new fall season reactions (big damn tv post)
I started working on this post last week, when I got to the end of my "to be taped" list. I give up on it. So VMars and Night Stalker get only cursory sentences.
Gilmore Girls
From what I've read on my flist and elsewhere, people weren't happy about Luke's easy response to Lorelai, just as they had been unhappy with Lorelai's proposal at the end of last season. While I agreed that the proposal was coming out of unpleasant circumstances which maybe Lorelai should have faced before retreating to a safe emotional base, I felt that what prompted the proposal was Lorelai's awareness of Luke's total fabulousness.
I mean, here she is, having a serious rift with her only child, with whom she is unusually close, and her boyfriend, rather than placating her with platitudes, gets involved. He loves both of them, and he throws himself into the breach. How great is it to have a significant other like that, willing to get your back? Hell, yeah, I'd want to marry him!
And Luke loves Lorelai tremendously. We see that in the second ep, where he runs to the vet's house with Paul Anka in his arms and blithers about not wanting to screw up with her. So, of course, no matter what her motivation, when she's looking up at him and proposing, he's not going to say no. It's not entirely the smart thing to do, with Lorelai in such a state, but it's the thing Luke would do in those circumstances.
Hmm. Now that I type that, I realize that it's something I've been saying in my head about VMars, too. Maybe this will be my theme for the 2005 season. "It's not smart, but it's in character."
I also read a post wondering where Lane was, while Rory was having this crisis of faith, and I wondered that myself. And then, duh, there Lane was, where we knew she was, on a tour of Christian churches with the band. Lane seems to be a seriously secondary character, if we can't even remember how her plotline ended up.
Rory needs to be hit upside the head with a two-by-four. I volunteer. That's all I've got to say about that.
House
Yep, I still love him. I love that while he is changing, it's sloooowly. He has, according to wossname Stacy, been a cranky old man for much of his life. So he's not going to get all touchy-feely in just a couple of episodes. And yet, he has unbent enough that he routinely visits patients, even if they still lie to him. And he thought to ask the little girl with cancer what nobody else thought of asking her.
Despite all this unbending, I didn't think his little speech to Cuddy at the end of ep. 3 was in character. I still can't make out how mocking Cuddy for her illogical guilt segued into reassuring her that caring made her a good administrator. Both are true, but I must have missed the connector.
I really need to go back and find the names of these episodes.
"Acceptance" AKA Dead Man Dying
I like the fact that the show is taking on racism. And it's become the PC thing nowadays to have a minority character express these racist views, so of course we got to see Foreman being slightly racist against this black man for playing into stereotypes. Which was good, especially when the patient challenged him on it and made him at least reconsider his viewpoint.
The whole House/Stacy trust issue would have been interesting, but they both took it so damn seriously. I really expected Stacy to know House well enough to know that he'll lie to get what he wants for a patient. Come on, he drugged her husband. But she didn't expect him to lie, which makes me wonder if that's due to poor writing (on this show?) or if their relationship was vastly different than the relationships House has with the other characters on the show. Also, once Stacy has rebuked House for not being trustworthy, why would she then turn around and be untrustworthy herself? Why not at least call House to warn him that she felt she needed to tell Cuddy?
That kind of action, taken with her treatment of House during his leg trauma/coma, seems to indicate that Stacy is the kind of person who never really opens up to people, never really trusts them. There's something Buffy-like about her taking the responsibility to make these decisions, even if they're not quite her decisions to make. And while Buffy at least had the excuse of Slayerhood, Stacy doesn't have that out. All she's got is some lawyerly hair-splitting and semantics.
"Autopsy"
I mostly just enjoyed this episode. I, like House, get tired of this beatification of children with illnesses. Not that they don't deserve it, but they seem to be held up as some sort of beacon of light or supreme example, instead of people doing the best they can in horrible circumstances. How can a person not in those circumstances ever hope to measure up?
Best part for me?
House: And you stay away the patient.
Dr. Cameron: What did I do?
House: You’ll just get all warm and cuddly around the dying girl, and insinuate yourself, and end up in a custody battle.
*snort* So true.
"Humpty Dumpty"
Stacy reappears, and I find I don't care. I don't dislike the character, and the interactions between her and House could be interesting. But Sela Ward's not giving me anything to work with. She just doesn't add anything to the show or the ensemble.
In other plots, the black patient really pissed me off, as did Foreman's reaction to House's trick. House would have done the same thing to any other stupid patient. Hell, he did it to the Viagra guy, and also to the one who wanted painkillers. Foreman's making a big deal out of this because the patient thought it was a racist issue. Foreman knew it wasn't, but then he got all ultra-sensitive when he thought House the White Man was oppressing the Innocent Black Patient. Foreman completely ignored the fact that the patient was actually Reverse Racist Patient who wouldn't accept a prescription from a black doctor or a white doctor. 'Cuz he's scientifically illiterate, just like most of this damn country. He doesn't understand that people's bodies behave differently based on their backgrounds, so he ascribes any difference in treatment to racism. I don't mind that portrayal, as long as it's mocked appropriately, but for Foreman to join in...blech. Yeah, I have issues.
