Yo Ho! How the Entertainment Industry Forced Me into a Life of Piracy

I don’t watch a great deal of television, but I am devoted to the shows I do watch. I read articles on them, watch promos and behind-the-scenes footage, trade trivia with my friends, and generally mine them for every scrap of entertainment value I can get out of them. The problem is that I very rarely get to watch them as they are broadcast due to wrangling Cub and Kitten into bed, a process that eats up damn near all of Prime Time. “Well,” I think, looking at the clock, “they’re finally asleep, but The Mentalist is half-over already. Oh well, I’ll catch it online later.”

A day or three later, I open the laptop and browse over to CBS’s site. Oh look…they have full episodes for almost every show available for viewing online. Notice that I said “almost” every show? Yeah…they only have short clips of The Mentalist. So off I go to the torrent sites or link farms, where dozens of hosts provide the content I want to watch.

Even if the networks are posting episodes, some of them are adding hoops and hurdles to get to them. TNT has this bizarre partnership thing going on where you have to log in with your cable provider information. The problem is that they don’t list my provider, which is the second-largest cable provider in the country. I sent them an e-mail explaining that I am perfectly willing to sit through commercials in an online episode, therefore contributing to their advertising revenue, but no one ever responded. Oh well. Guess I’ll use one of the streaming sites I have bookmarked to watch Leverage without the commercials.

Contrast all of this with ABC, which posts the last five episodes of Grimm on their site. That gives me a month or more to catch up, which I happily do.

Then there are the shows from other countries. Apparently, no one at any cable company, network, or studio has caught on to the fact that the first two Ws in “www” stand for “World-Wide.” For example, a friend just turned me on to the show Lost Girl. The show is about a girl who discovers she is a succubus, and is introduced to the world of the Light and Dark Fae. Very much up my alley. It’s an original series from Canadian cable channel Showcase, but SyFy just started airing it in the US. Here’s the thing, though…why would I wait for SyFy to air the episodes when I know there are almost two complete seasons of the show already out there? I went to Showcase’s site, where they have most of the episodes posted, but I get a notice that I can’t access them since I’m in the US. Hellooooo, torrents. Once SyFy got distribution rights, they could have posted all of the episodes and added in their own commercials, but they aren’t even posting the episodes they’ve already aired.

And then the industry has the balls to complain about lost revenue? Hey, pals, you’re the ones with the outdated distribution method. If given the opportunity, I have no problems watching a show on your site, even with commercials. It allows you to keep your ad revenue (funding the shows I like), and gives you a more accurate count of viewers – rather than relying solely on the steam-powered Nielsen Rating system – which keeps my favorite shows on the air. I’d even pay to access an archive of past episodes if I’m a latecomer to a show that’s been on for multiple seasons, or you can keep licensing those to Netflix and I’ll catch them there. Just please, please realize that once a show has aired, it’s going to be available somewhere online within a couple of hours. You’re not going to be able to get that particular episode of I Dream of Jeannie back into the bottle, so you may as well put it on your site and retain some control. I think most folks are like me, and would watch it there as a way of supporting it. Stop relying on false data to support overreaching bills like SOPA and PIPA and change your business model. Of course, that would also mean you’d have to revamp your accounting system to reflect reality, and…wait…I think we may have found the problem.

As a consumer, here’s what I would go for: keep the current season of your shows available on your site. Either retain the commercials throughout each episode, or have one long one at the beginning as a special sponsorship. Archive past seasons, and ask viewers to pay a small fee to access them by season. It might be a good idea to widely distribute the pilot episode to try and draw in new viewers. Post it on YouTube or allow Netflix to stream it. And of course, keep it available on your site. Requiring a sign-up is pretty much expected anymore, but stop the weird third-party partnerships. If you want global distribution, make deals with channels in other countries to simultaneously host your content on their site with local commercials inserted. Enough with the “The US will get it first, Canada three months later, Europe nine weeks after that, etc.” Is there any rational reason for staggering distribution anymore? By the time BBC America or PBS get the new Sherlock episodes, I’ve already watched them online and have no incentive to tune into those channels (or their advertisers).

