The Glades
I think too much. This poses problems in many areas of my life, but it’s particularly irksome at night. My brain just doesn’t turn off like the lights and various other electronic devices and Aaron. It just keeps coming up with shit and, much like Ric Flair when you ride Space Mountain, it can go all night long.
I need to distract my stupid brain, and I need to distract it very specifically if I ever want to get any sleep. If I just turn everything off and leave it to its own devices, it will be all
“OhheydidyouknowthatyourenotgettinganyyoungerandyouarecompletelyrunningoutoftimetomakeanythingoutofyourselfandalsoyousuckandyourarmsaregettingflabbywhenwasthelasttimeyoudidaburpeeandheyrememberthatMrShowskitletsreciteallthelinesrightnowandohmygodyouprobablyhaveaterminalillnessorsomethingandalsodidimentionyoureatotalfailurebutletsgetaNorthernPikessonginyourheadrightnow.”
And if I try one of those lovely white noise machines that are supposed to help you get to sleep, it goes all “OhheydidyouknowthatyourenotgettinganyyoungerandyouarecompletelyrunningoutoftimetomakeanythingoutofyourselfandalsoyousuckandyourarmsaregettingflabbywhenwasthelasttimeyoudidaburpeeandheyrememberthatMrShowskitletsreciteallthelinesrightnowandohmygodyouprobablyhaveaterminalillnessorsomethingandalsodidimentionyoureatotalfailurebutletsgetaNorthernPikessonginyourheadrightnow AND WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LISTENING TO?”
There are only two things in this world that soothe my tortured brain and let it and therefore me rest: Lake Erie waves and television.
I only get the former for one week a year when I go to the cottage, so I mostly have to rely on TV for pre-rest routine. And it used to have to be a very specific kind of TV: something I’ve seen before so my desire to find out how it ends doesn’t keep me up, but nothing I’ve seen so many times that I know the plot too well which allows my mind to drift. But I’ve long since worn out my 30 Rock, Mighty Boosh and Community DVDs and Aaron won’t let me watch Fringe at night because it creeps him out, so I’ve had to expand my repertoire lately.
In doing so, I discovered an amazing new form of sleep aid: the show I only really like enough to watch for a couple of minutes but not so much that I actually want to stay up and watch it properly. That was how I “watched” nine seasons of Red Dwarf and experienced some of the easiest sleep of my life. But then I ran out of episodes of questionable British sci-fi “comedy” and needed a new show to lull me into unconscious bliss.
Somehow, I decided that it was a good idea to try The Glades. It worked like a charm at first, but then I started thinking too much, as I am wont to do. And there’s a lot to think about when it comes to The Glades.
Interestingly enough, those flamingos are less plastic than any of the acting or situations on The Glades.
Look, I know how absurd this sounds. The Glades, A&E’s (which used to stand for “Arts and Entertainment” but now stands for “aaaeeee,” which I assume is the closest thing to a coherent sound that their current demographic can utter) answer to CSI Miami, certainly doesn’t look like a show that requires any thought at all. But it is, in actuality, far from your average procedural. In the sense that it is far worse than your average procedural.
It is, in fact, aggressively bad.
It is a procedural show that has even less use for procedure than it does for silly things like logic, foreshadowing, characterization and believable dialogue. It might actually be written by those box-shoe children from the Mr. Show skit about a scriptwriting sweatshop because it was certainly not created or crafted by anyone who knows anything about life or crime or words.
Apparently it’s about Jim, a rogue Chicago cop with a smart mouth who gets shot by his boss because he maybe bonked the dude’s wife and then transfers to Florida with his settlement and begins taking his fucking golf club to crime scenes and solving crimes based on nothing but his whims, conjecture and “charm.” There’s a subplot where Jim gets bitten by an alligator and then proceeds to fall in the least believable love in the history of television with the nurse who fixes him up, but she’s married to a dude in prison and then there’s angst and other nonsense that I mostly sleep through. And there’s some other characters and stuff and sometimes they have families and parties and crap, but I think it’s mostly about Jim pulling shit out of his ass at the last minute and then whining about his will-they-or-won’t-they soulmate.
Anyway, I’ve spend the past week and change thinking about The Glades. A lot. So here are 25 of the most pressing questions with which I’ve been wrestling:
- How did this get on the air?
- Who watches this show, other than me when I’m trying to fall asleep?
- Does it make more sense if you don’t fall asleep at the 10 minute mark?
- Does the lead actor cry himself to sleep at night because he’ll never be Damian Lewis in Life?
- Have the writers ever actually interacted with other people?
- Do they know how human relationships work?
- Has there ever been a more aggravating and stupid “will they or won’t they?” relationship on TV?
- How many plaid shirts and rompers does a med student and nurse who mostly lives and works in scrubs need?
Plaid Shirt #829374189237489274
- Does anyone else sympathize with the Chicago boss who shot Jim?
- Is Chicago Boss Who Shot Jim, despite being a Maris-like figure who never appears on the show, the best character on The Glades?
- Why haven’t more people shot Jim?
- Has anyone on this show ever taken acting lessons?
- Have they ever been in anything else, like maybe a Lifetime movie?
- If Tobias Funke were a real person, would he be able to land a lead role on this show?
- Does the wardrobe department have a bikini quota for each episode?
- Was The Glades created to make CSI Miami feel better about itself?
- Seriously, would this show make more sense if I paid attention to it?
- Was that scene where Jim got attacked by a snake at a charismatic church the most realistic thing you’ve ever seen?
- Did the writers for this show do any research at all?
- Have they ever met anyone in law enforcement?
- Have they ever watched an episode of Law and Order?
- Why are they still trying to make carrying a golf club to crime scenes a thing?
- Why does no one ever call Jim on his taking golf clubs to crime scenes by saying something like, “Why the fuck are you touching the body and evidence with your golf club, you massive tool?”
Seriously, what the fuck are you doing, young man? You are at a crime scene! Put that golf club AWAY. And stop rubbing it all over the fucking EVIDENCE. Or I will shoot you.
- Does Jim do or say anything that wouldn’t immediately get him fired in real life?
- WHY?
Risky Fuel 