One more on the Bones finale

So apparently Obijuan and I weren't alone on hating what happened in the Season Finale of Bones.

CC

Excuses, the Bones season finale, and writers strike bitching.

Sorry I've been so lax in updating. The Write-On competition (which is how you get on to journals at GULC) is kicking my ass. My grades were respectable by any non-law-school standard, but not that great law-school-wise, so I'm going to have to rock this to make it onto a journal.

(I probably won't rock this. Seriously. Even the case we're supposed to be commenting on completely sucks. But I am trying.)

Anyway... I did catch the season finale for Bones last night. And as much as I appreciated the bathtub scene with David Boreanaz (Seriously. Thank you for that scene.) I am confused on a couple of points.

If everything happened the way it looked like it happened with the explosion:

What was the point?

Who stole the skeleton?

Why did Goremegon's assistant think it was rational to sacrifice himself for something so, well, silly? (That might be question one again, but seriously...)

What's the deal with his motivation for working with Gormegon anyway? I mean, an earlier episode revealed that this person had a support system that I envied. Why did he do this?

I assume they are going for brainwashing here, but I just did a paper on brainwashing (indeed, my entire practice case comment for my legal writing class was on the admissibility of evidence of brainwashing and the jurisprudential upshot of accepting brainwashing as a defense, explanation or mitigating factor) and brainwashing doesn't really work the way Bones made it look at all, and this is a show that is normally pretty decent on the science.

The acting in the episode was awesome. But the writing was some of the worst I've ever seen in TV, though I've gotten used to that this season. The writer's strike has not made me appreciate the writers at all as I wasn't terribly sympathetic to large portions of their cause in the first place* and it has produced so much bad writing.

CC

* The Networks' argument "You did get paid once to write the five minute episode we're putting on the web for free to promote the show. We're not getting paid when we show it, so we're not going to pay royalties for every view. That said, these things make the show more popular, which helps keep you in a job and insures that the show will end up syndicated, so everybody wins." made sense to me.

But then every bit of writing I've ever done professionally I did on a "We paid you to write it once, now we own it and will use it as we like" basis, so the "We're not being fairly compensated unless we get paid every time you use our work" argument seems really odd. Or maybe I'm just jealous.

Brief bitching about Project Runway

I really don't get the difference between "having a strong point of view" and "doing the same thing over and over."

You knew Jillian the Whiner was going to do some tight little jacket (though it was interesting to see her do the “lining matching the outfit” thing that Chris did last week) and Christian was going to do big puffy sleeves. And that's good?

And Rami's admittedly gorgeous draping done over and over and Chris' using something similar to that funky collar he did for the couture episode is bad? WTF?

I’m glad my Big Gay Boyfriend Chris will live to make it work another day, but it all seems very arbitrary. I worry that Chris has to do the runoff challenge with Rami and that Rami’s technical skill will lead to Chris getting kicked off. But Rami has been getting worse and less interesting. Here’s hoping he self-destructs.

CC

Spike and Angel action figures that appear to be making out

Posted by request

If it is wrong to love this music video, I don't want to be right

Hat tip to Peacebang

CC reality TV report

(I'm only watching two reality shows, so this will be short.)

America's Next Top Model- It is becoming very clear that Saleisha will win. The judges love her and are apparently totally unable to see the blantant fakeness of her asskissery. I was amazed at how happy I was that a girl who was merely bitchy won the challenge. For two straight seasons, my favorite model has come in fifth and been kicked off at the go-see episode.

Project Runway- The only way Sweet Pea could annoy me more would be if she were to tell the world she's UU. (Don't know that she is, but she seems like the type.) I'm rooting for Kit, partially because she reminds me of Veronica Mars.

Is this the best damn season of CSI ever, or what?

I've got a lot going on and I'm afraid I'm not smart enough to blog about something more interesting than TV.

If I were, I would mention that two Episcopal churches in my area have broken off to join the Nigerian Anglican church. I mean, those churches accepting the leadership of an African-run denomination seems pretty amazing. I guess sometimes homophobia is stronger than racism.

But again, the last scence of CSI tonight left me gaping at the television.

CC

Veronica Mars is so damn good. (Spoiler to last night's episode)

Last week's episode had Patty Hearst as a guest star.

This week, we find out that the solution to the mystery at the center of the story arc involved Stockholm syndrome.

It's the best, most thoughtfully written show on TV, kids. Seriously.

CC

And on last night's Boston Legal...

The guy with Asperger's was in trouble again and needed to be saved. Gee, NEVER would have seen that coming. Candace Bergan was like "I wonder what he's done now?"

This suggests to me that perhaps David E. Kelley gets that this is getting old. But then, there's a lot about this show that's getting old and he's not fixing anything else...

CC

Veronica Mars screws up the Stanford Prison Experiment

I get that there's something kinda weird about complaining about a show when as far as I know, I'm the only one on my blogsphere who watches it. But I have to say that this week's Veronica Mars really screwed up when they tried to do an episode where some of the characters took part in an experiment that roughly mirrored the Stanford Prison Experiment.

