Firefly - Please!

For some time now I have been aware of a strange speech impediment by actors in films and TV dramas.

There is no indication whether this has been brought about by some acting academy or whether it is at the whim of a director whose methods have ‘caught on’.

Perhaps it started with an actor who wanted to make some point and somebody else thought, “Hey! That’s cool. I’ll try that.”

And so it progressed until, it seems, to be a commonplace and irritating idiosyncrasy.

What is this appalling linguistic device that I find so galling?

This:

“Tell me, [long pause] Adam.”

“What do you want to know, [long pause] Jill?”

Yes. It is the insertion of a pause between the statement and the name. Nobody puts the name first any more. We never, now, get:

“Adam, tell me!”

The name is always last and preceded by this pause that nobody, in real life, ever, ever does.

Why? What has brought this about.

This is not my only complaint about modern TV dramas. We have a host of new programmes now but very few, if any, are original.

I saw an episode of ‘Agent X’ the other night.

It is another make of a secret agent under the control of ‘certain people’ in high up positions putting the world right because they are ‘uber-qualified’ to do the job.

It is another ‘James Bond’ but without the glamour girl and the gadgets—although you could count the computers and tracking gear as gadgets, no doubt.

Sharon Stone - the glamour in 'Agent X'

Almost all the new shows on TV are remakes in a different form. All are predictable and, therefore, trite to the point of inducing boredom.

What do we have that is new and refreshing?

‘Criminal Minds’ is hardly new but, at least, it is a different format. The only problem, for me, is that I keep hearing ‘Fat Tony’ from ‘The Simpsons’ in it because Joe Montegna who does the voice of ‘Fat Tony’ also plays Dave Rossi, the FBI Agent!

Similarly, the entertaining series ‘Law & Order’ in its various guises was a fresh approach to crime dramas; it was a source of disappointment when it was finally done with. The same with the three CSI series—they were another fresh approach that were, ultimately, cancelled probably because they had ceased to become ‘fresh’.

What are they to be replaced with? Nothing special, it seems.

‘Elementary’ is a reasonable twist on an old tale and ‘Person of Interest’ was good until they removed Taraji P Henson and then the ‘Person of Interest’ was gone, really.

Still, she (Taraji) probably asked to go so that she could appear in ‘Empire’, which is a dire show that is only almost saved by Terence Howard and the aforesaid T. P. Henson.

Taraji P Henson

Now there is only football (soccer). Sometimes there is a good game of cricket showing.

Between the scriptwriter’s hash-ups trying to make a silk purse out of an old sow’s ear and these strange speech impediments I have pretty well given up on TV ‘shows’.

Bring back ‘Firefly’, for heaven’s (and our sanity’s) sake.

The ship 'Serenity' from 'Firefly'