TV watching: NANA and Supernatural
There's clearly something wrong on my ISP's end--email's down, I can't connect to Facebook, it just failed to give me a Gmail connection...but LJ seems to still be up and running (although things are loading slowly). (*knocks wood*) Combined with the ongoing failure to receive some snailmail I've waiting for, I'm feeling kinda cut off from the world.
Last night I distracted myself from worrying about the work I can't start yet by watching the last three episodes of NANA and the first two eps. of Supernatural. I'm not sure whether I hope NANA gets another season or not--the anime version is extremely good, and it conveniently stops at about the point when my attention started to drift in the manga. And yet I keep reading the manga because I still want to see what ultimately happens to the characters I'm attached to, and because those relationships are still clearly drawn and pull me in. The series' structure is set up in a particularly enticing way, too, giving just enough of a glimpse of how things turn out to make me want to see how the characters get to that point, and also hinting at finding out what happens after *that*.
IMO, the real power of this story is in its handling of relationships--centered on Nana and Hachi's friendship, but extending past that into the lives of all the people they know. The series starts off introducing the two girls, bringing them together into this unlikely but intense relationship that everything else springs from or revolves around. And then it all falls apart, so slowly, and it's no one's "fault"--both girls could have done things differently, or communicated better, and the most heartbreaking thing is that they both know it and still aren't able to stop this friendship they both value more than anything from crumbling around them. It's painfully clear all along that neither of them ever stops loving the other and wanting to be together again, to recreate that brief idyllic period in their lives. A lot of the other relationships are handled in the same way, and most of them ring true for me in the same way.
The story works for me in much the same way in the manga as in the anime, but watching the show, with the combination of knowing what's going to happen and of *hearing* the characters and watching them move, means I spent most episodes past a certain point tearing up just all the time. Even in the sweet, endearing moments, because the cracks are already showing. The whole thing is, on some level, a love story to the relationships (romantic and otherwise) that people can't hold together, that they can't maintain or ever let go of; it's about the people who shape lives through their absence and the memory of their presence and the hope of recapturing the way things used to be. So I watch these characters struggling and fighting and screwing up and manipulating each other desperately, for the most part with good intentions and real, messed up love, and it just keeps sucking me in.
(Those of you who've listened to me trying to explain why Fruits Basket is my most beloved story ever will observe that this kind of thing, done well, is the most likely way to grab my attention and heartstrings. Give me characters I believe in, make them really capable of love, and break them hard, and I'm almost guaranteed to be with the story for the long haul. It sounds like such an easy formula, and yet it almost never gets done well.)
***
I've had a copy of season one of Supernatural lying around for months, probably, but I have a hard time getting around to catching up on more than one domestic show at a time. And life has been very distracting since we caught up on Battlestar Galactica a few months ago; Chris and I did start watching Spooks with the girl (and we all like it), but things have been too busy for us to get very far, and now she's going to be away for over two months, so that's on hold. With everything else I watch off the air except for Big Love (which I should really not watch when I'm stressed, anyway, because I spend the whole time cringing and tense over how well the writers have mastered the Things Get Worse principle), I was kind of itching for something new. Supernatural won this time because the corner of my f-list that's really into domestic shows was suddenly all abuzz about a music video that came out in the last day or so, and it's got my curiosity up.
...yes, this boils down to "I want to see a video, but I hate spoilers so much that my answer is to start watching the existing two seasons of the show so I can see the vid when I'm done." Which would make more sense if I were better at mainlining, and also didn't have, oh, a day job and two incoming freelance gigs.
Not that two episodes is really enough exposure to have much impression, but I can see why I've heard people describe it as "X-Files Jr."; its initial formula certainly follows the same patterns that the early X-F did. And really, that classification is all I know about the show, other than that apparently a large chunk of the fandom ships the brothers. (And that musesfool, who writes fabulous Firefly fic, likes writing Sam as a girl...who she pictures as Katee Sackhoff. The overall dynamic doesn't sound like it's up my alley, but that is kind of a fun impression.)
