Kevin Watterson

The Time Criminal Minds Insulted All Of St. Paul

The genesis for this post began a year ago during an episode of Criminal Minds featuring some inconsistencies that only an #avgeek would probably spot. Like most of my blog ideas, it fell by the wayside. Then another one popped up during last fall’s premiere of Supergirl (CBS) and this post got real.

It’s a beast putting a 42-minute drama together. Such a chore that they can only shoot about 7 minutes of show per day. In one of my posts on the Warner Bros. VIP studio tour I described how laborious it can be to shoot a simple exchange of dialogue between two characters, and it helps understand why shooting goes so slow. With all that work it’s easy to see how little things like what I’m about to show slip by.

So don’t mistake this post as criticism. What follows are a couple of things I’ve noticed that are completely inconsequential but amusing. At least to me.

Supergirl_Plane

Supergirl saves an airplane…

…that probably couldn’t fly anyway. The first thing to get out of the way here is that I do understand this is a scene involving a flying woman, which is impossible according to the current understandings of any number of scientific disciplines. But it’s hard to consider that a goof when she’s the main character.

What got me here is what’s highlighted in the screencap below. This single-level quad-jet (most analogous to the Airbus A340) has its horizontal stabilizers mounted to the fuselage (lower arrow). Pretty common for aircraft with wing-mounted engines.

Now look to the upper arrow. The stabilizers there are mounted on the tail fin.
That’s what we call a T-tail, for obvious reasons. T-tails are typically found on planes with engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage.“You’re losing me, airplane nerd.” Here’s the thing: Planes have a T-tail or a stabilizer mounted on the fuselage, not both. Both would be…weird…and seriously screw with the aerodynamics of an aircraft. That’s why they don’t exist.

Criminal Minds insults all of St. Paul

In Season 8, Episode 17 of Criminal Minds the BAU took a case that brought it to the Minneapolis suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul has its own skyline (which I think is better than that of Minneapolis, for what it’s worth), but you’d never know it according to this piece of art hanging in the St. Paul Police Department.

St. Paul is known for having a delicate ego, so we would caution its residents to not get too bent out of shape about this. The folks at Criminal Minds have to make a new police department set every seven days so let’s cut them some slack.

Okobohgeez, X-Files

I was just settling into the X-Files in Season 1, Episode 4 when Mulder and Scully followed a case to the northwest Iowa town of Okoboji. I’m pretty familiar with Okoboji, or “the lakes” as we call it back home. It’s a chain of towns and lakes about half an hour from where I grew up. Okoboji sits in a flat land, the nearest hill of any kind is the Ocheyedan Mound, which towers 1,650 feet above sea level. Here’s a photo.

So imagine my bemusement when the agents’ car rolls past the sign for Lake Okobogee. Or when tall mountains blanketed with coniferous trees loom behind them. The filming location was actual Buntzen Lake in British Columbia, where X-Files filmed.

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Let’s overlook the fact that the episode was about a young boy named Kevin who was having government transmissions beamed into his brain. In northwest Iowa.

Criminal Minds drives #avgeeks crazy

I saved the inspiration behind this post for last, and I’m going to brag about it. You read this far, bear with me. The episode opens outside a 747 that’s supposed to be halfway between Pittsburgh and Phoenix, which it wouldn’t be because no airline is going to fly a 747 between those domestic markets (airlines don’t fly scheduled 747 service on any domestic routes). Because it’s mid-flight, the plane is supposed to be at its cruising altitude, but the video they show is of a plane shortly after takeoff. Its landing gear are retracting in the first few frames – a dead giveaway that the plane is not at 37,000 feet. You can also see the flaps extended, as they might to help get the 747 in the air.

