A Quick Shout Out...

To Enrico Colantoni, who was in Contagion, when I saw it the other night. The film was rubbish, but at least I got to say "he was in Veronica Mars!" so that cheered me up. Sadly, I still had to look at Jude Law.

So It Turns Out...

That The Walking Dead is still boring after all. No matter how many arrows Norman Reedus shoots from that crossbow in an effortlessly cool way. 

Hmm.

Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice

I have an anniversary coming up, and it's an important one. Six years, people. Six. Years. *sigh*

Yes, that's right, it is just about six years since I discovered, and immediately fell in love with Veronica Mars. The traditional anniversary gift in the UK for six years is sugar. I may spend the evening watching season one again and crying into a box of chocolates about how unfair it all is. I don't think I ever got over the cancellation.

Veronica Mars has affected my life more than any other television show. It might not be the best one ever made, but there was just something about it that caught my imagination, and nothing has ever managed to replace it. My televisual existence is plagued by ex-Veronica guest stars. Every time I watch something, I see someone that used to be on the show. I know that everyone who was anyone seemed to be on it at some point, but still... My mantra these days is "He was in Veronica Mars." I can't seem to watch any sort of drama without someone popping up. I think it's why I'm still watching The New Girl.

So, Veronica, I want you to know that I still think of you. Six years may have passed, but I still remember you as if it were yesterday. *Wipes tear from my eye*

Bite Me...

So, it turns out....and I'm almost embarrassed to have to write this...that The Vampire Diaries is fucking awesome.

I know, I know. It's a teen show. Aimed at people who are, well...teens. But still. It's awesome. I'm behind the curve on this one. I avoided it at first. Because of the name, because of what it was, because of the books. I'll admit it. I read them. Well, I say I read them. I tried. The Vampire Diaries in literary form makes Twilight look like some sort of Kafka/Kundera/Murakami collaboration. They are really, really awful. So this year, or last year--I don't remember--I thought I would give it a go. I posted about it on here, I believe. I watched all of them in about 3 seconds flat. I gorged myself, I'll admit it.

And I was hooked, instantly. The characters are good, the story lines are exciting. It's not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, even for a cheesy teen offering. The introduction of magic wasn't the best idea, as it so often turns out to be a deus ex machina, and the people that keep coming back when you think that they are dead...well, I could do without them. But Paul Wesley is acting the hell out of Stefan Without a Cause, and it's ridiculously shocking every. single. week, and Damon...well, Damon. What can I say?

He's declined a little this season. With the whole being in love thing. But even so. He's so entertaining to watch. In a LOT of different ways...

A Reformation

Sometimes, you are surprised.

Not always pleasantly, I'll admit as much. But I stuck with it, The Walking Dead. And while I won't say that it's the best thing I've ever seen, it's shaping up well. I thought I would have abandoned it by now, dumped it on the side of the road like a dead badger, or the sad, forgotten promise of Glee. Season 1 didn't set me on fire. And I was open to it. I wanted it and was totally ripe for the picking. I hadn't been overexposed to the zombie genre, so by the time season 1 started, I was nowhere near annoyed with zombie tropes. My zombie experience was limited to watching Shaun of the Dead. Really. I don't like any sort of scary films. I don't watch them, I don't think of them. 10 minutes alone with Scream, or any other sort of lightweight thriller and I'm sleeping with a rolling-pin-as-makeshift-weapon under the bed for the next year. They terrify me.

I liked it at first. I liked most of the male characters. Except Shane. I liked the setting, I liked the concept. But the season wasn't very strong, and it didn't seem to go anywhere. The women are still a huge problem. Really, really huge. They are ALL annoying. Without exception. Whiny and moany, and useless. Sitting ducks. And I really don't like watching television shows with terrible female characters, it feels like such lazy writing.

I wasn't sure if I would come back for season 2. But I did. I was unimpressed with the pilots on offer, and I'd decided to drop Glee. I was also still on a downer from a summer without Mad Men, so I decided to give it a second chance.

