Reading / Listening / Watching – March 2008

It has been a while since I've posted so I thought I'd do an update of what I've been up to.

Reading

I'm a little past halfway through the brilliant new Beatles book Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould. I wrote about it before I started reading it and it is every bit as good as many of the reviews say it is. It does a great job of not only talking about the lives of the Beatles but it also puts that and their music in the context of the times and the political social and artistic changes that were happening in the world. On top of that there is a song by song discussion of each of their recordings. It really is special and, while it is a bit too in-depth to be anyone's first book about the Beatles, for someone like me who has read lots of books on the Beatles, I'm enjoying it immensely.

I have, for the past couple of years, participated in the Calvin Theological Seminary book of the quarter reading group and this quarter we're reading Elizabeth Strout's Abide With Me, a fascinating look at the life of a small town preacher who's wife's death has brought him, his young daughter and their community personal turmoil. It is only through allowing his church to see him broken and in need of help that he can once again effectively lead them. We'll get together three times to discuss the book, once with the author who is visiting Calvin for the Festival of Faith and Writing! It's a good book and I enjoyed it a lot.

Listening

Because I have tickets to the Switchfoot and the Police/Elvis Costello concerts coming up soon I've gotten back into their music lately and, while I've already expressed my love for Jon Foreman's EPs I have mostly lately listened to a lot of Elvis Costello and, I must say, that his gift for melody and for inventive song and chordal structure is really extraordinary. I have long thought "Couldn't Call it Unexpected" from Mighty Like a Rose was a prime example of this but I just lately came to love the album All This Useless Beauty. It is just packed with beautiful songs. And if you haven't heard For the Stars, his duet album with opera singer Anne-Sophie Von Otter, you're missing something truly special.

I have also enjoyed Bethany Dillon and Matt Hammitt's worship album In Christ Alone. Meant to be more a modern hymns album than a praise and worship album it takes a number of songs by Keith Getty and others and puts them in a more modern setting and does a credible job with them. Some of the tracks come across as sub-standard versions of very popular songs (the title cut, or "How Deep the Father's Love" for example) but others, most notably Getty's "Jesus is Lord" which is transformed to a hip, new uptempo version, work really well and gives me a new appreciation for the song.

Finally, in the flurry of new and old music that I've been enjoying, I'm ashamed to say that it took me a couple of years to finally pick up the amazing Before the Daylight's Shot by Ashley Cleveland. I should have known better since her previous album, the live You Are There, is one of my all-time favorites. It's just that she doesn't release albums' very often and so I forget just how good she (and her guitarist/husband Kenny Greenberg) is. Amazing stuff. Meant to be played loud.

Watching

I continue to work through DVDs and I'm getting near the end of both Season 6 of 24 (which is much better than I was lead to believe based on the "24 is losing it" buzz that I heard last season) and Season One of Veronica Mars which also I'm enjoying quite a bit. I must also admit to watching American Idol and I have to say that, while David Archuletta got off to a strong start, David Cook is really bringing it lately … dawg.

I also watched the film Enchanted last weekend and it was wonderful. It dragged only the slightest bit near the end but, as a send up of Disney animated classics it is really great. The songs are catchy and the effects are quite impressive. And Amy Adams is just too likeable as the soon-to-be princess. Even if there are no kids in your house, this one is too much fun to miss.

24 Season One – not so sure about Nina

Warning: in case you haven't watched Season One of 24 yet, there are spoilers in this review.

I'm watching the first season of 24 again. It's been a little over a year since I got the DVDs for the first season and I'm really enjoying watching them again. One of the things that is fun, of course, is knowing what's going to happen and then seeing if there are any hints along the way that, had I been smart enough the first time through, could have lead me to guess what might happen. The big surprise at the end of season one is that Nina, who is seen as Jack's primary confidant, turns out to be a traitor. So, I thought to myself, were there hints of this earlier in the season?

I come to the conclusion that there are absolutely no hints about this until possibly the end of episode 21 – and even then it is just maybe a look in her eye. This is the point at which I think we have the very first bad thing that goes on where Nina might be complicit – how else would the bad guys know that Kim is on her way back to CTU in the police car unless someone in CIT told them?

