May 25, 2006
110.25: Apocalypso
The sequel to 10.5 is, if possible, even more scientifically fraudulent than the original. The only positive development is that ShakyCam has decreased by about 50%. My thoughts, as I watched it live:
- (We start, about 5 minutes in. People are mountain biking in Sun Valley, Idaho)
- Are the mountain bikers a callback to 10.5's opening scene?
- (Switch to peaceful Medford, OR. Gratuitous bra shot. Nurse and firefighter make cute. Firefighter's loudmouth brother, aka Superman, enters the house)
- Dean Cain! We've filled at least part of our Washed-Up TV Star Looking for a Comeback quota.
- (Cut back to Sun Valley, where the earth begins shaking. Two twenties-playing-teens types are on the chairlift. She drops her helmet)
- What I always do when there's been an earthquake and I'm sitting on a chairlift is not grab on to anything and lean really far over, just in case another one comes along.
- See, what did I tell you? You wouldn't have had all the fun of dangling 40 feet in the air if you'd held on.
- (Cut to the USGS, where Dana Delaney hulks over a monitor with the rest of her team of seismologists. A ridiculously detailed real-time computer assessment animates)
- I am impressed by both their monitoring equipment and their graphics package.
- Bald Mountain's going to erupt? Get Dr. Mussorgsky!
- (Cut back to Sun Valley)
- Dude! You now have bigger problems than this girl dangling from the chairlift.
- Dude! BIGGER PROBLEMS!
- Nice of you to notice the eruption, Miss.
- You can see that Bald Mountain is a cinder cone volcano in the mode of Mt. Saint Helens.
- Fun Fact: The real Sun Valley, Idaho is about 45 miles from Bald Mountain as the crow (or flaming boulder) flies, so this cloud of superheated ash is really moving.
- Enjoy your Pompeiification!
- (Cut to Sun Valley rescue ops)
- Natalie Warner: Zero to pissed in 6.2 seconds.
- Going back to the scene in which Waikiki was trashed by a tsunami, the geography doesn't really work. Earthquake in/near Los Angeles would mean the tsunami radiates from there, which would mean that the northeast of Hawaii was in trouble. Waikiki is on the southwest of Oahu, and what's more, there's a mountain range between it and the northeast. I understand when you have to make up the science, but the geography should be the easy part! You couldn't just find some city on the northeast to inundate?
- (A helicopter orbits near a discolored patch on a mountain)
- So you magically call up satellite photographs that happened to be taken at the same exact angle six hours ago? How does the NRO feel about your hogging all their satellite time?
- (Cut to a video conference with the President)
- You sir, are no Jed Bartlet. You're not even David Palmer. At least you're no Logan.
- Are the writers aware of the timescales involved in tectonic activity? This re-Pangaeification won't be done by next Tuesday or anything.
- Or apparently it will, says Kim Delaney.
- You have a theory?! What is it, bunnies?
- (Cut to Barstow, CA)
- Tony Almeida: Not dead after all! Those CTU guys are really good at faking their own deaths.
- (commercial)
- Am I the only person who's really disappointed by this new Nelly Furtado song? It's so...Black Eyed Peas.
- (Sun Valley, ID. Dean Cain won't wait for backup)
- Superman go down the hole.
- That cave-in was entirely predictable. Stupid, Superman. Stupid.
- Way to get pulled out by the backup you just couldn't possibly wait for.
- (USGS. Kim Delaney looks at articles about her dad, who's some sort of disgraced geologist.)
- Why is Kim Delaney Googling her dad? Shouldn't she already know this stuff about him? And isn't there some sort of national crisis going on?
- (Cut to Las Vegas. Kim Delaney's dad is playing high stakes poker)
- OH, GREAT. Just what the world needs. More poker on TV.
- This is SO DRAMATIC. Way more dramatic and compelling than, you know, the western half of the United States caving in.
- (Cut to Sun Valley. FEMA's second in command is screaming at Dean Cain for being an idiot)
- I really like this FEMA guy who's yelling at Superman.
- Dude, we both agree that was a stupid idea. Get over yourself.
- (Cut to a helicopter over some country highway. There's a sinkhole in the middle of it)
- I think this reporter's Canadian.
- Anyone who's hanging around at the edge of a sinkhole pretty much deserves to fall in when it predictably expands.
- (Kim Delaney's geologist (boy?)friend, Jordan, takes the helicopter to the Hoover Dam)
- You know, this is an adventure flight in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- Unless there's a magma vent right under Lake Mead, this is absolutely ridiculous.
- If there is a magma vent right under Lake Mead, this is merely ridiculous.
- When I see water cresting over the top of a dam, I think that's the perfect time to lower my helicopter below its rim, just in case it bursts.
- Too. Stupid. To. Live.
- PS: Look out, Laughlin!
- (USGS. Kim Delaney is catatonic. Or maybe she just had lunch. It's hard to tell. An underling comes in with a phone)
- "Dr. Hill? It's your father."
(dazed) "Father?"
"No, I'm a seismologist and a woman, but that's not important right now."
- Las Vegas is collapsing. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson begin the race to see who can say the dumbest thing in 5, 4, 3...
---End Pt. 1---
Now begins Part 2 of 110.25: Crapocalypse
- Previously: Las Vegas collapsed in a big ol' sinkhole.
- Natalie Wilson is dispatched to Vegas to save Kim Delaney's dad.
- Dean Cain's little brother is trying to reach his girlfriend in Vegas. Is she dead? No one knows! Looks like they're going there with the rest of the rescuers.
- Tony Almeida's goin' to Vegas with Bookbag.
- To the two of you who got both of those references: Don't ever change.
