The Summer of Buffy

This summer, I'm going through a rite of passage. It's a little late, to be honest, but you can just call me a late bloomer.

This is the Summer of Buffy.

I missed Buffy the Vampire Slayer the first time around—I was in high school and college, and getting my monster-of-the-week fix via The X-Files, and I'm not sure what happened. I wasn't paying attention? I wasn't into vampires? I didn't know about Joss Whedon (though, to be fair, nobody really knew about Joss Whedon in those days)? Whatever. I missed it.

I put it off for nearly a decade—not because I thought I wouldn't like it, but because I knew I would love it. I wanted to be in a place where, just in case, I could mainline Buffy without the normal trappings of an adult life—job, rent, you know how it goes—to distract me. I was thinking pregnancy bed rest, or possibly surgery for my nonexistent bunions. Well, you know what's a lot like both of those things, without the painful physical implications? Unemployment.

I just finished the first season, and I'm surprised about a lot of things.

I'm surprised by how many of my assumptions have turned out to be wrong: There's a sense in which, by being on the internet, Buffy's bound to become a part of one's fannish vocabulary. I knew things! Things about the plot! Except for the part where the things I knew were mostly inaccurate in fact or in context! I blame the internet.

I'm surprised that Buffy's mom is still alive. For example. I thought she died right off the bat, but Christine tells me that's much later.

I'm surprised at how little backstory there is: Buffy's the Slayer, period, end of discussion. It's nice, cutting straight to the (vampire) chase.

I'm surprised by how short all of Buffy's skirts and pants are. Did we really do that?

I'm surprised by Angel: I came to David Boreanaz via my weird affection for Bones, and I wasn't sure I'd have any patience for Baby Boreanaz's broody ways. This just in: I was a crazy person. Of course Angel made all the girls' hearts go pitter-pat! He's tortured and he has a soul and he wears that leather jacket, and it's super hot! Smitten. Immediately.

I'm surprised by Sarah Michelle Gellar: I like her. Huh.

What I hear about Buffy, over and over, is that I haven't even scratched the surface of it—that the show is barely itself in the first season. I like it anyway, though, Scooby Doo "and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you kids!" vibe and all. It's dopey and funny in a way that I can identify as the germ of later Whedon hilarity. I'm impressed by his imagination, and his willingness to be obviously metaphorical, and the many ways he invents to show us the monsters of adolescence, or of life generally. I'm excited to see what happens (not that I don't already know, right?), or at least whether Buffy's clothes ever get less horrendous (also up for a Stacy/Clinton intervention: one Willow Rosenberg). I see good times ahead.

Next up: in which I become a big girl, TV-wise.

A very long post about TV

For me, this was the last week of the regulation TV season, in the sense that all of my regular shows are officially over until the fall (Mad Men and maybe Parks and Recreation, then, must be the playoffs?). The following thoughts on this week's finales (I'm skipping shows that are already done, like Chuck and Friday Night Lights) were originally written for a slightly different forum, but then I thought, hey. Some of you watch the same shows I do. Maybe you'd like to talk about them. If, you know, you like talking about TV with somebody who thinks about these things entirely too much.

Warning: All of these discussions include spoilers. Don't say I didn't warn you. See? It even says "warning."

Ready? Okay.



Lost: "The Incident"

So, it appears that I totally missed the entire plot and/or significance of this episode the first time around. This is why I need Jeff Jensen in my life: to explain everything to me.

Jack vs. Everybody Else vs. Jughead, I got. I are good with the linear storytelling.

Jacob and the Man in Black? Not so much. So let me get this straight: the Locke we've been hanging with all season...is not Locke. He's the Man in Black masquerading as Locke, as he has apparently masqueraded/manifested as others over the years, in an attempt to kill Jacob. Or, to be specific, to get somebody else to kill Jacob. See, I totally didn't catch ANY of that, and even now I'm not sure about Jacob and who he is, exactly, or what his exact nature is (or what happens when he--whatever he is--is stabbed in the chest by a cranky, deceitful non-leader), but I'm hoping that I'm not alone in that part? We're not supposed to know all of this. Correct?

Anyway.

So, holy catharsis, Sawyer! I've never been all that interested in examining the Jack/Sawyer rivalry--partly because I wasn't sure it would be kind to my former Jack/Kate fan (who, it must be said, died a sudden and unexplained death this season at the hands of my inner Sawyer/Juliet fangirl), and partly because I just didn't think it would be all that interesting--but I loved the contrast between Sawyer's sudden maturity and Jack's total lack of growth since...well, maybe ever, but certainly since he got off the island. All packaged as a good beating, of course. Also, Jack claiming that he came back because of Kate rings false to me, which may be because it IS false, or because it's mushy storytelling (file it along with "Kate loves Aaron!," which I also never bought). Hard to say at this point.

I also thought Juliet's break-up with Sawyer was weak, but that really WAS on purpose, apparently, so...fine. I'm bummed but not surprised by Juliet's death--I figured that, with all the effort they put into making us love her and Sawyer together, one of them had to go, and it sure wasn't going to be him. And he just loved her so much, and all that crying and shouting...man. That was SAD. I think I'm going to miss you and your unreadability, Elizabeth Mitchell, which is progress for us. (But I hear you're in the V TV show, along with Alan Tudyk and Morena Baccarin and some other folks, so good on you.)

And then, of course, the screen goes white, and we just don't know. Rebooted? What does this mean for next January (ack, JANUARY)? Jensen points out that Lost has a symmetrical structure: seasons three and four mirror each other; so do seasons two and five; therefore, season six should match up nicely with season one--which means...flashbacks? A relatively closed storyline? I also very much like one of Jensen's predictions for the final season (basically, everybody's rebooted back to the moment at which Jacob touched them--because he DID touch each of them, physically, in the flashbacks--but with their current consciousness, so that they have the option of changing the future), though it leaves quite a few things unaddressed (Hurley will have already crashed on the island; what about Desmond and Penny?; what about Charles and Ellie?; did Daniel's research serve any purpose for us beside informing the constant vs. variable question?). I don't even know. But I loved this season--I love the Dharmas!--and I'll be ready to come back for the final stretch.



Bones: "The End in the Beginning"

Okay, just to start out: if you have rage over the ending of this episode, I know. I KNOW. It was a cop-out. It was an abuse of an important moment. This should have been a mid-season episode. I get it.

But: I loved it, at least the first 40 minutes or so, and I'm not totally sure I have much of a problem with the last two, either. Does anybody truly think that we're going to spend all of season five with Amnesiac!Booth? First of all: We're not. I'm going with Glenna when I say, two episodes, tops. Second of all: This is Bones! After hiatus, will they even remember that they gave the guy amnesia? I'm calling odds of 50/50.

