Books Read: January 2010

Let's try this again!

January 2: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I can't believe it's taken me this long to read Jane Eyre - it's been sitting on the bookshelf taunting me for years and this winter break afforded me the time and inclination to give it a go. However many years ago it was that the movie Becoming Jane came out, a New York Times article observed that Austen fans and Bronte fans are different, because Austen situations that could plausibly happen to you with minor time period adjustments and Bronte situations are so off-the-wall insane that they would never happen to anyone. This is all true, and while it won't replace Pride and Prejudice in my estimation, I still enjoyed Jane Eyre's drama. After reading the Twilight series, I had forgotten what it was like to enjoy a narrator's presence.

January 14: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

I first picked this book up after seeing its movie adaptation over the summer, but lapsed in reading when the school year began. I was compelled to return to the book after reading some of the press surrounding Powell's second book, Cleaving, particularly Powell's own posts on the DoubleX blog. (Slate being one of the few things I feel legit about reading while I'm at work.) I was intrigued in particular by Powell addressing a statement Amy Adams made regarding Cleaving's account of infidelity; namely that Adams had reacted by saying that "her" Julie Powell wouldn't have cheated on her husband. The differences between books and film adaptations are always interesting to parse; in this case, Powell's personality was dramatically flattened in the transition from "real life" to the screen. Film Julie seems to have a lot more in common with the other wide-eyed characters Adams has played in the years since Junebug that she does with the endearingly sarcastic woman who comes through in the written Julie and Julia. As someone who's recently tried to embrace cooking and baking with a small kitchen and a middling electric stove of wavering temperature, I couldn't help but identify with the ups and downs of Powell's quest. I can understand why Nora Ephron focused more on the vibrant personality and well-known persona of Julia Child in the film, but it would have been nice to see more of, say, Powell's love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or her hilariously expressed crush on David Strathairn.

Quoted

"Undoubtedly, though, what I'm really getting at is this: Since the bridegroom's permanent retirement from the scene, I haven't been able to think of anybody whom I'd care to send out to look for horses in his stead."

-J.D. Salinger

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters

When I got home from work and saw that Salinger died, the above quote popped into my head; it's always stuck with me as a simple invocation of the fundamental irreplaceability of a singular human presence in one's life. Maybe I'll say more later, for now I'll just leave it there.

Legal TV

Don't watch this clip if you ever want to watch Damages unspoiled, but this is one of the best "previously on..." segments I've ever seen.

In just two minutes, this collection of snippets from the past two seasons which opened last night's season premiere managed to evoke all the show's complexity and darkness. The segment's closing reel of the show's major character deaths to date served as the perfect climax - I hope Lost does something similar in opening their season next week, especially if the timeline does reset.

I've been thinking about Damages recently not only because of the new season starting, but also in relation to the premiere of The Deep End last week. Deep End gets compared to Grey's Anatomy frequently, but it shares a lot with Damages in claiming to depict a sort of high-flying, moneyed legal world. The difference is that The Deep End seems to function in a black-and-white universe - money grubbing sharks BAD! pro bono work GOOD! (I mean, obviously pro bono work is good, but pretending that a big fancy law firm wouldn't love the good press that can come out of devoting some hours to philanthropy is just dumb) - while Damages has carved a unique niche within the often rote law-firm-set television subgenre by taking a shark character and making her the champion of the "little guy" in representing class-action plaintiffs. The writers of Damages have created a wonderfully nuanced show by residing solely in grey areas, and the people who make The Deep End could learn a thing or two from them going forward.

Mood Music XXV

Velvet Goldmine is one of those movies where I always forget how much I like it until I'm watching it again. No director has quite the same flair for era-evocation as Todd Haynes. So, recently I caught this on TV and decided that I needed to stop dithering and just buy the soundtrack. And now I kind of can't stop listening to it...

