The political economy of TV.

underrated. suave. watch it.

Since we are approximately the last American adults who (a) have cable, and (b) watch television, we are watching television. On cable. Basic cable, as it happens. On BBC America, for whatever reason, they are showing Inside Man, an underrated Spike Lee Joint featuring a terrific, smart performance by Denzel Washington, a terrific, smart performance by Clive Owen--the ineffable Clive, as I like to call him--and a silken, slightly terrifying (terrific and smart also) Jodie Foster as a fixer. ZOMG I love this movie. In fact, we both do.

I'm doing whatnot and nothing on the internets when the historian calls me from the other room:

The historian: They're showing Inside Man, with one of my all-time favorite Jodie Foster performances.

Me: (scurries)

[Jodie Foster is being silken and threatening and also patronizing. Denzel is having none of it.]

Denzel Washington: You got a card, in case I need to call you?

Jodie Foster: Please don't take this personally, but no. I don't think you can afford me.

Denzel Washington: Well, don't take this personally, Miss White. Kiss my black ass, okay?

Me: Jeez I love this movie.

The historian: 'Kiss my black ass, okay?' There's sure a lot of patronizing going on.

[A commercial comes on.]

The historian: [with a small yet decided amount of heat:] The only thing wrong with this is these cussing commercials every ten minutes!

Me: It's capitalism, that's all. Just capitalism. Capitalism is ruining our television experience!

The historian: That's not even the half of it. [pauses, so that we may reflect:] Not EVEN the HALF of it.

Memo to the new television season.

TO:         The new television season
FROM:   htms
DATE:    Oct. 20, 2012
RE:         Mid-October Evaluation

I see a lot of hit-and-miss-iness. For instance, my commitment to The New Girl and The Mindy Project, while stalwart, is running purely on my affection for the characters/stars, and possibly my misbegotten confusion of the stars with their characters.

I love--I'm using the word love--Tina Fey, and I have loved 30 Rock from the beginning, despite the fact that it has been weird, pretty weird, for quite some time now. I decided long ago I was in it for the long haul. I'm just built that way. But I would appreciate it it, the new television season, if you would convey this message to the 30 Rock writers: would it kill you to, I dunno, make us care about the characters? a little? (Also, you can tell them that I totally fell for that Facebook thing, citing the faux magazine story where they said Jenna was 56 years old. Psych! on me. She's 42. Well-played.) But still: I want to care about the characters! Caring about the characters is why I'm still watching The Big Bang Theory and why I'll watch any episode of Frasier, anytime. (Yes, I know this is sad, but this memo is me giving notes to you. Let's leave my emotional life out of it.)

Parks and Recreation--hit and miss, but more hits than misses. Carry on.

Glee has made the transition of taking the younguns past high school graduation rather gracefully, and I am loving it. The last episode nigh unto killed me, because everyone broke up with everyone. Kate Hudson plays a mean/secretly not quite as mean dance instructor at NYADA that has it in for Rachel. It is awesome.

Now that the "season" of Major Crimes is over and they're promising new episodes next ...wait for it...summer, I am officially bummed. Because I really, really liked it. It made me almost not miss The Closer, and that's saying a lot.

The Good Wife is as good as it gets. Perhaps it will gratify you to know that it's one of the historian's all-time favorite shows. That's right. All-time. Me, too, by the way.

I also went ahead and took up Nashville which is a giant slice of cheese served on a cheese plate with a side of cheese and a foamy soapy topping. Wow! But it is compulsively watchable and laugh-at-able and full of excellent music. Also, the city of Nashville figures prominently. This show is so good/bad that the Go Fug Yourself girls do a screen-capped episode guide for it that is a riot. AND it features songs as good as this:




In conclusion, please don't cancel this awesome/awful show, and let there be more achy-breaky music like this, preferably in every single episode. And characters I care about! 30 Rock, I am looking at you.

At the movies.