Anyway, it's got the creepy factor down in the way that the X-Files used to. Last night was the first time in a long, long time that I was watching something and twitching a little when the score amped up in the "something creepy this way comes" way. Handled right, that does nothing but make the viewer more tense, rather than giving an advance warning that's just enough to keep you from actually being startled.
Last night I distracted myself from worrying about the work I can't start yet by watching the last three episodes of NANA and the first two eps. of Supernatural. I'm not sure whether I hope NANA gets another season or not--the anime version is extremely good, and it conveniently stops at about the point when my attention started to drift in the manga. And yet I keep reading the manga because I still want to see what ultimately happens to the characters I'm attached to, and because those relationships are still clearly drawn and pull me in. The series' structure is set up in a particularly enticing way, too, giving just enough of a glimpse of how things turn out to make me want to see how the characters get to that point, and also hinting at finding out what happens after *that*.
IMO, the real power of this story is in its handling of relationships--centered on Nana and Hachi's friendship, but extending past that into the lives of all the people they know. The series starts off introducing the two girls, bringing them together into this unlikely but intense relationship that everything else springs from or revolves around. And then it all falls apart, so slowly, and it's no one's "fault"--both girls could have done things differently, or communicated better, and the most heartbreaking thing is that they both know it and still aren't able to stop this friendship they both value more than anything from crumbling around them. It's painfully clear all along that neither of them ever stops loving the other and wanting to be together again, to recreate that brief idyllic period in their lives. A lot of the other relationships are handled in the same way, and most of them ring true for me in the same way.
The story works for me in much the same way in the manga as in the anime, but watching the show, with the combination of knowing what's going to happen and of *hearing* the characters and watching them move, means I spent most episodes past a certain point tearing up just all the time. Even in the sweet, endearing moments, because the cracks are already showing. The whole thing is, on some level, a love story to the relationships (romantic and otherwise) that people can't hold together, that they can't maintain or ever let go of; it's about the people who shape lives through their absence and the memory of their presence and the hope of recapturing the way things used to be. So I watch these characters struggling and fighting and screwing up and manipulating each other desperately, for the most part with good intentions and real, messed up love, and it just keeps sucking me in.
(Those of you who've listened to me trying to explain why Fruits Basket is my most beloved story ever will observe that this kind of thing, done well, is the most likely way to grab my attention and heartstrings. Give me characters I believe in, make them really capable of love, and break them hard, and I'm almost guaranteed to be with the story for the long haul. It sounds like such an easy formula, and yet it almost never gets done well.)
***
I've had a copy of season one of Supernatural lying around for months, probably, but I have a hard time getting around to catching up on more than one domestic show at a time. And life has been very distracting since we caught up on Battlestar Galactica a few months ago; Chris and I did start watching Spooks with the girl (and we all like it), but things have been too busy for us to get very far, and now she's going to be away for over two months, so that's on hold. With everything else I watch off the air except for Big Love (which I should really not watch when I'm stressed, anyway, because I spend the whole time cringing and tense over how well the writers have mastered the Things Get Worse principle), I was kind of itching for something new. Supernatural won this time because the corner of my f-list that's really into domestic shows was suddenly all abuzz about a music video that came out in the last day or so, and it's got my curiosity up.
...yes, this boils down to "I want to see a video, but I hate spoilers so much that my answer is to start watching the existing two seasons of the show so I can see the vid when I'm done." Which would make more sense if I were better at mainlining, and also didn't have, oh, a day job and two incoming freelance gigs.
Not that two episodes is really enough exposure to have much impression, but I can see why I've heard people describe it as "X-Files Jr."; its initial formula certainly follows the same patterns that the early X-F did. And really, that classification is all I know about the show, other than that apparently a large chunk of the fandom ships the brothers. (And that musesfool, who writes fabulous Firefly fic, likes writing Sam as a girl...who she pictures as Katee Sackhoff. The overall dynamic doesn't sound like it's up my alley, but that is kind of a fun impression.)
Anyway, it's got the creepy factor down in the way that the X-Files used to. Last night was the first time in a long, long time that I was watching something and twitching a little when the score amped up in the "something creepy this way comes" way. Handled right, that does nothing but make the viewer more tense, rather than giving an advance warning that's just enough to keep you from actually being startled.