If you're not familiar with the Stanford Prison Experiment, basically a researchr at Standford put together a "prison" and assigned students randomly to be "gaurds" and "inmates," then watched them interact.

It got out of hand.

It got out of hand SO QUICKLY, in fact, that soon the researcher himself was acting like a warden trying to prevent a prison break. The students BECAME vindictive gaurds and traumatized prisoners in literally hours.

This is a really important experiment, and one that explains everything about how things like Abu Gharib happen and why the individual soldiers there aren't so much at fault as the people higher up who set up the situation the way they did. When Abu Gharib broke, the prison experiment was the first thing I thought of.

And my favorite show on television really screwed it up.

They did a watered down version where one guy turned really mean and one other guy turned really submissive, but everyone else was more or less their own lovable selves. Ironically, the show's setup was even worse with the "prisoners" knowing the address where a bomb had been left and the "gaurds" charged with finding out that information before the bomb went off and people were killed. I can't imagine what would have happened if the real prison experiment had included that element. I get that it's a TV show, but it really irritated me as I want more people to know about the Stanford Prison Experiment and what it meant.

I suspect the intention of the show was to teach people about the experiment, but I suspect the show will have the opposite effect, teaching them that the experiment went fine.

Anyway, if you'd like more information, please check out the link above.

CC

Desperate Housewives thoughts

1. I thought the scene with Bree and Andrew was very well-written and well-acted. Bree brought that particular bit of difficulty on herself by messing with Peter's recovery, but still, she was just heartbreaking to watch tonight. I heart Bree.

2. Gabrielle sure did get over losing that baby quickly.

3. I'm glad Lynette gets a dramatic plot. Her husband is such a little kid.

4. Ok, so Karl did cheat on Edie with Susan. So why doesn't Edie burn KARL's house down? (I know, old complaint. But the assumption that men can't take responsibility for their own sex lives has always bugged me. It's so universal, though. I'm sure Catharine of Aragon blamed Anne Boelyn...)

CC

Has anybody proved that TV is dangerous?

I got:

I would say that Tv commercials do as much damage to that as drugs do. Let's get rid of them....:-)

in my comments box and it made me wonder. Are there any studies supporting that TV is as dangerous as people think it is? I've had this argument with LinguistFriend a few times recently as well and the issue is making me curious.

I get that it can be a contributing factor to obesity, but I guess I'm looking for something a little more direct.

To me, it seems evident that illegal drugs are easily traced to a whole range of societal ills, while television and television commercials are imperfect ways to spend one's time but to me pretty obviously not as damaging. Crystal Meth kills people, thighmaster ads do not.

I know TV violence gets a pretty bad rap, but the studies are inconclusive, as far as I've heard. My mom said once that she saw a sstudy where they let kids watch the Power Rangers and then go out on the playground. They immediately started kicking. Not kicking each other, kicking the air. On continued observation, there was a lot of air kicking, but this never actually translated into kicking each other. This is very consistent with how I remember behaving as a child.

My suspicion is that Joel is right that people are quite selective of thier vices. I don't know that I've met anyone who claims television screwed up their minds and continues to smoke up, but I'm pretty confident they exist.

But for the rest of us, if you had to choose between letting your kid watch Desperate Housewives and letting your kid smoke up, would it really be a hard choice?

CC

Wince-worthy

Boston Legal is one of my favorite shows on television, but I made it exactly four minutes into last night's episode.

If you saw the beginning of last night's Boston Legal, not all people with Asperger's are like that. That said, the general pattern of how they behave when under lots of pressure matches my experience well.

I am a great fan of mysteries. Without thinking anything of it, I watch body parts and people interviewed about their recently murdered spouses and all sorts of things that will be highly disturbing in real life.

But that I couldn't watch.

Always odd what's going to get to you...

CC

Can we lay off Dolly already?

I got on PeaceBang about this at her site, but it is far from just her who is being snide about Dolly Parton this year. (And this post should not be taken as a response to PB, more a rant in general.) The snotty essay in the Washington Post made fun of her, too.

The last straw for me was the E online coverage called her "Best Visual effect," writing "Sure, the Kong guys won the award, but we were left stunned by how lifelike Dolly Parton appeared."

Oh har de freakin' har. I'm sorry, the woman turned down a "Natural Woman" award from Jane Magazine because she said she wasn't a natural woman and didn't want to be photographed as one. I think that we all get that she wears a lot of makeup, has had some work done and that she is delightfully, unabashedly, redneck.

If we're all done showing how sophisticated we are by making fun of her, I'd like to review the reasons Dolly Parton kicks ass:

-She took Jane Fonda on a bus trip through Appalachia and made her eat possum. Somebody had to.

-She started and funds a kickass charity called Imagination Library that sends poor kids a new book every month for their first five years.

-She's a gay icon. (As Shakespere's Sister put it, "Ever been to a drag show without a Dolly?") But she doesn't feel the need to deny the rumors she's a lesbian. The people making fun of her should be so sophisticated.

