Oct

30

New TV Sucks

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I haven’t been that impressed with the new crop of television this year.  The strike is probably somehow partly to blame, but it’s still depressing.  I tried a few new shows this year, the list that I was willing to sample was unusually low.  I threw out Fringe a month ago, it was dismal.

I’ve been watching True Blood for over a month and I can never quite put my finger on what’s wrong with it.  I have a few ideas.  There’s no episodic structure whatsoever.  I know cable series take a lot of liberties that way, but I’ve always thought the tightest shows are the best.  (A great example is Weeds, which just finished a tightly wound and awesome season.)  It never seems to be clear where the show is headed.  There doesn’t seem to be much of an overarcing plot.  Sure, there are things that come up in multiple episodes, but the focus changes so constantly that you never get settled in.  The accents drive me nuts.  The casting is off.  (Aside from the two main characters, Sookie and Bill, I wouldn’t mind throwing out the whole rest of the bunch.)  The atmosphere is too heightened.  They really struggle to find a tone.  The whole thing ends up feeling like too much drama all the time.  And I’m sorry, but if you’re going to make a show about vampires, you need to present them in a new and interesting way.  These vampires look about as derivative as they could possibly be.  Okay, so maybe I can put my finger on what’s wrong with it.  Still, I haven’t quit it yet.  Maybe because I’m hoping things will get better and find some direction.

I also tried out the new show Life on Mars.  I admit, it had a lot more to do with the titular song by David Bowie, which I love, than any particular thing about the show itself.  I was willing to give it a go for a couple episodes, but having just watched the third I think I’m out.  There are good things.  Good actors, being given nothing to work with doesn’t make them bad.  I think the main guy has a real future.  The clothes and the soundtrack are pretty sweet.  It’s different (though not original, since it’s a British knockoff).  But there’s plenty of bad.  Some of it unintentional.  I know Harvey Keitel was a bit of stunt casting, but seeing him in 70’s garb just makes me remember him actually in the 70’s and it’s hard to concentrate on him as a tough cop when I keep imagining him as the very creepy pimp from Taxi Driver.  Michael Imperioli’s mustache is completely out of control.  Gretchen Mol is not able to put any life into it.  Mostly I’d say the issue is tone.  They swing back and forth from police procedural to period piece to preachy parable.  (Like that alliteration?)  There’s also some definite psychedelic elements and they never really fit.  But it just feels too clunky in its different selves, it never inhabits any of them well.  The 70’s stuff is just hit too hard.  It reminds me of that laughable bit in Titanic where Billy Zane laughs off Picasso saying he won’t amount to a thing.  The last episodes contained a completely unnecessary reference to Soylent Green on top of all the other terrible stuff.  (The terrible stuff was basically a look at how bigoted we were against gays in the 70’s.  And somehow the protagonist said that kind of prejudice would lead to 9/11 and the war in Iraq.  What?  A particularly clunky line was, “Gays in the military.  Unbelievable.  What are they gonna want next?  To get married?”  Worst dialogue ever.)

My latest new show is The Mentalist which I picked up after hearing it was the only decent new procedural out.  And so far I’m wavering.  It’s not bad.  It has Robin Tunney, who I like and whose hair I covet.  Too bad she’s stuck playing a total straight man.  I swear half her dialogue consists of rolling her eyes instead of speaking.  It falls a little bit too easily into the well established pattern these shows have.  And the kooky guy who solves crime is a bit I’ve seen before.  Still, I’ve seen worse.  It’s definitely better than a lot of the other similar stuff around, even if it’s a little gimmicky.  My main complaint, as an aficionado of thrillers, is an overly high proportion of dead girls.  This is a common problem.  The Closer is one of the only ones I don’t see regularly falling into this trap.  For some reason it’s always about dead girls, in real life, in books, on television, and it annoys me.  In the first 5 episodes, we had 4 with dead girls.  And the one with a dead guy had, of course, a stunningly attractive widow.  They need to find a bit of variety in their setups if they want me to keep coming back.

It is annoying to have lame tv.  I’m anxiously awaiting tonight’s return of 30 Rock.  I’ll be glad when Lost is back in January.  But there are a few gems hiding in the current shows.  Just not many.

On the reading front, I’m officially quitting legal thrillers.  Too much.  And too difficult for me to read.  I’m far too critical.  The last one I read (A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock) was probably the best, one of the most accurate, and showed the best look at being a PD that I’ve seen in a novel.  Still, it wasn’t that great of a book, really, so I’m off to greener pastures.

I just finished re-reading Octavian Nothing Vol. 1 in anticipation of Volume 2, which I just started.  It’s really weird to read a book when your first acquaintance with it was an audiobook.  It definitely changes the way you see it.  I really love the first book.  I think the way it gently exposes the first bits of information in the first 50 pages are wonderful.  (It’s the kind of book that it’s best to read knowing nothing about it.  A review may give away the time period and the details of the main characters that it’s better to learn on your own.)  And then once the big secret comes out, it actually gets more complex and more morally fraught.  It’s the kind of book that makes me wish I taught middle school English because I’d love to have a conversation with kids about it.  Not many books have the power to take your preexisting biases and throw them on their head.

