narrative movement. As it was, the final scenes fell flat, with only his voiceover to tell us things had changed, and no amount of shots of Jaime Murray standing around in Paris was going to stand in for that need (and I'm not going to go on about how Dexter found her, but seriously, when did he become Jason Bourne?).


What's worse, having Lila take Doakes off Dexter's hands was seemingly done because the other options would paint the show into a francise-wrecking corner. Killing Doakes, while an interesting narrative choice, would push Dexter too far over the audience-sympathy line (same with his sister in season one, which is a shame as we were really hoping he would do it and get that potty-mouthed Gupta the hell off our screens). On the other hand, framing Doakes would mean the next season would constantly be derailed with the side sory of Doakes trying to prove his innocence and Dexter's guilt. We've already had a season of that, and it needed to move on. Therefore, Lila conveniently deals with Dexter's problem. That means the drama up to that point mainly serves to show how Dexter would deal with the Doakes problem, and he does it just the way you would expect, by trying to frame him. We learn nothing new about him, no matter how many tedious monologues we hear, and in the end the only dramatic point of it all is that we see Dexter's actions through someone else's eyes, when Doakes is trapped in a cage while his captor hacks a drug-dealer up.

An aside: while I've been ragging on this show a lot, I still watch it in the hopes of some improvement or impressive story-telling, and this season managed it once. The scene with Doakes begging for this man's life, where we see Dexter for the monster he really is, was easily the best thing about the whole season. Kudos to King and Hall, both of whom really stepped up to the plate. So I guess the Dexter/Doakes plot was justified in that we got to have that great scene, but otherwise, it was a waste of time. The drama, which had the potential to completely change the direction of the show and really challenge our assumptions and empathic allegiance (something The Shield does constantly), ended up becoming little more than Dexter mulling over his options without ever having to act on them thanks to the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl Serial Killer Groupie. Yawn!


The end result of all this is a confused me. Do I watch the next season, which might feature a new brand of Dexter? Or do I cut my losses now, fully expecting that the reset button will be hit at the end of the year? The potential for interesting storytelling is still there, so maybe I should stick with it, but I also have to take into account how much the execution irks me, which is a whole hell of a lot. In the end it could all come down to time. Why watch something that annoys and frustrates me when I could be reading the new Neal Stephenson novel? Put like that, the choice is very easy. I need this show to shock the shit out of me, or it's dropped. Dexter, consider yourself on probation.

Breakfast Of Champions It Ain't

Consider it flagellation, but we tend to watch BBC's Breakfast while preparing to head out in the morning. It's an infuriating show, but there isn't much else on at that time in the morning. This morning, after nearly bursting into angerflames while watching it, I ended up turning over and catching a customarily piss-poor episode of Smallville (guest-starring Ian Somerhalder), having missed the start of The Naked City on Sky Movies Classic and not feeling up to watching multiple installments of Takeshi's Castle or Ironside. Even though there is nothing else on, I still debate having it on at all, giving up only because it features London travel news, or as it should be called, "What Percentage Of Your Tube Journey Will Be Cancelled At The Last Minute, Stranding You Underground And Unable to Contact Your Boss To Beg Him Or Her Not To Fire Your Ass For Being Late Every Day?"


Why the hatred? It is just breakfast news, which is never going to be Newsnight, and I'd be a fool to expect anything more than fluffy nonsense and light chatter. What I would expect is at least a baseline level of competence, which we do not get. We only watch about twenty minutes of it on average, and in that small section of the show we always, always, get at least one mis-cued link, one sound error, or one wrong film clip. Oftentimes it's far worse than that.

I once mentioned this to a colleague of mine, and he immediately leapt to the defence of the show, saying it was no easy thing to make a live TV show, and yes, I'll grant that, but many live shows either come off without a hitch or with only the occasional error. In a small subsection of the show (which runs for 195 minutes) we get at least one screw up every day. Extrapolate that out to the full length of the show and we're talking about ten head-in-hands-level mistakes a day at the least. It's sad and hilarious viewing at the same time.


