TV (Revolution, Go On, The Good Wife, Suits)
Hi, everybody!
So I finished my obsessive rewatching of The Good Wife's first three seasons and also tried out a couple of new shows. Briefly - I was bored silly by Revolution, in part because I found it hard to care about shiny-haired, midriff-baring Girl Protagonist and her little brother, whose entire personality seems to be that he's asthmatic. I would, however, totally watch a show about their parents. (Also, "Nate" is "Rick" from one of my favorite Veronica Mars episodes, but I kept thinking he looked like a brunet Cary Agos.) Go On is doing a little better in my estimation, though I very much understand why reviewers said that it was basically a remix of Community. Why would you do that, show? We already have a perfectly cromulent Community that I miss very much and want to see back at full blast. I particularly like the angry lady, who deserves better than being known as Poor-Man's-Allison-Janney, and yet that's what I think every time I look at her. And John Cho! Being beautiful as usual. Matt Perry is fine - he's much more suited to comedies than dramas, I think, and he seems glad to be back in the rhythm of a sitcom. I wasn't disappointed or blown away by his Good Wife turn, but I kept thinking how fish-out-of-water he seemed on the show.
ANYWAY, back to The Good Wife : HOW IS EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD (or, really, my flist) NOT WATCHING THIS SHOW? It is so good, you guys! I love that these characters are realistic enough to have good days and bad days and that they don't make speeches to explain their motivations - they just go forth and act. Also, you can clearly see all of these characters thinking, which should not be nearly as rare as it is. I have favorites, but every character seems to have been drawn with equal thoughtfulness.
One thing that really hit home for me on this rewatch was the way the show plays with cliches (and expectations) so effectively. Not just Caitlin not being a threat to Alicia, either with respect to Will or her job. Not just Cary becoming a friend because he's a worthy adversary. Not just Diane making good on the partner-track promise. The one that hit me this time around was Will: he's ready to commit to Alicia and say to hell with the firm - he'll step down and declare that he needs more than what he's been building for years - and that's when Alicia, reeling from the devastation of Grace being missing and then recovered as if by divine intervention, says she needs to step away from him, from the relationship that wasn't as real for her as it was for him. But that's not the surprising part; their affair had to end at some point, and it was clear that Will was more invested, that he wanted their relationship to mean that he got a stake in the rest of her life (while she wanted to keep their affair neatly segregated from every other ball she was juggling). The surprising part is that, having convinced himself that his heart could for once outrank his head, that he could leave the firm and his responsibilities behind and think himself lucky to have Alicia in its stead, the show went ahead and slapped him upside the head with the understanding of what that would have meant. He's the subject of a grand jury investigation and then he's nearly disbarred. It's then that he comprehends what he nearly let slip through his fingers. And all the time he's fighting for it, he hasn't lost his love for Alicia, and that's what shows me that whenever he said he loved her (but never in a way that she heard it or found it credible), he meant it. It's too easy to say that Will is sketchy or to take to heart his declaration that he doesn't have feelings, but it's also too easy to go all swooningly romantic and say that it is love of her that can save him or make him a good person. No. All we see is that he believes he's in love with her and then that's proved by how much he cares about her and his firm at the same time. And it's satisfying because he's there for both Alicia and Diane (as well as for Kalinda and even himself) and he's a better character for it.
Did you know, by the way, that two Will sex scenes show up in the deleted scenes of season 3? Why would you cut those, show, when the Alicia/Will sex scene from the first episode was so mind-bendingly amazing? One of the deleted scenes features him being sweet and playful with Alicia - teasing her about a mythical crush she has on Glenn Childs, feeding her candy, and dropping a kiss on her nose - and the other involves him playing STRIP CHAUCER with Callie. Um, is that a thing people do? Did Callie major in medieval lit and then decide coke and law school were both good ideas? Or were the writers simply thinking, "Ha! We know what will drive those English majors - surely a major portion of our audience - wild, and that is Josh Charles in his boxer briefs reading Chaucer." Crafty demons!
And I like, too, that the actors seem invested and interested in their characters and storylines, and the moments that felt big to the audience felt significant to them too. I particularly loved that Julianna Margulies had the same wishlist for season-4 Alicia that I do: (1) a relationship with someone new who has no previous history with her, (2) a conversation with her mother, and (3) continued growth/awareness. Awesome.
In short, you can come back to me now, show. I'm ready.
You know, my birthday is in exactly one month, and I'd be pretty pleased if someone wrote good Will fic. Or Suits fic featuring Harvey and Jessica being beautiful badasses together. (I'm very fond of Donna, but Harvey sets the tone for all of his relationships, including his with Donna - the only exception is his relationship with Jessica, so of course that's where my interest lies.) I finally caught up with Suits and still find Mike to be a yawn, though Rachel (their names are ROSS and RACHEL - we get it, show!) has grown on me. And Louis is amazing. But really, who could ask for more than Harvey and Jessica? Or Dan/Dana Sports Night fic. Or Unusuals fic. Whatever, I'm easy.
