"It's better to be hurt by someone you know accidentally than by a stranger on purpose."
Bionic Woman - the one with Callum Keith Rennie
This episode was a great reminder of the issues that made me squirmy in the Bionic Woman pilot and the reason I stopped watching the show: it was both full of skanky gender issues and seriously boring.
I know that the writers are going for a Jamie Sommers who is young, inexperienced, and trying to figure out who she is in a pretty scary and confusing world. What they have achieved, however, is a Jamie Sommers who is infantile. The romance plot with the CIA counterpart was disturbing on serveral levels. For one thing, The Rules? SERIOUSLY?!? For another, Michelle Ryan and CIA guy actor had no chemistry, on top of which he totally reminds me of Fred Savage from The Wonder Years, and that is not a sexy spy association right there. (I did like that guy in Conviction. Obviously not enough to learn his name, though.) But most importantly, because this vision of Jamie Sommers is so infantile, it is impossible to envision her entering an adult romantic relationship, much less having sex that is an expression of her own autonomy. The fundamental construct of this show is that she does not really own her own body, and when you try to fit sex into that construct without actually addressing its inherent problems--even without dragging in the tired gender stereotypes of The Rules and a bunch of really assy dialogue--it becomes profoundly icky. And that, right there, is the problem at the core of this version of the show: the heroine doesn't really own her own body or her own life, and the writing and the acting aren't complex enough to actually deal with those things as issues. Instead, Jamie lives by The fucking Rules.
Oh, also CRK looks hot in a tux. It was kind of hard to focus on him, though, because I was too busy feeling like I needed to scrub myself with a brillo pad.
The Office 4.07 - Survivor Man
I definitely felt this episode was more character study than comedy, though the nearness with which Dwight can come to objectively resembling a serial killer while remaining Dwight Schrute continues to be hilarious: he's caring and determined and possessed of a unique skill set, the guy you'd most want to be stuck on a deserted island with right up until the point when he decides you've run out of all other viable food sources. But the parallels between Michael and Jim were neat, because now that Jim's unrequited love for Pam has been dealt with, the next logical step in Jim's character development is dealing with his potential and what's keeping him in Scranton. I love the idea that the Michael Scott we know today was forged from some potent alchemy involving Michael's lifelong neuroses and the demands of managing that office: that he had once had ideas about improving efficiency, consolidating the birthday parties, and had ended up internalizing the office's need for slack time; that stuck with Michael's job, Jim finds himself taking on Michael's mannerisms. I've always been a sucker for the friendship between Michael and Jim, strange and fitful as it is, and their odd points of connection. If that final conversation--Jim swearing he won't be there in ten years, Michael reminiscing that he'd thought the same thing--isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is.
And Steve Carrell wrote this episode! I always get a little thrill when actors write scripts that show how well they get the characters. I guess next week's is the last until the strike is resolved.
In other strike news:
* Ron Moore in IGN on where BSG production was when they shut down, and on the writers and actors having to push hard to get any compensation for the Resistance webisodes.
* According to this guy, who seems to be a writer and showrunner (?) for the Sarah Connor Chronicles, while a number of episodes have been filmed, they're not crossing picket lines to edit the footage, so only the pilot is ready to air.
* Some observations on why the WGA is so united this time.
It strikes me that one of the reasons the producers are playing hardball is that they don't want to cede ground to the writers right before the SAG contract runs out in June. So this thing could last a while. I'm thinking now might be the time to dust off those old plans to rewatch Angel at some point.
But eveything in its order, and I'd like to finish my post on Charlie Jade this weekend before work eats me alive (just in time for the holidays!).
This episode was a great reminder of the issues that made me squirmy in the Bionic Woman pilot and the reason I stopped watching the show: it was both full of skanky gender issues and seriously boring.
I know that the writers are going for a Jamie Sommers who is young, inexperienced, and trying to figure out who she is in a pretty scary and confusing world. What they have achieved, however, is a Jamie Sommers who is infantile. The romance plot with the CIA counterpart was disturbing on serveral levels. For one thing, The Rules? SERIOUSLY?!? For another, Michelle Ryan and CIA guy actor had no chemistry, on top of which he totally reminds me of Fred Savage from The Wonder Years, and that is not a sexy spy association right there. (I did like that guy in Conviction. Obviously not enough to learn his name, though.) But most importantly, because this vision of Jamie Sommers is so infantile, it is impossible to envision her entering an adult romantic relationship, much less having sex that is an expression of her own autonomy. The fundamental construct of this show is that she does not really own her own body, and when you try to fit sex into that construct without actually addressing its inherent problems--even without dragging in the tired gender stereotypes of The Rules and a bunch of really assy dialogue--it becomes profoundly icky. And that, right there, is the problem at the core of this version of the show: the heroine doesn't really own her own body or her own life, and the writing and the acting aren't complex enough to actually deal with those things as issues. Instead, Jamie lives by The fucking Rules.
Oh, also CRK looks hot in a tux. It was kind of hard to focus on him, though, because I was too busy feeling like I needed to scrub myself with a brillo pad.
The Office 4.07 - Survivor Man
I definitely felt this episode was more character study than comedy, though the nearness with which Dwight can come to objectively resembling a serial killer while remaining Dwight Schrute continues to be hilarious: he's caring and determined and possessed of a unique skill set, the guy you'd most want to be stuck on a deserted island with right up until the point when he decides you've run out of all other viable food sources. But the parallels between Michael and Jim were neat, because now that Jim's unrequited love for Pam has been dealt with, the next logical step in Jim's character development is dealing with his potential and what's keeping him in Scranton. I love the idea that the Michael Scott we know today was forged from some potent alchemy involving Michael's lifelong neuroses and the demands of managing that office: that he had once had ideas about improving efficiency, consolidating the birthday parties, and had ended up internalizing the office's need for slack time; that stuck with Michael's job, Jim finds himself taking on Michael's mannerisms. I've always been a sucker for the friendship between Michael and Jim, strange and fitful as it is, and their odd points of connection. If that final conversation--Jim swearing he won't be there in ten years, Michael reminiscing that he'd thought the same thing--isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is.
And Steve Carrell wrote this episode! I always get a little thrill when actors write scripts that show how well they get the characters. I guess next week's is the last until the strike is resolved.
In other strike news:
* Ron Moore in IGN on where BSG production was when they shut down, and on the writers and actors having to push hard to get any compensation for the Resistance webisodes.
* According to this guy, who seems to be a writer and showrunner (?) for the Sarah Connor Chronicles, while a number of episodes have been filmed, they're not crossing picket lines to edit the footage, so only the pilot is ready to air.
* Some observations on why the WGA is so united this time.
It strikes me that one of the reasons the producers are playing hardball is that they don't want to cede ground to the writers right before the SAG contract runs out in June. So this thing could last a while. I'm thinking now might be the time to dust off those old plans to rewatch Angel at some point.
But eveything in its order, and I'd like to finish my post on Charlie Jade this weekend before work eats me alive (just in time for the holidays!).