Earlier there had been the hit on the safe house in something like episode 15 which may or may not have been set up by Nina. I don't think it was - at least I don't think the writers knew it at the time becasue she was there helping Teri and Kim. She left the house because Teri got weird about Nina's relationship with Jack, not because she knew a hit was coming. It could be argued that she used Teri's weirdness as a convenient excuse to get out of there but I really think the writers just wanted her out of there to keep her safe and put Teri and Kim in danger. I don't think they decided that Nina was a traitor until near the end of the season.

OK, 24 watchers – what do you think? What did I miss?

Getting ‘Lost’

I mentioned quite a while ago that I was turning into a fan of Lost. I got Season Two on DVD for Christmas but I decided that, even though I had not seen Season Two yet, I would just dive into the beginning of Season Three as it was broadcast last fall. Fortunately, the show took a lengthy hiatus in the middle allowing me to catch up a little but I don’t have the time to watch every episode of Season Two in quick succession (plus I was watching DVDs of 24) and it took me a while to get to my Lost DVDs so I’m still in the middle of Season Two while I’m also in the middle of Season Three. Sometimes it can get pretty confusing but it also has the benefit of making me able to connect the dots because I JUST saw some scenes that are being referred to across seasons. And once in a while I have to ask Bryan what's going on.

Anyway I’m realizing that as good as Lost was in the first season it got even better in the second season. I especially like the way that the producers give us new insight into things that happened in the past. The flashbacks of course are a big part of the charm of the show but we learn things about what happen earlier on the island as well. They really flesh out the characters and the mysteries keep piling up. It's nice to finally be getting at least some answers in Season three!

So people on the internet can complain all they want (and they do) but I think it’s a great show – I hope I finish watching season two by the time season three ends. While I sometimes think some of the online fans can never be happy I’ve really enjoyed the Lost Easter Eggs website and find it a lot of fun and worth checking out.

'Studio 60' getting the ax?

This article suggests that Studio 60 is getting put on hiatus after tonight's episode and perhaps being put out to pasture for good. My favorite line from the article is "Death would not come without mourning, but the grief would be more for the promise represented by Sorkin and a stellar cast led by Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford than for anything they produced." Aaron Sorkin knocked it out of the park twice - with Sports Night and then with West Wing. But with Studio 60 it just seemed like he was too full of himself and too intent on making writers look really bright and conflicted.

The good news is that now I won't have the Monday night do-I-watch-it-or-don't-I issues that I've had lately. The other good news is that the Gilmore Girls, a show that I usually only watch with my youngest daughter Lynnae, has been on target this season and Lost has been great so there is plenty to keep me busy!

In praise of good cliffhangers

Another show that I’ve started watching lately is 24. Actually, that’s not true – I started 24 at episode 1, Season 1 but there is something about watching shows with a lot of tension when they’re broadcast that gets to me so I stopped after about five episodes or so. Since that time Meredith has gotten into it big time and lulled me back through DVDs. It helped a lot that Meijer, Target and Best Buy have all offered very cheap prices on complete seasons over the last few months. So I’m all stocked up on 24 DVDs and watching them at a reasonable pace – no more than one episode in a sitting.

Last summer I watched Season 1, in the fall it was Season 2 and since Christmas I’ve been watching Season 3 and they’ve all been great – I’m up to episode 14 now (it’s about 3 in the morning show-time) and, in what is becoming typical fashion, the threat has played out the way they expected it to and, surprise, things aren’t what they thought. So while a threat is still there, they get to focus on a different set of problems. Very clever because some things you just can’t keep going for 24 episodes. For example, Kim and her mom getting rescued half-way through Season 1 was great – I was getting sick of them being held and the change really helped the pace of the season.

Here’s the thing that I have noticed especially about Season 3, though, and it occurs to me that this has been true all along. 24 does not feature stupid cliffhangers. By stupid cliffhangers I mean things like situations where Jack is hanging from a cliff. We all know he’s going to get saved and, sure enough, at the beginning of the next episode it turns out that someone reaches over and pulls him up. Big deal. That sort of thing always makes me feel like I’ve been cheated – like if the camera had pulled back just a little bit I would have seen the other person there and it would have been obvious what was going to happen.

