Stuff I watch when I'm not watching the Superbowl

That's right, I didn't watch Superbowl XLVI.  SSSSsshhh--don't tell anyone!! They will revoke my New England membership card.

I know it's trite as shit to post about what you are watching on the telly, but just for blog proliferation purposes (check out the concerns of prev post)  I'm gonna resort to that
  Let's do this in alphabetical order then, shall we??

 DOWNTON ABBEY (or..as my dad insists on saying--"DOWNTOWN Abbey")

It had really seemed to me that there was a good deal of hype surrounding the US Season2 premiere of Downton Abbey. And then I second-guessed that perception, thinking that—OK, perhaps it’s just that I’m especially attuned to such publicity. I love me some Downton Abbey (like I do w/ most things Masterpiece Theater...even Mouret’s Roundeau...I like nothing better than sitting in my wingback chair, rockin’ Rondeau at top volume, while enjoying a Calabash pipe . .. filled with bubble solution...or sometimes I forego the Calabash for a licorice pipe. Forgive me, I digressed..). But no, I was right, the US public is quite into Downton. . . suddenly…. inexplicably. I certainly don’t mean that Downton is not worthy of all the love...it’s just not this country’s sort of thing...usually.

So I have yet to figure why Downton has so virulently caught on on this side o’ the pond (inspiring at least SEVEN memes--wow). but I thought seeing it crop up on this weekend’s SNL for sure confirmed that it is indeed front & center on our pop culture radar. This more-or-less accurate skit I thought was pretty funny and at this juncture, I was going to embed it, but for some odd reason NBC Universal does NOT want that clip on the internet. I can't imagine why. They posted all that Bon Iver shite from the last episode ( I don't get what all the buzz is about that guy. I nodded off during his 1st song and that 2nd song he did I only sat thru because I was puzzling over which obscure 80s soft rock nobody he was channeling...it was TOTALLY Bruce Hornsby, BTW) The only thing I can think of is that they appropriated a bunch of Downton goodness without the BBC's greenlight. ..or somethin' like that.

Anyway, sans further ado, here be some of my DA-induced ravings—

Anna/ Bates--
I was charmed by the Bates & Anna dynamic in S1. Back then it was all sweet Anna mooning over resistant mystery man Bates with the shady past. Not that Bates was ever a bad boy, he was just mysterious and wounded (unsure that the masses could readily perceive the emotional wounds, DA writers threw in a limp for emphasis) It was a quiet burgeoning thing. That dynamic was charming. But now that mystery shady past essentially boils down to a PERSISTANT BITCH of a wife (oh, there was some stint in the hoosegow exposed, but that was pretty swiftly pishawed by Carson ...and maybe Lord G as well...I can’t recall 100%) And now he’s all “I WILL marry you—I swear it” and Anna’s all “ We will be together no matter what!! I stand by mah man” and it’s got an overall “Love shall conquer all” vibe and seriously, a little bit o’ that goes a LOOONG way. Not that I want them to fall apart, but just, y'know.. ZZZzzzz.

And—OH YEAH-- I *knew* that Vera was wormfood as soon as I saw that brief chat scene w/ Bates & Lord Grantham. Bates let fly – in this very uncharasterically hot-headed way—that he wished his ex-wife was his late wife . And Lord G was all, “Ooookay. Rage much?” And Bates responded “Please forgive the lapse in composure. It was a necessary clunky bit of foreshadowing I had to dispense with.” Ok, so those last two lines of dialogue were not actually uttered. But seriously, don’t you love it when writers BLATANTLY tip their hand like that? I do!! Well, I do and I don’t. I feel like it is often so contrived or lazily formulaic of the writers, but on the “pro” side, I do get a small rush of superiority a few episodes later when I am able to declare “ I *TOTALLY* called that storyline, bitches!!” And you know Bates didn’t off anybody, but he is going to hafta extricate himself from some sort of murder-accusation imbroglio. Also, I strongly sense that O’Brien is going to have some part to play in catalyzing said imbroglio, because this perked-up, extra attentive look crossed her shifty little visage when she noted the scratches on Bates’s face. And then later when they learn of Vera’s death, O’Brien makes that same ORLY? face. She not quite overt enough to arch one brow, but the mono-arch is surely implied. Well speaking of which...