And I'm glad that I did. It's not different, I'll say. It's the same as the first season. The women are terrible. Shane is terrible. They've made plot adjustments from the comics that seem...unwise. They've been sitting on a farm for what might possibly be the last five years doing nothing. But, I think I'm just getting used to it. Getting used to the pace, and what it has to offer. Daryl is just the best thing ever. I don't know if it's the fan love or if it was the intention all along, but they've transformed him from an annoying, rash redneck into an awesome, sympathetic, crossbow toting redneck.

So for now, I'll keep watching. And hope that it keeps on getting better. Fingers crossed!

In Case You Were Wondering...

I never did watch another episode of The West Wing. 


I've had 10 months to watch them. *sigh* 

A Return to Bad Form

Clearly, I don't keep my promises. Well, not promises, I wouldn't say things like that to all...none of you.

I did remove myself from the summer slump. How I managed it without Mad Men, I don't know. I could have rotted there forever, and no-one would notice. I mainly have Breaking Bad to thank, as I slowly catch up the US schedule. The writing, the characters, the plot...it's all marvellous. I can't think why I didn't start watching it before. I love Bryan Cranston, I love Aaron Paul. The secondary characters are just brilliant - Skylar, Saul, Hank, klepto-Marie. I've almost finished season 4. 

And from the summer feasting on meth lab madness, we are swiftly deposited in the lap of the pilot. I know, I'm a little late. It's practically NOVEMBER, for fuck's sake. But, ah well, I'm lazy and no-one cares anyway. So, the pilots. The most interesting to me this year were:

Ringer, the new Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle. The premise looked interesting, and I do like Gellar. It's a shame though, that my patience is so limited that I couldn't stick with it. Then again, I don't have the patience for a lot of things - I am the woman who paid to see A.I twice and walked out after 45 minutes. Both times. 

The pilot episode feature an appearance of the worst incidence of green-screen I have ever seen, and I mean really, actually, cross my heart seen. Not the usual overstatement of grand hyperbole that I go for. It involves a speedboat, fake wind and bad dialogue. I'd just about had it by this point. 

I told you I wasn't patient.

With one down, I placed all of my eggs in the prehistoric basket. What's that you say, "foolish"? Well, yes. Probably. Terra Nova has been billed as exciting sci-fi. Plus, it's executively produced by Spielberg (whatever that means), so it has to be good, right? 

I was disappointed. I was expecting good things, and I do like a little light sci-fi with my evening drinks. But I have Fringe, and that's actually good. So I won't watch any old tripe. I don't know what sort of vibe they were going for with Terra Nova, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a Shipwrecked-meets-low-budget-Jurassic-Park-but-with-no-good-actors vibe. And I have a strange kink for cheesy natural disaster films. So my threshold for hokey is quite low. 

So no more Terra Nova. I didn't even make it to the end of the pilot. 

I did give Revenge a go (just for Emily VanCamp, who I love), and also Person of Interest (because my JJ Abrams fascination is akin to my Douglas Coupland masochism). Revenge seems enjoyable, if a little contrived. But the cast is good, and it's achingly aware of itself, so you never know. Maybe I'll watch it instead of Glee this year. Person of Interest, on the other hand, is so confusing that I don't think even Jim Caviezel knows what is going on. Which he should probably be happy about.

Once again, it seems, pilot season was a bit of a bust. Nothing on the scale of last year, of course. But J.J. Abrams has lost two years in a row now. So it's back to the standard stuff. Complaining about Grey's Anatomy, yet watching it all. Failing to stop watching True Blood. Absorbing every second of The Good Wife. See, I threw that in at the end there to prove I could do something other than complain...

Nothing Changes

So, it's been a long time since I've posted anything. I had a summer slump. All right, more like a life slump. But, don't hold that against me - it's not over yet. I plan on a few more weeks of slumping before returning to the world of get-off-your-arse-and-do-something.


Summer television isn't made for aiding get up and go. It's made for lounging and antipathy, annoyance and sleeping. I thought that is I had a little break, things would be better when I got back. I could go away, sun myself <looks at rain> and return to a world where everything is better.


Except, when the time comes, you turn on your television to find what? Mad Men taking a year off. What the fuck? Really? I'm sorry AMC? Do you think that your contract negotiations are more important than my need for a regular helping of Draper with a side of Peggy? The answer is no! Sookie Stackhouse is not only still a total moron, but is actually having sex with Eric Northman and managing to make it look dull.


