I did something last weekend that I haven’t in a while: I read something quite long in French. The work was “Sale Gosse,” the French translation of the Stephen King novella “Bad Little Kid,” which at present is only available in French and German. I’ve read a few French books in the past and was quite pleased by how little I had to rely on the dictionary. Even the metaphors and idioms came through, although I was at first befuddled by a couple of instances of a phrase that translated literally as “the English are landing.” I had to resort to Google for that one. I learned that it is the way the French refer to a woman’s time of the month. Apparently something to do with the redcoats and the long-running history between the French and the English. I wrote an article for FEARnet about the story, which should appear soon.
Last night, I received a box of contributor copies of Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue from the Cold War, the MWA anthology edited by Jeffrey Deaver and Raymond Benson, which contains my short story “The Honey Trap.” The book comes out on April 1. I’m really looking forward to reading the other contributions.
Banshee finished its second season with a record-breaking viewership. Paltry by most standards, but it was the largest viewership Cinemax has ever had for its original content. The show has been renewed for a third season. It’s an over-the-top show, pulpy to the max, with impossible violence orchestrated like ballet and soft-core porn-level sex, but it’s interesting, too. They went a tad overboard this season with the concept of parallel structure: similar things happening to different characters at the same time. It was as if they thought they had discovered it, and they almost hammered viewers over the head with it, but that was my biggest complaint. It was an interesting choice to go back in time with Ana, Rabbit and “Hood” to see the things we’ve only heard about in passing until now. I liked the exchange between Ana/Carrie and Hood where he’s talking about his military experience. “How many lives have you lived?” she asks, to which he responds, “None, really.” Give ten bad guys machine guns and they can’t hit crap, but Job and a few other guys hit the mark every time. Rabbit’s final benediction: Somewhere in the future there’s a bench like this waiting for you. Probably true for a guy like “Hood.”
After strewing the church with empty casings and turning the pillars into Swiss cheese, and then dispatching Rabbit once and for all, what was there left to do? Plenty, as it turns out. We got to see the albino once more, in flashback, then Rebecca had the strangest sexual encounter on the show to date (and that’s saying a lot) with Chief “Thunder Man.” What a little sociopath she’s turned into. And then Emmett heads across the border to Maryland, content in thinking he’s out of the fray, only to find himself on the wrong end of a machine gun. Deva drops buy to visit her newly discovered Dad, Rebecca cuddles up with her naked uncle, and the Incredible Hulk decides it’s time to head back to Banshee, setting up next season. Oh, and Hood has a meaningful moment with Siobhan. A lot of the past has been wrapped up, which could open things up for Season 3.
I dropped Bates Motel off my DVR recording schedule. I just don’t care about 85% of what’s going on, and the remaining 15% isn’t enough to keep me hanging around. There are good ways to handle prequels (e.g. Hannibal) and bad ways. Hannibal is stylistic and it focuses on the central characters. It doesn’t need to go off in 75 directions all at once. There’s Will and Hannibal and everything else arises naturally from that conflict.
We’re about 2/3 of the way through the second season of House of Cards. It probably takes people like Frank and Claire to succeed in that environment, sad to say. Ultimately, everyone is dispensable, a means to an end.
The challenges on The Amazing Race seem really hard this season. The simultaneous martini trick was a real doozy, and the rival DJ scratching seemed just as hard, and impossible of course for the deaf contestant.
The Walking Dead finally did something to make me sit up and pay attention. The end of this week’s episode was quite shocking. Goes to show that characterization trumps horror and special effects. I still am not a huge fan of this fragmented 2014 season in general, though.
