a review: the glades

This is an unsolicited review of the tv show The Glades; the opinions are my own.

The Glades is a family-friendly murder show set in and around Florida beaches and resorts. During my trip to-and-from New York last weekend I, for the most part, was wallowing in not having my kids around. I took naps on the plane and read a magazine and had a beer while no one asked me for anything and no part of me was in any way responsible for anyone else's poop. Only twice during my airplane travels did I think to myself, "Man I wish my kids could be here to see this." Lucky for a lot of families flying in the seats around me, they had their kids with them during those two moments to watch The Glades in-flight and learn about the procedure of getting to the bottom of murder.

In Florida, most young swimsuit models are murdered in their swimsuits. I think portraying a murdered almost-naked lady with glassy fish eyes as a delicately beautiful, near-erotic vision (let's zoom in a little more on that sandy, bloody crotch area, enhance, ehance) is key to raising well-rounded, sympathetic 1 to 11 year olds and brings up really good questions for family conversation.

The little boy behind me, for example, during the 4 hour NYC to SLC leg of my journey, had a lot of questions for his mom and dad about The Glades which I was lucky enough to overhear. One of them was, "Oh my god, is this inappropriate for me?" While I winced at the kid's overuse of, "Oh my god," throughout the flight I nodded to myself at the quality of the conversation between the child and his dad. "Probably," the dad replied, "sometimes grown-ups like to watch shows where they figure out really bad crimes step-by-step."

"Like extreme violence and murder?" the son asked.

"Yeah," the dad whispered... This wasn't the whisper of someone engrossed in high quality tv. It was the whisper of a parent being forced to admit something simply and ugly about the world to his little boy. It sounded like he wanted to go on, he probably felt compelled to, but he didn't. These are awkward conversations.

So, I didn't get around to buying headphones while I flew and so I can only imagine what The Glades detectives and characters talked about. I think it was probably a lot of reflecting on the horror of violently taking another person's life and ways to avoid escalating disagreements and conflicts to the level of extreme violence and/or calculated murder. Most parents around me, I noticed, didn't ante up for headphones for their kids to listen to The Glades either. So those kids, like me, just got the benefit of having the murder mystery play out in their faces. But I'm sure they, like me, were contemplating the greater social and spiritual lessons of this most excellent PG-rated television show.