The second #avgeek goof comes from the interior shots. The 747 is a twin-aisle aircraft, but the interior shots are shot on a single-aisle set. Oooh, that’s a big goof! #eyeroll

Last one, I promise. When Dr. Reid hangs the aircraft blueprint on the wall it clearly says 727 Structural Schematic. The 727 and 747 are vastly different planes. The most striking difference would be the 727’s lack of the distinctive hump the 747 is known for. Another obvious unsimilarity would be that the 747 has four wing-mounted engines while the 727 has two engines mounted on the rear fuselage and one in the tail.

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The Man In The High Castle Is Terrible

In some writers’ room somewhere:

Hey, we have this great idea for a television show. Here it is:

Setting. Nazi Germany dropped a nuclear bomb on Washington, DC, leveling the US government and winning the war. Then the Nazis and the Japanese split the continent with Japan taking most of what’s west of the Rockies and the Nazis taking the land to the east. We’ve got great names for them like “Japanese Pacific States” and “Greater Nazi Reich.” (There’s some space in the middle that we’ll call the neutral zone, with a city called Canon City in it, which is basically Denver.)

There’s a resistance, of course, and they’ve got these films. It’s set in the 1960s so they’re actually old film reels in tin cases. Retro. We’ll give the films cool names like The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. They’re movies about what America might be like if they’d won the war and we’ll hint that maybe they’re not movies at all but actually real, as if the characters are somehow being hidden from the truth. Later we’ve got them watching one of San Francisco after it’s been atom bombed. Don’t worry – we’re not going too far down that road of alternate reality though. We know that sci-fi scares people. People in the resistance have to move these films through an underground network to “the man in the high castle” but they don’t know who that is. Spoiler alert: It’s Hitler. Right?! We think so.

And oh yeah, Hitler has Parkinson’s.

There’s also this whole thing with a Japanese trade minister and a Nazi who turns on the Reich. We have him getting caught but regaining their trust and getting sent to actually meet Hitler even though he still plans to kill him. But because we’re doing alt-history the führer talks him out of it and the guy shoots himself.

Our second side plot is someone shoots the Japanese prince. The boyfriend of a woman running films wanted to do it and bought a gun and the bullets to do so, but he chickens out an a Nazi sniper beats him to it. (Side note here: Guns are outlawed and there’s a registry for anyone who the governments allow to buy them. Yeah – we’re going there!) We’ve got DJ Qualls lined up to be his friend who eventually gets blamed for it.

Okay, now, we were a little coy about these films. In the one of a post-nuclear San Francisco we have two characters watching it – our guy who wanted to shoot the prince and our girl who’s running the films. While they watch one of them we see the guy get executed by a Nazi. Here’s the snake in the mailbox: The Nazi is our main character who’s been undercover helping the girl, pretending to be part of the resistance.

We’re going one step further in the finale: At the very end, the Japanese trade minister opens his eyes and he’s in the actual post-WWII America with baseball and flags and Ronald Reagan.

It’s all based on a book, by the way.

My advice: Read the damn book. This show, The Man In The High Castle, is a snoozefest. A bore of bores. If you’re not familiar with how Amazon Studios develops its original content, it works somewhat similar to regular television by ordering pilots and then a full series of what rises to the top. In this case it produced an outstanding pilot that was visually gorgeous with nuggets like a character ordering beer saying “make it cold” and a positively creepy scene where a police officer casually describes the ashes falling from the sky as the hospital burning the sick, handicapped and other drags on the state. Unfortunately none of that carried beyond the pilot. It’s like the producers put everything into their pitch and had nothing left for the actual work.

The stories themselves are just plain boring. There’s nothing interesting here. There’s the undercover Nazi, Joe, who struggles with his feelings for the female lead, Julia, and his orders to stop and ultimately kill her. Julia’s got her own issues with wannabe assassin boyfriend, Scott, and wanting to find out what is up with these films that got her sister killed. Sounds interesting, but it really isn’t. It’s as if they said well it it’s an interesting backdrop so whatever we do will be compelling. It isn’t.

