"Don't confuse close with happy."
Happy, happy (not close!) birthday cofax7!
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My meeting schedule suuuuuuucks right now. /whinge
ANYWAY. TV. Yes.
The Office 5.09 - "The Surplus"
This was pretty much Michael's worst nightmare: the office divided into chair and copy machine factions, at each other's throats, and he has to decide. (After, that is, after Oscar breaks out the lemonade stand analogy and he finally understands what the problem is.) He loves being courted, but he doesn't want to be the bad guy, and no matter what he decides, half of them are going to hate him. So he chooses himself, until Oscar calls him on it. (Michael never seems to realize how transparent his schemes are, how little real people conform to the standards of behavior set out in sitcoms--which is ironic, considering that this is a sitcom.)
There's a lovely parallel between Michael's dilemma and Angela's travesty of an engagement. She loves being courted; choosing one man over the other means breaking an engagement, admitting a mistake to herself and others, hurting someone in a way that other people can point to. She comes close, though; the magical atmosphere of Schrute Farms almost does her in; if only her realization that she'd picked the wrong man wasn't so quickly overwhelmed by her anger that Dwight tricked her into some kind of marriage, and took her choice away. Dwight's thinking is too convoluted; he always overplays his hand. He had her, but he had to go that extra mile. Oh Dwight.
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TSCC 2.12 - "Alpine Fields"
katie_m says some interesting things about the time paradoxes in this episode here.
I thought it was an interesting choice to tell the story of one of the people John protects from his vantage point in the future. Lauren's story is an echo, in different ways, of both Sarah's and Derek's. She's given a mission from the future, to protect a young child in the present, and more than that, to ensure that that child comes to be. From her viewpoint, Cameron is alien and mechanical; Sarah is an obvious role model; Derek, surprisingly, is her most sympathetic and human point of contact. Derek sees himself in her: the caretaker of a helpless younger sibling, charged with laying the path to a future outcome but not being the one who walks it. He offers her a place with the Connors, a membership in that exclusive and scary club.
It seems that Derek can't really get used to the loss in any of his futures. It was nice to see that translate, in this case, into a point of contact with someone in the present; in some ways, I think Lauren made him feel less alone with his own role.
We keep getting hints of the John Connor of the future, of the decisions he makes and the way he touches other people's lives, but like with any legend, we don't see him. Our picture of him is a composite, taken from his relationships with his followers. So I thought it was particularly interesting that Lauren never saw John in the present, that he was a few cryptic remarks from Sarah and a voice on the other end of some phone calls to her. Every family is unhappy in its own way; she seems to think there's a silver lining of closeness in Sarah and John's desperate existence, especially when stacked up against her parents' terribly conventional unhappiness; it's only in retrospect that we realize it's the thing she'll have to get her through her own parenting of her sister.
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I still have the second episode of Leverage stacked up on the TiVO, but I quite enjoyed the pilot. It was smart and well-paced and required attention from the viewer, and (to basically reproduce the comment I made to asta77) hinted at some interesting background for all of the characters without resorting to an awkward infodump. I've subscribed to the feed for Kung Fu Monkey, the blog of John Rogers (one of the show's creators), for some time, but I didn't put it together that this was the show he was talking about until a couple of weeks ago, because I'm on top of things like that. Anyway, he's got some fun stories about production, although alas, no tags to help you find them easily.
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Some links, mostly about cookies, since 'tis the season:
Mmm, cookies.
* * * * *
My meeting schedule suuuuuuucks right now. /whinge
ANYWAY. TV. Yes.
The Office 5.09 - "The Surplus"
This was pretty much Michael's worst nightmare: the office divided into chair and copy machine factions, at each other's throats, and he has to decide. (After, that is, after Oscar breaks out the lemonade stand analogy and he finally understands what the problem is.) He loves being courted, but he doesn't want to be the bad guy, and no matter what he decides, half of them are going to hate him. So he chooses himself, until Oscar calls him on it. (Michael never seems to realize how transparent his schemes are, how little real people conform to the standards of behavior set out in sitcoms--which is ironic, considering that this is a sitcom.)
There's a lovely parallel between Michael's dilemma and Angela's travesty of an engagement. She loves being courted; choosing one man over the other means breaking an engagement, admitting a mistake to herself and others, hurting someone in a way that other people can point to. She comes close, though; the magical atmosphere of Schrute Farms almost does her in; if only her realization that she'd picked the wrong man wasn't so quickly overwhelmed by her anger that Dwight tricked her into some kind of marriage, and took her choice away. Dwight's thinking is too convoluted; he always overplays his hand. He had her, but he had to go that extra mile. Oh Dwight.
* * * * *
TSCC 2.12 - "Alpine Fields"
katie_m says some interesting things about the time paradoxes in this episode here.
I thought it was an interesting choice to tell the story of one of the people John protects from his vantage point in the future. Lauren's story is an echo, in different ways, of both Sarah's and Derek's. She's given a mission from the future, to protect a young child in the present, and more than that, to ensure that that child comes to be. From her viewpoint, Cameron is alien and mechanical; Sarah is an obvious role model; Derek, surprisingly, is her most sympathetic and human point of contact. Derek sees himself in her: the caretaker of a helpless younger sibling, charged with laying the path to a future outcome but not being the one who walks it. He offers her a place with the Connors, a membership in that exclusive and scary club.
It seems that Derek can't really get used to the loss in any of his futures. It was nice to see that translate, in this case, into a point of contact with someone in the present; in some ways, I think Lauren made him feel less alone with his own role.
We keep getting hints of the John Connor of the future, of the decisions he makes and the way he touches other people's lives, but like with any legend, we don't see him. Our picture of him is a composite, taken from his relationships with his followers. So I thought it was particularly interesting that Lauren never saw John in the present, that he was a few cryptic remarks from Sarah and a voice on the other end of some phone calls to her. Every family is unhappy in its own way; she seems to think there's a silver lining of closeness in Sarah and John's desperate existence, especially when stacked up against her parents' terribly conventional unhappiness; it's only in retrospect that we realize it's the thing she'll have to get her through her own parenting of her sister.
* * * * *
I still have the second episode of Leverage stacked up on the TiVO, but I quite enjoyed the pilot. It was smart and well-paced and required attention from the viewer, and (to basically reproduce the comment I made to asta77) hinted at some interesting background for all of the characters without resorting to an awkward infodump. I've subscribed to the feed for Kung Fu Monkey, the blog of John Rogers (one of the show's creators), for some time, but I didn't put it together that this was the show he was talking about until a couple of weeks ago, because I'm on top of things like that. Anyway, he's got some fun stories about production, although alas, no tags to help you find them easily.
* * * * *
Some links, mostly about cookies, since 'tis the season:
- Via sdwolfpup, this this awesome interview with Joss Whedon by... a crochet blog. I love it for lots of reasons, including the fact that the questions are different and that Joss talks about creativity and craftiness, community and fandom, and that he uses the phrase "It fills me with tiny knitted joy."
- Kelloggs is stepping in to save Mother's Cookies. We may not have seen the last of the Circus Animals.
- Gourmet magazine's recipe retrospective on cookies 1941-present is a fun trip through American food history, with some tasty-looking recipes.
Mmm, cookies.