But 24 doesn’t do that – they would show Jack getting pulled up, have Jack say to the person who pulled him up “where’s Nina – did she get away?” and the person would answer “Jack, we lost her – and she has the virus!” See how that’s different? In the better scenario the cliffhanger sets up a whole episode worth of stuff rather than only the first two seconds of the episode. So among other things I like about 24, near the top of my list is the way they end each of the episodes.

Is Justice really gone this time?

The Fox show Justice seems to have evaporated from the Fox website and doesn't show up on the schedule anymore. I haven't seen any notices anywhere that it was really gone like I did when I wrote this post but I think we may have seen the last of it. That's too bad. I liked it.

Still loving Alias

I have been working my way through the Alias DVDs. I bought the fifth and final season when it came out but for some weird reason I wanted to ramp up to it by watching the previous four seasons. I started watching season one again sometime last May I think and have been going through each episode in order. Yeah, it’s a little obsessive but it sure is fun. (I have watched other things in between Alias episodes – after each disc I watch a disc of something else so it’s not quite as obsessive as it sounds.)

So, anyway, last week I finished Season Three, widely considered to be the worst of the five seasons. (In fact, early in season four Vaughn says “last year sucked.” Many fans consider that a shout out to them and a promise to make the fourth season better.) Let me say that while Season Three is clearly the weakest season I almost always enjoy things on DVD more than on broadcast television. For one thing, I can stop any time I want and the picture is really clear. I usually watch a bit just before bedtime on a portable DVD player and I can watch part of an episode if I’m tired or just don’t feel like committing to a whole episode so it’s pretty cool. And because of that I did really enjoy this season and I’m looking forward to diving into season four soon. (I have one more episode on disc three of Lost Season One to watch before I start Alias Season Four.)

Some thoughts about Alias Season Three:

• I wonder if the producers had it in mind right from the start that Lauren was evil – I was looking for evidence that she was evil in the first episodes and it just isn’t there. It plays like they changed their minds.
• The CIA is remarkably understaffed. They need agents so badly that they send Vaughn directly from the hospital to a field assignment.
• Sloan can’t be trusted. Oh wait, maybe he can. Oh no he can’t, I should have seen it all along. Both the strength and the weakness of this show is that you never know if Sloan is for you or against you. Sometimes I’m not sure if the producers knew either.
• What happened to Lauren’s mother? She just disappeared, never to be seen again.
• Jack Bristow rocks.
• I like the way they tried to mirror Jack and Irina with Vaughn and Lauren - unfortunately it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.
• Best lines of the season - both belong to Vaughn. After he finds out that Lauren is a traitor Jack tells him he has to pretend that nothing is wrong. Vaughn: "OK, what's plan B because that's not going to happen." Then, when Vaughn jumps out and clobbers Lauren in either the last or second to last episode he looks down and says "Hi, Honey."
• Marshall playing the drums and singing about Carrie and sushi to Vaughn is not just a Season Three highlight but a series highlight.
  

So, there it is. All in all, not a bad way to spend 940 minutes, especially spread out over 3 months or so.

[EDIT: I've started Season Four and the first ten or fifteen minutes of the first episode are really outstanding - it really does seem like they decided they needed to get back on track and pulled out all the stops to make it clear to fans that they were back.]

Alias ends its run tonight

I know I have written about Alias more than a few times but tonight is the two hour finale to the series and, even though I have a meeting, I'll be taping it and ready to watch it as soon as I can.

This is a show that grabbed me right from the start. I don't think I missed a single episode when it was broadcast (I taped them when I couldn't watch - actually I taped them when I could watch too because you can never tell when someone will call.) I also bought the DVDs. I always checked the Television Without Pity forums after I watched the show. It is fun to read what other fans think about particular episodes. I'm sort of glad I didn't discover this Alias fan blog until just a few weeks ago or it would have taken more of my time.

I thought the pilot was one of the best two-hours of television I had ever seen. I enjoyed the pace, the filming and the acting. I thought Jennifer Garner was always believable in this unbelievable role and world that she lived in.

I liked almost all the characters, Sloane who's evil-one-minute-not-so-evil-the-next development has been great fun as the viewers try to figure out exactly who's side he's on. Even though we knew all along that he was only ever on his side. Jack Bristow's first moment in the pilot, when he told Danny "welcome to the family" has been a wonderful set-up for a character who has become more and more three dimensional as the series continued.