I think that, in a lot of ways, this was the Bonesiest episode of Bones ever. It was a lot of them doing what they do best: wacky ensemble crime-solving comedy, supplemented by, I believe, surprisingly astute meta on the individuals and dynamics of the Bones universe. The things it didn't do well--say, failing to embrace a key moment in the Booth/Brennan relationship in favor of a lame soap-opera-style plot twist--well, they were pure (Bones showrunner) Hart Hanson, too. Did it make a ton of sense (seriously: nightclub owners)? It did not. Was it pure crack? Only of the whitest, rockiest variety. But, again: Bones. Nonsensical is how they roll. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't have high expectations for our shows, or that showrunners shouldn't be accountable for crappy things they pull; heaven knows I support the smartifying of TV. But, really, we watch this show every week. We know how it is.)

(Also, I would like to point out the history of Bones's season finales, which is to say that season one's "The Woman in Limbo" is really the only truly non-infuriating one. "The Stargazer in a Puddle," from season two is the lamest finale EVER, in my opinion, and last season's "The Pain in the Heart"...well, I actually love it, but we all know how it ends. I'm just saying.)

As far as the Booth/Bones relationship goes, the line that most stuck out for me in this episode wasn't even about Booth, but I think it sums up what they were trying to do: I think the key here is when Alternate Brennan says to Alternate Booth that their nightclub staff is lying to the police because they (the staff/squints) love them (Mr. and Mrs. B)--this is a summing-up of the lab dynamic that has, I think, never occurred to the real Brennan, though that doesn't make it less true. This season has been about Brennan considering love and its place in her life, and I think this episode--this whole novelization of her fake life--is her working out what it would mean for her to love and be loved unconditionally. So it's hyperstylized, and she's different, and it glosses over the many issues we know Brennan has over the idea of entanglement with other people--it's a thought experiment, I think, even more than a straight-up fantasy. And at the end, she's made her conclusion (though she erases the document, which is interesting). And yeah, amnesia; dumb move, etc. But the amnesia doesn't change her decision, or who she is, and so I don't know that it's such a huge setback. In short, if Brennan is indeed the struggler, as pointed out by Gordon Gordon Wyatt a few weeks back, the struggle is over.

(Incidentally, I know at least one person who thinks the love scene at the beginning is, in fact, real--that it's the future of Booth and Brennan, and that we'll see it again in the relatively near future. She has circumstantial evidence--the episode title, for one, but also a few details of the way that scene is filmed and narrated--but...I don't know. Food for thought.)

A few thoughts on the alternate universe itself:

- I buy Married Booth and Brennan, mostly. I thought their chemistry was spot-on: different than crush-y Booth/Brennan, but appropriate for who they might be if they shared a life 100% (as they did here--I loved the implicit trust between them). On the other hand, I'm not sure about the implication of who Alternate Brennan is--can Brennan only be happy, as Alternate Brennan is happy, if she's able to connect with people naturally? I do think that Brennan is capable of sharing her life with Booth, and of opening up to him in the way that a long-term relationship requires, but I'm not sure Alternate Brennan's generalized ease with people worked--unless it was Brennan's idea of who she would become, were she surrounded by people who love and get her. And, you know what, now I'm not even making sense anymore.

- So, somebody must be paying at least a modicum of attention, to get all of those supporting characters together at once. I didn't even catch that Clark's brother, the gang-banger was Angela's ex.

- Subpoint: CLARK! I love him. SO MUCH. Also, he's so cute.

- OH WENDELL. I laughed out loud (LOLed, as I believe the kids call it) when he wouldn't talk to the police. At all. I love that guy.

- I think that if I watched this season chronologically, Booth's relationship with Jared would make more sense. As it is, I have a hard time seeing it as an arc.

- That yellow pencil skirt on Brennan? KILLER. Also, I often object to Brennan's dress-up clothes, but I thought she looked fantastic in her black-with-green-accessories get-up. Cute, cute.

- Is it possible for John Francis Daley (Sweets) to be any more awesome, or to be more graceful about the ridiculous things they make him do on this show? I do not think it is. Also, nice voice, dude. (He really is like twelve, though. Or, maybe, 24. For boys, same thing.)

- Hee, Hodgins is a drunk pulp novelist with a fake Irish accent. OBVIOUSLY. That was awesome.

Okay. Until September, Bones.



The Office: "Company Picnic"

OH. OH. That was so good. I have permanent warm fuzzies on account of this episode.

(...which is probably not a good thing. My main complaint about this season is the loss of their grasp of the tiny heartbreaks of being human--I think the humor has suffered mainly because the little human dramas have suffered. But I'm going to forget that for now and just say !!!!)

Holly Flax, I love you, and I love what you do to Michael Scott, and I love who you are together. And I love it when you rap. And when you do impressions together and crack each other up. And when you are gently sad about each other, but also happy to see each other, and when you make Michael say awesome things like how he thinks you two have a long story (even though you are designing a house with your [very cute] boyfriend in New Hampshire). Holly Flax, please come back, someday, a long time from now, and finish that long story.

And then...well. Jim wore a baseball cap, and scooped Pam up like she weighs twelve pounds (which, of course, she probably does), and then he smiled and hugged and smiled and hugged some more, because: BABY! When the nurse said to Pam, "and there's no chance you could be pregnant?" I was all, "...did they just show us the gun AND have it go off, all in the same act? Sneaky!"

I think that, if any show on the entire planet can make a baby plot work, it's The Office. Also, this means Jim and Pam are sort of going to have a shotgun wedding, in the least shotgunny way possible, and they don't even need to write what Michael's going to say about it, because it's already happening in my head. Also, they were so, so happy, and that makes ME happy.

So: silence. We have not had this kind of silence since "Booze Cruise," back in season two, and it was brilliant, both between Holly and Michael and between Jim and Pam. Well played, Jennifer Celotta and Paul Lieberstein. Silence is hard, and I like you for using it so beautifully.

Um, where was Kelly? OH RIGHT. Off signing her seven-figure development deal with NBC, so that she can take over the world. Mindy, I have these really cute business cards now. Can I please send you one? They have typewriters on them, and they are, in fact, a Thing I've Bought That I Love.

I do not know what to do with the loveliness of this episode, except maybe watch it a lot over the summer.



So that's it. What did you all think?

Two lists

Things I Have Not Done Lately:

- Written in this blog (obviously)
- Written anything else to speak of (alarmingly)
- Knitted
- Watched TV except for Chuck and Bones, neither of which will be denied
- Gone to bed on time
- Cleaned the bathroom or the floors

Things I Have Done Instead:

- I have no idea. Seriously. Wherefore art thou, April?
- Gone with church community group to Georgetown retirement home for hilarious conversation-and-singalong time, wherein musical age gap is revealed. All present can sing chorus and first verse of "America the Beautiful," and that's all.
- Attended and enjoyed This American Life Live ("live" in the sense of "at the same time at different theaters"); finally admitted vague crush on Ira Glass. (Ironically, Live re-runs at theaters nationwide on May 7. You should go.)
- Designed and built a website.
- Became hooked on easy and delicious Asian noodle salad; set personal record of finishing package of tofu in two days.
- Got head/chest cold; stopped running; felt like blob; ran anyway
- Replaced The New Pornographers' "The Laws Have Changed" with Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" at the top of iTunes most-played list.

