PBA publicist Jason Thomas acted as a double for one of the actors in the bowling scenes and wrote about his experience here. Let me put it this way, it sounds like he had a lot more fun making the episode than I had watching it.
Well, it looks like network TV is about to do bowling another favor or, depending on how you look at it, disfavor this Thursday night at 9 PM with the season-ending episode of the Bones forensic drama series on Fox. Here is the "episode summary" I saw on TV.COM:
In the 6th season finale, the team investigates the disturbing, unidentifiable remains of a bowler that were found jammed in one of the bowling alley's automatic pinsetters. After hitting a dead end in the case, Booth and Brennan decide to go undercover and join a competitive bowling team in search of answers.
I'll probably force myself to watch this just to see if it paints bowling in an even more unflattering light than CSI did and, of course, to gather more grist for my blogging mill. In the meantime, you can check out the video below from another episode of CSI. I just discovered it today while looking for videos for this entry. I gotta get me one of them dice balls.
Thanks for the heads-up. I will watch with great interest and see if the "Snide Law of Bowling in Film" comes true. I really haven't named the law, it's just that as I blogged about here and here, there always seems to be some clear bowling ignorance on the part of the producers, no matter if they use "bowling consultants" or real pro bowlers as extras. Most annoying: Showing Brooklyn strikes followed by the character acting as if he meant to do it. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteI just saw this in my Bowler's Journal e-newsletter:
ReplyDelete• PBA.com’s Jason Thomas, who provided consultation assistance to the “CSI” bowling center murder episode a year ago, also provided technical expertise for the season-ending, bowling-themed episode of Fox-TV’s “Bones” which airs Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern.
Nothing against Thomas; I just hope he let's the producers know what a Brooklyn strike is.
Well, I watched the episode, and for once there were no Brooklyns. There was, however, a lot of things an avid bowler would pick up that the casual observer might not. For example, all of the bowler threw with a conventional grip. The kind of revs the balls were shown having as they hit the pocket were definitely not from the same shots. It also had some things that just can't happen that even a non-avid bowler would know. Such as the idea that a pinsetter being "rigged" to spot the pins a tad closer to each other to augment scores would allow the guy to pick up the 7-10 split without it being just pure luck.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't like how, like the CSI episode, the guy shooting for the 7-10 acted like, "Just watch, I'll get this." Yeah, right.