Fans generally agree that the third season was a let-down and I think they're right but I still liked it and enjoyed it a lot more on DVD, maybe because I knew the ending already. Things got better in season four and then season five hit the mark even more consistantly. I even liked the new characters this season and I hope they actually have an important role in the finale.

So it's farewell to Syd and Vaughn and the others. When does the Season Five DVD come out?

West Wing finale

It has been nearly a week since I’ve posted anything but it’s been a busy week! With classes ending and exams starting I’ve been busy with making sure the year ends well but I’ve spent more time trying to make sure that next fall will happen the way it is supposed to. Between helping make decisions about registration and lining up faculty to teach courses I’ve had little opportunity to do other things.

I am in the process of reading A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren and enjoying it a lot but I’m not ready to write about that yet.

I have written, though, about how my two favorite shows are coming to a close within a week of each other. As I mentioned, Alias is doing well, ending with lots of mystery and excitement. I'm watching season one on DVD now even as Season Five comes to a close. But the other show that I will miss is The West Wing. Mary did a very nice tribute to the show in her blog and I don’t want duplicate that so you should just go and read what she wrote.

I actually dropped West Wing for a brief period at the end of season five and missed about four or five episodes. I discovered watching those episodes on DVD that I enjoyed it a lot more than I did when they were broadcast – in fact, I can't remember why I stopped watching it for a few weeks there. But then again, I seem to enjoy almost every TV show more on DVD than I do on broadcast. I just picked up the Season Six DVD and I'm excited about watching it. I'm just into disc two.

I’m still looking (as I mentioned before) for the new shows to replace Alias and West Wing. I tried a couple of shows that have not panned out –

• Love Monkey got cancelled,
• Commander in Chief wasn’t what I’d hoped for and then got cancelled,
• Arrested Development got cancelled (even though I really only watched it on DVD),
  
• the Gilmore Girls just isn’t as much fun as it was early on. Lynnae still watches it so I catch many of the episodes but I’m starting to get irritated that people who talk so much never talk to each other!

So, I’ll have my VCR humming Sunday night as I watch the final episode of West Wing and Wednesday night as Alias has it's second to last night.

Alias is back

As I have mentioned before here (and here and here ) I am a fan of Alias. Like almost any show Alias has it's ups and downs and, while I've enjoyed it since it came back three weeks ago it wasn't until last night's episode that things really heated up for me again. I want to be fair to those who have not seen the episode yet but I especially like it when the major story arc moves forward in a big way and last night it did.

This is a show that it is easy to get snarky about because, let's face it - a spy who can do all the things Sydney does just isn't close to reasonable (not to mention getting from LA to DC in, like, 10 minutes) but the writers have had a couple of tricks up their sleeves as the series comes to an end and it feels like they are going to use these last few episodes to pull out all the stops. And, oh yeah, Rambaldi is back.

Alias goes on hiatus with a Bang!

I’m a TV watcher rather than a TV viewer.

In my own personal definition of these two terms, a viewer is someone who has the TV on while he or she does other things and gives it some attention. A watcher is someone who, when he or she has the TV on, is watching with more or less full attention. If I have the TV on I am almost always fully engaged in what I’m watching. Of course I’m not the only person in my house so the TV is on at times that I don’t really care much about what’s on but if I put it on I want to really watch something. That’s why I love DVD’s – I’m not bound to someone else’s timetable, the picture quality is very good and there are no commercials.

There are only two shows I watch without fail whenever new episodes are aired. In fact, even if I’m sitting in the room watching it I run a tape just in case the phone rings or somebody needs me for something or in case I want to watch it again. I also sometimes need to bail out friends who aren’t as careful about making sure they have their VCRs programmed. Those won’t-miss shows for me are Alias and The West Wing. (Full disclosure: there are a few other shows I watch on DVD that I don’t watch when they’re broadcast like The Simpsons and Arrested Development.)

Last night Alias had its last show before the show goes on hiatus for a few months so that Jennifer Garner could give birth. When the show returns in March (or whenever) they’ll crank out the last few episodes of the series. As I’ve mentioned here before, it’s been cancelled and this season is the end.

