Good Thing I Didn't Make a New Year's Resolution About Posting More Often
I haven't posted since January 1. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? I don't feel as if I've been that busy. I did, briefly, have a cold. Wednesday night I felt as if I was coming down with something and I did something I never do, called in sick to work on Thursday. My decision to try and nip it in the bud seems to have worked. Usually, I go into work feeling mildly crappy, get more run down and start feeling (and looking) like hell as I lose my voice and cough up a lung. Plus, I lose several days of PTO time, get way behind in my work and become more stressed. I think a lesson has been learned.
In between frequent napping on Thursday (because Alka-Seltzer Plus Crystal Packs knock me out an hour after digesting and, FYI, they are not "taste-free"), I had a Matt Bomer marathon. I watched Disc 2 of Tru Calling. Or, more precisely, watched Matt's scenes because OMG, SO PRETTY! I had to fast forward through some of Eliza's stuff. And the plots are pretty laughable. They actually ripped off Flatliners for one episode. Eight episodes in I've thus far spotted Joe Flannigan (married to the actress from HIMYM), Michael Trucco, and Leah Cairns. Then I watched half of the White Collar pilot (see Alka-Seltzer induced sleeping) and SyFy's Chuck marathon until I headed to bed around 10:00.
I DVR'd the remainder of Thursday's marathon and watched the episodes yesterday. It's a good thing I did because it's been sooooo long since the show aired I actually forgot a lot of what happened. I'm not sure if the Season 2 finale still counts as spoiler territory, but just in case... I did remember that Bryce died, again, in the finale. However, I forgot that his body was dragged away by one of the bad guys (as Sarah was asking for help and screaming "Don't you touch him!" She may not still be in love with him, but it was nice to see she still cared :). Even if a deal can't be worked out for Matt to return so Bryce can rise from the dead, again, (Matt's expressed interest in coming back), it seems clear the writers wanted to leave the door open for Bryce's return. Which means, in their minds, he's not dead! Yes, it's probably a bit extreme for me to obsess on the fates of fictional characters, but my TV boyfriends have a tendency to die, A LOT, on screen. It gets tiresome and I need to cling to what I can.
I've also read quite a bit of White Collar fanfic over the past few days. The last time I read this much fanfic was back when I was actively in Buffy fandom. I tend to only read fic if I feel more can be done with my ship or the ship could go in directions the creator/writers didn't take it (Spike/Buffy) or if there isn't a chance in hell of of it happening on the series (Neal/Peter/Elizabeth). Then there is Lee/Laura which falls somewhere in between the two scenarios, but there wasn't a whole lot of fic involving the two because too few saw the brilliance of the pairing. But in perusing the various White Collar communities I'm starting to spot some wankiness....with only seven episodes aired. I'm also realizing while most of the fic is very well written, there is quite a few scenarios I don't care to read. I'll save that for another post. ;)
Speaking of White Collar (of which I do a lot these days - sorry to those who don't watch/don't care!), I had two thoughts occur to me, one about the pilot and another about the mid-season finale, 'Free Fall'.
In the pilot, we have the scene in which Peter receives the call from Jones informing him that Neal is out of his two mile radius and they don't where he is. Peter walks down the stares to discover Neal is in his living room chatting with Elizabeth. Very cute, but it doesn't make sense. One, Neal lives in the City and Peter and Elizabeth live in...Brooklyn? At least not in the City and some distance away. Neal had to take a cab to get to the house. The anklet alarm should have sounded moments after he left his radius. And considering the monitoring allows the FBI/Federal Marshals to track Neal's every move, Jones should have known that Neal, if not in Peter's living room, was very close by.
And in 'Free Fall', in another plot point they didn't seem to consider, Neal's name and photo is plastered on the front page of the newspaper. I'll assume the story was all over the local news, at least, as well. Isn't that kind of viability going to hinder future undercover work?
