state of fannish me
In my new, post-dog life, I was going to have so much time for things! And all the stuff I was going to do--going out and being active, getting work done, watching cool stuff and writing about it, thereby reviving my dying fannish presence--was going to help buoy me through the post-dog sadness, as well as through the period of living where I don't want to live, etc. Great plans!
And then the Olympics happened, and I did nothing but sit on my butt watching swimming and gymnastics and track cycling (track cycling!!!) and beach volleyball for two weeks. It's my usual Olympics pattern: I begin with much enthusiasm, then toward the second weekend start to really burn out and succeed in not watching for a couple of days, and then start to get worried that I'm missing stuff (even though I'm reading all about it on the interwebs) so start to watch again, almost against my will, in a kind of completist need to see it ALL, until today, when I'm both terrifically relieved that it's over and simultaneously kind of wondering what it is I did with my time before spending four hours every evening flipping between the horrible commentators on NBC and the even worse ones on CTV. (An aside: Canadian Olympic coverage is vastly superior in terms of amount of actual sports shown and in terms of attention to athletes from all countries and ability levels. But some of their commentators are so bad they make the NBC commentators (though not Bob Costas) look good, and NBC also has markedly better production values. So I kept flipping.)
Anyway, yes. Thank God that's over, though I did enjoy parts of it muchly. (Like track cycling. Where have you been all my life???)
Before I got swallowed up in Olympics madness, I was spending my fannish energy on The Wire, about which I've been meaning to write things for ages and ages. I've seen through the fourth episode of season 3, and I keep having to remind myself that the seasons seem to have patterns for me (incidentally, I've seen season 1 twice, and it worked this way both times, as did season 2): they start slow, and I spend the first handful of episodes confused about what's going on, irritated by all the new people that I can't yet keep straight (with season 1 this was all the people), irritated that various of the old people that I'd come to care about aren't in it much/at all (Bubbles!!!! come back!!!!), and just generally feeling like I'm not sure what all the fuss about the show is about. There's something about the way this show does exposition--the first three or four episodes of each season (at least so far) are on one hand all exposition and set-up, and on the other hand don't behave like we're used to exposition behaving (characters just dropped in without context, various referents thrown out like we're supposed to already know what they mean, even when we don't, etc.). I see the brilliance of this, but at the same time, it frustrates me.
So I'm kind of stuck there right now with much-lauded season 3--wondering what the big deal is--and I know I need to get back to it, because past experience tells me that I'm on the cusp of when it all starts to fall into place. I will start to care about the new characters, I will figure out what the hell is going on, I will find someone to cheer for. And by the last four or so episodes of the season, I will get into must-mainline-this-all-right-now mode.
But I have to admit it: as of this point, anyway, I like The Wire a LOT, but I don't just adore it like so many people seem to. And the really annoying part is that I can't quite put my finger on why that is. People having to act in the midst of untenable circumstances is one of my big buttons, so you'd think this would be pushing it in a huge way, but it isn't really. There are moments, particular characters and storylines, when it does, especially with people who are embroiled in the life of drug (using or dealing) and want to get out but can't: so I loved D'Angelo's storyline, and Wallace's, and Bubbles in season 1, at least. I have a harder time with characters who are willfully self-destructive, and the move to turn Kima into McNulty is pissing me off (especially because I'm not sure what Kima's motivation is supposed to be: she doesn't seem to want her family at all, in which case, why didn't she speak up before Cheryl had the kid?). If Wallace and D'Angelo and Bubbles are the characters who grab me emotionally, Daniels and Stringer grab me intellectually: the master chess players who are trying to hold things together and save their own asses, and mostly succeed, though it's a near thing. But I'm not all that invested in them as characters. Maybe that's the bottom line between enjoying the show a lot and recognizing its utter brilliance, on one hand, and really loving it on the other: out of all these great characters, none of them have really clicked to the point of being a character I truly care about. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps the paucity of women is a factor?
In any event, I know that I have the majority of what people tend to think are the best two seasons (3 and 4, right?) yet to go, and I have every intention of watching the rest of it. But so far I think I want to love it more than I do. A show that's so obviously brilliant--and so vastly more brilliant than most of the rest of television--ought also to be a favorite. Or so we tend to feel, I guess. But, well, I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen the rest! (And please, no one spoil me past early season 3!)
In other fannish news, how has Rizzoli and Isles gotten so horrible so quickly??? Usually shows don't start showing these kinds of signs of fatigue until the fourth or fifth season, and even then it's a spotty, slow decline. Whereas this show that has been so much my happy place is suddenly just free-falling off a cliff. :( I'm still watching, because it is still maintaining priorities I like (chiefly, that Jane and Maura's friendship is still central), but wow, it's bad!
Leverage, on the other hand, is still delightfully itself: fun, teamy, geeky, not heavy, not too silly. These are writers who know their formula and know how to make it pay off. It doesn't take the risks that could make it a great show, but I don't think it aspires to be a great show, nor do I need it to be one. It does what it does really well, and I enjoy that.
And after I finish The Wire, I'm apparently going to fill a big gap in my geek education and borrow Buffy from some friends. I'll keep you posted!
