Pillars
Warehouse 13: still my favorite new story. Claudia has added the missing dynamic in the Artie-half of the episodes. If I had to point out one emblematic scene, it would be from Elements (which I know you've seen because it's the one with Joe Flannigan guest starring as earthside AU millionaire John Sheppard) where Artie is putting Claudia to work in the warehouse fixing all the electrical things she messed with while breaking in. Lena and Artie talk about Artie's stagnant chess game against himself while an over-worked Claudia naps inside the office. Lena says Claudia was looking at the game and Artie insists no one touch it since he's waiting for an epiphany. Claudia, blanket over her shoulders, appears behind Artie and reaches for a chess piece. Artie shouts, "No, no, no" and various other monosyllabic protests while Claudia shouts, "Yeah yeah yeah" in her patented tone of all knowing I've-got-it-ness, and when she finally completes the move, she says, "check." Much to Artie's astonishment, she's solved his problem. It's the perfect symbol for Artie's own real-life game against himself, where Claudia's role is to get in the way, argue with him, point out the things he's too close to see, and generally break the tension with a well-placed smart-ass remark.
I will have to talk about Fringe later, when I have a little more distance, because I got over my issues with all the warehouses that are apparently housing all manner of malicious government agents, creeptastic experiments, and perception-altering drugs hidden all over my neighborhood, and I marathoned the ten episodes available on Hulu and then nearly died of a heart attack caused by JJ Abrams' brilliant plotting. There Is More Than One of Everything is by far the best television storytelling I have seen since Alias, and you don't have to remind me there's a reason those things are both true. I really need to watch the season from the beginning, but I've already watched There Is More Than One of Everything three times and I am still not over my surprised delight, especially considering I started out mocking more of the show than I was enjoying, and cleary I just need more time to learn to suspend my disbelief at canon details like Olivia living on Strathmore Road. Also, when JJ Abrams says he's writing a show that you don't need to watch chronologically or one that gives you the freedom to miss an episode here or there? He's kind of lying.
I got myself all into a tangle of emotions tonight reading Brian Schechter's twitter and trying to infer how be became the ex-manager of My Chem. Which, frankly, is a very bizarre part of RPS. I know, intellectually, that this is a stranger's life, and that I don't get to know the whole story because we do not actually know each other, and I am not reading Brian Schechter like he's a novel. Except for how that is exactly what I'm doing. My entire engagement with this fandom rests on the construction that these real lives are in fact not real, but the idea of reality, and that within this fandom there is an agreed-upon, shared way of looking at real life events as though they were all a story, as though the events that happened made up a universe in which careers and romance and achievements and disappointments followed a narrative arc. I do not actually want to know the "real story" as such - I want to know this particular thread's conclusion in this master narrative we are telling ourselves about a band.
I will have to talk about Fringe later, when I have a little more distance, because I got over my issues with all the warehouses that are apparently housing all manner of malicious government agents, creeptastic experiments, and perception-altering drugs hidden all over my neighborhood, and I marathoned the ten episodes available on Hulu and then nearly died of a heart attack caused by JJ Abrams' brilliant plotting. There Is More Than One of Everything is by far the best television storytelling I have seen since Alias, and you don't have to remind me there's a reason those things are both true. I really need to watch the season from the beginning, but I've already watched There Is More Than One of Everything three times and I am still not over my surprised delight, especially considering I started out mocking more of the show than I was enjoying, and cleary I just need more time to learn to suspend my disbelief at canon details like Olivia living on Strathmore Road. Also, when JJ Abrams says he's writing a show that you don't need to watch chronologically or one that gives you the freedom to miss an episode here or there? He's kind of lying.
I got myself all into a tangle of emotions tonight reading Brian Schechter's twitter and trying to infer how be became the ex-manager of My Chem. Which, frankly, is a very bizarre part of RPS. I know, intellectually, that this is a stranger's life, and that I don't get to know the whole story because we do not actually know each other, and I am not reading Brian Schechter like he's a novel. Except for how that is exactly what I'm doing. My entire engagement with this fandom rests on the construction that these real lives are in fact not real, but the idea of reality, and that within this fandom there is an agreed-upon, shared way of looking at real life events as though they were all a story, as though the events that happened made up a universe in which careers and romance and achievements and disappointments followed a narrative arc. I do not actually want to know the "real story" as such - I want to know this particular thread's conclusion in this master narrative we are telling ourselves about a band.