Category: TV Shows

Hank McLean in Las Vegas in Fallout 2

Why I’m Not Management Material (and What Fallout Made Me Realize)

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I think I know what corporations want in an employee.

A couple of years ago, I was passed up for a role as the leader of a class module I didn’t even know I was being considered for. According to a colleague, I wasn’t chosen out of the fear that I would “change the entire module” if I were put in charge.

Which is true. I absolutely would have.

I would’ve pushed for changes to make the module more student-friendly. I would’ve questioned why certain things were done the way they were. I would’ve tried to rebuild parts of it instead of maintaining what already existed.

But that’s not what management wants.

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What Jamie Did: Adolescence, Masculinity, and the Quiet Collapse

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“Adolescence” caught me off guard in a good way. I read the summary and knew the program was a show about a kid being accused of murder. I assumed we would spend four episodes figuring out whether the kid actually did it. It took all of an hour to flip that on its head.

By the end of the first episode, our thinking on 13-year-old Jamie Miller is subverted: Jamie did murder his classmate Katie Leonard. It’s caught on film. The what of the story is already answered. Even with CCTV footage, the viewer is encouraged to question if the evidence could somehow be wrong. We see a young and innocent-looking Jamie ripped from his bedroom by police as his parents watch in horror. We want to believe there’s more to this story.

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