W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

Look at the Dr. Phil Website and you can see her photo pop-up! Jennifer and Carol Marine co-wrote a book, NO ONE'S THE BITCH, about making peace with moms and step-moms so the whole family runs smoother. They'll all be on the Dr. Phil show this Tuesday -- click on Tuesday to read more: www.drphil.com.

Very cool! We're all so proud of her. We're having a reshowing on Wednesday night at the home of friends. We'll all bring a potluck dish based on the letter of our last name. For me:

Water (sparkling)
Wheat-free mac and cheese
Watermelon (if I feel like going to the store again)

Visit Jennifer's blog where she reports more life lessons weekly or so: www.noonesthebitch.com.

We had 13 women for the Austin Writergrrls lunch today, Halloween. Ooooh, spooky! At the Ironworks BBQ downtown, where they have huge beef ribs to gnaw on. Scary!

But they're all central Texas women who are creative, smart and funny. So, not so spooky unless you're a de-evolved man who's scared by smart females. If so, may you piss your pants and run the other way. Smart women rule!

Update: Dr. Marjorie (she's a psychologist who drives up all the way from San Antonio) made this animated photo album of it! http://gallery.me.com/marjoriebrody#100366.

It was very cool to have so many wonderful things to celebrate, too! One friend's mystery novel, her first book, has an editor asking to buy it. Another friend's fantasy novel, a past WLT novel contest winner, was just completed and she's sent it to a couple of writing contests. I had my good fortune at the Hawaii Writers Conference to talk about. One friend is in a well-deserved new relationship with a wonderful guy who doesn't have "danger" associated with his name in any way (that's the story of another friend).

But the biggest news is that one friend who released her "How To" family relationships book this year has been filmed by the Dr. Phil Show and is scheduled to appear there in the studios in an upcoming episode! WOOOOOOOOOT! More on that, with links and names, as it becomes a real, contract-signed event.

I watch TV. I don't watch all TV; I find the shows I enjoy that are also affecting the cultural zeitgeist, and those I try to keep up with. The Emmy Show was fun for me (except for the reality TV part) because I knew what was going on and who deserved to win what. But also frustrating because I refuse to buy more than basic cable, so I've never actually seen an episode of MAD MEN... So here are some comments about the new season.

F-Bomb on SNL
We heard just last month that Lorne Michaels fired, in what seemed to be a polite way, some of the women (only!) on Saturday Night Live. "Bitch, pleeeze" Micheala Watkins was one of them. But they got some new female talent, which begs the question of what the new women could have the old ones didn't. So I watched SNL last night, first show of the new season. Host Megan Fox was actually both beautiful and had good comedic timing. Yeah, they had way too many skits that required her to stand there and look sexy and vacant. But when she talked, each character was individuated, especially the Texas airline hostess. But now Kristen Wiig is getting way overused, and looks creepily skinny and twitchy from it. Then new girl Jenny Slate doing a new (annoying) biker chick character, totally forgot to use the right "fricking" "frigging" adjective, and then dropped character right after she blurted the F-bomb on live TV. Don't see that she's improved things.

GLEE Needs Better Story Logic
Yes, that first early episode of GLEE got me hooked on the characters, writing and performing (appears many people are downloading the emotion-filled musical scenes). Three episodes in to the season now, I'm finding that the creators are having a hard time balancing so many plotlines in this worthy, large ensemble cast with the musical acts that everyone expects. What's suffering is the logic in the character arcs. Like how lovable teacher Mr. Schuester, our #1 protagonist, gave up Glee practice for 6+ weeks to create his (old) boy band. His determination and obsession launched the show and is the core plotine; a discursion like that might happen in the middle of the season as the frustrations get him down, but to have him shrug off the kids and the club right away?? It messes with our sympathy for him and our commitment to the plot. And to have sassy singer Mercedes, the most street and tell-it-like-it-is character, get a crush on swishy fashion-plate Kurt and believe the airhead cheerleaders that he has a crush on her?!! Some of these developments feel like the episode is glopped together just to get Singer X with background Singers A, B, C for some number they want to produce. Story comes first! (An aside: the thuggish mohawk-wearing Puck is played by Mark Sailing from Dallas. That explains my weird feeling of frisson when he's in his football outfit talking; he's got the accent of the Texas jocks I grew up with.)

COUGAR TOWN Is Better Than You'd Think
They cheat somewhat, because Courtney Cox-Arquette may be in her 40s, but she is gorgeously preserved and lithe. When they want to show the effects of aging, they have to have stunt flab and wrinkles. She could totally get any legal, hetero male of any age she wanted. But for the purposes of the show, divorced for 6 months from a parasitic slime bag, she has troubles finding men to date. So she busts loose with college boys, and really enjoys it, when she's not having a guilt melt-down. But the writing is really funny with lots of sexy details. It'll become quotable soon, just wait.

