I'm a newcomer to the CBS legal drama The Good Wife, now in its third season. I've spent the last day and a half watching the first season from my sick bed. It was a combination of things that made me finally give in, despite the fact that a new network legal drama wasn't particularly high up on my priorities. People whose opinions I respect say good things about the show, and then I saw some really great things said about it on PBS's excellent recent documentary, America in Prime Time, so here we are. The premise is simple: Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) has to return to the law in order to support her family after her philandering husband, Peter (played by Law & Order veteran Chris Noth), an Illinois state's attorney, is disbarred and jailed for a sex/corruption scandal. Structurally, the show is divided into two slightly overlapping major elements. First, the main plot, which follows Alicia Florrick as she tries to balance the aftermath of a very public humiliation with the workload of being a junior associate and being a single mother of two, and second, the Case of the Week format common to nearly every courtroom drama ever to grace American television.

The cast is very strong. Julianna Margulies gives a surprisingly subtle performance that's more about cumulative effects than individual scenes. She's best with small expressions in scenes with a sense of stillness, but she also manages to go between genuinely tender and brutally cold without appearing inconsistent or in any way out of character. I haven't seen a lot of her work, but this is the best performance she's given of those I have seen.

Chris Noth doesn't have a lot to do, and Josh Charles (as Will Gardner, one of the named partners at Alicia's firm) plays a variation of the same character he's done in everything since Sports Night. It's not a bad character, but it would be nice to see something new from him. Christine Baranski's portrayal of Diane Lockhart (another of the named partners) is exceptional, in part because despite being cast as a rich, powerful woman (a common role for her), she easily sidesteps any potential accusations of typecasting by giving a really warm performance, one that's strikingly different from the borderline parodic ones she's given in comedic versions of that role in the past. Relative newcomer Archie Panjabi (who I know best as Maya from the original UK series Life on Mars) is also great as investigator Kalinda Sharma. She is particularly excellent at keeping a subplot about the question of her sexuality from overwhelming her character. The part is written very well, but an actress not on her game could easily wind up wielding that aspect of the character like a cudgel, which would be the absolute wrong way to play her. Alan Cumming is just Alan Cumming with the volume turned down a bit, and it works fine.

The show also uses an excellent array of quality character actors, people like David Paymer, Michael Boatman, Peter Riegert, Peter Gerety (who most will know from The Wire, but I liked him better in Homicide: Life on the Street), and personal favourites Joe Morton, Carrie Preston, Amy Acker, and Martha Plimpton (and of course Gillian Jacobs makes an appearance in the pilot).

The ongoing plot about Alicia, her career, and her husband that makes up half the structure of the show, is unique and exceptional, focusing not, as one might expect, on the political ups and downs of the prominent public figure Peter Florrick (you can catch Kelsey Grammar in the new series Boss if you want that), but on her balancing act. One could also argue that it's a show about balancing private and public spaces, but those spaces commingle significantly after Peter is released from prison, and we are offered glimpses of his life and career through cracks in the door and shots over the shoulder. The information accumulates over the course of the season, and what happened to Peter and how he's responding gradually becomes clear, but we still see it primarily through how people treat Alicia on the job. It almost seems like the early episodes can't seem to decide whether or not they're actually about Alicia, or if they're just about Peter as seen through Alicia's life, like drawing a figure by filling in the negative space. I say almost, because the writers use it as a way to push her towards establishing her own agency, and by the end of the season, The Good Wife is unquestionably about Alicia, almost as though it took twenty-three episodes for the writers to convince both the audience and Alicia herself that the show really should be about her.

If I were to have any complaints about the main plotline, it's with some of the children. Zach Florrick's unusual technical prowess is a little too much like "kids these days" hand-waving, while his girlfriend Becca's (not unrealistic) aggressive sexuality just seems like one plot point too many.

The Case of the Week element of the show is a bit more problematic. On the one hand it's the primary vehicle by which Alicia establishes her new sense of self (and how they sneak in all those great supporting actors), but there's nothing new there in terms of a network legal drama. I've seen these cases before, I've seen the legal trickery and the research and the late nights with empty pizza boxes and those cool folded cardboard cartons of Chinese food that you never see in the real world. I've seen the awkward opening statements and the love/hate relationships between opposing counsel. I have seen it all a million times before, and it's not even self-aware about it like Boston Legal (an unbelievably brilliant show, despite its problems). Eventually one case began to blur into another, and they started to lose their sense of urgency. I can't help but wonder if they were only included at the network's request.

Since my case of the plague (or rather this nasty head cold) doesn't show any signs of abating, I'll probably move on to the opening episodes of season two tomorrow. It is my hope that the main plotline will continue to be strong, and the kinks in the Case of the Week format will iron themselves out.

I don't do resolutions. Not because it's a cliché; I sometimes think those are all right. Rather it's because I just don't ever stick to them. Things happen, blah blah blah. I could give you excuses, but that's how things wind up going. So, inspired by Adrienne's post (and obviously aping her post title) I'm going to say a few words about what I hope the new year has in store.

