There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the general love of bad boys. I’ve seen a few folks saying that nice guys can work too (and a few more actually claiming “bad boy” status on characters I would certainly categorize as “nice guys”) but it’s pretty much nothing compared to the wave of bad boys taking over books.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
Bad boys never did it for me. I never had a thing for Heathcliff (abusive, horrible puppy-killer!) or Mr. Rochester. I liked Gilbert Blythe and the fine, upstanding, stick-in-the-mud (if jerky) Mr. Darcy. (Actually, I *really* liked Captain Wentworth, who I suppose had the technical bad boy edge of being a privateer.) I thought Angel was a sociopath, and though I liked Spike as a character, I was never attracted to him and found his relationship with Buffy to be utterly laughable (as opposed to his relationship with Drusilla, which I actually found quite effective and moving). Me, I liked Riley — til they ruined him, that is.
(It is important to note that I do not think that angst=bad boy. Edmund Pevensie, upon whom I have a crush I’ve actually been paid to write about in detail, is angsty — but not a bad boy. He had one little lapse in judgment, and proceeds to spend the rest of the books atoning for it. A lot of bad boys are, however, angsty, which is usually our entry into sympathizing with them.)
So the only bad boy I ever fell for was Logan Echolls of Veronica Mars. And I fell hard. Perhaps it helped that Logan was still a child, and it was possible for him to rise above his abusive father and horrific home life that was making him into a psychotic jackass (See above re: angst and sympathy). I watched the end of the first season of VM with my heart in my throat worried/terrified that Logan had murdered his ex-girlfriend Lilly in a fit of jealous rage. And through it all, I loved him. My one bad-boy crush.
Perhaps my love for Logan helped when I found myself crafting my own bad-boy love interest — or what one reviewer (positively, if you can believe it) called “the asshole love interest.” It certainly hadn’t been my intention to write that guy, and it was really challenging too, to make it believable — to me — that a reasonable woman would take that kind of risk with her heart or with her safety. It took the better part of a book to set up a situation where I could even get her to a point where she’d initiate it, and another book entirely to get the relationship off the ground. It had to be believable for me.
And it worked, if the reader responses are anything to go by. People love Poe. I sometimes wonder how much they love him, and how much they love the trope of the bad boy. I worked hard on him, but most folks were on board right from the start. There’s something about bad boys that gives them that capital. Ironically, though bad boys have a population of readers ready to love them from the word go, good boys have to work five times as hard.
Here are the struggles they face:
If they are sweet and considerate, they are perceived as weak.
If they are steadfast, loyal, and sure of their feelings for the girl, they are perceived as desperate, lying, or too good to be true.
If they are fine upstanding citizens, they are perceived as bland and goody-two-shoes.
And to those naysayers, I present Mr. Lloyd Dobler:
Let’s face it, we all want John Cusack standing outside our house with a boombox.
And the whole point of Say Anything, really, is that Lloyd embodies everything that a bad boy is not. He’s sweet, and considerate, and unassuming, and steadfast, and stand-up, and absolutely, unequivocally in love with a girl that everyone thinks outclasses him.
MIKE: I wanted to ask you: how’d you get Diane Court to go out with you? LLOYD: I called her up. MIKE: Yeah, but how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you? LLOYD: I’m Lloyd Dobler. MIKE: This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks.
Lloyd isn’t boring or weak (he can manhandle drunks at a party pretty handily), but he’s also pretty accepting of the fact that his general lack of ambition and his vague idea of being a “professional kickboxer” doesn’t hold a candle to Diane’s future and destiny. So why do we like him so much?
A friend of mine told me it’s because Say Anything is, ultimately, Lloyd’s story. It’s not the story of a high-powered ambitious girl who accepts the gentle love and devotion of a nice guy like Lloyd Dobler. It’s about Lloyd, everyone’s favorite everyman, who through true love and devotion wins his prize of the beautiful girl. We’re with Lloyd. We really want him to get his heart’s desire, and when he does, we cheer.
But what if this was Diane’s story? Would we then perceive Say Anything as being about a very successful girl who takes pity on the class slacker, has a little summer romance, and when her life goes all topsy-turvy, settles, knowing this guy is willing to be her house-husband and general shoulder to lean on in England? Comforting, sure, but not exactly the stuff of high passion.