Earlier, I was following on Twitter reports from today's TCA NBC session. One bit of good news, The Jay Leno Show (AKA The Experiment of Epic Fail) will be be vacating the 10:00pm time slot on February 12. Our national nightmare is over! However, the NBC execs seem to be flailing about as how to fill the schedule and plan to "wait until the last second' to figure out what to do. O_o Putting aside the confusion for viewers, how do you sell advertising time if you don't know what you will be scheduling? Friday Night Lights may be back before summer. Chuck, whose third seasons launches tonight, has had it's chances increase for a fourth season pickup. They will be sitting down soon discuss Heroes new season (I wish I was joking, it's likely to be renewed). And Law & Order: Los Angeles is being considered (yet, still no word on broadcasting Law & Order: UK). David Tennant's pilot, Rex is Your Lawyer, is being viewed this week and could be fast tracked at the network. And if any of you have thought as I have about the possibility of rebroadcasting USA's shows on NBC, I quote one exec, "Just because it works on USA doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work on NBC." True, when you consider how hard it is for you to put quality programming on the air.
And, finally, I forgot to post my Doctor Who thoughts last weekend. Oops! Short version is I was not impressed.
I'm not a huge Doctor Who fan. I've seen all the episodes and specials and have enjoyed the series more often than not. I have no strong feelings for Tennant/Ten and can't say I like him any more or less than Eccleston/Nine. Russell T Davies I do find to be a bit full of himself (as many series creators are) and he's come to believe BIGGER, LOUDER and MORE equals good storytelling. Yet, he is occasionally still capable of writing a good scene.
There were two things I enjoyed in 'The End of Time': the scenes between The Doctor and Wilf. And, in my opinion, David Tennant gave his finest performance as Ten. But the rest left me in a state of confusion, boredom, irritation and WTF?
I won't even going to try to suss out why the Time Lords had to haul themselves and the whole damn planet (and what is RTD's obsession with moving planets?) across the galaxy for whatever their half-assed plan was to work. Otherwise, I will give myself a headache. And did the Time Lords really talk of ascension? Someone has been watching Stargate repeats.
If, in fact, the Time Lords died then the 'OMG THE TIME LORDS LIVE!' storyline seems pointless. As did The Master's return. There was so much possibility there and it all got resolved by The Master getting his revenge on the guy who gave him a cosmic form of tinnitus? At one point I was actually hollering at The Doctor, “Please, shoot someone! Anyone! Make the poor storytelling and Master's flip-flopping stop!”
Donna was utterly wasted, which makes me sad. She is my favorite companion, in large part because she never made googly eyes at The Doctor. I should have suspected she wouldn't get a proper storyline when I saw Catherine Tate was absent from the opening credits. Why was she even in this? She briefly got her memories back only to lose them again. And the Doctor declared her his best friend. Which on the one hand was cool and on the other had left me thinking, “Really?”
The ending, rather than poignant, I found distracting as I tried make sense of it all. Wasn't Martha engaged to someone else? What happened to him? Jack, presumably after running away from Torchwood, ends up at the Creature Cantina surrounded by a who's who of creatures and characters from The Doctor's recent past. And in their final meeting, The Doctor helps Jack pick up a guy. This is what their relationship comes down to? I'm also sure that will sit well with the Jack/Ianto fans still dealing with Ianto's death. The Rose meeting I found odd. I know The Doctor was in the shadows, but there still seemed like potential to mess up the timeline.
Ultimately, I think my biggest problem with these final two specials - and this is not meant as a criticism of Tennant's tenure as Ten - is that such a big deal was made about the tenth Doctor's death. I don't have a knowledge of the history of the show, so please let me know if I'm wrong, but I didn't think the regeneration process was quite such a big deal. Nine became Ten with far less fanfare. And Ten's fear of death has left me confused since I was under the impression that The Doctor is The Doctor. The body, wardrobe and personality may change, but it's still the same person. Ten retained all Nine's memories and even affection for Rose. But Ten's railing against death, to the bitter end, leaves the impression that each Doctor does die and a new body is created to hold onto the knowledge?
