In
terms of relevant biographical detail, this care worn and rather haggard
quadriplegic in her dismal state, granted not quite as bleak as Holocaust
survivors in the Ukraine engaging in humiliating gestures of obeisance to
wealthy American Zionists, knows very little about the quirky, xenogeneic focused
Bryan Fuller, other than the inferences to be drawn from his screen writing.
There are the usual thumbnail facial portraits of him, with a weevil shag bowl
of hair, in his generation’s encapsulation of post-beatnik repercussions, with
the most recent photographic images suggestive of the fact that his looks have
gone the way of the conflated distortions we give to rubbery lips traditional
cinematography bequeaths to the insane, and here comes the chastisement, a
connection missed, the bridge span unrealized by the time Hannibal was
transmuted into a serial and Fuller had a reputation to maintain, a minute
reminder to my weary brain to check with my own small social media escarpment
and of course Mr. Fuller is on Twitter with a substantive following, because he
writes for television, and apparently cut his teeth scripting Star Trek
Voyager. Any more astute observer would have done her research here before
starting an entertainment blog involving the merger of disability culture and
criticism of its conceits only to wind up on the edge of genocide revealed and
illegal speech, like taking out contract hits on senior living facility matrons
worn out by life as much as any of us, almost like George Trepal.
Trepal
is unique on the scales of American criminology, nearly a textbook case of
graphic novel theme park diabolical villainy of which Martin Scorsese complains
(to the near bewilderment of his audience) in relation to Marvel. Trepal was an
expert chemist, a reputed lab cooker, a member of Mensa, along with his ex-wife,
and for all that, he allegedly engaged in a meticulous effort to poison his blue collar neighbors[JM1] the Carrs. One new fact which
wasn’t highlighted in the crime documentary about the case was that tensions
between Mrs. Trepal and Pyle Carr initialized because Pyle was converting a
garage, his property, into apartments for his daughters. This is apparently
illegal in Polk County. Libertarians may wish to take note of the fact, and if
you’re an undercover detective not so glamorously portrayed as Angie Dickinson
on Police Woman, you write a true crime book after the fashion of Wambaugh and
his onion field about the enormous effort it took to compile circumstantial
evidence against this man in the twilight of the Reagan era. It took agent
Susan Goreck two years of chaffing brass serial anxiety over limited resources,
just as we would expect in any scripted procedural, to gather enough evidence
for her district attorney to expose Trepal as a viper with a yellow belly.
Whether she ever fancied it or not, even a former cop has a franchise leg up on
the stumbling dowager. She is a crime author who might be said to have the
potential for a stark convergence with Fuller, who only once, despite all the
pressures of screen writers guild fees and threshold requirements, took his
macabre artistry too far. As a stand alone episode, “Ceuf” has little to do
with the domestic terrorism of the Boston Marathon bombing, and for those of us
who live with the specter of violence as part of our existence, it can be
absorbed, but at the same time, as the critics chastised, it aims a little too
close to the jugular beneath the surface of American familial discord. The
closest Fuller gets to something so existential and bleak prior to this is
Course Oblivion on Voyager. As with much of the Trek spin offs, Course Oblivion
rounds off an encounter with a toxic protoplasm from an inhospitable demon
planet. The protoplasm, mercury like, perhaps inspired by Solaris, after
contact with Harry and Tom Paris, develops sentience, and a new species is born
all too briefly. The protoplasm becomes Voyager and her crew, and then dissolves
conveniently in the middle of nowhere. The episode serves to remind us that not
all risk taking leads to victory, that life and consciousness is starkly
perishable, and not all mysteries all soluble. As the show isn’t quite ready
for cancellation, the real Voyager encounters its own death, and due to network
time constraints, forgets what it once did for this living blood.
Unfortunately, this is what happens to most of us with transcendental
aspirations with too many setbacks knocking us off our perch. The Trepal story
is nagging, to my mind worthy of revisionist reexamination, but on its face, a
Mensa IQ doesn’t amount to much when it is utilized to torture a once divorced
waitress into a coma. Trepal had a unique skill set, a mind that was devious
enough to rid the United States of her enemies, and instead he files motions on
death row, trying to outrun the clock.
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