When the Fat Fireman Sings

At the risk of sounding pathetic, I care about my TV friends. If a well-crafted show engages me, then I will make sure to watch each and every episode even if it means eating dinner in front of the HD hearth and risking irreparable damage to the family unit. If a show is cancelled too soon, I feel a sense of loss and even betrayal. (Yes. The men were of a certain age, but they were not ready to give up the ghost). But if it ends when it's supposed to with dignity and grace then I'm satisfied. If a show sustains my interest for seven years and I stick with it through ups and downs, I trust that the creators of the fictional world will respect the rules on which that world has been built when writing the last season and crafting the finale. As sad as I am that I won't be able to listen to the guys bust each others' chops around the table anymore, I am as pleased as punch that Rescue Me left me holding back tears caused as much by sadness as laughter.

Rescue Me has always felt as if it belonged in the same absurd universe as that inhabited by the Coen Brothers. There's something incredibly life affirming about texts that find the humor in the human condition. The darker such texts get, the louder the laughter. I don't think I've had as many gut-wrenching laughs as I have had in Rescue Me or Coen brothers movies. If the creators of Rescue Me chose to kill Tommy or the entire house as they teased, I would have been deeply disappointed. I expected Rescue Me to find a way for me to laugh at how tragic our lives can be and it did.

The pitfalls of immortality

I just watched a trailer for In Time starring Justin Timberlake and it set into relief for an anxiety that seems to be coursing through texts these days: A fear of living forever. Torchwood: Miracle Day is exploring it at length by giving us a world where everyone has become immortal but the body hurts and ages nonetheless. That means if you get cancer you'll have to live with the pain for centuries. The theory explored by the Torchwood gang is that BigPharma is behind the miracle. They have somehow initiated the change so that there pain relievers will become a huge money maker.

So many relevant questions are raised by Torchwood's (and I'm guessing In Time's)premise. Simple but powerful questions: How do you become a caretaker? How do you manage pain? Do the rich deserve to live longer because they have been lucky enough to either inherit or make money? At what point is life not worth living?

If I were writing a paper,I'd probably bring in our fascination with vampires, but I'll save that for another time.

Insidious

I have a high tolerance for bad horror movies so my expectations weren't all great for Insidious. In fact, after suffering through an incoherent The Rite last week, my expectations were probably lower than normal. But even if my expectations had been higher, I think I still would have been satisfied with the unholy union of the Saw and Paranormal Activity creators. The movie was creepy. There was not a trace of torture porn. The twist to the haunting wasn't nearly as cool as The Others, but it was clever. The acting was more than adequate, especially Rose Byrne. There was just enough of the satanic in it to be compelling for a lapsed Catholic. It even presented "Tip Toe through the Tulips" as a demonic ballad. How could I not like it? But, best of all, it nods to my favorite subgenre, metahorror.

If I were writing a paper on it, I would focus on the ghostbusting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who, for me, seemed to represent to the two creative forces behind the movie. They lightened the mood just enough and reminded me as a viewer how creepy it is for me to enjoy horror.

P.S. They're cancelling Men of a Certain Age? Isn't TNT supposed to save shows (i.e. Southland) not end them? It breaks my heart to know I'll never hang out in the diner with those three especially after such a perfectly balanced finale. Alas. I wonder what the campaign to get them would require?

Summer TV

USA has done a marvelous job at creating a TV brand perfect for summer. For most of the year, we tend towards the dark--crime thrillers, post-apocalyptic sci fi, black comedies. Most recently I'd add rainy as well as we faithfully followed The Killing. But since dog days have finally kicked in here in the great white North, we've turned our attention to the bright, blue charm of the USA network. When I gave the boys a choice between Alphas and Burn Notice. It was Burn Notice. When I offered Torchwood, they chose White Collar. And I couldn't argue with them because I too am seduced by the uber-charming USA gentlemen.

Of course, we haven't shaken our taste for the dark. Falling Skies is watched religiously in the household as will Rescue Me. And when September comes around, we'll be viewing Miami through a lens much darker than that of Burn Notice.

Treme

I'm watching the season finale of Treme and savoring every minute of it. Ladonna has tapped into her rage and pulled herself out of her personal hell. Janette has been given the chance to open another restaurant in New Orleans. Wendell has found a way to fuse old-time New Orleans music with modern jazz and rebuild his father's pride and home. Even the seemingly not-so-happy endings of Antoine's band and Davis' role in his band are so beautifully crafted they give me pleasure. How could I not beam when I saw Antoine lead his high school bound in performance on a city corner during Jazz Fest?

There's so much to love about the show. . . the acting, the devotion to the music,food and people of New Orleans. But I think what I enjoy almost as much as the music is the slow burn of the show's pacing. It's as if the characters and the plot meander but always with purpose. When random acts of violence occur, they are as shocking as they ought to be. I can't wait to find out if the show captures the mood of New Orleans as effectively as it seems to.