Not only have I watched every episode of Alias as it has been broadcast (either live or on tape soon after – OK, occasionally I’ve done both.) I have also been watching the DVDs pretty faithfully and I’m now a bit over halfway through the season four set right now. Even when the show has been less than stellar I have found that it plays even better on DVD. I got excited last season about halfway through because I felt that they started to get back to the original form of what made it great. Many reviewers have felt that it seemed a little lackluster this year with the new characters not really taking off. I actually have really enjoyed the new characters, especially good spy Rachel Gibson and bad spy Kelly Peyton.

Last night’s episode was touted as the return of Michael Vaughn and, indeed it was. He returned in a dream sequence so he’s still dead but there were all kinds of hints that maybe he wasn’t. And the way they’re doing it is not in an I-feel-ripped-off kind of way but rather in a here’s-what-they’ve-been-planning-all-along kind of way. And the way his return was handled was a huge shout-out to the serious fans bringing back new versions of scenes from nearly all the previous seasons. This episode had me completely hooked and loving it and then Lena Olin showed up. (For the uninitiated, she plays Syd’s mom, Irina Derevko and is universally acclaimed to be really really good at this role. Fans go nuts whenever she shows up, which has been rare since season two.) Her appearance was, as far as I can tell, completely unspoiled. The fans – especially this one – didn’t see it coming or hear about it ahead of time. So we had a great episode with a wonderful surprise twist. Does it get better than that? I don’t think so. This was, pretty clearly, the best episode of the year and one of the best of the last couple of years.

Now I’m geeked about what J.J. Abrams has in mind for the series finale!

Pocket Franistans

John W. Campbell, one of the first and most important editors of science fiction in the middle of the 20th century was said to have told Isaac Asimov that science fiction mysteries aren’t possible because the detective can always say “I can just take out my ‘pocket franistan’ and solve this crime by doing this…”

Asimov responded by writing a series of science fiction mysteries (most notably his Robot Novels) that didn’t use a pocket franistan. Asimov said, and rightly so I think, that the only way you can have really good science fiction mysteries is if you lay out the rules early on and then stick to them. In other words, if you’re going to let your detective have some cool gadget then you’d better make sure the readers know it soon enough in the telling that they don’t feel cheated when it gets used.

All of this brings me to last night’s season premier of Alias in which Michael Vaughn dies. Here’s the thing – I’m not sure I believe he’s really dead and, even if he is, I’m not sure he’s completely dead. He’s maybe only mostly dead. Over the four previous seasons of Alias, I have not been convinced, especially lately, that someone is not going to open his jacket and say, “wait a minute – maybe if I inject Vaughn’s corpse with this special Rambaldi serum he’ll come back to life!”

Consequently, I can’t really commit to feeling bad about Vaughn’s demise. I feel like Alias is at a turning point – in the next few episodes they can grab me and keep me for the season by proving that they have no franistans in their pockets or they can use one and lose me.

The return of the real Alias

A week or so ago I wrote about West Wing and ended by saying "Now, if only Alias would get back to first/second season form I'd be even happier." Well, I finally watched this week’s episode (4.15) and I’m happy to report that we may be seeing the beginning of a very good set of episodes. One of the things that made seasons one and two so good was the idea that there was always something going on that we didn’t know about – somebody had a plan (usually nefarious) that was complex and we eventually found out that this plan was really what was driving the plot – usually it was Arvin Sloan who was manipulating people. There was a reveal and a “oh, wow – that’s cool” realization that all was not as it appeared. That is what made the show so wonderful. In season three it lost that – there was some mystery but not the kind of gripping plot twists that made me not want to miss a single episode (and – I haven’t).

This new season (Season Four) had promise as Sydney and Jack and all the other great people got reassigned to a new black-ops division of the CIA. But that promise seemed to have been squandered on self-contained episodes that had no compelling arc that made me want to keep watching. In fact, I even toyed with the idea that maybe the show had lost its appeal for me.

Then, this week’s episode hit and I saw that spark that had been missing for so long. It could be that Alias is back! With seven more episodes left in the season I think we might be heading towards a finale that will be lots of fun.