I spy my friend KS in the cconcessions line. We greet, she introduces me to her friend, I re-introduce her to the historian. We are going to see the same movie.

KS: Did you go see [eminent poet, who gave a reading this past week. On a weeknight.]

Me: I didn't.

KS: Oh!

Me: (interrupting--I don't want her to be embarrassed because she asked me this question:) I've heard [Eminent Poet] read before.

KS: ...and if you've heard him once, you don't need to hear him

Me: (interrupting again...this might be a bad habit. Look into it..) No! I love [Eminent Poet]! I love his work, and he's a great reader. But I'm not going to give up ... [shall I admit this? --forging ahead:] my television shows to go ...

KS: [laughs] Right. And you have to watch them when they're on.

Me: That's right. I'm old like that. I want to watch them when they're on.

KS: ...right--

Me: It's like it's my reward for getting through the day. Poetry almost never does that for me.

[by now at least two people in the line have looked at me with what I imagine are disapproving glances.]

Me:  ...and I'm a poet. [pause] It's not good.

In which I bake a tart and cry about The Closer.

Only one more episode.

Tonight the historian and I watched the next to last episode ever of The Closer, a show I have loved from pretty much day one. Sometime ago, Kyra Sedgwick, the eponymous and legendary interrogator, decided that she would bow out of the show in this, its seventh season. So, like every other fan of the show, I have relished and fretted over every one of these last episodes. I have, of late, dug up interviews with Sedgwick and the producer of the show, reviews of it, profiles of the actors, discussions of its plot twists. My daughter in Louisiana has also been a fan for a long time; we have been comparing notes over the last year at least over each episode and the overall arc of the show for the past two seasons. I will really miss it.

One thing I realized during this period of last-ness is how much I cherish a drama that's reliable, but how much more I cherish a reliable show that counts on you paying attention. This isn't, writing-wise, at the level of Mad Men or The Wire. But over the past season, or season and a half, the writers of the show have asked the viewer to reconsider her feelings about the characters and even, I would say, the satisfactions of a police procedural that depends upon our identifying with a police interrogator whose will to close the case, and deep intelligence, lead to unorthodox methods. The reconsideration asks us to view the character's unorthodoxy as possibly unethical, and gives her ample opportunity to consider and reconsider her own actions.

I love a show that picks up a thread that seems to have been dropped, and weaves it back into the fabric of the plot, and by so doing, turns the entire premise and its pleasures on its head. I will really miss The Closer. I might feel a little foolish for saying so. But I will, I will.

In its Platonic dream of itself, my tart looks like this.

Which is how I came to shed a tear or two into the tart dough I made. We had some apricots that needed to become a tart, or be eaten, or they would turn inexorably into sad, sad wasted fruit. I bought those apricots at the farmer's market at least two weeks ago, and tonight was the time to pick them up from their cold oblivion, and let them fulfill their destiny as pie.

And while the dough was chilling, relaxing, in the dark of the refrigerator, I watched the episode again. In case I missed something the first time around.

Right now,

or today, at least:

watched this (and earlier today, this),
read some of this--it is so choice, and
ate here--so delicious.

Also, so tired. I have just discovered that when I have something going on in the morning, I cannot quite get to sleep the night before. This will not stand. But I am still going to finish this episode of Scrubs, featuring Colin Farrell, because I have endurance and I am strong. I am the Iron Man of television watching.

Soap.

Here is a fact about my secret past when I was in junior high and deeply uncool: I used to get strep throat an abnormal amount. So much so that my doctor used to swab my throat, look up with a concerned/grossed out expression on his face, and say, "And she hasn't had her tonsils out." Nope, never.

Here's another fact: when I used to have bouts of strep throat, and had to stay home for days and days and days on end while the penicillin worked its bitter magic (oh penicillin! bitter and yet so efficacious!), I watched the soaps.

