NBC's earthquake destroys Houston, credibility

Last night, while Houstonist was busy separating the wheat from the chaff of local news, we were keeping an eye on NBC's epic 10.5: Apocalypse. It had everything you'd expect from a TV disaster flick: cheesy special effects, dreadful acting and a script that must have been written by a strung-out third grader. Yeah, yeah, big deal. Pass the Donettes.

But what really got our attention was the end of the movie, when a new fault line opened from the north coast of Canada clear to the Gulf of Mexico, cutting North America in two and making a mess of our fair city along the way. It was yet another chance to see what Hollywood thinks Texas looks like: As the fault line moved into the Houston area from the north, aerial shots of the terrain near what would be College Station looked more like computer-generated Big Bend, complete with sand and desert scrub. Between downtown Houston and the Gulf, the fault line passed through more of the same — we guess the folks in Pearland and Alvin were so afraid of getting wiped out that they packed up their entire towns, leaving only sand and the occasional tumbleweed behind. Smart!

There was also a shot of what appeared to be downtown Houston, except it was wrecked and divided by this fault line full of liquid hot magma. Problem is, though the fault line was supposed to be moving north to south, it was shown crossing downtown south to north. But given all the other problems with 10.5, it's really not that big a deal — neither is the footage supposedly showing people evacuating Houston, which looked like a traffic jam in Vancouver. (Given what we went through last fall, you'd think footage of people actually evacuating from Houston wouldn't be that hard to find, right?)

We know it's not fair to pick on TV movies — they're sitting ducks in the critical world. But come on, NBC: a series of earthquakes that destroys the west coast? Sure. A reversal in continental drift? Yeah, OK. Las Vegas falls into a giant sinkhole? We're down with that. But Houston surrounded by desert? That's just messed up.