I’m also finishing up Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, a book on writing.  It’s made me feel very good about myself, since I’ve learned many of these lessons through my own experiences.  She has a very different style and approach, so I’m not really taking diligent notes, but I can definitely see her creative power coming through.  Reading it this weekend, I had a bunch of different ideas to incorporate into my book just randomly spring into my head.  That’s the best.  (I’m making excellent progress recently, btw.  Almost 45,000 words!)

I’m making a trip to the library today to pick up The Shadow of the Wind, recommended by my friend Marlene, which looks exciting.

Oct

17

Playing Catch Up

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There was this study I read a few years ago where they found that people’s brains had the same response to seeing pictures of their friends as they did to seeing celebrities.  And I totally get that.  Because lately I feel like me and Tina Fey are best buds.  I’m re-watching 30Rock’s first season and it’s great.  I will easily finish the season before the new one starts.  I’ll probably finish it before the week is out.  And I really like to say “blerg.”

In other television news, every now and then I seek out a show I’ve never watched and then watch it all.  Like the few months I spent on The West Wing and The Sopranos which are both pretty well-documented here.  I’ve been watching The Closer because it was the first thing that came to mind and I’d heard it’s decent.  It’s okay if you overlook the fact that Kyra Sedgwick seems to have learned her southern accent from Gone With the Wind and that you aren’t actually allowed to do pretty much anything she does in her interrogations.  (Like how you’re not allowed to make promises and such in exchange for a confession, which she does every single time.  And let’s just pretend that whole right to counsel doesn’t exist.)  It isn’t as dull as other police procedurals and Sedgwick is at least charming.  (It’s not like she’s the only person who can’t do Southern.  I have yet to hear a good one.  True Blood is an example.  The only Southern accent on TV I like happens to be Jack McBrayer’s on 30Rock, probably because he’s from Macon.)  It’s pretty quick and meaningless fluff, which is basically what I’m looking for.

We’ve seen a few movies I haven’t written about, mostly disappointing ones.  Burn After Reading seemed to realize halfway through that it was a comedy, too late to make it funny.  Although J.K. Simmons is, as always, awesome.  (One of the only people I actually did get to meet at Sundance.  The other?  Michael Gross, the dad from Family Ties.)  The Lucky Ones was actually really good, which of course means it’ll be a box office failure.  (Where was the marketing for that?  Seriously?)  Choke had the same kind of problems that Pahlaniuk books usually have, which is why you shouldn’t make any movies out of them without a real vision.  And Body of Lies was a snooze-fest.  This is the time of year when I want to go to the snobby art cinema and see actual good movies but never manage to.  There’s the money and the time and everything else.  I’m super mad that I still haven’t seen Tell No One, a French thriller.

On the reading front I’m in the middle of about 5 books.  I’m still hacking away at Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence, which is my read-in-class book when I remember to bring it.  There’s The Septembers of Shiraz which was loaned to me and which I read when I can’t find anything else around.  (It’s not very compassionate of me, but I’m kind of over books with inhumane regimes and prison and such.  I think I’ve read too many books with Russian gulags lately for me to get all into something on Iran.)  Eric suggested The Moon is a Harsh Mistress because I wanted to find some Robert Heinlein.  So far, though, I’m not digging it.  I’m not much for books with funky dialects (A Clockwork Orange not included.  Since I listened to it as an audiobook, whenever I see a reference to a “droog” or the phrase “Oh my brothers” I can hear the narrator’s voice say it in my head.) and the whole revolution thing is a bit of a bore.  I like the computer… and that’s about it.  I’ve been plowing through multiple legal thrillers as research (for my own novel and for the talk I gave on legal procedure last week), none have been that awesome.  And I’m also reading The Grift by Debra Ginsberg, which I reserved for reasons I can’t remember.  So far it’s not that exciting either.  It is about time for me to read something really good.

On the bright side, I’m now number 12 on the waiting list at the library for Kate Atkinson’s new book, When Will There Be Good News? I’m very pumped.  If I could pick a current writer I want to be, it would pretty much be Kate Atkinson.  Her mysteries are really good, but they’re just a joy to read.  Plus her book Behind the Scenes at the Museum is beyond awesome.

Plus Octavian Nothing Volume 2 by M. T. Anderson is finally out.  (It has a much longer title in actuality.)  And I just so happen to have an Amazon gift card to use.  (Thanks, Hilton!)  Very nice.  (I also decided to throw in Case Histories–Kate Atkinson’s first mystery–and gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson just for the heck of it.  And for supersaver shipping.  I never buy books anymore, so I’m allowed.)