Warm Glowing Warming Glow

The Zach and Oliver Show

Did you happen to see the premiere of the CW's new summer series/dump, Hidden Palms?  I did.  It was interesting.  I'm pretty sure I didn't care for it.  It was nice to see Taylor Handley (Oliver, Marissa's first stalker) and Michael Cassidy (Zach, Summer's season 2 boyfriend) working again.  Otherwise, not so great.  Further thoughts:

Does Gail O'Grady always talk like that?  IMDB tells me she's from Detroit.  Am I picking on a regionalism?  Is it offensive that I'm even asking that?  OK, I hope I haven't insulted anyone, but I don't know what to do with her accent. 

My brother and I were trying to figure out what was going on with poor Taylor.  He looked really bloated throughout -- maybe because his character is newly out of rehab?  Is it makeup?  Is it just the way he's parting his hair?  He looked OK with his shirt off -- it's really just his face, as far as I can tell. 

Some girl blows up her garage and I think it turns out it's some sort of demented science experiment -- I was hoping it was a meth lab mishap, which would have made the show a lot more interesting. 

To the extent that this show has picked up any buzz, it seems to be about Kevin Williamson and whether or not he's lost touch with youth culture since Scream (1996) and Dawson's Creek (1998).  Unfortunately, the music cues seem to suggest he has.  I think it's a very bad indicator when Coldplay pops up on the soundtrack - six minutes in!  Amy Winehouse is slightly more hip, but the choice of "Rehab" to re-introduce Handley , post re-hab, was  regrettable.  "The Blower's Daughter" for the big cry montage at the end, also not exactly a youth choice. 

I thought that when Williamson was shopping this show around last summer, Handley's character was supposed to be gay, right?  That is no longer the case.  Interesting. 

Michael Cassidy's, on the other hand . . . at a certain point, in television shorthand, is there no difference between wealthy and flaming?   Cassidy is really good here -- much more dynamic than he was on The O.C.

Nicole Bilderback (Wh-wh-wh-whitney from Bring It On) is . . . also present as a trophy wife. 

"I Thought That Must Be a Bother for Him"

I don't know why I find this story charming, rather than sad and galling.  Is it the Babelfish effect?  Except the official's quotes are all in grammatically-correct, idiomatic English, and may in fact have been originally delivered in same.  I don't know.

Things to Make and Do

Here are some things I've been working on:

This is the "medallion mitt" from Knitting with Balls by Michael del Vecchio.  I like how this one (and its mate) came out, but do you think it makes my hand look fat?

This is a necktie, using the same medallion cable pattern and two shades of rug wool. I'm not sure how I feel about it -- I don't think the cable pattern works as well in a tie as it does in the mitten above -- it seems too bulky and unrefined.  I'm hoping that washing the wool (my mother suggests fabric softener) will make it seem less rough and maybe meld the colors a little bit as well. 

I'm going to do these monochromatic granny squares in a handful of colors (red, blue, two shades of grey) and then assemble them into an afghan.  I'm using Lion Brand Wool-Ease, very cheap and easy to work with, although it's been hard tracking down colors I want. 

More crochet: this is a vulgar, vulgar afghan I'm making, using scrap yarn (mostly acrylic -- I know) and a 1970s-inspired wave pattern.  It's a really good project for in front of the TV, because it requires no thought and almost no attention. 

"They're Saving a Teenager with a Bowl Haircut"

Usually Heather Havrilesky is so broad that I forget that she can be very, very funny when she reins it in.  Here is her recap of the 24 finale.

It Never Rains in Southern California

So I didn't care for the WC's "Veronica Mars season finale" promos.  They hurt my feelings.  I get that maybe the show hasn't been that successful for the network, but I think they could have been a little more gracious to the fans and admit that these episodes were really the end of the series. 

Otherwise, a pretty good set and an acceptable conclusion to the series.  I really liked "Weevils Wobble But They Don't Fall Down": good to see Francis Capra, who's otherwise been absent from this last arc.  This really argued in favor of the self-contained episode model: here you had a mystery that wrapped up in a single episode, but it had real weight, because Weevil's prospects are so bleak that it really mattered whether or not Veronica could vindicate him.  (Of course, there's only so many times the show could have gone to that well.)  Some of Kristen Bell's best comedic work here, too -- did you see the big showdown with the Aspen crowd, in which she replays the conversation?  Veronica's smirk at her own line ("Are you going to turn me into a vampire?") was perfect. 

"The Bitch Is Back" had some great stuff, too.  I've complained in the past about Veronica doing really awful things (getting Weevil to jack Madison's car, for example), but here her actions seemed warranted.  It was actually really enjoyable to see her tearing through Chip and that other kid.  Then, of course, we also got the pay-off where there were dire, dire consequences for Keith.  A little tantalizing to see how the Keith-Veronica law-vigilantism dynamic could have played out, had the show had more time.  In fact, this particular episode would have benefited from being twice as long: too much to track in a single hour -- Logan, Jake, the election, the hard-drives, Russian mafia . . .