Those technical difficulties aren't the worst things about it, though. Not by a longshot. As I said before, I don't expect Newsnight or Channel Four News, and so it's churlish to complain about the presenters not being Paxman and Kearney or Snow and Hilsum, but my god, even by the usual standards of early morning TV presenters (in the UK and the US), regular hosts Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams are just appalling. Watching them struggle to comprehend even the most simple of subjects is hard on my teeth, as they tend to grind together every time Bill says something inane, or Sian misunderstands what their guests are trying to say. They're so bad they make me nostalgic for Dermot Murnagurnah and the fragrant yet icy Kate Silverton. Yes, that bad.


I've considered writing something about this godawful show for some time now, momentarily inspired by various car-crash interview gaffes, such as the morning Bill asked Simon Pegg about drinking eggs a grand total of four times, obviously because that was the only bit from the Run, Fatboy, Run trailer that penetrated his braincasing, or yesterday's debacle when Joanna Lumley tried to get up from her seat in the middle of a link to local news which panicked Bill so much he practically rugby tackled her back down. There are many more examples, but those are the ones that spring to mind.


However, my ire was finally raised to blogging point by a segment about the release of Grand Theft Auto IV which, as expected, was used to say nothing more than, "Video games are destroying civilisation by turning your children into murderers." I could tell because Bill and Sian's faces were set not to Puff Piece Perky, but to Serious Story Stern. After a quick nod to the success of the franchise, this little factoid was used as proof of the game's insidious hold over the nation's children, as various non-statistics about the violent nature of the game led us into an interview between Team BS and two gamers, one casual, one working for the BBC. Surprisingly the "debate" wasn't held between the gamers (which is the usual course when news items are discussed in the studio), but between them and Bill and Sian, who pointed out time and time again that games are for kids and are violent and therefore are bad for kids and hence everyone is doomed.


It was already heading downhill by the time the first question was asked, which followed on from an email sent in from someone who thinks GTA IV was "symptomatic of the degenerating society", and that it allows people to live out a "fantasy of evil," leading Bill to ask the gamer if he has a fantasy of evil of his own. Sadly the guy didn't tell him to shut up, instead arguing for the game by saying it allows people to get rid of their pent-up aggression, which led Sian to ask the BBC gamer if that was the same for him, and to add, "I'm not suggesting you're violent in any way or give in to violent urges." By then it was obvious the game has been framed as only appealing to people who are drawn to violent things exclusively. Later Bill asked if the game has any redeeming qualities, if the characters give to charity or help people. Seriously, if Bill and Sian were a TV show, they'd be Monarch of the Glen. If they were a book, they'd be The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Where their brain should be, there is merely a tombola, used to raffle off a set of china teapots commemorating the coronation of King George VI.


When it was pointed out by the BBC gamer that GTA IV isn't on sale to children, Sian batted that away with the argument that kids would want to play it anyway. Of course they do. They're curious. When I was young I wanted to watch anything that was forbidden, and not even the exciting stuff. I remember staying up to watch some of the Red Triangle films shown on C4 late at night, though sadly the one or two rather earnest European art movies I caught have faded from memory compared to the proper innocence-destroying stuff (early viewings of The Thing, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Videodrome). So what does she suggest? Infantilising ourselves and censoring all art and culture just in case some children stumble across something that might do some harm? (And I emphasise might as there are conflicting reports about the corrupting influence gaming has on young minds.) I say this all the time in real life, and I'm introducing it to the blog now; it's the 21st Century, you fuckers. KEEP UP!!!