I was a fan, mainly, of such soaps as The Edge of Night and Days of Our Lives. Of course, I can't remember a thing about them. What I do remember is that you could get away with watching these programs about once every two or two and a half months and not miss a beat, that's how slowly they eked out the narrative. It's like if those stories were constructed out of atoms of narrative, it would take them two years to put together a complex molecule. But that was cool, since I was wracked with fever and pretty much incoherent for at least the first two days of The Sick, so I couldn't have handled much more narrative than that. Sometimes I would ask my mom for a little tip or two as to why this or that bejeweled heiress was behaving in such a bizarre way, but mostly I could hold my own.

I can't remember if I was not allowed to watch Dark Shadows, or if I was just too nervous to ask. Maybe both. Anyway, I got through my strep phase (although there was one brutal bout of it my junior year in high school, where I was out of school for two full weeks and came back a svelter, practically tubercular version of myself, boy howdy!), and I really didn't watch soaps after that. Until now.

Now, as I lay upon my bed of affliction (who knows what rude virus/bacterium has lodged itself in my sinuses?), I watch Downton Abbey (so sorry I cannot seem to stop myself talking about this by the way you can follow a discussion about it! on Slate! (work your way backward)). And Glee, though I am predictably behind the curve here--everyone is so over Glee, whereas I am in a protracted rapture about it, swooning over it and crying at the heartbreak and majesty of the teenage-ness of it all. And, frankly, The Good Wife, which is So. Great. it cannot fully be expressed words. It started out great and has never yet let us down.

These stories are practically sprinters compared to the daily soaps of old. They leap lightly from day to season to year and much has to be inferred by the canny viewer, who perhaps is not at her best at the moment, fighting off the viruses/bacteria of wintertime. However, she laughed, she cried, she drank her tea, and also watched the Jazz win. Is it The Sick that gives her courage to watch whole games now, as opposed to giving fearful glances at the screen? Who can say? She shall not stay sick forever: and the narratives will be parsed and discussed, and the Jazz will (knock wood cross fingers) keep winning, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

p.s. Read this.

In summation.

Me, to the historian, while the television is muted during a commercial break whilst watching The Good Wife: Guess how much work I got done today?

The historian: How much?

Me: Not any.

The historian: [expletive.]

Autumn light.

At home, 4:30 p.m., after a long long long day.

Me, already prone, reading: Will you turn on that light? No, wait.

Historian, with hand on the lamp: Are you sure?

Me: I just want to enjoy that natural light (gestures vaguely at window) for a few minutes longer.

[seven minutes later]

Me: Okay, turn it on.

In other news:

Just let me watch my shows. by lisab

Adventures in British television, starring Idris Elba.

We've been watching Luther, a darn good police procedural in the vein of the troubled detective who wrestles with the existential moral dilemma of the thin blue line, not always being sure if he's so much better than the violent, murdering criminals he must bring to justice.

My friend Ann recommended it, and the historian and I have watched an episode each night this week, and two on Friday, aka tonight (streaming on Netflix!). We have enjoyed it. Note: British TV gets away with a fair amount of gore in the pursuit of justice. It stars Stringer Bell, or Idris Elba if you prefer, and he is very good. There are an assortment of psychopaths, dirty cops, and unfinished romantic business. Very good stuff.

One of the great things--as with The Wire and Mad Men--there are amazing and always perfectly apropos songs to end each episode. Here's the song that ended Episode 6:

Now, when I heard it, I couldn't figure out who it was. Also, it took a minute, and also a tiny Google search, but who's counting? to remember that the version I had heard of this was done by The Animals.

The historian: Who's singing this?

Me: Dunno. Let's see who did the original. (google google google). (pause:) Huh.

Turns out, this song was written expressly for Nina Simone, who recorded it in 1964. And The Animals recorded it the following year. So, see? Television + Google: they're for educating minds.

My so-called TV life.

What's that?--you want to know what I watch, week to week, on television? I thought so. Well, I am happy to oblige.

