Forced Obsolescence

In the ’50s and ’60s, American automakers became famous for implementing an approach known as “planned obsolescence.” The idea was to roll out new features and appearance changes every year–adding a bigger tailfin here, a new hood ornament there, an FM radio option, an increase in horsepower, and perhaps a new form of power steering–so that a hapless person who bought a new car three years ago would look at their perfectly adequate vehicle with a sense of embarrassment and decide that they needed to buy a new one just to keep up with the times.

The new tech companies have gone one step beyond planned obsolescence, into the realm of forced obsolescence. That’s what happens when the tech companies just stop supporting the old tech that seems to work just fine, requiring you to purchase and switch to new tech. You don’t just want to change to keep up with the Joneses, you have to change if you want your device to work at all.

This is what happened with our Roku device, which is probably more than five years old. It has worked like a charm. Several months ago, however, we started to get messages when we tried one of the streaming service channels advising us that the channel was no longer available on our antique Roku device, At first I resisted doing anything about it, figuring that one less streaming service is not that big a deal. But now other services have started to drop off, too–so I’ve knuckled under and bought a new Roku device that hopefully will get us back to full streaming capabilities.

It’s irritating, but what are you going to do about it? The tech companies will tell you that they had to stop supporting the old device because of security risks, so the switch to the newer, faster, safer device is really for your own good. But his forced obsolescence approach also happens to provide a lot more certainty for tech company bottom lines, because the switch to the new product is no longer dependent on unpredictable consumer tastes and decisions. The tech companies figure that if they’ve got the ability to eliminate the X factor, why not do it?

Fake Crying, Fake Laughing

We watched the last episode of Shogun last night. The show ended, incidentally, in an enjoyable, Shogun-like way–which means there was more than a dash of mystery and confusion and misdirection to season a good storyline.

The episode required Cosmo Jarvis, who was quite good as Blackthorne in the series, to cry on cue at the loss of Mariko. It’s a tough assignment, perhaps the toughest assignment in acting. Jarvis gave it the old college try and did a credible job, but the cry didn’t quite reach the believability threshold. It made me think about how rarely you see a really authentic-looking cry on screen. When you see the genuine article, the entire face and upper body contribute to the cry, from the hunched, heaving shoulders to the quivering chin and mouth up to the sad, crying eyes. A true crying person is unmistakably crying. A single tear rolling down the cheek of an otherwise stolid face isn’t really a believable substitute.

Laughing also involves the complex interaction of lots of parts of the face, but usually laughter on cue is a lot more credible than crying. It is probably easier for actors than crying because they can summon up the memory of a good joke or a funny experience and use it get into the laughing mood. It’s harder to do that with crying, although some actors try. My mother told me once that when Shirley Temple was a child star and needed to cry on cue, one of the people on set would tell her her dog had died–which doesn’t seem like a solution you reasonably use more than once.

Anger, sadness, romantic interest, and surprise are emotions that any decent actor can reasonably convey, but fake crying is the gold standard. Find an actor who can do a believable cry on cue and you’ve identified a true “master thespian.”

Faces On A Screen

We were out to dinner at a casual spot last night–one of those places that seems to have TV screens covering every inch of wall space. As we sat down and I looked around, I was struck by how many of those screens featured close-ups of talking heads at that moment.

If your TV is tuned to a news show, or any kind of sports talk show, you’re bound to see a lot of faces on a screen. And now, with so much of daily communication happening through video calls on your computer, you get the same point-blank exposure to human faces on screens at work, too.

This didn’t used to be the case. Once, news shows or sports shows would feature footage of actual news events or highlights of key plays from a big game, with an occasional shot of an anchorman or a reporter on the scene. As some point in the past, however, somebody decided that actual film of events wasn’t really needed–probably for cost reasons–and head shots of people arguing with each other about the event would suffice instead. Add the onset of video calls into the mix, and the result is that we now get a steady diet of head shots, like the big screen footage of Big Brother in the Apple 1984 ad.

Babies are known to be naturally attracted to human faces, and studies have found that adult brains tend to look for human facial characteristics in various objects, like the fronts of cars. If in fact we’re hard-wired to appreciate human faces, this must be a golden age for homo sapiens, because I think it’s safe to say that this generation is seeing more close-ups of other human faces than any other generation in history.

