Accounting for Everything

A Distinct Sense of Accomplishment

2012-02-16T10:45:00.004-05:00

Talking to my friends last week, I realized that I never posted these pictures, which I meant to do shortly after these mittens reached their intended recipient (as a Christmas present for Hanna). We noted in our conversation that academic work can often feel awash in a sense of dissatisfaction with one's work that never really achieves resolution, and I observed that part of what I enjoy about knitting and baking is that there's an end where you can point to something definitive that you've completed. This was the first big Fair Isle project I'd done, which made it that much more rewarding.

I watched a lot of British miniseries while I was working on these. Watching The Buccaneers convinced me that there's nothing I'd like to see so much as a Downton Abbey prequel where we go back to the days of Robert as the titled fortune-hunter and Cora as the rich American. Imagine - meeting the previous Lord Grantham, he of the Entail of a Thousand Problems! Violet at what I assume must have been the very height of her powers as the mistress of Downton! Young Carson!

*pattern from Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine, Fall/Winter 2010*

Miscellaneous (Now Kind of Old-ish) TV Links

2012-02-16T09:00:00.006-05:00

Getting this business back on track after the schedule-warping time drain of my Valentine's Day party last week.

- A Grantland piece on Skins upon the beginning of the sixth series in the UK - I particularly like that this essay credits the show for its unique handling of a played-out soap trope in Tony's recovery from his accident in the second series. I'm hoping that the fact that the fourth and fifth series have reached these shores without making a pit stop on BBC America means that it won't be too long before the sixth is available on Netflix or iTunes or somewhere. I wonder if they're sticking with the penultimate episode death for this generation of characters - the arc works with Chris' story in the second series, but Freddy's death in the fourth is one of the more absurd TV twists I've ever seen.

- An A.V. Club retrospective on Homeland - after I saw that the whole season was still available On Demand while I was home for winter break, I ended up watching all twelve episodes in about three days and loved it. I picked the interview segment with "The Weekend" because it was easily one of the best episodes of TV drama I saw all year. This is the first show that's ever made me want to subscribe to Showtime instead of just recording Showtime shows on my parents' DVR and watching episodes haphazardly whenever I'm home. (I'll also include a link to the fourth part of the interview because it has such a great picture of Carrie's rainbow timeline on her conspiracy wall. Maybe I'm over-identifying with her crazy self, but I think there's probably an apt comparison to be made between academics and fictional characters attempting to unravel major conspiracies. Like, I've never had a corkboard wall, but I definitely have enough paper to fill one.)

- And another A.V. Club piece from Todd VanDerWerff on the pacing of watching seasons of television - particularly in speeding through shows versus watching week-by-week. Looking ahead to March, I started intermittently watching Mad Men over again from the beginning and on this rewatch I've become convinced both that Adam Whitman is more important to the show's mythology than most fans give him credit for, particularly in how Don relates to his kids in wanting to remain an active presence in their lives (which in turn is a major factor in the whole "Why is Betty still around when she's such a horrible person?" debate), and that he's also an easy character to overlook if you're watching the show too quickly.

Trailer Thoughts

2012-02-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

I didn't catch the terrible name pun until my second viewing of this.

- On the Yahoo page I got this from, the movie was listed under Tyler Perry's Good Deeds, which, if that's how it's going to be marketed, is one of the most self-aggrandizing things I've ever seen.

- I'm going to go ahead and assume that my curiosity about the genealogical breakdown of that whole "fifth-generation Ivy League" thing won't be satisfied.

- This...doesn't look terrible? Thandie Newton was easily one of the best things about For Colored Girls..., Perry's a million times more tolerable when he's just playing a regular dude, and if the story doesn't depend on Gabrielle Union and/or Phylicia Rashad's characters being total shrews completely out of proportion with reality then I could be on board.

Idle TV Thoughts

2012-02-01T12:38:00.000-05:00

Somehow, even though the person being sung to was wearing an eyepatch, that rendition of "Ben" still wasn't quite as whacked-out as I once hoped it would be.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Once Upon a Time

2012-01-31T09:00:00.001-05:00

- So Archie's dalmatian is "Pongo," the magic mirror is actually the genie from Aladdin - I believe they've opened up a crazy world of possibility here. Is it not just fairy tales, but any property under the Disney umbrella that's open to reworking on this show? (Note: I'd kind of legitimately be interested to see them incorporate some aspect of their princesses and beaus from The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, since I feel like those haven't received enough love.) (Note: I would probably have an aneurism if they ever brought in Pocahontas.) Is that tea set in Mr. Gold's shop, say, going to one day show up accompanying yet another take on the Mad Hatter and the March Hare? Are we going to run through the studio's back catalog until we find ourselves in some fourth-season episode where we flash back to a Storybrooke resident's unknown past as one of the dancing hippos from Fantasia? The mind boggles.

- So here's what I don't quite get about this whole set-up: in the pilot, Regina states that the various denizens of the fairy tale world are going someplace where there are no happy endings - cut to our world, laughs abound. But...it doesn't really seem like anyone was getting a happy ending in fairy tale land to begin with? All the fairy tale stories actually seem pretty grim (no pun intended) upon each episode's conclusion.

- There's something that's starting to trip me up about this show - besides the overwhelming general cheesiness, that is - halfway into the season, there are no stakes. Sure, everyone involved is under the influence of a curse, but there's no clear path to how that curse gets weakened or dismantled and the person allegedly charged with breaking the curse still doesn't believe that it's actually her task to undertake. The more time passes, the more I think "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" did more narrative harm than good. At the time, it seemed good to see the writers show that they were willing to kill off a seemingly major character, but it made it seem like the path to breaking the curse might actually not be that difficult and also raised the possibility of having someone in the know working with Emma and Henry, then dashed it away,. As it is now, the scenes in Storybrooke aren't interesting enough to hold the show together without forward motion on the overall arc.

Idle TV Thoughts

2012-01-29T23:42:00.002-05:00

I think at this point we can all agree that nothing Mr. Pamuk might have had in his bag of tricks could possibly be worth all this drama, right?

Quoted

2012-01-22T15:34:00.007-05:00

"But Comfortable History is asymmetrical warfare it needs only a smattering of facts, and need not guard against a lack of context, presentism, or other facts that might undermine its arguments. Instead it breezily proceeds through hypotheticals and abstract thought experiments which somehow satisfy our desire to be in possession of a dissident intellect. Comfortable History is like the computer virus that poses as the shield--it positions the espouser as a brave truth-teller, even as it infects us with lies."

- Ta-Nehisi Coates
"Crowd-Sourcing American History" from The Atlantic

Mood Music LXVII

2012-01-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I've been listening to One Kiss Can Lead to Another recently.

Quoted

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-05:00

"It was very important for me—and for Tate—to not make this into a Civil Rights piece, but they were being infiltrated and hunted down for their color." - Kathryn Stockett (author)

"One thing that Tate wanted to make sure of was that kids under age 30 don’t really have any idea of where the Civil Rights movement was at its most violent and Jackson, Mississippi, was right in the middle of it. So it shows that for the women, writing this book is putting them in a life-threatening situation without beating it over our heads and having a noose in the tree." - Brunson Green (producer)

From "The Help: An Oral History" on The Daily Beast

Actually, the idea that somehow a story about black maids in Mississippi in 1963 can be understood as separate from "Civil Rights" explains a lot about the issues I had with this movie. And I would suggest that people being unfamiliar with a history means that they do need to be beaten over the heads with it to some extent, but that's just me. Independent of any depiction of "the Civil Rights Movement" under its narrowest definition, if people can't see the continuities where the movement is, at its core, about reacting to experiences like the ones depicted in The Help, then you're not making a substantive contribution to their understanding of how those things fit together.

Mood Music LXVI

2012-01-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

OMG You Guys: Volume II, Part I

2012-01-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

I'm slightly obsessed with this trailer.

- I love how the trailer touches on important moments from the book without feeling like it's giving everything away. Watching this made me dive back through a quick re-read of all three books, and I was particularly struck to see how some of the same moments that get highlighted here also get mentioned in Mockingjay when they're discussing how to make Katniss an effective symbol for the revolution:

"'I want everyone to think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you. Not where you were jealous of her hairstyle, or her dress went up in flames or she made a halfway decent shot with an arrow. Not where Peeta was making you like her. I want to hear one moment where she made you feel something real.'

Quiet stretches out and I'm beginning to think it will never end, when Leevy speaks up. 'When she volunteered to take Prim's place at the reaping. Because I'm sure she thought she was going to die.'" - Mockingjay, p. 74

- The actress playing Rue looks so teeny-tiny! Ugh, I'm already envisioning unsightly public crying.

- I'm really interested to see more of how spectatorship functions in this movie, since this trailer makes it look like some of what we'll be seeing is how people in the districts watch the games as opposed to just staying inside the stadium. Adaptations from first-person books often suffer in translation, but here, for once, I can see potential benefits to getting out of the protagonist's head. It could be really vital to shaping the series going forward.

- Needs more Peeta. And Haymitch.

New Resolution!

2012-01-02T16:43:00.000-05:00

Yes, already.

Looking back through my list of posts, I decided on an initial resolution: all drafts begun prior to January 1, 2012 will be posted or deleted. The over-two-year backlog (the earliest draft dates to December 19, 2009) will be over by the end of this month, one way or the other.

Idle TV Thoughts

2012-01-02T15:00:00.002-05:00

I think I miss Pete Campbell. That sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure it's true.

There's a lot of media and pop culture stuff I'm looking forward to this year - Moonrise Kingdom, The Hunger Games, Anna Karenina, new (albeit delayed by months) Downton Abbey and Sherlock - but I'm pretty sure I'm going to weep when Mad Men comes back. Not because they traffic in tear-jerking moments, but because I miss all those awful people so much. I can't wait to watch them treat each other terribly again.

On Setting and Executing Goals

2012-01-02T09:00:00.001-05:00

Looking back at the writing goals I laid down at the beginning of last year, I have to say that they're essentially unchanged for this year. While I didn't quite hit my desired minimum of 120 posts for the year, thinking about that goal throughout the year forced me to look critically at some habits I'd like to break going forward. This year, I'm going to work on writing and publishing things while I'm actively engaged in thinking about them, rather than letting drafts stew for weeks (and sometimes months) and then returning to them and finding myself unable to recall what specifically I found so interesting in the first place. Part of this might be switching up the style of some posts, especially the aggregate reflections on different media - if I constantly arrive at Thursday with observations of the TV week ending on the preceding Saturday still unwritten, then that seems to be a sign that I should break the week up differently or write on one show at a time. Hopefully, it will feel like an interesting way to challenge myself to write more, rather than a chore. We'll see.

Random TV Love

2011-12-30T19:08:00.000-05:00

There are many things I love about Turner Classic Movies, but this year I've come to appreciate their "TCM Remembers" in memoriam montage for 2011. The run up to the Oscars has begun in earnest, and I suspect that none of the comparable segments I will see in any of the myriad awards ceremonies of the coming months will approach the project with as much class or consideration for granting equitable representation to as many members of their community as possible. (I also liked this Atlanta Magazine online piece about the montage.)

Hmmm...

2011-12-18T17:26:00.000-05:00

I suspect that the person who designed this shirt doesn't actually know where this quote comes from. Like, what does this even mean outside of context?

Trailer Thoughts

2011-12-18T09:00:00.010-05:00

You know how sometimes you watch a trailer, and your primary reaction is something like, "Oh, dear."?

Oh, dear.

Some other thoughts, in no particular order:

- That reaction is not to say that I'm assuming that this is bad, necessarily. Adam Shankman is a good choreographer and a solid director, and Hairspray ended up being a lot more charming than I thought it would be.

- There's an interesting task at hand here, and part of me is sort of curious to see how it plays out: unlike, say, Mamma Mia, this is a jukebox musical pulling its songs predominantly (if not exclusively) from the music video's heyday. How do you stage numbers that already have established visuals attached to them? I can't say I'm not intrigued.

- That being said, I'm skeptical about the use of "Sister Christian," if only because the song's already attached to an amazing film scene.

- I'm not sure the filmgoing world can handle the excess of terrible wigs entailed in both this movie and the second part of Breaking Dawn coming out in the same year.

A Bit of (Out of Context) Levity

2011-12-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

Insane Dialogue + Hilarious Line Reading SMACKDOWN! (Fall 2011 New TV Edition)

Baking: Celebration/Consolation Cake

2011-12-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

On Friday, the combination of the end of classes for this semester and watching Bridesmaids lead me to want to bake a cake for myself. (That whole "baking a single cupcake for myself as a perfect representation of my deep loneliness and mixed feelings about my baking career" deal from the movie just seems a little too savant-esque for me. How on earth do you figure out the proportions of ingredients for one cupcake?) I've spent the semester baking treats for my students - now I wanted to make something just for me.

Devil's Food Cake with Milk Chocolate Frosting from Martha Stewart (a recipe that's becoming one of my favorites, though I also chose it because I have sour cream on hand, but no whole milk). I halved the recipe because there's only so much personal gluttony I'm willing to rationalize.

I'm dually naming the cake for my mixed feelings about the conclusion of my first teaching experience. I'm happy to not have to get up for class three days a week, because I'm still not a morning person in any way, shape or form. But I'm also bummed that I won't see my students every week. Sixteen kids with a decent percentage of thoughtful contributors to discussions and no jerks? I'm just hoping I wasn't spoiled for future classes.

Mood Music LXV

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm feeling totally cheesy about the onset of the holiday season.

Random TV Love

2011-11-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

I'm slightly obsessed with this clip. Somebody needs to give that lady an Emmy. And get me my own Ben Wyatt analogue.

Mood Music LXIV

2011-11-12T11:56:00.001-05:00

Random Movie Love

2011-11-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

I love this overstuffed title sequence. I can't even pick a favorite part. The Growing Pains-style baby photo montage of Astaire and Kelly? The scroll of names getting lit on fire? The falling dominoes spelling out "LASSIE"? (What ever happened to that effect? I feel like I used to see dominoes all the time and never do anymore.) The giant gong? Part I may have awesome stuff like the decrepit MGM lot and glorious co-hosts implying that life under contract at MGM in "the good old days" was a personal hell, the specifics of which they can't quite articulate, but Part II definitely wins in the opening credits department.

Mood Music LXIII

2011-11-08T00:30:00.002-05:00

The lyric "I am the eggman" coming on while I was actually physically separating eggs made me giggle. Some days you have to take your levity wherever you find it.

Movie Stuff Release Valve

2011-11-07T21:37:00.004-05:00

I feel like I need a repository for the things that I find that are tangentially related to the class for which I'm currently a TA (tangentially mainly because the class ends in 1960, so similar topics but 2011 examples) because it seems like a decent percentage of the job of leading a discussion section is trying to actively resist the group's impulse to wander off on marginally relevant tangents.

Last week we learned about the introduction of Technicolor and the different processes and changes in filmmaking involved in its inception, an evolution that starts to feel sort of cyclical when you watch the discussions here of what goes into a full-scale implementation of 3-D:

An interesting HitFix piece from Drew McWeeny about the MPAA's ratings system and his opinion of its general uselessness.

And, because the class discussion of the Production Code and its tenets reminded me of it: Freakazoid's take on the ratings system.

Guest Starring Role Realness

2011-11-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

Between this and Terriers last season, I'm trying to decide what the third show is that Shangela needs to appear on to complete a Cult Television Trifecta.

Week in TV: October 30-November 5

2011-11-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Boardwalk Empire, 2.6: "The Age of Reason"

- There have been a lot of quiet scenes of serious, bone-deep loneliness this season - Richard's scrapbook, the stilted conversations of the Van Aldens - but nothing compares to the heartbreaking sequence of Lucy realizing what was happening and then gathering herself together to give birth alone. It seemed like the show relied a lot on Paz de la Huerta's established persona to build Lucy's character in the first season, but I think she's really done a great job with the more subdued material of this storyline.

- It's a small role, but I really like the performance Anatol Yusef is giving as Meyer Lansky. To the extent that BE ever functions as a sort of a biopic, it's what I think of as the ideal biopic performance - aware of the mythos without being overly reliant on it. There are just brief flashes here and there where you can say, "Oh, yeah, I can totally see this guy being a major player in revolutionizing American organized crime," but I never feel beaten over the head with it.