O’Brien &Thomas-- This maybe DA blasphemy, but I say this pair is considerably more interesting than Bates &Anna. Both of 'em are SUCH rotters but then occasionally show these glimmers of humanity. And of course, this is key to creating The Likable Villain. O’Brien on her own is not terribly likable, but avec Thomas, there is a snarky rapport there that is entertaining.

And she also sorta made a connection with Lang . Yeah, remember the shell-shock guy? His was a blip of a storyline, eh? Is he coming back?? Did they arm him with a pleasant letter of recommendation and then just kick his ass out ?? “Have a nice life, good luck on shit creek, try paddling with your hands!!” Anyway, she was downright nurturey with Lang.

Also she has this very warm regard for Lady G...which seemed to suddenly spring up in her after she passive-aggressively made her miscarry. And looks like m’Lady is hit with a health crisis next episode...one so bad that it makes O’Brien crack. Should be entertaining.

As for Thomas....I find him strangely delightful. I didn’t particularly care for him in S1 when his big pastime was tormenting William & Daisy because those simpletons were quarry that was... I dunno.... both undeserving and not worthy at the same time. This season we got the humanity glimpse when he was in the war...scared shitless...and then he got smitten with that blind soldier who looked like a skinny indie rocker who later killed himself (the Downton character, that is, not any indie rocker that comes to mind...not lately anyway) So then when he returns to Downton to assume command, and he is ALL smugness, I cannot really dislike him for it because : a) you know he's *extra* frontin' due to recent heartache and b) he never did anything all that dastardly with the power he grabbed. He just had it, and was rather smug and smirky and maybe lorded it over some folks, although he didn't even do that too much. He's soon to start black marketeering food or something like that, but I feel that's a pretty mundane story arc for him and I'm not really looking forward to it. Let's see him get some lovin', or get in a brawl or do something hugely comical. This won't be drastically different from his S1 wine shenanigans will it??

Lord Grantham/ New Maid Jane-- I DO NOT LIKE the implications being sown here. I mean, does it not seem like Cora & Robert are SOLID? After all, they defy popular dormitory convention so's they can spoon!! Does that not speak volumes? If Lord G has a dalliance, it will be EXTRA shitty comportment since it looks like (judging from  previews) it will closely precede a big health scare for his wife. (Oh, of course extra, EXTRA, EXTRA shitty move if it's during/ after the illness...though I don't think the guy is quite up to that level of dickery) In an ideal Downton, they nip this extramarital bullshit in the bud. Like, NOW. Or, if they MUST develop this somehow, Jane falls into unrequited love, turns all Fatal Attraction loco, and somehow, thru some machination, Ethel is there to save m'Lord, snagging back her old job in the process (with a fat promotion as well, to be fair) Ethel was kind of a snot, but I do feel bad for her, and she was for sure more interesting than this Jane chick.

Yep, that's it, Jane will go 'round the bend and get offed in some spectacular fashion. Ethel comes back with her bambino. Thomas, because he doesn't really have a job now or anywhere else to go, has to become a full time babysitter if he wants a place to live. And...bonus...you get Jane's son popping into their lives around Season 4 when he returns from boarding school where Lord G has been paying the tuition out of a sense of guilt over inadvertantly murdering the lad's Mum via his damned irresistable flirting. And perversely, it's like having the son he's always wanted. Ok, before I lapse into nutter fan fic...

