NEW YEAR NEW SHOWS : INTELLIGENCE

Some people have a chip on their shoulder -this guy has one in his brain!

The new year seems to be bringing in new roles for the cast of Lost. They are everywhere at the moment. Intelligence sees a return to the screen for "Sawyer" from lost Josh Holloway.

My last blog was on the new show Helix, which had micro-chipping as part of the storyline. Intelligence is about an under cover operative who is micro-chipped so that he can interface directly with the internet. He is assigned a watcher, Riley Neil played by Meghan Ory. She is the typical stereotype of a woman agent : long dark hair in a pony tail, slim build and of course cute. We could be looking at Lisbon in the Mentalist or any other show that features the regulatory stereotype. They do like stereotypes in hollywood, don't they? As soon as some actors come on screen you think "he always plays a villain, or that guy is always a policeman, etc.  Perhaps it keeps it simple for the sheeple that way.

Anyway, Intelligence. Pacy thriller or war on terrrrr? (as Bush used to say). I have to say it is mostly the latter. The ease in which Vaughn (Josh Holloway) gets information is probably supposed to convey to the viewer how easy it is for US intelligence to get data. We knew this anyway because of the NSA/GCHQ revelations that have come to life recently in the "real" world (whatever that is).


The plot. An agent can access data signals in the air and intercept and read it. At the start of the pilot we see how Vaughn can freeze a piece of data then walk through it to find evidence. So far so good, but are we going to stick to the story? No we are not. There has to be a love interest, doesn't there? In this case it is Vaughn wife, who is deep undercover in a CIA Al Qaeda cell and noone knows if she is still working for the Americans or has turned.

Vaughn is standing outside a Pakistani border listening post and is picked up by their army. When they try to question him he tells them all their names, etc, again proving he can get any information that he wants to. He escapes very easily and we see him back at base getting introduced to his handler, Riley. They are at Cyber command. The boss is played by Marg Helgenberger of CSI fame. She tells Riley that Vaughn is a war hero who is reckless, insubordinate and unpredictable which made me think why would you give such a personality a microchip? I suppose the writers needed a reason to include Riley. Vaughn can't let go of his search for his wife, which of course he is being told to forget about.

In the main story a computer expert is kidnapped. He worked on a project called clockwork, of which Vaughn is the end result. He is taken by the Chinese. He is to put a chip in an operative. He does not know if the chip works but is made to do it anyway. During the to-ing and fro-ing of the plot Strand meets her Chinese counterpart. She is also a woman. This is more brainwashing creeping in to fiction. Are we supposed to believe that all these women are rising to the top jobs in society? Not in the real bloody world! TV producers may want to give the impression of equality but we all know that the bottom line is that the world is run by White English speaking men who do whatever it takes to remain in control. This means letting one or two women and some non white people in to a handful of positions to give the impression of equality.

I have watched a few of these now and I am still deciding whether I like it. I do like Josh Holloway and Marg Helgenberger but I am wondering just how much storyline there will be given how easy it is for Vaughn to get information. Intelligence is definitely inferior to Helix, which I found both more believable and more gripping. In the second episode of intelligence the story deals with a new type of plastic explosive that is undetectable. The third episode is about an agent on the run with a hard drive full of secrets. Vaughn goes AWOL to grieve. When found by Riley he tells her that there is something wrong with his chip. (Cue Boomtown Rats : "The silicon chip inside his head got switched to overload...") It turns out that he thinks he has been hacked, that somebody is in his head watching him. When he tries to render the scene of the woman with the hard drive it turns into a hallucination. It turns out that he is being watched and may well be connected to the Chinese operative that had the chip put in in episode one. Interesting. Perhaps this show will grow in to a watchable one.

I think that using a real gun in paintball is cheating,really

Conclusion. Intelligence is about information gathering and how far the state will go to get it. It is fitting for the time falling in line with such shows as Person Of Interest. I think that big brother wants us to think that they can get to any information that they want and we cannot stop them. Its about spreading fear.

I used to think that TV programs carried predictive programming messages to indicate to the viewers which way society would be taken. Since December 2012 however I have modified that view. I think that the underground press, conspiracy sites and truth seekers have got so out of control that TV writers are actually getting their ideas from them. If you have read as many wacky things as I have recently (see my other blog Life, the Universe and Everything - plug plug!) you will know what I mean. I swear that Revolution (a favorite of mine) has had a profound and far reaching effect on a lot of people who have convinced themselves that it is real.

The truth is that the only things that are real are the illusions that we move through and try and make sense of everyday. On that deep philosophical note I will sign off.

Be seeing you!