‘The Madison’ and Tossing Maritime under the Bus

I watched the first episode of The Madison, a Michelle Pfeiffer TV Drama on Paramount.

In short, it deals with a rich NY family, where the patriarch dies while fishing in Montana and the daughter of the matriarch played, by Michelle Pfeiffer, gets mugged in New York City. Very quickly it is conveyed that New York City is fake and that truth can be found fly fishing on the Madison River in Montana.

The mugging as depicted in the show symbolizes the evilness and moral loneliness of New York City, and then compares it to the wide open skies of Montana, where the sun shines and apparently the bugs are not too bad.

However, after the mugging there is a scene that immediately destroyed my suspension of disbelief in the show. The Michelle Pfeiffer character is having dinner in a fancy restaurant with her family and they commiserate with the daughter after her mugging and to change the subject and get people off their cellphones Michelle Pfeiffer turns to her daughter’s husband and asks: “So anything interesting happen to you today, besides your wife getting mugged?”

The son in law, pauses and then says: “Well, Uh, yeah we are investing in a Dutch cargo ship venture. I mean some of these larger vessels carry over 25,000 containers. Like $2000 and change per container. That’s over 50 million a load in freight. And you have crew fees and docking fees, fuel by far being the largest expense --.

Michelle Pfeiffer interrupts him and says: “So… no, nothing interesting happened.”

Besides the fact that it is unlikely that the Dutch are investing in 25,000 TEU container vessels, what bugs me is that the one time that maritime trade is mentioned in popular media, it is condemned as boring. And as a life long fan of Michelle Pfeiffer, it actually hurts that her character judges it as such.

I can see where this show is going, it deals with culture shock between uppity New York rich and the more realistic culture of Montana. In watching the show, the culture clash is mildly funny, but also completely unoriginal since there have literally been hundreds of movies and TV shows that have described that particular culture clash.

I don’t know if I will continue to watch it, but the reference to maritime reminds me how poorly maritime is represented in popular culture, and what it does to the country.

We revere cowboy culture, but cowboy culture has been a dead end since the last great cattle drives. Despite massive government support, farming and cattle ranching has not, and will not, sustain the country’s economy. The lone cowboy on his horse has become a symbol of the country; a mark of its ruggedness, individuality and self sufficiency. All of it, at best a romantic notion, and at worst an outright falsehood promoted by self serving individuals and political tribes.

There is massive evidence that humans need contact with nature to sustain themselves and if there is a redeeming feature for the show it appears it addresses that issue. Although very unrealistically by portraying the Montana cabin as lacking electricity but somehow having excellent internet service for the video calls between New York City and Montana.

However, nature is not exclusive to Montana and this is where I want to make a point. Can we please stopped revering cowboy culture and think a little more outside the box (or rather inside the box). If one wants to talk about culture clashes and nature what is wrong with Michelle Pfeiffer at a fancy restaurant in NYC asking: “So anything interesting happen to you today, besides your wife getting mugged?” And the response is: “Well, Uh, yeah we are investing in cattle futures. I mean this will allow us to skim a fraction of the value of unhealthy foods, grazing damages and government subsidies ……

And Michelle Pfeiffer says: “So… no, nothing interesting happened.”

And after dinner the Michell Pfeiffer character and her daughter walk to the NYC water front and see a large container vessel heading for the Verrazano bridge and a small sailing vessel heading upstream to Albany. She turns to her daughter and says: “I wonder what that is all about? I think I need to stop focusing on fancy dinners, laser skin treatments and high fashion and figure out what I can learn here.”

They then turn away and the camera pans along the river, where some dolphins surface, an osprey catches a fish, and a fisherman in a small boat hauls out a striped bass.

Closing credits on the pilot episode show a crew member on the large container vessel watching a sunset, an engineer switching the engine room to unmanned status, and aboard the sailing vessel two crew members exchanging the watch.

The possibilities are endless.