Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most

Ft. Tryon Park

Consuming: I took last week mostly vegetate before I start the real work of the sabbatical and will spend some other days doing the same since I have a lot of vacation accrued. As part of vegetating, I spent time with vegetation. I went to Central Park (twice), Fort Tryon Park, Inwood Park, and Bryant Park. I also visited the Morgan Library and Museum.

We also continued our tour of Old New York with The Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, despite the fact

Tavern on the Green

that for quasi-religious reason, I don’t eat shellfish. We planned to meet for just martinis, but I ended up with a steak. I’m sure for oysters it’s great. We also had lunch at Tavern on the Green. I’ve been following the continuing sagas of rotating chefs and menus and awful reviews, so we were prepared for the worst. I thought the way Chris’s Caesar salad was plated was blah (and the one with chicken at the next table looked inedible), and my potato-leek soup was OK, but pretentiously served. However, the setting was lovely, the band played standards well, and I really enjoyed seeing tables full of people with different shades of rosé on one side, and people enjoying the park on the other side on a gorgeous day.

It’s finally linen season, so along with a new mouse and removable drive, I got new shoes, some shirts, and a new bathing suit I’m not sure fits. The car got new oil and is currently getting new windshield wipers and air filters. She will be getting new headlight covers soon.

Lena Dunham of Girls in my courtyard

This week I’m peering out the window a lot because they are filming an episode of Girls in our apartment building including the apartment I can see out the kitchen window (but not the main window), and in the lobby and courtyard. I’m a season behind, but I’ll be curious if they’ll mention the neighborhood or pretend this is Brooklyn. They’re also painting an apartment across the courtyard, which may or may not be for filming. I’m a little concerned that as they use/refurbish some the apartments that they’re going to upgrade them and rent them at market rates and/or go co-op.

Peggy from Mad Men. AMC

Producing: I’ve started reworking my book proposal so it’s just one book instead of three. It allows me to broaden the scope the way publishers seem to want without having to write a whole book about the “talented girl” era, which is mostly shows that started OK but turned to crap. I also read a book about a show I’ve been researching, and rewatched much of Mad Men in preparation for amending my presentation for Reykjavik, so at least some of the consuming was productive. After a tough term where blogging took a back seat, I hope to do it more often.

No, I didn’t know what tenterhooks really looked like either.

Anticipating:  There are a lot of decisions being made at our college right now. I keep saying we’re all on tenterhooks, but realized I didn’t know what those really were. Hopefully we’ll hear some good things in the next month. We’re going to drive down the coast to various beach towns where we might retire (even though for me that’s in 20 years).

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Jon Stewart and Jessica Williams: Comedy Central

It’s the time of the year when nearly all the shows I watch have ended their runs permanently or for the season. I’ll definitely miss Mad Men–no other show is as pretty in terms of costume and sets. Nurse Jackie has a few more episodes, which I need to see before I finish my conference presentation and Jeopardy!, the last few weeks of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and mostly disappointing but occasionally funny The Nightly Show still have new episodes, but otherwise everything is done.

Who knew Lindsay Weir would grow up to do such bad things? Photo: USA Today

I’m still watching (I’ve got Mad Men reruns on in the background now), but I’m not expecting to watch something that comes on at a specific time and I’m not having to worry about spoilers. No one much cares about Royal Pains. There are plenty of summer shows on the main networks, but I just can’t get excited about starting anything like that. So we’ve been binge watching–we watched the latest season of House of Cards, Bloodline, and Grace and Frankie in the last two weeks, all fun in their own ways. We’re excited about Orange is the New Black, though I’m not sure we can squeeze it in before our trip. I am also behind on Girls, Veep, and a few others shows, as well as never having watched Breaking Bad. Recently, I got the Seinfeld box set, mostly for the commentaries and features. There must be something I can watch, but not really watch, though, so I can edit or research (not really write) with that on. I’ll want to give all of that full attention. I’m thinking maybe Portlandia.