Heck, even Lloyd’s cadre of girlfriends (a delicate balancing act, from a writer’s perspective, to present Lloyd as being platonically beloved by women without coding him as someone who is not boyfriend material) have to have a discussion about his catch-factor:
REBECCA: Hey, I know this is a strange thing to say, but maybe Diane Court really likes Lloyd. COREY: If you were Diane Court, would you honestly fall for Lloyd? (long pause) Yeah. DC: Yeah! REBECCA: Yeah.
And maybe it also helps that Lloyd is so in love with Diane — standing-outside-the-window-with-a-boombox kind of love. But of course, that kind of thing can backfire on a nice guy. In high school, my friends and I used to say that a romantic gesture had nothing to do with the gesture — it was the guy doing it. If you liked the guy sending you secret notes and flowers, it was romantic. If you didn’t, it was lame and stalkery. If it wasn’t cutie-pie John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler who we were all rooting for — standing out there with the boom box, we’d probably recommend that Diane call the cops.
I ran into that problem myself with Brandon. The sweeter and more romantic Brandon was to Amy (and, most importantly, the less that Amy responded to it) the more his actions were viewed by the readership as lame and desperate. So maybe it’s that Amy actually likes the equally lame (from an objective standpoint) stuff that Poe pulls. I mean, a half-eaten pack of LifeSavers as a present? Not exactly diamonds and chocolates.
As the reactions to the boys in the SSG series came in, I was fascinated by what readers chose to believe of Amy’s narration and what they discarded. All first person narrators are to some extent, unreliable, in that the reader only sees what they see. Even if they are telling the absolute truth to the reader, they are not omniscient, and they bring their own biases into the situation. Take, for example, Amy’s initial reaction in SSG to Clarissa’s overtures in the library. Because Amy hates Clarissa, she thinks Clarissa is trying to be bitchy to her and to question Amy’s right to be tapped by Rose & Grave. Later, of course, we discover that Clarissa was honestly curious. Readers assume Amy’s version of events, and are corrected only when Amy is.
(Of course, some of them are never corrected. I am always surprised by the number of letters I get from people who hate Clarissa, even though Amy grows to love her.)
So perhaps readers’ disdain for Brandon’s romantic efforts is a result of Amy’s disdain. And yet, Amy is plenty disdainful of Poe through both SSG and UTR, and I got lots of letters at the end of UTR that were pro-Poe. (Which, honestly, was a relief, given what I was about to do with the storyline.) It’s hard for me to say, since I’m the writer. Were there subtle manipulations coding the reader to root for Poe over Brandon? Sure, why not? Are my skills as a writer, then, not up to snuff if I haven’t succeeded in making you root for the romantic coupling of my choice?
Now there’s a question to get neurotic over.
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
(I found the most lovelorn pic of Spike I could for this part, and, sidebar, do you know if you just google the word “Spike” this is most of what comes up? No actual, you know, spikes.)
There are some old screenwriting tricks writers sometimes use to create sympathy for an otherwise unlikeable character. If he’s mean, show that other people — people we’re inclined to like — like him. Have him be sweet to children or small animals.This is called “save the cat.”
When we see Logan going to get the belt his father will beat him with, we understand there’s a reason behind his jackass nature. When Spike risks death to protect Dawn, we see that he really does care about both Summers girls. Personal sacrifice, vulnerability, unshakeable interest in the heroine (who can’t help but be at least flattered, though returning the interest is the brass ring)… these are all games that you get to play with the bad boy. But the good guy? He’s not otherwise unlikeable. The readers already know his vulnerabilities. They like him.
They just don’t lurrvvve him.
Except when they do? Why do we swoon over Lloyd Dobler when he’s nothing like Logan Echols?Or are they different populations entirely that do the swooning? Are some of always going to be Team Bad Boy and some of us always going to be Team Nice Guy? And what does that make of me, Team Nice Guy, except for that one little dalliance with Logan?
I enjoy reading Lee Goldberg’s blog, though I don’t always agree with him. He had an interesting post up recently called “People Stop Watching Shows that Suck” in which he responded to an EW query about why SF movies are doing so well in the box office, while SF TV shows seems to be failing left and right.
