Shamelessly cribbed from Dorothy Snarker’s very nice blog post about Elizabeth Mitchell: this cute video of her “confessing” to TV Guide magazine.
Gosh, she is really funny. I thought she was a great actress in Lost, but had no idea what she was like as a person. Dorky and cute, as seen here.
I really enjoy reading recaps of Glee episodes because it’s funny to read someone trying to write a coherent narrative about a program that doesn’t actually make any fucking sense whatsoever. It’s mostly “and then this happened” followed by “yeah, I don’t know what that was about, either. WTF.” And yet I watch the show religiously, because I like music and the girls are all pretty. Which we all know is the reason why I watch any show, really.
Let’s be honest. To me the Bechdel Test boils down to:
1. It has to have at least two women in it (more than one woman to fantasize about)
2. Who talk to each other (so that I can infer subtext and imagine them having sex with each other)
3. About something besides a man (it’s hard to imagine them having sex with each other if they’re talking about boners)
I know, I know. I’m a shallow person and a bad feminist.
Skins is a British TV show finishing it’s fourth season in the UK. It’s fictional, set in Bristol, England, it focuses on teenagers, and it’s very raw and realistic, covering drug and alcohol abuse and sexuality as topics. It’s raunchy and hugely popular in Britain. I’ve been watching the British version streaming through Netflix, and I like it a lot. It’s a bit shocking in that there is a lot of stuff one would never see on American television, but it seems really real; like these are real teenagers and how they really act, and despite their adult behavior, there’s a sweetness and longing to the kids that betrays how innocent and hopefully they really are underneath their facade of cynicism.
So of course they brought the show to America. And fucked it up. Because that’s what we do.
The American version is almost a shot for shot recreation of the first season of the British original, but with American teens, so of course they look just a bit slicker and cuter. That shot-by-shot recreation is an important point, though — because when they deviate from the original, it means that there’s a calculated reason for it. And the calculation is what’s disturbing.
The story centers around a teenage school kid named Tony and the friends that revolve around him: his girlfriend Michelle, buddy Stan (Sid in the original), and several other pals. Tony is an attractive jerkwad who manipulates his friends, usually for selfish reasons. But he has charisma and charm and they hang around him despite his jerky behavior, because he can talk them out of being mad. He regularly cheats on his girlfriend Michelle, and she knows it, but she overlooks it. Usually. In the British version of the show, this is what brings their relationship to a halt halfway through the first season, and is the source of conflict through the rest of it — Tony decides to fool around with their gay friend Maxxie. It’s not because Maxxie’s a guy that Michelle gets upset, but rather that Tony does it openly where everyone knows about it. She’s been overlooking his cheating for a long time, but now that it’s no longer a secret, she can’t look the other way and she dumps him. The storyline is daring because Tony is so casually fluid about his sexuality; he’s clearly straight but isn’t freaked out about fooling around with another boy, and he’s so vain that he enjoys the attention. He only ends up apologizing for his behavior because he loses Michelle, but for that he wouldn’t care or have any moral problems with it.
And that brings us to the American version, and the homophobia problem with it — in this version, the gay boy Maxxie has been changed to a lesbian girl named Tea. She’s a cheerleader and is open about her sexuality to her friends. She casually sleeps with girls because she enjoys it, but she’s bored with most of the girls she meets and can’t find one that “matches” her level of interest in the world around her or her curiosity. She agrees to go out on a blind date arranged by her dad, and it turns out to be with Tony – whom she fools around with. He makes a case that he is the one that “matches” her. And despite her declarations that she’s gay, she appears to be considering him as a potential interest, at least for the first few episodes in.
Given that every single other element of the show is the same – dialog, jokes, shot for shot recreations of the original – this change is really blatant. Clearly, they were too freaked out by the gay male storyline, or the idea that a straight boy could be fluid about his sexuality, to leave the original story. But in making the gay character a gay girl, they made her sexuality fluid, which is already a stereotype about lesbians that we have to fight constantly, because the idea of a lesbian being “changed” or “corrected” by sleeping with a guy is so pervasive that a common hate crime directed at gay women is “corrective” rape. Having been a victim myself of that particular hate crime, these kinds of perpetuations of the myth that gay women aren’t really gay are painful to watch. It’s the reason I hated The Kids Are All Right, among other things. It’s just not true, and it’s annoying when guys have that false notion in their heads validated onscreen.
I’m going to continue to watch the American version of Skins, but if they end up putting Tony and Tea together, I’m going to be hard pressed not to throw my remote at the screen in disgust.