A taste for viral plagues

Somewhere under "Preferences" in my Netflix profile is the entry: Customer enjoys watching movies about viral plagues. Given our rather dark taste in films, I can only imagine what else is on the list.

I suspect the reason for the profile update lies in my decision to view "Black Death." Contrary to the apparent suspicion of Netflix, however, I didn't choose it because of the plague theme. It was the opportunity to see a greasy-haired Sean Bean wielding a sword and wearing a chain mail. (What am I going to do next year when Game of Thrones returns without him?)

Just as the name implies, the movie is set in England during the plague years, but it is definitely not written from the same script as Monty Python used. Darker than dark, it follows the Bishop's envoy who is intent on ridding a village of its satanic protector. When Luc asked if there would really be any monsters in the movie, I assured him that terrified people were monstrous enough and I was right.

Although the movie was dark, by the end you couldn't help but feel optimistic about the fate of humankind. Sure there is plenty of violence and despair. People still commit unspeakable acts. But in the majority of countries, we certainly aren't burning healers as witches, watching half our family die and hearing "Bring out your dead."

Mad Men or X Men?

I guess what it takes for me to enjoy an X Men movie is the superimposition of Mad Men over it. Set during the Cuban Missile Crisis with January Jones playing yet another gorgeous ice queen (dressed like Betty in Rome), I couldn't help but seen Jon Hamm/Don Draper in Michael Fassbender's depiction of an angst-ridden Eric/Magneto.

Even without the Mad Men resemblance, I still would have loved the movie. With it's groovy 60s setting, wonderful characters, great acting, fun references to history, and clever foreshadowing of the X-Men mythology, it's an origin story that outshines any of the earlier movies.

Like Thor (another comic book movie that I enjoyed this summer), X Men: First Class focuses on the relationship between two brothers who choose to channel their anger and talents in different ways. Thanks to the work of Fassbender and McAvoy, you leave feeling as if you understand their rivalry. I also left the movie wanting to pick up the comic books just because I wanted to know what happened next in spite of the fact that I know the comic book would offer me nothing like the movie and I do know what happens next. That's certainly never happened before.

I guess I'll just have to settle for Mad Men in the spring.

Guilty Pleasure?

Chris and I both watch trash TV, but our taste is very different. While he can watch Dolph Lundgren dolled up as a post-apocalyptic warrior in the same straight-to-dvd flick for the 40th time, I'll actually DVR soap operas. And typically I don't feel a need to justify my choices. I just don't feel guilty over my TV pleasures. But I've got to say that I'm finding it hard to justify my DVR'ing of the Real Housewives of NYC these days. Although I found most housewives in other zip codes to awful to watch, I've been able to watch NYC because the women seemed to lead fairly interesting lives. Yeah, watching them promote themselves is annoying, but I could at least understand why they were trying to brand themselves. But things have just gotten ugly this season.

Not only have the women lost any self-awareness, but the show's editors seem to enjoy casting them in as negative as light as possible. Each show my jaw just drops when I hear Kelly babbling inanities under the pretense of offering advice or listen to LuAnn hold forth on appropriate behavior. I shake my head when Alex stumbles into yet another socially awkward situation or Sonya reveals way too much without panties.

Why am I still watching? Especially since I don't have anyone to gossip about them with anymore? Is it schadenfreude? Am I tapping into a fascination for train wrecks? When all is said and done, I'm probably still watching it because they're in NYC after all and everything just seems a little more glamorous when wearing Manolo Blahniks.

Hearing the Voice and Feeling the Dance

While feeling warm and fuzzy listening to Blake gush over Dia Frampton during the finale of The Voice, I realized that I did in fact like the show. And I liked it because of the apparent emotional connections forged between the coaches and their wanna-be stars. I recognized the blatant manipulation on the part of the show's creators, but watching others be nurtured is just so darn enjoyable.

Although the dancers in So You Think You Can Dance aren't assigned coaches, they are guided each week by choreographers. Magic really does happen when the choreographer is inspired by her dancers and the dancers are pushed by the choreographer. Last night I felt that ever so pleasurable tug on my heart watching Mark and Melanie make that magic happen through Napolean and Tabitha's movement.

Feeling awake

After writing about my discomfort with Jonathan Franzen's books, I happened to hear a remark by David Lipsky when being interviewed about time spent with David Foster Wallace. Referring to a comment in an article, Lipsky talked about how "awake" he felt after reading Wallace. Unlike more entertaining fare, Wallace's writings require work to grasp, but the fact that Lipsky felt smarter after reading Wallace made him feel the effort was worthwhile.