First of all, I don’t know if SF TV shows are failing in any greater proportion than sitcoms, etc., but Lee makes some really good points about how SF shows have to bring in a greater audience because they are significantly costlier to produce than one of those “this is our living room, this is our coffee shop/bar/diner” sitcoms that have no special effects.
And of course, the comment thread turns into one of those “Firefly was the best show ever produced yadda-yadda-yadda, all shows before or since have sucked compared to its scintillating brilliance” mud pits. This is basically what happens at every TV show post where people are trying to have an honest discussion about the state of TV and show cancellation and whatnot.People bring out their Firefly bongo drums and beat the hell out of them.
Guys, Firefly was canceled seven years ago. Isn’t it time to move on? I get that you loved the show.
I’ve never seen The Sarah Connor Chronicles, though Justine tells me I’d love it and it’s totally going on my Netflix queue. But it is possible there were some quality issues and even the fans lost interest. I never saw it, and The Terminator is one of my very favorite movies of all time, and I totally loved Queen Gorgo in The 300. And yet, I still never saw it. I was still pretty angry over the horror that was the third Terminator movie and thought my husband wants to see Salvation this weekend, I’ve put my foot down about it.
(And all the reasons I’ve given — the movies are about time travel, and SARAH, not John, Connor and blah blah blah — are all reasons hat Justine has been thumping me over the head for not watching Chronicles, but I digress.)
As I’ve said before, it is rare for me to watch first-run television. In fact, in the past five years, the only shows I’ve seen first run are The Dollhouse (all on Hulu), Heroes (1st and second season), Veronica Mars (after falling in love with the first season on DVD), and How I Met Your Mother (ditto).
But I also really, REALLY love television. however, if there were some kind of Netflix “if you liked this, try this” matrix out there trying to figure out my television tastes from my favorite television shows, I have no idea what they’d come up with. Behold:
Diana’s Favorite Television Shows of All Time (not in order):
The X-Files
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The West Wing
Arrested Development
Veronica Mars
How I Met Your Mother
The Wire
Avatar
And you know what? I didn’t even like or even SEE every season of those shows. The X-Files should have quit while it was ahead, somewhere around 1999 or 2000. I pretty much only like Buffy up until the end of season 5 (the musical episode was good, though). The third season of Veronica Mars blows, except for the part where Logan smashes the police car. Arrested Development started getting a little weak at the end, I didn’t even like The Wire untile the second season, and The West Wing I actually haven’t watched after the first season after Aaron Sorkin left the show.
Other shows I’ve liked recently include:
The first season of Heroes (1st season ONLY)
Dexter
The Gilmore Girls (first two or three seasons ONLY)
Star Trek: The Next Generation
And though I’m brand-loyal, in the sense that I will try a new show by a creator/star of a show I’ve loved previously, I’m not going to just sit around and wait it out in hopes that it will someday become the thing that I previously loved. After having seen The West Wing, I watched Sports Night. I liked Sports Night. I could see the West Wing DNA and I think the West Wing was a much better venue for Sorkin to say those things in. Then I tried to watch the truly execrable Studio 60. It wasn’t funny. It was trying to be The West Wing, and though I could buy how important it was for the people running the country and saving lives and creating jobs to be all up themselves and whatnot, I have a hard time when I’m supposed to be watchign the makers of a comedy sketch show giving us a Very Special Episode about McCarthyism. Click.
I loved Buffy, but I never really liked Angel, probably because I actually never liked the character of Angel on Buffy and the character I did like, Cordelia, they changed completely until she was no longer fun. Firefly was okay, but certainly not the second coming its die-hard fans want me to think it is. The movie was very cool in some places, and utterly sucked in others. My Buffy goodwill, I have to admit, is wearing thin. Dollhouse has both Whedon and Eliza Dushku, but very little else to recommend it. I don’t like the characters, a lot of the acting, and most of the episodes I’ve seen. Is he making a statement about human trafficking? Is he trying to horrify us with our inexpected sympathy for the temptation the human traffickers/victims/investigators face? It’s manipulative and glossy, and I am not buying it.
