It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

You would think that with my having suffered the horrors of dwelling in North Dallas for 3 years, the ABC series GCB, which lampoons that very same microcosm would be right up my alley.

Oddly, I think it’s the familiarity that makes it difficult for me to watch.

On the one hand there are things that they get oh-so-very right.  The plethoras of money, the mock version of Highland Park United Methodist Church (where you go to rub shoulders with the wealthy more than for any real religious reason–though the service shown seems way too casual to be like the HPUMC main service…and not casual enough to be like the contemporary service), women with bizarre names like Bookie and Cricket, mentions of places like Turtle Creek, proper homage to the roll of Nieman Marcus in the shopping pantheon….

But then you have things like people offering over hand-gun laden purses to their daughters.  I’m not saying a hand-gun laden Gucci bag is abnormal in North Dallas, I’m just saying that every woman there would be damn good and well aware of the concealed carry rules (having gone through the process herself…except for the ones married to slightly more fringe husbands who cling to the belief that the concealed carry law will only give the government a list of names to collect from when the Second Amendment is destroyed–but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish) and know better than to arm her recently imported from California daughter.

And the pet peeve that actually arises in every show which tries to set itself in Texas (or, honestly, much of anywhere in the U.S.):  putting a definite article before a numerical freeway designation.  I-20 is just that “I-20″ or “20″ not “THE I-20.”  The minute I hear that I’m reminded that this whole thing is clearly being shot in L.A. (first ep WAS in Dallas at least as far as the exteriors were concerned–I’ve driven past more than one of the places shown).

The emphasis on ranches and cowboys is also losing me.  You see way less of that in Dallas than in other Texas cities like San Antonio or Ft. Worth.  Oh, sure, you see it in Dallas, probably more now than in the past few decades, but it’s mostly a costume put on to distinguish themselves from wealthy folks in, say, Atlanta.  It’s not because anyone’s spent any time on the family ranch.  After all, Dallas is all about “bidness” not farming and ranching.  Men in Dallas are more likely to be in Armani than Wrangler and I honestly can’t say I have EVER seen a woman from North Dallas over the age of 23 in a cowboy hat or boots.

Now that we’re on week two, I have to question the whole pork thing.  Really?  REALLY?  Pulled pork?  Oh, hell no.  This is Texas.  It’s all about the beef.  Even John Ford got that much in Rio Grande (“Ain’t no one told Uncle Sam we grow beef in these parts?”).  Also, if you drive 80 miles from Dallas, you won’t get to anything looking like the landscape shown around the local of the pork incident.

The thing of it is, the fodder is there in reality.  North Dallas and the Park Cities (Highland Park, University Park) are twisted little worlds.  Saint Molly of Ivins captured some of that in her article “Hello from Boosterville” (included in her book Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?).  While I was in law school there was still a gas station down in Snyder plaza where you could get full service.  No joke.  And I saw many a Grande Dame ol’ gal with that particular style of North Dallas Helmet-Hair sitting primly behind her wheel while a guy in coveralls filled the tank of her Mercedes and cleaned her windshield.  I’ve seen a fleet of Mercs, Jags, Audis, etc. parked in the firelane outside of my dorm because if you’re late to HPUMC on Sunday, you wind  up having to park over in one of the garages and that’s just not acceptable.  It’s worth it to pay the ticket left on your windshield after one a disgruntled law student in one of the dorms calls campus police…..

I may give it another week, but I just don’t think I’m going to be able to overcome what I know of the real comedy of North Dallas enough to enjoy this fake version.

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.

Being an L.M Montgomery fan, I had heard about the Emily of New Moon TV series years ago, but only recently have I had the opportunity to finally see the show (it’s been off the air for years now).  I was by no means expecting something completely accurate to the trilogy of books that I grew up reading, but I really wasn’t prepared for the level of “WTF?” I’ve encountered.

Now, at least in my mind, Emily has always been the oddest and most fanciful of the major L.M. Montgomery heroines (those with more than one book).  There was always more of a supernatural/second site element to Emily than there was to Anne or Pat or Sara.  But that element of the odd, eerily-other-worldly does not account for the acid trip I’ve been on in my marathon viewing of the first three season of this show.  If you are expecting the kind of look and feel of the many Kevin Sullivan interpretations of other LM Montgomery tales, you are not going to get it.  It’s got a darker, closer, eerier feel, from the music to to the many tree-enclosed scenes.