It’s such a disappointment. The premise is really compelling. The idea that the Nazi-Japanese rule might be an illusion is awesome, but it remains unexplored for most of the season. I’d suggest this show remain unwatched in your Prime video playlist.

Photos: Paramount Studios VIP Tour

After doing the all-day VIP tour at Warner Bros. Studios when I was in Los Angeles a few years ago, the 5-hour VIP tour at Paramount Studios was on my to-do list for my visit this past July. Because it was late July we were on the early end of filming for the fall TV season, so unfortunately the streetscapes were off-limits for the day. Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was filming an explosion scene on the main New York street, but we were able to sneak a look as some guys in tactical gear ran out of a building, followed by some smoke and a scaffolding tower rigged to fall. Exciting! I meant to watch the season premier to see if I could catch the scene, but of course I forgot.

With Paramount Studios of the course the big attraction is its famous gate. Though not the main gate anymore it is still a thrill to think about how many Hollywood stars passed through it.

Paramount Studios gate — This is the famous gate at Paramount Studios, from back when it was known as Paramount Pictures.

One of the things I enjoy about studios is the way everything on the lot is made generic enough to be the backdrop for any film shoot a production might need. This courtyard outside the gift shop is a gathering place for studio employees, but the area is landscaped in a way for it to be shot as a park, a backyard or the outdoor courtyard it really is.

The area below is built the same way. Studio employees work inside while cameras roll outside when the building needs to be an embassy, hotel or a residence.

Paramount Studios courtyard — Part of the courtyard just beyond the Paramount Studios gate.

And speaking of residences, doesn’t this look like it could be the living room window of a house in just about anywhere? It’s actually right across from the buildings in the previous photo, and it was Alfred Hitchcock’s office.

Alfred Hitchcock office window — The window of Alfred Hitchcock’s office at Paramount.

Here’s another great example: These offices are built to look like a motel. A similar office building at Warner Bros. was used for hotel scenes in Argo.

Paramount Studios office — An office building at Paramount that doubles as apartments or hotels when they need it to.

For more exterior shots Paramount built alleyways on the back of some of its sound stages. On one side they are the large numbered buildings people think of, like this Stage 9 where NCIS: Los Angeles shoots. In the bottom right you can even see an exterior set the show uses for an outdoor entrance.

NCIS LA set — NCIS Los Angeles sometimes uses that entry set for exterior shots.

This is what it looks like just around the corner. Filmed on one side it could be the back of some warehouse buildings; filmed from the other it’s an old apartment building or hotel. The grungy exterior is a paint effect to make it look older. Does anything look a little off? Check out the electric pole. It’s built short on purpose to help sell the illusion. Chances are you’ve seen countless short poles on movies and TV without noticing. Magic!

You can see how a tight shot at night would make this appear like a dark alley. Note the short electric pole.

The brick street, by the way, is kinda fake. Basically a type of plastic.

Throw some litter on the sidewalk and this looks like the kind of place you might not want to walk alone at night.

Paramount streetscape set — This streetscape set is build on the back of a soundstage.

As this wider shot shows, it’s just he side of a building. The dirty paint effect is here as well to sell the look.

Notice the electric pole? They build them shorter to be more easily fit into a shot and make the scene more believable.

I put this photo here because the walls here (most likely made of wood, not tile or steel like they appear) have the same wear painted on them as the blue doors on the streetscape above. Maybe you’ll see them in on of your favourite fall shows.

Paramount Studios sets — Some wood panels about to be assembled and believed to be tile walls or a steel door.

This construction shop says NCIS on it, but no one knows why that’s there.

Paramount Studios set construction — Construction at Paramount Studios is a 365-day a year job.

The last outdoor look before we went inside for lunch was at this golf cart, which actually belongs to Dr. Phil. The guys from Jackass stole it and decked it out with flames and the whole nine yards.

Dr. Phil's golf cart — Dr. Phil’s golf cart after the guys from Jackass got through with it.