Yes, I’m selfish. Yes, I demand instant gratification. But I’m also willing to allow you to advertise to me, because I know that’s how these shows are funded. If I really like the show, I’ll even buy the DVD boxed set when the show wraps for all of the extras I mentioned in the first paragraph. Honestly, just make it easy to watch the show on my schedule.

Or I can buckle on my swash, don my parrot, and plunder it.

Your call.

Except for a mouse

A dominant theme in the blogs lately has been people complaining (yet again) about retailers moving Christmas promotions up to Hallowe'en, and even before 10/31 in some cases.

I don't know what they're complaining about. We've been seeing Yuletide references ever since Subway rolled out their commercial with Michael Phelps back in the early summer.

I think I've mentioned before that we watch all our television with the Closed Captioning on. Not only does it help Cub with his reading, we don't wake anybody up at night by blasting the gunfire, explosions, or cursing that make up the majority of the movies we like.

In any case, I've become aware that, just like in any editing field, there are varying levels of competence when it comes to transcription services. Live feeds get a pass because that's very fast-paced. However, when it comes to filmed entertainment, where a script has already been nailed down, there are no excuses.

So Subway brings Phelps out, presumably to make the "munchies" connection, and the background music is Sly & the Family Stone's Thank You for Letting Me Be Myself Again. Subway splurged to include the lyrics of the song in the transcription, but evidently skimped on a proofreader. The lyrics on our screen were "Thank you/for lettin' me/ be mice elf/ again."

No Stomach for It

I caught a sliver of "Yo Gabba Gabba" the other day. The creatures were eating breakfast, and the camera had shots of the healthy food singing happily about joining the "party in the tummy." One of the characters was shown to have three stomachs. Good attention to detail, but kind of creepy.

Don't Even Blink

Speaking of the Disney Channel, "Phineas & Ferb" is an awesome little cartoon. Great premise, solid characters, and just the right amount of silliness. Plus, every episode has a nifty musical number, like the one below.

The setup: P&F always build some wild contraption in their yard, and their sister keeps trying to bust them. But something always happens to the thing before she can get their parents to see it. In this episode, she's ordered everyone to keep an eye on it until the parents get home so it can't just disappear.

The House of Mouse

Thanks to Kitten, I've been subjected to so much Disney Channel programming, I can not only identify the individual Jonas brothers, I've formed opinions about them.

Kevin: Nice guy, but will always be a supporting player (either on screen or on stage).

Nick: The talented one. Should go solo at the earliest opportunity.

Joe: Will probably come out of the closet soon after their Disney contract expires.

Dear France

We are very interested in speaking with you about the following quote:

"Maître Damien Celice, a lawyer for TF1, had warned the supreme court during the hearing that 'there would be no more reality TV in France' if the contestants were given work contracts."

Specifically, we wish to solicit your advice on how we might achieve the same results.

Sincerely,

American Television Audiences

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6424331.ece

Why Does Disney Hate Breasts?

Poor Disney. All they want to do is take sweet, innocent girls, make them famous, and wring every last drop of marketing out of them until they’re too old – around 16 or so. Their latest creations are Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez (oh, and Miley…somebody or other). Having a Kitten smack-dab in the middle of the targeted demographic for the Disney parabolic mirror means that we see more than our fair share of these tween queens.

So Kitten was watching Wizards of Waverly Place the other day, and there was a scene where the parents were attending a school function. I noticed in passing what I thought was a smear on the television screen (not uncommon in our household), and started to clean it off. Turns out, they had pixilated Mom’s cleavage.

Now, you’d think that a Disney wardrobe designer working on a Disney show produced at a Disney studio for the Disney Channel might have thought at some point: Hmmm…the actress playing Mom is fairly well-developed; maybe I should eschew the V-necked sweater. But no. They go with the more expensive technical fix. Funny thing is, they just made it more obvious by doing that. You think that was their plan all along?

Speaking of expensive technical fixes, before releasing Herbie Fully Loaded, someone at Disney noticed that Lindsay Lohan had boobs, so they decided to digitally reduce her bust size throughout the movie. This wasn’t apparent during shooting?

I think this is one reason the former Disney princesses go into full tart mode once they’re out from under their contracts. Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are prime examples (along with Miss Lohan). Anne Hathaway went from Princess Diaries to nude scenes in Havoc and Brokeback Mountain (of course, her costar, Julie Andrews, did the same in S.O.B.), even Hilary Duff started going out dressed entirely in black leather after Lizzie McGuire wrapped.

