Tag: television shows

Supernatural: meat-suits, tortured souls, and Jared Padelecki needs a haircut

power saw fun

(I can use a circular saw and a power drill and I have myrrh in my cupboard – I want to join the Supernatural gang!)

Spoilers ahead.  Not major ones, but if you’re one of those “normal” people who like everything to be a surprise then you will want to go find something else to read right now.

My thoughts on the show Supernatural:

Last night Castiel said “I need some myrrh” and I shouted at the television “I have some myrrh!”  How often do I have occasion to say that?

I want to know who started the “Busty Asian Ladies” magazine gag.

“Son of a Bitch” is one of my all time favorite swear words/expressions.  I have been endeavoring to use it more often but now it will just make me seem like a Supernatural groupie.

The show has used Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in at least three episodes.  This is one of my favorites of Dylan’s songs and one of the least often played.  It was in heavy rotation while writing Cricket and Grey.  So it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that the person choosing the soundtrack loves that song as much as I do.

I want to know when Castiel gets to change the clothes his vessel is wearing.

I’m tired of Sam toying with the dark side and I’m tired of the brothers spending more time not trusting each other and resenting each other than they spend acting like brothers who love each other.

The whole biblical theme is a bit tiring to this atheist.  I want more ghost stories again.

Also – I think Dean and Sam need to untorture themselves.  I’ve read spoilers and it seems it’s just going to get worse.  C’mon guys – untwist your knickers for a little while!

I have come to believe that Jensen Ackles could play Grey Bonneville when my book is made into either a tv series or a movie.  Except for the part where he needs to have a convincing Scottish accent.  Not sure a Texan can pull that off.

Satan is exhausting.  How do Christians keep their energy levels up when they have to fight off Satan and his minions pretty much non-stop?  No wonder so many Christians are cranky.

I really want Jared Padelecki to get a different hairstyle.*  It was okay for a while but it’s pretty schleppy.  I want him to cut it short.  Because it’s none of my business what his hairstyle is and because I don’t rule the universe, I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that that’s just how Jared likes his hair.  I’ve gotten used to Max wearing essentially the same “style”.  Sigh.

I am so tired of everyone in that show cutting their arms with knives.  I can take a lot of gore but for some reason that always freaks me out – I can’t watch.  Which is weird considering I sliced up my own arms on a regular basis for two years when I was a teen.  But back then I wasn’t feeling anything – I’m much healthier now.  Maybe that’s why it bothers me.  Because it SHOULD.

I love Castiel.  You can’t trust him which is a shame, but he’s pretty funny.  Great character.

The formula for making a show that Angelina will binge watch: sets full of old books, herbs, and archaic items + humor + badass fighting – God and Satan.  (Evidenced by my love of the following shows: Buffy, Fringe, Alias, Arrow, Warehouse 13, etc)

The hotel rooms in Supernatural are all of a similar design and I wish the average hotel room was designed by the set designer of Supernatural.

You know what’s missing from Supernatural?  At least one of the brothers should develop a healthy romantic relationship.  Not both of them, obviously, because how trite and stupid would THAT be?  We can’t have that kind of happiness going on.  But Dean’s relationship with Lisa was NOT healthy and he didn’t act like he really loved her.  I get the whole “We’re tortured and therefore can’t have love in our lives because everyone we love dies” blahblahblah.  So they just have sex with questionable women/demons/monsters.  I think some of the writers have some personal issues they’re taking out on Dean and Sam.

I was incredibly disappointed to learn that John Winchester was a philanderer.  I took it personally.  I think I’m still kind of hurting over this.**

How about more women hunters that don’t die off and aren’t lame?  Now that Ellen is gone – it’s just a bunch of huffing and puffing men with guns and salt.

I love how Dean is always calling the angels “dicks”.

I also love Dean and Sam’s tradition of drinking beers leaning against Dean’s car in the middle of nowhere at the end of many episodes.  I always wish I could join them.

Can’t get “meat-suit” out of my head.

*Hey Jared – you’re adorable, so don’t sweat my opinion.  My son Max wears the same style that you do.  I’ve become the old lady that yells “get a haircut!” to all young men.  Excuse me while I pull up my double-knit slacks and microwave myself a potato for dinner…

**You know, in the way you do when fictional characters disappoint you.

The Fringe Report 2

IMG_5709Reprise.  Because there’s more.  I don’t know how many posts it will take to get all the feelings and thoughts OUT that Fringe has raised in me.  I guess I’ll find out in real time.