- To everyone else: "Bookbag" was Zoey Bartlet's Secret Service codename on The West Wing, so I'm absconding with it for "Amy", the President's Red-Cross-volunteer daughter.
- Kim Delaney's dad: Not dead yet, just trapped in a sunken casino with Dean Cain's brother's pregnant girlfriend.
- I love it when a plot contrivance comes together
- It's like the Poseiden Adventure in a casino. Without Shelley Winters, I think.
- How did four different items manage to fall on one showgirl in just such a manner as to leave her with no more than a twisted ankle?
- (Kim Delaney gets more good news)
- "Major tremors coming out of South Dakota."
"(dazed) South Dakota?"
"Yes, it's a vaguely rectangular state, Pierre is its capital. But that's not important right now."
- (Mount Rushmore starts to crack)
- Those lines on George Washington's face really show his age
- Now he looks like the Phantom of the Opera
- Now he's taken off his mask
- (The President addresses the nation)
- So this fault is cutting the US in two and, almost certainly, Canada. Why no shots of Calgary trembling?
- So the Great Plains are being evacuated. Smart money's on heading east, it looks like.
- (The Poseidon Casino)
- "The only way out is up, not down." See, Kim Delaney's dad agrees with me.
- Mentioning that you're not just a crackpot would be helpful, doc, if you want people to follow you.
- "Hey, this guy used to be a geologist. He know's what he's doing." is not a commonly-expressed sentiment, although it's useful in this case.
- Dean Cain descends through the roof! Will he find the intrepid doctor?
- (Tony Almeida's parents don't want to flee Houston)
- What's with this stupid "oh, we'd be a burden" crap? Get on the damn road. Even if you are too stupid to live.
- (Poseidon Casino)
- So there's only one staircase to the top of this thing? And it's out?
- Dude, he's a geologist, not an architect. It's hardly his fault, nor is it his responsibility to design a way out.
- Although apparently he's an amateur civil engineer.
- Shakiest bridge/staircase ever!
- (Kim Delaney says some fake sciencey stuff)
- (Poseidon Casino)
- So the showgirl is scared of ladders now?
- Kim Delaney's dad is totally trying for a Sean Connery circa The Rock vibe.
- I shouldn't be so hard on the showgirl. This ladder/bridge thing is shaking like crazy.
- Oh. Here come the...giant boulders? Yeah. I don't know. You're dead.
- (commercials)
- Annika Sorenstam and George Hamilton for Wheat Thins. A match made in heaven. She's a champion golfer and he's...well-tanned.
- Windfall: It's like My Name Is Earl except not funny. And without karma. Or rednecks. Scientologists? Not sure yet.
- (Poseidon Casino. Dean Cain and his brother keep on descending)
- Wow, it's like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and Earthquake all rolled into one...giant ball of crap.
- (Chalk Pyramids, Kansas)
- Kansas has pyramids? Of chalk? This is news to me.
- Kim Delaney is out in the field...why?
- She's looking for a SO2 vent. SO2 is a volcanic gas, I happen to know. Earlier today, I was watching a Nova special on the volcano Nyiragongo, which sits above Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a city of 2,000,000. Because of that 45 minutes, I think that I now know more about seismic and volcanic activity than the writers of this movie and Dante's Peak combined.
- Now there's sulfuric acid seeping out of the ground and eating tires and campers' faces. Chemists around the world weep. I'm so tempted to go on a major digression about the ridiculousness of this plot point, especially in light of the timescales presented, in an attempt to allow you to draw a parallel to how stupid the rest of the science in this movie is, but it would be an insult to your intelligence even to imply that such a digression is needed.
- (commercials)
- Various people have herpes. Sucks to be them.
- (Poseidon Casino)
- Vegas: Still buried up to the 30th floor
- Poker buddy chooses door #1. He gets...a face full of sand! And a lifetime supply of death!
- (Vegas proper)
- Tony Almeida's trying to shock someone's heart; Bookbag looks stricken.
- I'm sure people are comforted by the nurse who looks 14 and who runs out of the operating theater.
- (Poseidon Casino. Stuff falls from the ceiling)
- "Move, move, move!" Whatever, Dr. Blast Hardcheese.
- Dean Cain wants to take a shortcut down an elevator shaft. THAT sounds promising.
- Oh, nice. Superman starts a fistfight when Younger Brother won't let him take a stupid, dangerous shortcut. Real mature.
- And now the building's shaking. Nice job, Man o' Steel Man.
- Look, there goes the elevator that would've come down on your head.
- Oh, now you say "Thanks for not letting me go through with my stupid idea."
- (USGS)
- So Kim Delaney...teleported back from Kansas?
- (Random Farm)
- This fault line hates windmills. And towns that look like Smallville. Watch out, Dean Cain!
- (Presidential telecon)
- So the fault line really hates nuclear power. Wait: Dams, windmills, and now it's heading for two nuclear reactors? I think it just doesn't like any form of alternative energy. It's totally in the back pocket of the hydrocarbon lobby, probably paid off by Halliburton. I knew that this would somehow be Dick Cheney's fault. Or Dick Cheney's Fault. OK, now I have to go accidentally shoot myself in the face.
- (Poseidon Casino. Dean Cain meets Dr. Sean Connery)
- Dean Cain's younger brother is going to be so excited when he finds out that his now-pregnant
girlfriend wife has been hanging out with a celebrity geologist like Dr. Sean Connery, although he might be kinda bummed that she's somewhat buried under the Random Boulders That Came From Nowhere)
- (USGS)
- What the hell is with this family and their teleportation powers? It only takes one cutaway and suddenly Dr. Sean Connery's in Colorado?
- Now that her dad's back in the picture, I think Kim Delaney's going to slip away to go seduce Sandy Cohen again. Or does that only happen if he's dying?
