yoga, books, movies, tv & too many crime procedurals – not necesarily in that order
Not even halfway through the second episode and it’s perfectly clear: Rizzoli & Isles would make a better drinking game than cop show.
1. Drink when Jane sounds hysterical.
2. Drink when Maura can’t relate interpersonally.
3. Drink when Jane disagrees with her mother.
4. Drink when her partner gags.
5. Drink when you hear a Boston accent (actually you should do a shot because it doesn’t happen all that often).
6. Drink when Jane acts hysterical.
7. Drink when Maura uses big scientific words no one will understand. Unless you’ve been a drug rep or taken anat & phys.
8. Drink when Jane disagrees with her boss. I’d be hammered already in this episode.
9. Drink when the whole ‘girls can be cops too’ trope comes up. Ugh. Double shot if “affirmative action” is used.
10. Drink when you hear any of Jane’s “quirky” ringtones. DOUBLE Ugh.
So about a month ago I started having a problem with my phone, where the screen wouldn’t scroll correctly and it would freeze up sometimes. I’m incredibly lazy so since it was functional I didn’t do anything. Then it froze enough that I had to restart it – which took an inordinately long time – and then my theme didn’t come up the right way. While in Glenwood Springs I stopped into the Verizon store and the worker “reset” my phone. At that point it took about 10 minutes to boot and when it DID come up, all the screens were wonky. Thanks for that.
Today I finally called Verizon. They had me do the soft reset and it took about 10 minutes to boot again. This time when it came up, the screens were back to normal. Except because the boot time was way wrong and there’s clearly something bad with the phone, she transferred me to the REAL tech support. We do another kind of reset and discover there’s a force close error that shouldn’t be there. We delete all my personal info and reset it again. Error. Now we’re going to replace my phone. Great.
Except in the meantime, now all my info is on my SD card and whereas my phone was b0rked but totally functional, now I get this GD force close error almost EVERY time I do something. I can’t wait for Wednesday.
Tonight’s dinner experiment was prompted by a Food Network show. We’re making our own deep dish pizza.
We started with a refrigerated thin crust, a layer of sliced provolone, a layer of pepperoni, a layer of shredded mozz, a layer of sliced mushrooms, a layer of Italian sausage, red bell pepper, red onion, diced tomatoes and topped with pizza sauce. We’re cooking it in the oven at 375 for at least 30 minutes. I’m not convinced we’ll need to cook it longer because everything inside is already cooked.
ETA: At 30 minutes I put foil over the pizza to protect the crust and let it cook for another 20 minutes. Motherfucking DELICIOUS.
Did everything right that Rizzoli & Isles did wrong:
1. Set up some ‘agency’ to help suspend disbelief
2. Introduce backstory in a ‘necessary’ way
3. One outlandish element
4. Good action/good story/interesting characters that aren’t beating you over the head (too much- the bathroom scene was a little ridiculous)
5. Then they even explained away outlandish element in a believable way! This was double-bonus as I’d already enjoyed the show enough to actively ignore it!
Definitely a win. Fun entertainment.
It’s a great premise. Really. Buddy-chicks solving crime. I’m TOTALLY DOWN for it. BUT.
This pilot was a hot mess.
It started out with a nicely ominous montage of a crime. And then went downhill rapidly.
P.S. WTF is it with every show set in Boston needing to have some vaguely Irish music for its theme. I mean really.
Right off the bat we get the nosy family and I’M A TOMBOY WHICH MEANS I DON’T KNOW HOW TO ACT AROUND PEOPLE. Grr. Don’t love it but I can live with it. Then the puking homicide detective. Really? He wouldn’t have known dead bodies make him puke before the promotion? And they would promote him anyhow? WTF.
Then we get the creepy dude who’s always the creepy dude and it’s a dead ripoff of Silence of the Lamb so can we PLEASE STOP DOING THIS, what with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins having pretty much KILLED IT? You won’t do it as well. Please stop trying. Also, WTF with giving the guy EXACTLY what he wanted? And her dude partner having to stick up for her all the time? I mean, what kind of shitty tomboy IS SHE.
Oh, she’s the kind of shitty tomboy who’s a TOTAL CUNT to her mother. WTF was THAT?!
Meet our quirky and interesting Coroner who is very quirky and interesting! She doesn’t wear jeans! She has a turtle! She’s quirky! And interesting! Feh.
Of course there’s a guy so BOTH female leads must be interested because penis = attraction. Seriously, people. WTF.
Then she’s the dumbest cop ever. WTF. Leaves the car, running through the woods yelling, apologizes for DOING HER JOB and tackling what should have been the bad guy. Dear guy cop, if you don’t want to get tackled you should tell the other cops that YOU’RE IN THE FUCKING WOODS. Suck it. I’m actually totally annoyed that she was all sissy about having done it and then APOLOGIZED. IT WAS HIS FAULT. YOU ARE THE WORST TOMBOY EVAR.
Also, the tantrums. Because seriously, this female cop who needs to be better than all the guys because she is the only girl was seriously throwing TANTRUMS about people not telling her stuff. Stomping her feet even. And then when they finally tell her, she whips out some bullshit “this isn’t in the report but I know it because I’m so much smarter” crack the case crap. WTF. WHY WOULD THAT NOT BE IN THE REPORT.
The van. I’m not even sure what to say about getting in the van other than, really WTF.
And the finale – let’s not forget that – where she TURNS HER BACK on the twitchy bad guy to cut herself free rather than SHOOT THE FUCKER because he’s twitching. Really? I mean, WHAT THE BLUE FUCK. I’m pretty sure that if someone tortured and almost killed me and then tried another shot at it and I’ve got a gun, I’m capping his ass before I worry about the duct tape. For reals.
I get that they were trying to be all ‘establish character’ shit but MAN was I disappointed in the ENTIRE SHOW. Spouse actually said “We don’t have to watch this anymore do we?”
I’m willing to give it two more episodes but DUDE. CHOCK full of SUCK.
That is SO my new ringtone. Last night’s True Blood served up equal parts hawt, horrifying and funny – as per usual. What I love about the series (both books and TV) is that you never get to pretend that vampires aren’t bad thing what want to eat you for dinner and maybe play with you a little beforehand (and even during). They’re actually MONSTERS. I dig that.
I have seen a lot of kvetching with regard to “oh noes, wimmen are victims.” To this I say: our media is a reflection of our society. Women are more often victims of crime (violent and not) and to pretend that would be otherwise with monsters who prey on the weak would ridiculous. Do I love it? No. But should it make you think? Absolutely. In fact, in this particular episode, Sookie WASN’T a victim and Tara was doing her best to fight back in a really really bad situation. Is it perfect? Of course not. On the other hand, show me someone fighting – someone trying – and I’m willing to go along for the ride. None of the women on this show are PASSIVE. That’s what I like about it.
Unrelated, I fucking love Lafayette. I heart Lafayette with the fire of a thousand suns. If the entire show consisted of Lafayette’s cooking in that bar I would still watch.
In other TV news, finally saw the Haven premiere. It could be good or complete crap – I’ll wait my decision on a couple of more episodes.
Tonight is new Closer AND Rizzoli & Isles! I’m inordinately excited about summer crime TV. I didn’t know that R&I was based on a crime novel series until I caught a very brief interview with the author on NPR this afternoon. Something to check out if I dig the series.
Yesterday’s movie marathon included TiMER, which was cute and interesting and I really enjoyed it. I also watched Daniel Tosh do standup (hilarious), Bright Star (Keats bio-pic-ish) which was very good and Suspect Zero which was…better than I expected. A bit predictable but all in all a decent film.
