It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

So for part II of my changing the channel adventure, I decided to check out Days of our Lives. I didn’t really have much of a concrete reason for choosing this one other than the online buzz for the show at this point seems fairly decent.

I didn’t have any trouble figuring out what was going on. For the most part (more on this later). Just like in stereotypes they do a good enough job of working exposition into scenes that it’s easy enough to catch up. Even though there’s major plotline that seems to be referencing some deep history.

Over all, I’m digging the show a bit more than B&B (which annoys me since it’s twice as long). There are things I definitely like about it. I like that they’ve spent a lot of time dealing with the friendship dynamics between Abigail and Melanie. Abigail kind of grates on my nerves, but the big issue is that television usually gets so swept up in couple swapping that they forget to include non-sexual friendships. And friendships can be just as compelling dramatically. I loved watching Melanie listen to Abbey’s whole story about sleeping with her married professor boss. You could see Melanie thinking that her friend was crazy and stupid and yet trying to still be a good friend. A lot of us have been there. It was a nice touch of reality.

Other things I like: EJ is a wonderful villain. Smarmy and smug. Devious. But he’s also multifaceted—seems to actually have some sort of a heart and feelings etc. I was blindsided by the revelation that EJ and Sami had slept together (this is a big deal because they’re both married to other people) because ordinarily on soaps when people have secrets they talk about them constantly, loudly, in public locations. I’m amazed that the show enabled me to be surprised. Nicely done. On the other hand, I wasn’t entertained by Sami’s husband Rafe making out with her sister Carrie because they kept building and building to it, yet I don’t really see any chemistry between the two. I’m also incredibly sick of listening to Sami yell at people about it. I hate when television shows do this thing where they have characters have the same conversation over and over again and it goes nowhere. Oops, this was supposed to be the things I liked. I like Will. By which I mean Will is an obnoxious little punk, but that’s an accurate portrayal of a young man in his late teens/early 20s. Particularly one simultaneously struggling with being in the closet and knowing his mother cheated on the step-father he really likes with the ex-step-father he hates. I liked the corporate espionage storyline with Sami and Madison, particularly in the way it made it clear that people around the two women would not have been so upset out of similar behavior by men. Nice. I like that the professor sleeping with the student subplot didn’t go with the standard seductive teacher but when with the kinda psycho undergrad. (By the way, since you may not be watching, they didn’t actually sleep together, she’s just convinced him they did. He was actually too drunk to stay conscious that long).

Things I dislike: Stefano is simultaneously too much of a cartoon villain and not enough of a cartoon villain. It’s hard to do a fleshed out caricature, and they aren’t pulling it off. I’m not entertained by this whole subplot where Hope (who thinks she’s married to Bo) is actually married to John (who thinks he’s married to Marlena). I don’t care. I don’t get why they care so much. I just want it over. I don’t like the whole election storyline because I’m clearly supposed to be rooting for Abe, but I can’t get past is unethical behavior (he let someone give him the debate questions ahead of time while slipping his opponent fake debate questions). His whole logic that his opponent (the aforementioned EJ) was dirty and so he had to sink down to fight him at that level didn’t convince me. Nor did his desperation that EJ would do horrible things as mayor. Seriously, he’d just be mayor. Too my knowledge that doesn’t come with missile codes or anything. How badly could he screw things up in one term? I was relieved when Abe’s wife finally pointed that out to him, but not relieved enough to like this storyline.

So over all, I’m definitely liking it more that Bold and the Beautiful. But I’m not loving it. I’m not invested in it. When my DVR crashed and erased an episode I wasn’t that upset. I didn’t even go watch it online. Maybe investment takes time. I had half a lifetime invested in OLTL and I don’t expect to feel that for any other show any time soon. But I’m still trying to support scripted drama where I can. And I’ll admit I’ve been thrilled to see ratings for all the non-ABC soaps increasing while the ratings for ABC’s new reality show nosedive into the toilet.

