10.5

And now it's time for the Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV Last Week. The most awesome thing I saw on TV last week was NBC's two-night miniseries 10.5. I can only hope that you watched it too, because it was hilarious! As you can probably figure out from the title, the idea is that there's a giant earthquake that changes the geography of the west coast of the United States. Luckily, it doesn't affect Canada or Mexico at all! In the beginning, when they were introducing each character, the writers were very fond of the "make you think this is a regular person who will turn out to be very important" scheme. Like there were two guys playing basketball, and then a guy walks up and calls one of them "Mr. President"! He's the president! You thought it was just a guy playing basketball! And the other guy was the head of FEMA! And then there is a surgeon. But he's not just a surgeon. He's a cowboy. A maverick. He doesn't play by the rules. And he's the head of FEMA's son! And then there was a divorced dad (Bo Duke!) picking up his daughter while his ex-wife looks on. But she's no ordinary ex-wife. She's the governor of California! Genius. And then Kim Delaney played the earthquake expert with the wacky theory that no one believed, but of course she turned out to be totally right. And I kept hoping that as things got worse, she would go, "Man, I need a drink." No such luck. And, hey, if the entire west coast is in trouble due to massive earthquakes, is it a good idea to base your emergency earthquake tracking center, including the one person who can predict what will happen next, in California? Shouldn't they be in an underground bunker somewhere? The special effects were really bad. The acting was cheesy. It would take me about fifty pages to go through all of the awesome parts, so I'll just leave you with this one: the head of FEMA, who was kind of an asshole, had a moment of clarity and decided to go into a hole and place a nuclear warhead closer to the fault line and save the world. Don't ask. But while he's in the hole, there's another earthquake and the nuclear warhead pins him in the hole. So he gets on the radio with the President, who gives him a giant pep talk, and at the last possible minute, the FEMA guy arms the warhead! Victory! But then there's a giant earthquake anyway and thousands of people die, but you don't actually see any destruction from this giant earthquake. Instead, you just see people running around in the desert while the camera shakes. And then the earth stops crumbling about two feet away from Kim Delaney. And none of the major characters (except FEMA guy) dies. If they ever replay it, or if it comes out on DVD, I can't recommend it highly enough. You will laugh and laugh. What? It wasn't supposed to be a comedy. Well, it was anyway. Which is awesome.