Sons of Anarchy, 4.9: "Kiss"

I know it's not really a flashback kind of a show, but I'd really love to see SOA take a look back at the early years of the Gemma-Unser relationship. (I'm sort of envisioning a West Wing "Two Cathedrals"-style setup.) What kinds of interactions did the cop and the wild daughter of Charming have back in the day that earned her such enduring devotion from him?

Revenge, 1.7: "Charade"

- I don't envy the people working on the upcoming Dallas reboot for TNT - Revenge has been bringing the primetime soap back with a vengeance (heh, no wordplay intended) and even if New Dallas is amazing, it seems likely that Revenge will totally steal their thunder. The introduction of Stripper Emily and the Nolan-Tyler blackmail hookup collectively showed that the show has transcended the pseudo-procedural revenge-of-the-week setup in only a few episodes.

- I know it's still a bit of a ways off, but what happens when the summer is over? The Graysons aren't year-round Hamptons residents, right? I'd like to think that the show will just continue on to other locales where the wealthy vacation - a season in Aspen or Palm Springs or wherever - but who knows?

American Horror Story, 1.5: "Halloween, Part 2"

- Finally, finally, a ghost tells one of the Harmons directly that they need to do some research. (In this case, one of Tate's apparent victims incredulous at Violet's ignorance of the situation.) The most frustrating thing about this show to me so far has been the Harmons' bizarre lack of curiosity regarding the house and its sordid history. If I was considering moving into a house and the realtor told me the previous tenants had died in a murder-suicide, I would Google That Business. Immediately. The further incidents of a) a stranger claiming to have burned his family to death in said house, b) a home invasion based around recreating events of a famous dual murder in said house and c) the Murder Tour of Los Angeles bus pointedly making a stop IN FRONT OF SAID HOUSE would prompt me to, again, Google That Business. Maybe take a trip to the library and spend some quality time with the Los Angeles Times on microfiche. It's difficult to feel bad about any of the terrible things happening to the protagonists when they seem so determined to face it all with as little helpful information as possible.

- Okay, so it's a major part of the story that the family doesn't have enough money to move, right? Then how do they have enough to afford that tricked-out security system with the prompt, personalized service?

- Interesting to see that Tim Minear wrote this episode - something about the tone reminded me a bit of his Angel episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been." Indeed, he wrote some of the most interesting flashback-based episodes under the Mutant Enemy banner - "Darla" for Angel, "Out of Gas" for Firefly and "Omega" for Dollhouse - which suggest that he's got a skill set well-suited to this show's particular universe and mode of storytelling. It wasn't the most suspenseful of the episodes that have aired thus far, but it was the first that made me curious to learn more about any of the characters (as opposed to previous episodes, which made me curious to see what sort of random insanity would get thrown up on screen the following week).

Miscellaneous Links:

- Shout-out to this week's A.V. Club Inventory on unexpectedly scary episodes of generally non-scary shows for including the episode that most readily came to mind for me: the Scream-based episode of Boy Meets World. (#10 on the list) "And Then There Was Shawn" is one of my all-time most memorable television-watching experiences, because it scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I was over at a friend's house when I saw it, and it marks the only time I can remember having to call home to be brought back from a sleepover during the night. I was wracked with paranoia for months afterward - I constantly checked behind doors to make sure no slashers were lurking and every time I got left alone at home I would just sit tensely in my room, jumping at every little creak, convinced that I was mere moments away from being murdered. Honestly, even though I've gotten older (and at this point, actually watched the real Scream without incident) and accumulated more experience with genre fiction, I'm still wigging a little bit just thinking about it.

Week(s) in TV: Miscellaneous Links

2011-10-31T10:20:00.000-04:00

- Not really about TV, per se, but I liked the excerpt the New Yorker posted from Mindy Kaling's upcoming book.

- Called it!

- Normally, I try not to get too worked up about announcements of development deals for pilots - so many pilots get made that never make it onto the official TV schedule. But I couldn't help but let out a squeal at the news of Lee Daniels working on a series based on Valley of the Dolls. a) Valley of the Dolls is pure campy awesomeness, and while I haven't seen any of the adaptations besides the 1960s film version with Patty Duke and Sharon Tate, that movie doesn't touch on half of what's in the book; b) the book could easily serve as the basis for a television series - it spans a decade or so and actually paints an interesting portrait of postwar New York and the entertainment world, touching on theater, movies and television; if shows like Playboy Club and Pan Am are any indication, a central character like Anne is exactly what the networks are looking for; c) Daniels, at least in his first film Shadowboxer, has shown a distinct flair for bringing balls-out craziness to the screen, which I think is really key to adapting VotD faithfully.

- Another interesting announcement came in the buzz around producers working on pulling together a black-cast Steel Magnolias for Lifetime. It was clear fairly shortly into The Help's run in the theaters that it would be the kind of project studios would try to imitate or replicate for their own profit, and at least on its face, this seems like an inspired tack to take. If they can get the kind of cast they want for the project, it will get awards attention and could be a game-changer for Lifetime's image.

Week in TV: October 23-29

2011-10-31T09:15:00.000-04:00

Boardwalk Empire, 2.5: "Gimcrack and Bunkum"

- In a media landscape that's often lacking in diversity, I feel like BE deserves props for making the cabal of Atlantic City elders backing the Commodore feel like the oldest, whitest group of old white men anywhere on television. Truly an accomplishment among stiff competition.

- Great interview with Jack Huston from The Daily Beast; the work he's been doing this season is mesmerizing, and really showcases BE at its best.

Revenge, 1.6: "Intrigue"

There are many things to enjoy about this show, but I'm currently really digging Ashton Holmes, Tyler's weird creepiness, and the fact that they've kept his motives fairly oblique; does he want to bang Daniel, replace him in the Grayson family, or murder him and wear his skin? (Maybe all three, not necessarily in that order?) Love it. I was kind of convinced that the shooting that opened the pilot is actually connected to the mentioned-infrequently-but-just-frequently-enough-to-clearly-be-relevant waitress relationship gone bad rather than Emily's revenge plot, but I'm willing to give a percentage of that theorizing over to "Tyler finally snaps." Good stuff.

American Horror Story, 1.4: "Halloween, Part 1"

I think this week really highlighted a central flaw in the show, particularly if the plot heads where it appears to be heading: the most interesting people in any given episode tend to be the former residents/current ghosts. If the seemingly inevitable horrific murder (murder-suicide?) of the Harmons comes to pass, they aren't currently compelling enough for their potential future haunting to seem like an interesting prospect. At the end of the episode, I wasn't concerned about the ostensible protagonists. I was thinking, "Damn, I hope we get some sort of cross-era ghost interaction so there are at least a few scenes of Zachary Quinto and Lily Rabe going crazy on each other, over-the-top Tennessee Williams-style."

Once Upon a Time, "Pilot"

Grimm, "Pilot"

Two takes on fairy tales, neither of which grabbed me right out of the gate. I preferred Grimm's darker take on the material, just because it seemed to owe more to the gorier original stories as opposed to the more clearly Disney-influenced versions in Once Upon a Time (and, honestly, when you're introducing a show like this in 2011, I think you need at least a dash of that kind of self-awareness and to contend with your source material in as nuanced a manner as possible), but I don't think I'm up for what looks to be a more procedural structure in the less whimsical show. I'm more curious to see where Once Upon a Time goes for a while, particularly whether the flashback structure holds up, and whether a long-term strategy for sustaining compelling storytelling emerges. The stated goal of Emma ultimately defeating the Queen and breaking the curse seems like a decent endpoint, but only if there's as little wheel-spinning as possible in the journey to get there.

Random TV Love

2011-10-22T01:51:00.004-04:00

How did I not realize sooner that Skins was on Hulu (now through the fourth series), and therefore available for me to excerpt and embed scenes like the following selection from the second episode that essentially marks the exact point where I became totally obsessed with the show?:

Look out, world. There's totally a "My 10 15 20 Favorite Things from Skins" post coming at you.

Mood Music LXII

2011-10-17T22:33:00.001-04:00

Trailer Thoughts

2011-10-07T21:23:00.002-04:00

I was excited about this movie anyway, but this trailer just kicked that excitement up tenfold. A significant part of that initial excitement came from my own pre-existing affection for Juno, but I like that the trailer doesn't oversell any commonalities this might have with any of Reitman or Cody's prior work. The use of "Queen Bitch" is just perfection. And there's something I absolutely love about that Diet Coke she's holding in the scene in the Macy's - like, that's the little touch that really says "full-tilt public breakdown."

Mood Music LXI

2011-09-30T20:36:00.000-04:00

Week in TV: September 18-24

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Good lord, TV. I am only one person!

How I Met Your Mother, 7.1: "The Best Man" and 7.2: "The Naked Truth"

My patience for this show's mythology shenanigans has grown so thin, but something in me just can't give up on it. The plan going in was to mostly let episodes just sort of accumulate on the DVR and watch them in blocks, and nothing I saw in this hour really dissuaded me from that position. (I'm going to be time-shifting like a fiend this year. Lots of moves to Friday and Saturday afternoon and evening.)

Sons of Anarchy, 4.3: "Dorylus"

I'm so curious to see where they go with the plot point of Juice's secret background. SOA does Imitation of Life!?! (It's brief, but Sutter wrote an interesting blog post about the upcoming storyline.)

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, 13.1: "Scorched Earth"

It's interesting - they seem to have done so much to try to shore up the show to compensate for Christopher Meloni leaving that this episode felt much more focused than others I've seen from the past few years. Ultimately, I wonder if the show didn't wait too long to start introducing new detectives into the mix (as opposed to when Criminal Intent started rotating D'Onofrio with Noth), but Kelli Giddish fit in well in this episode. And while it feels a bit manipulative, I was a big fan of the last detective/ADA quartet of OG Law and Order, so I'm glad to see Linus Roache back as Michael Cutter. As premieres go, they put together a fairly solid argument for Meloni's departure not being the incentive to abandon viewership that it originally seemed.

The Playboy Club, "Pilot"

- This show was both not as bad as I thought it would be and not as good as it could be. And while the potential for a better show lies somewhere among its multiple storylines, I fear its association with a still-existing corporate entity means that there won't be an incentive to find and cultivate that better show. It could find depth in deconstructing the tightly corseted facade of the Bunny. Instead it persists in glorifying an imprecisely-defined concept of empowerment, introduced not by one of said empowered women, but in the voice of "Hef" as a shadowy Big Brother figure. It's like someone read Enlightened Sexism and took it as an instruction manual instead of a criticism.

- Reviewers keep bringing up Mad Men in comparison with this show, and certainly that show's current place in the zeitgeist undoubtedly had an impact on getting this show greenlit. But the show that came more immediately to mind watching this was American Dreams - not only because of the performance from "Ike and Tina Turner" (another missed opportunity in contrasting image and experience?) but also due to the similarities between Hefner and Dick Clark, their presence as shadowy background figures on the show and their presumed behind-the-scenes ability to influence how they're depicted. I only hope Playboy Club grows to encompass the kind of scope that American Dreams did.

- Fall TV Footnote! Gloria Steinem's website put up a PDF of her famous undercover piece about working at New York's Playboy Club. (The points made in the show's voiceover sound suspiciously similar to the P.R. she cites and ultimately rejects as presenting a false picture of how Bunny life really is.)

Unforgettable, "Pilot"; Person of Interest, "Pilot"; Prime Suspect, "Pilot"; A Gifted Man, "Pilot"

Ah, network dramas. None of these was bad or offensive, and each one has at least one actor who I like, but life's too short to accumulate crime procedurals. I'll definitely give Prime Suspect another episode or two, and I'm so wiped out on Friday nights this semester that I may keep up with A Gifted Man (or, as I started calling it in my head midway through the pilot, Dude Providence) at least until Chuck starts.

Charlie's Angels, "Pilot"

I think a go-for-broke, full-tilt camp remake of Charlie's Angels could be sort of fun, but, unfortunately, this is not that show. The tone was way too serious for the core premise, and it made the whole show feel like it was aiming for a portentousness that was never quite there. And as much as I love Victor Garber, I think he was missing a bit of the warmth that John Forsythe had in his voice work as Charlie.

2 Broke Girls, "Pilot"; Whitney, "Pilot"

Watched them, can't even really think of anything germane to say about them, not getting added to the schedule.

Miscellaneous Links

- Interesting piece from Wired on Dan Harmon - I feel like every interview I read with him makes me worry about his health.

- The A.V. Club has really been stepping it up a notch with their series of showrunner interviews. This week's set with Louis C.K. really showcased how much he thinks about every aspect of Louie from script to screen, and how much cachet he's built up among comedians and other artists.

Week in TV: September 11-17

2011-09-21T09:00:00.001-04:00

True Blood, 4.12: "And When I Die"

Maybe I'll come back to this one? Like much of the season, this episode was mostly kind of dull. And what was exciting about it (in the last ten minutes) seemed to pretty blatantly be setting up plot points for Season Five. Which is all well and good, but that's nine months from now. Mostly, what I'm left with is: OMG REVEREND STEVE!!!!!

Sons of Anarchy, 4.2: "Booster"

- I really dig the mutual disdain Potter and Roosevelt have for Jacob Hale. Just another quality that adds to the general vibe of "The time of nutbag ATF agents is over".

- I love Rockmond Dunbar anyway, but that Do The Right Thing reference put it over the top for me. (If I let my TV geekery wander a bit, it's an interesting line to borrow - originally spoken by Giancarlo Esposito who, of course, is now appearing on Breaking Bad as Gus. Who, like SAMCRO, is having his own issues with a Mexican cartel (not that the SOA writers would've known that when they put this together)).

Ringer, "Pilot"

- I wanted to like this episode much more than I did. They loaded both characters with a host of problems, which are not the same thing as personalities, and declined to capitalize on Sarah Michelle Gellar's best trait as an actress in keeping the dialogue so low-energy. It could be a good guilty-pleasure show if they double down (no pun intended) on the campy possibilities of the story. Something about it makes me hope for that trajectory, even if it seems against the odds.

- The one aspect of this episode that I found really interesting was the subplot of Bridget attempting to maintain her sobriety while masquerading as her sister.

- So what's the over-under on how long it'll take for them to bring in someone else from Buffy? I'm thinking November sweeps, by which time it will likely be clear whether the show will make it past the original thirteen-episode order. I vote for Emma Caulfield - I think she could make a quality snooty rich lady.

Up All Night, "Pilot" and Free Agents, "Pilot"

A pair of shows that need time for their ensembles to gel. Up All Night has a great central cast, and I think the pilot showed that there's a clear sense of what the show is and what differentiates it from shows like Modern Family and Raising Hope. Free Agents wasn't terrible, but there was a definite air of humor lost in translation - watching it, I kept thinking, "Oh yeah, I can see how this probably worked better in Britain." I'm interested to see where the former show goes, but the latter never grabbed my attention the way I wanted it to.

The Secret Circle, "Pilot"

I don't know whether I'll ultimately stick with this show - CW programs always end up creating DVR issues for me - but not because this episode didn't pique my interest. They established a decent number of characters in the hour, and hinted at the potential for deep mythology and background, so I'm not averse to watching further weeks. At the very least, light shows (especially teen soaps) are a good accompaniment for morning coffee.

Miscellaneous Links

- Besides the football thing, this is pretty much how I feel this time of year. (from Hanna)

- I didn't watch H8R (even I have limits), but the reviews by Dan Fienberg and Todd VanDerWerff were a couple of the best things I read this week. Good TV-critic rants are truly priceless.

Week in TV: September 4-10

2011-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

Sons of Anarchy, 4.1: "Out"

- The few reviews I've read of this premiere emphasize this season returning the focus to the club as it functions in Charming as opposed to the more wide-ranging search for Abel last year. While I'm looking forward to the return to that scope of storytelling, in this episode I was most excited to see the show introduce new antagonists (and, at least based on their first appearances here, specifically non-crazy antagonists) for SAMCRO. By the end of last season, Stahl became too manic and desperate, to the point that, while it didn't rob the triple-cross in "NS" of its dramatic weight, it felt inevitable that her all-consuming desire to entrap the club would come back to bite her in the ass. And Hale's death left the show with a void regarding a practical, reasoned perspective on the club and their role in Charming. I also come in already liking Rockmond Dunbar and Ray McKinnon, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how the show uses them across the season's arc.