We ate a catered lunch on the set of Dr. Phil. This was the only sound stage we got to enter, which is a stark difference from the Warner Bros. tours. At Paramount you can only get into studios your tour guide works on. Ours, an aspiring screenwriter, works as what is essentially a stage hand at Dr. Phil. Prior to the show he and other workers go through the line of visitors waiting to get in to watch the show and gives them cards that were dictate where they sit. It works exactly as you think it would: Attractive people in the front, ugly people in the back. Hollywood.

One question came up from multiple tour groups as we were eating: Are the guests real? Everyone who worked on the show insisted they are. Our guide told stories about confrontations back stage and even having to once chase guests as they ran right off the stage and out the door of the studio.

I should also note the stories about chaos behind the scenes on the Dr. Phil show.

We weren’t supposed to take any photos, no studio lets you do that. But I did.

Dr. Phil set — The set of Dr. Phil, minus furniture.

After lunch we got a look at some of the props used in Paramount’s films and a walk through its archive.

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The last image in the slideshow is the back of a wall build around the outside of the archive building. Here’s the view from outside. As you can tell, it’s painted to look like the sky. The cars are actually parked in what serves as Paramount’s water tank for large outdoor shots that need to look like they’re on the ocean or a lake. You can see along the bottom where they’ve built the walls up to hold the water in. In part because of the drought, but mostly because of the cost, the tank hasn’t been flooded in years.

Paramount Studios water tank — The water tank is rarely flooded and has been a parking lot for years.

It’s tough to tell unless you click through to the full-size image and zoom in further, but this is the only studio street in Hollywood with a clear view of the Hollywood sign. And yeah, those are some crazy clouds back there. They looked like the famous spaceship scene in Independence Day, except they were a bazillion times bigger. It looked like doom. There was a storm north of the mountains that never quite got over them, much to the dismay of communities stuck underneath it. I’ve lived in the Midwest my whole life and seem some pretty epic storm formations. But nothing like this.

Paramount Studios Hollywood sign — The street on the Paramount Studios lot that lines up perfectly with the Hollywood sign in the background.

The last real sight on the tour is this courtyard, and it was one of the most interesting. I didn’t know this, but Lucille Ball played a major role in Paramount history. Her office, dressing room is the building with the blue windows on the left. She had the grassy area installed for her kids so she could show that a woman and mother can work in Hollywood without neglecting her family. This blog from a costume designer who works in the building is a worth a read.

Ball and her husband, Dezi Arnaz, were major players in Hollywood, far more than I ever knew. As this blog explains, their idea to film with multiple cameras changed the way television was made (sitcoms are still shot this way) and they were instrumental in bringing Star Trek and Mission: Impossible to life.

Lucile Ball courtyard — Lucile Ball had this big courtyard built for her family to show she could run a studio and be a mom.

Paramount Studios offer a shorter tour if you don’t want to shell out $175 for the VIP experience. The Warner Bros. VIP tour is $250, but it’s a full day and you do see a little more than Paramount. If you’re hardcore and don’t mind spending the money, I would recommend Warner. If you want to se a little more than the standard tour, but don’t want to go all out, Paramount offers a great option.

Who (Might Have) Shot Annalise On #HTGAWM [UPDATED]

In my earlier post on season two of How To Get Away With Murder I mentioned we won’t know who shot Annalise Keating until the point when the writers can’t hide it any longer, and it looks like we’re two episodes away from that point. Thinking back to last year’s two big reveals – who killed Sam and who killed Lila – we couldn’t have made a realistic guess because the writer’s held the final reveal until the very last second.

I think the same will happen here. They might even do a little misdirection like they did with Sam. So while I think it’s a fool’s errand to go predicting who will shoot Annalise, I think it is worth taking a look back at what they’ve given us in the seven episode so far this fall. Every episode begins and ends around the Hapstall mansion and recent weeks have drawn in nearly every character relevant in season two. Here is a look back at each, starting with the season premiere.