That is all.

Observations

There was a nun on the bus this morning, in a full habit and everything. She was young. People kept talking to her. I bet she gets that a lot.

I have been lurking around Etsy in search of business cards--because I keep scrawling my information on the backs of receipts and handing them out, and also because handmade paper products are like catnip--and instead I keep running across "mommy cards." Mom's name, "Mom of _____" (ugh), contact info, kid's allergies/fears. Is this a thing now?

Right now, everybody should be watching Chuck and Friday Night Lights. Chuck (Mondays, 8 p.m., NBC) because it is forty-two minutes of spy-hijink hilarity, and because it continues to get better and better every week; Friday Night Lights (Fridays, 9 p.m., NBC) because it is just perfect, all the time, and because you will fall in love with every single resident of Dillon, TX, even the ones that aren't very nice. You can totally catch up on both of these shows before they end for the season; the entire series of FNL is even streamable (legally!) on Hulu, which means you are officially out of excuses.

Also, last week's episode of 30 Rock was a small miracle.

I am thinking about making a professional website for myself--something to put on the cards, with links to my various web presences--but I'm pretty sure I don't really know what that means.

The National Cathedral is the new Lake Merritt: I try to run around the grounds and gardens three days a week, and have scoped out a variety of benches and shady places to stretch out with a book once it's warm enough. I recently went inside for the first time, and learned that they have evensong every day at 5:30. I'm never home from work by then, but if I hurry and then get off the bus one stop early, I think I could catch the second half.

"Orientated" is not a word. "Oriented" is a word. World, please learn this.

Getting started

It's (pretending to be) spring here--I just walked to the store in flip-flops and I still have all my toes--and so I guess it's sort of right that I'm starting things all over the place.

I'm writing a lot these days, and by "writing" I mean "staring into space with occasional frenzied bursts of typing." I'm working on an original television pilot--original pilots being what get young writers in the door these days, plus the story just had to come out--and coming up with a new TV show is, wouldn't you just know, a tremendous amount of work in terms of creating a universe and then paring down and parsing out what fits into a 42-minute episode. This project is the kind of thing that makes writers write, and also the kind that stops them from writing: the world of my show just comes to me, floods into my brain at the most inopportune times (at work, at the grocery store, anytime actual typing is not possible), and then just looks at me, all coy, when I sit down to wrangle it into five acts and three storylines. "Don't you just want to tell me all at once?" it says, and I do. I love it, and I believe in it, and I can't wait to see it all grown up and heading out into the world. It could give me a little help in this all-important outlining phase, but hey. We're not going to talk about that. It'll come.

So in the midst of my writerly highs and lows, it's a good thing I decided to do something really straightforward, right? Riiiiiight. This purplish thing is my fetal Lace Ribbon Scarf, which is really just a jumble of stitches on US-4 needles. All knitting projects start this way, like working blind, with the future hope of something pretty and springy to wear while I wait for the bus (...which will likely be finished just in time for, say, Halloween, but purple alpaca is timeless and seasonless, right?). But it's like the script: you just have to keep going, believe that the pattern's going to be there (the difference being that somebody else made up the scarf design; I have to make up the script). But, you know. I'm glad I picked that activity to break up the uncertainty of writing.

Welcome to March. Time to make something, don't you think?

Just another Monday night

Yep, definitely Monday night. I checked. Just finished Monday. Tomorrow's Tuesday. Sounds about right. And yet, so many moments of happy, all in one night! Only the bullet points can contain my joy:

- Home, clothes changed, and to Whole Foods and back by 6:45

- Whole Paycheck carries both (1) bratwurst AND (2) kale, unlike Giant AND Safeway some grocery stores I could name. (Jimmy Dean's does not a sausage section make, my friends.) And they have a parking garage, and even a left-turn arrow to get you across the scary Wisconsin Ave. rush-hour traffic. It's a wonderland!

- Sweet housewarming present from dear friend Stacy waiting in my mailbox. A much-loved book from a kindred spirit is heartwarming, indeed.

- Downright swoony Bratwurst with Creamy Apple Compote. If I die an early death, people, you will know it was the German food.

- Knowing the answer to Final Jeopardy, for once.

- Chuck. How is one to contain oneself with Bruce Boxleitner, Morgan Fairchild, and Dixon from Alias all appearing in one big three-ring circus of geek? I propose an entire episode dedicated to the Elder Awesome dinner party. Here, I'll say it: the Awesome/Bartowski clan eating dinner is plot enough for me. Subpoint: Sarah and her feelings, "whatever they may be," kill me. Sub-subpoint: This show is the best iPhone ad ever. What if someone chains me to the counter of a frozen-yogurt store, huh? What'll I do then? Call for help like a big noisy dork? THAT'S IT. I'M GETTING THE PHONE.

- Having a hotshot techie friend who is not only knowledgeable enough but nice enough to fix your wireless internet over the phone. Thanks, Luke. I would say, "You have no idea what this means to me," but I know you do.

I am warm and happy. Of course, that could also be the wine. Either way, yay.

The facts are these

Yesterday was the most-anticipated day of my TV season, the day when Pushing Daisies finally came back. If you think I hadn't been waiting, not very patiently, since December--or was it late November?--for my favorite new show to return, we clearly don't know each other that well. Because, really, who doesn't love a sweetly morbid mystery show about waking the dead and making pies?

If you know what I'm talking about--and I know there are at least a couple of converts reading--you're probably psyched. If not, you have homework. Check it out: Wednesdays, 8 p.m., ABC (or Thursdays and ever after on ABC.com; their video streaming is excellent, unlike a certain peacock-affiliated network I could name). Otherwise I may simply never stop talking about it, and then you won't want to read anymore, and then where will we be?

If you need a primer to the rules and canon of the show, I've gushed about them (with handy video!) here. If you just need a little encouragement, here are some reasons I love Pushing Daisies, and perhaps you should, too:

It looks amazing.














("Do you ever feel like all the oxygen's left the room?")

I would never watch a show on the basis of looks alone--I need personality, a sense of humor, and long walks on the beach--but the creativity and elaborateness of the visuals on Pushing Daisies consistently sweep me off my feet. It's vibrant; it's colorful; it's symbolic. And if it's an endless parade of decorative eye-patches you seek, or mermaid-shaped Burberry luggage for a pair of synchronized swimmers, the art direction, set dressing, and costuming here won't let you down.