If you were waiting last night for our weekly Downton Redux, you were disappointed. I doubt this actually happened to anyone seeing as I don’t think we have many readers who don’t follow me on twitter, and I spent a good chunk of time whining about this on twitter. My DVR has been acting squirrely for weeks. I knew it was going to need to be replaced. When it crashed on Thursday night, deleting all my recordings for the second time in two weeks, I knew it needed to be replaced soon. But I was leaving town Friday morning and I was able to get it back online, so I figured I’d deal with it another time. When I got back on Saturday night it needed to be reset twice, but each time came online without deleting anything. And I was tired, so I did nothing about it. I had to reset it again on Sunday, but I was still tired and my vertigo had returned. And once again, I was able to get it working again. I was even able to watch things I had recorded on it. I decided to call AT&T on Monday.

About 6:00pm it started making a funny noise (I wasn’t watching TV at the moment) and I realized it needed to be reset again. Only this time restarting it didn’t work. I tried resetting the gateway it connects to and that didn’t help. Then I tried unplugging it and resetting everything. Usually that wipes my DVR but gets it going again. Not this time. I went to online customer service (AT&T has recently made the phone number for customer service nearly impossible to find). The man on the other end of our chat talked me through restoring my DVR to factory settings. This still did nothing. He informed me that he would send someone out to repair/replace it and the earliest time slot available was 8:00am on Monday morning (due to my work schedule we had to schedule a much later one, but that’s not relevant to the story.)

And that’s when the nagging fear I’d had since Saturday night became a reality. I would not get to watch the Downton Abbey Christmas special when it came on at 9:00pm. Yes, it would later be available online. Yes, my friend J who lives across town and currently owes me some serious karma already has the DVDs and I could borrow it from him. Yes, my mother bought me the DVDs as a thank you for introducing her to the series and for paying off my car early and will probably get them to me by this weekend. No, it was not the end of the world in any way.

But I still sat down and sobbed. Then I realized it was stupid to cry over such a trivial thing when there are so many worse things going on in the world. Heck, there are many worse things going on in my life. This only made me cry harder.

You have to understand I am having the semester from hell. In the past couple weeks I have been reminded/realized 1) that I am a tiny insignificant cog in an overworked system 2) my staff sucks and I have to do all of their jobs 3) I have been screwed over by my committee 4) I will probably not get to take my qualifying exams this semester as planned 5) I am really not all that smart, and that might be an impediment in my chosen career path.  Add to that a severe case of vertigo.

In the midst of all that, the one bright spot has been Downton Abbey. It’s the only show on television I look forward to watching. It’s also the only time in the week I stop multitasking. Any other television I watch while grading papers, sending emails, cooking/eating meals, working out, etc. But for the past several weeks on Sunday night I take my shower early, fix myself a cup of tea or a glass of wine or both, and sit on my couch in my jammies with my kitty on my lap and lose myself in a delicious bit of fluff.

Last night that opportunity was taken away from me. And, naturally, I did the neurotic grad student thing of telling myself it was because I don’t deserve to relax like that. I have too much work to do to spend two hours watching television unless I’m also doing something productive. This was probably the judgment of the universe punishing me for being a slacker. I hadn’t been as productive Sunday morning as I could have—this was my punishment. Hell, if I had just had the initiative to contact AT&T in the morning I might have been able to get it fixed earlier. I had only myself to blame.

In the end it’s still not the end of the world. Some very sweet stranger on Twitter let me know I could watch on YouTube, quickly adding a note that he would ordinarily not endorse such a thing, but he recognized it was a major emergency. It was bizarrely touching. And since I knew I was useless for grading papers (I would have failed everyone) I decided to indulge a little bit. Not trusting the image quality on YouTube I decided to rewatch last week’s episode on PBS.com. I didn’t relax the whole time—I was periodically minimizing it so I could print today’s attendance sheets, packing everything I would need for today at work, and organizing the papers I was not going to grade until today. But I also relaxed some. I drank a cup of tea and a glass of wine. I ate a Reese’s peanut butter egg that’s been in my freezer since last Easter. I looked though my cookbooks for my next ice cream recipe.