I also feel that making Ten's death such a huge deal - hell, we had a choir sing him out - is a disservice to Matt Smith. In order to follow in what we are being shown is THE Doctor's footsteps, Matt will need to be incredibly charismatic, completely awesome and make us quickly forget his predecessor. From the little I've seen, it's not happening. Has RTD harmed the franchise (which he's leaving) as the audience tunes in, decides Eleven is no Ten, and moves on?
Yeah, I need to post more often. I've been working on this on and off all day!
In between frequent napping on Thursday (because Alka-Seltzer Plus Crystal Packs knock me out an hour after digesting and, FYI, they are not "taste-free"), I had a Matt Bomer marathon. I watched Disc 2 of Tru Calling. Or, more precisely, watched Matt's scenes because OMG, SO PRETTY! I had to fast forward through some of Eliza's stuff. And the plots are pretty laughable. They actually ripped off Flatliners for one episode. Eight episodes in I've thus far spotted Joe Flannigan (married to the actress from HIMYM), Michael Trucco, and Leah Cairns. Then I watched half of the White Collar pilot (see Alka-Seltzer induced sleeping) and SyFy's Chuck marathon until I headed to bed around 10:00.
I DVR'd the remainder of Thursday's marathon and watched the episodes yesterday. It's a good thing I did because it's been sooooo long since the show aired I actually forgot a lot of what happened. I'm not sure if the Season 2 finale still counts as spoiler territory, but just in case... I did remember that Bryce died, again, in the finale. However, I forgot that his body was dragged away by one of the bad guys (as Sarah was asking for help and screaming "Don't you touch him!" She may not still be in love with him, but it was nice to see she still cared :). Even if a deal can't be worked out for Matt to return so Bryce can rise from the dead, again, (Matt's expressed interest in coming back), it seems clear the writers wanted to leave the door open for Bryce's return. Which means, in their minds, he's not dead! Yes, it's probably a bit extreme for me to obsess on the fates of fictional characters, but my TV boyfriends have a tendency to die, A LOT, on screen. It gets tiresome and I need to cling to what I can.
I've also read quite a bit of White Collar fanfic over the past few days. The last time I read this much fanfic was back when I was actively in Buffy fandom. I tend to only read fic if I feel more can be done with my ship or the ship could go in directions the creator/writers didn't take it (Spike/Buffy) or if there isn't a chance in hell of of it happening on the series (Neal/Peter/Elizabeth). Then there is Lee/Laura which falls somewhere in between the two scenarios, but there wasn't a whole lot of fic involving the two because too few saw the brilliance of the pairing. But in perusing the various White Collar communities I'm starting to spot some wankiness....with only seven episodes aired. I'm also realizing while most of the fic is very well written, there is quite a few scenarios I don't care to read. I'll save that for another post. ;)
Speaking of White Collar (of which I do a lot these days - sorry to those who don't watch/don't care!), I had two thoughts occur to me, one about the pilot and another about the mid-season finale, 'Free Fall'.
In the pilot, we have the scene in which Peter receives the call from Jones informing him that Neal is out of his two mile radius and they don't where he is. Peter walks down the stares to discover Neal is in his living room chatting with Elizabeth. Very cute, but it doesn't make sense. One, Neal lives in the City and Peter and Elizabeth live in...Brooklyn? At least not in the City and some distance away. Neal had to take a cab to get to the house. The anklet alarm should have sounded moments after he left his radius. And considering the monitoring allows the FBI/Federal Marshals to track Neal's every move, Jones should have known that Neal, if not in Peter's living room, was very close by.
And in 'Free Fall', in another plot point they didn't seem to consider, Neal's name and photo is plastered on the front page of the newspaper. I'll assume the story was all over the local news, at least, as well. Isn't that kind of viability going to hinder future undercover work?