I’m really surprised this is the same company that allowed Jessica Rabbit to appear on screen, but on the other hand, Disney’s animated princesses are usually pushing the décolletage.

In Fantasia’s “Pastoral Symphony” segment, the centaurs’ breasts are always obscured or covered, but If you look quickly during the “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence, you’ll notice that the harpies are bare-breasted (they don’t have nipples, though). So…breasts are evil? Is that Disney’s message?

Too much weirdness for me to puzzle out. I’ll stick to Phineas and Ferb. Not only is it really funny, but Richard O’Brien does the voice of the dad.

So let’s do the Time Warp again.

This program has been sponsored by Hooters and Victoria's Secret

I saw a commercial tonight promoting the new Lingerie Football Games. I know I must be getting old because my first thought wasn't "Smokin'!" but "Ridiculous!"

My second thought was: I wonder if the cheerleaders will be wearing chadors.

Can You Keep a Secret?

The past couple of weeks, there’ve been rumors circulating on the internet about a major character on a popular television show that was going to commit suicide. It was going to be an out-of-the-blue shocker, and folks were putting forth their theories on who they thought it would be and why. Now, I only watch a few shows, so I was fairly sure I would miss it, and didn’t give it much thought.

As it happened, I missed all of my favorites this week while caught up in other things. I’ve been busy with some freelance work, so I haven’t even gotten a chance to peruse the web sites I usually go to. Grabbing a quick break, I went to one of the political sites I frequent to find out what people were complaining about today, and clicked on an article that caught my eye.

The fucking author had a spoiler about the suicide! And yes, it’s on one of the shows I watch.

I had been looking forward to catching up on my shows later on this week, but that’s completely ruined now. When I watch that episode, all I’ll be thinking is “When will it happen?”

I’d really like to slap that writer. You don't give away major surprises. Ever. Selfish bastard.

Grrrrrrrr.

Doing our part to fight the recession

I’ve mentioned before that the palatial Cat estate (Bad Manors) is an older home. Consequently, we are updating sections as time/resources allow. The electrical systems were all replaced last summer, and we are now starting to tackle the plumbing. We had one company come out today to give us an estimate on the work we want done.

“How much?”
He tells us again.
“I’m sorry…it sounded like you said - - - .”
He confirms it.
“No no…I didn’t want to buy any black tar heroin, I just want the faucet replaced.”
He circles the number.
“This is just to get the water heater to code? This doesn’t include any sex acts?”
The price goes up.
“We’ll let you know.”

Boy…am I in the wrong business.

***

You’re slipping, dear readers. I give you an awesome allusion and nobody mentions it. MacGyver worked for the Phoenix Foundation, and I used an “ashes” reference, and none of you caught it. tsk tsk tsk. The Pete thing was a gimme – the Free Space on your TeeVee Bingo card. Back to PopCulture 101 with the lot of you.

***

Speaking of MacGyver, Elle opines “you can't do ANYTHING with a paperclip, bubblegum and ducktape. Nothing.”

My first thought was to bend the clip into a hook, blow a bubble in the gum for a bobber, and tear the tape into strips for a line. Fishing pole.

My second thought was to straighten the clip and add a small ball of the gum to one end. Roll the tape into a tube. Blowgun.

I was sure there were many more options, so I asked the internet. Here’s what it had to say:

DogSoldier says:
Fuck you, NOOB!

TotalHottie97 says:
Your posts is most funny! Visit me and my friends at teendreemz.xxx!

YesWeCan976458751 says:
GOP=Hitler!!!!11!

Adbot says:
Get 90% off V1agra!

Toomuchfreetime says:
Who cares about mcguyver anyway their making a a-team movie hell yaeah!! They would kick macgyvers ass ther van was cooler than that stupid jeep he alwsys drove and they had guns.

So there you have it.

From the Ashes of Childhood

The networks are apparently upset that President Obama keeps interrupting their prime-time schedules (Doesn’t the man know this is sweeps week?).

I wonder if they’d be more upset to learn that I couldn’t name a single show that had been pre-empted.

I didn’t watch the address, because I figure someone will download the TelePrompTer script onto their website by tomorrow morning.