This is why I think my hypothetical “what show will Diana like next” matrix is in for a hard time. For instance, I like genre, I like epic, I like interesting characters, I like science fiction, I like strong females… but I hated Battlestar Galactica. I liked Buffy, but I didn’t care for Alias. I was utterly unconvinced by Mad Men, and even my well-documented adoration for Jason Dohring and the general vampire genre could not make me suffer through another episode of Moonlight. I feel like I’ve tried a lot of the obvious, “Oh, I should like this,” shows only to find the next great show to love (most recently, it was Avatar) in the most unlikely of places (kids cartoons) in the most unlikely of ways (I read about the race issues surrounding the casting of the upcoming live-action movie).
I’m nearing the end of my Netflix queue of tv shows to watch, and I’m starting to get worried. Will there ever be another show to discover on Netflix that I love as much as The Wire or Avatar? (Okay, Avatar is my favorite television show of all time. At least, it has been that way for the past few months. Veronica Mars, season 1 is still my favorite season of television, and Buffy episodes comprise most of my list of top ten episodes of television.) Are there any other shows that good? Has the bar been inexorably raised by the sprawling, modern, Dickensinian The Wire or the expertly crafted fantasy epic Avatar?
Is the reason I think How I Met Your Mother is so much better than Friends because it really is funnier and more realistic, or just because it’s about people my age who are much more like me than the inexplicably affluent high-rise dwelling 20 somethings of the early-90s Friends? Pretty much every episode of HIMYM includes something that has either happened to someone in my group of friends, or they say something that has been spoken by someone in my gorup of friends. It’s eerie and hilarious, and I’m glued to the screen.
And, most importantly, with only two seasons of ST:TNG to work through left, what in the world should I watch next?
She graduates from puppy school with flying colors (doesn’t like her cap, though.)
I am seriously considering using this photo as a tag for Tap & Gown announcements.
Bad things about having a puppy:
Her tail caught Pantalaimon’s cord today and dragged Pan off the coffee table. Pan survived (thank goodness!) but the cord did not. Hello, trip to the Mac store. Hello new $83 dollar cord. Wah.
Speaking of T&G, I’ve been asked to hold off on posting the cover until we get a few minor tweaks in. But I really love it, and I hope you will too.
In writing news, I’ve finished up the synopsis of the second killer unicorn book and I’m jumping into 70 Days of Sweat with both hands on my keyboard. Are you signed up? Come join us!
The weird thing about book publishing is that the author is always a book or two ahead of her readers, so if you’re writing a series, you always have to remind yourself that whatever you are thinking of is not where the story is for most people. For instance, I’ve finished writing Tap & Gown, and it’s so difficult to not mention the fact that in the final book in the series, Amy has a sex-change operation and runs off with Jenny, while George drops out of school to open a hot dog stand and Poe starts a ska band. These are the types of things I always have to remember to keep under wraps.
And of course, no one has read Rampant yet. so as I struggle to help the characters deal with the aftermath of the events in that book (as they pertain to the second, still-untitled book), there’s so much I can’t really talk about on the blog, for fear of causing spoilers.
The weather was gorgeous this weekend, as you can see from the previous post of Rio in the creek, but I’m still suffering from a cold I’m pretty sure i got standing int eh rain at the polls all day last Tuesday, so I spent a lot of time indoors watching movies. And here’s my verdict:
Made of Honor: Yawn. Like, seriously yawn. Maybe this movie was supposed to coast on the charm of “McDreamy” but as I’ve never seen the show, I wasn’t exactly rooting for the womanizing, jobless-rich jerk (reminded me so much of Hugh Grant’s aimless rich boy character from About a Boy, except he actually grows up and is forced to confront his wretched lifestyle over the course of the film) who has been stringing the fascinating, beautiful, hard-working (she’s fixing art on a Sunday!) woman along for ten years,who then goes to great length to destroy her wedding to the fascinating, interesting, fabulous Scottish nobleman who sweeps her off her feet. Wait, I take that back. The woman was a dud, too. What kind of woman has been “dreaming about [her] bridal shower since [she] was five years old?” Her wedding? Okay, fine. But her bridal shower? Are you kidding me? Blecch. The Scotsman can do way better than her. Also, I have a thing about movies where people are supposedly getting married but don’t want to and we’re supposed to root for that person? Blecch. That’s why I loved My Best Friend’s Wedding and am very iffy on this season of HIMYM.