It uses acrobatic language.

There are lots of motor-mouthed shows out there, and I pretty much like them all, but I can't think of another show that takes quite this much joy in what my college professors would call "formal experimentation": rhyme, alliteration, repetition, symmetry, onomatopoeia, simile, metaphor. This show trips off the tongue.

It's creatively romantic.





Meet Ned and his alive-again girlfriend, Chuck. They can't touch without consequences both fatal (for her) and heartbreaking (for him). Couldn't they simply wear gloves? Probably, but where's the fun in that?

It has the morgue dude.



He doesn't have a name or a backstory, but he had me at "You got some kind of shifty goin' on?"

It has Emerson Cod and Olive Snook.



He's a sassy P.I. who knits when he's nervous (he finds the stockinette stitch especially relaxing) and likes counting his money in the bubble bath. She's a former jockey who serves pie, insists on chit-chat, and sings sad songs in the Pie Hole at night. Together, they are hilarious and magical.

It's like nothing else.

This is the crux of Pushing Daisies: it borrows from a million places and is, in the end, nothing like any of them, or like anything else you've seen. Take a little bit of Roald Dahl, a little bit of Amelie, a little bit of Alice Hoffman, a little bit of your favorite pop-up book, a little bit of Alfred Hitchcock. Mix them up, make something happier and sadder and more gorgeous and more intensely metaphorical than you really thought you could. And, well, there you go.




P.S. The season-two premiere was awesome. How many bee puns--verbal and visual--can one writing staff squeeze into a 42-minute show? OH WOW SO MANY. I loved it.

The bright future

I'm watching the Emmys. Yep, I'm the one. I'm not watching them because I think they're particularly in touch with what's good in TV--they're still nominating Two and a Half Men, but not The Wire, so there you go--or because the internet's down and I can't check the InStyle Style Watch, or whatever. I'm watching the Emmys because they make me want to write stuff.

There's just so much cool material out there right now--shows that are concept-driven and writer-driven more than anything else. Mad Men's Best Drama win gave me chills. Barry Sonnenfeld won for directing a kooky, magical, completely unorthodox pilot for Pushing Daisies. Tina Fey just won her third award of the night, and got to pick it up from Mary Tyler Moore and Betty White. Do you think, someday, I could win an award and accept it from a cardboard cut-out of Tina Fey? Because that would pretty much be enough for me.

I'd say that the Emmys wouldn't matter for me as a writer, but that's only half true. Of course I want to have written something that somebody performed and somebody else filmed, and then a bunch of people decided it was worth some crazy heavy golden statue. I can't believe these people get to roll out of bed and put their work energy into characters and plot and all those things that make my stomach flutter, and I'm so, so jealous. I would not object to any of those things. But writers onstage are always a weird thing, and I suspect my presence wouldn't do much to normalize the situation. They always look extremely happy but kind of freaked out, like groundhogs emerging in February, all, "Hey! It's a party for us!...OH CRAP LOOK AT THAT SHADOW." Also, female writers have it rough. It's like a wedding party: the guys head to Tux Hut an hour before, pick something off the rack, wear it, and bring it back in the morning. Actresses, who don't spend their days shut up in conference rooms with tables full of candy and pizza, have custom, designer gowns shoved at them from all sides. The women writers have to dress themselves and look nice without the benefit of a stylist. I'd like to think I'd come out on the winning side of this proposition--again, maybe my girl Tina will continue to wear awesome dresses make writers the new It girls--but it somehow seems like the odds are slim. I've met myself. Not that, you know, I'd let the gown thing keep me home. I do want people to applaud while I look pleased and confused, and then am escorted away by an anonymously glittery girl; I'm just not sure how well I'd deal.

Also, Lee Pace just lost. Do you think he needs consolation? I may be able to help. Call me, Lee!

What I'm Watching, v. 3.0

The fall TV season is gearing up earlier than I expected, which means it's time for one of my favorite recurring posts: the What I'm Watching fall TV catch-up, wherein I get to yammer about the shows I'll be watching and the shows I might be watching for the coming season (and, in some cases, why you should watch them, too).

This season is reasonably predictable, and far less full than I expected, schedule-wise--it turns out that three of my shows (Lost, Friday Night Lights, and the Joss Whedon's new series Dollhouse) don't start until January. Similarly, the crop of new shows isn't as diffuse or as magnetic as it was last year, so I only have one definite newcomer for the fall. Here goes:


Returnees

Mad Men

Sunday, 10 p.m., AMC
Premiere: Already running (Season 2)
Premise: A look at the lives of Madison Avenue ad execs in 1960
This show is gorgeous and eminently grown-up--an unsentimental period piece with an ensemble cast of finely molded characters and a truckload of cognitive dissonance. Why does Don Draper commit himself so wholly to a lifestyle with which he's so uncomfortable? Does Peggy want to succeed or be seduced, and does she have to choose? When will Joan's boobs get their own storyline? (Kidding. Joan's boobs are their own storyline.) Some of these characters are a little stand-offish, but every single one of them is complex, interesting, and at least a tiny bit sympathetic. (Even Pete Campbell. I love Pete, insecure, self-important moron that he is.) AMC is running a second-season catch-up marathon this weekend, for anybody who's interested.


Bones

(Yep, this is about the level on which Bones functions.)

Wednesday, 8 p.m., FOX
Premiere: September 3 (Season 4)
Premise: A socially awkward forensic anthropologist and her hottie FBI partner solve murders using the victims' skeletons. Grossness, hilarity, and meaningful glances ensue.
This show pulled something of a jerkfaced move at the end of last season, but random rerun encounters over the summer have confirmed that I'm so not over my favorite silly police procedural. Somehow I just can't quit the Jeffersonian gang--not just Booth and Brennan, though I like where the writers have taken them, but everyone, especially when they're all together. (I even like Cam.) (Also, I must reiterate that although I object to the fate of one Zachary Uriah Addy, I am beyond pleased that my favorite ridiculous wunderkind therapist survived the season. I love Sweets.) Count me in for more goofy crime-solving hijinks, and possibly some genuinely strong episodes--they're more than capable when everything's firing on all cylinders.


The Office

(Surprise! The Office is not funny in still pictures. However, my sense of consistency requires me to include one anyway. Enjoy a Dwight acrostic.)

Thursday, 9:00 p.m., NBC
Premiere: September 25 (Season 5)(!)
Premise: An appallingly awkward and occasionally tear-jerking comedy about life at a paper company in Pennsylvania.
I frankly don't remember Season 4 all that well--I'm out of the rhythm of life in Scranton--but The Office rarely fails at being simultaneously hilarious and heartwrenching, and I have complete faith in the writing team behind it. (Oh, yes: Season 4. Jan and Michael broke up; Jan's pregnant; Jim failed to propose; Dwight and Angela: Part Deux. Amy Ryan--"Michael as a girl"--replaces Toby. TOBY!)