With the national economy in turmoil, the President asking Congress for the power to seize any financial institution, unemployment soaring, stocks falling, and basically the whole situation looking sort of “handcart-ish,” at least we’ve got one thing we can rally around:

The creator of “MacGyver” has a movie production deal.

There is no word yet on who will play Angus MacGyver, or his mullet. I think Richard Dean Anderson could still bust it out if given the chance (the role, not the mullet). I think an older, tougher Mac would work for today’s world. There was way too much smiling going on in the television show. These were secret agents, for Pete’s sake (Get it? Pete? His boss?...Hello?). It’s not known for being a laff-a-minute gig. A solemn Mac would more accurately reflect current geopolitical realities, I think.

The creator of the show, Lee David Zlotoff, recently gave an interview where he hedged on the return of Mac’s ever-present Swiss Army knife. Zlotoff was himself carrying an SAK equipped with a flash drive, and he agreed that it was the kind of thing the new MacGyver would employ, but also stated the Leatherman tools were strong contenders because they had a pliers, whereas the standard SAKs did not.

I think he should carry both, personally, along with the flattened roll of duct tape in his back pocket and his “strike anywhere” matches. As long as he doesn’t carry a gun. That was an unbending rule in Mac’s world, and that needs to stay. I also think they should ignore the temptation of referencing the tired “Nuclear Reactor & the Bubblegum” thing.

There are a lot of ways they could mess this up, but as long as they keep Shia Labeouf away from it, I’ll probably go see it. I’d actually like to see a grittier MacGyver, packed with all of the things they couldn’t show on television.

A thought just occurred to me…MacGyver/Rorschach.

Discuss.

Soylent Green and Seeing Red

I’ll go ahead and jump on the bandwagon of those lambasting the SciFi network for changing its name. Their marketing droids think “SyFy” is catchier, as the people they interviewed said that was how they texted the name of the channel.

Oh sure, change the entire brand based on how someone texts your name. That’s really fucking smart. Not to mention that it calls to mind syphilis (as a matter of fact, someone has already registered syfyl.us specifically for people to bitch about the name change).

I’m against the change for a number of reasons. SciFi stands for something, whereas SyFy means nothing. They’re also changing their tagline from the short and sweet “IF” to the grammatically horrid “Imagine Greater.” “IF” was perfect. Not only did it mirror the “FI” part of their name, but it’s the central theme of all science fiction. “Imagine Greater” is so broad it’s meaningless. And you’d think a network that wanted to be text-friendly would stick to a two-letter tag rather than increasing the length by 700%.

Not that I really expect anything different from them at this point. These are the same brilliant decision-makers that brought in Bonnie Hammer from Lifetime, who has publicly stated that she hates science-fiction.

This is also the same network that puts wrestling in a prime-time slot, finances execrable original movies instead of showing classics, and runs every B horror movie they can steal from their parent company (and not the good kind of B movies, either). And while other networks order up thirteen episodes of shows to fill out a season, SciFi shows them in runs of eight episodes, then breaks for six months.

The current president, Dave Howe, said of the backlash:

“Our core audience will use it an opportunity to question our motives, they always do."

I don’t know which South American B-school diploma mill you sent your SASE to, Dave, but if your core audience is always questioning your motives, maybe you’re…oh…I don’t know…alienating them.

Dumbass.

When cable started, the pitch was that it would be a "magazine rack" of special interest channels. The Learning Channel, The History Channel, The Golf Channel. As time goes on, though, the networks are becoming homogenized, offering the same crappy “reality” shows and low-rent makeover specials.

When was the last time you saw a music video on Music Television, something decidedly highbrow on Bravo, a movie more than twenty years old on Turner Classic Movies, or an orchestral performance on Arts & Entertainment? That’s one reason these channels are rebranding themselves, because if your name means nothing, you can show whatever you want.

It’s a damn shame. SF geeks are already proficient with using computers to find the content they want to watch; this is just giving them all the more reason to ignore the TV. SciFi could have filled an entire calendar year with all of the great (and not so great) science-fiction shows of yesteryear. Shows like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, Buck Rogers and Manimal, Lost in Space and Misfits of Science. How about the serials like Flash Gordon, or the movies like Them!? Is the MST3K back catalog really that expensive?

