The end of my short story is in sight. I know more or less what’s going to happen in the last page or two. All that remains is to write them. I stopped this morning on a high point so I’d have some momentum going into the ending tomorrow. The first draft is going to clock in at over 5500 words. Maybe as high as 6000. Well within the guidelines, but I suspect I’ll be able to trim it back to 5000 words before I submit it at the end of the long weekend.
I was surprised to see “Mayhem” from the Allstate commercials on Law & Order: SVU last night. Even more surprised, when I looked him up, to discover that he’s an alumnus of the show from back in 2000. That was one heck of a season finale: Cragen gets the Godfather treatment, sort of. I think this is the first time they’ve done a real cliffhanger, and it was a doozy. It was funny, too, seeing “Taub” from House playing a character somewhat sleazier than Taub. I guess the House clan will be popping up all over from now on. The same way I used to see Lost actors everywhere.
Speaking of Lost, I’m continuing my Season 6 review. I get confused at times about what we’re supposed to know when. During “Recon,” for example, I forgot that we didn’t know James Ford was a cop in the flash-sideways. I’d also forgotten how much “Ad Eternum” ground the show’s forward momentum to a halt. It’s an excellent episode in many ways, but in terms of overall series pacing: ugh.
I finally got around to seeing the latest Jesse Stone TV movie starring Tom Selleck. These two-hour movies have the same pacing as a 1970s crime drama, which is to say that they are leisurely. I wasn’t sorry to see the two cops go up in the opening scene, as they were annoying to the utmost. After that, it was a kind of old home week as Selleck’s Stone meandered through the landscape, touching base with all the familiar characters/actors from the previous movies. Some of it felt obligatory, like the visit to William Sadler’s mobster character, though it did set up the interesting flirtation scene with his assistant, Amanda, and he extracted one piece of useful information from her. On the whole, I enjoy these, but I think they try a little too hard to be Robert B. Parker. The whole dialog repetition thing (You didn’t like him. I never said that.) grew old fast. Also, I don’t think Parker would ever have written a criminal mastermind who commits the rookie mistake of knowing something before he’s told about it (the perp knew about the bombing before anyone else). Who was the sniper working for and why was he following Jesse around, so overtly? The scene in the ship at the end confused me to no end: did the perp know the sniper was there, or was the sniper after the perp, too? Hard to say. Selleck speculates that CBS might not order any more of these movies because they don’t know what to do with them. Sad state of affairs when a two-hour mystery of the week can’t exist any more. The demographics were interesting, too. The show performed well and won its slot overall, but the all-important younger audience didn’t watch.
I almost gave up on The L.A. Complex when Connor started acting weird on the set, but I’m glad I stuck with it. Raquel gave the performance of her life at that AA meeting. (Jewel Staite was excellent, too, but it was clearly her character putting on an act to salvage her movie deal). I got a kick out of the geeky (and painfully unfunny) stand-up comic’s plight. He’s been having women problems since, well, birth actually, but in one day he ends up in bed with two different women.
Shades of War Games on this week’s Eureka. At least the computer program didn’t offer to play a game of tic-tac-toe or chess.
