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
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