This is a little stupid but it speaks to the state of mind of the author. Ahem, me. Not only have I been laid up for the last week to three years, I’m in the throes of another wave of home sickness, so, bear with me.
Among the many things in my Netflix queue is this sort of silly show called leverage; timothy hutton as an ex insurance agent with a grafter, muscle, hacker and second story theif. They solve crimes and grift corporate bad guys to help out the little guy.
It’s supposed to be set in Boston although it tries for an international flair, they live in Boston. On the show Boston looks a whole lot like Portland. Oregon, not Maine. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been to Boston, but I’m pretty familiar with it. Usually a geographically based show or movie is going to at least have landmark type stills in it. There’s a whole tour-line for the freedom trail in Boston; I never took the tour but I crossed paths with it. None of those landmarks are on the show.
Now I’m sure I wouldn’t have to dig any deeper than IMDB to find out where they film, but that’s like cheating. One of the most telling clues, if not of location at least of a particular bias, everyone on the show pronounces Oregon correctly, even in a foreign accent. Outside of Oregon that’s pretty rare.
So I’m halfway through this episode that is supposed to take place in Portland. Oregon, not Maine. A few of the street shots are stock, I mean stock for the show, they’ve used them before. Outside the window of this place they are meeting is a constant rainfall with thunder and lightning. This is a show that appeals to armchair grifters. Methinks the director doth protest too much. The rain is too hard, too constant and deliberate and a thunder and lightning storm is uncommon for Portland.
Ok, not a lot of paw or back strength here. The other thing about this episode is suggesting those “We Buy Your Gold!” outfits isn’t on the up and up. I never quite understood why anyone ever thought they were. I’ve never seen one of those ads that wasn’t done like a low budget local used car commercial, that right there would keep me away from them. But the premise of every store, virtual or brick and mortar, is that you somehow have spare gold taking up closet space and you didn’t realize it might be worth money.
I may be out of touch with a lot of modern day thinking, but I’m pretty sure most people think there gold is worth money, probably more than it actually is, that’s why they’ve been hanging on to it. I’d be a lot more interested in seeing a documentary about how those places really work, successfully I mean, because shitty marketing and lowballing on one of the few commodities that everyone knows has value … I just don’t see how one of those places could even keep the doors open, virtual or no.
I guess when I’m caught up, assuming the show is off the air (I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be) I’ll check to see where it’s filmed. It’s cheesy and I’m making fun of it, but I like it, it’s likable in a cheesy way, even if it isn’t filmed in Portland. I’m almost positive it isn’t filmed in Boston. Probably a lot in LA, but, you know, even if it wasn’t cheesy and I didn’t like it, I’m still homesick.
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