Your dose of random for the day
Come January, Battlestar Galactica is moving to Sunday nights, where SciFi will pair it with The Dresden Files. I'm inclined to agree with asta77 that it looks like SciFi is trying to build up a second anchor night of programming. (Though didn't The Dresden Files have to be massively retooled? I seem to remember that word on the original pilot was bad.) But really, the most important thing is how this effects ME and how I will no longer have an entire weekend to rewatch the episode and formulate my thoughts. Boo.
As spoilerphobic as I am, I have given up on avoiding casting spoilers. You've got to pick your battles. So, the BSG casting spoiler for Season 4--Michael Trucco has been signed for a recurring role. I'm pretty happy about that. I don't expect Anders to have a huge part to play in the drama, but he's grown out of his initial role as Kara's love interest appendage and become a viable standalone character, and he could provide a good window onto the civilian portion of the fleet. And it would be nice if, for once, Kara lost someone because the relationship didn't work out, rather than because he died an awful fiery death.
This apparently came out at a Stargate convention where Trucco showed up because he and the actor who played Martouf are friends. The incestuous Vancouver actor pool strikes again. No word on whether Martouf was still that frightening shade of orange last seen in "Ripple Effect," though. (What was up with that?)
* * * * *
I haven't settled on what dessert to make for Thanksgiving yet. For a number of years, I made the deep dish pear, apple, and cranberry pie from The Joy of Cooking, but got wildly inconsistent results because of the variable sweetness of the cranberries I used from year to year. Last year I made a lattice cranberry tart from the Greens cookbook, and that came out pretty well, but when I made it again at Christmas it was horrifically sour, even though I had tasted the cranberries beforehand and corrected the sugar. I'm leaning toward this pear tart, maybe using grated fresh ginger instead of the ground. Hm. It would be good if I could decide today and go to the store tonight, because going to the store tomorrow is a bad idea.
* * * * *
I feel like I am not as excited as I should be about the news that the CW has ordered another 7 episodes of Veronica Mars, for a 20-episode season. I have Entertainment Weekly's TV Watch on my Google homepage and it's very bitter about tonight's episode, and I find myself agreeing with them on the fundamentals of this season, even though I still enjoy large parts of the show and think it has potential that will hopefully be realized more fully once they get out of the campus rapes arc. I think one of the big problems the show has had over the past two seasons is that Veronica's rape in Season 1 was a really powerful element of the arc, and of establishing Veronica, from the pilot on, as someone who took the bad things that happened to her and channeled them outward, into her investigations, even though they left their marks on her. And it wasn't just about something bad happening to Veronica--it tied into her relationship with Duncan, which rippled out to her relationship with her father, and with Lilly. But it feels like, on some level, the writers drew the wrong lesson from its effectiveness in Season 1 and have been dragging it up ever since in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture the magic and tie Veronica emotionally to whatever is currently the mystery arc. I still do not understand why, after Cassidy confessed to causing the bus crash and doing other terrible, terrible things to cover up his molestation, and because of what that molestation had warped in him, the writers felt it was necessary to up his evil quotient and tie his wrongs personally to Veronica by revisiting "A Trip to the Dentist" and making him her rapist. Veronica had just spent the entire season investigating the bus crash, she took it deeply personally, someone to whom she had complicated ties died because of it, and Cassidy's damage had directly hurt her best friend Mac. Veronica already had plenty at stake, and piling on an additional bit at the very last minute was narratively baffling. And this season, I can see why the writers thought the campus rapes would be a good storyline to bridge last season, and high school Veronica, with the new campus setting. There was continuity with "The Rapes of Graff." But the show seems to be using it as a shorthand for giving Veronica a personal stake in the investigation again, an emotional connection because of what happened to her in high school--and they're trying to do that without having Veronica really confront her past and how her own experience has made her feel about the situation, beyond a couple of throwaway lines. The result is that the storyline feels both repetitive and off. The writers need to find a new way of getting Veronica emotionally invested in the mystery arc du jour. Hopefully they'll be able to do that in the rest of the season. And hopefully the resolution of this arc will be interesting and challenging, because otherwise, I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to it, especially given the caricature angry feminists and the clunky way last week's episode attempted to resolve Veronica's trust issues.
* * * * *
Two random links:
Today is World Hello Day!
And check out this very excellent Lego stargate.
Why yes, Legos were my favorite toys when I was a child. Why do you ask?
* * * * *
Stupid early phone call to India. ::does faceplant on keyboard:: And somewhere in Bengaluru, I'll bet someone is cursing the late phone call to America even as I type this. One of these days, I'm going to write about the ups and downs of offshore software development, but let's just say that the time difference, while in many ways the least of the issues, is not insignificant.
