Arctangential

Happy summer everybody!

I guess I haven’t typed into this thing for a while. I should try to avoid these kind of lapses.

Recently I’ve been watching this TV show called The 4400, a sci-fi adventure show set in Seattle. Of course it’s filmed in Vancouver, which at least is better than having a show set in New York and filming it in Vancouver, or a show set in Truth or Consequences, NM and filming it in Vancouver. Mostly they pay lip service to the Seattle setting, with the occasional stock footage shot of the Space Needle, or mentioning that they’re heading off to Queen Anne or something. The whole thing is generally underplayed.

However, in the last few episodes we’ve seen in Season 3, something odd has been going on: whenever they need to make a throwaway reference to a location that they’re heading to or where something is happening, instead of using a place that exists in Seattle, they have been using the names of places in Pittsburgh. They’ve discussed visiting Schenley Park, Forbes Avenue, Munhall and Liberty Avenue. The first time it happened, I just thought to myself, “Isn’t that interesting that there’s a Schenley Park in Seattle too. I’d never heard of it before.” But, after a few more times, I went and looked them up and none of those places exist in Seattle. I don’t know why they did this; it’s like for a short period of time, they were using a list of Pittsburgh place names when filling in the blanks, instead of a list of Seattle place names, and they didn’t notice until after it was to late (if at all).

Overall, however, The 4400 is a pretty good show. It’s no Sopranos or anything, but it’s a reasonably well-done science fiction series, with interesting plots, good over-arching storylines, decent acting and effective (if fairly low-budget) effects. I’d recommend giving it a try if you’d enjoyed shows like Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica or The X-Files.