We supposedly have an impressive rainstorm heading our way, one that could produce 1-5″ of precipitation in the next 24 hours. We call that showers. We call that welcome, in fact. Despite the rain that we’ve had in the past month, we’re still in a drought, so the more the merrier.
My latest essay is up at FEARNet. It’s called ‘Carrie’ On and concerns the various adaptations of Carrie, including an off-broadway play that featured puppets and actors in drag. And that wasn’t the one that bombed.
We’re almost to the end of the first season of The Sopranos. We like it enough to take a risk on the complete series box set. I think it’s the sort of series that grows on you rather than grab you by the throat. One difference I’ve noticed compared to the other series we’ve watched lately is that there isn’t an overall story arc, in the first season at least. It’s just the day to day lives of these people and all the trouble that they find or that comes their way. I got a good laugh out of Tony giving his neighbor a box to “hold onto” to teach him a lesson for the way they treated him at the golf club.
I’m still enjoying Once Upon a Time. When the eighth dwarf showed up this week I found myself thinking that he should have been wearing a red shirt, because you just knew he wasn’t going to last long. One question occurred to me while I was watching it this week: who’s to say that their new lives are worse than the ones the curse took them away from? Sure, they don’t remember all that old stuff but most of them seem to be fairly happy, or at least as happy as they were when there were dragons killing people and the evil witch was doing things far more evil than your typical small town politician is capable of.
People are warning us that Fringe might not get renewed for another season, which would be a damn shame. The show took a good season to find its footing, and putting it on Friday night wasn’t the smartest decision ever, but I like it a lot. We’ve gotten to see four different versions of Walter, now: Walter, Walter Prime, Walternate and Walternate Prime, all subtly different. The scene between Walter Prime and his alternate wife (prime) was very good last week and it brought him around to the point where Walter Prime is becoming similar to Walter. It was smart of them to devilify Walternate Prime.
Episode three of Alcatraz was pretty good, too. Good to see Doc in his element working on inking a comic, and his ambivalence about what he’s doing with the FBI and his 10-20,000 hours of Alcatraz research paying off. Good, too, that the episode ended a little differently with respect to the fate of the returned prisoner. More and more people from the past are showing up looking exactly like they did 50 years ago. Curiouser and curiouser.
The Mentalist took a page from Dexter by having a dead person come back to talk to one of the main characters. Patrick’s trick with the squash ball—I remember that one from a Scholastic book of magic tricks I had as a kid, except you used a balled-up handkerchief instead.
