Sex and the City. HBO.
Consuming: I have been spending a lot of time just fooling around online. I’ve finished 3 or 4 New Yorkers a couple of Entertainment Weeklys (nice job on the LGBT issue, even if it was a little self-congratulatory) and a University of Chicago Alumni Magazine, but haven’t even cracked an actual book. I ate at Cafeteria, which I had heard of because of Sex and the City, not because I wanted to bring out my inner Charlotte York, but because it was a place I’d heard of but hadn’t been and since Chris had a job interview later, I was too nervous to work before seeing his job talk (preceded by that of one of the other interviewees). It was actually kind of hilariously 90s. Lots of gay waiters and busboys mostly (at least at first) ignoring me even though the place was nearly empty (it was a Tuesday at around 10:30). Had a nice chat with a guy later who as he left said “I have to go look busy.” Really yummy French Toast though.
Bert Cooper from Mad Men. AMC.
I did finish my Mad Men rewatch. I really hadn’t paid as much attention to the guy from McCaan-Erickson on my first watch, but he’d been hovering from the start and the ending seems even more preordained now. What did Bert Cooper do all day? I’m often bored, and I have the whole Internet. He doesn’t even seem to read a lot of books.
Producing: Not much. Some productive outlining. Planning our upcoming road trip. Through effective social networking, found two people to stay with Holden during our next couple of trips. You would think a free place to stay in Manhattan would be quite the allure, right?
Myrtle Beach. Photo: sundancer2000
Anticipating: A week of beaches and car rides, accompanied by oldies music on Sirius. We don’t know how far we’ll get, but we’re thinking Myrtle Beach.
The experience of binge watching is, as has been discussed in countless think pieces, quite different than watching from week to week. I really appreciate that about Netflix, and Netflix’s own series. But it definitely impacts the way we watch.
Bloodline Photo: USA Today
I imagine that if I had tried to watch Bloodline in a normal week-to-week sequence, I would have watched some of the episodes several days later than they aired, and more out of duty than interest, even though the acting was excellent and the setting and costumes were great. But sometimes it felt ponderous the way The Affair (which Chris gave up on early and I tended to watch only when I found spare time, and mostly because I started it) did. While all the actors in it were “names,” and the main cast looked to me like they could be related (though I wonder about an Italian milkman who may have fathered Cardellini’s character), people of color were mostly present as minor characters. House of Cards is similar in that way.
Grace and Frankie. Netflix.
Grace and Frankie was a lot of fun but not necessarily must-see TV. It wasn’t as 100% lovable as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (nor was the theme song as good), and I couldn’t get over the idea that Sam Waterston’s character seemed neither truly gay nor Jewish. I would have liked to see someone like Dustin Hoffman or Alan Alda (also not Jewish, but closer) play that character.
Orange is the New Black. Variety.com
We just a few hours ago finished the latest season of Orange is the New Black. I have heard people complaining it wasn’t a great season, and it’s true that the stakes weren’t as high as prior seasons. Litchfield did seem more like summer camp than prison sometimes. It can be simultaneously annoying and amusing that they’re all well read and have a good sense of humor, which we all know isn’t true of the general population, so it seems unlikely in prison.
I’m sure I’d be excited to watch this show week-to-week if a network aired it that way and that the online discussion during the week would be really robust, more than it is when everyone is watching at a different pace. Every race, many ethnicities, many faiths, many sexualities, it’s all represented, and there are just so many characters. As I’ve mentioned multiple times, when I can’t sleep, I think of lists of actors who have been on various shows. This show doesn’t have a ton of recognizable actors on it, though I’ve learned a lot of names by now, but even when I just thought of characters in terms of their character names or in some cases their traits since there are a lot of names I just don’t know, I came up with 75 or so recurring roles. IMDB lists 539 actors who have been on the show in only 39 episodes. That’s quite an impressive number. By contrast, In 172 episodes, Seinfeld had just under 1300 and that’s a very high number for a sitcom compared to others I’ve looked at.
Flaca finally gets a flashback. Netflix
Of these, 368 are women (or girls, since we see a lot in flashbacks). It would take a lot longer to analyze race/ethnicity (and there is, or course, no simple way to do that anyhow), but it is clear there are many many more women and people of color and LBGT characters than on any other US show ever. This show is also one of the better ones in terms of balancing funny with tragic. I don’t really have a problem with it competing in drama for the Emmys, though the comedy is where it really shines. Often, however, the seeming off-hand funny thing someone says turns out to be a trigger for something that becomes a big important event.
Soso does too. Netflix.
I hope as Netflix develops more shows they realize what’s good about this show rather than what’s trendy. I haven’t seen, or heard much good, about Sens8, which seems somewhat designed to catch the “some of everyone” vibe, but not as successfully. But whatever the flaws of some of these shows, it’s a great new way to watch that seems really different than the same old seasons and same old shows.
Girls Who (Don't) Wear Glasses 