stuff about stuff
* General cantankery: I seem to be having the 'Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas' conversation far more often than usual this year, especially with people who really should know better than to ask if I have had fun celebrating the holiday (15 hours in) or was taking off work for it. It's the middle of the week (so I don't feel like shredding and frying potatoes for one), it's a few days after Thanksgiving (so I don't have the slightest urge to see all of the family I saw last week), and I'm twenty-five years too old for it to be all about the haul (I get all my stuff on Christmas, anyway). And it's eight days, a marathon and not a sprint. The start of my Chanukah was low-key by design.
* This week's embarrassing Netflix confession isn't really all that embarrassing in context: The Young Riders. My best friend and I watched this faithfully when it was on -- the guys were hot, Lou was a relatively rare empowered woman in that type of show, it had a respectable ability to get the heroes in and out of trouble on a weekly basis, and did I mention that the guys were hot? And that my best friend and I were fourteen-year-old girls when it debuted?
I hadn't seen it since it aired -- it wasn't out on DVD and it wasn't anything I felt strongly enough for nostalgia-wise to download a TV-rip. But, since it was just added to Netflix's streaming service... Some thoughts on the first five episodes, rewatched for the first time in 21 years:
- The first lines of the series are spoken by a very familiar voice, but I had to pause the show for a second to gawp because while Jim Beaver certainly sounds the same, he looked a much younger man back then. Which, yeah, it's twenty-one years, but Josh Brolin and the Baldwin brother and Matt Cullen and Melissa Leo haven't changed nearly as much.
- Melissa Leo. I'd remembered that there was an Emma before there was a Rachel, but I hadn't remembered that Leo'd played her. It's like watching Kay Howard in a fever dream -- it looks like Kay, it sounds like Kay, and she's got a steel spine and she's still rolling her eyes at a Baldwin brother... but she's wearing petticoats and a bonnet and is determined to mother all the riders like they were still in swaddling cloths.
- My BFF thought The Kid was the cutest and I thought Jimmy Hickok was. I still think Jimmy's better looking than The Kid, but I might chose another option were we to have that conversation now. (Which we totally will once I call her and make her come over and watch. Because some things don't change even when you're no longer fourteen.)
- It's not nearly as jaw-droppingly stupid as I thought it would be on the rewatch. It's not Deadwood, don't get me wrong, and most of my tolerance is entirely based on nostalgia, but I'm not cringing at the sheer badness of it. We'll see how I feel if I make it far enough for Jesse James, the Cousin Oliver of the show, to appear.
- I say this as someone who is not even capable of using someone else's slash goggles: I seem to have missed that the main romantic OTP of the series wasn't The Kid and Lou, but Ike and Buck. Oh my goodness. I can read Aubrey and Maturin as devoted-but-platonic soulmates, but I'd totally buy these two sneaking off. And that was before Buck took off his bracelet and asked Teaspoon to give it to Ike and tell him first that he (Buck) was leaving them. Oh, boys.
- Buck may be the pretty and sensitive one, but I'd totally forgotten that Ike was the show's woobie. Also forgotten: just how annoying Cody is and that Kid was that much of a Marty Stu and the leader of the gang.
* In less hazy nostalgia-fueled news, Netflix also has a copy of Metropolis up for streaming. I saw a restored-in-quality-and-found-content version at the Ziegfeld a few years ago (the 2001 restoration) but I think this is the 2008, the most recent and most complete, so even if you've seen it before, you should watch it again.
* This week's embarrassing Netflix confession isn't really all that embarrassing in context: The Young Riders. My best friend and I watched this faithfully when it was on -- the guys were hot, Lou was a relatively rare empowered woman in that type of show, it had a respectable ability to get the heroes in and out of trouble on a weekly basis, and did I mention that the guys were hot? And that my best friend and I were fourteen-year-old girls when it debuted?
I hadn't seen it since it aired -- it wasn't out on DVD and it wasn't anything I felt strongly enough for nostalgia-wise to download a TV-rip. But, since it was just added to Netflix's streaming service... Some thoughts on the first five episodes, rewatched for the first time in 21 years:
- The first lines of the series are spoken by a very familiar voice, but I had to pause the show for a second to gawp because while Jim Beaver certainly sounds the same, he looked a much younger man back then. Which, yeah, it's twenty-one years, but Josh Brolin and the Baldwin brother and Matt Cullen and Melissa Leo haven't changed nearly as much.
- Melissa Leo. I'd remembered that there was an Emma before there was a Rachel, but I hadn't remembered that Leo'd played her. It's like watching Kay Howard in a fever dream -- it looks like Kay, it sounds like Kay, and she's got a steel spine and she's still rolling her eyes at a Baldwin brother... but she's wearing petticoats and a bonnet and is determined to mother all the riders like they were still in swaddling cloths.
- My BFF thought The Kid was the cutest and I thought Jimmy Hickok was. I still think Jimmy's better looking than The Kid, but I might chose another option were we to have that conversation now. (Which we totally will once I call her and make her come over and watch. Because some things don't change even when you're no longer fourteen.)
- It's not nearly as jaw-droppingly stupid as I thought it would be on the rewatch. It's not Deadwood, don't get me wrong, and most of my tolerance is entirely based on nostalgia, but I'm not cringing at the sheer badness of it. We'll see how I feel if I make it far enough for Jesse James, the Cousin Oliver of the show, to appear.
- I say this as someone who is not even capable of using someone else's slash goggles: I seem to have missed that the main romantic OTP of the series wasn't The Kid and Lou, but Ike and Buck. Oh my goodness. I can read Aubrey and Maturin as devoted-but-platonic soulmates, but I'd totally buy these two sneaking off. And that was before Buck took off his bracelet and asked Teaspoon to give it to Ike and tell him first that he (Buck) was leaving them. Oh, boys.
- Buck may be the pretty and sensitive one, but I'd totally forgotten that Ike was the show's woobie. Also forgotten: just how annoying Cody is and that Kid was that much of a Marty Stu and the leader of the gang.
* In less hazy nostalgia-fueled news, Netflix also has a copy of Metropolis up for streaming. I saw a restored-in-quality-and-found-content version at the Ziegfeld a few years ago (the 2001 restoration) but I think this is the 2008, the most recent and most complete, so even if you've seen it before, you should watch it again.