I don’t miss TV…

I think I spent my extra hour yesterday watching television shows. Now, regular blog readers are aware that SB and I do not have television reception. When we watch TV shows, it’s at Sailor Parent’s house or care of the fabulous wonderment of Netflix. But, lo, I have no discovered that nbc.com will show me the latest episode of any of their shows. Ruh-roh.

So I decided to give Studio 60 another go. I’m a big fan of The West Wing — such a fan, actually, that SB and I got the pilot of Studio 60 on Netflix before the show began. The pilot was cute, I thought, but didn’t really wow me. Then we watched the second episode. Then we stopped. I’ve heard mixed reviews, mostly that the comedy show-within-a-show isn’t actually very funny and that it spends too much time preaching to you. Now, the preaching was pretty common on The West Wing, but it really fit with the characters there. They were actively and earnestly trying to save the world in every episode. The stuff they dealt with was important — wars, and people starving and national budgets and stuff. With Studio 60, I expected they’d still think it was important, but more in a Sports Night kind of way. I expected them to have more personality, more sense of humor.

I did not expect a ten minute tour of the flipping sound stage. Yawn. Plus, the whole “he was a blacklisted writer” thing was telescoped way out, perhaps mostly because it was a rehash of about eight different The West Wing plotlines. It just felt so done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen this storyline. Random person wanders into your temple-of-work, and you try to dismiss him but it turns out he knows a lot more about it than you and is a piece of living history. It’s like that West Wing episode where Charlie found the letter written to Roosevelt. And once again, the Aaron Sorkin hiring committee busts out and hires the weirdest people for the job openings in the weirdest ways possible. Who hires a staff writer like they’re recruiting for the CIA? In The West Wing, it worked because, well, sometimes they were actually recruiting for the CIA. Here… not so much.

Word on the street is that this show isn’t going to last out the season. I want it to hit its groove, really I do, because I dearly, dearly loved TWW… but I’m a huge Sorkin fan and I don’t see the need to be going back for more episodes. So I can’t imagine what people who aren’t big fans are thinking.

So anyway, that was that. Usually I heard about the goings-on of Studio 60 in the same breath as 30 Rock, which is the Tina Fey sitcom (I can’t be the only person who always wants to write Tina Fet, like she walked out of Attack of the Clones or something, can I?) about the goings-on backstage at another SNL-type show. I find it odd that the same network is pitting a drama against a sitcom about the same topic. I also find the sitcom itself to be extremely, extremely, extremely odd. It’s partially the filming style, which is very out of the ordinary (and not in a good way) — doesn’t have that “set” feeling. Also, the short, jumpy scenes, the total lack of soundtrack, I just wasn’t quite sure what I was watching. Add that to a bunch of really, really unfunny jokes, and a plot that was cut whole cloth out of a Sex in the City episode from, what? Eight years ago? Ten? and I’m wondering what everyone is raving about.

I finally did watch the latest episode of Veronica Mars, btw. (Usual white text.) Eh. I don’t understand it, personally. I’m not clear on how a lowly Vanity Fair reporter actually bugs a cellphone, and how many hours of inane cellphone conversations he must have listened to to get to the one moment in time wherein Logan actually tracked down Charlie and called him, not to mention how the conversation between Logan and Real! Charlie must have progressed, unless Logan left a message for Charlie and it was Fake! Cahrlie that called back. Also, did the guy in the ATM photo look familiar to anyone else? Anyhoo, not exactly up to snuff, IMO. Or maybe I’m just spoiled by watching whole seasons at once on DVD.

So I’ll go back to televion on DVDs, I think. We’re working our way through Battlestar Galactica at the moment, which is very well done, but so frickin’ bleak I need a lot of breathing room between each disc.

We watched some movies this weekend as well. Just like Heaven, the film version of the novel If Only It Were True, which I received in a goody bag in RWA a few years back. I remember it saying on the front cover that it was soon to be a motion picture, but the title change threw me for a loop and I never did see it in theaters. (The book is very good.) Anyway, it was cute. Reese Witherspoon is always top notch, and there were some genuinely funny scenes, but the romantic conflict felt vaguely slight to me. But if you’re looking for a sweet story with some good performances (and one of the most beautiful apartments you ever will see) check it out.

Then we saw Failsafe, and, apparently much like everyone else who saw it, enjoyed it decidedly less than Dr. Strangelove. What can I say? I like my nuclear holocausts with a dose of satire. But it did freak me out. How in the world did we ever survive the Cold War? Seriously… how? And of course, it gave me bad dreams, none of which starred a matador, one of which required me to avert the bombers by entering the Maori name for New Zealand into the bombers’ radio signals, and of course, I couldn’t remember if it was Aeoteroa or Aotearoa (it’s the latter).

I have weird dreams.

And we watched Broadcast News, and for people who know more about movies than me (yes, Gina, I’m talking to you), how old are the characters supposed to be in that film? Late 20s? early 30s? They look a little older than me, but I’m not sure if I think that because I tend to think of those actors as being older than me or because it was the 80s or because they were older than me but were supposed to be playing my age or what. Sailor Boy’s theory is that it’s a film about how the stuff you do in your twenties doesn’t end up mattering all that much anyway. I don’t know how much I liked the denounment of the story, which felt flat (yet inexorable), but I really did enjoy the characters and how it refused to take the easy way out at any opportunity. It felt very real. I also loved the DC setting, of course, which made it feel even more real, and that these people might be friends of mine. Also, William Hurt has a cute butt. Oh, and the character of Sally, the tall, beautiful late night producer slut that Casey sleeps with in Sports Night is totally based on Jennifer. (Sailor Boy has instructed me to clarify that he was the one to point that out.)

And, to round up this whole film-entertainment weekend here at Diana’s Diversions, we also re-watched The Big Lebowski and Moulin Rouge. Classics, still such joys to watch. There are a few movies out or coming out that I’m looking forward to. The Prestige, One Night with the King (might wait for that on DVD) and The Fountain, which I’m totally seeing on the big screen and I don’t care who tells me it’s supposed to be some incomprehensible mess. It shall be my big incomprehensible mess. Mine and Hugh Jackman’s.