If you know the books,  forget them or just don’t watch.  The first season bears a passing resemblance to the source material.  You get most of the characters (Emily, Aunt Laura, Aunt Elizabeth, Jimmy, Perry, Ilse Burnley, Dr. Burnley, Rhoda Stewart….) all of whom seem to fit, at least generally, into their proper places.  Some of the sites and incidents are alike (The death of Mr. Starr, Emily’s letter writing in the garret, there is a Disappointed House…) but larger plots and themes that unwound over a long period of time in the books are truncated to nothingness (the extended period before Emily is allowed into and eventually given the room that belonged to Juliet).  The scads of smaller incidents that make up the episodes of the book (the soured friendship with Rhoda Stewart, various adventures in exploration with Ilse, day to day battles with Aunt Elizabeth, friendship with Dean Priest) are absent, replaced with incidents that are decidedly NOT in the original books (or any other part of the large body of LM Montgomery literature–like the whole Maida Flynn illegitimate baby thing.  WTF? And Ian Bowles and the whole doll mess?).  And that’s just season 1.

By season 2, names of characters are about all you have left.  Aunt Elizabeth, a featured character throughout the books?  Drowns at sea at the beginning of season 2.  And it’s all downhill from there.  Aunt Laura spirals into a laudanum addiction and the Murray’s of New Moon are less the upstanding family of Blair Water than a train wreck of epic proportions.  And while the Stewarts in the books passed as a little tacky, they don’t hold a candle to the white trash version we get on the TV show.  Random new cousins from Scotland bring some kind of interest, but only derail this thing further from the trilogy.  In the mean time, Emily’s hallucinations and visions are increased in frequency–sure she has a few episodes in the book, but that’s just a few very key and critical moments.  In the show it’s almost old hat and probably  sign the kid needs meds.  And in trying to blend Emily’s imaginings with the real-world plot, such as it was, things wind up feeling odd and disjointed.  More than once I thought maybe I’d been drinking while I was watching.  Especially with the final ep of the season which does a total sci-fi number on me with what basically amounts to a multi-verse version of one particularly relevant day at New Moon.  I give that props, but it was HIGHLY unusual for a period costume drama and I was thrown for a loop at first.

The feeling that I must be drunk only increased with season three.  Jimmy does a Flowers for Algernon thing, more infidelity and unwed pregnancy than you could shake a stick at (Maud would have been SHOCKED).  Cousin Isabel and Uncle Malcolm from Scotland have a dynamic that may have been interesting if it weren’t so incredibly manic-depressive.  Aunt Laura, having finally kicked the laudanum problem, has moved on to Stockholm Syndrome.  The one thing I always read into the novels that never really got addressed (Aunt Laura + Dr. Burnley) is given a star-crossed lover’s treatment of painful proportions.  Random plagues of smallpox along with an adorable black boy with a painfully Scottish name (Robbie Burns) are actually the most coherent parts of the series, but certainly don’t resemble the books.  Emily is seeing everything from the embodiment of death to God (and having conversations/arguments with both).  Honestly, if you would have landed the Millenium Falcon in the middle of a Blair Water potato field it really couldn’t have made this season feel any less weird.

There’s still a 4th season that I’ll have to get ahold of to finish out the madness.

As a fan of the books, I’m horrified.  And as a general fan of a good yarn, particularly in TV form, I’m just confused.  Despite the (needless) divergence from the material available in the books, the kind of drama and character relationships introduced had some potential–it just wasn’t executed quite right.  For one thing, the character relationships were all running hot and cold.  While there is some value to be had in focusing on the conflicting feelings of a character and how that impacts events around them, we never got that focus.  Instead you are kind of left feeling like the interactions of the characters are dependent on what was needed for the episode (or even the scene), not out of any true inner source.  For example, just about everyone’s relationship with Cousin Isabel ran hot and cold.  It could have made for a great running theme, but there seemed to be no reasoning behind the moments when they decided they were OK with her (the moments when they despised her were usually supported in the moment).  Aunt Laura’s weak spirit might have explained her inability to commit to her Stockholm Syndrome or rebel against it, but nothing in the show gave the proper focus to her internal struggle with indecision and we were again left with that feeling that whether or not Aunt Laura hated her husband was more a factor of what was needed to move a scene forward than out of her feelings.

