Tuesday, August 1

August First

Just a quiet week here. F & Z went to camp on Sunday. F comes home tonight, Z on Saturday. I rediscovered how much I enjoy cleaning the house when there is no one around to disturb things. I also finished painting Zach's old bedroom, the new guest room. The before picture is here. Saturday afternoon (before camera got packed for camp) it looked like this:
After picture will have to wait til the camera comes home.

I rented several dvds for my mini vacation: Deadwood, Grey's Anatomy and Northern Exposure. I was surprised at how much I did not like Grey's Anatomy. Perhaps the writing and acting and plots got better as the season progressed? I was looking for something more realistic, less formulaic, more nuanced characters, less caricature. The dvd had five episodes. I made it through 2.5. Deadwood? Refreshingly not broadcast TV, but almost too dark for me. I was surprised at the language. Did folks really say the F word so much in those days? I don't mind the word really, but long for historical accuracy. And did anyone use the term due diligence? That just seemed weird and made it seem less likely that they are striving for accuracy. Perhaps they are, though? By the end of the first episode, I was intrigued enough to watch the second one. Alas, the rented disk has a scratch right at the beginning of the episode which my player could not deal with. I would have had to skip the entire first chapter with no guarantee the rest would play. (I did miss a few minutes of the middle of the first episode due to a scratch). Good old Northern Exposure was a winner though. Even though I watched the show when it was broadcast, even though I knew what's going to happen, it's still refreshingly quirky. Bittersweet though, all the foreshadowing of development and change, now Roslyn is facing that development, losing something in the process. And when Joel is golfing, he's clearly on a logging road, in front of a previously clear-cut field, weeds growing up around the stumps and debris left behind. But they try to say it's some beautiful natural Alaska wilderness meadow. sigh.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't like Grey's Anatomy, either, for the same reasons. I've been enjoying House. And I adore Carnivale - it's dark, but it's about good and evil and it's really complex. A little weird sometimes, almost David Lynchian, but I like that. The 2nd season finally just came out on DVD. I've heard that about Deadwood and the F word. I've never been that interested in watching it.

Dorothy said...

The F word is fairly new. I find that movie and show makers are getting to the point where they don't have anything new to say or interesting to add so they just throw in some swear words and sex scenes. Voila, no need to actually write a proper script.
Yeah, some of the scenes in Northern Exposure were obviously not Alaksan. Still a well written, well developed show though.