My new Storytellers Unplugged essay is online: Tracking submissions, in which I discuss mild OCD and keeping track of where your short stories are, were and could be.
They did something on Survivor that telegraphed the final vote. By not showing certain conversations, it made it clear to me that Sugar was safe. If they had been planning to carry through their option of blindsiding her to get the immunity idol out of play, they would have showed conversations with her about “the plan.” Since they didn’t I was pretty sure they’d all decided to get rid of GC or JC or JG or whatever the heck his name was. I’m surprised more people don’t crack under the pressure. Every other season or so, someone decides they can’t hack it. I wonder what would have happened if the elephant had decided to charge the two bozos in the canoe…
C.S.I. was pretty good, though a little heavy-handed with the parallel between the guy who pulled the plug on his comatose wife and Gil’s relationship with Sarah. “Who exactly are we talking about here?” she asks, just in case we didn’t get the duality.
My favorite line of last night came from Life on Mars. Harvey Keitel and the rest of the NYPD has the drop on the bad guys. Keitel yells out: “Freeze, you’re surrounded by armed bastards.” The way Michael Imperioli’s character played Sam was very well done. He had me convinced that he was softening. What a performance. The fight between Sam and the lieutenant in the hospital room was a nice piece of comic relief. I had the getaway driver pegged the moment the robber came out, guns a-blazing, heading straight for that car. The introduction of the little lunar explorer robot is fascinating, a LOST-like element. The big question mark, like one of the stations on LOST island. I wonder if the trippy naked neighbor is going to be a regular. The choice of “I am a Rock” was interesting for the denouement, and the superposition of “and an island never cries” over that particular piece of Manhattan geography was well conceived, I thought. Sam still hasn’t done anything to take advantage of his knowledge of the future (other than an offhand aside about not getting too attached to Nixon).
In the “I’m Not Dead Yet” department: The Boston Red Sox, making history one more time with a come-from-behind win when down 7-0.
