Ah, the Incompetent Man

We're three episodes into "Terra Nova" now. I'm giving it six before I decide whether to stick with it or not. Thus far, the signs do not look good. The first episode was quite good, the second less good, and the third worse. It seems they've spent their entire budget on (fairly poor) CGI dinosaurs, leaving them nothing for script, cast or any of the other things that would make the show good.

But the third episode also featured a scene that really got on my nerves.

The two main characters in the show are a husband and wife team. As per standard TV rules, the wife is a hyper-intelligent driven career woman/perfect mother. The husband is a cop. Now, meaning no disrespect to cops, that pairing of 'superwoman' with 'ordinary guy' is pretty overdone, and frankly annoying as hell.

Still, I suppose it wasn't too bad. In that first episode they did establish that he really wasn't any ordinary cop, as he broke out of one max-security facility and then broke into another, all within the first twenty minutes of the show. So, fair enough, I guess.

Anyway, 'ordinary guy' is fair enough. Nothing wrong with 'ordinary guy'. Just as long as they don't make him incompetent...

So, we get to the third episode, where the superwoman wife has to work late at night, leaving her husband to cook dinner and look after their three kids.

Can you guess where this is going?

Yep, sure enough, he proved to be incompetent. This guy who can effortlessly break out of, and then into, max-security facilities found himself bamboozled by the impossible task of cooking dinner for four while handling the needs of three kids. Apparently, he is trained in the use of a frying pan, but only as a means of defence against cartoon creatures.

In the end, his (again, hyper-smart) daughter took pity on his panicked state, and cooked dinner for the family.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure which is the more offensive lesson there: "men are incompetent", or "women, despite whatever skills or intelligence you have, your place is in the kitchen - because men can't".

Either way, it's pathetic.