Secondhand Danger

Dear my friend who shall not be named,

This week I watched Travelers. That thing was freaky. It had the longest intro I think I have ever experienced of a pilot and I felt anxious and confused throughout it. It had a very thriller-esc mood or vibe to it. They kinda just throw the audience in the middle of it. We jump from one unpleasant situation centered around one character to an entirely different unpleasant situation with another character. This show uses a wide array of tools to influence the audience's experience. In the first scene, we see there is a blonde girl that seems the be the character of focus. She seems to be a grown woman. She is in a dim lit building. We subconsciously infer that it is closing time based on the conversation she has with another woman and the window that depicts a dark night and the ground wet from recent rain. We get a little short scene of her trying to read, telling us that she has some sort of mental handicap. Before a group of at four men start physically harassing her female co-worker as she watches and yells in horror. She starts banging on the glass yelling at them, but then seems a little disoriented when they turn their attention to her as her friend escapes. Like somehow she didn't realize that if she did that, it would call her to attention. She runs away from the big glass window after they throw a bottle of alcohol at it. Now, this is all just a play by play of the first sequence we see and I haven't even finished it. The sounds, the lighting, and camera angles make the audience feel as if we are there. We hear muffled screaming as her friend is attacked until it catches the main character’s attention, then the audience is suddenly outside of the building watching and hearing the assault first hand and then back inside as the main character responds. Which is pretty explanatory of my own personal discomfort watching the intro because the audience experiences four different scenarios with four different characters that are equally dangerous, but two of them are particularly frightening. The first is the one I began describing above which we will just summarize in short as Woman almost getting gang-raped and the second, we will just put in short as BabyDaddy under the influence smashes Young Mother’s head into the wall. Now the other two scenarios were just as dangerous but didn't have as much power to them. Now some might say that the reason the other two aren't as significant is because the main characters are guys and I disagree. The reason why the other two aren't as powerful is because the two characters are in danger by choice or at least more so than the other two. In the two scenarios where the main characters are guys, the first is a guy that looks to be getting his ass handed to him in an underground fighting ring and he chooses to ignore his friend urging him to stop and the other is a guy in a house or something with a friend sitting in chairs and injecting themselves with what I assume is heroin. Now I stopped watching not long after that, but I thought it was very interesting and frustrating how they put the audience in and make us feel scared, helpless, anxious, and confused. At least that was how I was feeling watching all these horrible situations play out and not being able to intervene. Whelp, that's all I've got for this one. I could probably talk a ton more about this show, but considering how it's not my favorite I think I'll end it here.

Till next time,

happylittlepenguin