I got your point here. However, for this show particular, I still believe that the values showed in a TV series today worth much than the actual history because the history means the past and the show means today.
I cannot deny that there was a brutal history during the development of British Empire. It was full of violence and blood. The invasion of North America must be a nightmare to the locals, not even mention the carnages. But the point here is since the British Empire has ended for a long time, the marginal effect of the invasion is decreasing. You could still blame the Brits for what they did to the Native Americans, but generally speaking, it is no longer a Queen’s land. North America has been independent for 240 years.
Now back to CMBB, what does this show tell the audience? I have no idea what Americans may think because I am not American, so as an individual foreigner, basically I believe that CMBB is trying to tell me like, “As an American, I speak and only speak English, so when I travel around, it is not my job to communicate with you but your job to communicate with me. If you don’t speak English and make me feel inconvenience because of that, it’s all your fault. “OR “we Americans could and feel proud that we could use drug to get laid and you cannot complain about that because we’re Americans. I don’t care whether use drug to get laid is legal or not, but as long as anything happened because of my behavior, it’s all your fault” etc.
Oops, fantastic. I’m an American, I don’t care about locals and I could do anything I want beyond borders. You know why? Because we have US government! See that team? See that FBI? See these badges and guns? Are you scared? Are you afraid? Are you local police feel shame? How dare you local police fail to protect we noble Americans? And how dare you let our noble FBI fly 20 hours to take the rescue? And see, the limited intelligence of you local police is just useless, because for every complex case which you couldn’t solve, we noble FBI could solve it immediately! And we don’t even have the whole team there! Back in Quantico, we have a genius as our back up! And you just lower the IQ of the whole police industry.
That’s it. That’s CMBB. And it’s only related to the victim part. The hidden words behind the team’ behavior are just much worse. Ignore the borders, ignore the regulations, and ignore the stupid “fact” that every foreign cop could speak English. Every country in the world welcomes we FBI and we FBI could shoot and kill every foreign unsub we met. Nobody would complain about that because we’re FBI and our job deserves a great appreciation by both the Americans in foreign land and the foreign government. The foreign government would just thank us instead of complain that we kill their citizens on their land.
Does that a bit look like the invasion of North America by the British Empire? They, both the victims and the FBI, just walk on some foreign land and do anything they want without ask the permission. Oh, I forgot, they asked, literally, on the condition that NO is not an alternative answer. Then what’s the point of asking? Before the Native Americans realized that they didn’t like the Brits, Brits had already started the slaughter and then there was no NO answer anymore, and that’s the exact same message which the show is delivering.
Yes I knew, it was just a show. We expected too much from a fictional drama and focused on those details which actually doesn’t matter, like the wrong French translation. But I could tell you that as a foreigner, the anger I felt when I watched the show does matter. I felt no sympathy to the victims because if you dare behave like that in front of my front door, you just deserve the death. You earned that and I just made your wish happen.
It is even not Beyond Borders because borders means respect and there is no respect showed in this series. That probably because from a view of an American, there is no such concept called “Borders”. And for an American version of “Borders”, generally we call it “invasion”. You don’t care what I care, and you don’ think I should care either, with the condition that it all happened in my house, in front of my face.
That’s the reason why I believe that a current TV series is much more important than the actual history. Because a criminal drama with a times series of today is a story happened at this moment, and reflects the value about today. Today, you may disagree the opinion that CMBB is denigrating other culture in favor of American knowledge, but my feeling is just telling the opposite way. I believe that this series is actually about American’s ambition of the invasion of the world. It’s an imaginary invasion tested under a fictional scenario. In this scenario, Americans have imaginary enemy (local unsub), imaginary alliance (local government) and imaginary strategy to achieve their target. It’s like a vertical attack, by sending the force (FBI) directly to a fixed coordinate (different country) immediately with a lethal weapon and an excuse (American down) to finish their job (welcomed by the world).
I have no problem with Americans, because even this show tries to tell me that the American who live to my next door probably taunt me inside every time when he smiled to me just because I don’t speak English, I won’t actually kill him next morning when I see him. It’s the values behind the screen delivered by CBS matters. Today you try to tell me “Never mind, it’s just a show”, tomorrow you might tell me “Relax, we’re here to rescue. We won’t bother you locals”, and what about the day after tomorrow? Native Americans would not know that the new landers were actually trying to kill them, took their livestock, raped their daughters and made them slavery in advance. But they did little by little every day and tested the respond of Native Americans until one day, made the place their colony.
CMBB did the same way, but the problem is, as a Native of a foreign land, I don’t want to be next Native American.
PS: I, individually, could understand the ego of being a citizen of you mother country. It’s normal and even if you showed that value in your TV series which about the story happened on your own land, it’s acceptable. There are a lot TV series, especially criminal drama, would show the superior of Americans. Full of foreigners or foreign-oriented criminals in the screen might give the screenwriters more options to make up the story. But that’s happened on your land, like CM, which makes the fictional story like an American business.
CMBB, on the other hand, behave differently. It’s happened on foreign land, which makes the fictional story become partially political. And whenever it came to the politics, you should be correct at least on a public platform, which refers to the camera. Just like the famous American Donald Trump. Even this guy always behave political incorrectly in front of the camera, I really doubt he would actually do as he promised after his election. But CMBB just did it, before Trump.
On another side, I also believe that besides these stupid storylines, almost every part of this show is nonsense. The characters are poorly written. What’s the point of having a language master in the team when every foreign cop could speak English? What’s the point of having a hot Asian with a military background in the team but don’t let him to do the Morgan-kick? What’s the point of having a medical examiner in the team when she just simply took the photos of the dead bodies? What’s the point of having a funny IT guy in the team when he was only useful at the beginning of the episode and filtered with the examiner? And most importantly, what’s the point of having such a leading male character? Hotch of CM has limited facial expression too but he was quite actively at the first episode. After one episode, you could know that he had a family, a lovely wife, a first-born, and respected his fellow colleague Gideon. He was a vivid character which looked like a real person. Here, Garret seems did everyone’s job while none of them seems to be his specialization. With his limited facial expression, he looked like a typical American solider in Iraq or Afghanistan, making the show even more like a drill of a new war. These made the series worse because if you have a group of good characters but a terrible storyline, we might endure it a little bit longer. But the questions is, with an annoying line and a terrible establishment of characters, what was left?
Comparing to Crossing Lines, CBS seems try to turn the whole world as his own version of Europe. I have no idea what CBS is planning about this series, but here is one thing for sure. You Americans probably right, we locals just dislike Americans.😃
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