- Not only was Ryan Hurst great in infusing the wedding scene with just a hint of sadness, but the show demonstrated a lot of respect for the audience's ability to retain information in letting that subtle undercurrent of grief be the episode's most direct reference to Donna. Semi-Related: I also love Lyla's tacky wedding platforms.

- They're awfully fond of musical montages on this show, with this episode bookended by them, so this EW gallery with Kurt Sutter and Paris Barclay breaking down the one that closed out "Out" was an interesting glimpse into that particular creative process.

The Hour, "Episode Four"

- I've enjoyed this show from the beginning, but I think this was the episode where the tone really clicked and the disparate storylines felt like they were all of a piece, joining comments on suppression and repression to construct a portrait of people striving together to challenge a status quo that leaves too many things unquestioned and unsaid.

- How great is Jessica Hynes? Her terse, matter-of-fact tone in her scene at the beginning of the episode beautifully established the tension that drove the remainder of the hour. In recent weeks, I've also seen her appear as an oversharing hippie on Skins and as an Edwardian-era boys' school matron on Doctor Who, so I'm sort of in awe of her range. (I also watched Paul over the weekend, and it's really interesting to see the more drama-focused track she seems to have taken post-Spaced as opposed to the genre work for which Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have gained international attention.)

- I've gone down a slight rabbit hole of British television recently, and it's really highlighted why comparisons between this show and Mad Men are simplistic and unfair. It's not just that the only thing they really have in common is the era, and even then not really. There's the difference in years, but more importantly, there's the different trajectories in global identity that the United Kingdom and the United States take during those years, which necessarily and dramatically inform the goings-on on both shows. But the striking thing you notice after watching more than a few British productions? Quite simply, they've been owning us at period pieces for decades, and have a deep pool of acting talent to back up that continuing engagement with the past.

- Just because it's not really like Mad Men in any way doesn't mean I can't still obsess over the fashion. I love everything about Bel's wardrobe, especially the scarves-as-headbands. And this show really makes me want to try to work some red lipstick into my repertoire.

Doctor Who, 6.10: "The Girl Who Waited"

- A great episode, with one of Karen Gillan's best performances in the series - I was particularly, and somewhat unexpectedly, pleased to see the return of Amy's bitterness towards the Doctor, which has largely dissipated in the episodes since "The Eleventh Hour."

- I again felt like I was waiting for a direct reference to what happened with Melody - you'd think that that's a thought that would come up in thirty-six years of stewing. In interviews I've read with Steven Moffat, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, it seems like they've got a handle on what keeps Amy and Rory traveling with the Doctor after that kind of traumatic experience, but I'm not sure that that's coming through on screen. There's an argument to be made that it would make sense for them to decide that being on the TARDIS is better than staying in Leadworth alone with their thoughts, but I think they need to specifically say so out loud, instead of leaving it to conjecture. I'm not sure how long the issue can go under-addressed without the arc (or lack thereof) starts undermining the quality of individual episodes.

Revenge, "Pilot"

I was really intrigued by the specific promotion offered for an early viewing of this pilot - ABC offered the pilot script as a free Kindle download on Amazon, which concluded with a link to watch the episode online. The changes from the script to the screen made for an unexpectedly interesting glimpse into the creative process of setting up a show's world to start off a drama series, particularly one like this where a good chunk of the story is dependent on past events. I love a good primetime soap, so I hope this one sticks around long enough to dig into its central mysteries. The pilot shows a lot of potential without seeming too high-concept to be sustainable past thirteen episodes.

The New Girl, "Pilot"

- Took advantage of this one showing up free on iTunes. I liked it, though I felt like I'd already seen about 90% of the pilot in the ads that have been running all summer for the show. I also feel like this pilot is difficult to use as an indicator of how the show will be going forward, since they had to replace Damon Wayans, Jr. and the pilot is so focused on the four roommates. Still, I like Zooey Deschanel (and Max Greenfield - Deputy Leo!), and as a nerdy, crafty twenty-something, I'm excited to see how they develop her character in further episodes.

- I found this profile of Zooey Deschanel from New York Magazine really interesting, especially in its take on both positive and negative reception of her star persona.

Miscellaneous Links:

- I love a good Mad Men dissection, so this Daily Beast post with Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm breaking down "The Suitcase" was right up my alley.

- An interesting AOLTV piece (shared by Katie) by Mo Ryan about declining numbers of women writers on television staffs.

- More Downton Abbey! (The pieces coming out about the show right now must drive PBS's marketing people crazy.) This time, a New York Times article profiling Julian Fellowes. I love that he defends Thomas to the interviewer.

And Yet More on The Help

2011-09-11T18:45:00.001-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

Discussing The Help in my August movies post, one of the things I said is that I felt like I wanted more historical specificity in the framing of the story. Which is all well and good, but even better if you've got an example on hand to compare it to. So here's one that kept coming to mind - Freedom Riders, a documentary which aired earlier this year as part of PBS's American Experience series, and was recognized yesterday at the Creative Arts Emmys for "Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking." One of the things I really like about this documentary is how well it uses its scope - it zeroes in on the Freedom Rides in a way that feels more incisive than, say, something like Eyes on the Prize, and gives a real sense of the range of people involved. I also appreciate the complexity of its depiction of the Kennedy administration and the way they balanced their interactions with the activists involved in the Rides with their desire to keep their Southern base with the Democratic party. More of the directed, purposeful actions of the era deserve this kind of rescue from the over-broad umbrella of "the Civil Rights movement."

Also, an interesting Entertainment Weekly piece from Mark Harris regarding The Help, and specifically Viola Davis' performance, which touches on a question I've been thinking about for a while - that of evaluating an individual actor's ability to transcend or bring depth to a stereotypical role.

Screened: August 2011

2011-09-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

August 6: The Deer Hunter

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

A long-standing entry on the "Movies I Feel Obligated to See" list, crossed off!

August 9: Captain America: The First Avenger

Screened: In the theater

Probably the best I've seen of the leading-up-to-The Avengers movies. Captain America embraced its period setting with vigor, and established its cast of characters so well that the movie's flash-forward ending felt like a bit of a tragedy. It's not only a good movie on its own, it established its ties to the broader Avengers narrative in a much less clunky fashion than the Iron Man movies. By the end, I actually felt like I was really looking forward to next summer.

August 17: Jumping the Broom

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

A nice little wedding melodrama ideal for an afternoon viewing chilling on the sofa. It feels a little facile to compare any black-cast drama with those of Tyler Perry's oeuvre, but to that end I appreciated that this movie had plot-driving conflict without outlandishly demonizing any of its characters. Also, I love the opening credits.

August 19: The Help

Screened: In the theater

I've been thinking a lot about this movie, and trying to capture my thoughts about it without my commentary becoming a treatise. It's not a bad movie - in the most basic sense, it is a very good, faithful adaptation of its source material - but it is a deeply flawed movie. Ultimately, what I come down to is that what bothers me about The Help is similar to what bothered me about X-Men: First Class (and how interesting that they take place within a year of each other) - the movie claims a specific point in history in its setting, but presents an overall picture that is troublingly ahistorical. Outside of the scene of Skeeter perusing issues of Life following the murder of Medgar Evers, there is little, if any, sense of the broader civil rights movement. No mention of the fact that the action of the story takes place nearly a decade after Brown v. Board of Education. No indicator of how Skeeter, recent graduate of Ole Miss, reacted to James Meredith's integration. And no sense, upon the story's completion, that in the next year activists will focus their attentions specifically on Mississippi and push for the state's black residents to receive the rights due to them as American citizens. The movie doesn't argue that Skeeter isn't naive. But it's unwilling to ask whether she has been willfully ignorant in the years leading up to the opening moments of the story, or what kinds of prejudices she may have left to challenge even as she disagrees with the actions of her former friends.

There's also a distinct, irksome lack of historical specificity. The churchgoing scenes were well-anchored by David Oleyowo (and I do hope that Lee Daniels' Selma can find financing before it fades into the ether, because - among other reasons - this movie made me really curious to see how Oyelowo's take on Martin Luther King would play out), but reinforced the ongoing issue in depictions of the civil rights movement of the lack of recognition for the increasing radicalization (and distance from church-based groups like the SCLC) of younger activists by this time. Besides Nelsan Ellis' quiet soda jerk, there really aren't any younger black characters around to even begin to offer different points of view of the way the world should be. There's also the fact that while Evers' murder serves as a narrative turning point, he is never specifically identified as working for the NAACP and his death plays as more random than targeted. I was also surprised that even with the film's focus on 1963, they declined to mention the Birmingham church bombing. There is merit in Kathryn Stockett's decision to focus on the domestic sphere and the interplay between intimacy and distance enacted there by black and white women. But the story is then done a disservice by allowing the world outside these individual homes to fade into a hazy background where nothing much important is going on.

I imagine over the coming months and years this movie will keep popping up, especially as I continue refining my academic interests in race and representation in popular culture. It's been invigorating to see those issues discussed in national, mainstream publications as The Help gained popularity. I just hope the discussion continues once the movie leaves theaters, and that filmmakers see its legacy as a challenge and call to offer more complex takes on a rich, complicated time in U.S. history.

Trailer Thoughts Shrieks of Dismay Regarding Delayed Transatlantic Transmission

2011-09-08T08:00:00.002-04:00

WHY DO WE HAVE TO WAIT FOUR MORE MONTHS FOR THIS OMG?!?

Ahem.

As I mentioned in my big books post, one of my summer reads was Adam Hochschild's To End All Wars, which focused on Britain's involvement in World War I - and, indeed, a major factor in my wanting to read it was prompted by the announcement of the declaration of war at the end of Downton Abbey's first series. I read and liked Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost back during my brief high school obsession with the history of the Congo (you know, like all kids have), and after I read a complimentary review of To End All Wars, I couldn't quite keep my curiosity under wraps. I've never been particularly engaged by military histories, but Hochschild managed his scope well and utilized a variety of perspectives that made it more interesting than a strict accounting of battles, especially in his focus on radical politics, labor unrest and Britain's conscientious objectors. Looks like the show is going to dive in to a good deal of that history, and I obviously can't wait to see it. Normally I don't have any problems finding enough patience to resist the urge to hunt down "alternative" means of watching shows that take a while to make the trip over here, but right now I feel like I'm going to have to sit on my hands once September 18 rolls around.

Books Read: August 2011

2011-09-07T19:00:00.000-04:00

August 3: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Somewhere in the middle of this book, I began to feel like I needed to start back at the beginning of A Game of Thrones and make myself a comprehensive flow chart of characters, locations and situations as I read. While I understand the complaints of the fans who waited for years for this book to come out, I have to say that starting the series just this year means that I haven't had the time to re-read and obsess, making the ever-expanding cast of characters much harder to grasp in anything even approaching a comprehensive fashion. There ends up being a lot of "Oh, this is like that guy with the thing..." For most of the points of view, this doesn't make too terribly much of a difference in appreciating Martin's depiction of a world being subsumed by darkness (and wondering how on earth they'll translate some of the stories to the screen if Game of Thrones gets this far). It's certainly a lot of information to process, though. A few years until The Winds of Winter doesn't sound bad at all to me.

August 28: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

I ended up re-watching Sherlock as I moved things around my apartment in preparation for the hurricane, then decided to download this on to my Kindle for some weekend reading. Which then came in handy after my power went out. I don't really think I understood how much of the adaptation for the show is really about capturing an ethos rather than telling the exact same story until I read A Study in Scarlet. It's sort of intangible and difficult to describe, but there's just something tonal that the writers behind the show seem to get about Holmes, Watson and the structures of the mysteries that were missing in the recent Guy Ritchie film. Not gravity, necessarily...I'm not sure exactly what word I'm looking for.

I also read "A Scandal in Bohemia" - it seemed like an appropriate companion piece to the weekend to read the story of perhaps literature's most well-known Irene - and I'm really curious to see how it translates in the show's second series. The basic setup of the story - a prominent man tries to retrieve a potentially reputation-damaging photograph - seems very well-suited to Sherlock's style of updating. And after seeing the way he's framed characters like River Song and Madame de Pompadour in "The Girl in the Fireplace" in Doctor Who, I'm really intrigued to see how Steven Moffat writes a 21st-century Irene Adler as a foil for Holmes.

Screened: Catching Up

2011-09-07T17:00:00.000-04:00

Same disclaimers as the books piece, but with what little commentary I already wrote staying put. (Not included: a second trip to the theater for Bridesmaids and a failed attempt to watch Biutiful, which proved that there are indeed limits to my desire for Oscar-field completism.)

May 1: Rabbit Hole

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

May 3: Dick

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

May 4: Requiem for a Dream

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

May 14: No Strings Attached

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

May 20: Blue Valentine

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

May 25: Bridesmaids

Screened: In the theater

June 23: X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre, Fish Tank

Screened: In the theater, In the theater, Netflix Instant Watch

Yeah, so the day may have been "Michael Fassbender's Out-of-Control Hotness"-themed. (I started to watch Inglourious Basterds, too, but I fell asleep in the middle.) What of it?

I guess I liked X-Men, but with serious reservations. The lack of historical specificity in this movie is irking me. It seems like the creative personnel behind the movie had an idea of wanting to set it in "The Sixties," but were then unprepared to tie it to a specific date with the way the story ultimately uses the Cuban Missile Crisis. The few period songs seem oddly placed - my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the use of "Palisades Park." It's very stylish, but in a way that struck my eye as very post-British Invasion. (The most striking example of this weirdness is alleged-CIA agent Moira McTaggert in her miniskirt-suit, which no professional woman by any means would've worn to the office. In my imagination, January Jones' first costume fitting for Mad Men Season Five involved Janie Bryant asking some form of, "What on earth was going on with that movie?")

Ultimately, I'd love to have another two hours of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender smoldering at each other, but I'm not particularly attached to X-Men as the context in which that needs to happen.

Jane Eyre was a gorgeous film, and did a solid job of condensing the book's material. There were a few odds and ends I'd have liked to see make it in - the story with Mr. Rochester and Adele's mother, the girl St. John has a crush on and the contrast between her and Jane in perceived suitability to missionary life and of course, the classic Brontë weirdness of the whole "Rochester poses as a old fortune-telling gypsy woman" thing, which never seems to make it into the adaptations. (Hey, after watching all these movies in fairly short succession, I believe Michael Fassbender can do anything.) The casting worked really well, too - Jamie Bell has a sort of quiet intensity that made him well-suited to playing St. John. And while Fassbender has a sort of magnetic screen presence, this adaptation really allowed Mia Wasikowska to shine as Jane and show why she's our heroine.

June 28: Super 8

Screened: In the theater

July 2: Inception, The Social Network, Black Swan

Screened: At home, DVR from HBO; personal collection

July 9: Peyton Place

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

July 17: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Screened: In the theater

Someday, when I have the time, I'm totally going to write a series of posts devoted to nitpicking the entire series of Harry Potter movies - for some reason, this series provokes that impulse within me in a way that no other adaptations do. I felt like this was a solid conclusion to the group of films, but also found that it really showed how many emotional beats and story threads from the books were sacrificed in favor of plot efficacy over time.

July 21: Red Riding Hood

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

Books Read: Catching Up

2011-09-07T16:30:00.000-04:00

These monthly posts totally got out of hand for me. I'd keep thinking that I wanted to write something more concrete about this book or that one, but never actually following through on doing so, until the backlog just became untenable. The Song of Ice and Fire books will probably come up again in future discussions of Game of Thrones, and I'd like to revisit A Discovery of Witches, Sisterhood Everlasting and The Night of the Gun when I have the time and focus to do so. Until then, I suppose this will have to suffice.

April 3: Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal

April 8: Bossypants by Tina Fey

April 9: A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

April 10: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

BTW, I'm totally adopting Deborah Harkness as a new role model. I mean, academic historian/fiction writer/wine blogger? Sounds pretty awesome to me.

May 1: Bumped by Megan McCafferty

May 21: Kissing Between the Lines by Diane Farr

May 31: Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein

June 1: A Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man by Bill Clegg; Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

June 14: A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

June 20: Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares

June 27: To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild

July 4: The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

July 6: Abandon by Meg Cabot

July 25: The Night of the Gun by David Carr

Weeks in TV: August 21-September 3

2011-09-06T10:45:00.001-04:00

True Blood, 4.9: "Let's Get Out of Here" and 4.10: "Burning Down the House"

- It's made for kind of a whackadoo mix of storylines, but I love how the various spiritual possessions, skinwalking ventures and V-induced dreams have broadened the range of material that TB's ensemble has to play with.