I feel like I'm maybe the only person in the world who still watches TV, as opposed to watching television shows via the internet, and likes it. This makes me feel a little like an old person, but the habit of regular TV watching can be explained: I believe it is due (a) to having come of age when watching TV was your only option, as there was no interweb, and (b) to liking the rhythm of a week being paced, in part, by the show that's on each night, if there is one. (I can feel your horror radiating all the way over here, through the tubes and onto my screen, because of how much TV you surmise I must watch. Well, horror away. I do watch that much TV. And I like it.)

So this means that, if the world is good, there's a show on most nights of the week that I like to watch. This is especially important for week nights. The world is most in balance if I can get through my working day on a Monday, for instance, and there's an episode of The Closer awaiting me at its appointed hour. That episode redeems whatever drudgery or difficulty or simply the long hours of the day that preceded it. On Tuesday, The Good Wife; on Wednesday, Modern Family; and on Thursday, the glory that is the NBC lineup, but especially Parks & Recreation. And 30 Rock.

Well, I have just named the television shows that are my mainstays at the moment. Like every other thinking person, I am awaiting the new season of Mad Men. I have several little DVD things lined up, because I either didn't have HBO, or I wasn't able to finish the series in real time (The Wire/In Treatment and Saving Grace, respectively). And I am about to go into mourning because The Closer is winding up its current stint, which will lead us inexorably into its very last episodes ever.

This summer, I started to watch Criminal Minds with my daughter, who is a huge fan of the show. I myself love a police procedural, and I came to appreciate the show. I am looking forward to the new season, which I will have to DVR so I can watch it later, as it is up against Modern Family, and the historian and I watch that one together. The DVR is hooked up to the downstairs TV. Currently, running son is residing in the downstairs lair, so it's possible that there may be a whole slew of Criminal Minds for me to watch sometime, when I don't feel I will be intruding on the whole lair-ness happening down there. Who can say.

I would like to have a bunch of new awesome shows to watch. I wish I had started Breaking Bad when it started. Ditto Men of a Certain Age and other stuff, like House. I guess. I guess I should have watched Downton Abbey, so maybe I'll try to catch up on the first season before new episodes start.

But I need to get this whole project organized. The television routine is part of what keeps everything else in its proper place, and I need that, the people. I need it, or everything else, and I, will feel crazy. Or maybe I might have to, what? do something else, like something productive. Write, or read.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I will be checking out a few things in the new season. And if you have something you think I should watch, something that's still broadcasting in the real world, in real time--on television, and not on my DVR--please let me know. I will consider it an act of generosity, and a kindness, which I shall never forget.

(thanks to Amelia, who pointed out this post on every day I write the book)

A few things I have been thinking about.

1. The Jazz and Jerry Sloan. I have opinions. And I have thoughts. To sum up: I wish it had happened either last summer or this upcoming summer, it was probably just about time, and I think I will scream--SCREAM--if the fans of the Utah Jazz put undue blame on a certain point guard. To sum up: I will SCREAM.

2. The fact that I am going to Scotland in March! to see everyone who lives there.

3. This summer. In fact, I almost can't stop thinking about this summer. (summary: Los Angeles/Idaho/my backyard/quiet/iced tea/make some movies/write some poems)

4. The mouse who possibly still lives in my house. And its possible brethren. We caught one in the humane trap (released, probably made its way immediately back to the house. In fact, I think we are ourselves making the mice in the field smarter as we speak.), and today I said to the historian, "I am indulging in the fantasy that there was just one mouse, and it's running all over the house, and now we've caught it, they're all gone." The historian chuckled, knowingly. As in, he knows I'm on crack and he also knows that the mice have, like, established a condominium in the dark places of this house, stealing out only to feast upon toast crumbs. Also, to flaunt their mousy intelligence and wiliness.

5. The sparkly shirt I plan to wear tomorrow.

6. The fact that I keep leaving my headset and mic in my office, rendering my intention to record audio comments for my students moot until I fetch it. (Freudian forgetting? Possibly.)