-She's been married to the same guy for four decades. He's never in the spotlight because he apparently doesn't want to be. If it's ever an issue between them, Dolly hasn't told us because it's none of our business.

-When she gets an idea from another, younger, singer, she tells the world. She credited Norah Jones with her recent decision to go with more piano work.

-She can't even bring herself to say something mean about Jolene This is like when Jackie O refused to invite Arthur Miller to a state dinner because he had publically mistreated Marilyn Monroe. It's that level of respect for and kindness toward other women.

-She has her own Muppet, Polly Darton

-She produced a documentary about the AIDS quilt, she wrote 9 to 5, she doesn't lie about her age, she's told the world that she admired the way the town prostitute dressed back home in Locust Grove and still dresses like her today.

-She sung a cover of "Stairway to Heaven."

'Nuff said.

CC

CC and the CSO’s guide to watchable SNL skits

Saturday Night Live actually does not suck if you have TiVo. It takes like half an hour to watch, but the good parts are still really good. For the past few months, TheCSO and I have been working on a guide for those TiVoing SNL. We like to minimize the suckage by predicting early on if a skit will be funny or not.

Here are the guidelines we've figured out;

Keep watching:
-Weekend Update. (Duh!)
-Anything about a convention
-Tina Fey
-Hardball with Chris Matthews
-Rachel Dratch as Debbie Downer.
-Will Forte as Tim Conway
-Anything where Keenan Thompson makes fun of slam poetry
-High school kids putting on some sort of show
-President Bush

Good signs:
-Maya Rudolph, unless she’s playing Donatella Versace
-Pirates
-Celebrities playing themselves
-Goths
-Will Forte
-Parodies of news shows

Bad signs:
-Set in a restaurant (very few good skits are set in restaurants. Last really good one CC can remember was last Mother’s Day although the one with the Amtrak lady a few weeks ago was passable.)
-Set in an office
-Set in the future
-Set at a party
-Set at a hospital
-Horatio Sanz
-Parody celebrity interview shows

Just go ahead and hit fast forward:
-Set in Target
-Horatio Sanz in a dress
-Someone playing a kid
-Merv the Perv
-Set in Outer Space

CC expresses an opinion on something she knows nada about

I was reading a magazine article about Skating with the Stars in the grocery store today and something occurred to me.

The show features actors (of both genders) and skaters (of both genders) and has them paired, male-to-female, one actor with one skater.

And I realized that I would be delgihted to bet any reader of this blog a home cooked meal that the winning pair will have a male skater and a female actor.

Why?

Because what I've observed of ice dancing is that it involves a lot of fancy tricks lifting the woman up in the air.

If, say, Lloyd Eisler (Skater dude) drops Kristy Swanson (the girl from "Ferris Bueller" who tells the home ec teacher Ferris passed out at 31 Flavors) funny, no big deal. Even less of a big deal given that Kristy Swanson did stunt work for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and knows how to fall.

But if, say, Dave Coulier (guy from Full House) drops Nancy Kerrigan and she falls badly, that could end her career.

So my guess is that a male skater/female actor pairing is a shoe in as there's no way the female skaters are going to be dumb enough to let some actor who just learned to skate lift them.

Are there holes in this logic I'm not seeing?

CC
who just loves to ponder this sort of thing and likes having a blog to ponder it on.

Still more cheesy pop culture blogging

What the heck, I'm on vacation.

Observations:

• Utah Whitney once told me that I look like Juliette Lewis. As I'm watching Juliette Lewis host a VH1 special while I wrap Christmas presents, I do not believe that I look like her. I do sort of talk like her and make similar facial expressions, though. It's sort of creepy to look at her and note how I would look and come off if I were hip.
  
  Ah well.
  
  
• Some lady from US Weekly just whined "It's like Meatloaf's I would do anything for Love, but I won't do that video. You never find out what THAT is..."
  
  In googling the lyrics, I discovered the Wikipedia Article also maintains that we can't know what "That" is.
  
  Weird. Seems very obvious to me from the lyrics in the end:
  
  
  [Woman:] After a while you'll forget everything
  It was a brief interlude and a midsummer night's fling
  And you'll see that it's time to move on
  
  [Meatloaf:] I won't do that! No I won't do that!
  
  [Woman:] I know the territory, I've been around
  It'll all turn to dust and we'll all fall down
  And sooner or later, you'll be screwing around
  
  [Meatloaf:] I won't do that! No I won't do that!
  
  So the message is: I would do anything for love, except love someone who isn't you.
  
  Sounds reasonable enough to me. If I knew how to change the Wiki article, I would.
  
  
• Madonna's new retro-70s look is really sort of cute.
  
  
• The Pussycat Dolls is a former burlesque troupe who are now pop singers. The first time I walked into the new Victoria's Secret flagship store near my house, the Pussycat Dolls' first single, "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was HOT like ME" was playing. I will forever associate the two. It's a stupid song and the band continues my tradition of liking bands with stupid names. (I really like the Butthole Surfers' music, but have real trouble saying their name.)
  
  
• Weezer should let theCSO and I hang out with them. We would really fit in.
  
  

CC