I shall return to my summer hibernation in the hope that all this madness had ceased by the time I awaken.

An Update

'Twas my NY resolution this year to watch the entire series of The West Wing from the beginning. I've never seen it (how?) and thought it was about time.


Anyway, about a week ago I started to despair (maybe) that it was May (MAY!) and I had managed to watch a grand total of 0% of the show. Poor showing. Really.


But no more! Episode 1 has been watched and filed and episode 2 is ready for action. Probably in August.

You Know it's Over...

When you spend more of the episode cringing behind your hands in embarrassment than you do actually watching.

And that is all that I have to say about the fracking awful, badly written, badly thought out, inconsistent finale of this years' Glee.


I shall be spending 40 minutes a week doing something else from September.

Token Title Containing the Word "Dead"...

Okay, so I have important things to be doing. I have a child to raise, and I would quite like her to realise that there are eyes, and a nose, and other features on my face. It's not just a rectangular black ThinkPad lid on top of my shoulders. I have a life to lead, friends to see, a grandmother to organise, a crazy mother to keep at bay. I have a million billion things to organise, a hyperbole conference to attend, and I'm supposed to be working out how I can get my life back, also known as going back to work.


And yet, all I can really think about is the latest installment in the Southern Vampire series, the imaginatively titled Dead Reckoning. Well, not the actual book of course, it's mostly badly written tripe made interesting by the television adaptation. Not so bad that I might stop reading it, but there you are. That's me. Shitmagnet.


So no, not the book, just the far, far more important issue of whether Sookie is going to end up with Eric or not. I am royally annoyed to discover that I actually care about this. I spent a little time wondering why on Earth I should be allowing such trivial matters to invade my brain space, but then I looked at this picture and I was no longer lost for a reason.

I am hoping that Charlaine Harris is going on a bit of a walkabout, and we'll be back to business as usual in the next book or two (though business as usual seems to involve rather a lot of beating around the bush and no romantic resolution or happiness). But there are little hints there, hints of a Beel and Sookeh reunion. Now, maybe I've been swayed by the rather on-point blog post on the Sookieverse about the borderline abusive sex scenes between Sookie and Bill, but the thought of that story line being revisited turns my stomach.


But then, why have Bill, when you can have Eric. Really?


I feel better now. Less frivolous. Thanks for letting me get that out of my system. World peace next.

Say What?

"Time for another drink, at least."

I'm a little behind on news, clearly. I read, somewhere, briefly, that Mad Men had been renewed for more than one series. I didn't really give it much thought beyond "good".


What I didn't read though, was that season 5 will not be airing until 2012. Really. Apparently, Weiner and AMC are having a bit of a tiff about whose turn it is to make dinner and this has delayed negotiations on his eight trillion dollar deal.


Actually, that isn't true - Weiner is standing up for not reducing show time, not adding product placements, and not cutting cast members. Basically, he's trying to keep Mad Men not shit. Which is commendable. But can he do it a bit quicker? I have trouble remembering what happened last week, let alone last season.

Once More, With a Lobotomy

This? It's only a flesh wound.

I hate these episodes. What the arse is the point of having a traumatic event that throws everything into chaos, only to have everything fine again by the end of the episode?


I assume that both Callie and the baby will suffer no long term consequences of the most unrealistic road accident in television history. She goes through a windscreen, without a seatbelt. And she wakes up. Really? As for Arizona and her quick smart denial of "the truck came out of nowhere"...is that some sort of new way of saying "I stopped paying any attention to the road whilst trying to one-up the father of my lesbian lovers' baby by proposing to her"? Come on, you know we've all done it.


And then, to make it worse (as if that were possible), there's singing. Yes, that's correct. SINGING. 


I notice that Patrick Dempsey alone seemed to have the good sense he was born with and managed to keep his trap firmly shut during any musical interludes. That man is too good for this show. I'm quite annoyed actually, as this season was actually starting to get good.


But it's ok. They're doing another one. Unless that's an April Fools. Fingers crossed.