How are you all doing?
So I finished my obsessive rewatching of The Good Wife's first three seasons and also tried out a couple of new shows. Briefly - I was bored silly by Revolution, in part because I found it hard to care about shiny-haired, midriff-baring Girl Protagonist and her little brother, whose entire personality seems to be that he's asthmatic. I would, however, totally watch a show about their parents. (Also, "Nate" is "Rick" from one of my favorite Veronica Mars episodes, but I kept thinking he looked like a brunet Cary Agos.) Go On is doing a little better in my estimation, though I very much understand why reviewers said that it was basically a remix of Community. Why would you do that, show? We already have a perfectly cromulent Community that I miss very much and want to see back at full blast. I particularly like the angry lady, who deserves better than being known as Poor-Man's-Allison-Janney, and yet that's what I think every time I look at her. And John Cho! Being beautiful as usual. Matt Perry is fine - he's much more suited to comedies than dramas, I think, and he seems glad to be back in the rhythm of a sitcom. I wasn't disappointed or blown away by his Good Wife turn, but I kept thinking how fish-out-of-water he seemed on the show.
ANYWAY, back to The Good Wife : HOW IS EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD (or, really, my flist) NOT WATCHING THIS SHOW? It is so good, you guys! I love that these characters are realistic enough to have good days and bad days and that they don't make speeches to explain their motivations - they just go forth and act. Also, you can clearly see all of these characters thinking, which should not be nearly as rare as it is. I have favorites, but every character seems to have been drawn with equal thoughtfulness.
One thing that really hit home for me on this rewatch was the way the show plays with cliches (and expectations) so effectively. Not just Caitlin not being a threat to Alicia, either with respect to Will or her job. Not just Cary becoming a friend because he's a worthy adversary. Not just Diane making good on the partner-track promise. The one that hit me this time around was Will: he's ready to commit to Alicia and say to hell with the firm - he'll step down and declare that he needs more than what he's been building for years - and that's when Alicia, reeling from the devastation of Grace being missing and then recovered as if by divine intervention, says she needs to step away from him, from the relationship that wasn't as real for her as it was for him. But that's not the surprising part; their affair had to end at some point, and it was clear that Will was more invested, that he wanted their relationship to mean that he got a stake in the rest of her life (while she wanted to keep their affair neatly segregated from every other ball she was juggling). The surprising part is that, having convinced himself that his heart could for once outrank his head, that he could leave the firm and his responsibilities behind and think himself lucky to have Alicia in its stead, the show went ahead and slapped him upside the head with the understanding of what that would have meant. He's the subject of a grand jury investigation and then he's nearly disbarred. It's then that he comprehends what he nearly let slip through his fingers. And all the time he's fighting for it, he hasn't lost his love for Alicia, and that's what shows me that whenever he said he loved her (but never in a way that she heard it or found it credible), he meant it. It's too easy to say that Will is sketchy or to take to heart his declaration that he doesn't have feelings, but it's also too easy to go all swooningly romantic and say that it is love of her that can save him or make him a good person. No. All we see is that he believes he's in love with her and then that's proved by how much he cares about her and his firm at the same time. And it's satisfying because he's there for both Alicia and Diane (as well as for Kalinda and even himself) and he's a better character for it.
Did you know, by the way, that two Will sex scenes show up in the deleted scenes of season 3? Why would you cut those, show, when the Alicia/Will sex scene from the first episode was so mind-bendingly amazing? One of the deleted scenes features him being sweet and playful with Alicia - teasing her about a mythical crush she has on Glenn Childs, feeding her candy, and dropping a kiss on her nose - and the other involves him playing STRIP CHAUCER with Callie. Um, is that a thing people do? Did Callie major in medieval lit and then decide coke and law school were both good ideas? Or were the writers simply thinking, "Ha! We know what will drive those English majors - surely a major portion of our audience - wild, and that is Josh Charles in his boxer briefs reading Chaucer." Crafty demons!
And I like, too, that the actors seem invested and interested in their characters and storylines, and the moments that felt big to the audience felt significant to them too. I particularly loved that Julianna Margulies had the same wishlist for season-4 Alicia that I do: (1) a relationship with someone new who has no previous history with her, (2) a conversation with her mother, and (3) continued growth/awareness. Awesome.
In short, you can come back to me now, show. I'm ready.
You know, my birthday is in exactly one month, and I'd be pretty pleased if someone wrote good Will fic. Or Suits fic featuring Harvey and Jessica being beautiful badasses together. (I'm very fond of Donna, but Harvey sets the tone for all of his relationships, including his with Donna - the only exception is his relationship with Jessica, so of course that's where my interest lies.) I finally caught up with Suits and still find Mike to be a yawn, though Rachel (their names are ROSS and RACHEL - we get it, show!) has grown on me. And Louis is amazing. But really, who could ask for more than Harvey and Jessica? Or Dan/Dana Sports Night fic. Or Unusuals fic. Whatever, I'm easy.
How are you all doing?