Discovery discovers new ways to make the amazing boring

The Discovery Channel recently took time off from hawking paranormal junk to present a special on the latest human-evolution discovery, Ardi. I watched it and fell asleep before the first hour was over. Then, for a few minutes today, I Googled "Ardi" and "hominid" and had my basic questions answered. One of which was, "What about the missing link? Is it a myth?" Answer: yes. At least, the ape/human missing link science always expected to find. Seems human features independently emerged long before we thought, and in a branch separate from monkeys. (As if I had much of a clue about this topic.) The split happened way, way long ago.

Discovery addressed this, too, but almost by the by. They were too busy showing images of no particular interest by themselves (people sitting at tables, the sifting of dirt, etc.). And that was the chief problem with the first hour--the slow, go-nowhere pace. At 57:00:00., Bev said "Why don't you turn on the news?" I did. So I have no idea if the pace picked up at some point after that.

If anything ever cried out for a condensed narrative, the painstakingly slow and careful uncovering of ancient fossils would have to be it. Like so many modern documentaries, this thing played like a drawn-out teaser, with "What they would find next would challenge the foundation of everything"-style cliches every couple of minutes. Nothing helps a flat and slow-paced narrative like empty-calorie teasers. Ironically, this approach is part of modern TV's strategy of keeping people hooked every second of the way, the hope being to stay one step ahead of the action, telegraphing everything that can be telegraphed. Of course, this approach doesn't work when 1) there's no action to speak of and 2) highly detailed exposition is needed. Instead, we got smatterings of exposition mixed with film footage of people talking, looking at things, looking at things while talking, looking at things while not talking, and (exciting!) of stuff happening on computer screens. And what's more interesting in 2009 than PC-screen footage? Paint-drying documentaries? Toast-popping-up studies?

One hilarious moment almost made up for the deadness--it happened when Darwin was first mentioned and a rock/Disco beat started up. Prior to that moment, the soundtrack was all flute-and-percussion dawn-of-time music. But once things got to Darwin--rock and roll! Or at least Disco and roll! Since I didn't get to see the closing credits, I have no idea whether or not Dork Productions, Inc. had a hand in this.

Discovery might want to stick with morons-in-haunted-houses shows and leave science to PBS, which at least used to know how to present stuff like this. Maybe they've lost the knack. If that's the case, then the art of making interesting science interesting might be lost to TV.


Lee