Poor writing, poor acting in Jamaica Is Not A Real Place
THE WRITERS for this season of Jamaica Is Not A Real Place (JINARP) are getting lazy. There are now more plot holes and loose ends than a Hallmark movie and they’ve just resorted to shock value to keep the audience entertained. How can you introduce a cult leader and kill off the character in the next episode? I guess they never wanted the show to have another courtroom drama with all the pending corruption trials. So, they shocked us with his tragic death. Then they shocked us with Ruel Reid’s brazenness.
Here is another example of an incredible plot line. A character facing what amounts to robbing the state of millions is forced to resign as a government minister, tries to return to his post as headmaster at a prominent high school, is chased away, goes on paid leave, and is now requesting for extension of said paid leave! There is no way that is a credible sequence of events even if it is taking place in a fantasy series.
The loose ends are just mounting in number. Where is the St Thomas Rapist? Are the mobs still looking for him? Will Kartel be free? Will Cornwall Regional be finished soon? Is George Wright the man in the video? Did the police ever find the Pajero driver who ran over the head of the honey vendor, killing him, while stealing his wares? The writers thought that we would just move on from these sub-plots that had us at the edge of our seats. Lazy writing!
PLOT HOLES
And then there are the plot holes. The Maroons chased out the police off their lands saying that they had no jurisdiction in their sovereign state. Then they called them to lock down a dance that went beyond curfew hours imposed by the Jamaican State. The Bank of Jamaica raised interest rates to stop inflation from rising rapidly. Yet inflation is rising globally where our local interest rate hikes will have no effects on raw materials and silicone chip shortages, the Chinese energy crisis and the global logistic nightmare giving rise to price gouging by shipping companies with resulting soaring freight costs. Big plot hole if you ask me.
The vaccines are supposed to achieve herd immunity but those vaccinated can still catch COVID-19. We are taking the vaccines to protect our loved ones but we can still spread it to them so they should get it too. Wrong explanation for the right course of action or plot hole?
Conspiracy theorists are jumping all over that one of late. Yet the writers conveniently left out the COVID-caused-by-5G, the microchip in the vaccine, the Bill Gates population control and the vaccines-aregoing-to-suppress-your-immune-system gangs that were loudest before billions of people got vaccinated and countries with high vaccination rates are moving on out of lockdowns and high death rates from COVID-19. Lazy writing.
NINE-DAYS SPAN
Every time we see the ignition of a Me-too movement it sputters out. Whenever there is outrage at corruption it dies down after the same nine days. Check it out. Happens in every episode. Exactly nine days.
The repetition of scenes with just a different cast is getting boring now. Petrojam, Caribbean Maritime University, the nutri-bun people, the Holland estate debacle. Give me a break. Same storyline, just a few tweaks. It’s like watching a Scooby Doo mystery and wondering if it is really a ghost this time around. The end is always the same. It has been from even before independence and across several administrations, but this season of JINARP is just insulting our intelligence.
I find myself losing interest and wanting to change the channel. Maybe something else good is going on in South Korea. Squid Game was worth watching. The US is boring right now with Trump gone. I am even beginning to miss Tapia being in the news. Oh, wait, he still is. Some characters are simply hard to be written out of a show. Unlike Dog Paw. He said recently that the police were trying to kill him. We knew from the Kentucky Kid episode that this could be possible, so we weren’t surprised when he was killed by the lawmen. I wonder how INDECOM feels about that. They lost their showman/ ringmaster Terrence recently and are not featured in many episodes since then.
Will ZOSOs and states of emergencies be back? With curfews lifted, will we see a spike in murders? This series is terrible crime drama and nothing more. It is not even in the league of a Law and Order because rarely does anyone get arrested, so the show never gets to the investigative or courthouse drama. It just stops at gruesome murders and roll credits. Lazy writing.
One would hope that the developing subplots may save the show but the predictability of how they will be resolved makes me want to find a hobby. There will be another COVID-19 spike that will last two months during which there will be increased vaccine uptake, hospitalisations and deaths. The Government and especially the Ministry of Health will get roasted even after dumping over two hundred thousand doses of vaccines. Who would not see that coming?
What is worrying is that the educational system will be much worse off because of the pandemic and the next generation of actors will not be able to change the show. Let us face it, Jamaica has jumped the shark. Might as well we migrate our interests to another channel.