- I'm sort of of two minds about this season. On the one hand, I think this season has done the best job of any so far of drawing upon the books; the books take place from Sookie's point of view, so she sort of darts in and out of the situations concerning different characters, and the show has established a broad enough cast of regulars that each of those stories has someone we know in it, which I think makes the audience more invested in everything that's going on than we've been in past seasons. On the other hand - like I said above, the mix has tended to be more crazy than cohesive.

Pretty Little Liars, 2.11: "I Must Confess"

- Oh, Dr. Sullivan. As soon as she told Emily that she knew, I was all, "Tell her over the phone, you're obviously going to get murdered!" Between the therapist's disappearance and Emily's Tragic Massage of Epic Creepiness, A's really starting to transgress some serious boundaries.

- Speaking of A, I loved the little "Update on Major Suspects" sweep through the audience for the doctor's hilariously unsubtle speech on text bullying, especially since Noel, Lucas and Mona had no lines or other scenes in the episode. I love when a show grinds the gears into place for a finale.

- Mr. Hastings, making a late-in-the-game play for Creepiest Weirdo in Rosewood! (Amid stiff competition!)

Pretty Little Liars, 2.12: "Over My Dead Body"

- PLL is approaching Lost-esque levels of obliqueness with their persistent refusal to offer concrete answers to their ongoing mysteries (I believe Garrett and Jenna were behind most, if not all, of the machinations of this episode, but enough of the notes related to that business were unsigned that I don't think they're necessarily A), but they do totally out-there creepiness better than just about any other show on television. Those dolls were truly something else.

- The idea of doing a one-off flashback Halloween episode is genius. More cable shows should have holiday episodes independent of their seasonal arcs. A Sons of Anarchy Christmas! Valentine's Day at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

Doctor Who, 6.8: "Let's Kill Hitler" and 6.9: "Night Terrors"

- I've tended to like the episodes focused on the quartet of the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River, but more and more it seems like the actors are landing the big emotional moments while having to spackle over some increasingly gaping plot holes. Like, as an immediate reaction, I would say that I liked this episode a lot, but if I think about it for more than about five minutes, my head swarms with unanswered questions and a creeping desire to try to pick apart the timeline. (see also: Point #5 in the io9 article linked below) Still, a delightfully energetic performance from Alex Kingston and great banter from Steven Moffat. Obviously, I'm torn. Strike this one down to revisit when the arc picks up again.

- "Night Terrors" is a solid episode, with a legitimately scary conceit in the dollhouse of horrors, done a serious disservice by airing out of production order. Declining to tie the episode's themes of the importance of family love and embracing an unconventional child to the broader arc of the story of the Williams-Ponds makes the characters seem flaky at best (and callous at worst: Rory's joke about letting the monsters get the boy feels...inappropriate given that, you know, his baby got kidnapped by nefarious aliens) and makes the writers seem like they're not paying attention to what's going on. If they absolutely had to move things around, it might've been better to switch this one with, say, "Curse of the Black Spot."

- This post is about to get totally linktastic. First! An interesting piece from io9 about things Doctor Who could do differently.

- AND: Steven Moffat is seemingly everywhere giving interviews about the second half of this series

- Daily Beast Interview

- Alan Sepinwall at HitFix Interview

- Mo Ryan at AOLTV Interview

Miscellaneous Other Links:

- Not terribly detailed, but with awesome, military-uniform-including cast photo: On the second series of Downton Abbey (Aside: Dear PBS, If the BBC can work it out so Brits and Americans can all watch the same new episode of Doctor Who on the same calendar date, can we please work on the timing of the Masterpiece selections' trip across the pond? I feel antsy just thinking about having to wait extra months for DA and Sherlock. Affectionately, Liz)

- Between Comic-Con, the TCA and the upcoming Emmys and start to the fall season, there's a veritable smorgasbord of showrunner interviews popping up all over the place online. The Daily Beast interview with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss is kind of delightful; they're clearly really jazzed to have the opportunity to dive further into George R.R. Martin's sprawling cast of characters.

- A.V. Club interviews with two of my very favorite TV people: Victor Garber and Martin Starr

- I'm fascinated by the ongoing discussions around AMC, their evolving brand identity, and what seems to be a growing suspicion among commentators that within the next few years their whole original programming enterprise could collapse like a house of cards. I started in on a post a few weeks ago, following the whole rigamarole around Kurt Sutter leaving Twitter - various outlets tried to frame it as some sort of showrunner smacktalk showdown, but I think that at the heart of what Sutter was saying about AMC, Mad Men and The Walking Dead was a criticism of the network for not managing its properties in a balanced way - but it sort of got lost in the shuffle (as too many posts do.)

Anyway: a fairly comprehensive timeline of this year's developments for the network from the New York Times and an excellent Vulture piece from this week. Potentially more thoughts on this in the future, maybe with the end of this season of Breaking Bad (a show I like, and certainly I can recognize why people love it, but I've had a few Sundays this summer where I've missed watching programs that night, and Breaking Bad is never the show I'm really burning to catch up on, you know?), especially if there are any more announcements that give off that "throwing things at the wall to see what sticks" vibe.

Shades

2011-09-03T16:36:00.002-04:00

The whole recently-posted-to-YouTube collection of Roddy McDowall's old home movies is inspiring such crazed retro sunglasses lust within me.

I'll take the pair Ms. Bacall is rocking here, please.

Random TV Love

2011-09-02T23:30:00.000-04:00

I kept thinking about this scene again and again after I watched this episode. I don't really have a big spiel to go with this, I just wanted to post it because I love it - the writing, the acting, the piano music, everything.

Mood Music LX: Chilling in the Dark Edition

2011-08-30T21:57:00.003-04:00

All in all, my Irene experience wasn't too bad; my power went out on Saturday night and came back on Monday morning. After I cursed the heavens for bringing me so tantalizingly close to the new episode of Doctor Who then yanking it away and stranding me in darkness on Saturday, I weighed my options and decided that a few hours of iPod battery charge was worth trading to combat the soul-rattling creepiness of sitting alone in the dark as wind and rain battered my building. The night's chosen theme: excellent soundtracks from movies set in the seventies.

Velvet Goldmine

The Virgin Suicides

Boogie Nights

Almost Famous

Moffat Influences My Life, Part Two

2011-08-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

Part of me wants to add something crazy and/or different to my wardrobe for the fall, just so I can find an opportunity to introduce the "It's a [ ]. I wear a [ ] now. [ ]s are cool." construct in a real-life conversation.

Non-Random Links

2011-08-12T11:33:00.003-04:00

For someone interested in black actors and the performance of race, the critical commentary around The Help is like a delicious smorgasbord of mind food. Whether the movie is any good or not (haven't seen it yet, but if my dissertation interests end up going where I think they're going, I'll probably end up seeing it about fifty times whether I want to or not), it's refreshing to see issues of race and representation being hashed out in national publications when they're so often overlooked or swept aside. Some samples:

"The Truth about the Civil Rights Era" by Martha Southgate, from Entertainment Weekly

"Black-and-White Struggle with a Rosy Glow" by Nelson George, from The New York Times (Plus: the trailer for the crazy-awesome-looking The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975)

A statement from the Association of Black Women Historians, with a great list of sources (some of which I've read) that interrogate the historical questions around race and class that they think The Help avoids

Further Thoughts on Television

2011-08-09T18:15:00.001-04:00

I moved to a new apartment a few months ago, and had to put my couch in storage, which left me with a few errant pillows with no real place to put them. As I drifted aimlessly around my apartment, looking for a place for my pointless pillow, I suddenly thought, "Steven Moffat was right."

While I clearly like to think and talk a lot about television, that kind of specific writer-associated thought is not something that happens to me a lot. That the same person wrote this and "Blink" seems like as good an argument as any that he should be better known over here. (In all fairness to the academy, I should have noted in my previous post that unlike his terribly deserving actors, Moffat did get an Emmy nomination for writing the first Sherlock episode. Maybe the breakthrough is imminent. Maybe the second series will be so impossible-to-ignore awesome and/or The Hobbit will raise the actors' profiles enough that the show will be showered with laurels next year. We'll see.)

Emmys 2011: Nomination Thoughts

2011-08-09T18:00:00.000-04:00

A casualty of three weeks of schlepping up and down the East Coast on planes, trains and automobiles: timely reaction to the Emmy nominations, which were announced mere hours before I boarded one of said trains, sans laptop.

- My Record: Admittedly, I cast a pretty wide net with the "Wouldn't Be Surprised to See" category, but nevertheless, I'm pretty proud of myself. Out of 94 acting nominations, I only missed four: Barry Pepper in The Kennedys (that miniseries did much better, nomination-wise, that I thought it would), Taraji P. Henson in Taken From Me: The Tiffany Rubin Story (love her, haven't seen the movie, didn't think she was "big" enough to capture the attention of the voters, who, in the past at least, seemed to disproportionately go for big names and hype independent of actual performance), Idris Elba in The Big C (thought Laura Linney would get that show's only recognition, Elba makes for a low-key odd man out in the category, and part of me thought Darren Criss was kind of a lock), and Kristin Chenoweth in Glee (I'm really disappointed in myself for missing this one - while I think "Rumours" was one of this season's strongest episodes, I think that the dialed-down nature of the writing for April compared to last year made me think that Chenoweth wouldn't get recognized, but that's no reason not to include her in the field. I'm not really sure where my brain was on this one, frankly.)

- My Best Categories: Supporting Actress in a Drama and Supporting Actress in a Miniseries/Movie, where all the actual nominees were either on my ballot or in the honorable mention category; My Worst Categories: Supporting Actor in a Comedy, where zero actual nominees were on my ballot, and Lead Actor in a Comedy, Lead Actor in a Miniseries/Movie and Supporting Actress in a Comedy, where only two actual nominees appeared on my ballot or in honorable mention

- Pleasant Surprises: I was kind of shocked by the number of nominations Justified garnered - obviously, I put a fair number of those actors on my dream ballots, but I never in a million years thought Walton Goggins and Jeremy Davies would actually for real get nominated. Also awesome: Cat Deeley finally receiving the nomination she's deserved since the category's 2008 inception for Outstanding Host of a Reality Program.

- Things That Make Me Go, "Hmmm...": I felt pretty sure it was going to happen (when I saw it on nomination morning, I may have gasped and said, "I KNEW IT!" aloud like a total psycho), and I certainly don't begrudge her the attention or, in principle, have anything against basic-cable procedurals, but I'm kind of bummed that Mary McDonnell got a nomination for her soon-to-be-spunoff role on The Closer and never got one for playing Laura Roslin.

- Unpleasant Surprises: Everyone has shows they love that get totally shafted - this year I'm mourning a bit for United States of Tara - final season, and transcended the trappings of its concept, which too few Showtime shows seem to do - and Community, which had great character work framed by inventive work across all the genres it showcased. But one batch of snubs in particular really get to me.

A few days before the nominations were announced, it suddenly came to me, floating up out of the recesses of my mind. "I bet Benedict Cumberbatch isn't going to get nominated," I thought. My increasingly Anglophilic, television-loving soul rebelled against the very thought. He's so good! I might have scoffed aloud at the theatrical trailer for the Downey/Law sequel because they are so clearly owned by Cumberbatch/Freeman! I might have moaned aloud as if in actual physical pain when I read that PBS's TCA presentation indicated that the new batch of Sherlock episodes won't air in the US until next May! However, my rational, knowledgeable-of-Emmy-history head couldn't forget the dominating performances the academy's voters have overlooked in favor of the comfort of familiar names in the past. And my head, tragically, was right. (Aside: Increasingly Anglophilic also, in part, means "increasingly appreciative of Steven Moffat's talent for genre-hopping." I'm not sure why he isn't more well-known in the US, outside of Doctor Who fans, that is - maybe if the Coupling remake hadn't flamed out the way it did?)

- This Gold Derby post of the episodes submitted for consideration by the nominated actors is very interesting. As much as I love this little exercise, I don't know that I could be an Emmy voter. Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss in "The Suitcase" versus Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in "Always"? A choice I'm glad I don't have to make.

- I ran out of the necessary energy required to complete the ballot posts on the overall drama/comedy series and miniseries/movie categories before (or even shortly after) the nominations were announced, but will pull together some concluding thoughts on the shows covered by this eligibility period. To be continued...

Idle Thoughts

2011-08-07T17:35:00.002-04:00

If Harry's mental connection to Voldemort is a byproduct of his being an inadvertently-created Horcrux, with all the soul-fracturing-and-storing that implies, then were Snape's Occlumency lessons ever really going to work?

This Must Be...Pop

2011-08-07T16:00:00.000-04:00

I always think I should post more links to things I read on other sites. (See also: previous post) Such as: the ongoing Ultimate Pop Song Tournament at The Critical Condition. It's fun to read and vote, to see how others comment, to ponder the selection and seeding of songs; for example, while I think "Since U Been Gone" is a perfectly fine song, its high seeding and presence in the total absence of Britney Spears is baffling to me.

You can see to some extent how the age of the bracket-makers leaves some gaps in the field. The overall field of sixty-four skews about 2:1 in favor of songs released between 1980 and 1995, as opposed to 1996 through 2011, which is interesting in that it's prompted me to think about what songs have been formative to my taste in music and what I see as quintessentially "pop." I'm twenty-five now, so I was ideally positioned for pop music's resurrection in the late nineties with the attendant rise of TRL and the introduction of the Now That's What I Call Music series to the US, and thus probably place more importance on the status of the Spice Girls, Hanson and their immediate successors than someone whose formative years were in the eighties would.

Anyway, it makes a pretty solid playlist, suitable for scoring, say, a three-hour drive down the highway with stretches spent sitting in traffic. (She notes, from recent experience.) I love that it's reminded me how much I liked "Not Ready to Make Nice," and prompted me to finally hunt down songs I've waffled over adding to my collection for years, like "What's Love Got to Do With It" and "Edge of Seventeen." It's a compelling project; given the set of parameters - 1980-2011, top 40 charters, one song per artist - how would you select a top 64 (50? 100?) that represented what you understand to be the ultimate in pop music?

Random Links

2011-08-07T10:00:00.002-04:00

Been percolating for a few weeks due to intermittent travel.

The excellent interviews conducted by Todd VanDerWerff for The AV Club with Michael Schur concerning each episode of the third season of Parks and Recreation.

A Vulture piece on rumors and discussions around movie follow-ups to TV shows: I think it's all neatly summed up in this quote - "these movies aren't just financially unlikely, they're creatively perplexing."

Mark Harris for Grantland on the MPAA, specifically the ratings associated with swearing

Dan Fienberg for HitFix on showrunners and actors versus the press

A Gold Derby piece, from before the nominations were announced, about series eligibility for the Emmys in different genres, specifically those British shows like Luther and Downton Abbey, which were submitted in Miniseries/Movie but have been renewed for a second series.

Garance Doré with photos from the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I was so fortunate to get to see the exhibit when I was in New York last month, even with an hour-and-a-half wait in line to get in! It's unbelievable seeing that kind of artistry and craftsmanship up close; I kept having to firmly shove my hands into my pockets to resist the urge to reach out and touch everything. Doré didn't include any photos from my favorite collection - the gorgeous, meticulously-tailored wool tartan pieces from "The Widows of Culloden" - but her selections offer a glimpse of what made the experience so transporting.

Mood Music LIX

2011-08-06T15:00:00.000-04:00

I forgot how much I like this song, until Amazon had one of those delightful deals on The Very Best of Hall and Oates the other week. Now I kind of can't stop listening to it.

Bonus track! I realized while I was driving down the highway the other day that this song is kind of my car-dancing jam.

Quoted

2011-08-06T13:34:00.001-04:00

I do think...that over-decorating is a lady thing but with misunderstood origins. It’s like when I wear a dress and someone says, “You’re dressed up today,” and I’m all, “A dress is one choice.” It’s actually less effort. Similarly, I built and stained the bookshelves in my apartment and this actually came up at breakfast with a friend this morning. She said, “You must really not sleep.” And I thought, “I must really not write.”

