Binge Watching "Project Blue Book"

I'm writing from home tonight, off work for the next several days. Starting last night I've been binge watching episodes of "Project Blue Book", which arrived at the Libe yesterday. I normally don't like to binge watch anything because then you don't get to savor each episode and let it sink in, but because this is a popular and brand new show, there will be holds on the dvd set and I won't be able to renew it. So I only have it until Tuesday and I have to finish all ten episodes by then. I've gone through six so far; two last night and four this eve (which I could do because I am off). I am very much enjoying the show so far, and I started to write about it last night, but as is sometimes the case these days, I became too tired to finish, lol. This happens when I am not as focused because of fatigue. I start writing, late at night as I do, thinking I know what I want to say, and I'll start to say it.....but then I'll get distracted and go off on tangents, which is a problem of mine. Having time to edit is helpful, but I don't often have that. So sometimes if a blog is turning into Jello simultaneously with my mind on a given night, I just have to shut it down and try again the next day. The following, then, is a combination of last night's aborted blog and tonight's added content, hopefully homogenized into a readable whole.

(from July 6 2019) Tonight I got started on "Project Blue Book". I watched the first two episodes this evening, and so far it is everything I was hoping it would be : Super creepy, with great early '50s atmosphere and art direction, and an ultra-paranoid script. Originally, after Roswell the Air Force initiated Project Sign to deal with the flying saucer question, when reports first began to come in from all over the country. "Sign" was followed by Project Grudge, which gives you an idea of how the Air Force felt about being tasked with the ongoing problem. They kept trying to sweep everything under the rug with minimal investigations and closed-mouth public relations but then in 1952 there was a huge UFO "flap" in the Unites States including an incident in which multiple saucers flew over Washington DC. This was dramatised to great effect in the famous sci-fi movie "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers". At that point, the AF had to form a new committee with a more open public face. This was Project Blue Book. On the surface it was committed to taking witness reports seriously and conducting thorough investigations where the evidence warranted. But in reality Blue Book was just another whitewashed cover-up with a "concerned face" pasted over the front. The Air Force wanted to make sure folks didn't get any ideas about UFOs. "They don't exist" was the AF's one and only tagline.

Why, then, did they open up investigations about flying saucers? Well, to quiet the public for one thing. The newspapers and radio reports had folks all worked up. But the Generals in charge of "Blue Book" seemed to know something that they were keeping secret. In the show, they have an officer - Captain Quinn, a WW2 pilot - in charge of the investigation, but his mandate is to close every case as fast as possible, with an "official" explanation prepared for the media about what was "actually" witnessed. And of course, no matter what the eyewitnesses say, none of them saw a UFO.

This is Captain Quinn's job, to "clear things up", to let people know that they didn't see what they saw.

The Air Force Generals think it might be a good idea to bring a scientist into the fold. The first half of the 20th Century was the golden age of science. People trusted scientists implicitly, so the thinking was that a scientist, in this case an astronomy professor named J. Allen Hynek, could "explain" any unusual phenomena in rational terms that would sound good and, if necessary, use technical lingo that would go above the heads of the eyewitnesses who were making the reports.

In the second episode I watched tonight (July 6), Captain Quinn and Professor Hynek are dispatched to West Virginia to explain away the account of a woman and her two children who witnessed a UFO crash in a nearby field. The locals have turned on the woman because they can't find any signs of wreckage. All they see is a vast burned area in the forest. They dread the UFOs too, but believe the woman is trying to spread fear because she claims she saw a "monster" emerge from the crash. We the viewers are shown this monster and it looks mighty scary and perhaps real. The town locals are portrayed as superstitious hillbillies reacting in a way that recalls the Salem Witch Hunts. They fear what they can't understand and want to blame the messenger, in this case the poor woman who had the encounter. At first, the Blue Book team projects a superior know-it-all attitude to the witnesses in every case they investigate. Captain Quinn is a smug s.o.b. Professor Hynek is at first a skeptic, but wants the investigation to proceed scientifically nonetheless. He wants to take Geiger Counter readings, examine crash sites, conduct follow up interviews of witnesses, but Captain Quinn (a composite, fictional character) shuts him down, saying : "When I close a case, it's closed".

One of the executive producers of "Project Blue Book", which airs on the History Channel, is Robert Zemeckis, so you are getting that Larger Than Life quality to the characters and their experience that is his trademark, gleaned from Steven Spielberg his mentor.

J.Allen Hynek, a real life person who was by all accounts a staid university professor from Ohio State, is turned into a sort of minor league Indiana Jones, which I find a bit distracting. In the first episode, he and Quinn both survive a fiery, nose down plane crash with little more than scrapes and a broken arm. They were airborne in what looks like a P-47 to try and recreate the flight pattern of an Air Force pilot who claims he encountered a UFO at close range. This incident took place in Fargo, North Dakota and I will Google it for autheticity. But in the show, their plane crashes and they both walk away, so it does have that heroic Spielbergian elevation of ordinary characters toward extraordinary acts of daring and adventure that requires an automatic suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. With Zemeckis as the Executive Producer you know going in what the deal is, because he was a protege of Spielberg, in whose "E.T." little kids ride bikes into the sky to try and take their little friend home. Fantasy is part of the Spielberg/Zemeckis format, and in "Project Blue Book" so is exaggeration. I wish they hadn't turned J.Allen Hynek, a real life astronomy professor from Ohio State, into a wild-eyed adventurer who throws caution to the wind in many situations, but in truth this is a minor quibble on my part. On an 10 Scale of Enjoyment, "Project Blue Book" gets an 8. It's extremely watchable, and you get Russian spies and Nazi Paperclip scientists and Men In Black thrown into the mix too, and not in cliche ways. The writing is excellent and some of the spooky paranoid stuff delves into very real and deeply disturbing aspects of what happens to a person after a UFO encounter.

You will have to watch the show for yourself to understand what I am talking about.

Have you ever had anything happen in your life that you weren't expecting, that came straight out of the blue, but when it came it felt as if you knew it was coming all along?

Have you ever seen anything that you'd never seen before but in the same instant you knew in your soul that you remembered it from a very long time ago?

Have you ever seen or heard, or even known, anything you felt you couldn't talk about?

Watch "Project Blue Book". For all it's Zemeckian embellishment it is still an awesome show in which a fair amount of truth comes through the modern dramatic structure, where the writers keep you hanging for ratings because they don't wanna give away the game. This is the formula for every big cable TV hit, be it "Game Of Thrones" or whatever. I quit watching "The Walking Dead" after five seasons because it never went anywhere due to this style of writing (and I also quit the show because of the horrendous violence introduced by that godawful character),,,,,,but anyway, now I am on one of my tangents so it must be time for me to sign off. I was just trying to point out that because "Project Blue Book" is only in it's first season (and about to begin season two), that it's formulaic structure can be overlooked at this point because the UFO investigations bear so much fruit and are so downright weird.

This is a Weird Show, and in the end that is all that matters because Weird is Good. Two Big Thumbs Up as a result.

I will binge the remaining four episodes in the next two nights and get back to you, and I'll also try to squeeze in a movie if possible. I had a nice hike at Santa Susana this afternoon, and we had good singing in church this morning.

I hope you've had an enjoyable holiday weekend. See you in the morn after a major-league sleep in.

Tons of love.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)