Hearing the comment made me wonder if part of the anxiety I feel when reading Franzen comes out of that feeling of wakefulness. Certainly that's not the case when I slip into Jack Reacher's world. Page turners pull me into a dream world that separates me from any real concerns I may have.

I guess after The Corrections must come Wallace's Infinite Jest, that is unless I get my hands on George Martin's A Song of Fire series before then. No matter how much I value being feeling awake, I'm a sucker for warrior women who choose baby dragons as a fashion accessory.

Jack Reacher invites Jonathan Franzen to dinner

After finishing Lee Child's Worth Dying For, I picked up The Corrections. It's hard to believe that both books can inhabit the same bookstore let alone end up as best sellers. Needless to say, reading the two is a very different experience. When I read a Reacher novel, I'm asking myself: Who is this man? Did Dexter have another brother? (Prompted by my husband) Doesn't he ever change his underwear? In spite of the impossibility of Reacher and the mind-numbing amount of violence, I typically can't put the books down. I have to find out how Reacher is going to extricate himself from yet another hellish situation.

When I visit Franzen's fictional worlds, I also feel as if I'm visiting some kind of hell but for a very a very different reason. Whereas Reacher is someone who I've never known and will never know, I feel uncomfortably close to Franzen's characters. They all seem to intersect my own world in odd ways. In fact, I hate to say it but I often see myself in all their self-loathing glory whether it's the nice, liberal couple in St. Paul or the professor who hopes to teach his students how to read all the texts produced by corporate America.

The Corrections will certainly take me longer to finish than Worth Dying For and it's not because of it complexity. It's because I can only take the character's self loathing (and by extension my own self loathing) in limited doses.

During my current break, I'm just imagining how Jack Reacher would handle Christmas in St. Jude with the Lamberts. A conversation between Chip and Jack would be priceless.

Show about those old guys

A few weeks ago my son saw Ray Romano on The Office and asked, "Isn't he on that show about those old guys?" It took me a minute to realize that he was talking about Men of a Certain Age. The delay in catching his drift was due to a couple of reasons. First and foremost, people in their 40s and 50s do not seem old to someone closer to 50 than 40. Second, Men of a Certain Age is about so much more than three old guys. Watching the season premiere last night reminded of all the reasons why it's on my list of favorites.

Among my favorite moments in the season premiere: 1) Seeing Joe in the opening scene hungrier for conversation with his buddies than he was for breakfast. 2) Seeing Joe finally satisfy that hunger in the closing scene 3) Noting how hopeful the 2 toothbrushes positioned in the same water glass was for Terry 4) Learning his "girlfriend" was also struck by how meaningful those toothbrushes were 5) Learning that Owen wouldn't give up the dealership and 6) Seeing that the connection between Joe's bookie and the stripper really was there.

I can't wait to see what the season has in store for the old guys.

If I had a daughter

In today's NYT Week in Review, Frank Rich locates the reasons for the box-office success of the Coen brothers' True Grit in the audience's nostalgia for a time when black and white hats could be easily distinguished from one another and the Law prevails. He sees the western as an antidote to the murky gray of the less commercially successful Social Network whose technologically gray landscape he likens to the pre-civilized Wild West.

Rich offers a fairly standard reading of the western and I won't argue against it. However, it doesn't account for the pleasure I took in TG. In fact, it wasn't until after I saw the movie Winter's Bone and finished the novel Anthropology of an American Girl a few days later that I realized why I so thoroughly enjoyed both movies. At the heart of each are fierce, smart, and resourceful young woman who embark on quests through lawless worlds in an attempt to restore order. Unlike the more conventional narrative thread of Anthropology and so many other texts for and about teenage girls, TG and WB tell coming-of-age stories for girls that do not hinge on the girls' sexuality. Mattie and Ree certainly endure much during their brutal journeys. Both girls see and experience violence that I wouldn't wish on any teenage girl or boy, but for me the fact that their pain wasn't based in a vicious rape or a broken heart made the stories more powerful for me. I found it inspiring to watch the two gritty girls overcome obstacles that didn't originate in their sexuality. As happy as I am parenting my almost 11 yr old son, I regretted not having a teenage daughter by my side while watching both movies.

If I had a daughter, we could admire the determination of Mattie and Ree to do what they thought was right. In watching the two fatherless girls saddled with passive, helpless mothers remain constant in their respective quests for justice, I'd want her to realize that she was blessed with an inner strength that didn't require the passionate embrace of a sparkly blood sucker to activate. She would see the loss that comes in giving up childish things and assuming her place in an adult world with all its violence and pain, but that loss wouldn't be sexualized. I'll need to think more about why this difference matters to me but it does. All I know is that I can't wait for Katniss Everdeen to make her way to the silver screen.