- Sloane Crosley

Interview from HelloGiggles

Oh, to be in Nerd Heaven

2011-07-24T22:10:00.006-04:00

I wish I could've spent the weekend bopping around the San Diego Convention Center instead of roasting in the open-air sauna of the East Coast. I'd still love to go in person someday, but the increasing presence of entertainment media means that you can cobble together somewhat of a virtual attendance from the safety of your air-conditioned home. I particularly love the snarky, self-aware videos shows will put together for their panels. Behold:

As time passes, I appreciate Jeffster in smaller and smaller doses, but this is pretty much the ideal use of their special talents.

Something about Zachary Quinto with the sandwich really cracks me up. (Do I need to say I love Ben Schwartz? I feel like I'm creeping ever-closer to embarrassing Lee-Pace-style gushing there.)

I wasn't a finale-hater, but I still love this. (How excellent is Titus Welliver? In the past TV season, he got sliced all to pieces and had his voice coming out of a stuffed animal. I feel like there should be some kind of special Emmy for something like that.)

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actor in a Drama

2011-07-14T07:45:00.000-04:00

Sean Bean - "Lord Eddard Stark", Game of Thrones

Kyle Chandler - "Eric Taylor", Friday Night Lights

Jon Hamm - "Don Draper", Mad Men

Michael Imperioli - "Louis Fitch", Detroit 1-8-7

Donal Logue - "Hank Dolworth", Terriers

Timothy Olyphant - "Raylan Givens", Justified

So...who's got a chance in Bryan Cranston's year off? Is it fair that my love of Bean's performance is partly influenced by having read the books on which Game of Thrones is based? The deeply entrenched sense of honor that guides the Starks, for good or for ill, was firmly established by Bean in every episode of his appearance as Ned Stark, and it should resonate through the series. Chandler, of course, has always been great - the frustrations of intra-team discord and the ever-shifting scene in Dillon showed that he still found new layers in Eric Taylor even up until the end. When I rewatched the last season of Mad Men recently, I was struck by the way that Jon Hamm wore the weight of Don's disappointments in his weariness and shambling drunkenness. He had great showcases in individual episodes like "The Suitcase," but it's really an absorbing full-season performance. I almost hate Imperioli and Logue for making me fall in love with their doomed series; Imperioli showed impressive command over a series of quirks that might have buried another actor and Logue's performance was driven by an engaging charisma that infused every case the show covered with a sense of importance because Hank cared about them. Olyphant is another whose performance beautifully encapsulated the push and pull between a man and his ideas of honor as Raylan wrestled with his darker impulses and his past in Harlan.

Honorable Mention: David Boreanaz, Bones; Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire; Vincent D'Onofrio, Law and Order: Criminal Intent; James Badge Dale, Rubicon; Charlie Hunnam, Sons of Anarchy; Andrew Lincoln, The Walking Dead; Holt McCallany, Lights Out; Stephen Moyer, True Blood; Bill Paxton, Big Love

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Gabriel Byrne, In Treatment; Michael C. Hall, Dexter; Jeremy Irons, The Borgias; Hugh Laurie, House; William H. Macy, Shameless; Christopher Meloni, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Ray Romano, Men of a Certain Age; Tom Selleck, Blue Bloods

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actress in a Drama

2011-07-14T07:30:00.000-04:00

Connie Britton - "Tami Taylor", Friday Night Lights

Julianna Marguiles - "Alicia Florrick", The Good Wife

Elisabeth Moss - "Peggy Olson", Mad Men

Katey Sagal - "Gemma Teller Morrow", Sons of Anarchy

Anna Torv - "Olivia Dunham", Fringe

Jeanne Tripplehorn - "Barb Henrickson", Big Love

Britton has always been wonderful, and the final season of Friday Night Lights was no exception - I particularly loved her scenes with Aimee Teegarden as Tami processed the fallout from Julie's romantic debacle. Marguiles was great all season, but she completely knocked it out of the park in the final episodes after Alicia learned about Peter and Kalinda. Some actors get a single-episode showcase so good that they deserve a nomination solely on those merits - I truly believe "The Suitcase" was an episode like that for Moss, showing Peggy with all her ambition and regret, her anger and wistfulness. Sagal served as an important connective thread throughout a season of Sons of Anarchy that sometimes felt like it was meandering off into tangents, always reinforcing the importance of family - both by blood and by choice. Torv gave shades and nuances that carefully defined the two Olivias as similar but not identical women, and then added a killer Leonard Nimoy impersonation to boot. (If this were the Daytime Emmys, she'd be golden - they love dual roles.) Tripplehorn was the saving grace of Big Love's final season, crafting a beautiful portrait of a woman struggling with deep ambivalence regarding her religion and her faith.

Honorable Mention: Mireille Enos, The Killing; Kathryn Erbe, Law and Order: Criminal Intent; Hayley Hasselhoff, Huge; Lena Headey, Game of Thrones; January Jones, Mad Men; Melissa Leo, Treme; Anna Paquin, True Blood; Ellen Pompeo, Grey's Anatomy; Maggie Q, Nikita

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Kathy Bates, Harry's Law; Dana Delany, Body of Proof; Emily Deschanel, Bones; Sally Field, Brothers and Sisters; Mariska Hargitay, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Angie Harmon, Rizzoli and Isles; Piper Perabo, Covert Affairs; Emmy Rossum, Shameless; Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer; Sarah Wayne Callies, The Walking Dead

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actor in a Drama

2011-07-14T06:45:00.002-04:00

Peter Dinklage - "Tyrion Lannister", Game of Thrones

Walton Goggins - "Boyd Crowder", Justified

Arliss Howard - "Kale Ingram", Rubicon

John Noble - "Walter Bishop", Fringe

Denis O'Hare - "Russell Edgington", True Blood

Michael Raymond-James - "Britt Pollack", Terriers

The category which, in my opinion, contains a significant share of the year's best work (A.K.A. the category of Liz's Endless Waffling, A.K.A. much of the reason why these posts are going down to the wire pre-nominations announcement). All six brought wit and a distinct spark to their respective shows. Dinklage did the best kind of adaptation work - the kind that makes you excited when you're reading to someday see the material embodied by the actor. Goggins let Boyd's struggle with his past flicker behind guarded eyes and never made his return to a life of crime feel like a foregone conclusion. Howard's cool made Kale Ingram TV's best espionage-affiliated gentleman since Jack Bristow. Much of Fringe's cast got to show great range in the dual roles dictated by the focus on the parallel universe, but Noble showed Walternate as a fierce villain, while keeping the original's distinctive loopiness. O'Hare pushed True Blood to its campy limits, devouring scenery with glee and making Russell a truly Big Bad. Raymond-James brought an easy charm, with hints of darkness, to Britt, ultimately making him - all apologies to Martin Freeman - the best detective sidekick of the year.

Honorable Mention: Scott Caan, Hawaii 5-O; Justin Chambers, Grey's Anatomy; Rockmond Dunbar, Terriers; Jared Harris, Mad Men; Joshua Jackson, Fringe; Michael B. Jordan, Friday Night Lights; Joel Kinnaman, The Killing; Taylor Kitsch, Friday Night Lights; Ryan Kwanten, True Blood; Matt Lauria, Friday Night Lights; Dallas Roberts, Rubicon; Nick Searcy, Justified; Brent Sexton, The Killing; Alexander Skarsgard, True Blood; John Slattery, Mad Men; TJ Thyne, Bones

Particular props to the ensembles of: Boardwalk Empire (Stephen Graham, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Shea Whigham, Michael Kenneth Williams); Game of Thrones (Mark Addy, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Aiden Gillen, Kit Harington, Jason Momoa); Detroit 1-8-7 (Jon Michael Hill, Shaun Majumder, James McDonald); The Good Wife (Josh Charles, Alan Cumming, Matt Czuchry, Chris Noth); Sons of Anarchy (Mark Boone, Jr., Dayton Callie, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Ryan Hurst, William Lucking, Ron Perlman, Theo Rossi); Treme (Clarke Peters, Wendell Pierce, Steve Zahn)

Yes, this version of narrowing encompasses forty-five actors beyond the ballot limit.

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Andre Braugher, Men of a Certain Age; Billy Campbell, The Killing; Irrfan Kahn, In Treatment; Delroy Lindo, The Chicago Code

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actress in a Drama

2011-07-14T06:30:00.000-04:00

Khandi Alexander - "LaDonna Batiste-Williams", Treme

Emilia Clarke - "Daenaerys Targaryen", Game of Thrones

Christina Hendricks - "Joan Harris", Mad Men

Kelly MacDonald - "Margaret Schroeder", Boardwalk Empire

Margo Martindale - "Mags Bennett", Justified

Sandra Oh - "Christina Yang", Grey's Anatomy

Part of what made Alexander's performance this year so great is the strength she established in the first season of Treme - you could see that woman struggling to reemerge in the wake of the assault she experienced, which then made it feel like a triumph when she finally let her anger flow free in the finale. Clarke and MacDonald both made their characters' journeys away from innocence vital arcs in their respective shows. Hendricks continued to find new depths in Joan as she gained more power in the office but saw her means of handling business become increasingly obsolete. Martindale gave an unbelievably great performance across the season, masking simmering menace with grandmotherly warmth, capped off by a wonderfully Shakespearean exit. Oh got the best material coming out of the trauma of the previous season's finale, and capably handled Christina's emotional distance from the driven surgeon who she used to be.

Honorable Mention: Laura Allen, Terriers; Christine Baranski, The Good Wife; Michelle Fairley, Game of Thrones; Michelle Forbes, The Killing; Mamie Gummer, Off the Map; Lauren Hodges, Rubicon; Natalie Martinez, Detroit 1-8-7; Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife; Sara Ramirez, Grey's Anatomy; Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men; Maggie Siff, Sons of Anarchy; Jurnee Smollett, Friday Night Lights; KaDee Strickland, Private Practice; Aimee Teegarden, Friday Night Lights

Particular props to the ensembles of: True Blood (Kristin Bauer van Straten, Rutina Wesley, Deborah Ann Woll); Big Love (Ginnifer Goodwin, Chloe Sevigny, Grace Zabriskie)

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Lisa Edelstein, House; Amy Ryan, In Treatment; Debra Winger, In Treatment

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actor in a Drama

2011-07-14T06:15:00.001-04:00

Michael Cristofer - "Truxton Spangler", Rubicon

Jeremy Davies - "Dickie Bennett", Justified

Jack Huston - "Richard Harrow", Boardwalk Empire

Lennie James - "Morgan", The Walking Dead

David Morse - "Jerry Raines", Lights Out

Eamonn Walker - "Ed Romeo", Lights Out

Cristofer, besides delivering one of the year's best monologues in the Tie Speech, made for an alternately magnetic and fearsome conspiracy-mongerer. Davies regularly made my skin crawl with his depiction of a man-child unafraid to resort to violence when his ambitions outpaced his intelligence. The mask made Huston stand out initially, but his haunted, hollowed-out performance was striking even within Boardwalk Empire's attention-getting ensemble. In a season with a lot of great drama pilots (with varying degrees of shows then delivering on the promise of those pilots), James gave a fairly perfect pilot-only performance, capably handling the task of introducing viewers to the new zombie-dominated world. Though Lights Out was short-lived, I feel like Morse and Walker's performances will stick with me for a long time. Morse embodied the tragedy the show saw in the threat of pugilistic dementia, and Walker continues to stun me with his ability to grant great humanity, spirituality, and depth to characters who in other hands would come across as "magical Negro" stereotypes.

Honorable Mention: Greg Antonacci, Boardwalk Empire; Raymond J. Barry, Justified; Nicholas Brendon, Private Practice; Reg E. Cathey, Lights Out; Bruce Dern, Big Love; Noah Emmerich, The Walking Dead; Jay R. Ferguson, Mad Men; Scott Foley, Grey's Anatomy; Michael J. Fox, The Good Wife; James Frain, True Blood; Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights; Tim Guinee, The Good Wife; Brad William Henke, Justified; Hal Holbrook, Sons of Anarchy; Bill Irwin, Lights Out; Joe Manganiello, True Blood; Robert Morse, Mad Men; Mark Moses, Mad Men; Denis O'Hare, The Good Wife; Dallas Roberts, The Good Wife; Christopher Stanley, Mad Men; Joseph Lyle Tayor, Justified; Titus Welliver, Sons of Anarchy

Can you tell this was a tough one to narrow down? Mark Moses almost made it - I love Duck Phillips' ongoing downward spiral so much.

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Beau Bridges, Brothers and Sisters; Richard Dreyfuss, Parenthood; Michael Emerson, Parenthood; Paul McCrane, Harry's Law; Jonny Lee Miller, Dexter; Scott Porter, The Good Wife

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actress in a Drama

2011-07-14T06:00:00.001-04:00

Maria Bello - "Vivian Arliss", Law and Order: Special Victims Unit

Cara Buono - "Dr. Faye Miller", Mad Men

Kaitlyn Dever - "Loretta McReady", Justified

Karina Logue - "Stephanie Dolworth", Terriers

Gretchen Mol - "Gillian Darmody", Boardwalk Empire

Alfre Woodard - "Ruby Jean Reynolds", True Blood

SVU's various guest appearances can often feel showy and awards-baity, but Bello's performance as an abrasive sort of alternate-reality Olivia was a subtle standout. Some shows with predominantly male ensembles can fumble introducing new female characters (it's something I've always felt Friday Night Lights hasn't done well), but Buono's dynamic performance asserted Dr. Faye as a force to be reckoned with, both as a professional woman in Mad Men's evolving world and as a woman who loves Don but is firmly uninterested in letting him off the hook for his crap. Time will tell whether she will ultimately become an established adult actress, but Kaitlyn Dever's work on Justified this season reminded me a lot of Mia Wasikowska on In Treatment a few years ago. I kept thinking during her appearances that the people casting The Hunger Games might've missed out on an ideal candidate for their leading lady. It's difficult to encapsulate what was so great about Logue's performance as Steph - the delightful rapport with her brother, the hyper-literal interactions with other characters - but I'll say this: she was introduced hiding in her brother's ceiling, stealing food and disappearing like a cat burglar, and that never once felt contrived. Mol handled Gillian with a combination of savvy and world-weariness that made her Boardwalk Empire's most self-assured woman by a mile. Woodard's character was sort of a funhouse-mirror version of what Frances Conroy did in United States of Tara, the mentally ill parent who grants previously unrealized depths to established characters in just minutes of screentime.

Honorable Mention: Kristina Apgar, Detroit 1-8-7; Elizabeth Ashley, Treme; Patricia Bethune, Mad Men; Ellen Burstyn, Big Love; Loretta Devine, Grey's Anatomy; Louise Fletcher, Private Practice; Ana Gasteyer, The Good Wife; Linda Gehringer, Justified; Marcia Gay Harden, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Randee Heller, Mad Men; Julia Ormond, Law and Order: Criminal Intent; Adrianne Palicki, Friday Night Lights; Jessica Pare, Mad Men; Melissa Rauch, True Blood; Anika Noni Rose, The Good Wife; Laura San Giacomo, In Plain Sight; Rachael Taylor, Grey's Anatomy; Ally Walker, Sons of Anarchy; Jo Beth Williams, Private Practice; Evan Rachel Wood, True Blood

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Jane Badler, V; Candice Bergen, House; Joan Cusack, Shameless; Christine Lahti, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit; Marlee Matlin, CSI; Mary McDonnell, The Closer; Sarah Silverman, The Good Wife; Jean Smart, Hawaii 5-O; Julia Stiles, Dexter

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actress in a Comedy

2011-07-13T08:30:00.000-04:00

Toni Collette - "Tara Gregson", United States of Tara

Courteney Cox - "Jules Cobb", Cougar Town

Tina Fey - "Liz Lemon", 30 Rock

Laura Linney - "Cathy Jamison", The Big C

Martha Plimpton - "Virginia Chance", Raising Hope

Amy Poehler - "Leslie Knope", Parks and Recreation

As always, Collette demonstrated fantastic range in portraying Tara and all her alters - this season in particular, she made Bryce feel like an honestly scary, tangible threat every time he surfaced. Cox rode out the refining of her show's premise last season, and this year she took advantage of the second season in showing Jules in all her loving and crazy shades. 30 Rock as a whole feels less novel as time goes on, but Fey continues to do great work, especially in episodes like "Double-Edged Sword" and "TGS Hates Women." (Since it'll probably be a factor for at least some voters, sure: I'm totally giving her bonus cred for Bossypants.) Linney infused The Big C with energy even when the material didn't feel quite up to the standard she set. Plimpton was ideally suited to Raising Hope's combination of sweetness and weirdness. Poehler would get on this list for "Flu Season" alone, but the whole season really served as a showcase for Leslie Knope and her bottomless drive.