Even for BBC Breakfast, the whole thing was offensively facile. The Beeb gamer tried to draw attention to the huge success of the franchise and how great it was that it was developed by Rockstar Edinburgh, but that was ignored by the presenters who were utterly incapable of seeing the release as anything other than another nail in the coffin of humanity. Another emailer, your archetypal concerned mother, accepted that the game wasn't for kids, but stated even eighteen year-olds don't have the emotional maturity to deal with the themes presented by the games (and then said why not celebrate the nice things in life, for crying out loud). Why stop there? Maybe eighteen year-olds don't have the emotional maturity to deal with anything. Let's take the vote away from them, stop them joining the army, stop them driving. And what age are you ready to handle any of this? Twenty? Thirty? Life begins at forty, so let's make that the default age.

It ended with Sian commenting that kids should be playing "that tennis on the computer that just went 'bip!' and 'bip!". Fine, Sian, if it makes you happy, we'll throw out years of programming progress just for you. Thanks for contributing nothing to the debate other than to continually turn it around so that game designers and gamers have to prove a negative instead of pundits and panicky parents having to prove games are corrupting on something a little stronger than conjecture and fear of the unknown. Now that you've done that, can the adults do what they want now? Please? The despicable Mail bitches that the BBC has a left-wing bias and rails against it every day, but this kind of insulting, alarmist, blinkered, ill-informed, paranoid, Luddite idiocy is just the sort of thing it loves. The Mail and Breakfast should get married and have stunted babies who can't feed themselves, are terrified of the modern world, and can only talk in racist, homophobic code phrases.

Wow. I feel like Will Graham up in this bitch. In the scheme of things, yes, the shoddiness of Breakfast is nothing to write home about, but this is a subject I get very annoyed about. I guess I should be grateful that they didn't trot out the "proof" so often used by lazy churnalists that another Rockstar game, Manhunt, warped one kid's mind so much he murdered his friend, even though he didn't own it, may have never played it, and any link between the murderer and the game was disputed by the police who investigated and the judge presiding over the case. Instead we got a lot of emotive nonsense about protecting kids from amoral culture intended solely for adult usage, none of which can be considered journalism or news. It's comment, and poorly thought through as well.

And what came up after that? Talking to Robert Webb and Ella Smith about the current West End run of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig, which could have been the starting point for an interesting debate about size fascism and peer pressure, or even a discussion about what the fuck LaBute's problem with women is, but instead turned into Sian asking if the play was like Shallow Hal, Bill asking if they keep laughing at all of LaBute's high-larious jokes while performing, and whether Robert Webb was filming another series of That Mitchell and Webb Thing. I guess it's good to see their momentary contact with the depravity of gaming hasn't changed them, if you enjoy cringing, that is.

ETA: Just after I finished this post, I read this article in the Times, telling of a horrible knife attack in Croydon while waiting for the midnight opening of Gamestation. It's terrible that someone was assaulted in that manner, but the article continues to draw parallels between the game and violence that don't hold up. The perp obviously has rage issues, but is that because of playing the GTA games? Or was he already like that? There's no causal link established there, merely a confluence of events, unless the guy suddenly screams, "It was the games wot made me do it!".

Even more annoying is that some poor guy got mugged yesterday, and his copy of GTA IV was stolen, which is reported in that article as if it is further proof of the corrupting influence of the game. That's not the fault of the game. It's a desirable object. Tragically, people get mugged for their desirable objects all the time. Should we ban iPods and mobile phones? No matter how often bad journalists try to link gaming with crime, it just won't wash. I expect to read more of this nonsense over the next few months.

ETA again: According to Florida attorney Jack Thompson, "Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio." He also says, "indictments should be handed down against Wal-Mart, Best Buy, GameStop, and all other retailers distributing this game to minors at their retail stores, openly, to kids who are only seventeen." Of course. They would be breaking the law, after all. However, he also says, "indictment should also be against Sony and Microsoft which are making this pornographic game available to minors, and openly so, on their PS3 and Xbox systems." What, just for making the game and making machines to play the game on? This argument only works if you assume games consoles are exclusively used by kids who are not legally being sold the game. Gamers are not just kids, you cretin. Now go find something important to rail against instead of playing to the worst instincts of the voter. Oh God, I'm getting this annoyed about it all and I don't even like the GTA games. I realise that they're great, but I've never spent enough time with them to get as obsessed as millions of other people have. I need to move on before I really do burst into flame.

