For several years, I’ve been trying to remember the title and author of a book I read in high school. I would get close, but it kept slipping away. I thought the author’s first name might be Eric and that he was from Nova Scotia. I remembered one plot point: a man getting trapped by a falling tree. I did all manner of searches, including pouring over lists of Canadian authors from the Maritimes, but to no avail. Then I saw a book last week that my daughter was reading for school and I recognized the format: New Canadian Library. At the back, they had a list of all their titles and I found what I was looking for straight away: The Mountain and the Valley by Ernest Buckler. I now have a used copy of it en route. Wonder if it’s as good as I remember it being.
The last minute of How I Met Your Mother last night was an unexpected kick to the head. And I guess Suzie Plakson is old enough to be Marshall’s mother, but that just didn’t seem right. I have to admit that I totally missed the “countdown” to the bad news. The only number I consciously noticed was the one on the fake file Barney had when he pretended to be the doctor.
An interesting finale for The Closer. For the first time, Brenda got it totally wrong and it took Gabriel going over her head and her husband’s confession to make her see the error of her ways. Especially powerful was Fritzy’s sit-down with her where he set her straight about the way he used to be when he was drinking. I still kept waiting for the addict to implicate someone else to validate Brenda’s suspicions. Just one more season to go before the final wrap.
Compared to shows from the 70s, modern programs can pack a lot of plot into an hour. Crime shows like Quincy or Rockford Files are leisurely by comparison. Take for example this week’s Castle, which managed the complicated crime of the week (a murder always makes you feel better, his daughter advises), the major subplot of the actress who will be Nikki Heat tagging along (played by Laura Prepon of That 70s Show) and the minor subplot of Ryan’s engagement (to an actress who is his wife in real life). The Nikki Heat story was especially amusing: watching how Beckett changed over the course of the episode from welcoming the actress (partly to wind Castle up) to becoming so self conscious that she wasn’t even sure how to stand properly. And good for Castle for not falling into the actress’s bed. “Too meta,” he said later, but he doesn’t want a knock-off Beckett.