And would it kill these writers to make one person happy?  Tragedy is good in small doses, but I didn’t see a single happy romance in this whole tangle.  The closest thing to happy is the friendships of Perry, Ilse, Emily and Jimmy, and they are continually being beat down from the outside.  Without at least one example of success and happiness, nothing in this series gave you much hope.  The town of Blair Water is gossipy, small minded and unwelcoming, and the New Moon family is the heart of dysfunction.

The acting is actually fine.  I love that all the kids looked like realistic kids instead of show pieces.  I totally loved that they let the kids scuffle and yell the kind of insults only kids can yell (Ilse’s are the best).  The adult cast is impressive (I really loved Susan Clark as Aunt Elizabeth–so it totally sucked when they killed off the character).  If the storylines had been more coherent, they honestly would have knocked this outta the park.

But the entire experience has left me feeling disjointed.  I can’t say I’m regretting having watched, but I’m not going to run out and suggest this to anyone else.  In fact, I think I mostly feel like I just want to take the good stuff and shake it into place.  The pieces are there if they just put them together a little different.

Or, maybe I’ll just go drink a beer and lie down.

In case you aren’t catching onto the theme here, you can pretty much guarantee that we’re going to be talking Downton on Sunday nights from now until Series 2 ends later in February.  Apologies to those who don’t give a damn (or are avoiding spoilers)

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With absolutely no joking or sarcasm, I offer my deepest condolences to my co-blogger and all the other One Life to Live fans.

I can’t even come close to claiming I’m a soap fan in the traditional sense.  Outside of vague memories of my Mom watching All My Children, and Kristy keeping me entertained with well reasoned and supported arguments as to why one Joey Buchanan was the best, and retelling highlights of plots, I am all but soap ignorant.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t see where ABC’s misguided assumptions about achieving a bottom line have created a cultural travesty.  To replace something that’s endured for over 40 years with, well, reality tv, is abominable.

Oh, I get the business reasons.  It’s cheaper, yadda yadda yadda.  Believe me, I know.  I also know that business jack-asses rarely know as much as they think they know and statistics are easily manipulated.  Dollars and cents wise it may be cheaper to go to a reality show with lower production costs, even if the audience shrinks–at least in the short run.  Long run?  I’ve got my doubts.  Soaps are another victim in the ranks of creative programming (and by creative, I mean requiring writing and acting creativity, not just editing).

Even if I didn’t doubt the accuracy of the business decision, I’d still hate the over all cultural impact.  For one thing, it’s hard not to see the downfall of One Life to Live and All My Children has a kind of insult to women.  We’re the overwhelming portion of the viewership for soaps and have been from the start. And before that?  We were a listener-ship when these types of works were on the radio. For many of the soap fans I know, they started watching because older female relatives watched.  Kristy acknowledges her memories of her Mom watching soaps.  My Aunt (a PhD scientist) watched occasionally because my Grandma watches.  Another friend of mine watched because it was part of her summer stays with her Grandma who has passed on.  A girl in law school talked about watching with her Mom and Aunt to learn English when they came to the U.S.  Take away a multi-generational point of connection for so many women, and it’s hard not to have your feminist hackles rise a bit.

Additionally, while I may never have really dove into the genre, I’ve always been able to respect the unique way a soap is driven.  From a writing perspective, I’m in bloody awe. When you think that one of these series entails generating written scripts for Every. Single. Weekday. For. Decades.  Even if you have multiple writers, you have got to tip your hat to that–after all, sitcoms have whole teams of writers, too and they’re sure as shit not that prolific.  They’re juggling an ensemble cast and at this point, over 30 years of back-story.  Creatively, that’s just fuckin’ impressive.  And for the actors?  Amazing.  I’m not going to claim that all soap actors are great (ZOMG, I have seen some seriously painful scenes in my channel surfing times), but when you pause to consider that these people are memorizing and performing a different script every week day of every week, year in and year out?  I can’t memorize a 6 item grocery list.  It took honest and painful effort to get myself off-book when I was playing a teensy little roll in Julius Caesar (Kristy’s fault) with maybe 5 lines, let alone entire scenes.  These people are acting machines!  In high school I got sent to a summer nerd camp for humanities and  arts.  One of the girls attending for drama was telling me how she really wanted to go into soaps.  She liked the idea of getting to play one role, but having new material every day and not spending a lot of time on that material.  She memorized quickly and liked to play the scene and move on to something else, so the world of soaps seemed to fit like nothing else.  Until then, I’d not really thought of the unique work this kind of programming offered for actors.  Now what will fill that creative-style void?