Pushing Daisies
Wednesday, 8:00 p.m., ABC
Premiere: October 1 (Season 2)
Premise: Ned the Piemaker brings dead things back to life, with consequences.
This is by far my best-loved new show from last season, and is rapidly becoming an all-time favorite, period. It's like nothing else on TV--honey-sweet, brilliantly colorful, randomly musical, and yet utterly macabre; it's also practically impossible to describe without visual aids. Therefore, this video effectively covers the "rules" of the show as established in the pilot...



...and this one makes me salivate over all that's promised for Season 2, while also showing off the extravagant visuality of Barry Sonnenfeld's direction and art direction:



I can't recommend the weird, wonderful kookiness of this show enough, especially for people who like mysteries, love stories, cute baker guys, nuns, funny dialogue, bees and honey, cool costumes, Alfred Hitchcock, musicals, pretty cinematography, synchronized swimming, personality disorders, fine cheeses, Kristin Chenoweth, and/or pie. NBC.com has a bunch of episodes online; DVDs come out September 16. Learn it, live it, love it.


30 Rock

(And you wonder why I identify with Liz Lemon.)

Thursday, 9:30 p.m., NBC
Premiere: October 30 (Season 3)
Premise: Tina Fey plays herself, only single. (A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a female head writer on a sketch comedy show.)
Even when it wasn't totally consistent, this show was excellent and featured some pretty awesome performers doing peak-level work, namely Tina Fey as Liz Lemon (representative of an entire subset of the female population, if you were wondering) and Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy. Now that it's all Emmy-winning hot stuff, it's just as crazy and just as good, though in my opinion the stunt casting went a little overboard last season (except Carrie Fisher and Will Arnett, because I can never get enough of Will Arnett). There is practically nothing I don't love about Liz Lemon and her band of merry men (plus Jenna), and I can't wait to see what curveballs they'll throw and what new slang I'll learn. Say it with me now: By the hammer of Thor! (Actually, I am waiting and waiting for the day when I can say, in any context, "Gimme your fingernails!" "NO!" Oh, Kenneth.)

Newcomers

Fringe

Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., FOX
Premiere: September 9
I recently heard someone call this show a triple whammy: it's going to attract fans of Alias and Lost (because it's a J.J. Abrams production), Dawson's Creek (because of Josh Jackson), and The X-Files (from which it has stolen at least its basic premise and possibly its structure). I personally am in it for the J.J. factor--I never watched Dawson and don't need to revisit The X-Files--but if it's as good as his other work, and as good as the huge investment FOX has made in it (a $10 million pilot), all of these elements will fuse into something that rises above all three. Here's to hoping it rules, and that FOX doesn't cancel it before it gets to that point.

On the Fence: Things I Might Watch, But Probably Not

Dirty Sexy Money (Actually quite good; might re-incorporate if time)
Chuck (Ditched last season, but am reconsidering)
Kath and Kim (Abysmal previews, but I like Selma Blair and Molly Shannon)
Life on Mars (Fandom is peeing their pants over the original British version)

What are you all watching this fall?

Blanketed

Have you ever pondered the very squareness of your average blanket? Square, I'm telling you. Not a strip, not a rectangle--that would be a towel--but every stitch of width accounted for by a row of length. Square, man.

I've been pondering the squareness of blankets lately as I've been working on the baby blanket I'm knitting. It's a winner of a blanket, I think; I like the pattern and I like the colors. But: blanket. Square. Pink pink pink pink white white pink pink pink pink white white. I'm dreaming in stripes these days.

Good thing there's been the AMC Mad Men marathon to keep me company. I'll bet HBO is kicking itself--they passed on the show (created by one of their own, no less, Sopranos alum Matthew Weiner), only to watch it be picked up and produced by AMC and subsequently receive sixteen Emmy nominations. It's the kind of thing you'd never see on network TV. Set at a Madison Avenue ad agency in 1960, it's hopelessly (and sometimes pleasingly) adult--not so much violent or graphically sexy as subtle, complex, and packed with precise dialogue spoken by paralytically conflicted characters. These are people that are almost universally dedicated to a lifestyle that none of them seem entirely comfortable with; they're always trying to break or escape their own situations, even as they work day in and day out to preserve what they have. In short, it makes me positively thrilled to be a child of the 80s, though the flouncy shirtwaist dresses, pencil skirts, and fantastic shoes make it almost worth a trade. (Kidding. Any man that spoke to me like the men on that show would sound like Bobby McFerrin for a week.)

Don't you wish your life was as exciting as mine?

The quiet house

This week has been awfully quiet at my place. Last Thursday was the official end of my 2007-2008 TV schedule, and now...summer.

My Tivo is basically full--I sacrificed almost everything else in order to keep the full season of Lost intact, because that's what you do when you're scatterbrained and compulsive about the most complicated show on the planet--but it's okay, because there's nothing on the Season Pass horizon until September. (When that day comes, though, watch out. Did you know that both Joss Whedon [Buffy, Firefly] and J.J. Abrams [Alias, Lost] have new shows premiering next season? And not a single one of my current shows has been cancelled. OY.)

It's nice, kind of. I can write. Read. Knit. Enjoy the psychic space of my quiet apartment. Listen to the guy across the street with the outlandishly loud voice when he talks on the phone. But I'll admit that after awhile, psychic space gets kind of dull (same with the neighbor; he sounds like Louis Armstrong on HGH, but I can't actually understand what he's saying), and I know I'm going to be trolling the universe for something to occupy that part of me that's always hunting for a good story.

I've declared this hiatus the Summer of Battlestar Galactica, which I think will be a Thing when I get there, but I'm still too close to the Lost finale to even think about something so brain-intensive (to say nothing of the aforementioned full Tivo, which I will eventually need to watch through and/or delete--it's a closure thing, since we won't see the island again until January). In the interim, I've got Freaks and Geeks coming up on Netflix, which is supposedly brilliant and not too long, and I'm trying to figure out whether I can find and finish the first season of Mad Men before the second season premieres in July. (The DVDs come out July 1. Why do they do this, not give us catch-up time between DVD releases and premieres? Maddening.) And then there are the other, smaller shows just starting to tap at my consciousness--How I Met Your Mother and, secretly, Dr. Who--which I probably won't get to anytime soon, but am sort of wondering whether I should. Right now I'm taking it easy with old episodes of Gilmore Girls--the first season is just like perfect old pajamas, I've seen them so many times--and random run-ins with What Not to Wear. Which is nice, and doesn't tax the brain too much, but at some point I will have recovered from 2007-2008 and be ready for sucking-in. And when that time comes, I want to be ready. What to watch, what to watch?