So here is The Fringe Report 2, just as full of spoilers as the first one:

  • I loved Gene the cow in spite of how unrealistic such a situation would be.  This is where fantasy takes advantage of not having to be reality.  Gene offers valuable comic relief just by being a milking cow living in a science lab.
  • I think the show handled the age old question of the consequences of science well by not becoming tediously moralistic.  The story illustrates that there is no concrete division between science being used for “good” and science being used for “evil”.  That it is often a question of personal perspectives.  What science can do to help one person can devastate another.  There is so much grey area in science that shows often gloss over.  They could easily have made the old Walter truly evil and the repentant Walter truly good.  Instead they made him hopelessly human in that he traverses through so much moral grey area and he doesn’t make perfect repentant choices.  The thing I appreciate the most is that the new Walter never loses that devilish side that wants to DO THE EXPERIMENT!! because that’s what he loves most – discovering things, investigating them, breaking them down, and putting them back together.  He gets swept up in his excitement all the time and has to be reminded that the person he’s helping might not enjoy his glee that they are giving him an opportunity to cut into them.
  • I loved seeing Peter transform from bitter con-man drifter to finding his tribe and forgiving what he thought was unforgivable.  I loved seeing him fall for Olivia because he did it so quietly and respectfully.  You could see it unfolding even though the writing and the acting was subtle enough that it was obviously not a major theme.  It made it feel more genuine.  But Joshua Jackson really took it home transforming Peter’s sarcasm and bitterness into something sweet and genuine.
  • I loved seeing Olivia slowly work on forgiving Walter as their past together was revealed and Olivia grappled with her anger and Walter grappled with his guilt.  I loved watching her go from an impenetrable broken person to a whole woman who has found her tribe and family at the same time Peter does.  I love seeing her realize the weakness of being invulnerable and overcoming it to let others in.
  • I loved the theme of family and belonging in Fringe – that family doesn’t have to mean the traditional blood ties most people mean by family.  That you can find family with anyone with whom you share daily communion, converse, affection, and acceptance.  Sometimes the found family can be more profound and solid than the one you’re born to.  The concept of family can embrace both blood and adoption.
  • Walter.  I just fucking love Walter.
  • I want to be Olivia but I am Astrid.  It’s not about thinking less of Astrid, because I adore her.  It’s just that so many of us pragmatic caretakers want to be heroines and be heroic and brave and shoot straight and run far.  But the goddamn dishes still have to be done and it’s people like me who do the dishes in stories.
  • But this does remind me of the scene at the end of season 4 where Astrid suddenly breaks out with the moves and kicks her attackers and is just so fucking awesome – right before she was shot.  I almost screamed out loud to cheer her on but remembered the other people I live with who weren’t watching with me.  I always knew Astrid had it in her to break out the fierce moves.
  • And when I took Kung Fu I discovered that I do too.
  • Us practical pragmatic types can sometimes break out and surprise those who are used to us holding them together with things like soup, clean laundry, and knowing just how to comfort others that no one else seems able to decipher.  We’ve got a long-burning light, even if it isn’t super brilliant.
  • I wonder at people giving the attributes of complete power of creation to a being they don’t think of as human, a deity, and it’s okay for that deity to arbitrarily create rules for living and exert punishments and rewards and to create whatever twisted creatures and nightmares it wants but the thought of humans being able to do the same is so abhorrent.  So evil.  Humans aren’t supposed to “play God” over others because this is the sole privilege of a being we can’t see, can’t hear, and who’s existence can never be verified, whose rule is absolute but also contradictory and defective and doesn’t grow as human kind grows – this is okay in an invisible force.  Yet so many believers in God are perfectly willing to let humans “play God” if it promises to give them children that they weren’t otherwise able to have or to extend their life years beyond terminal disease.  Humans have such a difficult relationship between God and science.
  • I think Fringe illustrates this uneasiness about who’s allowed to make decisions for mankind very well.  It’s a fraught question.  Can science and God coexist?  Where does God end and science begin, and are they even linear companions?  Are they ultimately the same?  If science lets us make babies when our bodies “naturally” aren’t able – is there no god in that gift of science?  If we can do it, doesn’t God make if possible for us to do it?
  • People need each other.  That’s a theme I always love because I happen to believe that none of us can make a go of this life alone.  How many people does it take for us to reach adulthood?  Not just our parents, and maybe not even our parents, but teachers, friends who keep us from killing ourselves, employers who give us a chance not everyone sees we deserve, loans to skate over financial cliffs, long nights draped over sympathetic shoulders when life is untenable, the people who feed us when we have no food, people who encourage and inspire us.  People who nurture our dreams or even people who try to crush them and become catalysts for action and determination and the perseverance required to succeed?  No one gets through life alone.  No one.