And the real shit of it is that through Kristy’s tweets and re-tweets about the end of the series, I was more intrigued than I’ve ever been before (even more than when Kristy was telling me about how someone had a sassy black woman in their head–honestly, how can you not have your interest piqued by that?).  A little activity like that on the part of the damn network would probably have resulted in drawing in more viewers like me and–with only minimal cost to capitalize on the power of social media–tipped that scale to a point where reality TV would be way less of a bargain that it is alleged to be.

But they didn’t, and now it’s just a sad day for a large fandom.  I’m truly sorry.

As mentioned on several occasions previously, I ditched my satellite TV and went back to plain old over-the-air broadcasts.

For the most part, this is great, particularly on the money-saving front.  Since I have a pretty wide variety of channels in this area, there’s almost nothing I would have watched that I don’t get now.

But there’s a slightly time-consuming price involved here.  The really-old-skool rabbit ears on the TV that’s upstairs doesn’t pick up everything.  It requires adjustment.

Lots of adjustment.  And I’m still trying to figure out the optimal position to get CBS to tune in.  The efforts involved in achieving have been embarrassingly elaborate and time consuming.  It’s one of those times I’m glad I live alone because no one can mock me for my efforts.  First you try moving the antennae.  Then I propped it higher on a shelf.  Then came the books.

I realized I was going too far when I found myself in the basement looking for my brother’s old Tinker-Toys with grand plans of building an rotating platform (and for those concerned about my previous post, I had a cup of tea in one hand during the search).  And, yes, I had given thought to employing a small electric motor to handle the actual rotation.

It’s not like I can’t get CBS at all.  I only have to go downstairs.  But it’s turned into a kind of crusade now.  A puzzle that begs to be solved.  In the midst of my complaints about the lack of time for so many other things, I just can’t seem to let this one go.

As I mentioned last month, I am embarking on an adventure the likes of which I haven’t had since dwelling in the law school dorms:  I’m ditching TV.

Today, I finally got a chance to call and cancel the satellite.  Since that’s actually paid for the next month, it will be several more weeks before it’s truly gone, but it was nice to make the arrangements.  I was prepared to do more battle with the gal on the phone, but she was oddly friendly, and while she mentioned that there were lower tiers I could drop to, she didn’t push when I told her I wasn’t interested.

Ditching Netflix is the next step.  Since my decision to cut them out is based largely on their price hike bullshit, I’m going to wait a little longer.  I’ll get billed once more before the price increases which will carry me through to just a few days after the satellite ends.  I’ll milk this one for another month as the $10 cost, then it’s auf wiedersehen to that one too.

I am truly looking forward to what it will be like without those two time sucks.  Just for the shear change of it all.  And it’s not like I don’t have steady signal and plenty of channels with rabbit ears–in fact, my ability to pull up a local weather map was zero on the satellite, where it’s 24/7 on the new digital channels.  Plus, there are 3 PBS’s instead of just the one.  And if over-the-air fails, I still have a cache of DVDs to keep me entertained, and the library’s just up the street for more.

But mostly, I’m looking to make a dent in The Stack, which, unfortunately, gained 2 more books when I visited the soon-to-be-gone Borders (and they have lots more to discount so I might have another few to come…).  I might actually get decent at writing a book review…..

The current plan is to stay Netflix free until PBS finishes running the second season of Downton Abbey (which starts up again in January).  Why?  Honestly, no reason, other than that I know myself and when this show finally comes back it will be all I want to watch for several weeks so anything else is a waste.  After that, we’ll revisit the situation.

