The blackness of outer space comes from the lack of anything to reflect light rather than the absence of light.
Each sore defeat of my defeated life / Faced and outfaced me in that bitter hour; / And turned to yearning palsy all my power, / And all my peace to strife, / Self stabbing self with keen lack-pity knife.
And, (4), we’re not really even seeing “characters” at all: it’s not Major Frank Burns, pathetic self-important putz from Fort Wayne, Indiana; it’s Larry Linville of Ojai, California, actor stoic enough to endure thousands of letters (still coming in, even in syndication) from pseudo-voyeurs berating him for being a putz from Indiana.
The vested owners of all those sun-drenched tract houses may stick around for a while and fight over the region, perhaps thinking that they are reenacting the great historical dramas of the nineteenth century—such is the long-term effect of canned entertainment on the collective imagination.