I think of this time as sort of a TV detox. The tyranny of the TV gets me down toward the end of the season when there’s just so much to keep track of and so many “think pieces” and forums to read on every single show that by the time we get to June/July, I just need a break. The school year is over, all the students I mentor have been reassigned, I’m no longer convener (sort of like department chair) and the shows are done for the most part. So in theory I can shift gears and start writing.  In actuality, I’m still shifting gears. Because Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.

Seriously Disturbed: Complicating Orange is the New Black (Part 1, I suspect)

Fiddleheads from gourmetfury.com

Consuming: The planned dinner at Cafe De Broadway was thwarted by virtue of it being closed, (presumably just on Mondays but there were no posted hours), so we had dinner again at the Indian Road Cafe. They cook with seasonal ingredients, and while my steak, which came with polenta with fried scallions and some kind of greens was very good, Chris and Terry’s spring greens risotto with fiddleheads and garlic scapes was outstanding. I was glad she had some left over and I could have it for lunch yesterday. I’d try to make it but a. summer is not when I want to stand around in an un-air conditioned kitchen stirring and b. evidently fiddleheads can make you sick if you don’t cook them right. So I’ll just settle for what restaurants have. The second to last Nurse Jackie of the season. Halt and Catch Fire which was a great one for Donna, but bad for everyone else.

Producing: Grading a student’s incomplete from the Fall. Responding to various crises with adjunct instructors.

Anticipating: It’s been the summer term for nearly a month already, and we still haven’t done a bunch of what I’d planned, in part because it’s all very complicated. Shakespeare in the Park is via online lottery, and between Chris’s work schedule and traveling, I haven’t entered at all. Today I would have, but they’re talking thunderstorms. The Colbert Report and The Daily Show put out info that tickets are available randomly on twitter and they’re instantly gone. I actually secured two Daily Show tickets for this afternoon,  but realized that even though Chris said he could be out slightly early that this would be too early even for me, as we have a provost search going on and I’m going to watch the interview from home, and the timing doesn’t work, so I canceled. Colbert starts two hours later, but even that could be a problem. Other times they seem to put out tickets a month in advance, which would be great because many meetings can be canceled or moved, but we’re getting down on only about 75 eps of Colbert ever (and I don’t think The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be the same at all, or that I’ll watch). Both shows usually take off six weeks in the summer, too, so it might have to wait until Fall when fewer tourists are here. I’m no Twitter pro, but I did what it said to text me when that account had a post, but it didn’t do it.

 

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Alison Tolman in Fargo. Photo from usatoday.com

So even though there are still a few series on (and Masters of Sex and Dallas come back soon), we finally caught up enough on our series to find the time to watch season 2 of Orange is the New Black. Except, the way the fancy new Netflix interface works on TiVo, it seemed like it wouldn’t play season 2 on Friday night. So we watched the first two Episodes of Fargo instead. We managed to record them all and watch none during the season, which is not like us. I’m sure there will be more to say in the future, but I was disappointed in how few women there were, and that even though Alison Tolman’s Molly was clearly the smartest person around, as the “rookie” she didn’t have the command of Frances McDormand’s Marge from the movie. Anyhow, I was feeling like a bad feminist for watching it instead of OITNB or maybe Orphan Black. We’ll definitely get back to it, but after the man heavy House of Cards, it didn’t feel like a priority.

Saturday night, though, OITNB worked. Who knows? Technology is mysterious, and when you combine two types together (three if you count the Time-Warner modem that’s allowing it all)–well I’m just glad it worked, because I wasn’t sure which customer service line to call, and I’m sure I would have gone into a rage, whichever “help desk” I picked.

Anyhow, in the past few days we’ve gotten through episode 5. So what comes after will be spoilery up through then, but I don’t want any spoilers for the future episodes, thanks.

Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren from OITNB. Photo from IMDB.com

I’m glad they’re expanding the universe to include flashbacks more inmates like Taystee and Morello. I’ve been waiting until about episode four of the first season for Suzanne’s flashback and am so happy to have seen it. But they’re being much coyer than they were. In the first season, I’m pretty sure they showed us how everyone got to jail in their flashbacks, but now that the show is a hit, they seem to be doling out background information more selectively. Makes sense, as this way each character can have more than one flashback and they don’t have to keep adding and adding characters, but refining and redefining the ones they have. But we can only guess how Taystee or Vee got arrested, while not knowing at all how Suzanne did, and why she wasn’t committed to a mental hospital instead of jail (a post I read said someone mentioned really great lawyers. Her parents have money, so OK).

