Loose Ends...
Aug. 12th, 2004 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWell, got my first two paychecks this week - just need to deposit them. Picked up the second one this afternoon, had to leave work a little early to do it, but ate lunch at desk, and may stay a little later tomorrow to make up for it. That's one month's rent taken care of at least. Was going to do laundry tonight but wimped out. Laundry requires lugging the bag and cart down three flights of steps, three blocks, to the laundramat, plus two hours sitting there waiting for it to get done, then folding the clothes. Didn't have the energy.
Work is...paying my rent at the moment. And providing me with an opportunity to learn and hone skills in Lotus Notes and Excel. Also I apparently haven't forgotten Contract law, still can analyze a contract quickly and efficiently regardless of what it is for. This is a good thing, I suppose. Not sure where this will take me, except that it's incredibly ironic since my least favorite courses in law school were Contracts.
In other news, attempting to get myself to write creatively again, but self-conscious. I'm wondering if this conversational writing style I've adopted for online writing has hurt me somewhat? Also maybe I'm reading/scanning one too many writer's blogs? While I've learned a lot, they can be a tad intimidating. One starts wondering if one has the chops.
Lately, I've been struggling to remember what I know on POV writing. I normally just write what comes naturally, which is third person close - and I don't think too much about it. Now I'm wondering if I should?
Have a couple of ideas, just struggling with fleshing them out.
One is a sci-fi fantasy. One real world. Probably should stick with the real world one, but the fantasy one actually has stuff written on it. And it's easier to work on a work in progress, than something entirely new. Decisions. Decisions.
Riskiest TV show is hands down Nip/Tuck. IF you saw it this week you know why. The show actually did something that I haven't seen many other TV shows attempt. An edgy no-holds-barred adult show, Nip/Tuck continues to push the envelope.
In this week's episode, the lead character, Dr. Scean McNamara, who has up until this point had things fairly easy - a successful plastic surgery practice with his best friend, a family, a lovely wife, and the ability to help others with surgery, had the rug pulled out from under him. A man of logic, Dr. McNamara does not believe in God nor does he embrace any religion. He believes religion is false and provides false promises. He lives very well thank you without it. He trusts his practice, his friend,
his family, his world - he has faith in that, he does not need to have faith in something he can't see, hear or taste. That isn't logical.
What he doesn't know is that his wife and best friend slept together 17 years ago, still harbor feelings for each other but have never acted on them again, and that his 17 year old son is actually his best friend's. Nor does he know that the secret is slowly unhinging his wife, who has an outbreak of shingles this week. (She'd only discovered the secret the year before, up until that point she assumed the boy was Scean's). Yes it sounds like a bad soap opera, but the way the writers handle the reveal is anything but. They combine the serial expertly with the stand-a-lone/issue of the week, this week's patient is a young woman who appears to be suffering from the stigmata. The writers examine through her stigmata the ways we physically torture ourselves out of guilt or desire for control and the whole issue of faith. Why we need to believe in something outside ourselves. One of the characters, an anestheiologist who is in her late 40s and homosexual, desperately wants to get pregnant and does finally, through artificial insemination, with the help of Scean's best friend, the beautiful but somewhat self-centered bad boy, Dr. Christian Troy. Then she discovers she has a child with Down's Syndrom and tries desperately to have faith it will be okay, even asks the stigmata girl to bless her. But when push comes to shove, she doesn't have faith, and confesses to Troy that she aborted it for the same reason she asked him to contribute sperm, having always considered herself an ugly freakish woman, she desperately needed her child to be beautiful. (This was keeping with the character who tells Dr. Troy in an earlier episode that she had waited until her father died, because he used to say "at least you're unlikely to have kids".) Troy meanwhile is heartbroken, he would have loved the child no matter what and can't believe she only saw him as a pretty face or thinks that's all he cares about. Then we have the girl, the nun, the Priest, and the Catholic Church - which needs the girl's miraculous condition to get funding and attract parishioners. Plus all the people who need to believe in the girl. When Dr. McNamara condemns the Church for using the girl as a sort of symbol to keep their Church alive, requesting they stop the parishioners from turning his practice into a shrine, the Priest tells him that sooner or later he will hit a point in his life where he desperately needs to believe in something. Plus, he points out - the patient he just operated on would never have found him without the girl being there.
