Keeping Secrets

In the second season of the tv show Lois & Clark, there is a scene where one of the villains, Tempus, gleefully reveals Our Hero's secret to Lois Lane. If you're not familiar with it, check it out, it'll only take a minute. This scene repeatedly comes to mind when watching both The Sarah Jane Adventures and Merlin. Now, there are a lot of shows (and comic series) who have the whole secret identity/ secretly fighting crime/ some superheroic secret of sorts premise built into them. Early on, it inevitably gives the show in question a lot of mileage built around the juxtaposition of the main character really doing amazing things and some or all of the people around him/her being unaware of it. You don't need actual superpowers involved.

( Spoilers for Alias, Buffy, Lois & Clark, Merlin and the Sarah Jane Adventures folllow. )

We're in the fourth season - i.e. it's the third year of adventuring for Rani and the fourth for Clyde - and the idea that their parents either "couldn't handle it" or are somehow still oblivious enough not to draw the right conclusions despite all the glaring signs, and despite being characterised as loving, concerned and brave parents, starts to be far worse than what any variation of the Superman story ever did to Lois Lane in this regard. It makes me feel like Capslock!Harry Potter from Order of the Phoenix. STOP IT ALREADY.

Things we said today

Watching Beatles interviews in chronological order is interesting, because you can see how they hone their act with the media (and also when the journalists caught on that they were getting good free quotes here). There's an 1963 one from Ireland, when they're already a national but not yet an international phenomenon; George keeps glancing outside the camera frame (to his mother, if the dialogue is anything to go by). He all but waves. By the time they're in Sweden two years later, they're pros but also very bored with the press and passing the boredom by testing just what they can get away with, especially John. Mind you, some things stay consistend, including stupid questions. One is tempted to invent a Beatles Interviews Drinking Game.


- 1 sip when (there is no if about this) someone asks about the hair
- 2 sips if/when a non-British reporter asks any variation of "which one are you?"
- 3 sips for any variation of "why do all those girls love you?/What do you think about your fans?"
- 4 sips when John pokes Paul, pulls his ear, tickles him, slaps him on the head or throws a pillow at him
- 5 sips if a reporter wants to hear some singing
- empty the cup if the smart ass remark comes from the interviewer rather than from the group (I found only two examples, Dusty Springfield asking Paul whether he plucks his eyebrows and a reporter after the "more popular than Jesus" quote asking John "Mr. Lennon, is it true you want to give up your musical career for a chair in comparative religion?")

( Now try it out with the examples below the cut! )