Link Salad, the Looking for Closure Edition
-- ‘Looking’ for Complexity: Why HBO’s Great Show Can’t Seem to Break Out - Andy Greenwald, Grantland, Mar. 23, 2015
"Earlier this month, a shadowy cabal of industry types sequestered themselves in a conference room to determine the difference between comedy and drama. At the end of their labor, definitive verdicts were announced. Jane the Virgin and Shameless - which have featured plotlines about artificial insemination and the accidental ingestion of cocaine by children, respectively - were officially comedies. Orange Is the New Black, with its cunning, lingual dogs and tampon sandwiches, was a drama. That the arbiters were making these declarations on behalf of the Television Academy, and thus directly determining this fall’s Emmy race, made their work at once more conclusive and more absurd. The truth is, in today’s rich television landscape, the very best shows are always funny and moving. Think of Better Call Saul’s tightrope walk between laughter and tears, Mad Men’s killer cleverness, or the way You’re the Worst made broken weirdos falling in love into the most romantic thing I’d seen in years. As with real life, chuckling at someone slipping on a banana peel is only half of the story. Eventually, you’re going to have to deal with the violent impact of their fall."
-- A Place in the Sun: The Return and Withdrawal of Serena Williams at Indian Wells - Louisa Thomas, Grantland, Mar. 23, 2015
"Indian Wells is about two hours away from Compton by car, although it might as well have been a colony on the moon for all that the two places had in common. Compton was wrested from nature by concrete, chain link, crime, and systemic injustice. Indian Wells was transformed from an expanse of sand into an enclave of privilege by white wealth and by water. As I write this, I’m looking out onto one of the golf courses that surround my hotel. It is lush and absinthe green. Not a blade of grass has been allowed to brown."
"Earlier this month, a shadowy cabal of industry types sequestered themselves in a conference room to determine the difference between comedy and drama. At the end of their labor, definitive verdicts were announced. Jane the Virgin and Shameless - which have featured plotlines about artificial insemination and the accidental ingestion of cocaine by children, respectively - were officially comedies. Orange Is the New Black, with its cunning, lingual dogs and tampon sandwiches, was a drama. That the arbiters were making these declarations on behalf of the Television Academy, and thus directly determining this fall’s Emmy race, made their work at once more conclusive and more absurd. The truth is, in today’s rich television landscape, the very best shows are always funny and moving. Think of Better Call Saul’s tightrope walk between laughter and tears, Mad Men’s killer cleverness, or the way You’re the Worst made broken weirdos falling in love into the most romantic thing I’d seen in years. As with real life, chuckling at someone slipping on a banana peel is only half of the story. Eventually, you’re going to have to deal with the violent impact of their fall."
-- A Place in the Sun: The Return and Withdrawal of Serena Williams at Indian Wells - Louisa Thomas, Grantland, Mar. 23, 2015
"Indian Wells is about two hours away from Compton by car, although it might as well have been a colony on the moon for all that the two places had in common. Compton was wrested from nature by concrete, chain link, crime, and systemic injustice. Indian Wells was transformed from an expanse of sand into an enclave of privilege by white wealth and by water. As I write this, I’m looking out onto one of the golf courses that surround my hotel. It is lush and absinthe green. Not a blade of grass has been allowed to brown."