I still don't understand Ray Walston's line...
Year and years of viewings and I still don't understand Ray Walston's line reading of "Brilliant, brilliant" after Harold Lauder suggests adopting the whole committee.
Ray Walston sighed and said, "brilliant,just brilliant". Taking a cue from his earlier remarks, I'd say he was again annoyed that they (humanity) were falling back in to old patterns; running headlong into ways that lead to their destruction.
He doesn't want them to follow blindly and do as they are told.
He was dismayed that the town's people blindly accepted what Mother Abigail wanted.
The thing that I took from it was more in the vein of 'Now why in the heck didn't we think of that?' than Harold's idea not being a good one.
Ray Walston sighed and said, "brilliant,just brilliant". Taking a cue from his earlier remarks, I'd say he was again annoyed that they (humanity) were falling back in to old patterns; running headlong into ways that lead to their destruction.
He doesn't want them to follow blindly and do as they are told.
He was dismayed that the town's people blindly accepted what Mother Abigail wanted.
The book makes it very clear that the Committee (and the Zone as a whole) approved of the idea. Stu called the ideas that Harold put forth, especially the one about the blanket election of the ad hoc committee 'sharp'. One of them, if memory serves it was Larry, told the others afterwards that Harold was 'ace-high'. And it did streamline the process. Anyway, that's how I see it.
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It was defintely a negative seeming line reading. I took it as sarcastic or resigned to it at least.
Like Lauder had hoodwinked them in some way.
Someone slipped up in the editing department right here.
It was defintely a negative seeming line reading. I took it as sarcastic or resigned to it at least.
Agreed.
Like Lauder had hoodwinked them in some way
Here I don't agree. Have you read the book? It's more clear there. Like a few other things, this wasn't presented or explained well enough in the miniseries. My comments that follow are based far more on the written version than the televised one ...
First, I've gotta say that the Free Zone committee sometimes struck me as being shockingly dimwitted, at least collectively. I don't mean just that they're inexperienced at being in leadership positions. I mean that they simply didn't have a lot of firepower between their ears. I'm thinking in particular of a moment when they were preparing for the first public meeting (when they were still a temporary committee and were planning how to use the meeting to get themselves put on the permanent committee). Glen instructed them on the necessity that each should have people already recruited and ready in the audience who would nominate and second them. Now, this is something that a person who has never run for anything, not even high school class treasurer, might legitimately not think of, so it's not surprising that some of the other six might have not thought of that; but it's also something that's quite obvious once it's pointed out. But the reaction of at least one other committee member was something that seemed to indicate that he or she would have never thought of that, not in a million years.
Imagine that the seven of them were headed from some house to some other one, and just before leaving Glen had remarked, "that sky looks nasty, better bring your umbrellas" ... and one or more of the others, instead of saying something like, "I hadn't looked at those clouds, thanks Glen," said something like, "you're so brilliant, Glen, I don't know what we'd do without you" (meant completely sincerely). That's the way that episode seemed to me. And although unfortunately my Kindle is charging up right now and I can't look for specifics, I do remember that there were a few other moments when the committee struck me this way as well.
Also ... by the time of that first meeting, there was already some animosity between the committee members and Harold. Harold had been considered for membership on the committee and rejected, because as one member (Stu, IIRC) said, "none of us quite trust him."
And ... it was a point of irritation that Harold kept taking their ideas and improving them. For example, when one subcommittee was formed (burial committee, IIRC), Harold suggested that its size be increased as new arrivals showed up and the general population's size grew.
So ... imagine that you're in charge of something. Even further, imagine that you've been chosen by God to be in charge of something. And to top it off, imagine that, like Glen, you've got a post-graduate education and several decades of life experience ... and here's this pimply-faced teenaged kid, that you and your colleagues already somewhat dislike, who keeps upstaging you with better ideas than yours ... and he's making you look a little inept, whether he intends that effect or not.
I think that's the context for the reaction. Not that Harold has actually deceived them in any way, he hasn't. Just sarcasm and disgust, a combination of "here we go again," "we should have thought of that ourselves," and "I wish that damned kid would just shut up."