Sylvanian Polygamists

Church of Bill

Honeybee

Those Sylvanian Families have some pretty conservative dress codes going on. Just saying.

Hoo-Fricking-Rah

Fringe has received the honour of early renewal. Yay! It has managed to defy the history of the Friday Night Death Slot, allowing its awesomeness to shine through. Well done, viewers. 

A Clusterfuck

of craziness. 

Lets just say, that if more of the entries are going to be like this (and by that I mean a marvellously schizophrenic mash-up of YMCA and The Mighty Boosh in forrin), then I will be watching ALL of Eurovision this year. 

A Matter of Life and Death

Okay, I'm going to put it out there. With the risk that I will be proved wrong, and this hardly ever happens. I make good television predictions. What was that? Something about pride and falling? Psht, never! 


I think FauxLivia is going to die. 


Maybe not this week, but soon. I can't sort through all my thoughts in my head to decide how it will all work - Peter is supposed to make a choice between the two women, and therefore the two worlds. Maybe Peter's choice will result in her death, or maybe she will die and he will make his choice unaware of events. It seems that Walternate wants the baby - does FauxLivia decide to have an abortion, or does he want it any way to prevent possible problems? 


I'm just trying to look forward, and think about next season. I don't think we will be maintaining the alternate universe at the rate that we are now. I don't think we will have another season with whole episodes over there. It has to be sewn up somehow. Is the universe really going to be destroyed, or is Peter actually going to find another way?


If she doesn't die, is she going to end up over here? Trying to save herself, one assumes with the help of Lincoln and Bubbles, does she make it over to our universe? I just think that long term, she isn't going to live. Which is a shame, because unlike most of you out there, I like her. 


Can someone make it be tomorrow? 

The End of Love

It's over. Of course, it's been over for a little while but clearly I  have the urgency of a snail on sleeping tablets and have only just managed to get around to watching it. That, and I wasn't actually looking forward to it. 


The writers of this show have managed to spectacularly ruin Big Love for me. When I started watching the first season, I couldn't remember the last time I had been so excited to see what happened. I loved the slow burn, oh how I love the slow burn. The women were marvellous, the characters were interesting. The intricacies of a plot surrounding a man with so little appeal he makes George Osborne look like a candidate for Times Magazine person of the year. And Chloe. My eternal girl-crush on Chloe Sevigny was indulged on a regular basis. Who was I to complain? 


But come season three, and then season four, and then season five, it became clear -obviously very slowly, you would think as I had three seasons to realise, it might have dawned a little quicker- that things were going down the shitter. 


Ridiculous plots, too many characters. HBO were obviously not on board any more, I suppose they pulled the plug on the majority of the money. But still, there wouldn't have been so much of a money issue if the writers weren't trying to shoehorn in more twists and turns than Alton frakking Towers. Sensationalist plots, the deplorable Senatorial race, outing the family, Rhonda, JJ and Adaleen and the hormones, and all the other craziness I have clearly wiped from my mind to make space for more important things, like Damon Salvatore. 


I kept hoping it would get better. I stuck by it, as I have done so may times before, like the glutton for punishment I clearly am. Like continuing to watch Smallville long after the departure of Rosenbaum, or not being able to give up on the soapiness of ER in the teen seasons. I hoped that they would pull it together for the final season, give the wives the ending that the deserved. 


And they got it, in a way. Bill is dead. Hoorah. Not many shows have the guts to build a show around a central character who is so innately unlikeable. But Bill Henrickson, well, he's unlikeable in spades. Uncompromising, hypocritical, greedy. How he attracted one woman, let alone three of them I will never understand. I liked that they stayed together even after he was gone, despite the fact that they were falling apart with him. They loved each other, and the show was always about the love story and relationship between the wives themselves. 


But the loose ends! This is always an issue when a show comes to an end. Will they manage to satisfy the viewers by tying up all the hanging threads? I've discussed this before so won't go into it at length (though why stop now?) but will just say that the success was mixed. I liked some things. Bill managing to evade his many threats over the years: The Greens, Alby out to kill him, fundamentalists, only to be shot and killed by his neighbour. Seeing Sarah happy. A resolution to Lois and Frank, not having more of Ana and the preposterous baby storyline. Barb buying the convertible - seeing all of them together was wonderful. 