NBC Team-Up

I'm still deciding what I thought about last night's Heroes.  I think I'm going to decide that I liked it and actually, maybe having a lot to think about and discuss is a sign of high quality in a television show, in itself, no matter if the resulting thoughts and comments are mostly negative.  Maybe not.  Anyway, yeah, some problems:

-- We never got a satisfying explanation for D.L. taking the bullet for Niki, when he could have just as easily phazed her out of the path of the bullet.  I think that what really happened was that D.L. didn't have time to think of the best response to a speeding bullet and instinctively put himself in the way of the woman he kind of sort of used to love or something. 

-- Also confusing: why did Peter need Nathan to fly him out of the atmosphere?  I guess maybe he was overwhelmed by the feeling of imminent explosion and couldn't use his other powers?  It seems like someone could have said something about that. 

-- Not clear why Peter was the one who had to face off against Sylar (except dramatic potential): yeah, Peter's much more powerful than any of the other heroes, but as it turns out, the only borrowed power he used was Niki's super-ass-kicking, which he didn't even acquire until mid-fight . . . No big, CGI-laden fight between the two titans, which seems like a missed opportunity.

-- Love, hope, save the cheerleader, yada yada yada . . . So it seems like maybe Claire and Peter saved the day by guilting Nathan into sacrificing himself, thereby foiling Linderman and Angela Lansbury Petrelli's master plan?

-- No real stakes: D.L., Parkman, Ando and Bennet all still alive, despite various wounds, prophecies and dramatic opportunities; Sylar possibly alive (albeit in cockroach form?), Peter and Nathan probably alive, due to deus ex contract, which means saving the world cost everyone exactly nothing, except, assumedly, some radiation from Peter's semi-apocalyptic hissy fit.

BUT:

-- Really impressive and cool how many of the loose ends got wrapped up in 40-some minutes.

-- Big showdown at Kirby Plaza, despite anti-climactic nature, still kind of cool, especially Nathan and Peter zipping off into space.

-- Bennet promising to kill Peter, if need be. 

-- "Call me Noah." 

-- "You look badass."  "Really?"

Fox: The Return of Amy Sherman-Palladino

Here's the Fox press release about the fall schedule -- not a lot new here.  K-ville might be good.  I'm really interested in The Return of Jezebel James, Amy Sherman-Palladino's anti-Gilmore Girls, with Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose. 

CW: I Don't Care Anymore

Here's the fall schedule press release for Dawn Ostroff's crappy network.  Read it if you feel like it.  I can't be bothered. 

Oh, OK.  Fine.  I'm not entirely uninterested in Gossip Girl, from O.C. creator Josh Schwartz.  I am entirely uninterested in Reaper, although I'm intrigued by the stunt-casting of Laura Palmer's father (Ray Wise) as Satan.  Apparently the CW has a comedy night and some of those comedies are coming back.  The only one I've heard of is called Everybody Hates Chris.  I'm sure the fans of something called The Game are as happy today as I am depressed about Veronica Mars.  Dear fans of The Game, best wishes!

Goodbye to Neptune

Crap.  It looks like it's over for Veronica Mars.  We may not know, for sure, for another month, but Sepinwall is pretty sure.

Update: Yep, dead.

Goodbye to Stars Hollow

I was even more wrecked by last night's Gilmore Girls series finale than I expected to be.  I don't think it's just a matter of not wanting the series to end because hey, there's another hour of the void I have to fill.  There's enough else on, plus 150 or so episodes floating around on ABC Family and DVD.  I think I was actually responding to how sad the send-off was.  One of the things that the show always did very well -- under both the Palladinos and Rosenthal -- was to make every story relatable: I don't have that much in common with Lorelai or Rory, I often don't even like either of them very much but I really, really could relate to the sadness of Rory leaving Stars Hollow.  I'm not sure what else I wanted to say: I thought it was a really good finale and we couldn't have hoped for a better one.  It's probably good the show didn't try to limp on through another season -- even a 13-episode one.  Um, no Mrs Kim in the finale, though.  That disappointed me, but thinking back, I think we last saw her in the shower episode ("Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore")?  That was a good summation for the character.  Anyway, thanks for everything, Emily Kuroda.  You were usually better than the writing. 

I was sort of in and out during Veronica Mars last night, no strong responses.  Um, Chris Lowell was pretty funny last night . . . Pitchfork got a huge and very persuasive shout-out -- I almost never read that anymore, but the more Piz talked about it, the more I thought "I'm going to visit Pitchfork, right now."  Oh, I liked the Mac-Max stuff.  I'm still a little down about her dumping the hot vegan, but Tina Majorino and Adam Rose have good chemistry.