Honorable Mention: Lea Michele, Glee

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Kaley Cuoco, The Big Bang Theory; Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie; Patricia Heaton, The Middle; Melissa McCarthy, Mike and Molly; Mary-Louise Parker, Weeds

Who knows about Desperate Housewives? My gut tells me that even though it's still kicking, that its buzz, at least in the awards-relevant sense, is mostly gone.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actor in a Comedy

2011-07-13T08:00:00.001-04:00

Alec Baldwin - "Jack Donaghy", 30 Rock

Steve Carell - "Michael Scott", The Office

Zachary Levi - "Chuck Bartowski", Chuck

Joel McHale - "Jeff Winger", Community

Lucas Neff - "Jimmy Chance", Raising Hope

True Life: This is always the most difficult category for me. It seems that there are a lot of male-led comedies that I simply have no interest in watching. Or they're like buzzy arthouse movies - I feel more like I should watch them than I want to watch them. There were certainly performances I enjoyed, though. Baldwin did a great job with the art-imitating-life storylines with Kabletown and Jack becoming a father. Carell executed his final episodes as Michael Scott with both grace and humor. Levi did a lot of heavy lifting that carried some of Chuck's storylines (especially the one focused on Vivian Volkoff) through their weaknesses. McHale anchored Community with magnetic personality. Neff proved to be a great straight man among Greg Garcia's cast of wacky personalities.

Honorable Mention: Rob Lowe, Parks and Recreation

Not that I don't think Lowe wasn't delightful as Chris Traeger, or that I don't get why he or his agent or whoever decided on this strategy, but he doesn't belong in this category.

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Louis C.K., Louie; David Duchovny, Californication; Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory; Thomas Jane, Hung; Matt LeBlanc, Episodes; Danny McBride, Eastbound and Down; Matthew Morrison, Glee; Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory; Matthew Perry, Mr. Sunshine; Jason Schwartzman, Bored to Death; William Shatner, $#*! My Dad Says

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actress in a Comedy

2011-07-12T23:40:00.000-04:00

Yvette Nicole Brown - "Shirley Bennett", Community

Busy Phillipps - "Laurie Keller", Cougar Town

Aubrey Plaza - "April Ludgate", Parks and Recreation

Naya Rivera - "Santana Lopez", Glee

Yvonne Strahovski - "Sarah Walker", Chuck

Sofia Vergara - "Gloria Delgado-Pritchett", Modern Family

Pregnancies involving suspect paternity can seem awfully cliched, but Brown did great work with Shirley struggling to maintain her cheery optimism in the face of a situation over which she has no control. I think Phillipps might best embody what's great about Cougar Town - the show's capacity for both deep silliness and emotional heartbreak. Plaza's arid deadpan is becoming a trademark, but the way she shows the flickers of April's affection for Andy and her coworkers makes her performance great. Rivera got the best material of this season of Glee in communicating both Santana's razor-sharp snarkiness and her roiling internal conflict. Strahovski is always great, but this year in particular she did a great job with Sarah in both action mode and in coming to terms with embracing a domestic commitment she hadn't previously envisioned for herself. Vergara moderates beautifully, letting Gloria be big without feeling too manic or shrill.

Honorable Mention: Julie Bowen, Modern Family; Alison Brie, Community; Rosemarie DeWitt, United States of Tara; Gillian Jacobs, Community; Brie Larson, United States of Tara; Christa Miller, Cougar Town; Heather Morris, Glee; Amy Ryan, The Office; Phyllis Somerville, The Big C; Casey Wilson, Happy Endings; the Perfect Couples ensemble of Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Olivia Munn and Christine Woods

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Jane Adams, Hung; Eve Best, Nurse Jackie; Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory; Jenna Fischer, The Office; Anne Heche, Hung; Ellie Kemper, The Office; Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock; Jane Lynch, Glee; Anna Deavere Smith, Nurse Jackie; Betty White, Hot in Cleveland; Kristen Wiig, Saturday Night Live; Vanessa Williams, Desperate Housewives

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actor in a Comedy

2011-07-12T23:20:00.000-04:00

Keir Gilchrist - "Marshall Gregson", United States of Tara

Donald Glover - "Troy Barnes", Community

Nolan Gould - "Luke Dunphy", Modern Family

Nick Offerman - "Ron Swanson", Parks and Recreation

Danny Pudi - "Abed Nadir", Community

Jason Segel - "Marshall Eriksen", How I Met Your Mother

Gilchrist's performance has always been a highlight of Tara - this season he made Marshall's exhaustion and anger at his family's situation palpable without veering into what could come off as rote teenage pettiness. Glover and Pudi have a great wacky chemistry as Community's dynamic duo, but both also shone in some of the season's quieter episodes ("Mixology Certification" and "Critical Film Studes,"respectively). Gould makes me laugh more consistently than any other performer on Modern Family (and maybe including other shows, too). The things that make Offerman's performance so great are difficult to articulate...the basketball coaching to the mourning of the Indianapolis steakhouse to the Snake Juice dancing to Lil' Sebastian's funeral...it's Ron Effing Swanson, you know? The death of Marshall's father was one of the few story arcs that was consistently well-executed in this season of How I Met Your Mother (if not the only one), and a lot of that has to do with Segel's wonderfully understated work as Marshall contended with his grief.

Honorable Mention: Max Adler, Glee; Aziz Ansari, Parks and Recreation; Chevy Chase, Community; Chris Colfer, Glee; John Corbett, United States of Tara; Garret Dillahunt, Raising Hope; John Benjamin Hickey, The Big C; Josh Hopkins, Cougar Town; Chris Pratt, Parks and Recreation; Adam Scott, Parks and Recreation

With quality ensemble work in: Happy Endings (Zachary Knighton, Adam Pally, Damon Wayans, Jr.); Modern Family (Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ed O'Neill, Eric Stonestreet); Perfect Couples (Kyle Bornheimer, Hayes McArthur, David Walton)

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Fred Armisen, Saturday Night Live; Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men; Ted Danson, Bored to Death; Peter Facinelli, Nurse Jackie; Zach Galifianakis, Bored to Death; Bill Hader, Saturday Night Live; Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother; Ed Helms, The Office; Ken Jeong, Community; John Krasinski, The Office; Jeremy Piven, Entourage; Andy Samberg, Saturday Night Live; Jason Sudeikis, Saturday Night Live; Rainn Wilson, The Office

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actress in a Comedy

2011-07-12T23:00:00.000-04:00

Frances Conroy - "Sandy Gregson", United States of Tara

Dot-Marie Jones - "Coach Beiste", Glee

Megan Mullally - "Tammy Swanson", Parks and Recreation

Gwyneth Paltrow - "Holly Holliday", Glee

Parker Posey - "Lindsay Carlisle Shay", Parks and Recreation

Sherri Shepherd - "Angie Jordan", 30 Rock

Conroy brought a light touch and a loopy energy to Max's mother, providing a low-key counterpart to Tara while also suggesting a rich history. Jones sadly didn't get enough to do in the post-Regionals half of the Glee season, but she balanced the character's quirks with a real sense of pathos and a grounded adultness that isn't always present in the show. With a second appearance as the second Mrs. Swanson, Mullally elevated her character to the Parks and Recreation version of Event Television. I get why some people don't like Gwyneth, but I think she brought an appealing zaniness to her turn as Glee's wanderlust-driven substitute teacher. Posey's glorious snootiness as Lindsay Carlisle Shay was a great example of an actor playing an established niche to the hilt. I've always enjoyed Shepherd's performance as Angie, but this season in particular the "Queen of Jordan" episode was a highlight for 30 Rock.

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Banks, 30 Rock; Carol Burnett, Glee; Margaret Cho, 30 Rock; Mo Collins, Parks and Recreation; Tina Fey, Saturday Night Live; Ashley Fink, Glee; Carolyn Hennesy, Cougar Town; Cloris Leachman, Raising Hope; Shelley Long, Modern Family; Amy Poehler, Saturday Night Live; Susan Sarandon, 30 Rock; Gabourey Sidibe, The Big C; Celia Weston, Modern Family

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Sasha Grey, Entourage; Melanie Griffith, Hot in Cleveland; Queen Latifah, 30 Rock; Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 30 Rock; Mary Tyler Moore, Hot in Cleveland; Jennifer Morrison, How I Met Your Mother; Elaine Stritch, 30 Rock

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Guest Actor in a Comedy

2011-07-09T21:30:00.001-04:00

Robert Clendenin - "Tom", Cougar Town

Darren Criss - "Blaine Anderson", Glee

Timothy Dalton - "Alexei Volkoff", Chuck

Eddie Izzard - "Dr. Jack Hattarras", United States of Tara

Jim Rash - "Dean Pelton", Community

Ben Schwartz - "Jean-Ralphio", Parks and Recreation

I don't think there's another actor or actress who got a better introductory scene this past year than Darren Criss did with "Teenage Dream." It was essentially Glee telling America to meet their new Fake TV Boyfriend, and I think Criss rose to the challenge. (Tangent: The more I think about it, the more I really wish they would do some sort of bit at the Emmys involving Darren Criss, Jon Cryer, and Ducky's lines from Pretty in Pink musing on the name "Blaine.") Dalton was far and away the best thing about Chuck this year, and is probably the best villain the show's ever had, playing Volkoff with a twinkle in his eye that made even psychotic threats of violence seem positively delightful. Clendenin, Rash and Schwartz all proved to be vital oddball contributors to their shows' universes in the second season of all three - Schwartz always throws himself whole-heartedly into Jean-Ralphio's oblivious toolishness, and Rash in particular gets bonus points for multiple costume changes, some involving short shorts. Izzard played well off of Toni Collette, infusing Tara with gravity as he took Hattaras from skeptic to believer.

Honorable Mentions: Will Arnett, 30 Rock; Kevin Corrigan, Community; Matt Damon, 30 Rock; Matt Dillon, Modern Family; Buck Henry, 30 Rock; Ken Howard, 30 Rock; John Lithgow, How I Met Your Mother; James Marsden, Modern Family; Justin Timberlake, Saturday Night Live; Stephen Tobolowsky, Community

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Alan Alda, 30 Rock; Tim Conway, Hot in Cleveland; Richard Dreyfuss, Weeds; Will Ferrell, The Office; Zach Galifianakis, Saturday Night Live; Don Johnson, Eastbound and Down; Michael Keaton, 30 Rock; Nathan Lane, Modern Family; Liam Neeson, The Big C; Carl Reiner, Hot in Cleveland; John Slattery, 30 Rock; John Stamos, Glee

Idle Thoughts

2011-07-09T18:05:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure that I understand what specifically it is that people think they're going to get from an Arrested Development movie that can't be accomplished by picking your six favorite episodes and holding a mini-marathon. Regardless, I wish the creative personnel would just go radio silent on the whole project until it is actually for real in production. The more time passes, the clearer it is that nothing is officially happening until a studio says so in a press release.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie

2011-07-08T21:30:00.000-04:00

Hugh Bonneville - "Robert, Earl of Grantham", Downton Abbey

Benedict Cumberbatch - "Sherlock Holmes", Sherlock

Idris Elba - "John Luther", Luther

William Hurt - "Henry Paulson", Too Big to Fail

Ed Stoppard - "Sir Hallam Holland", Upstairs, Downstairs

Bonneville and Stoppard both excelled in their master-of-the-house roles, projecting the kind of warmth and magnanimity that can make a viewer really want to glorify old modes of class stratification. (I kid, mostly. But they were pretty delightful). Cumberbatch and Elba fall under their own umbrella, that of the preternaturally intuitive detective; Cumberbatch embraced his character's quirks and made the modern-day update of Holmes work, while Elba drove Luther with his charisma even when its narrative arc faltered. Hurt projected calm and anger in presenting Paulson as the both the meteorologist and the eye of the storm that drives Too Big to Fail.

Honorable Mention: Jim Broadbent, Any Human Heart

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Kenneth Branagh, Wallander II: The Fifth Woman; Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood; Samuel L. Jackson, The Sunset Limited; Tommy Lee Jones, The Sunset Limited; Greg Kinnear, The Kennedys; Ian McShane, The Pillars of the Earth; Edgar Ramirez, Carlos; Patrick Stewart, Macbeth

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie

2011-07-08T21:00:00.000-04:00

Hayley Atwell - "Freya Deverell", Any Human Heart

Keeley Hawes - "Lady Agnes Holland", Upstairs, Downstairs

Diane Lane - "Pat Loud", Cinema Verite

Jean Marsh - "Rose Buck", Upstairs, Downstairs

Kate Winslet - "Mildred Pierce", Mildred Pierce

Atwell seems to be establishing herself as the new master of the twentieth-century British period piece - she's the kind of actress where it doesn't ring false when other characters describe hers as magnetic. Hawes gave her lady-of-the-house just the right amount of snappy snarkiness. Lane's performance as Pat Loud made her seem like such a force of nature that when Cinema Verite ended I immediately wanted to search my local library websites for Loud's memoir. Marsh, in the rare position within the miniseries/movie categories of already holding an Emmy for playing her character, anchored Upstairs, Downstairs by tying it to the past while also keeping its flights of nostalgia from feeling twee. Winslet carried Mildred Pierce by making the protagonist always feel painfully human across all the emotional highs and lows of her travails.

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth McGovern, Downton Abbey

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth; Jennifer Love Hewitt, The Client List; Katie Holmes, The Kennedys; Hayden Panettiere, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie

2011-07-08T20:30:00.000-04:00

Brendan Coyle - "John Bates", Downton Abbey

Thomas Dekker - "Lance Loud", Cinema Verite

Martin Freeman - "Dr. John Watson", Sherlock

Paul Giamatti - "Ben Bernanke", Too Big to Fail

Brian F. O'Byrne - "Bert Pierce", Mildred Pierce

This was a tough one to narrow down. Coyle shone in the kind of complex but essentially good-hearted "downstairs" role that seems to form the emotional core of Julian Fellowes' work like Downton Abbey and Gosford Park. Dekker's performance was one of the few in Cinema Verite that didn't feel overly reliant on the original series - slightly over-the-top, but undeniably charismatic. Freeman, more than any other actor who submitted in this category, is more like a co-lead than a supporting player. Wherever he's acknowledged, he deserves recognition for the way he played off of Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes in his wonderfully even-keeled performance as a contemporary Watson. Too Big to Fail was full of great performances, but Giamatti's soft-spoken work as Bernanke commanded particular attention and helped reinforce a sense of portentousness in the events the film covers. O'Byrne did some of the best work in an adaptation that hewed closely to its source material - it would be easy for a character who dumps the protagonist in the earliest minutes of the piece to seem like a villain, but he infused Bert with a flawed but warm humanity.

Honorable Mention: Billy Crudup, Too Big to Fail; James Gandolfini, Cinema Verite; James LeGros, Mildred Pierce; Matthew Macfadyen, Any Human Heart; Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce; Tim Robbins, Cinema Verite; Adrian Scarborough, Upstairs, Downstairs; James Woods, Too Big to Fail

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Donald Sutherland, The Pillars of the Earth; Tom Wilkinson, The Kennedys

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie

2011-07-08T20:00:00.001-04:00

Melissa Leo - "Lucy Gessler", Mildred Pierce

Maggie Smith - "Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham", Downton Abbey

Morgan Turner - "Young Veda Pierce", Mildred Pierce

Ruth Wilson - "Alice Morgan", Luther

Evan Rachel Wood - "Veda Pierce", Mildred Pierce

Melissa Leo and Maggie Smith are the kinds of actresses that the television academy loves to nominate in the miniseries/movie categories: Oscar winners working in buzzy period pieces. Entirely coincidentally, they gave two seriously great, scene-stealing performances. Leo, in Drag Race parlance, served Sassy Thirties Character Actress Realness in every frame of Mildred Pierce she appeared in, while Smith anchored Downton Abbey's look at shifting class mores with regal bearing and amazing line delivery. ("What is a week-end?" rightfully becoming an instant classic.) I couldn't see putting forth Turner without Wood or vice versa; Turner provided the perfectly snooty base in the miniseries' first three episodes, from which Wood crescendoed to delightfully campy heights in the final two. Together their performances shaped one gloriously monstrous young woman. And Wilson brought a necessary energy to Luther with Alice's particular brand of sociopathic menace.