Sex in the City: I kind of fell off watching it that last season, so I wasn’t clear on everything that had been going on, but I liked where they took the story. It felt like a super, super long episode. (REALLY long, I had no idea!) I was kind of surprised Steve cheated, though. I really like where Charlotte’s life has taken her, and I like that they didn’t compromise on Samantha being Samantha. Carrie always kind of bugged me, so this felt no different, and I felt like they wasted Jennifer Hudson yet again. I did love the apartment redesign, though!
Get Smart: I thought it was hilarious. I love Steve Carrell, I’m always impressed by Anne Hathaway, The Rock is fun to watch, and I was a HUGE fan of the show as a child, and felt like they really did capture its spirit (though it was a lot more action packed than I remember the show being –Sailor Boy said the final car chase scene reminded him of The Matrix Reloaded, and it reminded me of the ridiculousness in The Island, but other than that…) I felt like 99 should have put two and two together earlier about the identity of the villain, however.
Iron Man: Sigh. Seriously, what happened? Halfway in, I was positive this was the best superhero movie I’d ever seen. Robert Downey, Jr. was incredible, the script was tight, the special effects were fun, Gwyneth Paltrow failed to annoy me (no, really, I thought she was good), I wanted to marry Terence Howard, and I bow at the feet of Jon Favreau,who obviously knows my cinematic preferences — and then the whole thing fell off a cliff. I honestly do not understand the ending of the film. At all. I watched it again, because that’s how little sense it made to me, and I still don’t get it. I don’t understand how the battery thing could fail at the rate it was and still work as long as it did (or work after being encased in acrylic, but whatever), I don’t understand why the villain didn’t just kill Tony when he had the chance (and let’s not even talk about the stupid Glowing Keychain of Death trope so popular in sci-fi these days — yes, Firefly, I’m looking at you), I don’t understand why if the Glowing Keychain of Death works on some kind of sonic frequency thingamabob (the reason the villain wears earplugs to avoid it) that when it is aimed into a man’s ear who is holding the cell phone, the person on the other end of the cell phone doesn’t also feel the effects. I don’t understand how the villain and hero can catapult themselves in battle through several city streets then up into the air for a big aerial fight, then free fall and still manage to magically land on the roof of the building they originally came from. I don’t understand how a blue death ray blast can safely blow the hero out of harm’s way while simultaneously incinerating the villain, who is standing much farther away from it. I don’t get it. And not in a “I don’t understand how the Death Star can explode without killing all the Ewoks with a nuclear winter” way — in an “I’m watching this and it’s impossible and makes no sense right at the moment that the images enter my ocular cavity” way. It’s bizarre. Jon, baby, what were you thinking?
That was disappointing. I’d heard it was so good, too.
We also got the first season of Mad Men, which I’ve heard only excellent things about. So far, I’m enjoying it (two episodes in) though I can’t stop thinking of Zoe from The West Wing as Zoe from The West Wing, and Connor from Angel as Connor from Angel. I am, however, getting over Saffron from Firefly.
Upcoming debut author Jessica Burkhart (Canterwood Crest), is running a series of “beach read” video reviews on her blog, and yesterday, Rites of Spring (Break) was one of them! Check it out (mildly spoilery):
Cute, huh?
So last night I had the weirdest dream. In the dream, you only got tapped for Rose & Grave if you had the potential to develop superpowers (like on Heroes) except for not all of the taps had developed their superpowers or knew what they were. Naturally, Amy was one of the underdeveloped ones. Anyway, there was a whole big show down with the members of Dragon’s Head, who not only all knew what their superpowers were, but had been trained to use them to kill the Rose & Grave members.
And there was special flame retardant underwear. And one of the DH powers was to light concrete on fire. Seriously. My dreams are bizarre. Someday, I’ll have to share the killer unicorn one.
