Mmm...New TV

I am unreasonably obsessed with television, and the beginning of the new TV season in September may be my favorite part of every year. Although I don't have a television right now, the advent of online TV means that I can catch more shows that I ever previously dreamed possible. The weeding-out process begins immediately as I begin to cement my watching schedule. Some first impressions and snap judgements:

- I have to face it, I'm just not that into Prison Break. It's a fairly entertaining show, I suppose, but the whole storyline of Michael returning to prison forced me to face the fact that I actually don't care about what happens to him. (Caring is crucial to me. Once I become even slightly invested in a show, I have to follow it through despite terrible writing or acting. My inability to tear my eyes away from utter trainwrecks has lead me to watch every episode of Studio 60, October Road and The Best Years, of none of which I am proud.) I'm not too broken up about leaving Prison Break, as it frees up some of my Monday for...

- NBC. I think NBC may be on some kind of roll with quality shows. Their lineup of new shows for the fall isn't entirely mind-blowing, but it is pretty solid. (NBC's online player has gotten much better, also, which works in their favor. One of the most frustrating things early last year was trying to get into Friday Night Lights with NBC's patchy player.) Chuck seems cute and strikes a pretty good balance of espionage and humor - kind of like what Alias might have been had it been a show about Marshall. I wasn't really planning on watching Journeyman or Life, but procrastination and online availability won out and both outperformed my somewhat low pre-season expectations. I don't think I'll become particularly attached to either, but they seem pleasant enough for the time being - no egregiously bad writing or acting. Bionic Woman was a bit meh - some critics I've read seem to think that Michelle Ryan doesn't have enough fire, and I think that's true. I'll stick with it, at least for a little while, as a Battlestar Galactica fan who loves Katee Sackhoff's sassy way of delivering cheesy lines.

- I'm excited about my Wednesday nights, as I think that I may now have some kind of "trashy rich people being awesome" block going. As an unabashed lover of primetime soaps, (I own DVDs of Dynasty, Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place) I had high hopes that Gossip Girl and Dirty Sexy Money would honor the memory of the late, great Aaron Spelling. I was not disappointed. Gossip Girl makes me truly happy in a way that only a really sharp, well-executed book-to-screen representation can. Dirty Sexy Money seems to have a great cast, and I wanted to watch the pilot again right after it ended. Hopefully, both do well enough ratings-wise to stick around and make my Wednesdays awesome.

- The rest of ABC's new dramas leave something to be desired. Private Practice is one big meh. I don't think that the substitution of Audra McDonald for Merrin Dungey was a good thing, and the sing-song dialogue of Shonda Rhimes is really starting to get on my nerves. No matter how many times I try to wrap my head around it, I just can't understand how we got from the stellar Season 2 ender for Grey's Anatomy to uncalled-for character assassination on that show and this lukewarm spinoff. Their other new drama (besides Pushing Daisies, which premieres next week) is Big Shots, which has a premise that doesn't give viewers much to sympathize with, character wise, and has some really terrible dialogue. I went back and forth with myself about whether my love of Michael Vartan (from Alias) extended far enough to include Big Shots. I don't believe that it does. However, I'm not quite ready to give up on it for a few reasons. One, I'm intrigued by Nia Long's character (actually, I wish that there was a show about a character like that instead of this one. The travails of a black female executive seem like they would be much deeper than the superficial problems that are the focus of the show.) Two, Rob Thomas from Veronica Mars is allegedly coming in to revamp scripts and make the show better, which gives me hope that it might one day suck much, much less.

Ahhh, the new fall season. I already can't wait for November sweeps.

"I saw eternity the other night / like a great ring of pure and endless light"

I had been thinking for a while about writing something about Owen Wilson and the feeling of nearly losing a creative voice that I love when I heard that Madeleine L'Engle had passed away. Her faith, which came through so strongly in her writing, gives me faith that her soul is somewhere that, if not better, is at least different from here. I couldn't help but shed a few tears though, to know that she has gone and taken her characters and worlds with her. The stories of Meg Murry, Polly O'Keefe and Vicky Austin have all been told, there will be no more.

Like most children, my introduction to L'Engle was through A Wrinkle in Time, which I must have read for the first time sometime in elementary school. I recall reading the Wrinkle quintet and enjoying them, but it wasn't until high school that I started to compulsively collect and read more of her adult books. As a reader, I could tell that she cared deeply about her characters and that their lives didn't stop with the books. My two favorite books of hers, A Severed Wasp and A Live Coal in the Sea, each pick up the story of one of her young heroines, decades after their first appearances. She created complex, intelligent women who were wives and mothers as well as Nobel laureates and world-renowned concert pianists. She raised issues of religion and faith without proselytizing. She wove her stories together, taking characters from one novel to the next and always making their appearance natural. I can't say enough about what her books have meant to me.

Rest in peace, Ms. L'Engle