The Cinderella Effect

I’ve been really enjoying the NCAA Tournament this year. I didn’t fill out a bracket, but our annual Buck Back pool is in full, trash-talking swing, and the tournament is just great TV to watch, period. It’s got all the elements: compelling story lines, enormous pressure and ultra-high stakes because in every game a loss means one team’s season is ended, joy, fear, devastation, and other emotions being displayed by the players and their fans . . . and irresistible Cinderella stories.

What is it that draws us, every year, to the Cinderella teams–like the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, which on Thursday improbably toppled mighty Kentucky? Is it just that Americans traditionally root for the underdog? I suspect that there is a bit more to it than that. During the regular season, the sports media tends to focus on the big-name teams from the power conferences, ignoring the smaller schools and the more obscure conferences. You hear so much about the power teams you almost get sick of it. But the smaller schools that aren’t featured on ESPN Sportscenter have good players who might have decided to go to a smaller school rather than one of the big boys for many different reasons. When the tournament rolls around, those players finally get a chance to shine on the big stage, and they’ve got nothing to lose–whereas the big boys might be feeling the increasing pressure of a high seed. It’s nice to see those fresh faces that have been hidden from view until now.

There’s another element at play, too. Those smaller schools often are key parts of their communities. Many Americans live in places where these small schools are found. Oakland University, for example, is located in a suburb of Detroit. During the regular season Michiganders will root for That Team Up North and the Michigan State Spartans, but when the tournament arrives I’d guess those fans will also gladly yield a bit of their rooting interests to a school like Oakland in the Big Dance. At least, that’s what I do: I always root for the Ohio teams that have made the field of 64.

Alas, the Golden Grizzlies were knocked out yesterday, losing a heartbreaking overtime game to North Carolina State–which is a bit of a Cinderella story in its own right. But there are still a few of the Cinderella teams left, like Grand Canyon, James Madison, and Yale, each of which is hoping that they will be fitted with the glass slipper. We’ll be watching today and hoping their improbable journeys continue.

The Closed Captioning Playlist

From time to time we’ll watch a TV series with the closed-captioning function on. The sound quality on some shows seems to be more muddied than on others, and if you’ve got a character who speaks with an accent it also can be hard to follow the dialogue. (I ruefully concede that age and hearing decline might be a factor, too.) In any case, in some situations closed-captioning definitely comes in handy.

One feature of the closed-captioning function is particularly enjoyable: the effort to describe the incidental background music during the no-dialogue scenes. In fact, in my view it’s often hilarious–as in the closed-caption example above. You can imagine the closed-captioner, listening to the music, and then searching for the right words to best describe it to someone who can’t really hear it. In the example above, for example, you wonder whether the closed-captioner was wrestling with the choice between “eerie” and “creepy,” or between “chimes” and “tubular bells.” Sometimes the closed-captioner gets a little more granular on the music description, too, and you’ll learn that what you’re hearing can be described as “techno pop” or “industrial synth” or some other genre you’ve not heard of before.

The adjective choice in the music descriptions can have a bit of a spoiler effect, too. Among the more common music descriptors are “suspenseful,” “ominous,” and “menacing.” Those three words seem to form a spectrum. If music is described a “suspenseful,” that probably means a character is just walking through a darkened alleyway, but there’s a good chance nothing will happen. “Ominous” kicks it up a notch, and tells you that the character is going to at least be confronted by a bad guy emerging from the shadows, so be prepared. And “menacing” is even more heightened. If you see “menacing” used in a music description, brace yourself– the hapless character on the screen is going to be the victim of imminent bodily harm and perhaps a grisly death at any moment.

I wonder if the composers of music for TV shows like the closed-captioning takes on their creations, and work with the closed-captioners to come up with apt descriptions?

The Lincoln Lawyer

It was cold and windy in Columbus yesterday–a perfect day to stay inside and get in some binge-watching on the tube. But as I scrolled through various options, nothing really appealed to me. Finally, I saw The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. I normally avoid “legal” dramas like the plague, because there are inevitable eye-rolling moments that an actual lawyer is bound to spot–but I knew it was based on novels written by Michael Connelly, a writer I like, so I decided to give it a shot.

