After a short story was rejected recently, I decided to take a look at it before sending it out, a sort of semi-annual checkup, and I was shocked and appalled by how heavy handed it was. The story was 3500 words long, and about 2000 of those words consisted of introspective naval gazing. I know what I was aiming for with the story, but boy did I botch it. I almost decided to trunk it, but I thought I’d dig the story out of the mess and see what remained. I’m almost done with that part of the job, and I have 1500 words of straight plot. The story is essentially a metaphor, so the next task is to go back at it and lightly sprinkle in a few things that guide the metaphor instead of having the story hit the reader over the head with a sledge hammer.
I hope Boston PD does a better job of maintaining a crime scene than was depicted on Rizzoli and Isles this week. They seemed to have been having a great deal of trouble keeping everyone and their mother (Rizzoli’s mother, in particular) from blundering onto the scene. The perfect little girl turned hooker has been done to death, and having the R.A.-cum-pimp yank out a gun and shoot the only shield he has in the middle of a crowd seemed like bad plotting. The only worthy moment the show had was the last few minutes where Rizzoli talked about why she didn’t go to college. The weakest installment of the first four by far.
The Closer was their annual Keystone Kops episode featuring Provenza and Flynn, who were hooking up with a couple of dim flight attendants when Provenza stumbled across a body in a bathtub mere moments after he popped his little blue pill. I was hoping that the two flight attendants wouldn’t miraculously turn out to be Mensa candidates at the end, and I wasn’t disappointed. Of course, the captain became an obvious suspect because he suffered from familiar actor syndrome—there was no way Kyle Secor (Bayliss from Homicide, Life on the Streets) was going to have just a walk-on part. None of it really mattered a great deal, it was just all good fun. Some very funny moments, including the gay medical examiner describing the murder as “Accidental death in the middle of someone else’s hissy fit.”
Rubicon could be interesting, depending on how they decide to dole out information and how long they decide to string us along. We’re getting glimpses of the people involved in what appears to be a high-power cabal, but none of it fits together yet. I’m wondering if the instructions from high up to concentrate on the guy in Bulgaria are to keep that team distracted from thinking much about the apparent death of their former handler.
Don Draper had a hell of a Christmas on Mad Men. The first one away from his children. He’s drinking heavily, losing his keys, making inappropriate advances (as always). I wonder if his secretary was typing up her resignation at the end of the episode or if she was just covering her hurt by doing menial office tasks. And, boy, wasn’t that client a bastard, the one who kept insisting on humiliating Roger?
The second of three 90-minute BBC telefilms called Sherlock, a 21st century rendition of the famous detective, was called “The Blind Banker,” though the title was pretty arbitrary. I thought this one was weaker than the first episode. Again with the murders staged to seem like suicide. The middle part felt soft and sluggish, and the final confrontation between Holmes and the evildoers felt like something from a James Bond movie. “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.” The bit with the arrow was way over the top (if Watson could knock his chair over, why couldn’t Sarah knock over hers? Or at least why couldn’t Holmes?). Someone else commented that it was reminiscent of Fu Manchu. Where was Lestrade? It also took them a long time to tie in the opening scene in the museum with the rest of the story, and the secret code seemed more like a puzzle of curiosity than any real utility, especially in 2010. Only one more left to go—hope it’s a good’un.