Sybil /Branson-- I keep waiting for this pairing to BLOW UP, but thus far it's just a slow simmer. I’m not averse to a slow simmer…if you get to see something develop, that is. What is with Sybil and Branson though? He’s a Socialist, she…she… well she certainly is not apathetic. She goes to rallies and -ZOINKS--she wore those dreadful (but pioneering) PANTS in S1, so you know she hold some manner of political viewpoint and she AIN’T playin’!! And they’re both purdy. I guess that makes them a logical pairing then. So yeaah, I guess his love for her has somehow sprung up and blazed into a mighty let‘s-plan-a-future-together love over a series of errands (mostly offscreen) that he’s taxied her around on? And she likes to hear him talk Socialism while he works on carburetors (again, mostly offscreen) Oh, though we did get to see him feel worried for her that time she got half-trampled at the rally she duped him into taking her to. All in all, it’s not much of a basis for JACK. Still, her saying “wait two or three weeks for me” is kinda giving the guy hope that they WILL make that future together (oh, plus I inadvertently happened upon some spoilers on a UK site that pretty damn well assure that)

So I guess these two are gonna go from 0 to 100mph in 1 minute (so to speak) and I’m going to say …I suppose it’s a plausible pairing? Well, what’s past is past, and I suppose the task at hand is to make the pay-off SO caliente that the viewers don’t give a damn how feebly it was  all established.

Daisy-- Needs to shake it off already, I can’t think of a more innocuous little white lie…well, it was a biggie, I suppose. But it was indubitably of the white variety -pure, dazzling, blindingly white. Daisy has always been irritating but a tormented Daisy all racked with guilt is THE WORST. Ugh, I reeeeeally don’t like her. Can she just be discreetly written out??


Edith / Peter-Patrick-- OK, there was this one episode where I kinda nodded off in the middle. I truly do love my Downton, but I was exceptionally tired on this particular evening. I see Edith suddenly decide she must master driving and shortly after she manages this I lapse into fuzziness.. .slumber…I come to and she’s in love with some farmer. WTF and , for that matter, where the bloody hell did this farming couple come from? But whatev…farmer man just  illustrates how Edith is ripe to fall in love with anybody who so much as gives her an especially cordial “Good day, Lady Edith!” It’s been some years for me since taking Psych 101 but I do believe that predisposition can be attributed --somewhat--to birth order. Middle children are great peacekeepers, but they are often quite attention-starved. Now if Edith was purely this big ball of needy twitterpation, I wouldn’t like her. But I do like her…on account of she’s shown a sort of capable, sensible, pluck that was not evident in S1. Maybe learning to drive tapped into her dormant pluck reserves. It’s also possible she was once too preoccupied being bitter to be plucky. It would be hard not to resent an older sister like Mary. It’s not just that S1 Mary was too fabulous to bear. No, it was that she was too, inordinately fabulous *and* quite the hard-ass. Yep, she was a TOTAL hard ass until that dead Turk in her bed knocked her down a peg or two.

Anyway, it’s a damn shame how this burnt-up con man zeroed in on Edith’s needy, twitterpatability and exploited it. I am thinking Pete-Pat was probably a con man because almost immediately after he was informed that his story was to be checked into…fellah hit the bricks. Add to this hasty departure, the apologetic tone of his note to Edith. I would think if it was the cruelty / insensitivity of his own family that DROVE him away, he wouldn’t feel that he had to apologize. But that’s really just speculation. I like that they didn’t explicitly reveal whether he was or was not the real deal. It’s not that I am anti-closure, but they introduced Pete-Pat and then hustled him outta there all so swiftly--it’s better that they ended with a sort of elipses rather than a full stop. As a complete story arc, it would be such a gyp!!

Oh boy, if that really was Patrick, the whole Crawley family with the exception of Edith &Matthew were a pack of bastards! I understand a reluctance to wholeheartedly buy into his tale, but they couldn’t have 110% DISbelieved him either. If that was the real-deal Patrick--what a miserable, barely civil reception!!