It was a good decision, I ripped through the first five episodes of season one last night, and I put the show squarely into the “binge-worthy” category. The lead character–a criminal defense lawyer named Mickey Haller who had an accident, becomes addicted to painkillers, gets clean, and then experiences a surprising development that changes his trajectory–is well played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. Haller does most of his work from the back seat of a variety of Lincoln vehicles as he moves from courtroom to courtroom, which is how the series gets its name.

What really makes a good binge-worthy show in my view, however, is whether you care at all about the characters surrounding the lead. Because Haller has a complicated life and clearly needs a support network, there are a lot of them–including two ex-wives (one of whom manages his law practice, while the other is a prosecutor), a teenage daughter, an investigator, and a driver who shuttles Haller around. My favorite is the driver, Izzy Letts, deftly played by Jazz Raycole, who is seen in the photo above. A former addict herself, she keeps an eye on her boss, makes sure he stays firmly on the wagon, and has the kind of issue-setting conversations with Mickey as they are driving that move the plot along.

And to my surprise, the legal issues are handled in ways that are reasonably close to reality, given the requirements of TV drama. Haller is jaded by his experience with the criminal justice system and the police, but his approach to the practice of law is in the ballpark and believable. I particularly liked an episode where Haller had to pick a jury and deal with a challenging client at the same time.

Two seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer are in the books, and are available for binge treatment. It’s nice to know I’ve got a good TV option as brutal February drags on.

Treadmill TV

I’ve been hitting the treadmill at the workout facility lately. The workout room has treadmills with all of the bells and whistles, including a TV monitor built into the machine that allows you to search through different channels and find the programming of your choice while you chug along, keeping your pace up. Watching TV helps to pass the time, and the built-in TV is a nice feature because you don’t need to crane your neck to watch an overhead TV–and because you’ve got control over the programming.

All of which raises the question: what is the ideal TV to watch while you’re striding along? Yesterday I carefully considered that question as I scrolled through a menu of basketball games, news programs, golf tournaments, Spanish language stations, and generic TV programming. You can eliminate the news channels right away, because anything with serious content really doesn’t offer the distraction that you are looking for. Basketball games require too much concentration to keep track of the score, and your basic golf tournaments all look the same and are kind of boring, as the golfers hit perfect shots on well-manicured courses. I don’t speak Spanish, either. I therefore find myself gravitating to the Food Network or HGTV, which seem to offer the most reliable distraction content.

A program like Guy’s Grocery Games on the Food Network has all the elements of perfect treadmill TV. It’s not life or death stuff, of course, but is interesting enough to keep your attention. It helps that the episodes all follow the same course–first a goofy game is introduced with some cornball humor, then the contestants decide what to cook and run down the grocery store aisles to fetch their ingredients, then they frantically work over a stovetop to complete their creations as the clock winds down, and finally their dishes are tasted and judged. Along the way we inevitably get snippets of the contestants talking about how much they want to win, the judges intoning about the challenges involved in the game, and jovial host Guy Fieri offering his thoughts and announcing how much time is left. 

You marvel at the creativity of the chefs coming up with dishes on the spur of the moment, wonder how a particular kind of exotic taco dish or pizza would taste, see the chefs labor away, watch Guy interrupt their preparations while eating one of the ingredients, and before you know it, you’re ten minutes closer to the end of your treadmill workout. And if your workout ends before the show does, it’s really no big deal–it’s not like you’re missing anything crucial. 

The same could be said for Chopped, or Beat Bobby Flay, or one of the many home refurbishing shows on HGTV. These shows are so ideally suited for the treadmill that you have to wonder if it was developed with workouts in mind. 

The Inoffensiveness Challenge

With the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, and two weeks of constant game analysis and predictions and Taylor Swift chatter behind us, people have started to focus with anticipation on the really important issues, like the halftime show and the commercials. And speaking of the commercials, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that this year’s crop of ads is facing a really tough challenge: to be funny and memorable without offending anyone.

Good luck with that!

Modern America is a pretty hypersensitive place, and trying to avoid offending anyone may just be an impossible task. If you think about the famous Super Bowl ads of the past, like the weird Apple 1984 ad, or the Mean Joe Greene jersey-tossing Coke ad, would they have met the totally inoffensive to modern America test–or would someone, somewhere have been upset by the notion that our country had turned into a dark and dystopian Big Brother society, or that Mean Joe at first was gruffly dismissive of the Coke-bearing little kid? Can any commercial’s language and phrasing actually survive minute dissection for potentially offensive elements? Would Spuds MacKenzie or the football-kicking Clydesdales be well-received–or would some organization argue that they unfairly exploited animals?