And now I'm doing something really tedious with conditional text in FrameMaker. Time for more coffee. Is it time to go home yet?
As spoilerphobic as I am, I have given up on avoiding casting spoilers. You've got to pick your battles. So, the BSG casting spoiler for Season 4--Michael Trucco has been signed for a recurring role. I'm pretty happy about that. I don't expect Anders to have a huge part to play in the drama, but he's grown out of his initial role as Kara's love interest appendage and become a viable standalone character, and he could provide a good window onto the civilian portion of the fleet. And it would be nice if, for once, Kara lost someone because the relationship didn't work out, rather than because he died an awful fiery death.
This apparently came out at a Stargate convention where Trucco showed up because he and the actor who played Martouf are friends. The incestuous Vancouver actor pool strikes again. No word on whether Martouf was still that frightening shade of orange last seen in "Ripple Effect," though. (What was up with that?)
* * * * *
I haven't settled on what dessert to make for Thanksgiving yet. For a number of years, I made the deep dish pear, apple, and cranberry pie from The Joy of Cooking, but got wildly inconsistent results because of the variable sweetness of the cranberries I used from year to year. Last year I made a lattice cranberry tart from the Greens cookbook, and that came out pretty well, but when I made it again at Christmas it was horrifically sour, even though I had tasted the cranberries beforehand and corrected the sugar. I'm leaning toward this pear tart, maybe using grated fresh ginger instead of the ground. Hm. It would be good if I could decide today and go to the store tonight, because going to the store tomorrow is a bad idea.
* * * * *
I feel like I am not as excited as I should be about the news that the CW has ordered another 7 episodes of Veronica Mars, for a 20-episode season. I have Entertainment Weekly's TV Watch on my Google homepage and it's very bitter about tonight's episode, and I find myself agreeing with them on the fundamentals of this season, even though I still enjoy large parts of the show and think it has potential that will hopefully be realized more fully once they get out of the campus rapes arc. I think one of the big problems the show has had over the past two seasons is that Veronica's rape in Season 1 was a really powerful element of the arc, and of establishing Veronica, from the pilot on, as someone who took the bad things that happened to her and channeled them outward, into her investigations, even though they left their marks on her. And it wasn't just about something bad happening to Veronica--it tied into her relationship with Duncan, which rippled out to her relationship with her father, and with Lilly. But it feels like, on some level, the writers drew the wrong lesson from its effectiveness in Season 1 and have been dragging it up ever since in an unsuccessful attempt to recapture the magic and tie Veronica emotionally to whatever is currently the mystery arc. I still do not understand why, after Cassidy confessed to causing the bus crash and doing other terrible, terrible things to cover up his molestation, and because of what that molestation had warped in him, the writers felt it was necessary to up his evil quotient and tie his wrongs personally to Veronica by revisiting "A Trip to the Dentist" and making him her rapist. Veronica had just spent the entire season investigating the bus crash, she took it deeply personally, someone to whom she had complicated ties died because of it, and Cassidy's damage had directly hurt her best friend Mac. Veronica already had plenty at stake, and piling on an additional bit at the very last minute was narratively baffling. And this season, I can see why the writers thought the campus rapes would be a good storyline to bridge last season, and high school Veronica, with the new campus setting. There was continuity with "The Rapes of Graff." But the show seems to be using it as a shorthand for giving Veronica a personal stake in the investigation again, an emotional connection because of what happened to her in high school--and they're trying to do that without having Veronica really confront her past and how her own experience has made her feel about the situation, beyond a couple of throwaway lines. The result is that the storyline feels both repetitive and off. The writers need to find a new way of getting Veronica emotionally invested in the mystery arc du jour. Hopefully they'll be able to do that in the rest of the season. And hopefully the resolution of this arc will be interesting and challenging, because otherwise, I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to it, especially given the caricature angry feminists and the clunky way last week's episode attempted to resolve Veronica's trust issues.
* * * * *
Two random links:
Today is World Hello Day!
And check out this very excellent Lego stargate.
Why yes, Legos were my favorite toys when I was a child. Why do you ask?
* * * * *
Stupid early phone call to India. ::does faceplant on keyboard:: And somewhere in Bengaluru, I'll bet someone is cursing the late phone call to America even as I type this. One of these days, I'm going to write about the ups and downs of offshore software development, but let's just say that the time difference, while in many ways the least of the issues, is not insignificant.
And now I'm doing something really tedious with conditional text in FrameMaker. Time for more coffee. Is it time to go home yet?