As for the bad...Oh Barb. I cried, I admit. I don't like to cry, it's messy and pathetic, particularly when it's over a fictitious character. The way that Bill treated her made me blub repeatedly. Unyielding to her desires, deaf to her needs, has there ever been a shitter husband? I suppose it was on the table from the start - she gets cancer, he gives her plural marriage. Super! 


Where is Joey? I would happily have lost more of the political story line to find out more about Wanda and JoDean. I wanted to see more of HomePlus, not Bill's many other pies.


Is Heather magically not a lesbian any more? Is there a special Mormon tablet we can take for gayness now? Or is she just suppressing what she is? And she married Ben. I hate that we didn't get an idea of what went on there. Heather is not into polygamy. So what was the compromise? I'm inclined to believe, sadly, that it was Heather who compromised. The show has done nothing if not teach us that men don't compromise. Ever.


Remember that, girls. 


So, goodbye Big Love. It was good while it lasted. And not good for far too long. 

Once Removed

I am a little behind. I have two episodes of Big Love waiting for me. I can't really build up the enthusiasm to watch them. It's too much like hard work. So I started watching trash instead. I was thrown into a slump by the sub par episode of the last but one Fringe (you know, the one where we find out all of a sudden that Peter is some sort of fly-by-night-shape-shifter-assassin) and started watching The Vampire Diaries. 

I've been good lately. I stopped watching all the crap that I used to watch. All the soapy stuff with no real story line pay off. Private Practice gone. Smallville gone. ANTM gone. I have yet to get rid of Gossip Girl. It's like a UES limpet, hanging on for dear life as I try to appear erudite in my television choices, giving me away as the cheese-whore that I really am. I'm a sucker for the Dan/Blair frenemy thing that they have going on at the moment. So what I thought I was doing, adding some more cheese to the proceedings is anybody's guess. I've worked my way through season 1 in mere days, compelled to watch more and more until I have the whole story. I'm anticipating the sugar crash when I catch up to current time. The anti-climax of no more episodes to binge on. 

Maybe then I can start cultivating my high brow (ha!) persona again. After all, Fringe was back to its glorious self this week. And The Good Wife managed to restrain itself with the dun-dun-duns. Also, I have finished season 1 of Breaking Bad and hope to be up to speed enough to talk about it in the present tense at some point in the near future. Maybe soon I can start on that pesky new year's resolution to watch the tiny amount of a bazillion West Wing episodes. But who am I kidding? I love the low brow. I love all  kinds of brow.

If You Meet The Buddha on The Road

So Fringe returns from the void of winter. Honestly, it had been so long I had started to wonder if it was ever coming back. And then I almost forgot (okay, I did forget) that it was changing days to the Friday death slot and nearly missed it altogether. 


But it was worth the wait. A story line involving Christopher Lloyd and a time travelling man from 1985 (sound familiar, folks?), Walter at his adorable best at the start of the episode and some mean tension and progress from Peter and Olivia. Really, when it comes to building the UST, Bones needs to take a lesson from Fringe. A quote from Peter's favourite book:

"You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who your are and take your chances."

Which is appropriate, given the circumstances. The pain between the two of them is palpable, and Anna Torv has gone from being stiff and wooden at the start of season one, to being subtle and nuanced and completely impressive. She creates a believable and layered Olivia. And Peter, well....he's Peter. My Pacey love is endless of course, despite his stupidity at telling Olivia how much more miserable she is than her parallel counterpart. Good one, boy. 

So, questions. Will Peter and Olivia open up to each other enough in order to find their way back to some sort of level ground? What will happen to Peter now that he has ingested the Milk of Death? Will this is some way influence his story with the Machine from the other side? Can we do away with the MOTW format and just stick to the slow reveal of the main arc? When will John Noble win an Emmy for his astounding portrayal of two complex men? 


And, most importantly, how depressing is it that we simultaneously discuss the Emmy-worthiness of the actors and ponder whether or not the show will get cancelled? An episode called "The Firefly" on a show moved to the place that Firefly went to die? Lets hope not. Get it together Fox!