That's pretty much the state of fannish me. You know what I miss? Space operas. Here we are landing probes on Mars (how cool is that!!!), and there are no good shows about space. I miss space, y'all! Exploration! Wormholes/warp drives/ftl jumps! Aliens! Big damn guns! Wide-eyed idealism and triumph over insurmountable odds and a backdrop where the story is only as limited as the imagination. Discuss: where have all the spaceships gone? If Battlestar Galactica killed the whole genre I'm going to be even more angry with it than I already was.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
And then the Olympics happened, and I did nothing but sit on my butt watching swimming and gymnastics and track cycling (track cycling!!!) and beach volleyball for two weeks. It's my usual Olympics pattern: I begin with much enthusiasm, then toward the second weekend start to really burn out and succeed in not watching for a couple of days, and then start to get worried that I'm missing stuff (even though I'm reading all about it on the interwebs) so start to watch again, almost against my will, in a kind of completist need to see it ALL, until today, when I'm both terrifically relieved that it's over and simultaneously kind of wondering what it is I did with my time before spending four hours every evening flipping between the horrible commentators on NBC and the even worse ones on CTV. (An aside: Canadian Olympic coverage is vastly superior in terms of amount of actual sports shown and in terms of attention to athletes from all countries and ability levels. But some of their commentators are so bad they make the NBC commentators (though not Bob Costas) look good, and NBC also has markedly better production values. So I kept flipping.)
Anyway, yes. Thank God that's over, though I did enjoy parts of it muchly. (Like track cycling. Where have you been all my life???)
Before I got swallowed up in Olympics madness, I was spending my fannish energy on The Wire, about which I've been meaning to write things for ages and ages. I've seen through the fourth episode of season 3, and I keep having to remind myself that the seasons seem to have patterns for me (incidentally, I've seen season 1 twice, and it worked this way both times, as did season 2): they start slow, and I spend the first handful of episodes confused about what's going on, irritated by all the new people that I can't yet keep straight (with season 1 this was all the people), irritated that various of the old people that I'd come to care about aren't in it much/at all (Bubbles!!!! come back!!!!), and just generally feeling like I'm not sure what all the fuss about the show is about. There's something about the way this show does exposition--the first three or four episodes of each season (at least so far) are on one hand all exposition and set-up, and on the other hand don't behave like we're used to exposition behaving (characters just dropped in without context, various referents thrown out like we're supposed to already know what they mean, even when we don't, etc.). I see the brilliance of this, but at the same time, it frustrates me.
So I'm kind of stuck there right now with much-lauded season 3--wondering what the big deal is--and I know I need to get back to it, because past experience tells me that I'm on the cusp of when it all starts to fall into place. I will start to care about the new characters, I will figure out what the hell is going on, I will find someone to cheer for. And by the last four or so episodes of the season, I will get into must-mainline-this-all-right-now mode.
But I have to admit it: as of this point, anyway, I like The Wire a LOT, but I don't just adore it like so many people seem to. And the really annoying part is that I can't quite put my finger on why that is. People having to act in the midst of untenable circumstances is one of my big buttons, so you'd think this would be pushing it in a huge way, but it isn't really. There are moments, particular characters and storylines, when it does, especially with people who are embroiled in the life of drug (using or dealing) and want to get out but can't: so I loved D'Angelo's storyline, and Wallace's, and Bubbles in season 1, at least. I have a harder time with characters who are willfully self-destructive, and the move to turn Kima into McNulty is pissing me off (especially because I'm not sure what Kima's motivation is supposed to be: she doesn't seem to want her family at all, in which case, why didn't she speak up before Cheryl had the kid?). If Wallace and D'Angelo and Bubbles are the characters who grab me emotionally, Daniels and Stringer grab me intellectually: the master chess players who are trying to hold things together and save their own asses, and mostly succeed, though it's a near thing. But I'm not all that invested in them as characters. Maybe that's the bottom line between enjoying the show a lot and recognizing its utter brilliance, on one hand, and really loving it on the other: out of all these great characters, none of them have really clicked to the point of being a character I truly care about. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps the paucity of women is a factor?
In any event, I know that I have the majority of what people tend to think are the best two seasons (3 and 4, right?) yet to go, and I have every intention of watching the rest of it. But so far I think I want to love it more than I do. A show that's so obviously brilliant--and so vastly more brilliant than most of the rest of television--ought also to be a favorite. Or so we tend to feel, I guess. But, well, I'll reserve final judgment until I've seen the rest! (And please, no one spoil me past early season 3!)
In other fannish news, how has Rizzoli and Isles gotten so horrible so quickly??? Usually shows don't start showing these kinds of signs of fatigue until the fourth or fifth season, and even then it's a spotty, slow decline. Whereas this show that has been so much my happy place is suddenly just free-falling off a cliff. :( I'm still watching, because it is still maintaining priorities I like (chiefly, that Jane and Maura's friendship is still central), but wow, it's bad!
Leverage, on the other hand, is still delightfully itself: fun, teamy, geeky, not heavy, not too silly. These are writers who know their formula and know how to make it pay off. It doesn't take the risks that could make it a great show, but I don't think it aspires to be a great show, nor do I need it to be one. It does what it does really well, and I enjoy that.
And after I finish The Wire, I'm apparently going to fill a big gap in my geek education and borrow Buffy from some friends. I'll keep you posted!
That's pretty much the state of fannish me. You know what I miss? Space operas. Here we are landing probes on Mars (how cool is that!!!), and there are no good shows about space. I miss space, y'all! Exploration! Wormholes/warp drives/ftl jumps! Aliens! Big damn guns! Wide-eyed idealism and triumph over insurmountable odds and a backdrop where the story is only as limited as the imagination. Discuss: where have all the spaceships gone? If Battlestar Galactica killed the whole genre I'm going to be even more angry with it than I already was.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.