Threshold
Yeah. I TiVo'd it and watched the first five minutes, which were so bad I deleted both the show and its future recordings.
Kitchen Confidential
Not hilarious, but funny enough that I'll watch it for a while to see if it improves. And if it gives Nick Brendan more to do. Bradley Cooper is a pretty, pretty man.
My Name Is Earl
Amusing and original. Not one of those shows where I was startled by its perfection (House and Battlestar Galactica, I'm looking at you), but I'll definitely keep watching it.
Invasion
The pilot was good, but the next two episodes seemed to suffer a bit. Frankly, when watching the third, I forgot that there had been a second. Pacing seems a bit off, like they're trying to create urgency by not including any pauses anywhere.
CSI:NY
I watch this show for Gary Sinise. He is pretty and monotone.
The season opener was okay. I was sorry that the climber's story only served to introduce the "real" mystery. He seemed like he would be an interesting (I need a thesaurus!) victim to investigate, and instead we get a mosquito. Eh.
Numb3rs
I am a dork. Big dork. Love math and science. But the insertion of mathematics into the show seemed completely nonessential. It also wasn't explained what variables the mathematicians took from each case file in order to come up with their results. How could they even get the same variables from each file? It's not like there's a national standard of how to write cases up. What one agent considered important, another might not even both including.
I missed Season 1, and while waiting for this to air last Friday, I was downloading it. After watching, I cancelled my download. It just wasn't worth it.
Veronica Mars
Ah, Veronica, how I love you.
Night Stalker
Not fabulous, but has potential.
Battlestar Galactica
I haven't watched the fall finale yet. I'm not sure why. I caught a glimpse of a reason yesterday when I started it and didn't get much past the previouslies. BSG, as good as it is, is dark. Very dark. Almost unremittingly dark. And, me, I'm currently on an upswing mentally. So, out of preservation or a lack of affinity or something, I want to avoid the dark. I usually do anyway, which is why I won't watch Natural Born Killers or anything by David Lynch with Matt.
Now I'm wondering why BSG got the okay for regular viewing before. Did it have enough balance that it didn't unbalance me? Am I in a different place now, more likely to be unbalanced?
These are questions to which I have no answers. So "Pegasus" remains on the TiVo, unwatched.
Gilmore Girls
From what I've read on my flist and elsewhere, people weren't happy about Luke's easy response to Lorelai, just as they had been unhappy with Lorelai's proposal at the end of last season. While I agreed that the proposal was coming out of unpleasant circumstances which maybe Lorelai should have faced before retreating to a safe emotional base, I felt that what prompted the proposal was Lorelai's awareness of Luke's total fabulousness.
I mean, here she is, having a serious rift with her only child, with whom she is unusually close, and her boyfriend, rather than placating her with platitudes, gets involved. He loves both of them, and he throws himself into the breach. How great is it to have a significant other like that, willing to get your back? Hell, yeah, I'd want to marry him!
And Luke loves Lorelai tremendously. We see that in the second ep, where he runs to the vet's house with Paul Anka in his arms and blithers about not wanting to screw up with her. So, of course, no matter what her motivation, when she's looking up at him and proposing, he's not going to say no. It's not entirely the smart thing to do, with Lorelai in such a state, but it's the thing Luke would do in those circumstances.
Hmm. Now that I type that, I realize that it's something I've been saying in my head about VMars, too. Maybe this will be my theme for the 2005 season. "It's not smart, but it's in character."
I also read a post wondering where Lane was, while Rory was having this crisis of faith, and I wondered that myself. And then, duh, there Lane was, where we knew she was, on a tour of Christian churches with the band. Lane seems to be a seriously secondary character, if we can't even remember how her plotline ended up.
Rory needs to be hit upside the head with a two-by-four. I volunteer. That's all I've got to say about that.
House
Yep, I still love him. I love that while he is changing, it's sloooowly. He has, according to wossname Stacy, been a cranky old man for much of his life. So he's not going to get all touchy-feely in just a couple of episodes. And yet, he has unbent enough that he routinely visits patients, even if they still lie to him. And he thought to ask the little girl with cancer what nobody else thought of asking her.
Despite all this unbending, I didn't think his little speech to Cuddy at the end of ep. 3 was in character. I still can't make out how mocking Cuddy for her illogical guilt segued into reassuring her that caring made her a good administrator. Both are true, but I must have missed the connector.
I really need to go back and find the names of these episodes.
"Acceptance" AKA Dead Man Dying
I like the fact that the show is taking on racism. And it's become the PC thing nowadays to have a minority character express these racist views, so of course we got to see Foreman being slightly racist against this black man for playing into stereotypes. Which was good, especially when the patient challenged him on it and made him at least reconsider his viewpoint.
