I just finished reading Douglas Coupland’s jPod, and I have to say that I’m somewhat disappointed. I actually found the television show to be more entertaining, although there are certain plot aspects in the novel than I wish had made it to television.
In my opinion, the characters are portrayed with much more personality and depth on TV than they are in the novel. Aside from Ethan and his parents, the novels characters are two-dimensional and for the most part interchangeable. It’s as though every character was striving for John Doe’s statistical normalcy. I was especially disappointed in Cancer Cowboy’s character - he’s just another programmer in the novel, whereas in the TV show he can only be described as a twisted force of nature.
As it’s Tuesday morning, I actually have some work to do so I should get to it. I’ll have more to say on this later. I will say that it’s a shame that CBC has decided to cancel jPod. If you’d like to see more of the TV show, head over to Save jPod and do your part.
My name is Mike Kelly. I'm a Vancouver-based technologist and non-practicing physicist. strangely entangled is my home base on the internet. If you look hard enough you'll find some blog postings, articles, photos and other stuff I thought might be interesting
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Jan Karlsbjerg
June 6th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I read the novel first, then saw the TV series. Maybe that’s why I loved both.
The TV series felt like “version 2″ of the book - not a sequel, but a bigger, funnier story that even catered to the book’s readers by having some plot elements be different just to give the book readers a new experience.
The TV series has lots more space/time to unfold its story, so of course there’s more room for character development.