And the upshot is that next Sunday, when I otherwise would have had to deal with the reality of no Downton till next year, I can lounge on my couch and relax one last time.

So… I missed my post on Wednesday. And I’m making today’s post only moments into the day. This is really all because I’m going to a conference this Friday and Saturday. But it’s really, really because of a particular road trip fixation I have: having the proper music. And because I have a CD player in my car that plays data CDs, this boils down to making the perfect massive mixed CD.

Driving back from Virginia this January I engineered CDs that held seven or eight musicals, because musicals are the perfect music for road trips. But this time around I’m driving several other students of various backgrounds, musical tastes, and languages. So musicals didn’t seem the best choice (particularly in that one of my passengers hates musicals so much he dislikes “Once More with Feeling” even though he’s a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan). So mix CD it is.

But it was extra pressure. Figuring what of my music would go over with my friends. Not helped by the fact that two of my passengers are ethnomusicologists. People who study music for a living. So I wound up spending several hours that I logically should not have putting together the perfect playlist on Wednesday. Only to have my burning program malfunction and decide it would not work. So I switched to a different program and rebuilt my playlist. Well… I started to, because it crashed halfway through and erased what I had done so far.

So we’ll hope the CD works. Because if it didn’t I will realize that all that time was an even bigger waste of time than it seems.

Would we drink coffee with Jon Stewart?

Kristy: I’m really kind of shocked this one hasn’t come up before. I actually did a search before writing this, because although I couldn’t remember doing one, it seemed we must have. But if we have, I can’t find it.

The short answer is: Hell yes. How could I not? He’s that William and Mary alumni that gave all the rest of us hope that we might actually be cool some day. And not cool in the frat boy, business major kind of way, because those of us who weren’t that already had no desire to be. Cool in that smart, funny, people listen to me and love me kind of way. There are a lot of things I love about Mr. Stewart. He brings the funny and knows how to use humor to call attention to things that need it and to elevate the conversation. I love that he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously. These things would be enough to make me buy him a cup of coffee. But I’d also sit down with him for a cup because there are things I’d love to ask him: What’s the truth behind his time at W&M? He’s alluded several times to not being happy during that time, was it the general pressure cooker that is W&M or was there something else? None of my business, but that doesn’t matter at the Spacial Anomaly Coffee Bar and Refueling station. I’d love random gossip about what the people he’s worked with over the years are really like. I’d love to know his actual opinions on current events. And just in case he ever misses the ‘Burg, I’d bring him ginger cakes and maybe even a Cheese Shop sandwich.

Cammy:  Oh, hell yeah!  As Kristy said, how could I not?  We owe him coffee for giving us hope.  And it would be interesting to find out how he feels about being the bench mark for W&M students to aspire to (move over, TJ).  I’d like to get his stories of the most surprisingly funny interview-ees.  He’s nerd enough that he’s interviewed a lot more than just entertainment personalities, so which of those writers, politicians, historians, etc. really caught him off-guard with their ability to banter back?   I also need to apologize for hating his guts for the first 6 months he was doing The Daily Show (I was a fan back in the Craig Kilborn days and was pissed when Kilborn left.  I took it out on the new guy.  Until I realized the new guy was way funnier).

I’ve always said I’m grateful to have had a brother (even though growing up there were plenty of times I wasn’t grateful to have my brother) because I think I understand the opposite sex much better than girls who grow up without them. There’s something about spending that much time in a nonsexual relationship with a member of the opposite sex that is very educational and helps you avoid certain misunderstandings if you start dating the opposite sex when you grow up. Now my brother and I are six years apart and even though we have a good relationship we weren’t super close, so I’m sure there are plenty of things I still don’t understand about guys, but I still find myself from time to time explaining male behavior to friends who’ve done more dating than I have, just because they don’t get men.