It seems clear we’re in for some kind of a race war. The black women are clearly in an unholy alliance led by Vee, and Gloria is as much the leader of the Latina women as anyone. We’ll see where the “white trash” crowd goes now that Pennsatucky is both alienating her buddies and trying to hang out with the other white women. Red is no longer the leader of what I can only think of as the pretty white women (Nikki, Morello, Alex, Piper. Not sure how Big Boo fits in there, but she doesn’t sit at the same table usually), but has moved onto the “Golden Girls.” With her past with Vee, though, I can see how she will definitely be in play.

Piper at a table in Orange is the New Black. Photo from guardian.com

And yet, I wonder if it’s entirely consistent with the reality set up in Season 1? I know they sit at tables with people they choose and that is mostly by race, subdivided by sexuality or age. In the first episode, Nikki and Morello oriented Piper to the tables much the way someone does to the new girl in every high school movie. But since when does each race have its own sleeping area and bathroom? I remember distinctly in the first season that Piper could never get into the middle stall–the only one with a door–because the Latina woman who was always screaming in Spanish, (it turned out into a contraband phone), was in it. Piper was also roommates with the Caribbean Miss Claudette, and I’m pretty sure was scared off by a large black woman (can’t remember who) from showering in an early episode. Then again, the Latina woman sleeps at a table alone, and Miss Claudette was considered terrifying so maybe crazy trumps race/ethnicity, sexuality, gender identification (where is Sophia sitting?), and class.

All of these are minor quibbles. I still think this show is great, and any ensemble TV show’s writers seem to have as their first order of business to find ways to get multiple characters, including characters who hate each other or are fighting, in the same place. That’s why Gossip Girl had the characters going to fancy parties every week, and why so many procedurals work. But these women are in prison. They can’t avoid each other. I don’t think we need quite this much melodrama (oooh Poussey can’t just be Taystee’s friend, she looooves her) to see some interesting, very different from average, and very flawed women on television.

 

 

The Girl with Something Extra

Consuming: Steak Frites at Bistro Cassis on the Upper West Side. It’s hard to

Julia Collins and Alex Trebek on Jeopardy! From SF Gate.com

find a place to eat around there that doesn’t get at least three $ on Yelp. It was OK. More House of Cards. We have one more left in the first season. Don’t spoil things for me, but I’m guessing Frank does not become Vice President or I would have seen a million headlines about how the show should be called Veep.  Yet more games from the very un-annoying Julia on Jeopardy!, who has won nearly 4 million dollars without jumping around the board or being arrogant or anything. She’s just fast and she knows a lot of stuff. The last Mad Style of this season on TomandLorenzo.com.

Producing: A letter so I can apply to be a Faculty Fellow for the Television Academy. I’m sure it’s competitive. I also updated my CV. I’m sure I have done it more recently, but the most recent version I had saved when my computer died was from May last year, so there as a lot to update.

Anticipating: More House of Cards (we’ll go right on to the second season) and Louie. Saying goodbye to my friend Jackie who is moving from Saratoga Springs (so I still see her a lot) to Lexington Kentucky to teach there after a summer in Rome. The last weekend in NYC before I spend the next two upstate, followed by a third that includes a trip to Long Island for a “purse party”. Planning trips to SF and to host my parents this summer.

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Louie and Jane from the Louie episode Elevator Part 2 from FX television

So I’ve written extensively about the Brainy Girl who was ascendant in the 1990s teen shows. And I have this idea that the 2000s was about talented girls and I’ve written about them. But now, in the second decade of the 2000s, with the CW basically having given up on the idea of normal teens, and ABC Family not exciting me, I wasn’t seeing a “third wave”. Until recently.