Yet Another Important Message From Will Graham

From the case-log of FBI Special Agent Will Graham:

This job, it never ceases to amaze me. As a psychological profiler for the FBI, I have to deal with some real wackos. This week I've been researching a case, a tough one, trying to get into the head of some guy who likes to wrap houses so tightly in tinsel that the brickwork bulges. I get into his mindset, see what made him into the sick son-of-a-bitch he is, and I realise he wasn't allowed to wrap his Christmas tree in tinsel when he was a kid. It was okay for him to hang ornaments and lights and angles and whatnot, but not tinsel. So now he's the West Coast Tinsel Terrorist, and five innocent victims had to claim insurance on their bulging houses. There's no such thing as a victimless crime.

While I've been dealing with all this crazy, I get to thinking about childhood, and what it means to be a kid in this day and age. The world's a scary place, believe me. I'm an expert on this. That's the thing, though. You need a little scary, like a vaccine against the world. You need to rub up against weird stuff when you're that small. It makes you a better person.


So what do I find out when I get home to my wife and kid? That the internet has been tearing itself apart over Where The Wild Things Are, a film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's book about monsters. I never read it. Too busy reading and re-reading Mark Felt's book about the FBI, which my young brain interpreted as being kinda hinky. I read it over and over and over, and for some reason I couldn't explain at the time, it struck me that this guy was someone who would not be able to keep a secret, would you, you son-of-a... Anyway, I never read the Sendak book. Maybe I should have.

Seems a lot of film lovers out there, people who understand art and think that this Spike Jonze guy is the real deal thanks to those amazing Charlie Kaufman adaptations, they're getting upset because you guys at Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures are rumoured to be considering reshooting the move, because kids think it's kinda scary. Well, I say scare them. Reading all of those books on serial killers when I was a kid freaked me out, but look at me now. The FBI's top criminal profiler. I caught The Tooth Fairy! And Hannibal Lecter! What has your kid done today, faceless corporate art-hater, other than watch Spongebob and drool a lot while you stare at Bloomberg on another TV and count huge numbers in your head?

So, you get a little worried because you showed the movie to some people and they didn't like it. Fine. Be worried. You should be. Investing in movies is never a sure thing. It's a gamble. You're all gamblers. Anyone is who puts up money. The difference is that this time, yeah, you may win or lose, but there's a damn good chance you'll be creating something of lasting value anyway, something that might pay off big-time in the long run. Jonze and Eggers are no slouches. They've been doing pretty good for a while now. Have you seen Being John Malkovich? Have you read A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius? And by "read" I don't mean "optioned because you saw it on the New York Times bestsellers list". We're talking some serious talent that is only now beginning to bloom. You're obviously used to taking a chance. Hell, you invested in a truly crappy script by Shyamalan even though other executives backed off, so why can't you just take a leap of faith and stick by a film made by a talented director with an acclaimed script that has already been shot and just needs some post-production work done on it?

But you're not going to do that, are you? Why take chances creating something different when you already have an idea in your head of what kid's movies are like. They're garish. They're not realistic. They're noisy. They're not contemplative. They talk down to kids. They don't treat them like perceptive beings. They have a lot of fart gags. They're not bothered with addressing what it's like to be a child. They have a soundtrack by Danny Elfman. They don't have a soundtrack by Carter Burwell and Karen O from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs.


They star some loud formerly funny actor bellowing tacky jokes and winking at the camera every two minutes. They don't feature voicework by the brilliant Lauren Ambrose and James Gandolfini. They wreck a beloved book by adding ad-libs that "appeal" to adults that you think would be horrified by the thought of having to sit in a cinema with their kids watching something they might not understand. They don't adapt a book by honouring the themes and tone of that book, or risk alienating the adults by making something that will speak to the intended audience in a visual language they might find appealing, thus sticking in their minds and affecting their lives for the better.