Dear Bones,

I apologize for thinking briefly but with enthusiasm today about the extra writing time I would have during your summer hiatus. I didn't mean it! Thank you for all the singing this week! And one more thing: Please do not kill Agent Booth, because I think that I, not to mention one Dr. Temperance Brennan, would miss him terribly, and we don't want that, do we?

To recap, I will not gloat over additional writing time if you will keep my favorite striped-socks-wearing dork of an FBI agent alive.

With remorse,

A loyal viewer

You knooooow what I like

Sometimes, I love my Tivo. Currently collected in my "Tivo Suggestions" folder:

- Top Ten Hawaiian Beaches

- Lionheart (starring Jean-Claude Van Damme; "A French Foreign Legion deserter enters a U.S. arena of bare-knuckle brawls run by a woman")

- Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which it records every day and which I delete every day, because my attention span only has eyes for Jon Stewart

- Steak Paradise!

It's like it RECORDS my SOUL.

Pencils up!

Writers' strike over! Back to work! New TV for everyone!

WOOT.

(Also, I am apparently delirious with strike-ending happiness, as my brain keeps trying to sing: Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my TV to me, to me! Camp songs? Now? Really?)

What I'm Watching: Strike! Edition

Normally, around this time of year, I'd write the second half of my "What I'm Watching" TV-recommendation post. In September, I like to give a summary of my possible TV schedule for the season; when winter hiatus ends, I follow up with what made the cut and why. The "What I'm Watching" thing is, however, obviously problematic this year. Striking writers, and all. In terms of current non-reality shows, I'm watching very little at all.

Which doesn't mean I haven't made good use of the time. I miss my shows, and I'm so, so smad for the writers and the non-writer folks who aren't working because "we don't know if the internet's gonna make any money," but I'd be lying if I said my TV was gathering dust. This is like a weirdly placed summer break. All this time to catch up on all the shows I've ignored over the years? It's not ideal, but it sure does cut down on the "things I should have watched but haven't" list. And so I present What I'm Watching: Strike! Edition.

Friday Night Lights
I'm not sure what NBC would have to do to get people to watch Friday Night Lights (make it look less like a football-themed teen drama?), but I feel like personally going to everybody I know, looking deep into their eyes, and saying with great gravitas, "You must watch this show." I don't care who you are: young, old, single, married, into TV, not into TV, whatever. If you like stories about people, and if you have a heart pumping blood through your body, I dare you to watch the first disc of the first season and not fall crazily in love with Dillon, TX. This show is spectacularly written and spectacularly acted, but those are only the means to a funny, sad, real, heart-breaking, head-nodding, "that's so true!"-inducing end. "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose," indeed. (Bonus: First season: $20 at full price! Unheard-of! Watch it today!)

Arrested Development
I've often said that The Office is a groundbreaking show, the kind of TV that will change the medium. I still think that. But I have to give props: before there was The Office, there was Arrested Development. My brother gave me the complete series (three seasons) for Christmas, and this show has been a weird, hilarious bright spot in early 2008: a half-hour comedy with an ongoing plot and jokes that build on themselves for whole seasons at a time. For the uninitiated, it's about "a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son that had no choice but to keep them all together" (It's in the theme song). Other than that, there's really nothing to explain, except that Will Arnett doing his Mexican chicken dance will never not reduce me to tears. Just...helpless, sometimes guilty, laughter. So, so funny.

LOST
I was saving LOST for a rainy day, and that day came when I visited Maggie in Phoenix and she sent me home with her first-season DVDs. Now, can we face facts for a moment? This show is CRAZY. Tropical-island-with-polar-bears-and-monsters-and-underground-faux-Cold-War-Buddhist-bunkers crazy. But I love it. I love the first season for making me care (mostly) about an almost infinite number of character relationships (14 factorial!), and I think I love the second season even more, for having an actual plot and for creeping the heck out of me on a regular basis ("I'm Henry Gale. I'm from Minnesota." Ack!), and for having Sawyer show up, drunk, in everyone's backstory. Heh. It's weird and intense, but also deeply rooted in character--it has to be, to make us care deeply about that many fictional people--and full of nice little moments. It's ambitious and sometimes silly, but rarely boring. Bonus: Season 4 starts January 31! New TV for this wasteland of a season! Totally worth it.

So that's the current roster. But, really (and don't tell the AMPTP this or we'll be TV-less for a lot longer), I could go for awhile. I have the first season of Six Feet Under burning a hole in my DVD shelf, and Battlestar Galactica, Bleak House, the second season of Weeds, and Dead Like Me sitting on my Netflix queue. And Masterpiece Theatre's doing the complete Jane Austen on Sundays. And if we're stuck long-term, I can always break out the big guns: Buffy and Angel, which is a combined...what, eleven seasons? Don't think I won't, guys. I'm just looking for a reason (besides pregnancy bed rest and bunion surgery, which have been my go-to Buffy/Angel watchwords). I'm here for the long haul. (But please, can we have our TV back?)

What if you didn't have to be dead?: Why I love Pushing Daisies and you should, too

1. No beating around the bush. Ned likes Chuck. Chuck likes Ned. Ned can't touch Chuck, but he lets her move into his apartment, where they bake pies and sleep in twin beds. The end. Or, rather, the beginning.

2. Emerson Cod knits sweater vests and cozies for his handguns and his stacks of money. He doesn't like to knit in public, but he keeps a set of needles in his pocket, just in case.

3. Chuck's clothes. Serious sundress envy, here. Rumor has it she wears orange next week!

4. Lee Pace is adooooorable.

5. It has a whimsical orchestral score and a Gothic narrator.

6. Kristin Chenoweth is Hopelessly Devoted to You. And Ned. And Digby the dog. THERE ARE NO WORDS.

7. It's not like anything you've seen on TV before. Trust me.

Wednesday nights! 8 p.m.! ABC! Experience the adorable weirdness for yourself!

What I'm Watching, v. 2.0

September in California isn't much like fall anywhere else, but I can feel the change of seasons in my bones. Maybe it's all the apples at the farmer's market. I wore pants and long sleeves to crew practice last night. Or maybe it's just because of that age-old ritual, the pre-fall Tivo clean-out. I'm in the process of making space on my 40-hour machine(!) for the barrage to come--can I really bear to delete the Gilmore Girls finale, even though I haven't re-watched it?--and thinking about my schedule for the season. I lost a couple of shows last year, leaving me with a reasonably empty plate, but I also picked up some newer shows over the summer. And then there's an entire Christian boo-fay of new stuff. I'm spoiled for choice.