Best of the 00s: Hiatus

Okay, so clearly I should have just started the whole "Best of the 00s" thing in the summer when I started making my lists rather than waiting until November and accruing this insane backlog of posts while simultaneously facing the end-of-semester writing crush. Long story short, I need to focus my writing energies on my thesis no matter how much I'd rather be committing hundreds of words to pop culture minutiae. Posting the Showrunner list without commentary was so personally unsatisfactory that I'll probably just add here and there to the lists I've got and post them whenever they're done. (The fact that I'd rather write so much about television than, say, myths of national origin highlights the fundamental flaw of my thesis. I'm planning to do something about that in looking ahead to comps.) So here are the "Best of the 00s" lists in the pipeline:

Best Romantic Chemistry

Best Season Finales

Best Series Finales

My Favorite Albums

My Favorite Movies

Favorite Actors and Actresses

I'm torn about whether or not to do master lists of Best Comedies and Dramas from television - you can probably guess what they are just from level of recurrence across all the various posts. I'd also like to return in the future to some ongoing themes from the past - I never did finish my favorite book-to-movie adaptations (there are two more posts there) and I'd really like to pick up the Musicalfest thread again (the recent uptick in Gerard Butler's popularity prompted me to recently rewatch The Phantom of the Opera - what a deeply weird story that is). Anyway, it'll probably just be miscellaneous brief posts until I metaphorically wrestle my thesis to the ground. Believe me, I'd rather be doing this.

Mood Music XXIV

The Dear John trailer/commercials so thoroughly wedged this song in my head that last night I finally reached the saturation point where I go "WHAT IS THIS SONG? WHO SINGS IT? I MUST OWN IT NOW." (This happens frequently with me, and is just one of the many reasons I am an ideal media consumer.)

Best of the 00s: One Season Wonders and Other Short-Lived Shows

Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999-2000)

Looking back at the decade, I see Freaks and Geeks as a formative show in my media consumer evolution. It was the first show that I loved that wasn't watched by very many people, and the first I watched that was cancelled mid-season. I was a thirteen-year-old eighth grader and I couldn't believe that no one around me was embracing this show I found so amazing. Its cancellation was also the first time that I really thought about the relationship between networks and viewers - I briefly considered boycotting NBC, but realized that the absence of one Nielsen-box-free tween wasn't going to make a bit of difference. Finally, the complete series was also the first DVD box set I bought on my own. I *may* have raised the box over my head and done a celebratory dance in the store - maybe.

Undeclared (Fox, 2001-2002)

Undeclared has never quite received as much press as Freaks and Geeks within the Judd Apatow pantheon, but it deserves to be recognized for a take on college life that was funny and authentic. Jay Baruchel's gangly geekiness may never be better served.

Wonderfalls (Fox, 2004)

One of Bryan Fuller's imaginative spotlights in the decade's TV landscape, Wonderfalls is distinguished by a delightfully cynical heroine - twenty-something slacker Jaye remains rare among young women as depicted on television - and a uniquely quirky concept - Jaye hears what may or may not be the voice of God advising her through inanimate objects.

Reunion (Fox, 2005-2006)

As much flak as Fox gets for quickly canceling underperforming shows, they probably showed the most willingness to give oddball shows a chance of any of the networks over the past decade. Case in point - Reunion. The show was probably too overstuffed, concept-wise, featuring a murder mystery revolving around six high school friends with each episode taking place in a different year beginning in the mid-eighties. In the early episodes, at least, it was just clever enough to be innovative, drawing out the present-day character introductions to gradually sculpt the mystery and featuring some fantastically soapy twists. As cheesy as it could sometimes be, it deserved a full season.

The Black Donnellys (NBC, 2007)

The Black Donnellys may have been better in theory than in execution - the show's mythologizing of the early years of four brothers who it was implied would become well-known criminals always made the show's future seem more interesting than its present. It wasn't helped by the fact that shows on cable had the freedom to display the kind of violence necessary to driving home to consequences of living in a criminal world. Still, it was probably the best that could be done with a modern gangster show on a major network.