But they chose to show wrestling.

At 10:00 P.M.

On a channel for geeks.

Riiiiight.

I actually hope this is the first part of them killing the channel entirely, because it would be painful to watch it limping along after so promising a start. They’d have a hard time justifying to their advertisers why their supposed target audience is no longer there. Because remember, networks are paid by advertisers, not you. The channel sells your viewership to the advertisers.

You are not the customer.

You're the product.

Self-perpetuation and Small Appliances

It occurred to me tonight that reality shows are the lowest-common-denominator version of a Philosophy degree.

Let me explain.

No. Is too much; let me sum up.

Winners of these reality shows, instead of doing anything worthwhile with their fifteen minutes, usually go on to host their own spin-off reality shows.

Philosophy majors, when faced with the realization that GE and Microsoft aren’t scrambling to hire them, dive back into the ivory towers and start teaching their own Philosophy classes.

I fled to the kitchen tonight to avoid both reality shows and Philosophy majors, and happened to notice the warning on the door to the toaster oven:
“In the event of a food flare-up, make sure door is closed.”

What odd phrasing – “flare up.” Do people not understand the word “fire” anymore? It’s as if:

“MOM!!!”
“What? What is it, honey? Why are you crying?”
“I have a date tomorrow night…and I’ve broken out in pork chops!”

“Hey…we can’t go to that house.”
“What? Why not?”
“Don’t you see that sign on the door? Someone in there has Toasted Cheese Sandwiches.”
“I thought that was eradicated, like, back in the 50s.”
“New strain came over from Eastern Europe. Just leave the Watchtower in the mailbox. Come on.”

“Duuuuude…I can’t believe you’re going out with her”
“Whattaya mean? She’s smokin’, dude.”
“Yeah…she’s tight. But she’s got muffins, man.”

“You look like hell, Dave.”
“Not sleeping very well, Al.”
“You and Eileen okay?”
“What? Yeah. It’s nothing like that. My fish sticks are just acting up again.”

“Hey, Sweetheart?”
“Yes, Dear?”
“Could you pick up another can of tater tot spray while you’re out? This burning is driving me crazy.”

Monkeyshines

So Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have found employment for the next few months, protesting the New York Post’s recent editorial cartoon. As near as I can tell, there was a local story about a rabid monkey that had had to be shot at a zoo. The cartoonist depicted the animal control officers standing over the hole-y corpse and saying “Looks like they’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.”

Of course, the professionally offended are all up in arms about the implication that Obama is a monkey, because they don’t know:

a. The President didn’t write the bill; Congress did.
b. There is an old theory about monkeys at typewriters turning out the works of Shakespeare.
c. It’s not uncommon to refer to a colossal cock-up as having been engineered by monkeys.

I found this quote at DemocraticUnderground:

“The cartoonist should be fired! The office of the president deserves our respect.”

Coming from a group that referred to Bush as “Chimpy” for eight years, that’s fucking rich.

***

Quite possibly the best line on television this week:

Man hands gun to girl: “You know how to use one of these?”
Girl takes gun: “Four brothers.”
Girl cocks gun with attitude: “None of them Democrats.”

Dollhouse

***

I saw where Obama wants to nationalize the banks. Since it was Congress that mandated the lending rules that started this big ol’ ball rolling in the first place, why would we do that?

***

A local job fair charged applicants $20 per person to attend. Talk about a recession-proof business.

No Tools Required

Mrs. Cat and I were surfing through Deep Cable last night, idly scanning to see if anything interesting was on (I’ll save you the suspense…no), and stumbled across two more examples of why our country is completely fucked.

First, we landed on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, where a gentleman who majored in Speech and worked for Army Intelligence could not identify the preposition in a sentence, and did not know which organ produced insulin. Now, I would have assumed a Speech major would have been given at least a cursory breakdown of the parts of speech along with their Rhetoric courses, but apparently knowing the difference between a proper noun and a preposition was not given a high priority when he was matriculating. And while one could argue that only diabetics and the doctors that treat them need to know that the pancreas produces insulin, I would hope that if an order ever came down for the Army to storm the Isles of Langerhans, someone would say “Yeah…about that…”.