That faith sometimes is the only thing that keeps people going and if this girl can help them - even if the stigmata is not real - where's the harm?
In odd turn of events: The girl appears to actually have the stigmata, the blood in the oddly shaped wounds in her feet isn't hers. Perplexed by this McNamara goes home to his family, and his guilt-ridden wife unable to contain herself much longer, tells him the truth about his son. McNamara's world shifts. He tells her to leave his house. He goes after Christian and when he finally does violently confront Christian, Christian has just been told by the anestheiologist that she aborted his child. The last scene of the piece takes place in Church. McNamara has finally gone to religion. He has decided for the first time in his life to believe in something illogical. And here is where the show surprised me.
If you expected to see Touched by An Angel or the Amends episode from BTVS? You would have been sorely disappointed. This may be one of the few times I've seen a TV show not go for the comforting ending. The girl admits to McNamara that she is a fraud. Informs him that the Nun, Sister Agatha, planned the whole thing - created the girl's wounds, put her own blood in them. They did it to ensure the girl wouldn't go to the County Hospital and that Sister Agatha's Home would get funding. God doesn't exist, the girl tells Scean. He can't find any comfort here.
So McNamara stares into space, lost.
Wow.
The show doesn't tell us God exists or doesn't exist, it just
says the world is the way it is. Risky thing to do in these troubled times.
The other show that surprised me was The 4400
which remained smartly ambiguous until the very end.
The twist in that show, took it a step above every alien abuduction storyline I've seen. Surprisingly innovative, yet conventional at the same time. If you get the chance to check out this gem, do so. Like Nip/Tuck it does something I'm not sure Angel The Series ever accomplished successfully, which is the combo stand-a-lone/serial format. A couple of episodes introduced guest characters that existed only for the space of those episodes, they were well drawn, you cared about them, and you were sorry to see them go. It was sort of like watching an anthology within the serial format. The principal characters were also complex, multi-faceted, and ambiguous. No clear good guys or bad guys here. It's not a perfect series. A couple of the characters felt a tad forced in places. There's a baby storyline that veers closely towards cliche and convention. Outside of that? The series held my interest. It also pushed forward the somewhat existentialist view of a random universe, except with pattern, suggesting if we could only see the pattern, maybe we could change it and make things better.
Last of the group is Rescue Me which is not as good as the first two. Dennis Leary is wonderful.
The acting in general is quite good. And this week's episode distracted me because the church they were filming in looked alarmingly like the Church I used to go to in Brooklyn. I spent a good portion of the episode trying to figure out if it was the same church. Doubt it. But you never know. The problem with Rescue Me is it does fall into convention too much and seems far too interested in shocking me with sexual hijinks (this week S&M and three-somes) and foul language, then story. When it's good, it's focusing on Leary - his family relationships, and his relationships with the ghosts, his psychological trauma. And there's a nifty bit on a man whose dealing with post-traumatic stress through poetry. But the story on gay-bashing, sexual hijinks, and the fear of being seen as a homosexual have been done to death by now. It felt slow in places and fairly predictable, I kept waiting for things to happen. On the other hand, I enjoy the dark cynical edge, Leary's world-weary Fireman who is equal parts hero and anti-hero, struggling to just make it in this life, while being haunted by his cousin - reminds me in some respects of Angel being haunted by Spike. In fact Leary's character reminds me a great deal of a real-world version of Angel. It's not quite as good as Leary's last venture in my opinion, the darkly humorous The Job which I missed most of because it was opposite Angel. But it's worth a look.
Okay bed calls. Must mosey off.
Work is...paying my rent at the moment. And providing me with an opportunity to learn and hone skills in Lotus Notes and Excel. Also I apparently haven't forgotten Contract law, still can analyze a contract quickly and efficiently regardless of what it is for. This is a good thing, I suppose. Not sure where this will take me, except that it's incredibly ironic since my least favorite courses in law school were Contracts.