UPDATE: Of course they went there. Ugh.
The site has great mobile stylesheets
You can read on your mobile device, which is why I was the only blissfully happy person standing amidst a crowd of very disgruntled people for an hour and a half in the security line at La Guardia. So yes, I was basically reading what amounts to very light soft core lesbian erotica in a pack of strangers. Turns out that’s not as disconcerting as one would think.
I know this means you’ll be suspicious of what I’m reading whenever I have my phone out in your presence. As well you should be; I probably am. 🙂
Call me a juvenile goofball, but this email made me the teensiest bit giggly this afternoon:
Ahem – For your reading enjoyment: Fanfiction.net’s Rizzoli and Isles channel.
I haven’t read fan fiction in quite a few years because it was always so hard to hunt down good stuff and separate it from the crap. But I’ve been a long-time fan of Dorothy Snarker, and somehow I navigated from her site to fanfiction.net the other day. This site does a great job of aggregating fan fiction, sorting it out, and even encouraging group editing projects to improve people’s writing skills. There’s still a lot of bad stuff there, but it’s possible to navigate your way around it thusly: go to whatever category of stuff you like. Sort by characters you want to read about. Look for stories with tons and tons of reviews. These are the stories people really like because they bother to comment. Read some of them. Look at their authors, and the authors also have lists of their favorites stories and authors. Visit those. Repeat. This was an awesome distraction to the stress of going out of town on business this week (I suck at travel; indeedy I do).
(I have a similar method of finding cool stuff on Flickr by surfing the favorites of photographers I like. Hours of awesome.)
Here, let me highlight a couple of the steamier Rizzoli & Isles items for you:
Yeah, come back after you’ve read those and let me know what you think. 🙂
I have more stuff to link to, but I’ll hold off until I hear from you.
ADDENDUM: Of course, as soon as I posted this, I got email from the other other half of TNT’s dynamic duo:
Of course this whole post presupposes that you’ve actually seen the TNT show Rizzoli & Isles, which aired this summer and will be back next. If you haven’t you can catch it in reruns. It stars Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, along with a small dog, a tortoise and absolutely insane amounts of subtext and Totally Gratuitous Touching. Shame on you for missing it.
Just to reiterate, this time with photos:
A smart, funny, brainy show with the strongest female lead I’ve ever seen and interesting story lines. A version of the X-Files done right, and infinitely smarter; It doesn’t go off the rails or take itself so seriously that it’s over blown the way Mulder and Scully did. I don’t know what I can say to get you hooked on my current obsession – Fringe – but I’ll say it, because it’s good.
Can’t remember what caused me to start watching Fringe, but one or two episodes of season 2 got me roped in, and I started getting the first season from Netflix to get caught up. I’ve been saving the current season to watch after I met up with myself in the middle, which turns out to be a mistake, because I should have been watching the show right away so my viewings counted toward the ratings – cable numbers are counted live or if viewed from DVR within 24 hours. Our drastically pared down Fall TV schedule has allowed me to get nearly caught up (I know, I know! But we’re still watching less TV).
If you’re a current viewer or fan, you should know that it’s moving to Friday nights on January 28th. Be sure to follow it, because unless it’s successful there, it’s projected to be canceled. I always manage to find the really good stuff too late and lose it too early.
In my extended exam of the reviews of new television shows this season, I ran out of space to track what we actually decided to watch. I made a list and we then cut it down to 8 shows – 6 1/2 hours a week.
I think The Event is going to be replaced pretty quickly by one of the shows that was on the bubble – NCIS: Los Angeles, Fringe, and Human Target were all candidates. The Office was iffy – Stephanie was for keeping it but I’ve been bored the last couple of seasons and when we missed an episode here and there we weren’t heartbroken.
I’ve just found The Event to be really irritating – I’m not intrigued by any of the characters, and I could tell from the moment that the water rescue happened that it was a con job designed to separate the young couple. I know I must irritate the crap out of Stephanie when I constantly announce “here’s what’s going to happen…” and fifteen minutes later that’s exactly what happens, but I really can’t help it. They may as well put a big flashing arrow on screen that says “Look, a plot point! Guess what it’s there for!” I was a heck of a lot more interested in FlashForward than in the Event, and they did this all the time, but at least had some interesting ideas behind it sometimes.