Episode 1
Characters: Wes, Annalise
Wes is seen running from the Hapstall mansion.

Episode 2 – Two Months Earlier
Characters: Wes, Michaela, Laurel
Open
Wes is running from the mansion like in episode one. He meets Michaela and Laurel, who are looking for Connor. Connor is with the bleeding Annalise telling her it’s not her fault.

Close
Connor is with Annalise as the other three run in and convince him to leave her. As they run out of the mansion they go past the dead body of Emily Sinclair, the prosecutor going after Nate.

Episode 3 – 7 Weeks Earlier
Characters: Wes, Michaela, Laurel, Connor, Nate
Open
The four students are running out the mansion’s gate. Nate is in a car, calling Annalise but she can’t get to her phone in time.

Close
The four students are running in the woods and hid from a car, which turns out to be Nate, who gives them a ride. He’s in a police cruiser.

Episode 4 – 4 Weeks Earlier
Characters: Wes, Michaela, Laurel, Connor, Nate, Caleb Hapstall
Open
Law enforcement and paramedics are at the mansion with Annalise. The four students are still in the car with Nate when Michaela gets a call.

Close
Their car pulls up to an apartment building. Nate stresses that the only way they can get in trouble is to worry about things they can’t control. Laurel interjects that killing someone can get them in trouble. Nate reassures and says to focus. He sends Michaela inside. She goes into an apartment where Caleb Hapstall is waiting. He asks how she is, she assures him she’s fine but he gives her a look.

Episode 5 – 3 Weeks Earlier
Characters: Bonnie, Asher
Open
Bonnie runs out of the mansion, past Emily’s dead body. She gets into the driver’s seat of a car with Asher waiting. She promises him it’s almost over.

Close
Bonnie pulls into a gas station where she runs into the bathroom and ditches her bloody undershirt. The blood is under her left chest, similar to where Annalise was shot. She has blood all over her arms. When she comes out the car is still there but Asher is gone, he’s at the police station and says he needs to make a statement.

Episode 6 – 2 Weeks Earlier
Characters: Frank, Catherine Hapstall
Open
Annalise is brought into the emergency room where a frantic Frank follows her until he is removed. He leaves the ER, past a security camera, then calmly walks to his car where Catherine is unconscious in the back.

Close
Frank lays Catherine’s body in the woods. A cop finds her right as she awakens with a shirt covered in blood spatter.

Episode 7 – 4 Days Earlier
Characters: Michaela, Connor
Open
At the mansion, Michaela and Connor come down a set of interior steps as he tells her she doesn’t have to come if she doesn’t want to and that there are no excuses this time. Laurel and Wes overhear them and wonder what to do. Wes says to stop them and he has a gun.

Close
Michaela and Connor are just out of the mansion, Laurel and Wes are outside on an upper level. Connor tells Michaela not to turn back. Right then Emily’s body lands in behind them. They look up to see Bonnie standing above all of them on an upper level of the mansion.

The only ones we haven’t seen at the mansion this point are Frank, the Hapstalls and Oliver (whose fate is up in the air after the most recent episode). But the timing of what they gave us in episode seven is significant.

What happened here – Michaela and Connor leaving while Laurel and Wes, with gun in hand, overhear – happened before Emily died, meaning before what we saw at the mansion in every previous episode. Emily’s body first appeared at the close of episode two as Connor, Wes, Michaela and Laurel ran past it after the later three convinced Connor to leave Annalise.

Here are the questions that leaves:

Connor has to go back into the mansion at some point. Why?
Wes had to be separated from Michaela and Laurel at some point. How? What do those two do that gets them outside the mansion?
Wes didn’t have the gun when we first saw him running from the mansion. Where did it go? Is it the same gun he gets from Rebecca’s brother? Is it the gun used to shoot Annalise?
Is this why Bonnie was running out of the mansion?