Anyway, to make a long story short, after all the dust settled, we found out that George had the “bend space and time” power of Hiro, except without all that unfortunate dorkiness, clumsiness, and the weird constipated look Hiro gets every time he’s about to warp. But my subconscious seemed to mix it up a tad with The Terminator, because if George takes a person with him through the warp… well… she loses all her clothes. And he may or may not lose consciousness, depending on the degree of the warp. So I suddenly transferred into George’s heading, waking up on a misty hillside with a totally naked Amy lying next to him.
Those of you who have read any of the books may realize how that’s problematic. Those of you who’ve read all of them realize how excessively problematic that is. Still, it was fun to live in George’s brain. Let’s just say that the things he thought when he saw the naked Amy were not what I’d been expecting him to think at ALL.
I wonder what my editor would say if I tried to incorporate time travel and superpowers into the story at this late date. I wonder what Amy’s superpowers would be.
Actually, maybe it isn’t so disturbing. After all, right now, VM is pretty much pointless. All of the things that made the first season so exquisitely Heathers-meets-Chinatown is gone now. Logan is toothless; the other secondaries are given silly scavenger hunts that have nothing to do with the story and doesn’t have any bearing on their lives in order to fill up their contractually obligated screentime. This part in her life has no angst or drama to it. Which you know, not so bad. She needs a little down time after the past three years of her life (including the one before the show started where her best friend was murdered and she was raped and her mom left her dad and her dad lost her job and was a national laughingstock but she stuck by him even though it meant total social ostracization). So maybe Rob Thomas has a good idea.
So here we are in the future. V is an up-and-coming FBI hopeful, when suddenly, she’s called back to Neptune because her dad, the sheriff… what? Is he murdered? That could be cool. And it wouldn’t be like Keith was getting less screentime. After all, Lilly started out the show murdered and she was in a ton of episodes (and stole every one of her flashback-lighted scenes). And maybe Logan could be a suspect. Talk about angst! Or maybe Logan marries Parker and then Parker is murdered and Logan is a grieving (or is he?) widower and Veronica’s father once again is the lone voice of reason in a world crying out for another Echolls’s head and Keith loses his job again and Veronica has to step in…
Yeah. That could be cool. Much cooler than anything going on now. Because while I will say that the first season of VM might be the best single season of television I’ve ever seen anywhere ever, the second was only decent, and this one basically sucks. Spinning wheels. They seem to have no idea what to do with themselves. I’m feeling none of the dramatic tension I got in the first season. I don’t think I’d be unhappy if it was canceled. After all, I have my DVD of Season 1, which I will watch over and over and over again.
So that’s my news. Oh, and that Heroes is apparently not necessarily picking up any of the same storylines from the first season for Season 2. that’s right, folks; I’m here for all of your television gossip.
For someone who doesn’t have a TV, I certainly watched a lot of it and talked about it a lot this past week.
No, the show I was speaking of in Monday’s post is not MI5. I’ve actually never even heard of that show. I’m halfway through the fourth disc of the show I am watching, and I’m less and less sold on it all the time. It seems to… well, okay, fine, I give up, it’s BSG, and I have to use this joke — it likes frakking with you for the sake of frakking with you, you know? Not for any dramatic worth, but just to have entire episodes where everyone just goes, “Oh, well, we won’t worry about this anymore, instead we’ll get up in arms over something else that isn’t important in the scheme of things next time around.” Are they making some kind of statement about bureaucracy and the futility and overwhelming stupidity and weakness of the human race? That’s all I can figure. Which is deep and all, but doesn’t actually make for good television. And then there are entire scenes that are just so… tense without any discernable motivation. Except for sex. Apparently all anyone cares about on this show is sex. But I have promised people I’ll give it until the end of the season, so I will. It has two more discs to win me over.
Speaking of shows, NBC.com only has the first episode of Heroes available, and then there is nothing available until about episode 13. So after I watched the first episode and got hooked, I actually had to buy subsequent episodes on iTunes for $1.99 a pop. Thanks a lot, Julie. You totally owe me beaucoup bucks. I’m not embarrassed to admit how many episodes I’ve seen, but let’s just say that I’m just about ready to start watching them on NBC.com again. Now you see why I don’t have TV. It’s pretty good. I love the way you can’t make up your mind about Mr. Bennet. I also remember why I resisted watching this show. I thought it was an X-Men ripoff, and thought it’s not, it does owe a lot to the X-Men premise, and if you are at all familiar with X-Men, a lot of the “twists” aren’t really twists at all. (I actually wonder if that’s why they didn’t make a big deal of the “Rogue” character figuring out the true nature of his powers, since they figured that, with Rogue being such a big part of the X-Men movies, we’d all already guessed what he was. And boy does he have it better than Rogue.)