I re-read last year's pre-season TV post, and it seems that things are far less settled now than last season--I'm trying out more shows, but I know less about them and I'm less assured of what's going to be good. There's a lot more herd influence going on this year, and I'll probably end up giving up on a lot of them (or seeing a few cancellations). Either way, this is what I'm looking at:

Already Watching:

Bones
Tuesday, 8 p.m., FOX
Premiere: September 25
Premise: A socially awkward forensic anthropologist and her hottie FBI partner solve murders using the victims' skeletons. Grossness, hilarity, and meaningful glances ensue.
Why do I always feel the need to explain my relationship with this show? Here's the truth: the writing on Bones is not the best. It's not the worst, either, but it's sometimes awkward and obvious and just kind of...lacking in finesse. But you know what? I really, really like it anyway. I should stop apologizing for it. It's a pretty show about pretty people solving crimes, and it cracks me up. Basically, it's a triumph of casting, chemistry, and cinematography over a mediocre script, and I am more than okay with that. And anyway, now that we're starting season 3: Did Angela and Hodgins run away and get married? Did Zach ("ZaaaachAddy!") go to Iraq and get shot? Will Booth and Brennan realize their love and be 2getha 4eva? And will poor Cam EVER get her own storyline? So much intrigue!

30 Rock
Thursday, 8:30 p.m., NBC
Premiere: October 4
Premise: Tina Fey plays herself, only single. (A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a female head writer on a sketch comedy show.)
Maybe if I say this really fast, it won't feel so mean: 30Rockisgreatbutdidn'tdeservetheBestComedySeriesEmmy;TheOfficeisabettershowandshouldhavewon. There. That said, I really do love 30 Rock, and I stand by it as the best true sitcom out there. I also intend to continue watching it in forever in my quest to be Tina Fey when I grow up. So: Watch it. It's silly and well-written and I look forward to it every week. (Also re-watches well, especially while knitting.)

The Office
Thursday, 9:00, NBC
Premiere: September 27
Premise: The everyday trials of working in an office full of...regular people. Steve Carell is in charge. 'Nuff said.
I have a hard time explaining why this show is so great, but that's only because it DEFIES WORDS. Every time I think it's gone all touchy-feely happy-happy on us, I happen upon some scene that leaves me stranded on the couch in fetal position, peering through my fingers (I recently watched the beginning of "Women's Appreciation." It was a near-death experience). The Office feels, to me, like a higher form of TV--it's characterization and dialogue and joy and heartbreak and hilarity and non-reality reality in a way that other shows can't even fathom. It's one of those shows that I believe has changed the face of TV and will continue to do so. It's just that good. WATCH IT. It will make you laugh. And cry. And have hope for humanity, or at least for comedy writers, even though they're sometimes terrible people.

Friday Night Lights
Friday, 9:00, NBC
Premiere: October 5
Premise: A small town in Texas is obsessed with its championship high school football team. DRA-MA.
NBC is so sure new viewers will fall in love with this show that they're offering a money-back guarantee on the first-season DVDs. It's a pretty cracked-out business model, but for FNL, it's not a bad idea--I have yet to meet a single viewer who doesn't love it in an ridiculous way. The thing to remember here is that this is not a show about football. This is a show about people who interact because of football, but it's about life in a small town, about friends and families and boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives, and then occasionally there's a game. But football is never the point, here. The people are the point, which is the hallmark of good TV from where I'm standing.

New and worth a shot:

Chuck
Monday, 8:00, NBC
Premiere: September 24
Premise: Action-comedy in which a regular guy accidentally gains access to sooper-sekrit government documents. I think I read that he somehow downloaded them to his brain? I don't know.
Could...be fun? I've heard good things from people who've watched the premiere on NBC.com. So basically I'm going with the herd, here.

Reaper
Tuesday, 9:00, CW
Premiere: September 25
Premise: A young man learns that his parents sold his soul to the devil, and now he has to be the devil's personal assistant.
Like Dead Like Me, only on network TV. I'd be skeptical except that it's a Kevin Smith creation, and Tim Goodman loved it. And I do what Tim Goodman tells me to.

Pushing Daisies
Wednesday, 8:00, ABC
Premiere: October 3
Premise: A guy can touch dead things and bring them back to life...once. If he touches them again, they die permanently.
Another death show? This one sounds hokey, but it's probably the most critically-acclaimed new show out there. It's by the guy who did Wonderfalls, which everyone (and by "everyone" I mean "TV geeks," but there are kind of a lot of us) loved and which lasted approximately 3.6 seconds on TV. We'll see if this one sticks; I hope so. I like quirky TV.

Maybe if they sweet-talk me:

Aliens in America
Monday, 8:30, NBC
Premiere: October 1
Premise: A family takes in a Pakistani exchange student so their nerdy son will have at least one friend.
A half-hour show on the CW doesn't make me want to jump up and down, but 1) it's getting some good press--Tim Goodman liked it, anyway--and 2) Scott Patterson (Luke from Gilmore Girls) is in it. So it gets a chance, at least. I think.

Bionic Woman
Wednesday, 9:00, NBC
Premiere: September 26
Premise: ...The Bionic Woman
I just don't know about this.

Dirty Sexy Money
Wednesday, 10:00, ABC
Premiere: September 26
Premise: Peter Krause is a good-guy lawyer trying to deal with the bad-guy family of clients he's inherited from his father.
The title and the ABC-at-nightness turn me off of this one, but producer Greg Berlanti's involvement and my Sports Night/Casey McCall crush on Peter Krause require me to at least check it out.

Before anybody starts worrying about my mental and physical health, please know that I'm not actually planning to watch all of these shows. This is the pre-tryouts roster; some of them are sure to wash out before we've even finished warm-ups. (And now, see? I'm watching too much Friday Night Lights.)

The Long Goodbye

Tonight, for the very last time, I will spend my Tuesday night with Gilmore Girls.

I remember the first time I watched Gilmore--it was after college but before Maggie and I moved into the cottage; I went over to her parents' house and we watched the season-three premiere together. The episode is "Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer," and it opens with a dream sequence: Lorelai wakes up surrounded by alarm clocks, and when she goes downstairs, Luke is there--he set all of the alarm clocks, and he's hidden her coffee. He talks to her tummy (Sid & Nancy/Leopold & Loeb), kisses her goodbye, and leaves. She wakes up and calls Rory in a panic. I didn't know who Luke was or why he should or should not be the father of Lorelai's kids, but I knew with the Connie Chung joke and Barbara Boxer's name in the credits that THESE WERE MY PEOPLE.

Is it weird to say that a TV show has changed my life? I'm not saying I want to be a single parent, move to a quirky town in rural Connecticut, feud with my parents, and/or fall in love with a guy who owns a diner. I can also live without going to Yale, sleeping with my married ex-boyfriend, jumping off a tower, stealing a yacht, taking a sulky trip to Europe, and living in my grandparents' poolhouse. But there are books I might not have read, songs I might not have heard, and movies I might not have watched without the Gilmores around. There are friends--real people, good friends--I wouldn't know if I'd never started watching. And wouldn't I be a different person without The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath? Wouldn't I be different without the Shins? Wouldn't I be different without The Philadelphia Story and Grey Gardens? I can't even say what a different place my world would be without my Gilmore friends. They're not even my Gilmore friends anymore; they're just...friends.