7. Veronica Mars. Currently streaming on Netflix. Seriously, how did I not know that this show was awesome? And set in SoCal? And full of class resentment? in other words, right up my alley? (thanks to college daughter for the heads up, and for watching countless episodes with me.)

8. The three little dogs who followed us home on Saturday, despite my sternest efforts to get them to go home. They are living in our laundry room while the posters advertising the fact that we found them flutter forlornly on the lampposts of the neighborhood.

A little fret before I do my crossword.

Well well well, no new episode of The Good Wife? Instead, the Victoria's Secret Lingerie Parade? with Wings? Boo, I say. BOO. I don't think the television people fully understand what happens to me when my shows aren't on. I need my shows, Television People! Harumph!

I am pretty sure I have some work to do but for the life of me I cannot remember what it might be.

Also, while fretting, I think I will worry just a little more about this

---------------------------->

because it's always worrisome until it is done, and then, we can debrief and discuss and decide how to do it better, take notes and whatnot of "What We Will Do Next Time,"and then we can all go home and watch the dvr'd episodes of Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock which had by golly better be on the DVR or I don't know what I NEED MY SHOWS.

Another way of understanding the role of television in my life.

Over dinner:

Me: (enumerating the television shows of my youth) . . . and Hawaii Five-O, and Taxi. And Cheers.

The historian: Of course, when you were watching a lot of those shows, you were a kid, and I wasn't.

Me: . . . right . . .

The historian: . . . but then, we really didn't watch much TV . . .

Me: (rolls eyes)

The historian: because we were in grad school, and so there just wasn't time.

Me: I'm not sure if that's actually true . . .

The historian: well, it didn't seem like there was time.

Me: (pauses to reflect) . . . of course, you actually finished your Ph.D.

The historian: (tactful silence. Eats quesadilla.)

My agenda.

1. Grade.

2. Lunch with birthday boy grandson.

3. Consult with 3 students.

4. Grade.

5. Scavenge dinner.

6. Grade.

7. The Office.

8. 30 Rock.

9. Walk the dog.

10. Grade.

TAGS: tedious

And now let us pause for a brief television review.

While we were driving in Los Angeles, we saw a billboard advertising a new television show, NCIS Los Angeles. According to the billboard the show would be featuring the dramatic talents of Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J.

Fact: NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The show is about an agency that investigates crimes involving the Navy or the Marines. I, like the rest of the free world, have been mixing this show up with CSI, which, isn't it a lot of work for the free world, keeping these acronyms straight? When they're using the exact same letters? Television producers, get on that!

Fact: Even though the Ls in "LL Cool J" stand for "Ladies Love," as anyone in the civilized world can tell you, you don't punctuate them as you would L.L. Bean. Why? I don't know. You just don't.

Anyway, a show that's a police procedural AND it's set in Los Angeles AND has Ladies Love Cool James? I'm all about that. As I mentioned to the historian whilst driving in Los Angeles. While we were driving west on Santa Monica Blvd., I said, "I'm going to watch that show." ["Santa Monica Blvd." may or may not be the actual boulevard upon which we were driving.]

And did I look up this show to find out when it was on? And did I watch it tonight? Yes, I did.

And was the show as good as its particulars might imply? I am sorry to report that no, in fact, the show is terrible. Stagy, poorly paced, not well written, and, sorrowfully, drawing dramatic interest neither from its military nor its police contexts.

"Who thought of this?" I said to the historian, after one particularly stagy moment, "and why are they wasting the charisma of Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J?"

Also, the charisma of Los Angeles. Criminal.

Meta-blogging: I have apparently crossed a terrible and consequential blogging threshold, as I now have 2000 tags, and Blogger informs me that no blog can have more than 2000 tags. Sadly, some of the tags I need, like "Los Angeles," "acronyms," "charisma," not to mention "LL" or "the people cry out for justice," I may not add. Blogger! Why do you have to be so harsh? Can you not accept that sometimes we may need to articulate categories that exceed your limited view of what a category is? Blogger! Let my people go!