We’ll get the answers to these questions, and probably others we don’t even know to ask, in the next two weeks.

UPDATE

And the latest from episode 8 – three days earlier.

Characters: Connor, Wes, Laurel, Michaela, Bonnie

Open

The four come running back into the house with Laurel saying “You seriously thought we wouldn’t notice?” and they are arguing. Connor says, “How are you both okay with this?” Bonnie comes down the stairs and meets them. She tells Connor there was no decision here and to agree or he’s the next dead body out there. Bonnie then asks for and gets the gun from Wes. She goes walking away.

There was no closing mansion scene. Instead the episode ending with the shocker that it may have been Katherine who shot her parents in tandem with her inbred brother. Caleb took Michaela to a heating vent where he found the gun hidden a week ago. Wes noticed one of Katherine’s paintings in the background of a photo of Philip (the inbred brother) playing video games.

So do we need to add Katherine and Philip to our suspect list? Annalise was exceptionally harsh toward him tonight, but he proved himself by bribing a lab assistant to run a DNA test that helped avoid Katherine taking a plea deal.

I still believe there’s something as yet unrevealed that we will need to know before we can reasonably guess who shoots Annalise. We’ll learn in 7 days.

How How To Get Away With Murder Gets Away With Everything

When they kept playing the promo clip of Annalise Keating writing on her chalkboard and drawing out the phrase “Howww to get aaawaaaay with muuurrrderrr” last fall I couldn’t get over how truly awful that show sounded. I’ve not been a big Scandal fan – tried the pilot, thought it was pretty lame – so the Shonda Rhimes connection didn’t do it for me either.

For some reason I watched the HTGAWM pilot.

I…loved it! Instantly hooked. Viola Davis was dynamite, oozing control and power in every scene. Spectacular. It made the show all the more impactful when they started to peel back the layers of Annalise’s invulnerability, and that was when HTGAWM shined. When Annalise took off her wig for the first time. When she confronted Sam. “Why’s your penis on a dead girl’s phone.” Bam!

Annalise is essentially a female anti-hero in the mold of all the male roles we (or I, at least) have grown tired of. But we see so few female characters in that role it’s not tired when Viola Davis does it. Keating is a brilliant lawyer who almost always wins and loves saving the underdog; she’s also a controlling, at times belligerent, figure who stops at nothing to portray and protect her power over everyone around her. The people who should hate her can’t hate her because she made them. Her control is absolute.

The best example came toward the end of season one when Bonnie dropped to her knees at Annalise’s feet to beg for continued acceptance. That’s why it was no shock to see Bonnie suffocate Rebecca in the basement. She knows Annalise is keeping at least one, probably two, killers in her circle. And they’re closer to Annalise than anyone. Bonnie wants to be that close. That’s the Annalise character in full glory.

Annalise is morally flawed in countless ways, as is every character on the show. It embraces and flaunts their shortcomings so freely that everything that happened in season one was completely believable. No one flinched when Frank emerged as Lila’s killer because it’s not a leap to believe knowing the way he uses his position to get in bed with Annalise’s students. It’s essential we see and believe their moral flaws in order for the show to create suspense. Everyone has to be a potential killer in order for someone to be.

I saw a note from a TV critic on Twitter that ABC didn’t send out the usual screeners for the season two premier. The critic speculated this happens when something big is going down, and she was right. If you’re going to end the episode with Annalise gasping for breath in a pool of blood you don’t want it being leaked.

So that’s our storyline for season two. Two months in the future, someone will shoot Annalise in the mansion of two children suspected of knife murdering their adopted parents. Just before the cliffhanger we hear the gunshot and see Wes running from the house. Did he do it? Last season would instruct us that there is much we don’t yet know, and won’t know until the moment when the writers can no longer hide it.

Supergirl saves an airplane…

Criminal Minds insults all of St. Paul

Okobohgeez, X-Files

Criminal Minds drives #avgeeks crazy

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