Tonight I was reminded of just exactly how much women can remain a mystery to men without sisters. I’m often amused to discover that my male friends actually believed certain movie stereotypes about women; for example, they’re often disappointed to learn that at slumber parties we don’t sit around in our underwear braiding each others’ hair (apologies to our male readers if I just shattered any fantasies). But I had never encountered the particular delusion my friend K suffered from until tonight.

K is at a special disadvantage in that he has no sisters, he works in a male dominated profession, and he’s gay. He’s spent seriously limited time around women. Tonight a bunch of us were drinking some apocalypse cocktails (don’t ask) and one of our mutual friends left, leaving behind a skirt she had just been given. We realized it after she left and there was a lot of joking about what to do with it. Someone offered it to me, as the lone remaining female, but I quickly demurred on the grounds that the lime green color would make me look like I was suffering from a liver disease. Then K picked it up and pretended like he was going to put it on. He looked inside and said, “Wait, where are the pants?”

We all looked back at him blankly, not knowing what he meant and he said, “It’s just a tube of fabric.” We pointed out that’s what all skirts are and he looked totally confused. He motioned to me (I was wearing a skirt and tights) and said, “Yours has pants attached to it.” I shook my head and stated that I was simply wearing tights underneath my skirt. “But you have short type things under the skirt,” he insisted. I shook my head. “So if I looked under your skirt I would see your underwear?” “Sort of.” I tried not to look too offended when he shivered at the prospect.

Turns out that he believed all skirts were skorts or that they were made like dance skirts with trunks attached. Poor boy had just never had occasion to put one on take one off, or look underneath one. I guess us ladies retain more mystery than we think.

On Friday around 6:00pm I got a phone call from a Maryland number. I didn’t answer, assuming it was probably a wrong number, but I looked down later to realize I had a voice mail. I listened and it was a mattress store (I won’t name them here) calling to say that they would be delivering my mattress the next morning between 7:00 and 10:00am. This was all well and good except, of course, that I hadn’t ordered a mattress and I doubted a Maryland store even delivered to Indiana. I just ignored it, figuring the actual mattress’s recipients would be surprised the next morning, but not giving it much thought.

Until 7:10 the next morning. When my phone rang. I was so disoriented and asleep I thought it was my alarm and spent the whole ring cycle trying to turn it off.

No worries. It rang again five minutes later. It was the mattress store saying they were en route with my mattress. I told them they had the wrong number. They didn’t seem to believe me. I told them I was in Indiana and hung up.

They called back again! This time I answered and without waiting for them to greet me said, “This is the same number you’ve been calling. I’m still in Indiana.” And I hung up.

They called back again! This time I glared at the phone, but didn’t answer. Seriously? Seriously? If the number was wrong the first four times, it’s not magically going to become the right number.

Keep in mind it was Saturday. I don’t generally sleep that late on Saturday thanks to the orange monster that is usually climbing on my face demanding his breakfast and my bizarre need to beat everyone else to the grocery store on student discount day. But I do like to splurge a little on sleep. Sleep till… you know… 8:00?

But no. Because of someone else’s mattress, I was denied that splurge. And for that, the mattress store that shall remain nameless goes on my list. And possibly to the first circle of Hell.

I thought about coming up with something creative to post about, but I have a migraine that I’ve had on and off since Friday. So we’re just going to stick with reactions to our British import obsession.

I just really don’t know what to think about Isobel this season. Last season I really liked her. This season I really don’t. I’m thrilled she’s going to help the refugees though I worry every time she leaves she’s going to croak and everyone will have to feel guilty. Not to mention it will screw with our survival odds.

I’m not sure how I felt about the Patrick thing. I know, as a soap fan I should be behind any plot that involves amnesia and people coming back from the dead. But… I’m not sure I am.

I kinda need them to stop kicking Edith in the shins. I don’t love her, but seriously? Is this necessary?

I know I’m probably the only one, but I kinda want more Sibyl and Branson.