No one.

  • Your tribe may be tiny or it may be substantial but those with no tribe at all tend to drift off into the ether with spirit untethered and unseen.  Those who feel no tribe at all, who feel completely alone in the world are the most vulnerable to self destruction.  Sometimes those who feel alone don’t have to be alone but may lack the courage to claim importance to other human beings.  That feeling of being alone in the world, whether based on reality or on perception, is a powerful killer.
  • I think one of the best moments in the whole Fringe series is in the second to last episode (I think) where Walter is full of love for Peter, remembering things he didn’t previously remember that have made him find himself again.  He tells Peter about the best moments in his life and one of them was when Peter slipped and called him “dad”.  He tells Peter he’s his favorite thing in the world and Peter is crying and there’s so much water under the bridge and it isn’t about forgetting the wrongs of the past or about forgiveness, it’s just about love.  Pure love.  It’s so easy to ruin parent/child relationship scenes with a bunch of saccharine bullshit, a bunch of manipulative heart-string yanking, but this scene in Fringe was done so well I felt all the complications of their relationship and experiences and understood the absolution that wasn’t about warm and fuzzy forgiveness and redemption.  It was two people who have found their way to love in spite of ridiculous difficulties.  They’ll never be perfect, either of them.  Love didn’t fix their world, but it made it a hell of a better shit-hole to live in and made it worth protecting.
  • But here’s a question I have, relating not at all to the previous paragraphs: why the hell do neither of the Olivias or Peter seem to be aware of the existence of birth control?  Both Fauxlivia and Olivia seem stupidly surprised that they find themselves pregnant after sleeping with Peter a bunch of times, apparently without protection.  Seriously?  Don’t bother being tempted to tell me both of them were using birth control that failed.  You could argue that for one or the other but not both.
  •  One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is in season 5, when Walter goes outside and sees the cds strung across an empty tin drum like confetti and pulls down the one whole one and puts it in the player in the abandoned car nearby and listens to “Only You” by Yaz.  It’s such a hopeful scene and I relate because I feel the same way about music that Walter does.  It ignites the imagination and is necessary.  It breathes life into us when we’re nearly dead.
  • In spite of not being a romantic person in real life there must be some part of me that is because I never find genuine love between people boring.

I feel slayed by this series.

My Frustration with Fringe and Under-explored Female Archetypes

meat and buildings sf

Work on the second book is going slowly and not that well.  I’m on chapter three.  So far I can tell that the biggest problem is way too much dialog.  Like I’m making my characters say EVERYTHING they could possibly say all RIGHT NOW.  Which is funny considering how Cricket and Grey aren’t exactly chatterboxes.  I know the general direction I’m taking book two but I haven’t mapped it out chapter by chapter.  I’m still struggling to find the main – the large – story arc that goes from book one to book two.  I have all these things I know the characters are going to go through and I know that ultimately the largest story arc is the transformation of Cricket from living her life passively as a member in a safe family unit to living it on her own terms.  Growing up and finding a new sense of family and belonging.  But the vehicle that will drive that transformation – I know it’s there already but it’s shadowy like I’m under water and seeing it move across the cloudy rippling surface of a lake.

Meanwhile – you can now purchase my book from Amazon in both trade paper and hardback editions.  I think if you want to buy it as a gift for someone else it won’t get to you in time.  They say 2-4 weeks to ship to you.  That’s because it’s print on demand.  So if you were thinking of buying any trade paper copies for friends or family as Christmas gifts you’ll be able to buy them from me – probably by the end of the week.  I’ve ordered 20 copies to sell from this site and from my Etsy shop.  I will announce when they get here.  But if you want to buy copies for yourself you can do that now!  Click on the image below and it will take you to the trade paperback listing:

It’s been pretty cold here and I’ve been loving it.  21 degrees last night.  We don’t get snow here but at least we’re getting some wintery temps.  More than I can say for last winter.

Max just turned 13 years old and suddenly is losing all his baby teeth.  I didn’t realize how many of them he had left.  I think most kids lose them all before becoming teens.  He’s lost 4 teeth in less than two weeks.  It kind of freaks me out.  Partly because he has been aggressive about yanking them out of his own mouth (or making his dad do it) the minute they’re loose.  I’m scared he’ll start pulling out his adult teeth.

I’m watching Fringe right now.  I’ve been binge watching it for a week and have just started season 3.  I notice something about myself that is very inconvenient much of the time.  I can’t take too much suspense once I’m super invested in television characters.  Usually when there are partners with sexual tension I get extremely annoyed with it after one or two seasons.  I find it tedious to see couples constantly ALMOST get together and then fuck it all up with stupid decisions.  It seems that, in spite of being very unromantic in real life, in fiction I always want couples to get together and stay together.