Honorable Mention: Eileen Atkins, Upstairs, Downstairs; Cynthia Nixon, Too Big to Fail; Mare Winningham, Mildred Pierce

I wouldn't be surprised to see: Gillian Anderson, Any Human Heart; Kim Cattrall, Any Human Heart; Patty Duke, Unanswered Prayers; Betty White, The Lost Valentine

Baking: Happy Fourth of July!

2011-07-04T21:09:00.002-04:00

A festively red, white and blue dessert from the holiday weekend!

(Berry Pound Cake with Whipped Cream from Martha Stewart)

Trailer Thoughts

2011-06-27T18:00:00.000-04:00

If you'd asked me at 8:45 last night, "Liz, are you excited about the upcoming season of Boardwalk Empire?", my response would've probably been measured. The first season wasn't perfect, but the actors gave great performances and the finale made me feel like I was looking forward to seeing what the writers would do in a second season, particularly with the alliance between Jimmy, the Commodore and Eli.

Imagine my shock, then, at seeing this preview before the True Blood premiere and finding myself erupting into paroxysms of delight. I'm serious - by the time Jack Huston showed up in that mask, I was jumping up and down and clapping my hands with glee. Maybe I really love all those reprobates. Maybe everything else just seems ten times better in a post-The Killing world.

Week in TV: June 19-25

2011-06-27T16:30:00.000-04:00

Game of Thrones, 1.10: "Fire and Blood"

- Baby dragons!

- This episode had some great scenes from the book that really translated well - the declaration of King in the North, the shot of the Night's Watch rangers heading north of the wall, Arya meeting Gendry, the confrontation with Catelyn and Jaime. They really seem ready to attack A Clash of Kings with all the energy it will require. I'm excited for next spring already.

- Sophie Turner really seems to be digging in as Sansa's story gets progressively grimmer and grimmer. At this rate, assuming they get to a third season, eventually we'll apparently be seeing some sort of masterpiece of pathos with her and Peter Dinklage.

- I wish they would've swept further across Westeros and checked in with at least Renly before the end of the season. I understand that there were necessary limitations based around the simple fact that they filmed without knowing whether or not they'd have a second season, which means no Stannis, no Greyjoys, no Tullys, no new sets for Riverrun or Highgarden, etc. It just made the sense of the developing war seem a bit lopsided in predominantly focusing on the Northern army and the Lannisters.

- The past few weeks sort of got away from me - partly because this was the only show I was interested in writing about, and it thus got lost in the Sunday-to-Sunday schedule, and partly because the really big events weren't surprises to me after reading the book. "The Pointy End" was well-written by George R.R. Martin; he seemed to add a shade of his own understanding of the various Starks that really shaped the episode well (Rickon speaks!), and the scene with Cersei dismissing Ser Barristan from the Kingsguard. (Of all the characters I'd like to hear more from in A Dance with Dragons, Ser Barristan's at the top of the list. I've got my fingers crossed for some chapters where he's just regaling Dany with stories of the Targaryens and Westerosi history.) "Baelor" did an unbelievable job with the final scene - I really liked the way they depicted Yoren finding Arya in the crowd as a sort of last mercy on Ned's part. And both the conversation between Maester Aemon and Jon about being a king's brother and the introduction of Walder Frey were all I'd hoped they'd be.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 10.7: "Icarus"

One of the major bummers about the Internet uproar over the finale of The Killing is that it overshadowed what seems likely to be one of the last great "ripped from the headlines" episodes of the Law and Order universe. (I won't completely rule out SVU making a serious rebound post-cast-adjustments, but it seems unlikely right now.) However much I hyped up the ripping of Spider-Man in my own mind, the actual episode was somehow even better. The depiction of stage flying was amazing. The faux songs were amazing. Cynthia Nixon as Not Julie Taymor was AMAZING.

The Killing, 1.13: "Orpheus Descending"

- I can't sustain the exquisite levels of exasperation and rage sustained by Mo Ryan and Alan Sepinwall in their reviews of this finale, but I can try to put a finger on what specifically about this show was so disappointing to me.

I stopped watching week-to-week about a month before this finale; the show's vaguely defined structure of introducing and dismissing suspects made it fairly clear that the audience wasn't likely to get any important information about who killed Rosie until the writers were ready to reveal who, exactly, that was. Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes continued to do strong work conveying the Larsens' grief, but there wasn't enough variation in their story from episode to episode. The political campaign wasn't engaging. Dismissed suspects faded away, out of the show entirely, where they could've been used to build the show's world. The show's story arc was oddly flat; in post-finale interviews Veena Sud said that she thought people were disappointed because they expected the show to be more like an average procedural. I actually think it's the opposite, as contemporary television structuring goes - people were disappointed because the show didn't behave more like an average serial. (And these days, I don't think anyone tuning into a show on AMC would expect a procedural of any kind.) The eight-to-thirteen-episode cable serial season, as it's come to be established in the past fifteen or so years, has come to represent a more thoughtful use of story and character with more rise and fall and flow than The Killing ever demonstrated.

The real disappointment to me, though, came in the finale's tying of Holder to some sort of conspiracy dedicated to implicating Richmond in the murder, at least in the short term. I watched the four episodes preceding the finale over the weekend, so I already knew that the show had been renewed. When I watched the Linden-and-Holder-focused "Missing," I thought that there could be something there for a second season. I could, conceivably, be engaged in a show about Linden and Holder solving an entirely different, better-written season-long mystery. But it seems that that dream is not to be. At the very least, the finale twist erodes the trust that had built up between them, and at worst it casts Holder as a villain and completely wastes the potential inherent in their partnership. It's not just that Holder was the only character I sort of liked after twelve episodes - Joel Kinnaman was more or less keeping the show afloat with his squirrelly energy - it's that the writers seemed so determined to keep everything shrouded in mystery for as long as possible that they ultimately left Linden not unrelatable but unaccessible. The best detective-driven shows can make you care about a case simply because their protagonist cares, regardless of whether they're "likable" in a traditional sense - I keep wistfully thinking of Veronica Mars and Hank Dolworth - but Linden is still practically a blank in all those respects. Upon the conclusion of this episode, AMC aired a commercial exhorting viewers to tune in next year to learn who really, truly killed Rosie Larsen. And all I could manage was a strangled cry that I simply don't care.

- The ads for the upcoming season of Breaking Bad felt like a mirage of quality storytelling and sustained story arcs in the desert of...whatever this was. I may or may not have exclaimed, "SAVE US, Vince Gilligan!" aloud to my television.

- I feel like Cold Case is being unfairly maligned in the criticism of the things that weren't so great about The Killing. Yes, the show often felt like one long episode of today's standard crime procedurals, with suspects introduced and dismissed as if the weeks between episodes were more like extra-long commercial breaks. But Cold Case, more than any of its peers, excelled at one thing at which The Killing routinely failed: establishing an emotional connection to the victim. The best Cold Case episodes made the victim feel like a real person, and made their death feel like a tragedy. The Killing did neither, and I think many of the show's other problems stem from the void that Rosie Larsen continues to be.

- I love reading online responses to shows like this, and this finale produced a smorgasbord of them. Here I'll cite Myles McNutt's interesting piece about the AMC brand and how The Killing may be undermining their image. I realized during over this past television season that I'm less and less willing to take it on faith that AMC's new shows are worth taking a chance on. I'll probably give Hell on Wheels a chance when it premieres, but I'll be much warier of its potential than I will be for, say, the new shows coming from HBO or FX.

- I understood why AMC decided to cancel Rubicon back in the fall, truly. But, I'll be honest, now the fact that this amorphous show gets to have a second season and we will never get more time with Rubicon's characters is kind of pissing me off.

Pretty Little Liars, 2.2: "The Goodbye Look"

- I love how these girls' parents try to dictate something like keeping them separate from one another but then contribute no real supervision to attempt to enforce it.

- In my imagination, outside of class all the other students talk about how blatantly obvious it is that Ezra and Aria are hooking up. (Oh, how I hoped Mona would actually say as much to Aria.) "He was giving our English class this heartfelt goodbye, but was so clearly talking to only her. He didn't break eye contact with her the whole time!" "I totally saw them making out on the hood of his car out in the parking lot!"

- Parents on teen shows are interesting. On the one hand, they can end up being a vital puzzle piece that makes the show great - your Joyce Summers, your Harold and Jean Weir, your Graham and Patty Chase. On the other, some work fine without them - I've basically accepted that we're never going to meet most of the parents on Glee, no matter how little narrative sense it makes. PLL, besides the obvious gap between imagined and actual authority cited above, tends to use them fairly well. Here, though, I find myself really, really wanting to meet the Cavanaughs. Who are these mysterious people who raised these two weirdos, perhaps the weirdest kids in a town full of strange, twitchy teenagers? What are their family dinners like? Do they not notice that Toby projects sadness all around him all the time, or that Jenna is seriously, seriously creepy, or do they just not care? Every time one of them mentions their parents, I'm like, "I must see these people made flesh!"

Friday Night Lights, 5.10: "Don't Go"

"Apt" seems insufficient as a descriptor for that episode title. I've had, I don't know, over a year to accept that this show is ending, but it didn't really hit home until this episode. Tim's parole hearing, especially Buddy's surprisingly touching speech to the board, broke some sort of emotional dam inside me, whence flowed a veritable geyser of tears. I'm not prepared for the next three weeks.

Mood Music LVIII

2011-06-16T19:23:00.003-04:00

It's been one of those days. You know, the kind where you wake up at 6:15 in the morning after falling asleep with your contacts still in, then fall back asleep after getting up to take them out to be awoken again by your alarm at 9:30. Then comes the back-and-forth with you and the snooze button and around, oh, 10:20 or so, part of your brain thinks, "This is well past a rational adult time in the morning to wake up. You are totally ready to turn the alarm off and seize the day!" but there's also this sluggish voice fighting to be heard saying something more like, "You know, I think I'm still tired. I don't really think we should turn the alarm off. You...should really...reset...the...alarm...before...youuuu....faaalllll...baaaack...tooooo..." And then the next time you open your eyes, you already know without looking at the clock that it is past noon. Yeah, one of those days.

Anywho, the above selection just sort of keeps popping into my head. Probably the annual post-Tonys surge of show tune love. The performance comes from the 80th birthday concert they did for Stephen Sondheim last year, which I watched when it aired on PBS. I'd never heard any songs from Follies before, but I automatically loved nearly every selection they included in the concert. I'm kind of bummed that I never got to see the recent Kennedy Center production of Follies, though I suppose that's my own fault for never bringing it up with persons more financially equipped to purchase theater tickets during the relevant time window.

Dream Emmy Ballot 2011: Nonexistent Category Division

2011-06-06T00:15:00.001-04:00

It's that time of year again, y'all. I know it's geeky to get so jazzed about something like this, but the only sport I follow with any regularity/have a consistent understanding of the rules of is tennis, so the Dream Emmy Ballot is my version of the fantasy draft. Posts coming in the weeks ahead! I thought I'd share a quality scene from some recent Netflixing to celebrate:

Ostensibly, I suppose this falls under the "Guest Actor in a Drama" category, but A) I'd be shocked if ABC Family submitted this for consideration and B) it feels like a performance of this nature deserves a category all it's own. Like "Best Performance by an 'Actor' Playing What is Essentially a Thinly-Veiled Version of Himself." So, step aside Fred Thompson on The Good Wife, because this is The. Best.*

[*If I may digress, this clip is also an exemplary display of the kind of campiness that Make It or Break It could really use. Watching the show, I appreciated that every one of the central characters spent some time being a smug, egomaniacal bitch, since it felt authentic to the kind of pressure-filled environment that the show takes place in, but I then intermittently wished that it was also the kind of show where people sometimes slap each other. Certainly, an infusion of manic soapiness might make it seem less disturbing that NO ONE reacts appropriately to Lauren's non-stop sniping and sociopathic behavior.]

Week in TV: May 29-June 4

2011-06-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Game of Thrones - 1.7, "You Win or You Die"

- In Which the Starks' deeply ingrained sense of honor begins to come back to bite them in the ass - a theme that I'm sure will only get more and more heartbreakingly wearying as the series progresses.

- I'm not sure that I ever had the impression from the books that Tywin Lannister was the sort to literally get his hands dirty, but I can't quibble with such a perfectly badass introduction. I really love Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's performance in the episode's opening scene as well - you get so much of the fraught relationship between the Lannisters just from the way he shows Jaime quietly shrinking in the presence of his father.

- It's interesting that the show is making me notice parallels that I didn't necessarily see in the books , just from the ways the different story threads are arranged - specifically, I never really thought about the relationships in common between Jorah and Dany with the Dothraki and the Old Bear and Maester Aemon at the wall until their scenes were put together in this episode.

- Idle Thought: It occurred to me as I read Alan Sepinwall's piece on the Deadwood pilot that maybe part of the reason why GoT's recurring use of Expositional Monologuing with Prostitutes feels so clunky is because Al Swearengen already proved himself the master of the form.

Friday Night Lights - 5.8, "Fracture"

- Kyle Chandler has had many great moments across this series, but Coach Taylor quietly yet aggressively running Derek off of his property has to rank in the top ten. Julie must've told her illicit T.A. paramour exactly nothing about her parents to make him think that showing up in Dillon was a good idea.

- I missed the opening credits, and thus got to be pleasantly surprised by Matt's appearance (and, sure, let out a bit of a girly shriek). I may have to re-embrace my final-season-of-Lost strategy of deliberately ignoring the credits to keep the guest appearances as fresh as possible.

- It's really too bad this show has already wrapped. The ladies of the Landing Strip deserve to have their own webisodes where they dole out beauty tips and relationship advice.

Other Shows

The summer season of internet TV writers rewatching past shows began this week, and there's a lot of shows I just might rewatch along with them - Six Feet Under, Veronica Mars, Deadwood. Sunday's popularity as the night for cable dramas means that even with So You Think You Can Dance, the summer schedule of new programming has really front-loaded weeks. And rewatching should mean that I can pace myself week-by-week and resist the temptation to marathon.

In particular, I really enjoyed Ryan McGee's piece on the Alias pilot, because it articulated a lot of things I haven't previously put together about the show's significance in my development as a television viewer and fan. I've already written here about how Freaks and Geeks marks a turning point in my TV-watching evolution, but I don't think I've given the same degree of thought to Alias. I was a sophomore in high school when Alias premiered and, like Freaks and Geeks, Alias was one of the first shows that I really loved in a way that I knew was fundamentally different from watching NBC's Thursday night lineup just because it was popular.

It was the first show where I had a concept of the showrunner behind the scenes (J.J. Abrams, in this case) and how he shaped and drove what happened on the show. It was the first show where I really looked at fan sites online. The first two seasons are some of the first, if not the first, TV DVDs I owned. It isn't just a game-changer for network television as a serial, as McGee outlines, but on a personal level it gave me a degree of familiarity with genre television I hadn't had before, which in turn made me more receptive to shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost (and probably about a dozen others I could name). If Freaks and Geeks helped me to define my concept of myself as an independent television viewer, Alias helped me think about the kinds of genres I wanted to explore and thematic paths I was then interested in traveling down.

Week in TV: May 22-28

2011-05-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Game of Thrones - 1.6, "A Golden Crown"

- Peter Dinklage and Jane Espenson: a match made in snarky-fantasy-TV Heaven. (I'll also add props for Arya's excellent "bitch, please" asides when Sansa talks about how much she wants to stay in King's Landing and bear Joffrey's babies.) Of all the show's characters, I think Tyrion's voice is losing the least in translation from the original book, and Dinklage is doing a bang-up job. When I read A Clash of Kings, I kept thinking that if that material made it to the show relatively intact then he'd probably end up with an Emmy, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if he sneaks up and becomes a frontrunner for the award this season.

- I have mixed feelings about having read (most) of the books before watching this show. (I don't know that I've mentioned before that I'm in the middle of A Feast for Crows. It's slower going than the first three.) On the one hand, knowing who dies when and how terribly tinges some scenes with an air of tragedy that's hard to shake (the different combinations of people who don't know they'll never see each other again in the departures from Winterfell in the second episode made me unexpectedly burst into tears - I didn't realize before then that I cared that much). On the other, it does occasionally give things a bit of "yelling-at-the-screen-during-a-horror-movie" flair. Like that scene where Sansa made up with Joffrey - sometimes it's an "Oh, Sansa," sometimes it's a "Girl, RUN," sometimes it's a "Ooh, honey, this is not going to work out in your favor." Good times.