Part of humor is surprise–even shock. And when you surprise people, you might also upset them . . . and a perception of offensiveness could follow. In a world where some people evidently believe that Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs is some kind of deep-state “psyop,” all bets about where the “offensiveness” line really lies are off. Why, it makes you want to watch the Super Bowl just to see how the ad makers try to rise to the challenge and thread the needle–if an eye of the needle even exists.

The Daily Browns Fix

As it has become clear that this season is an especially memorable–and perhaps even magical–one for the Cleveland Browns, I’ve found myself wanting more exposure to all things Browns than what I can get from just watching the game every week. 

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the Browns had some good years, I subscribed to a weekly publication called Browns News Illustrated that provided the news, in-depth analysis, opinion columns, and feature stories that I desired. I even brought it to the office after I finished reading it, attached a paper routing slip to it, and sent it around to my fellow Browns Backers at the firm through interoffice mail so they could similarly scratch their Browns itch. That subscription ended long ago, and I have no idea what happened to BNI–but one advantage of living in the internet age is that Browns fans and fans of any sports team can find many internet resources to satisfy their craving. There are a huge number of webpages, blogs, news websites, team pages, message boards, random highlights, clips of radio broadcasts, and other sources to choose from.

As the Browns have made their run to the playoffs this year, the urge to consume ever more Browns coverage has intensified, and I’ve found myself watching internet videos, too. If you’re not a sports fan, you probably can’t understand this–but if your team has had years of struggle and disappointment, as the Browns have, you need to fully enjoy the good times while they last, because you never know when they might abruptly and sadly end. 

One of my new favorites is a broadcast called Ultimate Cleveland Sports Show on YouTube. The photo above is a still shot from one of the broadcasts. The show consists of three, four, or five guys sitting in a circle on the set, talking with each other, with the show’s producer, and with guests about Cleveland sports topics–which at this time of year means talking mainly about the Browns. You’ll get some analytics, some statistics, and some insider gossip, with some off-topic chat and sophomoric humor mixed in, but mostly the show consists of guys offering their opinions and then arguing with each other about them. 

This is great stuff for someone who gets home from a long day at the office and wants to relax and immerse himself in some friendly Browns chatter. It’s like going to a bar, planting yourself on a well-worn stool, and talking earnestly with your friends about your team over a beer or two–with the usual jokes and camaraderie and silliness mixed in. It’s comfort food for your fanship gene, a kind of meat loaf and mashed potatoes and gravy for the brain, to help get you through the long hours of the week until the next game is played. 

So far, UCSS has helped to get me to today, with only one day left before tomorrow’s playoff game against the Houston Texans–and I imagine I’ll be watching again tonight to see what the guys have to say about the matchup. Thanks, UCSS, for getting me through the week!

Algorithmic Imbalance

For some time now it’s been clear that Facebook’s algorithms have been hard at work in their relentless pursuit of clicks from me. They’ve offered up countless smorgasbords of film clips and other clickable options, hoping to establish my likes and dislikes and hone in on the former. So far, they’ve been successful in determining that I like the Beatles, Johnny Carson Tonight Show clips . . . and the Three Stooges, preferably during the Curly era, although the Shemp era clips are a close second.

With that important information at hand, the algorithms have given me a steady diet of those three interests. I never suspected there were so many “Beatles pages” on social media, cranking out the content for Beatles fans like me–including a Spanish language version that I get in translation. My Facebook feed includes written pieces, still photos, and performance clips of the Beatles, presumably because I’ve indicated I am capable of clicking on all of them. With Johnny Carson and the Stooges–so far, at least–I’ve been only getting the clips, although lately the still photos are starting to creep into the mix. I figure it’s just a matter of time before the algorithms start to throw the written content in as a test, too.

Once it became clear how these algorithms seize on a click and start to build a personal profile, I decided to exercise some conscious restraint on the clicking, not wanting to expose too many of my interests and predilections to the ruthlessly efficient software. So I keep it to the above-noted topics, and no more. To the Facebook algorithm, I’m no doubt seen as narrowly obsessed with the Beatles, the Tonight Show and the Three Stooges–not exactly the kind of person you’d like to get stuck talking to at a cocktail party–despite being given tantalizing options to click on clips from Midnight Special, other ’60s and ’70s music shows, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, or The Little Rascals. But since I’ve stoutly resisted clicking on those tempting options, it’s still just Carson, Curly and the Fab Four.

