Mood Music LII

There's something so great about the way Debbie Harry delivers that "oh" after "I should have known/you'd look at me, then look away." Like, who hasn't felt that way sometime or another?

Week in TV: January 16-22

Big Love

I don't think there's been another television protagonist I've wanted to punch in the face as much as Bill Henrickson. Not Don Draper. Not Sookie Stackhouse. There's something about Bill's smug obliviousness in the face of the sheer misery he inflicts on others nearly everywhere he goes that makes me wish I could physically reach into the television and smack him. And like many of the episodes in the fourth season, this premiere didn't offer enough of a balance of other characters and plots to make him slightly tolerable. I'm trying to be optimistic about the writers bringing it all to a good close this year, but that idiot is testing my patience.

Skins

- I don't think I realized quite how many times I'd watched the original Skins pilot from the UK until I watched MTV's take. Because the mirroring of shots and dialogue was seriously jarring and the lived-in quality that the young British actors brought to their characters was largely absent. I'll keep watching, mainly because I'm interested to see whether the show can forge an identity that's unique, but right now I'm mostly doubtful.

- So, if you're going to completely reshoot your first episode with an entirely new cast, why on earth would you keep what is easily its worst subplot? Not only were the scenes with the drug dealer still tonally inconsistent with the rest of the material, but they completely botched the play on words with his name. Of all the slang they elected to keep in that's distinctly and obviously British, they change that?

Parks and Recreation

I don't really have much specifically to say about this particular episode, just that having Parks and Rec back is like a soothing balm for the soul. And I wish I could have the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness in poster form. Get on it, NBC store!

Also Watched: How I Met Your Mother, Chuck, Greek, Lights Out, The Good Wife, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Off the Map, Top Chef, Community, 30 Rock

Mood Music LI: One Week

From the past week, when I did daily posts on Facebook. Because I'm a nerd.

Sweet Tuesday Morning by Badfinger

Mood Music L

How have I lived for so long without Loaded in my life?

Week in TV: January 2-8

How I Met Your Mother

There were a lot of things to like about this episode - after watching a lot of Angel this past summer, I was thrilled to see Alexis Denisof return as Sandy Rivers - but I ultimately can't get behind the countdown. Using such a distracting gimmick to lead up to such a grave moment felt callous, and made me wonder if the show's writers are no longer sure of how best to utilize the tools at their disposal. Hopefully, the coming weeks will show that they still know how to maintain the balance between broad comedy and emotional authenticity that served the show so well in its early seasons.

Greek

As the series-concluding half-season continues, I imagine that I'll decide whether I think the show is pushing it narratively or not. The premiere made the almost-everyone-stays-at-CRU premise seem a little plausibility-stretching, but they've managed to do a lot within a relatively formulaic structure before, so we'll see.

Grey's Anatomy

- It was not at all surprising, and felt like it might have been ripped from an old ER, but I have to admit that I teared up a bit when they had the big reveal of Christina in the back of the ambulance. The Grey's writers haven't squandered any of the emotional potential of the fallout from last season's finale, and Sandra Oh continues to do some of her best work in the entire series.

- Today in Shallow Observations: It's been like a decade since Felicity, but Scott Foley is still totally cute.

Rewatched

Skins, Third Series

- Both the upcoming fourth series DVD release and the premiere of MTV's American version prompted me to rewatch the third series of Skins for the first time since it aired on BBC America in 2009. I was pleasantly surprised by how much more I liked it this time around - maybe it's the pacing, or that my first viewings of the first two series were fresher. While I still have some narrative quibbles, I was better able to appreciate the work of the young actors and the episodes as individual showcases, and I find now that I'm genuinely curious about the fourth series.

- What narrative quibbles, you say? Namely, this: I can appreciate any show that's willing to do something as dramatic as a season-to-season full cast change. However, the ties that remained between the first and second generations of Skins characters at times served to undercut the narrative arc of the third series. I understand that Nicholas Hoult was off becoming Tom Ford's new favorite person, but to me it seemed completely implausible that the dissolution of the Stonem's marriage and Effy's subsequent down-spiral would all occur with no intervention whatsoever from Tony.

- It seems to me that it's a major failing of American English that we have no pejorative equivalent to "wanker."

- One of the things that's been interesting about the press regarding the MTV remake and what distinguishes Skins from American teen shows is the tendency to classify the characters' actions as consequence-free. And while Skins tends to eschew the kind of immediate cause-and-effect framing of actions and consequences that one sees in a show like, say, 90210, watching any stretch of the show reminds me that a lot of really terrible things happen to any number of the characters. They may party like there's no tomorrow, but one of the great things about the show is that the writers don't harbor any illusions about the characters' actions not being unbelievably self-destructive. The greatest crime in the show's universe is avoiding confrontation with deeper emotional truths about oneself, and that, much more than any tawdriness, is what truly distinguishes Skins from its contemporaries.

Also Watched: Detroit 1-8-7, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Top Chef, Private Practice

Mood Music XLIX

Trailer Thoughts

1) The first time I saw this, I was really excited because I thought that Mindy Kaling was the lead. And then, disappointment. Doesn't it seem like, given the opportunity, she could totally rock a romcom lead?

2) Joining Michael Ealy, Natalie Portman wins the 2010 "Best Performance that was So Unnerving that I Feel Uneasy About Watching the Actor in Other Roles" award. Truly, after seeing Black Swan, my initial gut reaction to this trailer was, "Look out, Ashton! She's crazy!"

Mood Music XLVIII

On Writing and the New Year

Since it's resolution-setting time, I thought I'd lay down some thoughts about what I'd like to do here in the coming year. I'm not big on the New Year's resolution as hard-and-fast goalpost, but more like a guideline for where I'd like to go. So, with all attendant wiggle room and heaps of forgiveness, goals for Accounting for Everything for 2011:

1) More posting: I never want to feel like I'm forcing myself to write posts, but I would like to make more frequent use of this outlet as a place where I can channel all my various pop-culture musings. Looking back over the past couple of years, I'd like to have a more even distribution of posts throughout the year and take advantage of the time I have available to write to fill the gaps of the time I don't. The conservative goal is to have 120 posts on the year, ambitious is to have 150.

2) Completing and continuing series: Nothing sticks in my craw more than the assorted series of posts that I've left unfinished in the past couple of years. It may be far past timely, but I really want to finish up the Best of the 00s, and the set of posts on my favorite book-to-movie adaptations, and I'd like to return to talking about movie musicals. I'm looking forward to continuing the monthly posts on movies, and the Week in TV should pick back up in the next couple of weeks - I expect I'll have a lot to say about the final season of Big Love, if nothing else.

3) More academic discussion: When I started writing the Books Read posts a couple of years ago, I decided to focus it predominantly on my recreational reading; the life of a graduate student in the humanities is one of endless discussion of one's reading, but I do still love to read all manner of things when I have the time to do so. But now I'm done with classes, and while I still like to keep this space somewhat separate from my other work, I think it will probably be helpful to see this as another place where I can think "aloud." Plus, being interested in popular culture and media means that a fair amount of my reading falls into somewhat of a liminal space of being germane to my interests but not strictly academic, which deserves at least a modicum of attention and time.