Earlier, I was following on Twitter reports from today's TCA NBC session. One bit of good news, The Jay Leno Show (AKA The Experiment of Epic Fail) will be be vacating the 10:00pm time slot on February 12. Our national nightmare is over! However, the NBC execs seem to be flailing about as how to fill the schedule and plan to "wait until the last second' to figure out what to do. O_o Putting aside the confusion for viewers, how do you sell advertising time if you don't know what you will be scheduling? Friday Night Lights may be back before summer. Chuck, whose third seasons launches tonight, has had it's chances increase for a fourth season pickup. They will be sitting down soon discuss Heroes new season (I wish I was joking, it's likely to be renewed). And Law & Order: Los Angeles is being considered (yet, still no word on broadcasting Law & Order: UK). David Tennant's pilot, Rex is Your Lawyer, is being viewed this week and could be fast tracked at the network. And if any of you have thought as I have about the possibility of rebroadcasting USA's shows on NBC, I quote one exec, "Just because it works on USA doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work on NBC." True, when you consider how hard it is for you to put quality programming on the air.
And, finally, I forgot to post my Doctor Who thoughts last weekend. Oops! Short version is I was not impressed.
I'm not a huge Doctor Who fan. I've seen all the episodes and specials and have enjoyed the series more often than not. I have no strong feelings for Tennant/Ten and can't say I like him any more or less than Eccleston/Nine. Russell T Davies I do find to be a bit full of himself (as many series creators are) and he's come to believe BIGGER, LOUDER and MORE equals good storytelling. Yet, he is occasionally still capable of writing a good scene.
There were two things I enjoyed in 'The End of Time': the scenes between The Doctor and Wilf. And, in my opinion, David Tennant gave his finest performance as Ten. But the rest left me in a state of confusion, boredom, irritation and WTF?
I won't even going to try to suss out why the Time Lords had to haul themselves and the whole damn planet (and what is RTD's obsession with moving planets?) across the galaxy for whatever their half-assed plan was to work. Otherwise, I will give myself a headache. And did the Time Lords really talk of ascension? Someone has been watching Stargate repeats.
If, in fact, the Time Lords died then the 'OMG THE TIME LORDS LIVE!' storyline seems pointless. As did The Master's return. There was so much possibility there and it all got resolved by The Master getting his revenge on the guy who gave him a cosmic form of tinnitus? At one point I was actually hollering at The Doctor, “Please, shoot someone! Anyone! Make the poor storytelling and Master's flip-flopping stop!”
Donna was utterly wasted, which makes me sad. She is my favorite companion, in large part because she never made googly eyes at The Doctor. I should have suspected she wouldn't get a proper storyline when I saw Catherine Tate was absent from the opening credits. Why was she even in this? She briefly got her memories back only to lose them again. And the Doctor declared her his best friend. Which on the one hand was cool and on the other had left me thinking, “Really?”
The ending, rather than poignant, I found distracting as I tried make sense of it all. Wasn't Martha engaged to someone else? What happened to him? Jack, presumably after running away from Torchwood, ends up at the Creature Cantina surrounded by a who's who of creatures and characters from The Doctor's recent past. And in their final meeting, The Doctor helps Jack pick up a guy. This is what their relationship comes down to? I'm also sure that will sit well with the Jack/Ianto fans still dealing with Ianto's death. The Rose meeting I found odd. I know The Doctor was in the shadows, but there still seemed like potential to mess up the timeline.
Ultimately, I think my biggest problem with these final two specials - and this is not meant as a criticism of Tennant's tenure as Ten - is that such a big deal was made about the tenth Doctor's death. I don't have a knowledge of the history of the show, so please let me know if I'm wrong, but I didn't think the regeneration process was quite such a big deal. Nine became Ten with far less fanfare. And Ten's fear of death has left me confused since I was under the impression that The Doctor is The Doctor. The body, wardrobe and personality may change, but it's still the same person. Ten retained all Nine's memories and even affection for Rose. But Ten's railing against death, to the bitter end, leaves the impression that each Doctor does die and a new body is created to hold onto the knowledge?
I also feel that making Ten's death such a huge deal - hell, we had a choir sing him out - is a disservice to Matt Smith. In order to follow in what we are being shown is THE Doctor's footsteps, Matt will need to be incredibly charismatic, completely awesome and make us quickly forget his predecessor. From the little I've seen, it's not happening. Has RTD harmed the franchise (which he's leaving) as the audience tunes in, decides Eleven is no Ten, and moves on?
Yeah, I need to post more often. I've been working on this on and off all day!