And, honestly, more power to Edith that she was right back in love with him as much as ever. Possibly it’s yet another illustration of how quick-smitten she is, but dammit, it’s still commendable. It’s not the guy’s skin that gets me…it’s that left eye of his. Or rather, his right, my left, but I might not be able to stare at him long enough to work out those logistics because-- EGADS! Then again, I suppose if I were well and truly in love….I mean REALLY in love now…

Matthew / Mary/ Richard/ Lavinia-- Now, even though the Matthew-Mary pairing is (and has been from the start) the central romance of this saga, I am still fuzzy on several key points. It was fairly late-ish in Season1 that it was established: he is in love with her and OMG yes she actually LOVES him back and there was some smooching and marriage was discussed. I cannot, for the life o’ me, recall now who turned down whom and WHY. And at the start of S2, that split is a distant, amicable thing and they’re ostensibly old pals now, and oh, there’s this Lavinia Swire. Wait-whaa? Where the FFFfffeck did this Lavinia come from anyway?? Surely there were some alluded to , off-screen happenings but I’m betting that most of these question come from there being such a loooooong wait between S1 and S2 that I just couldn’t retain the facts in my addlepated noggin.

But of course, the $64,000 question is why hasn’t Mary just @#$%(ing COME OUT WITH IT already? We all know the answer: they’ve gotta draawwwww this central romance out…longer…longer..at least long enough to make a Season3 happen. This knowledge does not make Mary’s emotional constipation any easier to bear. I do like the softer, gentler Mary of S2, but it seems like--in just this regard-- she’s lost her backbone ENTIRELY. I guess, when faced with a milquetoast as *deeply* drab as Ms Swire her pity is so roused that she can’t bring herself to do it. I almost thought than when her dear Carson counseled it, she was going to ‘fess up. It wouldn’t have been wicked of her to just write him a simply stated letter. No entreaty, no pressure, a purely informational, “Dear Matty, I just thought you should know, SINCE YOU MIGHT GET KILLED IN WWI, that I still love you. Best Regards, Mary” Nope…presumably all her missives pertained to the weather at Downton and how Miss Lavinia was getting along. Phoo.

And then briefly, Matthew was M.I.A., Mary was distraught, and I thought that at his homecoming (right on cue for his part in a duet, natch) would have her so overcome that she would blurt it out. NO dice. And AGAIN, back at the front he gets bomb-blasted, gets carted into Downton looking SERIOUSLY to’ up and she’s clearly upset and…nope. Nada. Clearly, she’s not gonna utter the L-word without sodium pentathol or waterboarding.

It doesn’t look good for Mary that he’s now getting leg tingles. Lavinia comes back simply because her undying love won’t let her stay away (forget that Mama & Carlisle had conspired to fetch her…there is so far nothing to suggest coercion) Pretty soon, Matthew will begin hobbling around, and *then* Mary is going to say, “Oh hey wait, I still love you actually” (Good timing that, now that he’s literally back on his feet) “And PS my fiance is not the simple slime ball I took him for, I just found out he’s actually quite a mean f-er” All very real sentiments, but her motives are going to look disingenuous in comparison, aren’t they?
 

--Grey's Anatomy--

These “dream sequence” type episodes can be kinda fun but also they're frustrating in that they don’t really do anything to advance the current storylines. The last new episode ended on a DREADFUL spat betwixt Christina & Owen. I mean, if you can’t refrain from top-of-your-lungs hollering at a friend’s kid’s birthday party...that definitely qualifies for the “dreadful” tag . It ain’t good!! I love O & C, so I wanted to see the aftermath of that fight. The episode opening did give a brief shot of them decidedly NOT spooning in bed (surprising that they were even in the same house, I thought) but aside from that , not much fresh intel is proffered.

My standing gripe with Grey's is --and it applies to this episode too-- Eric Dane didn't get nearly enough screen time.  He rarely ever does.  (and , no, I did NOT make that collage in case you were wondering.) It's such a perpetual show flaw that I'm not even gonna bother with it.

So the premise here , in a nutshell-- if Meredith hadn't lost her mom to Alzheimer's she wouldn't have become the intriguingly "dark & twisty" Mer we know and love.  Oh, and lest you underestimate how thorough and far-rippling the Ripple Effect is-- Ellis Grey's survival somehow makes Bailey wear her hair in cornrows and dress like a schlomo. Go figure. Meredith's bit in the alternate universe was dull.  But there were a couple bits I did like...just a couple..