Swingtown (CBS, 2008)

When critics talk about Swingtown, they often remark that the show might have been better served had it been picked up by a cable network rather than notoriously stodgy CBS. To me this implies that the show's problem was insufficient salaciousness, but it was always more about the emotional fallout of testing a marriage's sexual boundaries than the act itself. It was pretty much doomed from the start - airing on Friday nights during the summer (remember when there used to be original programming on Saturday nights? That feels like another age entirely) - but the show's central six actors - Jack Davenport, Molly Parker, Josh Hopkins, Miriam Shor, Grant Show, and Lana Parilla - made the material vibrantly heartfelt.

Kings (NBC, 2009)

To return to the previous point, it's easy to see how Kings might have been served by being a cable property rather than a network one, particularly with NBC's fraught relationship with scripted dramas over the past few years. Kings displayed the kind of ambition that is rarely seen in any new shows, modernizing the Biblical story of Saul and David and mixing in grandiose Shakespearean overtones, featuring riveting performances by Ian McShane and Sebastian Stan. All the episodes are on Hulu - I highly recommend it.

Joan of Arcadia (CBS, 2003-2005)

Recently (I want to say New Years Eve or Day) I got sucked into watching a mini-marathon of Joan of Arcadia on SyFy with my sister and mother. I'd forgotten what a warm show JoA was; the "God speaks to teen girl" premise could have been much cheesier than it was - instead it exemplified the best of what "family" television can be. Plus, any show where you can nickname a recurring character "Hot God" definitely merits inclusion on a best-of list.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC, 2007-2009)

I don't talk about it very often, but I love soaps. The unabashed embrace of melodrama and sense of freedom from conventional narratives often creates thrillingly outlandish TV. In its first season, DSM embraced the ethos of classic primetime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, particularly aided by great family chemistry among the actors playing the self-absorbed, moneyed Darlings. The show tried to do too much in its post-writers-strike second season, but there was a brief moment when it seemed like it could start a true 80s revival.

Pushing Daisies (ABC, 2007-2009)

Pushing Daisies presented such a vibrant visual world, any attempt at verbal description feels automatically insufficient. Like Bryan Fuller's other shows, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, Daisies was so unique that it was almost shocking that it ever made it to air. The show's murder mystery structure kept its bright, inventive universe from veering too far into twee-ness and the central quartet of Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride were uniformly excellent.

Life (NBC, 2007-2009)

With better ratings, Life should have made Damian Lewis the next Hugh Laurie - that is, a Brit playing a quirky American in a semi-procedural show. I can't say I quite recall how Life's twisty conspiracy ultimately ended, but it offered just enough of a twist on the average cop show to be engaging.

Dollhouse (Fox, 2009-2010)

Sure, Dollhouse hasn't quite ended yet, but it still qualifies with only two thirteen-episode seasons. Dollhouse was a slow starter - Fox executive interference is credited for emphasizing procedural repetition in the early episodes. As the first season came to an end, particularly in the DVD-only finale "Epitaph One," the writers began to explore the darker implications of the show's central identity-wiping technology and made it one of televisions most uniquely compelling hours.

Best of the 00s: Favorite Episodes

Alias, "Phase One," 1/26/03

It's always interesting to see how the networks use the post-Super Bowl slot. Some launch new shows, others feature guest-star-packed episodes of already popular shows. Another tactic is to use the slot to try to juice the ratings of a good show that may not be getting the attention it deserves. At the beginning of 2003 Alias was in the middle of its second season, critically beloved but with middling ratings. Blessed by ABC with the post-Super Bowl opportunity, J.J. Abrams and company pulled out a "Go Big or Go Home" episode that functioned as a rare mid-season gamechanger in exploding the show's structure. The elimination of SD-6 and its partners, which erased Sydney's status as a double agent and freed her to finally make out with Vaughn, was an unquestionably bold move for the show and one that paid off, at least until the season-ending time jump. The episode-ending shot of Francie shot through the head by her double remains, for me, one of the most haunting images of the decade in TV.