Outrage

So I hear, through the grapevine, that despite the editing out of some of the stronger language, sex AND violence, the Skins US adaptation is still too much for advertisers.


Wrigley and Taco Bell, amongst others have pulled sponsorship from the show. Apparently the show is not for them. <ponders> Hmmmm, if only there was a way for them to have known what on earth the show might be like before they put their money where their mouths are. How on earth was the show described? Is there any way that Skins could ever have been suitable for them? I mean, this image was the E4 promo print for series two. 


4.6 seconds of Googling could have saved them all this trouble. Of course, I don't imagine that MTV is complaining at all about all the controversy. Nothing garners an audience like talk of obscenity.

Misery Loves Company

I've been trying to write this assessment of the first episode of the new season for the best part of two days. Usually, if I can't pull the whole thing together, I just mull it over for a day or so and the right way comes to me. It's probably something to do with Jesus.


But I am having trouble. I wanted the show to redeem itself. I loved it, initially. And I thought at first that it could come back, that they could make things better here, this year. But I'm not sure if that's possible. Putting everything else aside - the ridiculous story lines, the bad acting on some parts...okay, one - I think things have gone too far for the Henricksons.


We open with the Henricksons hiding out in the desert, in the best lit tents in the western world. Yes, hiding. Because that is the point of coming clean with the world and claiming to be proud of what you are. I mean, lets not start pretending that you care about what a shitty time the children are having of it....

Bill is walking around in some sort of haze. He seems to spend most of his time labouring under the delusion that no-one thinks that badly of the family, and that they should hold an open house so that everyone can come and throw pineapples at them, or something. All the workers at HomePlus, the business he can't be arsed to think off half the time, think he's either a paedophile or worse, a bad boss. He seems unaware that his neighbours hate him as some reporters hung around for a while and left some cups on the floor, ruining the good name of the neighbourhood forever. He makes an apology to everyone at some point (I may have fallen asleep) for risking everything, but Paxton's acting is so flat that I can't even bring myself to try and believe him. 

Margene looks like she's about to have a nervous breakdown. There's a woman ripe for a cult/pyramid scheme if ever I saw one. 
She is freaking out (and is the loudest crier EVER) as she realises the true cost of coming clean is everything that she loved about her life, and that her chances of financial independence are dwindling now that she seems to unemployable. She drops the F bomb at a school meeting that contains more drama than a Walker family dinner, but no worries - it appears as if the next story for gullible Margie is lining up.

Barb doesn't know what to do with herself. She seems torn between the family that she loves and the life that she hasn't had, all the things that she hasn't experienced, wondering about what sort of life she could have had. Bill of course, seems utterly shocked to discover that she has bought a bottle of wine. Not a surprise though, as the man seems to wander around in a self-involved dream, completely unaware that the people he shares his life with are utterly sad. Because of course, what else do you do when your lives are falling apart and two out of your three wives are ready to cry at any moment? Why, you hold an open house for your constituents! Isn't it obvious? 


Nikki is...well she's Nikki. Conflicted as always, vacillating between smug contempt for the rest of the world and shy insecurity in the face of her new position as a public wife of Bill Henrickson. Chloe is marvellous, as she always is.


The thing is....everyone is just so miserable. I don't think I've ever felt so depressed after watching a show. How can they come back from this? Can Bill not see that his wives are just so completely unhappy? A happy ending at the end of this season would be completely unbelievable. I almost wish we had cut our losses and just not had the show back again. I could then sit and ruminate on how things could have been good again, instead of feeling sympathetic suicide pains for fictional women. And Alby. Who appears to be spending the final season going even more batshit crazy. Hooray for love, eh?

A Quickie

Just a quickie before I leave the house. I watched The Good Wife last night and am concerned at the level of cheese. It appears to be swiftly rising and infusing all story lines. 

Srsly. I enjoy this show. I like it. I managed to persuade someone else to watch it. I do not wish to be embarrassed by it taking a mass market cheese twist. I feel that my reputation rests on this show not turning shit. I have never recommended something that turned out to be rubbish. I've worked myself up into a lather about shows that I have subsequently been disappointed by, but that's just me. And we'll keep that between you and me. But there is face to be saved here. 