I think drug addled, tatt-covered little Grey is a major improvement over actual little Grey.  She needed more than just a dash of dark & twisty to make her character interesting again. They should morph her into that in the real storyline.  A drug addiction should be easy enough to whip up on a medical drama, am I right??

I hadn't thought of the Kepner +Karev pairing, but that could be good. You know how good that hate-to-love TV romance trope can play out. Like, how great was Moonlighting, right? I f-ing LOVED that show. Now it's a known fact that Kepner needs--NEEDS-- a love interest. I can't even believe the show tried to pair her up with Peter MacNicol. She is too young and cute for that. Avery is the obvious go-to...too obvious...it would be a snooze. I had the idea that it would be an awesome curveball of a story if they paired her with Sloane.  It would be like the reincarnation of Rob Lowe & Mare Winningham in St Elmo's Fire.  That was the BEST part of that movie!! A Karev-Kepner match up would have a similar vibe, but to a lesser extent on account of Karev being a mere demi-god (vs Sloane being thoroughly & immensely divine )

--An Idiot Abroad--

I don't have much to say on An Idiot Abroad. Just this: If you're not watching it, you should be.  Unfortunately, I don't have the Science channel (which is the channel that airs this in the States) so I have to wait a couple days after each new ep premieres and catch it on Xfinity onDemand (side tangent: it's like Comcast has multiple personalities now with the Xfinity onDemand, but using the Comcast name for other shit.  Stop confusing me!!)

I just caught episode 2 where Karl travels the Trans-Siberian Railway and makes a stop in Mongolia.  It was pretty great but I'd been anticipating this choice bit that I'd seen in preview that wound up being completely cut from the episode!!  Whyever would anyone cut this??? It clocks in at <1minute and it's hi-fecking-LARIOUS!!

---Project Runway All-Stars--



I think my fave moment of that last episode (#5) was when Isaac Mizrahi was about to THROW DOWN over who most loves a jumpsuit. It amused me.

Otherwise, hese PRAS judges are yet to surprise me. I can’t always pick out the top & bottom 3, but once those are chosen, I can ALWAYS call who is headed home & who’s winning. I knew Jerrell wouldn’t get the boot because it’s rare that they eliminate for offenses of batshit craziness. I knew Michael wouldn’t get the boot because he makes for good TV. THANK GAWWWWD he didn’t win this week—though he still managed to have his requisite attack of overwhelming emotion, didn’t he? I thought it was funny—Anthony comforting him, as if Michael were the one ousted. And Anthony is definitely in the running for most graceful exit in PR history. I know I’ve said that about other PR designers (which is why I ‘ve said just that he’s “in the running” but not, hands down, the MOST GRACIOUS LOSER ever) but it surprised me, coming from him. Being such a ...uhhh, BIG personality, I definitely saw potential for tragic melodramatic meltdown there, but I guess this just shows...the optimism is *strong* in this one. And it’s a good thing too, because you notice, on PR All Stars, the losers don’t get the gentle hug and sympathetic “I need you to clean up your workspace” final mentor send off. Which really highlights how very inadequate this Joanna broad is. I mean, of course she’s no Tim Gunn (who could be??) but if she, at heart, gave a shite, she would make a stab at reproducing that bon voyage ritual.

I was fine with Mondo winning. I like him (but Austin is my #1 fave). I think Mondo deserves a prize simply for getting and keeping his hair in such a colossal Mohawk. Impressive. I think, as far as my personal fave that I would actually wear...I actually liked Kara Janx’s best. (and what’s with her having so damn much “game” anyway? And I’m not talking design game either....that fellah she accosted in the park was all sorts of twitterpated..) Out of the top 3, I liked Rami’s best. I did quite agree that his fedora was irksome—it was altogether too jaunty to be worn in a real-life, non runway scenario (except by the most victimized of fashion victims) but I DO hate it when the designers get penalized for little nitpicky issues of styling.