The first episode of The Event also had so many flashbacks and time jumps that I couldn’t track the time line – “Ten days later”? Ten days from what? The first flashback, or the second, or the third? And I think as Lost proved – just chopping your storyline up and jumbling the pieces may mask that fact that you have no coherent narrative for 7 seasons, but you’ll win no friends when the whole thing comes out. If the producers of Lost came to me with a proposal for a new show, I’d make them tell me the story from beginning to end in order before I let them craft me a pilot, just to prove that they could do it for once. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice…
I’m sure a mystery-driven thriller storyline will succeed in capturing the Lost mystique sometime, but I’ll bet money it will need to be a linear narrative when it does.
In times past I made big elaborate lists on my blog of the fall television I was going to watch, using the Fall TV Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly as a guide. I formatted the whole list as a table cell grid with times and shows, highlighted what I was going watch, what was new and when shows premiered. A little obsessed I was.
Over time, Entertainment Weekly progressed in their presentation of the Fall TV issue, too. I was thrilled when they started printing the time grids for each day of the week, with new shows highlighted, so I could abandon my online mock-up. I cut out their days, pasted them all together and had a solid television week with my shows highlighted that I kept next to the couch so I could set the VCR, and later the DVR for my programs.
Now EW prints each day’s chart, but also provides a single chart at the end of their fall section with all the days on it, and when all the shows premiere. How handy – rip it out and you’re ready; no cut and paste.
And yet.
It’s hard to deny how much stuff I get done in the summer time when there are fewer new shows on – writing, organizing, walking around the neighborhood or around the city. Stuff done in the yard, time spent with friends, classes in new interests I’ve taken. I proposed to myself that I limit my television viewing to 5 shows this year. Well, maybe 5 hours, to allow for some 30 minute sitcoms. Perusing the fall list – 6 1/2 hours covers shows that we watched last year that I thought might be worth seeing again. Hmmm. More crunching required.
But eliminating new shows from the list wasn’t really hard this year. I’ve said in the past the television was getting better, and it is. Lots of shows have better writing, more plausible characters and plots you can take seriously. There’s lots of goods stuff on.
This year seems really thin, though, judging solely by the write-ups of freshman programs. (I know, I should “watch the shows and give them a chance before judging!” But who the hell has time for that?) Let’s look at what Entertainment Weekly calls the “5 Best New Shows.”
1) Hawaii Five-0
Let me go off on a tangent right away here – I’m so tired of cop shows. Apparently there are 5 main professions on the other side of the TV machine. Cop, lawyer, doctor, spy, and housewife. I know the first four are “high action” professions and the 5th good for relatable family drama, but surely people in other occupations have action in their lives, or family relationships. I wonder if there’s a correlation between people’s perception of current crime statistics and the number of cop shows on television.
Few people make detergent in TV land. Run an aquarium supply store, paint the stripes on the road, work in an unemployment office, design golf courses. All are occupations I’d like to see on my television machine – and maybe urban farmer thrown in. I want to see occupations fundamentally different from mine, only partly because I want to see how people do the stuff they do. Perhaps those jobs would be boring in a documentary, but they’re all interesting enough to drive plot in a scripted drama.
Specifically about this show – Hawaii Five-0 – the actors being interviewed about it are painstaking in their efforts to emphasize how different their show is from other remakes, and from the original. “This is a completely different show for a completely different time. Hopefully, this one is gonna stick,” says star Alex O’Loughlin. Wow, he sounds so convinced himself, doesn’t he? Five bucks says he hasn’t completely unpacked.
And the things they highlight about what’s different and makes this show The One – one of the male characters from the previous version is now female – played by Grace Parks no less, who famously already did that in Battlestar Galactica… Gee that’s creative. Let’s make a guy into a woman! That’s edgy! And they’ve dropped lots of the story lines, but kept the cheesy theme, and the even cheesier signature line – “Book’em, Danno!” I would be waiting all episode for that line to to cringe when I heard it.
2) Lone Star
Let me read you the description, and you tell me what it sounds like to you: “The sharp, understatedly debonair James Wolk is a con man juggling two identities, trying to go straight while also using his skills as a dissembler to succeed in business.”
Did you see what I saw? “Mad Men, but set in the present.” I’m already watching Mad Men done well, I don’t need to see it ripped off.
3) Blue Bloods
“A crackling drama about a family whose members are all involved in law enforcement…” Oy. More cops. And a family, so you know, they can have family drama, too. Why it’s the best of both worlds! Next.
4) Raising Hope
“Raising Hope… makes shrewd everyday-America observations and gets laughs without ridiculing its characters. Lucas Neff’s Jimmy is a twenty-something single dad living with his parents)…”
Hello, “Modern Family” and “$#*! My Dad Says” fusion with Cloris Leachman playing Betty’s White’s comeback role. I’m bored with you just reading your description.