Sally and Don Draper on Mad Men from AMC

These days, as I’ve mentioned, I’m not watching many teen shows. What I am doing is watching a lot of adult shows with interesting girl characters. During the last month or so I’ve seen Kiernan Shipka’s Sally have a rapprochement with her dad, Don Draper and kiss the nerdy guy who cares about astronomy instead of the disaffected “cool guy” on Mad Men. Next to Peggy, she’s the character I’m most interested in seeing each episode.

But I’ve also heard two very interesting speeches (Spoilers ahead for Louie and The Americans, so stop reading if you haven’t seen recent episodes):

First there was 14 year-old Paige on The Americans. This season she’s become

Paige from The Americans

suspicious about what her travel agent parents are doing, not even close yet to understanding that they are secretly Soviet spies for the KGB in early 1980s America. While on a bus trip to find out the meaning of an address she found, she is approached by a girl her age who invites her to “hang out.” She ends up joining a church, which infuriates her atheist parents who believe in Mother Russia, but cannot begin to understand Christianity. They won’t let her go to church camp, but do let her attend a rally against nuclear weapons.

The minister is arrested. Philip and Elizabeth, of course, of course, flip out. Paige responds “It’s called Civil Disobedience.” When they explain that they understand what that is. She goes on to say “I’m not talking about understanding Civil Disobedience I’m talking about doing it. This moved me. OK? This is the point of the church. The is the whole point of the Church and Jesus. . . . I know you don’t want to hear this but he was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. And that inspires me.” (Echo).

This makes Elizabeth, who already figured out when Paige wanted to go to the rally, believe that Paige is “like me.” She thinks Paige needs something to commit to and is therefore willing to consider letting the KGB train her as part of their “next generation” project, despite the fact she’s just seen the deadly result of an earlier attempt. We’ll see next season if that’s the kind of cause Paige can believe in. For me, the religion storyline wasn’t too interesting, but this is.

In the same week, in the Louie episode “Elevator Part 2”, part of a 6 part series (the last of those airs this coming Monday), Louie’s daughter Jane, who is not a teen or even officially pre-teen (in one episode she is described as eight, another ten) gets in trouble at school. No one at the school will even bother to explain what happened, they just insist that Louie take her away.

Louie asks Jane if she’s mad at him or her mother or her sister or herself. Jane, who we have seen playing the violin beautifully in a prior episode, seems to be losing touch this season. In the second episode, she gets off the subway, causing her dad to panic (though she follows the “subway rules” and stays right where she got off, so he finds her without too much trouble). She talks about how she isn’t quite sure whether she is dreaming or awake.

But back in this season, she can’t quite explain why she is getting in trouble at school. She says:

“I don’t want to go to school. I mean it I don’t want to go there anymore.

They don’t know how to tell me anything and they all lie. The teachers are stupid, the kids are stupid. Really. I’m not just saying it.

Christopher Columbus is a murderer. They want me to draw a picture of him smiling.

They don’t know how numbers work. And they want me to do it all wrong.

The kids are just mean babies. They don’t know anything really, and the teachers don’t know anything. They’re mean and tired and they’re stupid and they just say what’s in the book. Because they don’t know. See. They don’t answer any real questions.   . . .

Like, why is there even an America? How come France isn’t part of New York City? Why isn’t Africa and India in charge? They have the most people. And why isn’t God on the news?”

Louie doesn’t entirely buy this and it turns out it had to do with who got to ride on a “spring horse,” and that Jane ended up ripping a teacher’s skirt off, but clearly Jane is seeing through the act everybody is putting on. She, like Paige, needs to understand something larger.

In my manuscript, the Brainy Girl is also the social conscience of her group of friends, but we don’t see these girls interacting with other kids much. These newer TV girls are truly interesting, but I’m not sure how to classify them. I think they can also be considered “Gifted Girls” but in what way? Perceptiveness? Commitment? What can I call them?

Here Comes the New Season, Same as the Old Season

Consuming: Dinner and drinks at Spasso, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, the season finale of Revenge, Louie including the insta classic “So Did the Fat Lady”, Ken and Brad winning decisively and unsurprisingly in the semifinals of the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Louis CK and Sarah Baker. Photo from Vulture.com

Producing: The rest of the grades, my annual work plan for next year, more edits to a book chapter. We may just give that one up.