Also, so much eye candy. Everyone is just as cute as a button on this show. Even the serial killer. I can’t decide who I think is the cutest. Probably the geneticist. Let’s take a quick poll:
Sorry, I’m just concentrating on the guys in this round. Besides, my vote for cutest girl is Eden, hands down.
I’m enjoying it, with reservations. I always have reservations about these “there’s a big secret” type of shows, because I’ve been burned so many times before when the show runners tried to sustain the secret so they could sustain the show and it started getting… bad. (Yes, Chris Carter, I’m looking at you.) I’m wondering how much longer it can sustain the premise. The whole idea of “chapters” for each episode makes me feel more like it’s a movie or a miniseries. Also, love Clea Duvall. Just love her. All the time.
More TV blogging. Was anyone else completely underwhelmed by the mini-finale of Veronica Mars this week? Yawn. Yawn. I wasn’t dramatically engaged by any of it. Perhaps because, for the first time, the solving of the mystery did not involve our girl putting herself in harm’s way, nor did it involve any emotional oomph. I was more moved by the basketball player and his coach father a few weeks ago. I actually thought Veronica was in danger a few times there. I just didn’t even care. And if they think they are pulling my whole heart strings with the new love triangle, they can think again. As far as I can tell, Logan is actually interested in dating this girl, not in pulling some weird twisted Hannah crap like last year. Also, I like this girl, whereas I hated Hannah and found her enormously annoying. SB always accused me of hating Hannah merely because she was an “other woman.” But I’m no simple LoVe shipper. No, my love for Logan is pure. I just want him to be happy. If Veronica can’t make it happen then let’s move along to the next girl that can. (In white text: I actually think Parker is a lot like Lilly, only maybe not quite so screwed up — fun loving, brave, spunky, sexy. I think they’d be really good together. She’s also so perky and happy, even considering what she’s been through, that she may be a good choice for him, since he does have that tendency to brood.) So I’m all for this pairing. Well played, Rob Thomas.
Okay, now I’m really televisioned out. Let’s give away an ARC. The winner this week, despite Patrick and Heather’s attempts to stuff the ballot box, is:
No, I did not watch the Oscars last night. I didn’t watch because I’d actually only seen one film that was nominated for any Oscar at all (unless you count Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which was up for makeup of special effects or something) and that was Little Miss Sunshine. I am slowly becoming aware that, movie buff I am, Oscar-type movie buff I am not.
That being said, I am glad that Scorsese finally brought it home.
Speaking of film… so there this television show out there that everyone, but everyone, has told me that I must watch. It’s supposed to be brilliant and groundbreaking and political and so much deeper than one would expect of the channel that hosts its broadcasts (to which I say, whatever. TV networks aren’t the ones truly responsible for show quality. There are good shows and hack shows on every channel.). My friends are aghast that I don’t already watch it. Several of the more erudite magazines I read are similarly persuasive. The creators of two of my other favorite shows call it the best show on television. My brother thinks I’m nuts. The hype? Huge.
And it is the type of show I’d probably watch, if I had television. Historically, I love shows of this genre. I actually tried to watch it once, a few years ago, but the first episode was so unremittingly bleak that I didn’t know if I could do this particular show. And I watched Carnivale, so that pretty much means I’m up for anything.