The second incident occurred on Tool Academy. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the show gathers together a number of men who apparently learned all they know about how to treat women by watching porn, and tries to reform them. Sort of a Guido/Playa version of My Fair Lady (for the visual learners) or Pygmalion (for the lit crowd). I would argue the mere existence of this show is another indicator of the coming collapse, but more specifically, the segment we subjected ourselves to had a female coach explaining to the guys about attitudes that women found desirable in a mate, and how this particular batch of testosterone junkies were lacking in these attributes. The exchange:

Coach: “You need to learn humility. Do you know what ‘humility’ means?”
Neanderthal: “Uh…humor?”

At this point, my brain ejected a goodly portion of my remaining IQ points in an effort to save enough memory to restore baseline bodily functions once the program had ended.

Hate to break it to you, Studly, but women do not want a guy that makes them laugh above all else, despite what Jessica Rabbit says. Oh, and humility does not mean humor, you ignorant troglodyte! Read a fucking book every once in a while! Your erstwhile mate might want the reassurance that you won’t be a bouncer for the rest of your life.


He makes me laugh. And he has a large…vocabulary.

I’ll admit to tapping into some residual high school nerd-rage, where the beautiful people hooked up irrespective of GPA, but I’m also decidedly Southern when it comes to how I treat women. Libbers hate it, but a sense of chivalry still exists in the South, and my mother would make a concerted effort to return from the Other Side and haunt me if I treated women the way some of these boys do.

And apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way, given the popularity of this site .

Yes, I know there are many self-esteem issues certain types of women work through (or don’t) by dating these slabs of flesh unsullied by anything resembling original thought. Mrs. Cat has a choice list of terms for those kinds of women, which I won’t repeat because of the aforementioned threat of maternal poltergeist activity.

Because I’m smarter than a fifth grader, don’cha know.

Commercially driven

The University of Chicago Press publishes the “Journal of Consumer Research,” and one of their latest articles claims that commercial interruptions actually enhance a viewer’s enjoyment of a show. It didn’t seem to matter about the length or nature of the interruption, but the interruption itself was crucial.

The central argument is that viewers adapt to the level of comedy, suspense, etc. in the program, and their enjoyment diminishes as a result. The commercials allow the viewer's adaptation to recede, so they can enjoy the program more thoroughly when it comes back on.

The précis of the study did allow that some people don’t “adapt” to the shows, and that some programs do not lead to adaptation, but that information was presented as the exception that proves the rule.

This blog will continue after a word from the Arachnid Gymnastics Team.



I’m too cheap/poor/apathetic to pay to unlock the entire article, but I would be interested in seeing some of the specifics of this study (like who paid for it, for one). The only show that was mentioned specifically was Taxi, where one group was shown an episode with commercials, and another group shown the same episode without them. I don’t know how they measured “enjoyment,” but the group that had commercial breaks showed more enjoyment by a wide margin. I’m sure the researchers controlled for the idea that these people hated Taxi, so anything that interrupted it was welcome.

See, here’s the thing: television programs are written specifically to be interrupted every so often. There are many books on writing for television, and most of them advise the writer on how to structure their episode to make sure the audience comes back after the commercials. This usually involves a mini cliffhanger in dramas, or a setup for a wacky misunderstanding in comedies. Watching these programs without the interruptions throws off the rhythm of the show. I know, because I watch most television shows online or on DVD, and that rapid fade out/fade in is jarring.

We’ll be right back.



I remember when Fringe first aired, it was presented commercial-free, and the writers structured their stories to unfold more organically, rather than in discrete chunks. I’ve stopped watching it, so I don’t know if this is still the case, but the writing for films is structured the same way, and audiences manage to stay entertained throughout the entire two hours (depending on the quality of the film, of course). I’m sure that when watching a movie on a cable channel, you’ve been irritated when a commercial cut in at a seemingly random point – in the middle of an action scene, for example, or a conversation between the two leads. That’s because the movie wasn’t written for these breaks, and they have to get shoehorned in for the sponsors. I especially hate it when they break right before the film ends, so there’s three to four minutes of commercials, then about forty-five seconds of the movie when you get back.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, right after this message from Benny Lava.



So though I’m sure they got some interesting, verifiable results, I think the structure of the script has more to do with it than anything else.