But that's understandable. The last kid's movie that I remember treating children with respect was Babe 2: Pig in the City. It was released poorly by a studio scared of angering the audience that had turned up to see a carbon copy of that wonderful original only to find animal death and sadness and surrealism and bleak honesty. It failed at the box office. It cost a lot of people their jobs. Not what a studio that has been damaged by the writers strike wants to think about, especially during the absorption of Bob "Shady" Shaye's New Line.


Forget that movie, right? Except no one who saw it could, because it is a work of goddamn genius, you sons-of-bitches! It was like nothing made before, and it treated kids like smart, growing, curious, resilient human beings who love to be challenged way more than adults do, and its fanbase has grown over the years, enough so that a discussion about Richard Kelly's overrated Lynch-lite Donnie Darko will get derailed by excitement over the thought of this lost classic being reappraised by a classy hipster from the AV Club. But what chance does love of a work of genius have against the possibly of the third quarter of 2008 showing a drop in revenue that can be attributed to one of those gambles you are always making? I'll tell you, you son-of-a-bitch! No chance! That's right, isn't it, you son-of-a-bitch! No chance at all!!!!


Well, it doesn't matter in the long run. Even I know it's just a film, even though I'm pissed at you all. Hopefully this is worry for nothing. Perhaps the movie really is crap and it has nothing to do with your cowardice, and you're actually right for a change. Perhaps you do intend to release it properly, and all this worry is for nothing. But we're watching you. There are those of us have been alerted to your possible strategies, and we're aware you're capable of doing to Jonze what you did to Paul Schrader on that crappy Exorcist movie, and we're already getting mobilised, albeit slowly. So know this. You're on notice, executives.


[In background, voice heard telling Graham there is a package waiting for him.]

Oh wow! It arrived! The new Lost game from Ubisoft, Via Domus! I've been looking forward to this for months. Everything's going to be alright. Everything's going to be just fine.

::Cue "Heartbeat" by Red 7::

Another important message from Will Graham

From the case-log of FBI Special Agent Will Graham:


So, Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers president J. Nicholas Counter (far left), I see that you have spent the weekend calling out the Writers Guild of America instead of trying to reach an agreement. It's not your fault, right? They walked out even though you asked the negotiations to continue. Negotiations you would quite happily see continue on and on without resolution just so programmes and films could continue to get made. A cynical man might think that you appear to have no intention of using this as an opportunity to put right one of the oldest injustices in the TV and movie industry. But hey, I guess that makes sense. After all, as you have said:

Instead of working toward solutions that would give the industry the flexibility it needs to meet today's business challenges, the WGA leadership continues to pursue numerous unreasonable proposals that would result in astronomical and unjustified increases in our costs, further restrict our ability to produce, promote and market TV series and films, and prohibit us from experimenting with programming and business models in New Media.

Sure. Flexibility. Because the last thing you want to have stop you from creating new ways to push product is to have to pay anyone other than yourselves and your stockholders. I remember you were all for flexibility last time this happened, when writers expressed concern about the way royalites from VHS and laserdisc sales were agreed, which then blew up in their faces and continues to do so. I'm sure your heart bleeds for the TV writers who see shows that they worked on packaged in those lovely high-selling boxsets and the royalties from them amount to so little.


But who cares about that, right? You have your friends and peers telling you you're doing the right thing. Writers earn, on average, $200000 a year, so they're fine, right? Even though it's not a guaranteed wage, and they might have to depend on the residuals in the future. That's not important. After all, your union-hating friends in the GOP think writers are whiny assholes too, don't they? Don't they?!?! And they cannot imagine people supporting them, because seriously, who would support a bunch of people getting screwed over when they could side with a bunch of empty, talentless suits?

