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It’s fatal, for me, because not only is it glaringly obvious, it’s completely indefensible. Based on everything that’s come before, if Broyles were to call the team to a children’s hospital and reveal to them a completely hairless child, what would have happened is this: Broyles would have turned to a stunned Olivia and said, “Look familiar?” while the two Bishops stared through the window in shock and surprise.
Given the importance the FBI has placed upon investigating The Observer and his obvious connection to The Pattern — the existence of which is the entire reason that Dunham’s team exists in the first place — if they were suddenly and unexpectedly to happen upon someone (be it an adult or a child) who looked exactly like him, that would have informed every single action they took next, every single decision.
Instead, not one of the four main characters who know about The Observer — Walter because The Observer saved both Walter and Peter years ago, Peter because he encountered him in the woods, Olivia because she spotted him in Pattern-related photos, and Broyles because he’s in charge — bothered even to comment upon the resemblance in passing.
There are always moments in any television series where you just sort of agree with the writers via a wink and a nod to overlook something for the sake of the story at hand. But you can’t do that with an element of the overarching mythology of the show as major as The Observer and hope to maintain the integrity either of the story being told or of the characters within it.
Addendum: It should be noted as well that if the ultimate point, for the sake of argument, was that he wasn’t actually a mini Observer, that still would not excuse not having a single character comment upon it.
This isn’t, say, a case where a child was found who close and attentive viewers would notice had the same scar as some random character from twelve episodes ago. That would be something you could get away with not having anyone notice. Rather, this is a child who looks exactly like a key element of The Pattern. Yet no one mentions it.
In the end, if they just didn’t want to get into it, they could have engaged (ironically enough) in a wink and a nod via some Dr. Bishop hand-waving. Just have Olivia ask, “Is this another Observer?” and Dr. Bishop respond, “No, I don’t think so” and then move on with an impish lack of elaboration. Instead, they simply wrote all four of their main characters to be completely unobservant morons.
Twilight. I’m confused.
by Channing Frye
I’m just a guy venting. It’s a wildly famous book and series, but all I want to know is what am I missing? Did Bella watch too many episodes of Blade or what? Please, let me know. I’m trying to understand why we don’t write a book called “Big Dummy” starring Bella co-starring a herd of rabid moose.
End of excerpt.
10 Creation Vacations
by Mike Matthews and Pam S. Sheppard
Some Christians spend months and months finalizing details about where to stay and what to eat, but they never give a thought to their biblical worldview. When visiting zoos, museums, and parks, they often don’t even notice the unbiblical, anti–God teaching, even when they have children.
…
Why miss out on polar bears, rock canyons, and mounted dinosaurs—which God wants us to study and enjoy—just because of the secular propaganda? Such propaganda can even be turned into learning opportunities.
As a Christian, learn to recognize anti-biblical content, and discern how to answer the propaganda from the perspective of the Bible and solid, observational science. Your efforts will help prepare you and our next generation to live victoriously in this fallen world, as we defend the Christian faith without compromise and proclaim the gospel with authority.
End of excerpt.
Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism
by Susan Jacoby
The absence of triumphalism and religious certainty in the Second Inaugural merits particular notice in view of the political rhetoric, combining religion and the doctrine of American exceptionalism, that surrounds and attempts to sanctify America’s current military actions. As White notes, Lincoln “offered little comfort for those who in every crisis of war want to chant, ‘God is on our side.’” And even though the arguments of the Second Inaugural are grounded in biblical concepts, “Lincoln speaks forever against any ‘God bless America’ etiology that fails to come to terms with evil and hypocrisy in its own house.” Indeed, the impartial stewardship of Lincoln’s God — He gives both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came — may explain the initial coolness of the reception accorded his “greatest speech” in the North. The unmistakable implication of complicity in slavery on the part of all Americans, including Lincoln himself, was as far removed from the fervid moral righteousness of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as it is from George W. Bush’s pious excoriation of evildoers.
…
… Lincoln, who has less than six weeks to live, was speaking not as a theologian or a saint but as a good and merciful man (too merciful, in the view of many northerners who wished to see their southern compatriots punished severely for their rebellion against the Union). After Lincoln’s death, his would-be canonizers would appropriate that goodness and mercy under the banner of religion. The attempt to Christianize a president who had never been a member of a Christian church was predictable, if paradoxical, after a war of extraordinary brutality fought by both sides in the name of Christian righteousness. “There was something in the hearts of good and typical Christian[s] … which exploded,” commented a Union general who had witnessed the savage guerrilla warfare between northern and southern sympathizers in Missouri and Kansas, where thousands of civilians were tortured, mutiliated, murdered, or driven from their homes. If these were typical Christians, could Christianity truly be termed good? Could religion be relied on to soften the exploding hearts of men? The transformation of the martyred leader into patron saint of the new American political religion was an attempt to proclaim, in a confident affirmative, that religion was the answer. For Lincoln, poised between belief and unbelief, religion was the question.
End of excerpt.
Exactly why did I (and others, at my request) post a Twitter update today consisting of those words, addressed to Mike Doughty? Because this was April Fools’ Day, and for no particular reason at all I felt like summoning a ghost from the past.
