As part of my desk-clearing initiative, I read through a story that I thought was pretty close to being ready to send out again. It’s not a new story, but it’s one that I’ve only submitted a couple of times. I trimmed 200 out of 3600 words during this morning’s readthrough, but I want to print it out and tackle it again before I’m ready to sign off on it. The main things I changed this morning were over- or dual-explanations. Saying the same thing twice in different ways or explaining something and then showing it. Sometimes this can be quite subtle. An introductory clause of a few words that aren’t necessary to the sentence, for example.
I got caught up on some shows on tape yesterday. Private Practice got off to a good start. I’m regularly amazed at how tight the writing on ensemble shows has become. There was a time when an hour-long episode of a crime program dealt with just a single plot. Think back to Quincy or Matlock or Perry Mason. Now, in the same amount of time, four or five different storylines can be explored, and not superficially. Take, for example, the Amy Brenneman subplot in Private Practice. One of her patients is discovered in a sporting goods store, on her hands and knees, obsessively counting the thousand of tiny tiles in the floor. That alone could have been the subject of an entire episode of House, but it was dealt with nicely and it didn’t lose any emotional resonance by having to share the hour with four other stories.
House, on the other hand, has become less about the cases and more about just House and his ongoing jousts with his colleagues. The medical mysteries are McGuffins at best. I had this week’s figured out the moment the boyfriend’s friend showed up. In the end, it doesn’t matter why they’re sick or how many times House (and his team, when he has one) get it wrong. What’s important is having Wilson kidnap his electric guitar, or commenting on Cuddy’s water bra, or getting a janitor to stand in as an attending. By the way, was it just me or did the intern who volunteered some suggestions about the situation resemble lonelygirl15?
Survivor was interesting last night. I think they picked the wrong side of that battle in terms of who to send home. If they wanted peace and quiet, that wasn’t the way to go. They allowed a moron to appoint himself leader and the guy is refusing to let them start a fire until the mortar on his barbecue is dry. The WWF chick might have annoyed the other players, too, but at least she seemed to have a little common sense. And what’s with the poker player who thinks he’s got a good strategy by pretending to be lazy so when he actually gets off his duff and does something he’ll get extra credit? Where did that plan come from? I thought the girl who was borrowed from the other team made a good strategic move by revealing the clue to the person she perceived as the weakest player. Of course, that player then made a dumb-ass move by revealing the clue to someone else. After two seasons of hidden immunity idols, hasn’t anyone gotten the point that there’s no real advantage to telling anyone else what you know?
C.S.I. was great. I don’t understand why the killer went over the deep end—hopefully there’s some reason pending that will more than just “so she couldn’t be interrogated and accidentally reveal something.” This episode demonstrates why the two spinoff shows don’t hold a candle to the original. There’s no character on the other shows that I’d care about if they were kidnapped and at death’s door. Though the show doesn’t focus on character all that much, the little tidbits we’ve been fed over the past seven years or so have had a cumulative effect. I liked the promo for next week in which Griss claims his relationship with Sara started nine years ago and she claims it was two years ago. A little detail like that makes a lot of sense when you understand the characters. So, I’ll give them a pass for having Sara conveniently carry a nice, shiny rearview mirror across the desert so Nick could spot it.