I’m kind of sad we aren’t seeing as much of the sweetness in Robert and Cora’s marriage as we saw last season.

I feel genuinely bad for Daisy. They spent a season teaching the poor girl about honesty and integrity and then told her it only mattered some of the time. You can’t do that to a girl. Especially one as simple as Daisy.

Oh Matthew… I simultaneously want to hug him and push his chair into something hard.

Lady Violet is totally who I want to be when I grow up.

I knew Vera was going to be dead. I knew it! Who killed Vera? Cammy did, obviously.

Were you enjoying the lack of soap opera related posts? Too bad. Today we’re going to talk just a little about how my life has changed since One Life to Live’s cancelation. For one thing, I no longer eat lunch at exactly 2:00pm. For another thing I’m watching less ABC. And judging by their ratings, I’m not the only one. But I digress.

I originally figured when OLTL went off I’d be done with soaps. I was trying to look on the bright side and think that gave me five hours of extra useable time every week. But the more previews I saw for OLTL’s replacement (I like to call it The Coup) the more pissed off I became. And it occurred to me, that if I turn off the television it hurts ABC marginally. I’m not a Nielsen family, but I was recording things on my DVR, and the do get statistics on that. But since advertisers focus on market share, if all I do is make the size of the market smaller, I hurt ABC a little bit. But if I just change the channel, I hurt them a little bit more. And I liked that idea.

So I decided to check out a new soap. Now as regional markets would have it, there are no scripted dramas in the 2:00pm slot where I live. So I had to content myself with hurting All My Children’s replacement, which is okay, though slightly less satisfying. Fourth Street Media has stated on Twitter recently that channel loyalty tends to override show loyalty or genre loyalty, speculating that it was unlikely ABC soap refugees would jump to other soaps. While last week’s ratings largely prove them wrong, I’ll admit they aren’t totally wrong either. Most soap watchers I know have identified strongly with being ABC, CBS, or NBC soap fans. I haven’t watched All My Children in years, but I always had some idea what was going on over in Pine Valley based on previews or even just turning on the television early. Non ABC soaps were like a foreign planet I knew nothing about. But hey, I’m an adventurous girl. Beam me up, Bradley Bell.

So which show to watch? Ultimately, I wound up giving two shows a trial period, but we’re only going to talk about one in this post. I decided to start watching The Bold and the Beautiful for several reasons. 1) It’s only half an hour long and therefore less of a commitment. 2) Richard from the Soaps in Depth twitter feed had mentioned it was an easy one to get into because it has a smaller cast and usually fewer storylines at once. 3) Scott Clifton. Though in many ways he’ll always be Dillon from General Hospital to me, I find him very likeable on screen and off no matter who he’s playing. 4) Hillary B Smith who played Nora Hannen Gannon Buchanan on OLTL for many, many years was just offered a role on the show playing a sex therapist.

Wanting to really test out how hard it is to pick up a new soap (and because I don’t have that much time) I decided not to avail myself of any of the resources online to tell me the back story or who these people are. I’m just going with what I see on television.

How hard is this: As expected, it’s not that hard to figure out what’s going on. I’m sure I’m missing subtle nuances, and I’m missing that attachment to characters you get after watching a show for years, but I haven’t been lost.

First impressions: I think OLTL may have been the only soap on the air that didn’t have multiple characters involved in the fashion/cosmetics industry. Condescending much, television? You know we are interested in other things, right? Moving past that. There’s something unsatisfying about this show. It’s not just that it’s only half an hour, it seems to have an even higher percentage of time devoted to commercials than the ABC shows, but maybe that’s just perception.

