The upside to not feeling well all weekend was that I got plenty of time to watch the whole first season of Pushing Daisies, which looks amazing on DVD. It’s only three discs, so I got them from Netflix instead of buying them, but I suspect I’m going to end up buying them anyway.
I also watched the first five episodes of True Blood, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, simply meh.
True Blood sorely lacks the kooky charms of the books and tries too hard to be “edgy” or “gritty” or some such buzzword. It also commits the cardinal sin of trying too damned hard to portray a blue collar Southern town and it’s inhabitants, particularly folks living on the sharp edge of poverty. The whole thing has an overdone quality that kinda screams, “I saw poor people once. In a movie.”
I think the set designers need to follow some variation on the Coco Chanel rule. No, not consort with Nazis – remove the last accessory you put on after you’ve finished getting dressed.
The characterizations aren’t half-bad, although the actor playing the Jason, the slutty brother, needs to turn down his redneck emoting about 6 notches. Otherwise, he’s pretty amusing. I don’t buy Anna Paquin as Sookie, but for the sake of the show I guess she’s okay. I don’t know that I’ll watch any more episodes, but maybe I’ll let Tivo keep collecting them for the next time my innards decide to knock my feet out from under me. If I was being picky, I’d point out that the show oughta be called TruBlood, after the synthetic blood substitute at the center of the show/books premise.
I also don’t have a single unread New Yorker in my house. When I first gathered them all and started going through them, I fell asleep and woke up the next morning in what looked like a rather pretentious nest. I soldiered on and got through them all. Our recycling is going to way a ton this week. Alright, yes, I do have a file of articles I ripped out to read later, but I don’t believe that counts.
So, um, that’s all the excitement here. I got out Galactica 1980, but didn’t watch it. Didn’t seem right to venture into that territory without backup, and Husband has been in San Francisco hanging with this rough crowd.
I finished the last of books recently (read all 8 of them) and while a far cry from High Art they do look like Shakespeare compared to that rabble on HBO. The lack of Sookie as a main character, the fact that Tara is 1)black and 2) even in the current story line, the only other African American is a flamboyant homosexual drug dealer (hows that for positive stereotypes!), the vampires can’t act their way out of a paper bag (I think those teeth are getting in the way of being able to pronounce anything), and that Jason has been elevated from a mere bit character to a main (really stupid) one that seems required to have at least one sex scene per show all tie together to make this a very disappointing show.
I mean, come on, there was enough sex and intrigue and murder in the first book that they could have followed it by chapter and made an interesting show. I totally do not understand why they strayed so far off the path as to be driveway on another highway in the opposite direction. This show is just trashy and I never got the impression that this was what the author was trying to depict – if anything she wanted to make Sookie be above that despite her lack of formal education and barmaid career. I suspect I’ll let Tivo keep recording them but I’m not going to go out of my way to watch
What she said.
At least Eric (or rather, the actor playing him) allegedly learns his lines phoenticly, being Swedish so he has an excuse. I don’t know if that’s true, but it explains many things. Rather I don’t know if the phoenetic part is true, not the Swedish part.
And I agree about Lafayette being such a horrible stereotype – they’ve set the whole thing up as an indictment of homophobia with “god hates fangs” and the preachers and the blood contamination fears, then they completely ruin it by going way to far with Lafayette.
Course, I set the bar kinda high by watching good shows before and after this one, but still. 90210 is more engaging.