So....I'm just putting it out there in the world, hoping it makes its way through the ether to those bigwigs in the big chairs over at TGWHQ. Here goes. I do not wish to watch dun-dun dun! moments. K? I don't want to watch Alicia and the team be surprised by someone walking into a room and saying "they have been charged with......MURDER!!!!" as we watch Alicia freeze for a moment and then we have the DUN-DUN-DUN music. I do not want to see Will (though generally, I do want to see Will, and a lot more of him, if you get my drift) threaten Diane with guards outside her door and a menacing look with a DUN-DUN-DUN!!!!! 

It is not on. So, if you are planning on taking the show this way, don't. This is not the cheese-fest I signed up for. 

Now, on with the rest of my day. Glad I got that off my chest. 

A New Frontier

I'm annoyed already. It's crap. Crap theme tune, crap title sequence. Crap "comedy" music with the zanily annoying door voice and car escape scene. Crap acting from Mangan who keeps making me think he is that guy in the Barclaycard adverts. Tamsin Greig appears to be doing some sort of awkward/bad comedy actress thing. Which is odd, as she is not a bad comedy actress. I've seen Black Books. 


The whole show is like a caricature of a scenario that tv fans imagine in their head when they think about shows crossing the pond. NOT something made by people who know what happens in such situations. And I'm only about 8 minutes in. 


The new frontier is that I thought I would blog about the episode of Episodes (hur) while I watch it. I've never done this before, I like to be controversial and pay full attention to one thing at a time. But this has had a benefit. I haven't been able to get as annoyed as I would like to be by the shitness of this show. 


The dialogue is cheesy and badly written. And the acting. Urgh. When Beverly says "We need better friends," it's just all so wooden. Unbelieveable. I think Greig is actually worse than Mangan, it's like they just put down their Acting for Dummies books and strolled straight over to Job Number One. 


And I haven't seen more than twenty seconds of Matt LeBlanc yet. 


The only reason I'm so pissed off is because I was convinced that it was going to be good. I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed at myself or the show. Is it the writing? (yes) Or just the acting? (maybe) Is it just my expectations? (very likely)


The idea that experienced British show makers would have no idea how things work elsewhere is actually ridiculous. Everything seems so contrived, and I hate it when people are made out to be stupid in order to try and make things funny. The almost slapstick meeting where we go through the "is it set in stone/is/isn't HA HA HA" is embarrassing. And I just knew that as soon as they pulled up to the gate what the guard was going to say. I hate being able to predict dialogue. 


So I'm out. I feel like I've used up all my hate for one day. Actually, that's not true but it's only 10:25pm and I like to spread it out evenly throughout the day. Even Vernon Dudley can't save this steaming pile of horse dung.

Is that a little ambiguous?

Resolutions

As one might expect, at this time of year, there are resolutions to be made. I've not been much of a one for resolutions throughout my life, the important ones at least. You know, exercise more, eat less cheese, help a charity. Last year I experimented in resolution making and decided that in 2010 I would watch more films. My aim was to watch one hundred films. Now, given my commitments not involving a screen, this is quite a large total for me. Two films a week is almost unheard of for me. 

What actually happened is that I managed thirty films over the first three months (impressive) and then my interest waned (not surprising) and I watched about ten in the rest of the year. It was just much easier to soak up Mark Kermode's reviews and then pretend I had watched the films. Less time consuming. More conducive to sleep. 

And now we are here, that time again. January. A chance for me to predict how much of a failure I will be in the upcoming year. So I'm not setting my sights high this year. I've taken my resolution from my 2010 activities. I made my way through all four seasons of Felicity (how I had never seen this is beyond me). 2009 saw me watching (well, re-watching, I had seen all the episodes when they aired) all fifteen - yes, fifteen - seasons of ER AND watching and loving (obviously) all of The Wire. If I can do that, I can do this.

So this year I endeavour to watch The West Wing. I have this:

bought for the bargain price of some pounds so there is no going back. I have tried to watch it before but I've always been distracted by shiny things. I hope to finish it as soon as possible so that I can look back and heartily mock my doubt. 

Yeah.