*Spoiler alert for anyone just starting to watch Fringe*

So by the end of season 1 of Fringe I really wanted Olivia and Peter to end up together.  The hints that they liked each other were plenty but I had to know if they would ever get together so I looked up spoilers.  I discovered that at the end of season 2 they kiss.  So that was reassuring enough to get me to the end of season 2.  Which I stayed up until 2:30 am watching last night.  Only to discover that just minutes after Olivia and Peter kiss the first time she is replaced by Fauxlivia.  SO FUCKING STRESSFUL.  I can’t stand it.  So I woke up late this morning and what do I have to do?  Watch the first couple of episodes of season 3 but I’m totally stressed out now because Fauxlivia is hanging out with Peter and he can’t tell the difference because apparently he’s dumb as a hammer all of a sudden.  Meanwhile, Olivia is having very bad adventures in the alternate universe.

I couldn’t stand the suspense so I read spoilers for the entire series up to the very last episode and now I don’t think I can continue to watch this show because the writers constantly put Olivia and Peter in turmoil with each other as well as in every other conceivable way.  What bothers me the most is that Peter has sex with Fauxlivia and later it turns out she gets pregnant with his baby.

Of course she does.

And then she tries to lure him back to the alternate universe where she is and where he really is from too and I’m so irritated with this twist I am still bumming right now as I write this.  Why?  Because once a fictional couple gets together and you’ve already bought the subtext that they really are supposed to be together, I can’t stand to see them constantly betraying each other.  Yeah, even if I’m supposed to understand that they don’t know they’re betraying the other person themselves.  Or even if there are REASONS.

*Yeah, I’m a fictional WIMP*

So here’s a little spoiler for the tiny group of Cricket and Grey fans: Cricket will never have sex with anyone but Grey.  Grey will never have sex with anyone but Cricket.  Furthermore, they will not betray each other in any shockingly big way.  Maybe they’ll fight.  Maybe they’ll be unwillingly separated.  But most of the conflict in my series is outside of them.  They’re partners.  They face adversity together.  That’s the model I like.

But I realize, in having many discussions about shows with friends, that while I love it when partners finally become real partners and have a relationship, many of my friends get bored once a couple has become a couple.  I think most people just want the sexual tension to keep going and going with no real reward.  Or they want to see the couple get torn apart and tortured so that they are never actually happy with each other or done not-really-being-together.  I hate that.  I hate it.  I almost gave up on Bones because it got so fucking tedious – the obvious attraction between them.  The obviousness that they were great as a couple.  And then the constant pushing each other away.  I only came back to it when they got over themselves and finally got together and I’ve been loving the show again ever since.  There’s some strife, they have their difficulties, but they are going through it TOGETHER.  The exact same thing with Castle.  I just about gave up on the whole push-me-pull-me sexual tension never being resolved bullshit.  Since they’ve become a real couple I’ve enjoyed the show again.  And since that happened many of my friends are finding it boring.  Just as many of them are bored of Bones now.

The model of story I love best is when people find their friendships or their romantic partnerships (my favorite) and once they do they have adventures and go through fire and brimstone TOGETHER.  I like the model that people accomplish more and better things when they’re paired up against adversity.  The world is a very lonely and hostile place for people without close friendships and who don’t experience partnership as a couple – the kind where you feel safe enough to explore and do great things or maybe fail a lot before you do anything great and to know someone is there who will hold you up.  And to be a person who will hold a partner up when they need it.  The world needs more of that.

I realize that I put my main characters through hell in book one.  Really, I let a lot of horrible things happen to them.  The one blessing is the friendship that comes from it.  And then what comes out of the friendship.  It’s largely about how Cricket doesn’t think she needs anyone and discovers she really does and – has to figure out how to navigate her life in different partnerships.

So.  Will I finish watching Fringe?  I don’t know.  I know it all resolves in the end.  Peter and Olivia manage to work things out, it seems.  But in order to see them actually come together for real and in real partnership I have to wade through three seasons of them constantly being torn apart and unable to trust each other and betraying each other in one way or another?  I don’t think I can enjoy seeing all that.  The other characters are totally interesting and the concept of parallel universes being played out is interesting but I think I will just be too fucking annoyed with the crap going on between Fauxlivia, Olivia, and Peter to enjoy the journey.  I think the whole show pretty much ended for me the moment Peter and Olivia finally kissed – but before Fauxlivia returns to the prime universe to fuck everything up.