5) Boardwalk Empire
A 1920’s period drama (my interest peaks) about mobsters (and immediately goes away) with Steve Buscemi the lead gangster and romantic figure (I come close to losing my lunch.) Steve Buscemi in romantic situations? Even his WIFE doesn’t want to see that. Can I have Deadwood back, please? If you’re just going to go for another elaborately designed period drama, HBO, fire back up the wild west set. I miss my Calamity Jane. Come on.
Those are the best new shows this season? Wow, the networks really have trouble finding new writers, I guess. Maybe you should consider hiring different kinds of people – like, hey, maybe some women. I hear that Amy Sherman-Palladino has a bunch of good ideas in the hopper. Get her.
And it’s not very hard to play “guess what the pitch was” for the “3 more to keep an eye on” sidebar that Entertainment Weekly also highlights:
1) Undercovers
You don’t have to read the description to see what the pitch was – just look at the promo picture in the article. Man in his boxers and undershirt, women in a white men’s shirt with no pants, both brandishing guns – that’s the movie poster of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie for Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But wait, these two are black. So you read the description to discover – the plot is a black Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Hell, when I can tell what the pitch for the show was without even reading the description, you really need to change more stuff about the plot you’re lifting wholesale. Really. I like the idea of a black couple leading a show – brava on that one. But the references in the description to the conflict between the two over their job – must we? Can’t we have a couple that actually gets along, where there isn’t relationship drama? You already have drama from being a spy show. You don’t need relationship conflict. The “Nick and Nora” couple who always get along and who’s relationship is based on humor and mutual respect used to be a common sight in movies and occasionally on television. Now that couple scenario seems long dead and I really miss it. I think one show with a couple that sticks together through thick and thin would really hit big if someone would just write it.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
The Undercovers
2) No Ordinary Family
Family suddenly gets superpowers. Dad (Michael Chiklis) has super-human strength. Mom gets super speed. Daughter can read minds. Son JJ becomes a genius. The review even namechecks Heroes as an “inspiration” but I see a live-action Incredibles, with a little “Fantastic Four” thrown in. Perhaps the presence of Chiklis is what makes that really noticeable. I like superhero tv shows, but Heroes really makes me too gunshy about this one to try it, especially when they weren’t creative enough to come up with an original idea as a premise.
3) The Event
This is the only one I’m tempted to add to my list at all, and even then, it’s on the bubble. It’s mystery epic along the lines of Lost and FlashFoward. As much as I adore that premise, as I’m complained here in the past – you can’t announce that its a mystery show. You have to let people discover it’s a mystery. Lost was presented as an airplane disaster show. Upon first viewing, people thought it might be referencing 9/11 with the airplane crash, and as the first few episodes aired, they thought it might be a scripted version of Survivor. It wasn’t until that frickin’ monster showed up that people thought was a dinosaur – that’s when they sat up and payed attention. And even then, the theories were all “It’s Land of the Lost!” They landed on a dinosaur island! People actually operated on that theory up until they found the hatch.
Lost had people guessing from the first, and guessing wrongly, with blind alleys all through the first season. Of course, the writers really had no idea what the hell they were going and end it up with “and then they all when to heaven! Amen! The End!” So maybe Lost is not the best role models. But I was with them through the whole thing. Even though it got religious and stupid.
So The Event starts out with a guy who’s girlfriend is missing. That’s small enough, simple enough. But the fact that they’re already advertising that “the president of the united states doesn’t even know what the event is!” does not bode well. I don’t believe in global conspiracies because nobody is bright enough to carry something like that off on a global scale. Even if everyone is smart enough to understand what the point is, once your group gets bigger than a few people, everyone has their own agenda and starts working for themselves anyway.
Hell, people aren’t even bright enough to write good TV shows when they have bunches of people working on them altogether. Nobody anywhere on the staff of these looks up and says “hey, this show is really shite, you know? Why am I here?”
That’s a good question. I think I’ll be somewhere else, at least to start this season. Maybe I’ll hear water cooler buzz and find out I’m wrong about my first impressions.
Apropo of nothing, on the way to the restroom at work, this notion popped into my head:
“Hey, wasn’t Joan’s roommate Carol (played by Kate Norby in season 1 of Mad Men) a lesbian? They should write a scene where she meets Peggy’s new friend Joyce (played by Zosia Mamet, appearing in season 4) so they could hook up.”
Yes, I’m setting up fictional lesbians on television programs these days.
