We flipped the channel to "The Botany of Desire" on PBS. The show is a documentary based on the book of the same name by Michael Pollan.
After watching the show for four minutes, I decided it had been made by people who had gone to the Ken Burns School of Painfully Slow Storytelling. Literally, no new information in four minutes of program. Gretchen thinks the show is dumbed down way too much. I have to agree. Why do I want to watch some kind of Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed? And now I'm typing this, and 10 minutes later, they're still talking about Johnny Appleseed. OK, Pollan is telling us that there's a point here about genetic diversity coming from seed instead of grafting clones. Wow, what a long time it took to make that point!
However, I will say that the art credits of the show are incredible. I really liked one of the 19th-century paintings on the screen and Gretchen was able to source it in just a few moments by using the online credits for the program.
UPDATE (2011-01-05): OK, we watched the whole show. It wasn't bad, the tulip and cannabis sections were the most interesting. I think the ending, which covered potatoes, was very heavy-handed in its treatment of genetically modified potatoes. Here at the Hawks house, we're highly into local sourcing and diversity of heirloom varieties. But genetic technology can play an important part increasing productivity and reducing the human footprint. Pollan himself comes off in the program as an alarmist. The last ten minutes of the documentary could have used more balance.
