Television

Imagine a man walks up to you in a top hat and suit. He shows his gloved hands are empty. He removes his gloves. He shows his ungloved hands are empty. He shows up his cuffs. His cuffs are empty. He removes his jacket. He rolls up his sleeves. His forearms are now bare. There is no place to hide a gimmick up his sleeves now. He guides you to a table. He knocks on it to show it is solid and ungimmicked. He shows you underneath and has you knock as well, to show that it is ungimmicked. He gingerly, with two fingers, reaches into a pocket, carefully and slowly, to pull out a deck of cards. He places it on the table. He picks it back up and removes the plastic wrap in front of you to show it's not a deck he could have done something to. He reaches into another pocket. He pulls out a coin. He taps it on the table to show it is a real coin. He let's you look at it for a moment, just to make sure you know it's real. He reaches into a pocket again, and pulls out another coin. He taps it again. He shows it to you again. He reaches into a pocket again, and pulls out a pencil, painted like a magic wand, classic black with white tips. He lets you examine it, to see it is real. He places it carefully parallel to the cards next to the table. He picks up the coin, holds it up to catch the light, and then piles all of it back into his pockets, says, 'Shows canceled,' and walks away. It was never a magic trick, just all the hallmarks of a magic trick to hold your attention for a while.

I started From but I didn't get the sense that it was building anything. There is a style of writing for shows, like Lost, where once you understand it, you can't watch them anymore. They are made to get you to ask questions but never actually pull anything together, curiosity edging. It's a process of making it seem like they have a plan, where anything might be the foreshadowing key to understanding the rules for the world they've built. However, there is no world which has been built, and thus no foreshadowing, no key, no past context or future destination to constrain the moment. It's just a sequence of events with no rules and no goal, milking attention out of you drip by drip, the signifiers of mystery with no mystery, jigsaw puzzle pieces from a hundred different puzzles that can never be made whole.