My personal experience during that trial was really weird. I worked at an R&D Lab in Atlanta for a big company. It was a high stress, high stakes work environment. I was about 25 years old and brand new to the world of engineering.
My boss was a successful black man, not only in the white world of engineering, but in the black world of R&B music production - he produced the shows for one of the top names in R&B.
I was young and he trained me to understand radio frequency engineering. He was a mentor to me. I worked pretty much exclusively with him for over a year before I started working on other projects at that company, still under his supervision.
He was a flashy dresser - always had really nice suits with his ties in a full-Windsor knot that was somehow in a very very tight point at the bottom. He’s the only man I’ve ever known who could carry off a lot of gold and diamond jewelry. He was a very good looking man who was very into looks; his wife was beautiful and his daughter was a model. He drove a BMW.
In some ways, he was like OJ in that he had climbed out of a really impoverished background to be so financially and socially successful. He’d been a football player in college and then fought in the first Gulf War as an Army grunt.
I was with him when the verdict came down. We were in the cafeteria of our work. He was so angry about the verdict. I think it represented everything he was trying to leave behind by proving he could succeed. I know a lot of black people saw it as a victory, but I am sure he felt it was a set back.
I had an hour to kill a few days back, and so went to Netflix for a recommendation. It suggested that I’d enjoy The Blacklist, which I’d not even heard of before. James Spader vehicle from a few years back. Kind of a procedural cop drama thing with the twist that a key member of the ‘team’ is a high-end criminal that the team generally dislikes, but is too valuable to actually take off the streets.
I’m a few episodes in, and I don’t know. I like the twists and turns, and the mind-games, but the imagery is a little graphic for my tastes (which I’ll quite happily admit are decidedly on the milquetoast end of the spectrum).
While watching Game of Thrones with a friend a few years back, I discovered that my brain has a bit of an “off switch” which seems to get triggered by gore or other disturbing imagery. Somebody gets thumbs graphically jammed into his eyes, my friend reacts with horror and I don’t see anything at all. For me, it’s as if nothing happened; not even aware that I’m missing time when the thing happened in front of my face. Blacklist seems to typically fly just under the threshold where my brain switches off, but it’s still graphic enough that I find it unpleasant.
I’m sure that Game of Thrones and Westworld and similar shows are far worse in terms of the severity of violence and gore they show… but my brain switches off for those sections, so I’m entirely comfortable watching them. Blacklist, on the other hand, makes me distinctly uncomfortable for the few minutes per show when they want to show the criminal being cruel to somebody…
Just wondering what you thought of it. I love Eccleston but there are some cringy moments in that season so I always wonder what people think 1st time around.
Well, sure; but I think I’ve gone into this endeavor with some realistic expectations.
I’m aware that I’ve started watching a series that has a vast and well established fandom, and the earlier eps are bound to be a little rough around the edges, especially since I’m viewing them 12 years after the fact.
Overall, there was more for me to like than to dislike; so I look forward to seeing how the series has evolved since then.
I have to say that after reading these comments, it seems a little depressing that we are watching, or have watched, most of the shows discussed here. But we mostly download and watch, as opposed to just watching what is on.
Watching what is on usually equates to settling for whatever crap is on. I would like to think that I have far better things to do and am very glad we live in a golden age where I get to choose.