"Sometimes I have to break the news to clients that the only people who care passionately about their grievances are themselves," says Eric Dezenhall, once part of the Reagan White House communications office and now a crisis manager. "Before you launch what is in part a PR war, you have to evaluate whether your grievance resonates with people outside of your self-interested clique."

Yeah, self-interested clique. Irresponsible. Meanies who won't roll over. That's what you think of someone trying to get a fair shake of the stick. That's the snobbish attitude you have, in your platinum-plated tower, eating pheasant and picking your teeth clean with ivory toothpicks. This is why shows I love are turning to crap right before my eyes. This is why I have to wait extra months for new episodes of a certain island-based sci-fi show and the latest adventures of Mr. Jackson Bauer esq. after I've already had to wait too damn long. This is why Office regulars Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak and Paul Lieberstein may have to cross a union line to fulfil their jobs as actors and producers even though they support the strike. Not because the writers are unreasonable, but because you are.

You're wrong!!! And everyone out there with even a minimal understanding of economics or even the slightest hint of empathy for people being screwed by the monolith of heartless Big Business will understand that. Can you understand? Can you?!!! CAN YOU, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!!!!


Maybe I should put this into perspective, you son of a bitch! While you right fatuous, mean-spirited insults about unreasonable strikers, and allow your website to be filled with FAQs that portray writers as scum, real writers, creative people who are able to see the world in a way you could not possibly understand, can go out there and deal with the subject like this:



That's a human being reacting there, not a walking tickertape of stock market news.

[In background, voice heard asking if Graham is alright]

Yeah honey, everything's going to be alright. Everything's going to be just fine.

::Cue "Heartbeat" by Red 7::

An important message from Will Graham

From the case-log of FBI Special Agent Will Graham:

You got what you wanted, didn't you, Coogan. Became a big name in Hollywood. Big for someone who plays a useless old sports presenter on BBC2 with that stupid catchphrase, that is. Got to sleep with a big celebrity with a history of messed-up behaviour, lots of publicity for both of you. You didn't realise she was clean though, unlike you. You're still doing drugs, but she's stopped. She's got a kid growing up, and she doesn't want her to get messed up. But that wasn't enough. You had to take someone down. Cuz that's the way you think, that's what makes your mind tick. Like an evil clock ticking evilly.

So you work with Owen Wilson, and he falls into your trap. Cuz you're like a spider, a heartless spider sitting in a web of drugs and lies. You take drugs. He takes drugs. You lie and he believes you. His girlfriend leaves him, and things get bad. Real bad. And you don't care, do you. Because you feed off it. Like a vampire/spider hybrid sitting in a web of drugs, feeding on bad psychic energy, and ticking like an evil clock. With a stupid catchphrase.

It was you, wasn't it. It was you who pushed him to it, wasn't it you son-of-a-bitch! You got high, and he got high, and he paid the price, didn't he!!! DIDN'T HE, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!!!!



And now I'm stuck in your mindset, just like the time I took down that psycho Lecter. If I'm gonna get you out, I have to take you down. I tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to phone a friend of Owen's, someone you worked with once, in that stupid movie no one watched. You know, the Jules Verne film that everyone hated and made no money. This friend, he's going to be mad. You already know, you don't want to get this guy mad. Because he's Jackie Goddamn Chan.



Man, I loved those guys in that movie. The Singin' In The Rain fight scene, the eel-in-the-pants joke, the way Owen keeps being mean to Charlie Chaplin... I could watch that all day long.

[In background, voice heard asking if Graham is alright]

Yeah honey, everything's alright now. Everything's going to be just fine.

::Cue "Heartbeat" by Red 7::



The moral of this story is, don't mess with FBI Special Agent Will Graham. He always gets his man. Get well soon, Owen Wilson.

[Inspired by absurd and scurrilous gossip, Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, Michael Mann's Manhunter, and the ravings of Masticator and Canyon]