We don’t actually have pumpkins, but we did grow them when I was growing up and I think the source of the saying was that they were among the most vulnerable garden plants to the cold weather. They were fussy plants all around–I remember my father having to hand-pollinate them as well; otherwise, they would only have produced pretty flowers instead of gourds. Anyhow, we had frost on the ground this morning which isn’t terribly rare for southeast Texas but noteworthy.
I thought Lost last night was mostly unexceptional. There were a couple of interesting revelations (Widmore’s youth, why Richard knew to show up at Locke’s birth and elsewhere) but there wasn’t very much that made me gasp or giggle with glee. The event that ended the episode had already been shown in the previews, so it didn’t have much impact or resonance. Glad that Daniel finally got to declare his love and intrigued by the possibility that the woman who had him at gunpoint might actually be his mother. I found Penny especially bland last night, almost unlikeable, and I wonder if they’re setting us up for Ben to carry through with his threat.
Life on Mars was cute, but it dwelt to much on the Sam-as-immigrant notion and not enough about the weird stuff that’s happening with him. The surprise about who his new love interest is was handled very well. The actress who plays her was one of Don’s conquests on Mad Men–she was the daughter of the department store owner who allowed Don to pitch a campaign that was a little outside his comfort zone. I suspect that the bit where the cops put their guns away to battle the Russian gangsters was in deference to the British version, where the cops are unarmed–I haven’t seen that episode of the UK edition yet. And I finally figured out why I knew the British Sam–he played the Master on Doctor Who.
I finished Chapter 9 this morning, so now all I have to do is tidy up the ending of Chapter 8 and write some ancillary material and I’ll be more or less done the manuscript in first draft.