VAMPIRE DIARIES Is Also Better Than You'd Think
It has the tortured vampire guy (Paul Wesley) trying to make it as a human high school kid. Of course, he's 160 years old and looks like a 28 year old man, but... He's got a full-on murderous vampire "brother" (the pretty Ian Somerhalder; hope he grows into acting smouldering and Jack-Nicholson-flippant) trying to screw things up. One of the plot twists is that you can survive on fake blood, but the mesmerizing vampire powers come from living on human blood, so Stefan can't best Damon with strength or undo his mind-warps. And it's set in that Hollywood High School world where everybody is a nubile, sexually expressive free-agent. The teenagers have only one annoying teacher/coach, and the rest of the adults seem to provide unlimited cars, stylish clothes, funds, party locations. Oh, and somehow a small community can have multiple people going to the hospital or morgue with their throats torn out and nobody gets torches and stakes together. So those are the silly tropes in this. I'd heard the L.J. Smith books are not well written, but the saving grace of this show is that the dialog is AWESOME. Again and again it's so underwritten, uses the deal of words that aren't spoken because of danger or conflict, but they hang in the air anyway and you totally know what they are. The kids are narcissistic and talk that way, but the sad Elena, now an orphan, has other concerns so her dialogue is different. Stefan has to not-say lots of things to keep his cover, so his dialogue is especially tense. Some good writers on that show!

AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL Is Really Bugging
This is the one reality show I watch and my embarrassing confession. This season it's short girls -- 5'7" and under. Tyra Banks is going to change the fashion industry, y'all! Yeah, like she changed it for bitchy plus-sized Whitney, who won two seasons ago and has no high fashion career whatsoever. The designers make their runway clothes for size 0, six-foot-tall girls. Tyra ain't gonna change that! It's just not going to end well.

MERLIN is being promoted as the BBC England's first attempt at exporting a TV series for American audiences. I applaud that they use the British historical fantasy and re-tell it, in the story of Camelot and the Round Table. Only in this story, King Uther lives, at least long enough to browbeat his teenage son Arthur. And Merlin is not an old wise man who teaches Arthur, but his same age. Merlin is being tutored by (Richard King as) Gauis, the King's herbalist, but they have to keep the fact he knows magic on the down low. King Uther has forbidden magic in Camelot, on pain of death!

Which is part of the problem with the plotting on this series so far. Every episode has the same arc, the same problem. Poor Anthony Head, his King Uther character serves no other purpose except to be mule-headed and cause plot problems. He behaves like a spoiled nut, just so our main characters can have obstacles to overcome. Must every story have Uther say, "Take him to the dungeon! No magic allowed here!"? Must every story have Arthur, a spoiled teenager but good fighter, be pimped out for death by his own father? There's also a lot of people saying "okay" and "that's gotta hurt" and other modern slang. They also have the rules of chivalry and the knights, but it's not something Arthur created to fix the abuses of the upper classes who believed "might makes right." It's just used as a convenient plot problem when someone (Launcelot, last week for example) needs to be frozen out.

I do like cute little Colin Morgan as Merlin with his delicious dimples. And how fun to have a Guinevere who's a ladies maid with a crush on Merlin. Plus she's played by someone who appears to be a Maori actress!

I'll watch one more episode, but if it keeps being these lame-o stories, it's a waste of my time.

I still use a macintosh G4 tower in my home office. The Safari browser has been limping along, pretty much broken down on YouTube & wouldn't let me access Facebook & crashed several times a day (and people do NOT try to make their sites backwards compatible anymore, yo!) -- so I had Bryan my handy mac guru come out and upgrade. I'm on a new version of Leopard, some directory things that were broken are now fixed, and so...

I can watch THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT! Whenever I want, right on my mac! And re-watch episodes of 30ROCK and pick up on some weird & very funny offhand comments and bits of business in the background. It's like it's 2009 all up in here!

Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you're delayed watching TV...

GLEE - I wasn't going to get hooked on any new TV, but dang. This one had so much positive press. Entertainment Weekly raved, other major pubs did too. People kept saying it was hysterically funny... Actually no, it's only humorous. Maybe as Jane Lynch (love her!) gets more into her alpha bitch role it'll get funnier. But more than that it has heart. I didn't want to watch high school music nerds (I was a drama nerd; plus my school didn't have a glee club), but dang if this didn't really intrigue me. The teacher with the self-important, high-maintenance wife, while the perfect woman for him is the guidance counselor in the school. It reminds me more than a little of HAMLET2 from last year with Steve Coogan playing a deluded drama instructor with a baby-obsessed wife. Anyway, I have to say, when the scrappy group of kids put aside their differences, teamed up and made a performance out of a Journey (!! yuck!!) song, Don't Stop Believing, well I did wind up crying. Surprised the hell outta me, but they got the hopeful, heartfelt thing right! -- UPDATE: This is not a show starting this summer; what they did this week was just an early premiere of a fall show. I hear the YouTube replay of the song is being hugely popular too!