This leads me to wonder: does the Facebook algorithm ever conclude it has reached the point of single-topic overload? Does it ever just give up?

Baking Day — 2023

Today will be a designated Christmas cookie baking day. That means I’ve got to decide what to bake, then assemble a list of ingredients that I can use as the basis for my shopping list. I sit and drink a hearty cup of coffee as I sift through a stack of recipes that increases every year, giving careful consideration to which of the cookies and other concoctions should be made this year. I feel like Mr. Phelps at the start of an old Mission: Impossible TV episode. going through his stack of photos and biographies before I inevitably decide that Barney should be added to the team.

In every household there are staples that must be prepared every holiday season, so those go into the approved stack as a matter of course, but other considerations come into play as well. Which cookies are fun to bake? Which cookies seem to travel well in a cookie tin? And I like to try a few new recipes every year, too.

For me, at least, baking is a process, and the early morning review of accumulated recipes–some of which have been singed around the edges by the old gas range–is the first step on the journey.

Singing Star Trek

Star Trek and its various spin-off series have always featured quirky episodes. The original series had episodes like The Trouble With Tribbles and A Piece Of The Action, where Kirk and Spock go to a planet that had adopted the governance principles of ’20s-era mobster Chicago due to the contaminating influence of a book inadvertently left behind by prior Federation visitors. We’ve watched episodes where characters lost their inhibitions, prematurely aged, lived alternative lives, met their evil selves, time traveled to meet historical figures, and just about every other oddball plotline you can think of.

But there has never been a musical Star Trek episode–until this year. Brave New Worlds, the show that features Captain Christopher Pike, Spock, Uhura, and Nurse Chapel on the Enterprise in the pre-original series years, aired an episode called Subspace Rhapsody in which the characters periodically burst into song and dance steps, just like they do in ’40s musicals or West Side Story. I’ve been trying to catch up on Brave New Worlds this week, and I finally watched the episode last night.

The concept underlying the episode is that the Enterprise encounters a fold in subspace, tries to use it to speed up subspace communication, and broadcasts a song at the phenomenon–which reacts in a way that causes everyone in the Enterprise to start singing their deepest innermost feelings. The phenomenon spreads, and eventually crew members in every ship in the Federation are launching into revealing songs, which incidentally poses obvious security problems. Even the fierce Klingons are affected–and they don’t like it, because rather than singing Klingon opera they’re crooning a “boy band” number with accompanying dance moves, which is pretty hilarious.

From the on-line reaction, it looks like the episode was a hit with viewers. You can read a Variety interview with the creators of the episode here, check out a “behind-the-scenes” article here, find out about the musical abilities of the cast here, and see the nine songs sung in the episode ranked here.

I’m not a big fan of musicals, but I thought Subspace Rhapsody was a worthy addition to the roster of classic, one-off, quirky Star Trek episodes. It did make me regret, however, that the original series didn’t try this approach, at least one. It would have given Dr. McCoy the chance to utter the timeline line: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a singer!”

The Series Nobody Watched

Have you watched any of the World Series? Were you even aware it was underway, and that a game is being played tonight? If not, you’re not alone. The viewership for this year’s World Series between the Texas Rangers and the Arizona Diamondbacks is stunningly, astonishingly bad.

ESPN reported the ratings for first game of the Series with a headline that must have sent chills down the spine of every baseball executive: Game 1 least-watched World Series game in recorded history. The headline’s reference to “recorded history” makes it sound like the record goes back to Roman times, when in fact “recorded history” just dates to 1969. Still, the numbers are awful. Game 1 averaged 9.35 million viewers, which set a new record for being unwatched. It was only the sixth World Series game since 1969 that didn’t draw at least 10 million TV viewers. The fact that it outdrew The Price Is Right is cold comfort.

And get this: the viewership statistics for Game 2 were even worse, averaging only 8.15 million viewers on Fox. To give you a sense of just how dismal those numbers are, consider that it was only seven years ago, in 2016, when the classic Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs drew 40.05 million viewers–or about 5 times as many viewers as watched this year’s Game 2.