Anticipating: Lunch with one of my best graduating students, drinks with a colleague to talk over some new presentation/book ideas, Modern Family, The Americans, the unpleasant last semifinal game of the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades with Colby and Roger. Go Pam! Brighton Beach over the weekend.

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This is the time of year when the networks hold their “upfronts” in order to announce what old shows are getting canceled (although news on that is mostly old news by then), which renewed (similar), which new shows they are picking up from pilots or presentations, and where they will fit on the schedule.

Ken Marino and Casey Wison of Marry Me. Photo from NBC

Scheduling is always an issue. So far the full schedules aren’t out, but it’s clear NBC is putting one romantic comedy, Marry Me, with Ken Marino, who I really like and Casey Wilson, who I always hear is hilarious, up against Fox’s The Mindy Project, which will get a shorter and likely final season unless they really manage to finally gel and get an audience to return. This might be do-able if New Girl gets back to what they do right, but also could be threatened by having Brooklyn 9-9 moving to Sundays (where it will be a weird fit for me, what with PBS’s Downton Abbey and AMC’s Mad Men as the other shows I watch). In any case, between a TiVo with slots for two shows, On Demand, and (as a last resort since my MacBook Air hates it) availability on computer, I don’t stress much about shows being up against each other in terms of my finding time to watch them, but it does make it seem likely that with network counter-programming two such similar shows against each other than one will suffer a premature cancellation.

Unfortunately, the shows aren’t putting out “family photos” anymore as they did when Sheila Aird and I wrote Black Guy Corner. It’s too bad. There is a ton more diversity than there was then. Mindy Kaling and Kerry Washington are leads, of course. Brooklyn 9-9 has two African American men, and two Latina women. ABC is going all in on Shonda Rhimes’s formula of leads of color and diverse casts, with new shows starring Viola Davis and Anthony Anderson, as well as Cristela and Fresh off the Boat, starting a Latina and Asian Americans.

I’m sure I’ll check out some of those at least once. I tend not to like heavy drama unless it is on cable–I do watch The Americans, Homeland, and Mad Men–but don’t want to watch any of the shows about hostage negotiators or future societies or fairy tales the networks show. I don’t have any interest at all in procedurals (now that Psych is over the closest thing I’m still watching is USA’s Royal Pains and I assume that is in its last season or two). Most of what is being touted sounds dull or derivative, but I usually feel that way about upfronts season and then end up watching a few new things.  Yet this past season Brookyn 9-9 was the only network show we picked up (along with Showtime’s Masters of Sex). We sampled most of the comedies. One was enough of Dads, The Millers, The Crazy Ones, and Sean Saves the World. We watched the first five or six episodes of The Michael J. Fox Show before deciding we just did not care. Since only The Millers is returning out of that batch, clearly we weren’t alone.

Next season will bring a ton of change, though. It’s the last one for Glee (thank goodness), Parks and Recreation, Two and a Half Men (Chris likes it), Revenge (which should also be put out of its misery) and probably The Mindy Project. How I Met Your Mother and Community are gone. Colbert is moving to The Late Show, Larry Wilmore to The Minority Report in Colbert’s old spot, and Terry Crews to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a show I only started watching this season because multiple friends have been on (and one won $100,000).  I’m guessing Alex Trebek will leave Jeopardy! within the next two years, maybe sooner.

Out of the new shows, I will check out anything that has the involvement of anyone involved in Parks/30 Rock/Wet Hot American Summer. Love Tina Fey, but never found Ellie Kemper funny on The Office or in Bridesmaids, so don’t have terribly high hopes for The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, the NBC show Fey is producing. Mr. Robinson, starring Craig Robinson could be promising, but I already saw School of Rock and no one is buzzing about it.

This summer we’ll be catching up on Netflix with Netflix’s own shows and cable shows we didn’t watch first run. There is really nothing from the networks that we need to catch up on. I’m not interested in becoming a “cable cutter” because I watch a lot of cable, but I would consider being a “network cutter.”