Sunday, October 7, 2007

99

My manic state continued last night as I did laundry until 2am and finished off a number of more tv shows. Bionic Woman was quite good, done with obvious attention of style and mood and setting up a dozen or so potential sub plots to deal with later. It felt well planned, perhaps even over planned. I feel it might be better suited to have stayed small at first, concentrating on Jamie's internal turmoil and making the company seem like an honest benefactor like the old show. However, we are already suspecting its motives. Basically good tv. Following Bionic Woman I recorded the first episode, but not the second, of "Life" about a cop who was sent to prison for 12 years, learned to be very philosophical about everything, then is released when it is proven he was innocent. He gets millions of dollars in compensation but returns to being a cop anyway so that he can solve the crime he was sentenced for. It is really well written and acted. I was playing out scenes of this this morning to Margaret, they stuck with me so strongly. The other gem of tv last night was the one hour opener of "Family Guy" doing a Star Wars parody. This was the best Star Wars send up since "Hardware Wars". It returned to the film with reverence, which made it more cutting than most other satires I've seen. A few weeks ago I was watching a bit of "Space Balls" and comparing these two is really eye opening. Satire really must be done by people who embrace the original, the satire is an honor to the original, not a excuse for opportunists to repeat the same jokes over and over again.

Thanksgiving supper with both sets of parents today; turkey was nice but I have a sore throat and conversations were limited.

I bought the board game "Carcassonne" box set with 4 extras today. Margaret, William and I played it - I learned it in Seattle from Tom and Veronica and liked it a lot. It is a fairly high end strategy game but there are no secret cards or negotiations, so we are able to help William along and play relatively cooperatively. We just played the basic game before supper, but will likely ramp up to the dragon supplement this week.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

you should be checking out Journeyman. It is the best new show this season. Journeyman is a time travel story, but it is done with a great deal of attention to detail. It has a bit of a Quantum Leap angel with lack of control and the fixing of history, but without the higher power or the sparely sidekick. Really worth checking out.

Gerald Saul said...

I've been watching Journeyman, (see comments on Oct 5 blog) and have not been enjoying it and plan to cut it from my programs. There is good detail, but this guy, torn between the two loves of his life, lies to both of them and already seems to be forgetting about his son, who meant everything to him in episode 1. The main character has yet to do anything really clever and I've given up on him.

Unknown said...

Right, I rushed away from the computer and didn't read that whole post for Oct 5th- sorry. Well, I'm loving it. I agree that giving him a son and then having him pop in and out of importance was unwise. It may be one of those shows that benefits from old school weekly viewing rather than marathon viewing.