Preliminary thoughts on Red Thread, episode 6

I’m planning to write a critique on Red Thread for The Kent Ridge Common. I’m not going to publish it while the AWARE storm is wrecking havoc around the blogosphere, so I will watch another few more episodes to do the critique some justice. Until I do publish it, here are the notes for last night’s episode (Ep. 6)

Official synopsis:

Li Ann explains to Alex why she had to lie to her parents that they are dating. Kong has a heart to heart talk with Alex about Li Ann and makes it clear that he will make Alex suffer if he breaks Li Ann’s heart. A DVD from an anonymous sender wrecks Pamela‘s engagement party and causes her to flee from home.

Officially, I only watched half the episode. However, the parts that I did catch was (1) Justin catches Pamela running away from home, (2) Alex accompanying Li Ann home and subsequently get a talking down from Patrick Teoh Kong Wah, (3) Justin taking care of Pamela while she has her alcohol medication at the pub, and (4) Pamela waking up in Justin’s bed *dun dun dun*

I’ll refer to them as Scenes.

Scene 1 was pretty terrible. Pamela needs to cry better and her sorrow is unconvincing. While she may be heartbroken, a one-off glance doesn’t tell me she’s heartbroken. In real life, cries of sorrow attract attention and is recognised in a snap. She’s just walking briskly and talking at Justin. Justin has a pretty aloof role here, so even if he is non-acting, it certainly works here. If there was a time where overacting and melodrama could be used, it would be here.

Scene 2 was well done. Patrick Teoh as the Patriarch of the Kong family conveyed a “nobody-talks-shit-to-me” attitude well, and was the first time that I felt his character was treated with justice after 2 epsiodes (especially after Episodes 4’s poolside scene which was crap). There was some liberty being took with the camera in this scene with three different angles of Patrick Teoh talking Adrian Pang down. There was a side profile of Patrick; a foreground-background one with a silhouetted Patrick in the fore, and Adrian in the back; and the blandest frontal shot ever. I have no idea whose idea to film a webcam angle shot. Did they rescue that from his audition tape? The director seriously needs to use the camera to depict Patrick as an august, world-wearing but unfliching dictator.

Scene 3 was okay in general, but a few bits marred it. Pamela wants some revenge over her cheating fionce, and the (half) kiss with Justin felt terribly untense. Like it was supposed to be shocking, but everybody was expecting it anyway. Justin’s expression and non-reaction is priceless though.

Scene 4 is only a few seconds long, but deserves its own paragraph to comment. Pamela wakes up in bed. It’s instantly obvious that it’s not her bed, and it could have been shot or acted better to seem that it is her bed to increase the shock value of what would happen next, which is Justin walks in half naked in a towel, presumably just out of the shoower. I can accept that it’s probably a compromise to appeal to the “fan girls”, even though any person with any shred of EQ says that you fully dress yourself in the washroom if there’s a person in the other room. The following female shriek is cliche, and ends the episode on a downer. Omigod, did they sleep together? He wasn’t responsive to her in the first place but she’s like dressed down in bed and he’s naked and maybe he gave into temptation and she was drunk anyway but whatever, I don’t care. The tension wasn’t build well enough for me to get more involved. They’ll surely fall in love within several episodes, or otherwise the Pereirra family wouldn’t have been touted as ‘intertwined’ with the Kong family.

In conclusion: overall, there seems to be good set-up for plot-driven cliffhangers. However, this episode like getting an injection at the clinic. You get all tense when the doctor pulls out a needle but on the other hand you were expecting it anyway. Something happens, you forget how you felt in the first place, pay the man and go elsewhere for a lollipop.

Oh, and Alex’s sexual tension with the women? Nada.

Some quick random thoughts, not necessarily well organized or thought of

It’s reading week and I’ve barely started reading. Monday was “pass up the final paper” day, Tuesday was one of those horribly bad days, Wednesday was a lost day, Thursday was the beginning to catch up day, and finally today, after 20 kilometers on my bike at 6am in the morning I got down to work.

Which isn’t great because every page I read a paper for social policy, I reflect on everything else. For example, I wanted to write a large commentary about a link Rajan put up about liberal-utilitarianism and how I disagreed with some of the premises there but I don’t want to spend time on it at the moment. Like how the dude went like it’s okay to reduce one segment of society’s utility if it meant huge gains for others, which I don’t think is justifiable by other moral standards. Yeah, I’m paraphrasing here and I don’t want to argue… yet.

Also Hafiz commented on why pay taxes if the government is going to misspend it, and the short answer is that the government is going to put you in jail for tax evasion. The longer answer would be, under a more authoritarian government, people would have even less say where your tax money is going. Under a representative democracy, it should be taken that leaders will have a life of their own and people only have an indirect power over the content of government. He argues that the government needs to convince people that they have a stake in government. To add to his point, I would argue that people necessarily have a stake in being governed, even by a mediocre government (although not a completely dysfunctional one where there is effectively no state at all). A mediocre government always trumps the absence of government, and because demand for security is inelastic, government can always charge high taxes, although a weak government would make tax evasion possible because , which in turn cause a free-rider problem in a collective action dilemma (ooo big words). It’s essentially Hobbes’ Leviathan. They are thugs, they always will be thugs, it’s just a matter of how nice they are. I should throw in some Gramscian hegemony after this but I’m not in the mood for it.

Kent Ridge Common writing is down, there’s the exams and there’s been a brief spike of publishing. I have some material written down for the next article on Red Thread, but after reconsidering it I may have to scrap half of the current draft (which is about 300 words of a written 600 of an intended 1200) because it’s just not punchy enough. Also, I’ve sent out invitations to write a labour day special for KRC. Yaaaay.

In other thought, it struck me that the three things that are considered impolite conversation subjects (politics, religion and sex) are also the three things I consider the most important to talk about.

I’ve been listening to a podcast between William Lane Craig and Shelley Kagan on the necessity of God to have objective moral values. I don’t buy into Craig’s arguments, especially moral accountability. What interests me is that Shelley Kagan uses the veil of ignorance and the natural position to objectively base moral values, which essential says that Rawls was right in positing the natural position but perhaps was too quick to conclude the Maximin principle.

Oh, the author cited by Rajan also discussed the Maximin principle. Uh, yeah, not going to talk about that. Ok, mental diarrhea over!

Thailand’s Technocracy Can’t Take Trouble

Just a thought, speculating on Thailand. I don’t know enough of PM Abhisit’s personality, but what the new emergency in Thailand is indicative to me.

A foreign-educated technocrat like Ahbisit, can be relied to be good at managing the economy, bringing in investments, helping Thailand succeed internationally.

However, he’s poor at managing state-society relations. He’s poor at being a politician. He can’t rein in the different political factions in Thailand.

I believe that if you become a leader and you know that the opposition still has cards in their sleeves, you better cut a deal with them and make sure they don’t put you in a tight spot. Sometimes, you just have to compromise on smaller issues to achieve bigger priorities.

Now see what they’ve done. They’ve rejected constitutional means to changing government, caused a lot of trouble and they’ve no reason to stay within the system. You’ll be breeding hate and animosity by declaring an emergency.

Just incorporate them already to keep them on a short leash. If you want to be a great leader of your people, try thinking about getting the other side on your team.