I’m having the same problem with Warehouse 13 now.  I have come to a point where I actually think that Myka and Pete (ha!  another Peter!) should become a couple.  I guess I should see if the show has been cancelled and read all the spoilers for that one too.

At least I still have Castle and Bones.  Though since most people like to see couples get torn apart and dislike couples to ever have any peace or happiness, my guess is that those shows are destined to be cancelled soon.

Stories and character types I will never write about either because it’s already been told five billion times or because it annoys me or because it’s not a story or character I’m capable of or interested in writing about:

  • Stories about women who want children
  • Stories about women who want children and can’t have them
  • Stories about women who have children
  • Stories that string you along with suspense and devastation that never pay off in a happy (or at least hopeful) ending
  • Stories about women characters who wear strappy stilettos while chasing villains down
  • Stories with women who are martyrs
  • Stories about men who only like women with long hair and big boobs
  • Stories about men who want children
  • Stories where the main characters don’t evolve
  • Stories about femme fatales (I find that female archetype much more annoying than the martyr)
  • Main characters who cheat on partners or spouses

It will be interesting to see if I end up proving myself wrong with any of these.  One thing I know down in my bones is the first three will never change.  The women/children story and all it’s variations have been told five billion times and I find it boring.  I am only interested in exploring female main characters who have no interest in having children because I relate to it so much and I feel that it is a ridiculously underexplored female archetype.  In fact, the archetype doesn’t really exist at all yet.  You really only encounter childless women in stories where they are shown as having chosen a career over children because they are driven in a seemingly man-like fashion which suggests that real women will always at least long for children even if they choose not to have them.  You rarely see women in literature who never desire having children in the first place, women who have defined themselves not on what their reproductive organs are capable of but on what they’re capable of as a whole person, which for them doesn’t include children.   Women characters who are womanly in every way except for not wanting to procreate.  It’s time we make new archetypal women characters to include those of us alienated by all the old ones.

 

Hair Complaints

I’ve been watching a new show called “Body of Proof” starring Dana Delany.  First of all, I don’t like the main character.  Too smug.  I should like her because she’s as arrogant as Dr. House.  But I don’t because she isn’t the least bit funny or charming so the arrogance and the smugness just stands out there on its own.  She’s a medical examiner whose partner* is a police officer who doesn’t seem to have any particular use.  They work with other police officers who actually look for clues and do police stuff.

I’m not sure I like this show.  I keep watching it, maybe to see if it picks up?  Okay, I’ll admit that what I’m really waiting for is to see the character Ethan get his hair cut.  There is no excuse for such moppy hair.  He’s not a bad looking guy but I CANNOT get over the hair.  Once his hair is cut I will be able to sleep again.

Speaking of hair, Beckett** (on Castle) needs a haircut too.  The last episode (which was ages ago, those lazy actors take A LOT of breaks) featured Beckett with her long-ish locks pulled into the frumpiest hairdo ever.  (I admit a bowl cut would be worse which would be tied with a mullet.)  I have not been enjoying her hair for a while now.  When the series started out it was really cute.  Really pretty.  Now I itch to stick my hand in the screen and chop it.

I thought I missed the Royal Wedding.  I thought it was last night.  I was up (not by design) off and on all night long.  One of the many times I woke up was when it should have been happening.  I thought “I could just get the hell up and watch the damn wedding” but decided against it.  My friend Aimee just informed me that I would have been disappointed because it isn’t until tomorrow (wee hours).

I call that today, very late.  I perceive a day to really begin when I wake up at a reasonable 7am and a new day doesn’t begin until the next reasonable morning hour.  To have the new day start when it’s time for sleep is ridiculous to me.  So when Aimee says the wedding is tomorrow I am assuming that in Angelina-speak that means it’s really tonight, very very late, almost morning.  You see how having my own perception of things can lead to misunderstandings, mishaps, and missed doomed weddings?

I must now make some effort to begin work.

But all the while I’m thinking of all the nettles that aren’t being picked while I sit here at home, working.

I have become nettle obsessed.

I like to think that all across the country similarly nettle obsessed people are keeping the desperate*** tradition alive.

Cheers to nettles!

*Though I am very impressed with the actor’s American accent.  He’s not American.

**I know, everyone likes long haired women, because they think it’s sexier.  I think they’re trying to sex Beckett up.  In Stana Katic’s bio pictures her long hair is made to look all sexy but I still maintain that she is better looking with shorter hair.

***”desperate” because back before refrigeration and grocery stores spring was a lean and mean time, nutritionally, and nettles were a great way to stave off hunger and also nourish a body grown poor from a winter of dried fish and salt pork.