AMERICAN IDOL - I dislike reality shows, and this one in particular. As I posted before, it's one of the yuckiest things about this world that Simon Cowell makes millions of dollars and pounds sterling and whatever else currencies from people's huge delusions that they are All That and A Winner! But still, even I noticed this odd, magnetic, attractive guy Adam Lambert. Unusual for that show, he's a musical theater actor/singer, with dyed black hair, painted fingernails and guyliner. He's pretty open about what he is, and I love flamboyant gays like that. So I have to say that America not voting him #1 last night? It's hard not to see that as homophobic. Watching his clips online, I saw that the guy turned in some incredible performances, lots of different personas and sounds, all very personalized to his outrageous style. Like many No.2 idols, I predict his name will be huge, he'll cut records, do tours, star on Broadway.

LOST - Awesome that the creators committed to two more seasons only so had to start wrapping up storylines. In this Season Six there were plenty of cliffhangers and all the while you were seeing how the power and mystique of the island came to be. Loved that it had a scifi premise of strong magnetic energy making holes in time. I did wonder how the island could have a personality too, and reward some people and eat up the bad ones with a smoke monster. Well, in the season finale, we're introduced to two eternal, enigmatic, modern-speaking characters: Jacob and anti-Jacob. So the whole plot is the work of supernatural beings??! Not fair! That's a huge no-no in plotting a novel, and I didn't like it here either. Plus it's now recast the conflict into the eternal battle between ceiling cat and basement cat. It's cheating to start that nonsense at this late date. I'm intrigued enough to watch the final season, but disappointed in the show creators. Last-minute cheezy cop-outs on TV? How unlike Hollywood!

THE OFFICE - When Greg Daniels, one of the creators of the U.S. version of this show, was in Austin last October, he showed us outtakes from the show. He showed Jim proposing to Pam, and told us he'd tried it as a long-shot and no sound. But then he wanted their dialog heard and added it, still with a long-shot. When he asked which was better, I stood up and clearly (I think, and he sort of reacted like I did) made a case for the soundless version. I said something like, "We've seen through this whole season how hard Jim and Pam worked to have some privacy from the documentary filmmakers. If this had been with no sound, it would have been clear and still powerful, and we would've felt the beloved characters got something they very much deserved." And people clapped for that! So this season finale had Jim and Pam sharing a couple milestone, and it was silent! And we still got it! And it was more lively because we had to use our imaginations! So I feel like I deserve a story consultation fee on that episode... ha!

AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL - My one reality show failing. I've been into it for the past 4 seasons, plus I do admire and get a kick out of Tyra Banks. Color me surprised when supremely odd, wacky Allison got into the final two... And like the judges and the rest of America, I worried in the final competition when she had to walk the runway, but then the girl stomped it out! And when they had the models writhe down the runway in black mud, she slimed it out! She kinda freaked people on her first interview when she revealed she was fascinated with blood. It seemed a weird (but effective!) ploy for attention. Yet once the competition started, she remained remarkably level-headed and humble and aware of her weak points. So it turns out the blood thing is real, and she's just odd. In fact, she's so odd she had a fan base on 4chan.com -- as Creepy Chan. What's funny about the gallery on her from those days is she appears to be a waifish girl. She is skinny, with big eyes. But the girl is pushing 6 feet tall!

Masterpiece Theater is doing a 5-part presentation of the less-famous Dickens story, LITTLE DORRIT. They have a good main actress in Claire Foy, who has a pleasant, somewhat plain English face and is a small, slim, young woman. Perfect for the part of the selfless, little character. She does a lot with showing emotion in her clear, large blue eyes, which is important because Amy Dorritt ("Little Dorritt") is a character pushed around by fate and not very active, herself. However, she's the heart and soul of the plot. Behavior from her family members that we'd find unforgiveable, Amy has such grace and insight into their true pain that she can and does accept anything from them.

Matthew Macfadyen plays the other key character, the middle-aged, earnest, honest Arthur Clennan. He does okay. He's just not that appealing to me. Most of his performance in these many honorable characters he plays (Mr. Darcy in the most-recent PRIDE & PREJUDICE, for example) is in his eyebrows. They arch high above his eyes in an earnest way, so he just seems to play to that.

Andy Serkis (Gollum) plays the evil, psycho, French murderer Rigaud. He's got a fake nose and shaved-off eyebrows that make him almost unrecognizable, plus he's freaking EVIL. That guy can really get his teeth into a part. He's nightmarishly creepy in this.