In other news, attempting to get myself to write creatively again, but self-conscious. I'm wondering if this conversational writing style I've adopted for online writing has hurt me somewhat? Also maybe I'm reading/scanning one too many writer's blogs? While I've learned a lot, they can be a tad intimidating. One starts wondering if one has the chops.
Lately, I've been struggling to remember what I know on POV writing. I normally just write what comes naturally, which is third person close - and I don't think too much about it. Now I'm wondering if I should?
Have a couple of ideas, just struggling with fleshing them out.
One is a sci-fi fantasy. One real world. Probably should stick with the real world one, but the fantasy one actually has stuff written on it. And it's easier to work on a work in progress, than something entirely new. Decisions. Decisions.
Riskiest TV show is hands down Nip/Tuck. IF you saw it this week you know why. The show actually did something that I haven't seen many other TV shows attempt. An edgy no-holds-barred adult show, Nip/Tuck continues to push the envelope.
In this week's episode, the lead character, Dr. Scean McNamara, who has up until this point had things fairly easy - a successful plastic surgery practice with his best friend, a family, a lovely wife, and the ability to help others with surgery, had the rug pulled out from under him. A man of logic, Dr. McNamara does not believe in God nor does he embrace any religion. He believes religion is false and provides false promises. He lives very well thank you without it. He trusts his practice, his friend,
his family, his world - he has faith in that, he does not need to have faith in something he can't see, hear or taste. That isn't logical.
What he doesn't know is that his wife and best friend slept together 17 years ago, still harbor feelings for each other but have never acted on them again, and that his 17 year old son is actually his best friend's. Nor does he know that the secret is slowly unhinging his wife, who has an outbreak of shingles this week. (She'd only discovered the secret the year before, up until that point she assumed the boy was Scean's). Yes it sounds like a bad soap opera, but the way the writers handle the reveal is anything but. They combine the serial expertly with the stand-a-lone/issue of the week, this week's patient is a young woman who appears to be suffering from the stigmata. The writers examine through her stigmata the ways we physically torture ourselves out of guilt or desire for control and the whole issue of faith. Why we need to believe in something outside ourselves. One of the characters, an anestheiologist who is in her late 40s and homosexual, desperately wants to get pregnant and does finally, through artificial insemination, with the help of Scean's best friend, the beautiful but somewhat self-centered bad boy, Dr. Christian Troy. Then she discovers she has a child with Down's Syndrom and tries desperately to have faith it will be okay, even asks the stigmata girl to bless her. But when push comes to shove, she doesn't have faith, and confesses to Troy that she aborted it for the same reason she asked him to contribute sperm, having always considered herself an ugly freakish woman, she desperately needed her child to be beautiful. (This was keeping with the character who tells Dr. Troy in an earlier episode that she had waited until her father died, because he used to say "at least you're unlikely to have kids".) Troy meanwhile is heartbroken, he would have loved the child no matter what and can't believe she only saw him as a pretty face or thinks that's all he cares about. Then we have the girl, the nun, the Priest, and the Catholic Church - which needs the girl's miraculous condition to get funding and attract parishioners. Plus all the people who need to believe in the girl. When Dr. McNamara condemns the Church for using the girl as a sort of symbol to keep their Church alive, requesting they stop the parishioners from turning his practice into a shrine, the Priest tells him that sooner or later he will hit a point in his life where he desperately needs to believe in something. Plus, he points out - the patient he just operated on would never have found him without the girl being there.
That faith sometimes is the only thing that keeps people going and if this girl can help them - even if the stigmata is not real - where's the harm?
In odd turn of events: The girl appears to actually have the stigmata, the blood in the oddly shaped wounds in her feet isn't hers. Perplexed by this McNamara goes home to his family, and his guilt-ridden wife unable to contain herself much longer, tells him the truth about his son. McNamara's world shifts. He tells her to leave his house. He goes after Christian and when he finally does violently confront Christian, Christian has just been told by the anestheiologist that she aborted his child. The last scene of the piece takes place in Church. McNamara has finally gone to religion. He has decided for the first time in his life to believe in something illogical. And here is where the show surprised me.
