I May Be Obsessed

I've been readily explaining this summer to anyone who will listen that I am obsessed with Primeval; I've even gotten some people to watch the show. But perhaps you think I am fabricating my obsession? Perhaps you think it isn't as big as I say it is? Be under that impression no longer.

You see, Primeval fades into everything. (Yes, spoilers coming up.) I'm in a class on the History and Evolution of Food right now (yes, you may commence your jealousy). Given that we started at the very beginning of the timeline, there was much talk about early scavengers and the nutrition you can get from tubers that some modern gatherers still find by poking sticks into the ground. Sound familiar? That's exactly what Abby was doing in her opening scene for Season 4; hunting and gathering was exactly what she and Connor had to do during their year in the Cretaceous. So while I was sitting and reading through books and articles or listening to presentations in class, I kept returning to Primeval.

Obviously, whenever I come across the word anomaly, I start giggling (audibly if I'm alone, probably inaudibly if I'm not). I never realized how often that word is used until it took on this bright, fluorescent coloring. Even the word "primeval" itself comes up more often than I ever knew; I start rallying up with happiness whenever I run by it.

And then in my class on Romanticism we were looking at some paintings from around the same time period; Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (which you can view here) has so much of the sublime that it evokes not only Connor and Abby stuck in their Cretaceous setting, but also Cutter when he first goes through an anomaly and looks out at the wide Permian landscape, or Danny when he surveys the Rift Valley in the Season 3 finale. It's a view of something stunning, awesome and potentially threatening, against which a lone figure is only a very small part.

You see, you see: I'll give depth to Primeval.