There's a cast of dozens in this story, and the awesome and so-intelligent Andrew Davies keeps them all in! And does a wonderful job of spinning the story out comprehensibly, but with the big scale and big canvas of Dickens. From the lowest society to the highest, all with their own secrets and plans and relationships. It's pretty dense storytelling, especially in the first 30 minutes of the first episode. He's interviewed a lot on the PBS site about how/why/etc. and he's a great old queeny screenwriter yakking about it all with his red, red lipstick. Man, I'd love to work with him someday.

I'm interested in the Miss Wade and Tattycoram couple -- the only clear instance of Dickens writing about lesbians. Of course he describes Miss Wade as a bizarre and unappealing character who lures away Tattycoram. Typically white male Victorian distaste... And I finally placed the Mr. Pancks character -- the rent collector described as puffing around like a railway train -- but also canny and resourceful in that he uncovers the Dorrit's unclaimed fortune for them and helps to reveal the crimes of the evil Rigaud. Eddie Marsan plays him with a comical sinus-laden snort when excited. Marsan is the actor who played: a) the driving instructor guy in HAPPY-GO-LUCKY and b) the creepy bankrobber in HANCOCK. I looked and looked at his strange deepset eyes and lumpy nose forever trying to place him!

Me, I love me some period pieces, and I'm a Jane Austen completist. I own lots of Dickens dramatizations on DVD too. I might have to get this one!

I really like this season of LOST, how it's answering questions instead of giving some idiot red-shirts who present themselves and die in the same episode. But according to the mainstream entertainment magazines, there is discomfort that the underlying causes appear to be science fictional. Geektastic, is the word. Oh nos! Because SF stuff is yucky and uncool, y'all. And all those people who read and write it are like smelly and have no social skills.

Save me.

Anyway, to prevent spoilers from messing with the folks who watch the show on DVDs long after the seasons are over, I've got a few Wendy guesses I will ( hide behind the cut... )

PBS Masterpiece Theater is re-doing some classics of English literature -- which last week had Bond girl Emma Arterton as the best Tess of the D'Ubervilles ever! -- and last night I kept looking at the actor playing a pouty, sleepy eyed (but effectively sexy and cruel) Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. He had a mass of black hair falling into his face a lot which is what misled me. If he'd been bald I would have recognized him sooner --

as Jon Luc Picard's young, evil antithesis in the STNG movie NEMESIS! That movie also made good use of actor Thomas Hardy's* almost androgynous and eerily symmetrical face. And his smooth, posh accent.

But back to 21-year-old Arterton, who was so good (the look! the sometimes raspy young Yorkshire accented voice! the sadness! the passion!) as Tess Durbyfield that I'm pondering writing a fan letter. I've written only three in my life...

*one assumes he was named after the author of Tess...

One of the successful BBC-TV redo's for American audiences is the supernatural cop show, LIFE ON MARS. True, it joins a crowded genre -- probably half a dozen supernatural cop TV shows and they keep adding more. True, it does what many of those others do, which is star a British actor (Jason O'Mara, Irish guy, who is awesome!) in the lead role doing an American accent.

The supernatural premise is a little "wtf?" but they smartly keep giving you clues to how/why with each episode. And in each episode, though there are plots for that storyline, the bigger storyline of "what happened to me and how do I get back to my real life" is worked and developed also, and mined for the tons o' emotion. The premise: Sam, a 2008 cop, is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973, same town he grew up in and works in. He knows police work so he joins the squad, who heckle him about his unabashed claims of coming from the future and call him "space man." He deals with non-PC attitudes like cop brutality being part of the job, sexism, racism, homophobia, second-hand smoke, disco wear, machismo cops and their mutton chops...

The plots build in so much emotion, as Sam sees himself at age 4, about the time his father mysteriously disappeared. He makes friends with his fragile mother and tries to protect her and 'himself' based on memories from his childhood. He runs into the young, hot version of his father-figure mentor cop. Just about everyway you could pull up unresolved emotion for Sam to deal with it, they do it, and it's even more affecting because he's supposed to be a tough-guy cop who doesn't cry in public. Jason O'Mara has some great street scenes of him walking past or away from a deeply affecting moment and his expression is that of a man about to crumble. I've seen only about half of the episodes so far, but sobbed at each one.

There's funny stuff too. Sam uses 2008 knowledge to foil or respond or confound the 1973 people. When he's menaced by Black Panther types, he has to "throw down" and all he can remember is some rap that ends with "...ice ice baby." Hah!

Harvey Keitel, head of the 1973 squad, is a kingpin in most episodes because he is the classic machismo guy, but he also listens (grudgingly, ultimately) to what Sam tells him. He gets some amazing character arcs of his own. He's got the perfect face and demeanor for one of those guys too; plus I never expected to see Keitel on the small screen!

It's not getting good reviews but it is wonderfully written and acted and deserves more attention. And now, if my write-up intrigued you, you'll have to wait unti Feb 2009. It's on hiatus until then.