T w e n t y S i d e d

Before we can talk about The Grand Tour, we have to talk about Top Gear.

Top Gear was a strange show. At it’s high point it was the most widely watched factual TV program in the world. The show began in 1977 as a fussy, just-the-facts automobile program. Based on the clips I’ve seen on YouTube it had a dash of humor, but it was still dedicated to something approximating automotive journalism. The show died out in the 90s and was then rebooted in 2002. The new version of the show was a little slicker and maybe had a little more joking around, but it was still trying to review cars and discuss motoring news.

Over the next decade the humor element of the show grew. It became more about the hosts and less about the cars. The cast seemed to go through a certain degree of flanderization. Jeremy Clarkson got more bombastic. James May became even more of a fussy old man. There was a proliferation of short jokes about Richard Hammond.

BBC was in a strange spot. They had the most popular television show in the world, but the show also caused a lot of controversy and complaints, usually (but not always) due to Jeremy Clarkson’s big mouth. I can’t begin to sum up the differences the two had, but they were far-reaching. In 2015 after numerous disagreements and warnings, Clarkson finally went too far and the BBC dumped him. Hammond and May jumped ship shortly after, along with the fourth invisible member of the team, producer Andy Wilman.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “TV I’m Watching: The Grand Tour”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Narcos tells the story of the drug war between the Colombian government and a series of Colombian drug lords, with a handful of Americans acting as our main characters even if they weren’t of central importance to the events in question. The show is shot on location, in Spanish, with proper period clothing / technology / cars. This gives the show an incredible level of verisimilitude, even before you realize that it’s all based on real events.

How can you tell which parts are real and which are Hollywood fiction? Easy. The parts that flow like a proper story with character arcs, suspense, and intrigue are fiction, and the cartoonishly implausible stuff about the cartels is real.

The first two seasons told the story of Pablo Escobar, and that guy is where most of the really strange stuff comes from. The guy was basically The Joker, let loose in a world without Batman. Or maybe he was a James Bond supervillain in a world without a James Bond.

The closest thing we have to a super-spy in this story is the morally compromised and profoundly cynical CIA agent Bill Stechner. He’s not here to stop the cartels, he’s here to enforce the ever-shifting will of the US State Department. He’s good at his job and you get the feeling he’s done some really ugly shit in his life, but he’s not the hero and he’s nowhere near being a main character. Like so many fascinating personalities in this story, he’s lurking on the edges of the action and making you wonder how much of him is based on real people or stories.

This isn’t a simplistic story about Escobar vs. The Cops. This story is fractal. At a high level you’ve got the cartels, the USA, and Colombia. But the “Cartels” are a conglomerate made of organizations made of families made of gangs. The USA is likewise made up of different factionsThe military, the CIA, and the DEA. that engage in a lot of infighting. Colombia is a complex country with different economic, geographical, and political groups. Nobody’s 100% a saintAlthough Colombian president César Gaviria comes out looking pretty good. I often wonder what Colombians think of his portrayal on the show. and nothing is clear-cut. The fight against Escobar was a never-ending string of trolley problems mixed with the prisoner’s dilemma mixed with a version of the sunk cost fallacy based on human lives instead of money.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “TV I’m Watching: Narcos”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.