Reviews

Pilot Season by James Brubaker

munchin's review

4.0

Totally bizarre, occasionally hilarious, and always hitting a bit too close to home.

msand3's review

4.0

An interesting exploration of how we shape our own realities, not so much by how we fictionalize our surroundings, but instead how the fictions in our own lives ultimately structure what we understand or perceive to be real. For me, the central story of the collection -- both in terms of theme and actual placement in the text -- is a pilot episode that takes as its subject the faked moon landing (not an investigation into possible fakery, but a speculative show that assumes the nation is already in agreement that the landings were faked). Brubaker gives us a fictional depiction of a television recreation of a staged event that really happened. (If such a tv show were actually produced, one can only imagine that so much fakery would only help to draw a generous segment of viewers who actually thought the speculative drama was a sly uncovering of the "truth" behind the Apollo landings!)

This is wonderful satire on how television doesn't so much fictionalize reality as much as it reassures us that the desires we live/generate/project are the proper and true course for our lives. Sure, we are The Audience (which Brubaker amusingly capitalizes throughout, suggesting the homogenous, cued response by viewers who, like scripted characters, are manipulated by the writers at will), but we are also The Father, The Daughter, The Wife, the Son, etc. We live these "types" that we construct inside our own heads. Television gives us the comfort of validating those illusions.

I'm looking forward to reading Brubaker's upcoming work.