So what gives? To be sure, the Diamondbacks and the Rangers aren’t big-market teams, and they don’t have the histories and fan bases of teams like the Cubs or the Guardians, or some of the other established baseball clubs. But still, it’s the World Series! Does this mean that there just aren’t that many true baseball fans out there, who care about the Series no matter who is playing? When I was a kid, everyone paid attention to the Series and talked about it–but that apparently isn’t the case anymore. And, to be honest, I haven’t watched a minute of it.

If I were involved in organized baseball, I’d be incredibly concerned about these numbers. There’s no way to spin them. It’s really bad news for a sport that used to be the dominant fixation of virtually everyone in America, and now seems to be withering on the vine.

Channel Wars

It’s always a bit uncomfortable when the normal folk get caught between the competing forces in some dispute between colossal corporations. That happened recently to many Columbus cable TV viewers, including us, who became pawns in the big-money battle between Disney and Spectrum, the cable TV provider.

These cable company versus content provider power struggles inevitably seem to come to a head during football season, when one side or the other can try to use the outrage of gridiron fans who are deprived of the chance to watch their favorite team as a bargaining chip to force the other guy to knuckle under. In this case, Disney decided to pull certain channels from Spectrum–including ESPN, ABC, National Geographic, and FX–while the two companies fought about fees. I didn’t hear much hue and cry about people not being able to watch documentaries on polar bears on the National Geographic channel, but there was a lot of hand-wringing in Columbus about college football and what you would have to do to find your game of choice. And in the meantime, both sides tried to enlist angry pigskin fan cable viewers on their side of the channel wars, with Spectrum running statements like the one seen above if you tried to access one of the blocked channels.

I don’t know anyone who takes the time to voice their support for, or opposition to, one side or the other in one of these cable conflicts. Instead, we curse both sides and then try to figure out if there is a way to watch the desired program through some other avenue, like a streaming service or some alternative provider. “Voicing your concern,” which they always ask you to do, doesn’t do squat, but finding a site where you can watch your game of choice can be a very productive exercise.

Spectrum and Disney eventually settled their dispute–not coincidentally, only a few hours before the first broadcast of Monday Night Football was set to air on ESPN and ABC–and football fans who are Spectrum subscribers breathed a sigh of relief and hoped that things would return to normal. Let the analysts decide who got the better end of the deal; for now, we’re just happy that we insignificant pawns have been taken off the chessboard and won’t be deprived of our football any more.

Mental Image Pollution

I’ve been reading the Cormoran Strike series of books written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I’m in the middle of the third book in the (so far, at least) seven-book series, and have very much enjoyed following the exploits of British detective Cormoran Strike and his plucky assistant, Robin Ellacott.

One of the fun parts of reading a series of books is developing a clear mental image of the characters, and that has been true for the Cormoran Strike series. Strike is described as a huge, hairy, overweight man with a nose mashed from boxing and a head covered by hair that is better suited to his nether regions; he also has a prosthetic lower leg to replace the limb he lost in an explosion while serving in the investigatory service of the British Army. The descriptions of him are vivid, and after two and a half books, I’ve got a fixed picture of him. Robin is a bit more elusive, because other than strawberry-blond hair and an attractive figure, her main features are her very appealing personality, her loyalty to her boss, and her emerging toughness, but I’ve got a developing conception of her appearance as well.

Because of that, I’m going to follow my standard rule and not watch any TV adaptation until I’m done with the books. In this case, the books have been made into a British series called Strike. I don’t know whether the series is good or bad, but in either case I don’t want to mess with those mental images. I also prefer to finish the books in the series before I watch the show, and not get ahead of the books. I’ve followed that rule pretty uniformly, too, with the only exception being the Game of Thrones series because it is not clear to me whether George R.R. Martin will ever finish and publish the final books.

Sometimes the casting of beloved literary characters fits with the mental image, sometimes it jarringly doesn’t, and sometimes it completely alters the mental image in a positive way. The best example of that latter scenario is the casting of Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. Duvall’s rawboned look is not how I envisioned Gus, but by the end of the first episode I was sold, and Duvall’s unforgettable portrayal is how I know see that terrific character. Perhaps that can happen again with Cormoran Strike, but for now I’d like to leave my mental image of the character unpolluted by someone else’s vision.