If I have the storyline right: Dillon from GH is calling himself Liam and he’s married to sexy brunette Steffy but in love with abstinent blond Hope. He can’t leave his wife though, because she has a blood clot in her brain that could cause her a stroke if she gets stressed. Only she doesn’t. Liam’s dad falsified test results because he either really likes Steffy (possibly in an inappropriate way) or really dislikes Hope or both. He’s married to Katie who looks eerily like Kelly #3 from OLTL, only much prettier as a brunette than she was as a blond. Steffy has evidently done a lot of lying and manipulating, but is totes reformed and dedicated to her marriage. Hope is so devastated to have not gotten her man she’s considering throwing out her principles and everything she stands for (apparently she’s some sort of celebrity). Hope has a meddling mom. Who I think is married to Steffy’s dad. Steffy’s mom has a problem with too much collagen in her lips.

All hell breaks loose when the truth comes out about Steffy’s nonexistent blood clot. There’s lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but ultimately Liam realizes that since he was planning to leave Steffy before the blood clot, he should probably go ahead and do that. Elsewhere on the show there’s a crazy old lady with a Wayne Brady obsession and JR Chandler from AMC fresh from firing into a crowded room is doing something underhanded.

My thoughts: So many things I want to like about this show, and so few I do. I want to like Liam, but he spends entirely too much time looking tormented and playing with the feelings of both ladies. I want to like Hope for being a female on television who doesn’t sleep with every guy who looks at her twice. But she’s just kinda cloying and annoying. I kinda like Steffy except she was so freaking deluded about things working out with her and Liam. The older generation seems more childish than their children. And aspects of this show (read: the whole Wayne Brady thing) just seem a little silly. And not in a fun way.

Verdict: I’ll give them a little longer, but I’m far from hooked.

Director: Kevin Lima

Writer: Bill Kelly

Things I liked: It’s a musical. I love musicals. And the songs were fun. Also, pretty costumes. As someone who’s worn a hoopskirt on more than one occasion I loved that they showed the absurd difficulties of getting around in on. Speaking of absurdities, I also enjoyed the way the film points out how irritating charming little moments in fiction would be in real life; making dresses out of curtains, for example. Also, Angela Montenegro sighting at the end!

Things I didn’t like: You cast Idina Menzel in a musical and don’t have her sing? Let me ask that again, you cast Idina Menzel in a musical and don’t have her sing? Tell me there was a song that was cut from this. I actually rather liked her character, and so I guess I’m glad she got a happy ending, but I would have liked to see more of her. Over all, I felt like the film was saying that even modern, independent women are waiting for a prince to come sweep us off our feet. I’m not saying that doesn’t have more truth to it than I’d care to admit, but I’m not sure I cared for it.

Over all: A fun little bit of fluff to watch while cleaning my room, but I’m glad I didn’t spend money on it. Two and a half out of five jars of peanut butter.

Would we drink coffee with Maggie Smith?

Kristy: My first instinct was, “Holy crap, of course!” But then I thought about it and I’m not sure. I mean, I love this woman’s work. In everything I’ve ever seen her in she has this magical way of standing out without making the whole thing all about her. She steals scenes while still being a giving actress and that’s a rare talent. And yes, she keeps getting cast as the same character over and over again, I don’t care. She does it better than anyone else. And I love that even though she sometimes plays a raging bitch, she often plays strong characters. So on the one hand, I would totally buy her coffee. On the other hand, I’d be a little intimidated to sit down with her. Also, I have a hard time picturing her drinking coffee–if she drinks a hot beverage it’s hard to imagine it being anything other than tea. But if she does drink coffee, I suppose I’ll screw my courage up because I don’t think I could live with knowing I’d turned down such an opportunity.

Cammy:  For bringing life to a long list of awesome characters, I feel I owe her whatever the hell beverage she wants.  I mean, she is the screen embodiment of Professor McGonagall!  And need we even discuss the awesomeness of Lady Violet?  But, like Kristy, the intimidation factor is up there, not the least because most of what I know of her is the characters–and that’s not who we’re drinking with.  Being the more chicken-shit of the two of us, I’ll let Kristy be the brave one who actually sits down.  Me?  I’ll just help make sure they’re at the best table in the house and that the tab is open for whatever beverages are required.