Manifesto #1, issued from the big chair.

Communique #1: It's time for you people to get cable.

First of all, I want you people to take my advice about what shows to watch, as in: "Mad Men is the best show of the summer." or "Damages is not to be missed." If you people don't have cable, your rejoinder is, "I'll watch it when it comes on dvd and I can get it on Netflix." Not good enough, you people. I want you to take my advice Right. Now.

Second of all, if you have cable, it's simply not true, as some of you have protested, that you'll watch more television and you can't afford to watch television. You people are all disciplined, far, far more disciplined than I am, for instance. All of you. No, really, you people: you are the people for whom TiVo or DVR were invented. If you don't have time to watch the shows I recommend to you, by all means, TiVo them or DVR them and watch them when you have time, between grading assignments the second after your students have turned them in. I know you. You can do it, you people.

Thirdly, it is not too expensive. Give me a break, you people. I know you can figure out a way to pay for cable without the premium stations. You people, this is all I ask of you. Just get the cable that has Mad Men (AMC) and Damages (FX). So I can talk to you about the shows I watch.

And another thing, you people: what is it with the sorry state of television criticism and commentary in this great but possibly failing nation of ours? Why is it that when a person who loves a television show wants to read about it, because none of her friends are watching it--they're all waiting for it to come out on dvd, so they can watch it on Netflix--she can find virtually nothing, not even on the internet? Or a review based on watching the first two episodes when, come on, you people--anyone knows that it takes more than two episodes to get most shows rolling. (Although not Mad Men or Damages--both of these shows were awesome from the get-go.) Can we do anything about this, you people? Can we make television criticism better in this great but possibly failing nation of ours? Not if we're waiting for shows to come out on Netflix, we can't. But I digress.

If you won't get cable--and the good Lord knows I've tried my best to convince you that you should--I will have little recourse. I think you know what I'll be forced to do. That's right--I'll have to keep on talking to myself about these shows, that's what. You people: it will be upon your heads.

Vacation stats.

Reading: aforementioned Kiki Strike. Finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union, as well as Come Up and See Me Sometime (Erika Krouse, short stories). Read in Notarikon (Catharine Bowman, poems); Mortal Everlasting and Rumor of Cortez (Jeffrey Levine, poems); Grave of Light (Alice Notley, poems); Walking to Martha's Vineyard (Franz Wright, poems); Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism (Rosemary Hennessy, literary/cultural theory). Started Falling Man, and it is gorgeous.

Excellent vacation innovation: iPod loaded with 8000 songs. Thrilling!

Deep thoughts: I have had several. In fact, quite a few.

Quality of the light and air: splendid, restorative, chimerical, both still and moving.

Natural observations: several seals lying on a rock in Noyo Harbor (by Ft. Bragg); numerous hummingbirds in the garden; several fat and communicative chickens; blackberries growing everywhere; poison oak (no actual encounters).

Excellent purchase: a variety of French notebook that is, for me, kind of like that one kind of cookie in Proust (is a madeleine a cookie or a cake?).

Overheard at breakfast this a.m.: People talking about the concert last night at the Mendocino Music Festival--about whether they were familiar with "the Mahler" and/or "the Brahms." Funny, at least a little. "The Mahler." (Sort of like "the Todd" in Scrubs?)

Guilty fact: I still like to watch a little television at night, even when I'm in a location such as this. Is that bad?

Still to do: another tramp or two in the headlands around Mendocino; a little more desultory shopping, including little presents for people back home; more deep thoughts and note-taking in the French notebook; more reading. We have been cooking in (it's our favorite kind of vacation, where we can buy good food and cook at home--it's playing house in a different locale, I guess), so two more dinners. (also, a little television to watch.)