If you expected to see Touched by An Angel or the Amends episode from BTVS? You would have been sorely disappointed. This may be one of the few times I've seen a TV show not go for the comforting ending. The girl admits to McNamara that she is a fraud. Informs him that the Nun, Sister Agatha, planned the whole thing - created the girl's wounds, put her own blood in them. They did it to ensure the girl wouldn't go to the County Hospital and that Sister Agatha's Home would get funding. God doesn't exist, the girl tells Scean. He can't find any comfort here.
So McNamara stares into space, lost.
Wow.
The show doesn't tell us God exists or doesn't exist, it just
says the world is the way it is. Risky thing to do in these troubled times.
The other show that surprised me was The 4400
which remained smartly ambiguous until the very end.
The twist in that show, took it a step above every alien abuduction storyline I've seen. Surprisingly innovative, yet conventional at the same time. If you get the chance to check out this gem, do so. Like Nip/Tuck it does something I'm not sure Angel The Series ever accomplished successfully, which is the combo stand-a-lone/serial format. A couple of episodes introduced guest characters that existed only for the space of those episodes, they were well drawn, you cared about them, and you were sorry to see them go. It was sort of like watching an anthology within the serial format. The principal characters were also complex, multi-faceted, and ambiguous. No clear good guys or bad guys here. It's not a perfect series. A couple of the characters felt a tad forced in places. There's a baby storyline that veers closely towards cliche and convention. Outside of that? The series held my interest. It also pushed forward the somewhat existentialist view of a random universe, except with pattern, suggesting if we could only see the pattern, maybe we could change it and make things better.
Last of the group is Rescue Me which is not as good as the first two. Dennis Leary is wonderful.
The acting in general is quite good. And this week's episode distracted me because the church they were filming in looked alarmingly like the Church I used to go to in Brooklyn. I spent a good portion of the episode trying to figure out if it was the same church. Doubt it. But you never know. The problem with Rescue Me is it does fall into convention too much and seems far too interested in shocking me with sexual hijinks (this week S&M and three-somes) and foul language, then story. When it's good, it's focusing on Leary - his family relationships, and his relationships with the ghosts, his psychological trauma. And there's a nifty bit on a man whose dealing with post-traumatic stress through poetry. But the story on gay-bashing, sexual hijinks, and the fear of being seen as a homosexual have been done to death by now. It felt slow in places and fairly predictable, I kept waiting for things to happen. On the other hand, I enjoy the dark cynical edge, Leary's world-weary Fireman who is equal parts hero and anti-hero, struggling to just make it in this life, while being haunted by his cousin - reminds me in some respects of Angel being haunted by Spike. In fact Leary's character reminds me a great deal of a real-world version of Angel. It's not quite as good as Leary's last venture in my opinion, the darkly humorous The Job which I missed most of because it was opposite Angel. But it's worth a look.
Okay bed calls. Must mosey off.
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Re: interesting juxtaxposition
Date: 2004-08-12 10:42 pm (UTC)Oh, the baby in heaven I was talking about was on Six Feet Under, and didn't have Downs syndrome. The character chose to not have the baby, because she was only 18, single, and not ready for it, not because of a possible health problem the baby might have. I didn't see the Nip/Tuck episode yet.
Re: interesting juxtaxposition--oops
Date: 2004-08-14 10:58 pm (UTC)Sorry, Rob, I must have been rushed &/or up too late when I wrote that. Yep, sure enough, that's what you said, quite clearly. I'll have to read more carefully.
But at least I seem to be typing carefully enough. Don't know how it happened, but when "Re:" was added to the subject line, so was an extra "x" in "juxta[x]position." I looked at the notice in my inbox & thought, "How'd I do that? I must've been rushed &/or up too late!" But when I came back to s'kat's LJ to reply, it was spelled right in my message! I fixed it in my modified subject line for this message. OK, now I've probably jinxed my spelling...I'll have to check extra carefully for a while.