There's a technical side of this show that's been important to me. I've spent a lot of time with the Gilmores over the years, and I think I've learned things about story and structure, about character and arc and relationship--Amy Sherman-Palladino (not to disrespect David S. Rosenthal for the brave and interesting things he's done this season; they are legion) showed me about making the big things little and the little things big, and how giving viewers what they want can also mean breaking their hearts, and how that's not always even a bad thing. I haven't agreed 100% with every writing decision she ever made, but I've usually been able to see her reasons, and I can respect that. Most of what I'll miss about the Gilmores, though, isn't about what I've learned from it. What I'll miss are Tuesday nights on the couch. I'll miss Birthday Week and the Firelight Festival, town meetings and Friday Night Dinner. I'll miss painting songs, fuzzy Certs that taste like keys, and "Luke? Can WALTZ," which sounds more like "I'm surprised I still have my clothes on." I'll miss watching The Donna Reed Show on mute and using a Bop-It to dissolve social tension. I'll miss the Troubadour. I'll miss Paris the person, "What's up, quippy? Why so silent?," and packing your chastity belt because you're going to Harvard. I'll miss non-crazy Sookie. I'll miss Madeleine Albright cuddling with Rory in her red power suit. I'll miss Mrs. Kim and "this Bible belongs to God but is being used by Dave Rygalski." I'll miss Zach and Lane and Steve and Kwan, and whichever of them is all over growing in the torso. I'll miss Blake Edwards night at the Dragonfly, Cletus in the dining room, and Michel counting blueberries. I'll miss stealing an answering-machine tape, selling the old boat and buying a new one, and apologizing in a hay-bale maze. I'll miss Kirk's pedi-cab. I'll miss Richard humming classical music to drown out the Czech teenagers, letting Lorelai climb out the window, and telling her to relax for a moment and enjoy Rory's graduation. I'll miss the two-steps-forward-three-steps-back of Lorelai and Emily. I'll miss the Crap Shack. I'll miss that whole corner of the world, because seven years is a long time to exist, even fictionally.

So tonight is the end, and I'm okay with it, sort of. I knew the actors' contracts were up after this season, and I'm always a fan of TV shows quitting while they're more or less ahead. I'm excited to sit down with some knowledgeable friends, some frozen pizza, some Mallomars, and some pudding (not in crystal bowls) to watch it all wrap up. It'll be fun, seeing the Girls finally find true love, or march off to become Christiane Amanpour, or whatever it is that happens in the forty-two minutes we've got left.

I'm ready. And anyway, there's always DVD.

"I forgot to feel the President's glands."

Ugh, I hate being a blog slacker. Busy, busy, etc.

Except not, because I took a sick day on Monday, and slept all morning and then spent the afternoon crashed out on the couch with the first season of Bones (Hey, don't mock; at what point does cheesy and obvious outweigh pretty and charming? We shall see). I felt fantastic all day yesterday, but woke up this morning with my throat scratching and my lungs wheezing in a not-very-amusing way. Not cool, body. Not cool.

So maybe it's less "busy, busy," and more like "boring, boring." Which isn't really any better.

I did give up on a book recently, which is pretty unusual--the first hundred pages of Broken For You were fine, but I was reading on my break one day last week, and I reached the end of a sentence and said to myself, "I can't go on." It was all very swoony and dramatic, but I'm much happier now, having picked up The Best American Non-Required Reading 2006, an anthology of essays, short stories, graphic short stories, excerpts from scripts, and all kinds of non-categorizable writing excellence from, well, 2006. The most thought-provoking piece I've read so far is the Iraqi Constitution, which I admit that I a) didn't actually expect to finish, and b) am finding so dense that I'm reading it in five-page spurts. I'm finding it both hopeful and kind of depressing--hopeful because it lays out what sounds like a pretty good proposal, where everybody is treated well and the government functions for the good of the people, but depressing because I know that's not what's happening. It also brings up issues about the United States Constitution, and about Constitutions in general--where and when did we as people decide that a single document meant authority, and what is it that makes us (mostly) recognize that authority today? Why do the U.S. and Iraqi Constitutions cover so much that sounds so basic to human civilization? (I think I know the answer to that one--implication and natural decency just aren't enough for us.) It's a really interesting piece of writing, if you're into that kind of thing.

The Passion of the Sorkin

I think I'm going to write more about writing here from now on. This blog started as a way for me to share what's really going on with me, and these days, pen and paper (or keyboard and screen) have been heavy on my mind. I'm looking at my future, trying to decide where to go and what to do, whether it's best to concentrate on writing my own material or on refining other people's, and why the options seem so limited right now. I'm doing Cinema Hype and preparing to apply for the ABC/Disney Talent Development Fellowship, among other things, trying to stay sharp and make opportunities for myself. There are a lot of words in me, and I think I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the best way to get them out. Anyway. Writing about writing.

My old friends Kendra and Amy came to visit me this weekend; Amy's getting married in June, and we got together to do dress fittings and shoe shopping and stay up late chatting (check; check; double check). It was wonderful to see them both; the three of us spent three summers working and living together, and at the end of the summer it was always like losing a pair of limbs. Kendra stayed with me an extra night, and we spent the time as two unashamed TV fiends do: we curled up on the couch with blankets and mainlined a half-season of Studio 60.

When I watch Aaron Sorkin's shows, I always learn things. He teaches me about voice and timing, about the interplay of comedy and drama, about the importance and appeal of communities in storytelling. But mostly what he teaches me is about passion. Sorkin cares deeply about platonic male friendship; that's why we get Casey and Dan, Danny and Matt, Josh and Sam, and Leo and President Bartlet. We know he cares because the result is always surgically precise and delivered like it's the Gospel itself, and also because he essentially tells the same story over and over, mulling and refining and tinkering with the same basic structure. He never gets tired of talking about it, which is why he always has relevant things to say on the subject. Sorkin is also passionate about baseball, Gilbert and Sullivan, liberal politics, and television, which is why he continually works any combination of those things into his work. He's like a kid showing his parents around at open house(or, more accurately, like Tom Jeter at Studio 60?), always wanting to show off the things that are interesting to him. It shows, the passion. It makes a difference. It's why, at the end of the Studio 60 pilot, I hear "Pressure" and see Matt and Danny walk through the semi-lit theater, and I get butterflies in my stomach. It's why I have to smile when he slips little bits of TV history in around the edges--he can't not. He so wants us to know and care, and so I do. It's inspiring.