Glee - 2.22, "New York"

This episode ended up seriously frustrating me, and I'm trying to put a finger on why without devolving into a pure rant. I just still can't believe that they tried to play off Rachel and Finn kissing as the reason that the club didn't make it past the first cut at Nationals and not their unformed, unfocused, bullshit "rehearsal" "process." It seems insulting to a) songwriters and b) actual glee clubs who actually work to prepare themselves for competition to suggest that a group - even with the "pluck" and "determination" of the New Directions - would show up at a competition like this with barely a day's work on their performances and not be repeatedly and dramatically shown up. (Sure, they didn't make the cut, but twelfth? Seriously?) I haven't been in a chorus in over a decade, but chunks of songs I sang then surface out of my mind all the time. You know why? Because we practiced them - ad nauseum. As much as the show tried to sort of place Jesse in the non-dreamer villain column in critiquing the club, he was also mostly right. There have been enough song performances that have landed more in the "flight of fancy" realm than the "actual performance" one this season for me to think must be some way for this show to show the club taking the competition structure as seriously as they pretend to and still showcase a variety of songs.

I keep thinking about this show in comparison with Friday Night Lights - last season, I kept thinking that Will is the kind of character who imagines himself to be someone like Coach Taylor, but is actually more like Assistant Coach Stan. (Except I actually wish FNL would follow up on that one time when Julie awkwardly ran into Assistant Coach Stan at that gay bar, and never want to see another story about Will's romantic life ever again.) FNL lets the structure of the competitive season shape the show, and even though its characters are sometimes underdogs, it never pretends that the team's success happens without focused hard work. I wish Glee had enough confidence in its storytelling to do the same.

Other Shows:

- The first three seasons felt like some of the most human television I've ever seen, asking the viewer to consider people and society and how they're all held together in a way that felt truly unlike any other show I've watched. It's a fascinating snapshot of domestic politics in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I doubt that another show will ever offer as thoughtful a portrayal of the issues involved in the death penalty. The later seasons devolve a bit into sensationalism, more melodramatic storytelling and distractingly prominent guest stars, but it remains a singular show. I can see seeds of the cable TV revolution in Oz, though I can also see why the show may not have received a lot of awards attention even with its superlative acting ensemble. I'm even more intrigued now to watch The Sopranos and The Wire.

- The fact that nearly every character on this show is a Bad Dude or Lady has given an unsettling air to so many things - Criminal Intent, Fringe, those Farmer's Insurance ads with J.K. Simmons...I'm not sure I could go back to watching Dexter even if I wanted to. I think the only media that doesn't feel adversely impacted is Dean Winters' set of "Mayhem" ads for Allstate. That being said, that ubiquity just reinforces the feeling that the casting directors who work with HBO's shows don't get nearly enough credit as star-makers, or even just as discoverers and highlighters of talent. (In my dreams, next year Vanity Fair devotes one of their excellent photo spreads to 15 years of HBO dramas.)

- It was interesting to finish watching this show in the same week when Christopher Meloni's decision to leave Law and Order: SVU was announced, as Oz repeatedly made it dramatically clear that SVU was wasting Meloni's boatloads of God-given charisma.

- This was the first full series I watched via HBOGo, and while I'm not overly fond of watching things on the computer I was pleasantly surprised by the streaming service. While the actually streaming software (or maybe just the site's bandwidth, I don't know, I'm not a techie) still seems to need some tweaking (it's not as consistent for me as, say, the Netflix player), the selection of series in particular is great - the streaming counters the main frustration of watching HBO dramas through Netflix, where the breakdown of episodes-per-disc means that watching multiple seasons can move at a snail's pace. It's verrry tempting to blaze through the relevant remaining entries on my "best of the 00s" wishlist (four down in the last 18 months - holla!) - for now I'll settle for figuring out how it can best supplement the reading I'm starting to work on for comps.

Mood Music LVII

2011-05-28T12:00:00.002-04:00

Early KoL always feels perfectly suited to the kind of insufferably hot, humid weather that dominates my summers - makes it slightly more bearable to step out of doors.

Screened: April 2011

2011-05-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

April 3: Sex and the City 2

Screened: At home, DVR from HBO

April 9: 12 Angry Men

Screened: At home, from personal collection

April 15: McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

April 21: How Do You Know

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

April 23: Trainspotting

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

April 24: Prodigal Sons, Life as a House

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

Books Read: January, February and March 2011

2011-05-27T12:00:00.001-04:00

January 1: The Long Song by Andrea Levy

January 16: Starter for Ten by David Nicholls

January 21: A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

February 2: A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

February 19: I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson

March 8: Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

Week in TV: May 15-21

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

Game of Thrones

- I kind of loved the scene with Renly & Loras, if only because it makes me really excited for the show to introduce more of the Tyrells - doesn't "capitalize on an intimate or vulnerable moment with your partner to advance your personal agenda" seem like a move straight out of the Queen of Thorns' playbook? I love the way the books increasingly present the Tyrells as super-schemers, but with less of the overinflated sense of self you see in other houses, and I think that the show's original writing could draw Margaery in particular as an interesting counterpart to Sansa.

- The beginning of the trip to the Eyrie was just the best - the uneasy side-eye action between Catelyn and Tyrion while Lysa rants crazily from her throne? THE BEST.

- I forgot to mention previously how much I love the opening credits. I can't wait to see how they render Riverrun, the Twins and Harrenhal.

The Killing

I'm going to start letting episodes accumulate on the DVR and watch them all closer to when the season ends. I was just so disengaged during this hour, and found at the end that I didn't particularly care about that disengagement. Still well-performed by its principal actors, still drearily-paced.

Law and Order: Criminal Intent

I don't know that I've ever seen an episode of any Law and Order franchise use a flashback like this one did. Connecting Goren's therapy back to his interplay with Nicole Wallace was cleverly written and well-edited; I hope they keep drawing on that sort of continuity in this set of episodes.

90210

I couldn't let the season finale pass without observing how much I enjoyed the storyline of Adrianna switching out Silver's meds. It was Classic Spelling: a circumstance that would be horrible if it occurred in real life, but that made for excellent melodramatic television (like Adam Carrington painting Jeff Colby's office with lead paint to gaslight him back in the day on Dynasty). This episode's appearance of the Ghost of Javier was just the icing on the cake.

How I Met Your Mother

The semi-reveal of the wedding at the end of this episode was so terribly frustrating, and perfectly encapsulated the things that have been distancing me from my former status as a fan of HIMYM. The writers keep throwing the ball out ahead and then promising that the journey to get where the show is going will be worth certain information remaining shrouded in mystery. But - it isn't. I used to be so excited for this show, but when I heard that it was being renewed for not one, but two more seasons, I just felt exhausted. I believe that they could still have great stories remaining for the characters. I believe they could mine good material from Lily and Marshall having a baby. I believe they could find their Paul Rudd, so to speak, in casting a girlfriend for Ted who's not an unbelievably grating character (or even, Heaven forbid, the Mother). It just doesn't seem like Bays and Thomas are willing to go there without a set endpoint, and I don't know how much more patience I have for wheel-spinning.

Friday Night Lights

I love how Billy and Mindy are a) turning into Taylors-in-Training, with various hits and misses as mentors to the teens in their lives and b) adopting Luke and Becky as surrogates for Tim and Tyra. Their messiness is so endearing.

Mood Music LVI

2011-05-23T12:59:00.002-04:00

I think Born This Way : 2011 :: Ta-Dah : 2006; that is, a dance album that comes around at the precise moment when I need some perking up.

Books Read: December 2010

2011-05-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

Better late than never, right?

December 22: Original Story By by Arthur Laurents

There's actually a very specific reason why I picked up this memoir - for a while now, I've been sort of fascinated by the character Anybodys in West Side Story. Like various of the Jets, she doesn't have a clear antecedent in Romeo and Juliet, but is rendered with an intriguing degree of specificity as a) a supporting character and b) someone who vocally refuses to conform to gender norms in the early 1960s. I wondered if she was a creation of Laurents, who wrote the book for West Side Story, and accordingly decided to pick up Original Story By to see if he discussed it at all. While that question wasn't addressed in any way, shape or form, the book was a delightful read. Laurents isn't afraid to indulge in some good, old-fashioned name-dropping - he seems to have interacted with an unbelievable array of Old Hollywood figures, and is wonderfully willing to talk about who he doesn't like and why and to dissect how his own work translated from page to screen.

December 26: Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Good, but probably my least favorite of Cohn and Levithan's three collaborations. I liked the different scope of New York locales they utilized for this book, and the way they used the Christmas season to revel in touristy kitsch, but Dash and Lily as protagonists come off a bit abrasive in their high opinions of their own points of view.

December 26: Fannie's Last Supper by Chris Kimball

Reading more Cooks Illustrated and watching more of the America's Test Kitchen shows in the past year have really made me a fan of Kimball. (I love this Slate piece, where he declares that suggested cooking times are "bullshit.") The enthusiasm that drives his presence in the shows is evident in this take on the Fannie Farmer cookbook of 1896. The academic in me would've liked a bit more examination of how class shaped kitchen work and who performed it, but the budding foodie reader loved the detail Kimball devoted to dissecting every element of the late-nineteenth-century multi-course dinner party.

December 27: Matched by Allie Condie

A solid introduction to what is clearly intended to be a series, but also a bit dry. Once you've read more than one young-adult take on a dystopian universe, the whole structure of the "heroine being part of the system/heroine questioning the system/heroine rejecting the system and working for the revolution" can feel pretty rote if it isn't executed with a significant measure of unique framing and writing infused with emotion. I think the ideas shaping the world of Matched have potential for a great second book, but I felt the introduction was just good.

December 27: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

December 28: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Both books where I'm intrigued to see how they've been adapted for the screen later this year - they could be affecting if done well, and melodramatic camp-fests if not. (Maybe fabulously so? I mean, one thing that really stuck with me when I read Water for Elephants was that, trusting that they stick to the story, Cristoph Waltz getting *spoiler alert!* clubbed to death with a circus tent pole by the elephant he once abused could make for the kind of clip that out-of-context viral fame is made of.)

Week in TV: May 8-14

2011-05-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

Game of Thrones

- This episode was particularly exposition-tastic. It wasn't really a great stand-alone episode of television, but it dispensed a lot of information vital to the series in as elegant a manner as possible, which is all that one can really ask of an adaptation dealing with as sprawling a world as this one.

- Sansa's discussion of mothering male heirs in this episode, and the show's ongoing descriptions of houses with interrupted lines of succession due to war made an interesting contrast with the recent royal wedding business. Obviously, the newly-minted Duchess of Cambridge doesn't have to worry about those same negative implications of producing female heirs, but the suggestions of a reproductive imperative in royal marriage were still swirling all around that event.

- There are many character introductions that fill me with delight (the third episode did a great job of bringing in a lot of the series' major supporting characters without making it feel like too many pieces were coming into play) but inception of Jon and Sam's wonderful bromance made me particularly happy.

- The Skins fan in me freaked out to see Joe Dempsie playing Gendry. It's always nice to see an actor you like in a role that starts out relatively small - it speaks to the potential for world-building in the show that they've already cast the role with someone who can handle it becoming more prominent. It's probably looking too far ahead to think about how awesome he might be working with Maisie Williams in the second season, but I'm excited anyway.

The Killing

I keep thinking back and comparing this show with the first season of Veronica Mars in reflecting on why I think it's not quite working. Veronica Mars did a great job of sustaining its overall arc, especially in pacing revelations regarding the conspiracy around imprisoning the wrong man for Lilly's murder and in maintaining a cloud of suspicion around several characters until the final reveal of the real murderer. It made Lilly Kane a vivid character in her own right, showing not just that the remaining characters missed her but illuminating her unique personality and presence. And it introduced Aaron Echolls with subtlety, showing that he could be a villain without making it immediately clear that he was the villain.

Conversely, I feel like I can't say much about Rosie Larsen, besides that she liked butterflies and had some shady friends. The show has drawn great performances from Brent Sexton and Michelle Forbes in showing the Larsens' grief, but still has this distinct void around who Rosie was and what specifically they miss about her. While I could see the Richmond campaign tying back in to the murder investigation later in the season, right now it's making for a dull B-story that highlights how little is being solved week-to-week in the A-plot. I'm trying to be optimistic, and could definitely see them pulling out a great couple of episodes once they let the audience in on who the killer was and how he or she has been covering their tracks. Right now, though, it's not quite all gelling.

Gossip Girl

I love the way the show uses Desmond Harrington. It's like Stephanie Savage keeps him locked up in a closet somewhere in Silvercup and once a year just sort of drags him out, dusts off the mothballs and sticks him in front of a camera to do the Jack Bass thing. He's turned into one of the show's few recurring characters who is used exactly the right amount.

Parks and Recreation

- So back in January, Amy Poehler did this interview with Alan Sepinwall where she mentioned the drunk talking heads from "The Fight" and how awesome they were, and I kept thinking back to that wondering when they would come up and whether I was over-hyping them in my mind. The reality, somehow, was so much better.

- There's something I really love about April's pretense that the Snakehole Lounge is actually named after someone whose last name is Snakehole.

Friday Night Lights

- I love how over the years my FNL viewing keeps coming around to some point or another where I end up shaking my head sadly at the TV, sighing, and saying, "Oh, Julie." I can't even quibble with what a terrible decision-maker she is, since the vast difference between her idea of her worldliness and her actual worldliness been such a consistent part of her character nearly since the pilot. (In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a fairly direct line between that charmingly pretentious analogy she makes between the Panthers and Moby Dick and her ultimately having an affair with a TA.) I just hope the rest of the season doesn't leave her too downtrodden.

- It is positively eerie how much the kid they have playing Buddy, Jr. looks like Brad Leland.

On pickups and cancellations:

We're heading into one of my favorite times of year, when the TV year ends. The next weeks will have upfronts with pilot pickups and show renewals, and then comes Dream Emmy ballot time. (Yay!) It's been interesting to watch the news of cancellations and renewals coming down this week - it seems like most of the networks are ready to clean their slates and work on reshaping their brands. If there's been another season since the writers' strike with so much turnover, I can't recall it. Most of the cancellations were unsurprising, though some were disappointing - I felt like Detroit 1-8-7 and Off the Map had great casts with material that could've made great shows with a little tweaking and refining. And I was happy to see that Happy Endings got a renewal - there's definitely the potential for a great second season there, a la How I Met Your Mother. More commentary yet to come as the weeks progress and I reflect on which shows I may stop watching looking ahead to next season...

A Wish Come True

2011-05-14T17:15:00.000-04:00

God bless Kurt Sutter and his wonderful compulsion to share. It's all an insatiable media consumer and lover of behind-the-scenes information could hope for.

If you'll recall, I said back in the fall that this specifically was an episode for which I was looking forward to the cast commentary, so this just fills my heart with glee.

Ready for Summer

2011-05-09T13:21:00.003-04:00

HBO's promos tend to be pretty excellent across the board - I love each season's new "look how awesome we are" shows-and-movies montage - but there's something I really love about the simplicity of this one. Like, "Check out our hot awesome cast in all their glorious righteousness." And I don't think there's a clearer illustration of the general excellence of Nelsan Ellis than how much of Lafayette's character he projects in about four seconds of screen time. The fourth book of the original series is probably my favorite, and now I'm really starting to look forward to the particular brand of insane tawdriness that True Blood brings to the summer. Seven weeks and counting...

Trailer Thoughts

2011-05-03T17:05:00.004-04:00

I'm so curious to see how this show shakes out - nineteenth-century America is so underrepresented in television once you get away from the standard Western template and tropes, and the construction of the railroad seems like a rich vein to tap. I'm particularly intrigued by Common's character - it seems like popular media has been reluctant to tackle the emancipation generation of black Americans in all their complexity, and there's definitely a wealth of stories to be told there. There's so much potential here - I hope the show's writers capitalize on as much of it as possible.

In Which I Am Psychic

2011-04-23T17:45:00.003-04:00

And then: from today. I'm so terribly excited for the return of Goren and Eames. Best L&O partnership across all franchises, in my opinion.