TV Meme -- Day Thirty!
TV Meme in 30 Days
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- "Doctor Who"
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching -- "Fringe"
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this season) -- "The Vampire Diaries"/Honorable Mention: "Modern Family"
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever -- "Alias"
Day 05 - A show you hate -- "Grey's Anatomy"
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- "Rendezvous"
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- "30 Seconds"
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch -- "The Muppet Show"
Day 09 - Best scene ever -- "Mad Men," episode 1x12, "Nixon vs. Kennedy," Don and Pete's confrontation in Cooper's office.
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving -- "The X-Files."
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you -- "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times -- "Ugly Betty," episode 1x13, "In and Out"
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show -- "Guiding Light" and "All My Children"
Day 14 - Favorite male character -- Jack Bristow, "Alias"
Day 15 - Favorite female character -- Livia Augusta, "I, Claudius"
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show -- "The Nanny"
Day 17 - Favorite mini series -- "I, Claudius"/ Honorable Mention -- "V"
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence -- "The Nanny"
Day 19 - Best TV show cast -- "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
Day 20 - Favorite kiss -- Dave and Maddie's first kiss, "Moonlighting"
Day 21 - Favorite ship -- (tie) Betty and Daniel, "Ugly Betty" & Frank and Eleni, "Guiding Light"
Day 22 - Favorite series finale -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
Day 23 - Most annoying character -- Derek Shepherd, "Grey's Anatomy"
Day 24 - Best quote -- "Has no one in this family ever even seen a chicken?" - Michael, "Arrested Development"
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new) -- "Undercovers"
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "The Best of Both Worlds, Pt. 1"
Day 27 - Best pilot episode -- Drama: "Lost" / Comedy: "Lois & Clark"
Day 28 - First TV show obsession -- "Remington Steele"
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession -- Recently Canceled: "Ugly Betty"/ Returning: "Fringe"
Day 30 - Saddest character death
I went back and forth on this one. Many have devastated me over the years (Nadia Santos! Maureen Bauer!), but only two have made me weep hysterically. There's no deciding between them, because each won big fat tears and gulping sobs from me, so we have a tie:
Mr. Eko, my Sweet Baboo, why did you have to die? It wasn't his death that got me as hard as the moment where we flashed back to him and his brother as children, before it all went so horribly wrong, walking together with their arms around each other's shoulders. "Lost" always knew how to turn on the waterworks, but this moment was the ultimate for me.
When Bonnie Richmond died on "Jericho," I didn't initially cry -- I was too busy being totally impressed by what an utter bad-ass she was at the end. Bonnie, who was deaf, was trying to resist a group of paramilitary invaders and, on visual cues alone, outshot almost all of them. The scene was brilliantly filmed -- music only, no sound of the intruders, with her focusing on each shadow and movement in turn to fire the gun. But they got her in the end. No, what made me sob buckets was the scene where her brother, Stanley, visited her dead body in the morgue. He's sitting beside her, devastated, and then he starts to sign. Because he's not talking to the audience or to God; he's talking to his sister. It killed me.
**
While my brother and neffy were here, we went to see "Inception." The obligatory thinky-thoughts post follows!
Well, I thought it was extremely good, though the ending revelation -- clever, haunting and thoroughly foreshadowed as it was -- means there's a limit on how good "Inception" can actually be; when you walk out of a movie literally knowing nothing for certain about what really happened or why, it's a bit of a cheat. I wish it didn't work like that, because what's good in "Inception" is so good that it nearly rises to the level of greatness. The ability to juggle five separate timelines, all happening at different speeds, while retaining not only coherency but also urgency: Christopher Nolan, this is your superpower, and it's a freakin' impressive one.
Before this movie came out, I read a few early reviews criticizing the thinness of the female roles, but this ended up being a nonissue -- I mean, there are no female characters in this film. There's one character, Cobb, and the phantoms/memories/intruders/we don't know inhabiting his dreams. And Mal, whom so many reviewers made much of for having a name that means "bad," is obviously the part of Cobb's brain that's trying to save him from the illusions; she's the only one who tells him the truth (that he's dreaming), and her efforts to "sabotage" the missions are in fact efforts to destroy his illusions. The real Mal (if there was one -- again, the lack of any anchoring information is to me what keeps "Inception" from the stratosphere) perhaps was with Cobb in this dream originally; maybe her plummet from the hotel window reawakened her. To get back to character thinness, I didn't think Ariadne was any less substantive than Arthur or the other guys (none of whose names I even remember), and in the end, none of them should be three-dimensional; they are in part (but what part) pieces of Cobb's id.
(But what about scenes in the timelines that Cobb was not a conscious part of, such as Arthur's zero-g stacking of the bodies in the elevator? Things like this do not stand up well.)