But when it came out on DVD, we put it on our Netflix queue and now we are finally watching it (halfway through season one) and… I don’t get it. Does it not find its footing until later? Other fab shows, like Buffy, took a while to figure out where they were going, so I’m willing to give this supposedly brilliant show the benefit of the doubt, but… Rather than being blown away by excellent writing, unique plots, and intriguing and difficult philosophical and political questions, I am aghast that these characters stay alive from episode to episode, since pretty much all they do is act like idiots. I mean… idiots. For instance, say you are in a situation where you are alone with another person and discover that they are a spy. An evil evil evil spy. Do you:
A) Say, “Hey, you’re a spy!” and wait for them to kill you, B) Say, “I would never think you are a spy,” and leave it at that, or C) Say, “I would never think you are a spy, could you excuse me for a moment?” and then high tail it to your boss and go, “I’ve found a spy.”
I think that C would be the obvious answer, especially if you are supposedly the smartest person in the world, which this character is described as being. But the show posits not only that this smart person would not choose C, but that the only options are A and B. And though I’m totally willing to buy the usual stupid decisions that this character makes because of his or her pathological narcissism, nymphomania, and borderline psychosis, in this case, there was nothing to lose from option C.
In another episode, a couple committing a minor indiscretion accidentally allowed a major tragedy to occur, and instead of saying, “whoops, we are so sorry, we won’t let it happen again, please give us the appropriate punishment for our minor indiscretion, keeping in mind of course that we are two rare, highly trained technicians in our field and you need our expertise under these dire circumstances” which is, you know, logical and appropriate, they denied that the minor indiscretion took place, leading everyone to suspect that they’d actually purposely and maliciously caused the tragedy. You know, folks? It’s better to admit that you flouted some office-romance rules than to be branded a terrorist. Just saying.
In the end, the couple’s staff, loyal to a fault, actually chose to lie and say that one of them was the terrorist. Yeah. I almost stopped watching the show right there. And then, when one half of the couple’s boss says to him that he should think long and hard about how this other dude is now in major trouble because of him, and the guy agrees, does he tell the girl he’s doing it because they have more things to worry about, because they were responsible for the tragedy and they should learn from that, or any of the other very rational reasons that the relationship should end, not least because of all the rule breaking, or does he tell her that he doesn’t care very much about her? Well, if your this show’s character, you pick the latter.
And if you’re the girl in question, do you respond with, “You’re right. I’m sorry to lose you, but we’re all in a really, really dire situation here and we need to behave more responsibly?” Of course not. You fly off the handle and get all girly and pouty and refuse to even pause for a moment and think about the person in jail because you needed to get your freak on. (Though maybe I should give this girl a break, because I know that she’s not necessarily acting under a pure agenda, and besides, she appears to be incredibly, exhaustively oversexed, much like her, uh, sister. To the point that she has, in the space of a few episodes, gotten cozy with two main characters on the show, not to mention at least one dead/inanimate object.)
Yeah, that’s the other thing. The only woman on the show who is not portrayed as a total sexpot or sexless placeholder is supposed to be in a developing romantic relationship with a personality-free pretty boy that doesn’t act like he goes for the girls. I really wish they’d cast this other main guy as the pretty boy’s character, since he’s about ten times more heroic and has been since the very first scene I saw him in (even if he is sleeping with that weird chick above).
It’s getting to the point where I’m waiting for the bad guys to just come out and say that the real reason for their jihad is that the good guys are clearly TSTL. I mean, they have been making a similar point, but I’m looking for the catchphrase.
Now, all that being said, the last episode I saw was really good, mostly because we finally got screen time with the one bad guy whose major weapon isn’t the sexual weakness of the good guys. It had its weaknesses as well, but I did catch a glimmer of all supposed brilliance and philosophical mindbenders. Though perhaps I would have been more impressed by the theology if I never saw Joan of Arcadia. This isn’t the first show to talk about God, though it may be the first in its genre.
In conclusion, SB and I remain unsold, though we’re willing to keep going to the end of the season in hopes that it gets better. I’m really disappointed, whereas SB is only mildly so. He thinks that our expectations might have been set too high to start.
Ironically, there’s another cult fave show of this genre that once played on the same network. I loved it and found it groundbreaking and innovative and fabulous, while SB condemned it for not being as smart as he wanted it to be.
(I’ve tried to remove as many identifying details of this show as possible, because I don’t want to dissuade people who haven’t yet seen it. though let me tell you, it was hard, given the show’s premise. But if you have seen the show, you probably know what I’m talking about.)
I am giving away ONE book this week. Guess what it is.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