Arrested Development, "Motherboy XXX," 3/13/05

One of the things that made AD great was the show's offbeat universe. Motherboy is one of the more fantastically weird creations, building on Lucille and Buster's codependent relationship by introducing a creepy mother-son costumed dance. The building insanity that ensues when Lucille decides to kidnap George Michael rather than deal with Buster's recent hand loss features some of the show's funniest situations and images - my personal favorite is Jessica Walter and Michael Cera in costume as Sonny and Cher. What's more, the episode also features the excellent meta reference of having Henry Winkler jump over a shark, which the writers must have found too irresistible to exclude.

Veronica Mars, "A Trip to the Dentist," 5/3/05

I've already written about how much I love this episode, so those points don't really need to be reiterated. Tightly written, evocative of the insularity of high school, fully rooted in the show's universe, features Teddy Dunn's best scenes as Duncan, brilliantly sets up the following season finale. What more could you ask for?

The Office, "The Dundies," 9/20/05

As the show's second-season premiere, "The Dundies" was a big show for The Office. The show's writers needed to prove that they could move out from the shadow of the British original and be more dynamic than the slow-starter first season. The Mindy Kaling-penned episode does all that and more, working to more clearly establish the Dunder Mifflin staff outside of the main credits group and making Michael Scott a noticeably softer character than David Brent.

How I Met Your Mother, "Slap Bet," 11/20/06

HIMYM is a show with writers who love continuity - that is, continued references to people, places and things contained within the show's universe. One of the best things about "Slap Bet" is that the first time you watch it, if you're unspoiled, the ending is impossible to predict. Robin's cagey refusal to go to the mall leads to the rest of the group speculating on her rationale, leading to the infamous titular bet between Barney and Marshall. The ultimate revelation of Robin's past as a Canadian pop star (with hit single "Let's Go to the Mall") makes the episode great. The launching of the running joke of the slap bet, with Marshall ultimately winning the opportunity to slap Barney five times from now until he dies, makes the episode classic.

Battlestar Galactica, "Unfinished Business," 12/1/06

Any show that utilizes a significant jump in time - say, a year or more - ultimately faces the dilemma of how to deal with the lost time afterward. Too much exposition renders the jump essentially pointless, while too little can leave viewers with a surplus of unanswered questions. "Unfinished Business" found the perfect level of revelation - focusing on one hopeful day early in the New Caprica settlement emphasizes the origins of the descent into misery that defined BSG's third season, while still leaving much to the imagination in the time jump. The framing device of military-rank-independent boxing serves the flashbacks so well that it doesn't feel as abruptly introduced as it could have been and allows for great little character moments from Tigh, Cottle and especially Roslin. Truthfully, it's also probably the last time Lee and Kara's relationship (see clip below) didn't seem like it was based on creating needless drama out of thin air.

30 Rock, "Hardball," 2/22/07

30 Rock's stellar first season is full of gems, but this has always been my favorite. One of 30 Rock's best ongoing devices is bringing in real NBC personalities to give the show's universe a semi-fictional air (the best, in my opinion, have been Lester Holt announcing that the Black Crusaders are after Tracy, and any time Brian Williams is on.) This episode's use of Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson, as Jenna appears on Hardball to apologize for an unintended slight against America's troops, results in some of Jane Krakowski's best work as Jenna. The subplots of "Jack loves negotiating" (which culminates in the clip below) and "Kenneth joins Tracy's entourage" (featuring what I believe is the first appearance of "I love x so much I want to take it behind the middle school and get it pregnant." - the first "x" is cornbread, and Jack McBrayer's quiet "Pregnant cornbread...?" is an unbelievably great line reading) make this an example of 30 Rock firing on all cylinders.

Friday Night Lights, "Mud Bowl," 3/28/07

FNL's first season march to the state championship provided a lot of great moments, but "Mud Bowl" was the best. A train accident leads to a chemical spill that disrupts the Panthers' home field advantage, the coach finds a replacement in a cow pasture (with live cows!) and pouring rain turns the field into a mud pit during the climactic game - all fabulously serving FNL's homegrown/verité aesthetic. The show has always used filming in Texas to its advantage, but this is the episode where the show really dug into its non-Hollywood, non-soundstage location and brought up a gem.