I loved the whole concept of "subconscious security," inception, etc. But in some ways, I felt like that concept would have been more fun applied fannishly; I'd rather have seen characters I knew -- that I felt something for, that I had a sense of reality for -- dealing with this. Still, though, it was a really solid film -- enjoyable, thought-provoking and definitely different than the average summer blockbuster. It's awesome that audiences are responding so well to it.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled -- "Doctor Who"
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching -- "Fringe"
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this season) -- "The Vampire Diaries"/Honorable Mention: "Modern Family"
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever -- "Alias"
Day 05 - A show you hate -- "Grey's Anatomy"
Day 06 - Favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- "Rendezvous"
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show -- "30 Seconds"
Day 08 - A show everyone should watch -- "The Muppet Show"
Day 09 - Best scene ever -- "Mad Men," episode 1x12, "Nixon vs. Kennedy," Don and Pete's confrontation in Cooper's office.
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving -- "The X-Files."
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you -- "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times -- "Ugly Betty," episode 1x13, "In and Out"
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show -- "Guiding Light" and "All My Children"
Day 14 - Favorite male character -- Jack Bristow, "Alias"
Day 15 - Favorite female character -- Livia Augusta, "I, Claudius"
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show -- "The Nanny"
Day 17 - Favorite mini series -- "I, Claudius"/ Honorable Mention -- "V"
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence -- "The Nanny"
Day 19 - Best TV show cast -- "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
Day 20 - Favorite kiss -- Dave and Maddie's first kiss, "Moonlighting"
Day 21 - Favorite ship -- (tie) Betty and Daniel, "Ugly Betty" & Frank and Eleni, "Guiding Light"
Day 22 - Favorite series finale -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
Day 23 - Most annoying character -- Derek Shepherd, "Grey's Anatomy"
Day 24 - Best quote -- "Has no one in this family ever even seen a chicken?" - Michael, "Arrested Development"
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new) -- "Undercovers"
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale -- "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "The Best of Both Worlds, Pt. 1"
Day 27 - Best pilot episode -- Drama: "Lost" / Comedy: "Lois & Clark"
Day 28 - First TV show obsession -- "Remington Steele"
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession -- Recently Canceled: "Ugly Betty"/ Returning: "Fringe"
Day 30 - Saddest character death
I went back and forth on this one. Many have devastated me over the years (Nadia Santos! Maureen Bauer!), but only two have made me weep hysterically. There's no deciding between them, because each won big fat tears and gulping sobs from me, so we have a tie:
Mr. Eko, my Sweet Baboo, why did you have to die? It wasn't his death that got me as hard as the moment where we flashed back to him and his brother as children, before it all went so horribly wrong, walking together with their arms around each other's shoulders. "Lost" always knew how to turn on the waterworks, but this moment was the ultimate for me.
When Bonnie Richmond died on "Jericho," I didn't initially cry -- I was too busy being totally impressed by what an utter bad-ass she was at the end. Bonnie, who was deaf, was trying to resist a group of paramilitary invaders and, on visual cues alone, outshot almost all of them. The scene was brilliantly filmed -- music only, no sound of the intruders, with her focusing on each shadow and movement in turn to fire the gun. But they got her in the end. No, what made me sob buckets was the scene where her brother, Stanley, visited her dead body in the morgue. He's sitting beside her, devastated, and then he starts to sign. Because he's not talking to the audience or to God; he's talking to his sister. It killed me.
**
While my brother and neffy were here, we went to see "Inception." The obligatory thinky-thoughts post follows!
Well, I thought it was extremely good, though the ending revelation -- clever, haunting and thoroughly foreshadowed as it was -- means there's a limit on how good "Inception" can actually be; when you walk out of a movie literally knowing nothing for certain about what really happened or why, it's a bit of a cheat. I wish it didn't work like that, because what's good in "Inception" is so good that it nearly rises to the level of greatness. The ability to juggle five separate timelines, all happening at different speeds, while retaining not only coherency but also urgency: Christopher Nolan, this is your superpower, and it's a freakin' impressive one.
Before this movie came out, I read a few early reviews criticizing the thinness of the female roles, but this ended up being a nonissue -- I mean, there are no female characters in this film. There's one character, Cobb, and the phantoms/memories/intruders/we don't know inhabiting his dreams. And Mal, whom so many reviewers made much of for having a name that means "bad," is obviously the part of Cobb's brain that's trying to save him from the illusions; she's the only one who tells him the truth (that he's dreaming), and her efforts to "sabotage" the missions are in fact efforts to destroy his illusions. The real Mal (if there was one -- again, the lack of any anchoring information is to me what keeps "Inception" from the stratosphere) perhaps was with Cobb in this dream originally; maybe her plummet from the hotel window reawakened her. To get back to character thinness, I didn't think Ariadne was any less substantive than Arthur or the other guys (none of whose names I even remember), and in the end, none of them should be three-dimensional; they are in part (but what part) pieces of Cobb's id.
(But what about scenes in the timelines that Cobb was not a conscious part of, such as Arthur's zero-g stacking of the bodies in the elevator? Things like this do not stand up well.)
I loved the whole concept of "subconscious security," inception, etc. But in some ways, I felt like that concept would have been more fun applied fannishly; I'd rather have seen characters I knew -- that I felt something for, that I had a sense of reality for -- dealing with this. Still, though, it was a really solid film -- enjoyable, thought-provoking and definitely different than the average summer blockbuster. It's awesome that audiences are responding so well to it.