The whole House/Stacy trust issue would have been interesting, but they both took it so damn seriously. I really expected Stacy to know House well enough to know that he'll lie to get what he wants for a patient. Come on, he drugged her husband. But she didn't expect him to lie, which makes me wonder if that's due to poor writing (on this show?) or if their relationship was vastly different than the relationships House has with the other characters on the show. Also, once Stacy has rebuked House for not being trustworthy, why would she then turn around and be untrustworthy herself? Why not at least call House to warn him that she felt she needed to tell Cuddy?
That kind of action, taken with her treatment of House during his leg trauma/coma, seems to indicate that Stacy is the kind of person who never really opens up to people, never really trusts them. There's something Buffy-like about her taking the responsibility to make these decisions, even if they're not quite her decisions to make. And while Buffy at least had the excuse of Slayerhood, Stacy doesn't have that out. All she's got is some lawyerly hair-splitting and semantics.
"Autopsy"
I mostly just enjoyed this episode. I, like House, get tired of this beatification of children with illnesses. Not that they don't deserve it, but they seem to be held up as some sort of beacon of light or supreme example, instead of people doing the best they can in horrible circumstances. How can a person not in those circumstances ever hope to measure up?
Best part for me?
House: And you stay away the patient.
Dr. Cameron: What did I do?
House: You’ll just get all warm and cuddly around the dying girl, and insinuate yourself, and end up in a custody battle.
*snort* So true.
"Humpty Dumpty"
Stacy reappears, and I find I don't care. I don't dislike the character, and the interactions between her and House could be interesting. But Sela Ward's not giving me anything to work with. She just doesn't add anything to the show or the ensemble.
In other plots, the black patient really pissed me off, as did Foreman's reaction to House's trick. House would have done the same thing to any other stupid patient. Hell, he did it to the Viagra guy, and also to the one who wanted painkillers. Foreman's making a big deal out of this because the patient thought it was a racist issue. Foreman knew it wasn't, but then he got all ultra-sensitive when he thought House the White Man was oppressing the Innocent Black Patient. Foreman completely ignored the fact that the patient was actually Reverse Racist Patient who wouldn't accept a prescription from a black doctor or a white doctor. 'Cuz he's scientifically illiterate, just like most of this damn country. He doesn't understand that people's bodies behave differently based on their backgrounds, so he ascribes any difference in treatment to racism. I don't mind that portrayal, as long as it's mocked appropriately, but for Foreman to join in...blech. Yeah, I have issues.
Threshold
Yeah. I TiVo'd it and watched the first five minutes, which were so bad I deleted both the show and its future recordings.
Kitchen Confidential
Not hilarious, but funny enough that I'll watch it for a while to see if it improves. And if it gives Nick Brendan more to do. Bradley Cooper is a pretty, pretty man.
My Name Is Earl
Amusing and original. Not one of those shows where I was startled by its perfection (House and Battlestar Galactica, I'm looking at you), but I'll definitely keep watching it.
Invasion
The pilot was good, but the next two episodes seemed to suffer a bit. Frankly, when watching the third, I forgot that there had been a second. Pacing seems a bit off, like they're trying to create urgency by not including any pauses anywhere.
CSI:NY
I watch this show for Gary Sinise. He is pretty and monotone.
The season opener was okay. I was sorry that the climber's story only served to introduce the "real" mystery. He seemed like he would be an interesting (I need a thesaurus!) victim to investigate, and instead we get a mosquito. Eh.
Numb3rs
I am a dork. Big dork. Love math and science. But the insertion of mathematics into the show seemed completely nonessential. It also wasn't explained what variables the mathematicians took from each case file in order to come up with their results. How could they even get the same variables from each file? It's not like there's a national standard of how to write cases up. What one agent considered important, another might not even both including.
I missed Season 1, and while waiting for this to air last Friday, I was downloading it. After watching, I cancelled my download. It just wasn't worth it.
Veronica Mars
Ah, Veronica, how I love you.
Night Stalker
Not fabulous, but has potential.
Battlestar Galactica
I haven't watched the fall finale yet. I'm not sure why. I caught a glimpse of a reason yesterday when I started it and didn't get much past the previouslies. BSG, as good as it is, is dark. Very dark. Almost unremittingly dark. And, me, I'm currently on an upswing mentally. So, out of preservation or a lack of affinity or something, I want to avoid the dark. I usually do anyway, which is why I won't watch Natural Born Killers or anything by David Lynch with Matt.
Now I'm wondering why BSG got the okay for regular viewing before. Did it have enough balance that it didn't unbalance me? Am I in a different place now, more likely to be unbalanced?
These are questions to which I have no answers. So "Pegasus" remains on the TiVo, unwatched.