I’m sure by now, the news of the 60% price increase coming in September to those of us using Netflix has already reached your ears.  I swore loudly when the message popped up in my inbox earlier this week, and I’ve been drawn into the hue and cry in comments adjacent to an inordinately large number of blog posts on my feed reader dedicated to the subject.

I’m pissed.

I joined Netflix after the previous price increase, so I don’t have quite the room to be offended as many who’ve already seen their bill go up, but, at the same time: 60%?  Are you shitting me?  Raise it a buck or two, but this is over the limit, and as long as Netflix keeps rotating stuff off the streaming list (I had several German movies queued that I didn’t get to in time….damnit), that’s not worth it alone, and likewise, the 1 DVD out at a time is less appealing when there’s a delay in turning around the exchange.

So, come 1 September, I’m cancelling.

It won’t be permanent, I’m guessing.  Up until this price hike, Netflix was to be the savior that helped me to break the shackles of an over-priced satellite bill.  I was going to cancel satellite in favor of my cell phone data plan and Netflix with a side of good ol’ rabbit ears.

I’m still cancelling the satellite, but at least for a while, I think I’m going to let Netflix lose a user.  In part, it’s making a statement.  Granted, it won’t be a drop in the bucket as most people–even the ones bitching loudly in the blog comments–are probably just going to pay the increased price and keep going with life.  But, it will ease my conscience.  And, it makes sense.  That will come at the height of when my job assignment is going to get hella busy, along with a fair amount of travel.  The crazy is going to last at least through the New Year, so  there will be a good 2-3 months where paying for Netflix would have been a bit of a waste at any price.  Once I get back, I can always grit my teeth and start using it again, if I want.  Heck, in January, Downton Abbey should be entering a new season on PBS, and I have faith that my obsession there will be such that I won’t be interested in watching much else, so it might be into February before I consider going back…

It’s a little bit freeing to think about, actually.  Like a junkie finding the power to kick the habit, I’m going to take the one eye’d monster out of the equation (mostly–I’ll still have a fairly extensive list of over-air channels through rabbit ears and I’ve got plenty of DVDs in my collection).  To the extent that the job leaves me much time, I’ve got one less distraction to keep me from making better use of that time sewing, writing, reading, or just keeping the damned house clean.

We’ll see how this little experiment goes.  I may be thanking Netflix for their crappy decision.

¹Cammy Footnote:  What happened to Firefly is one of the most heinous travesties of TV programming history.

²Cammy Footnote: SCREW YOU AMC!  No resolution to the Victor vs. Scubby debate.  Total cliffhanger.  AND NOT EVEN THE DECENCY TO RELEASE THE SHOW ON DVD.  FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUR CHANNEL and I AM STILL BOYCOTTING YOU MORE THAN 10 YEARS LATER!

³Cammy Footnote:  I’m thinking heads on pikes as a warning to the next 10 generations that some actions come at too high a price, or perhaps turning their bones into flutes for little children to play…..my apologies to JMS for bastardizing B5 there.  At least THAT didn’t get totally shit-canned.

So, Kristy’s the soap fan.  I’ve just never been bitten by the bug.  It’s always been a relief not to have to feel the shame associated with being secretly addicted to this much maligned TV genre.

Then came my trip to Australia.  With only 5 or so channels to choose from, and 4 of them generally playing nothing but sports (and 3 of those being cricket), reruns of their soapy drama McLeod’s Daughters were a totally viable option for viewing.

Or so I tell myself in those moments when I feel that overwhelming shame that I’m eagerly streaming every episode on Netflix.

The series focuses two half-sisters running a ranch after their father’s death.  With all female hands.  And of course the neighboring ranch involves a family with only boys.  It’s kinda like watching a slightly more grown up version of those camp movies where the girls camp has to kick the boys’ camp at color wars or something.  Only with grown ups.  And more cows.  And sheep.  And Utes.  And hot Australian men in jeans.

I’m pretty sure it’s that last one that makes it that results in my overlooking any hokey-ness to snuggle up in the recliner and drool at the TV.

It’s also got at least fairly amusing characters (Claire is my homegirl–jeans are always appropriate attire).  The South Australia setting is gorgeous.  And the occasional scenes in the small towns are a nice reminder of my trip down.

And did I mention the the hot Australian guys in jeans?