We had a very wet beginning to the year, but it didn’t take long for people to start thinking about drought again when it didn’t rain for a few weeks. We had a brief but loud thunderstorm in the middle of the night and the promise of much more over the next few days, starting shortly. The weather radar shows a mass shaped something like the English Isles (and only slightly smaller) headed our way from the west.
I started working on an editing project I was hired to do by a small press. The work in question is in my bailiwick, so it involves a great deal of fact-checking, but it was also written by someone for whom English isn’t the first language, so I’m finding myself having to rewrite prose to make it more natural. Could be a significant task.
Had an e-mail from an editor I’ve worked with in the past asking for my author bio for his next project. Thing is, I didn’t contribute to his next project! I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything this time around. I checked my e-mail folders to confirm, because the old memory ain’t 100% what it used to be. Turns out he used an old e-mail list. I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t say anything and just sent in the bio!
I really liked the way Castle ended the season. For a few minutes I was sure they were going to leave us hanging at the bottom of the end of a second act, when everything is as bad as it can get for the main characters. But they didn’t, and good for them. A few people are hearkening back to Moonlighting, but I don’t see the same thing happening here. The Castle writers take the show more seriously than that. I have to admit I was a little dismayed to see on the tombstone that Beckett’s mother’s was born just ten years before me. Made me feel old.
When a series comes to an end, it gives the writers a lot of freedom to do interesting things with the characters without worrying about the repercussions. With House, that means that Wilson can go hog wild like he did this week and, possibly, die as they seem to be hinting. It means that Chase can leave and it isn’t a feint or a ploy. And it means that Thirteen can come back and it isn’t forever. Although it could be forever and the actress isn’t committed to anything more than two episodes.
The idea of a patch that can accelerate someone through the stages of grief was pretty amusing on Eureka. Poor Fargo was so volatile that I expected him to start having hot flashes. I like the way they are exploring the repercussions of the experiences of the people who were part of the Astraeus expedition. On some shows, significant, life altering events happen one week and are gone the next as if they never happened. But the people who lived in that virtual reality world for a while have to re-adapt to the status quo. Fascinating. I also liked that they made Parrish just a tad more human. He didn’t get gushy and tell Fargo he was sorry about his loss. But he did something almost as good by offering to play a fantasy game with him. Nice touch.
Are people still watching The Killing? It’s getting more chaotic all the time. When I watched the Danish version, I had the luxury of seeing it all over the course of a few days. Spread out like it is, the American version seems to be sprawling and unfocused, with all these new aspects coming in. The arbitrarily vicious native cops, for example.
After watching Mad Men, I found myself wanting to buy some Cool Whip. And was that really Rory Gilmore getting nasty with Pete Campbell? It took me a while to figure out who the actress was, but I knew she looked familiar. It’s amusing how Roger Stirling has come to terms with his new place in the firm.