First of all, I'm going to get a new job. This really isn't optional, since I've just been freelancing since August (and I'm definitely going to be doing more of that; I've already been doing some freelance editing this year, and I've been back from the holidays for less than a week), but at this point anyway, it's not paying the bills. I'm trying to keep optimistic, but this is honestly going to be simultaneously the hardest and the most important part of my new year, both in terms of the task itself, and keeping my spirits up.

I want to read more poetry. And I've already started! I'm nearly seventy pages into Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems. I've said for a long time that he's my favourite poet, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. I really admire his work, and "The Idea of Order at Key West" is my favourite poem of all time, but maybe that's not enough. I'm going to start with books of poetry already in my collection (the Stevens is a textbook left over from a Modern American Literature course I took with Stan Fogel as an undergrad), which means poets like Anne Sexton, E.E. Cummings, Anne Carson, Don McKay, Ezra Pound, Adrienne Rich, David Donnell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a bunch of others who show up in various anthologies. I admire poetry as a form, but I don't feel like I understand it very well, particularly contemporary poetry, and I find that I either connect instantly and profoundly with a poem, or it bores me and I want to move on. I don't know if this is normal, but it's starting to bother me, and I want to work on it this year.

I want to start writing and blogging more, particularly about television. I've said things like this before, and it would be easy to say "and this time, I really mean it," but I've been a serious fan of television as a medium my whole life, and at this point I think I have a strong enough grasp of what's going on and the necessary critical language to write about it seriously. It would be nice if I could get paid for it, but I've come to realize that if I've got something to say I should just say it regardless. I plan to start with a series of posts about the amazing sitcom Community—and before you say anything, I've already got drafts started. As for blogging about other things, I also have drafts of book reviews and other posts, I just need to finish them. To be honest, the biggest obstacle is the stress of looking for work; it's difficult to concentrate on the writing I do for myself with that looming over my head. (I would also like to say that 2012 is the year I stop making excuses, but really, nobody keeps that resolution.)

This will surprise no one who knows me well, but I'm kind of a geek. I like Star Trek and Star Wars, video games, science fiction novels, anime, and roleplaying games (well, some). I own complete runs of Cerebus, Preacher, and The Sandman (or did before some folks borrowed some of the latter without returning them). Hell, I even got about a third of the way into writing my own tabletop RPG once. Yeah, that's right, I'm that guy. But over the years I've drifted away from those roots. I don't read as much SF/F as I used to, I haven't played an RPG in years, and I can't even remember the last time I watched a new anime series. The truth is, the deeper I got into "fandom," the more I found two equal but opposite impulses within the community extremely unappealing. The first was the impulse from some in the community to relentlessly nitpick every trivial little thing that was even a tiny bit inconsistent or outside their expectations—which goes beyond criticism and into entitlement—and the second was the impulse some have to go easy on people working in genre because it's been ghettoized for so long and "we're all in this together" (or some other sentimental nonsense the critic in me can't abide), which helps no one, as it gives us a false sense of the work. Anyway, neither of those impulses are representative of the fan community as a whole (and it's more a collection of related communities than a unified entity anyway), but they made me not want to be a part of it all the same. I got into James Joyce and art films, A.S. Byatt and The Wire, and for a long time didn't look back.

The thing is, you can't read a lot of contemporary literary fiction, or watch a lot of television and film—not even the art house versions of same—without seeing how they have been influenced by and intersect with what we talk about as genre work. I'm not ashamed of being a big nerdy goof. Long time readers will know that I've blogged extensively about William Gibson's books, for example, plus reviewed his last two for Quill & Quire, and even interviewed him for Canadian Notes & Queries; additionally most of my professional book reviews have been of books that straddle the line between genre work and "capital L" literature. But I never felt a kinship with the community, and drifted away in favour of other priorities. This year I want to change that. I spent most of December reading Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and now I've moved on to H.P. Lovecraft. I've also, almost clandestinely it feels like, been reading Raymond Chandler, Ian Rankin, Stieg Larsson, Elmore Leonard, Fred Vargas, Michael Dibdin, David Montrose, P.D. James, James M. Cain, and so on, and enjoyed pretty much all of them unequivocally. So I'm going to read a lot more genre fiction this year, and even try and see if I can connect a little with the community. We'll see how it goes. I may even write about some of it.

So that's a lot of rambling nonsense, but those are things that I hope will happen in the coming new year. As usual, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Dear NBC:

I am a book critic by trade, but deep down, I'm also a TV person. I watch an enormous amount of television, and have since I was young. But I don't watch uncritically. I think TV has taken over from the movies as the place to go for the best in filmed entertainment, but aside from a handful of legacy programs, I have largely migrated from the shows created by over-the-air networks to those produced by cable channels. For a time I had given up on the sitcom entirely.

Community changed that. It's the smartest, funniest, most inspiring half-hour comedy that NBC—or any network—has produced since the demise of NewsRadio, and is single-handedly responsible for restoring my faith in the sitcom as a format where good work can be done, and where innovation can still happen.

The writing is stellar, the cast is the tightest ensemble on TV today, and the show is utterly fearless at the conceptual level. The end result is that Community is not only the best sitcom currently on television, but one of the best sitcoms in television history. Community's creators appear to love and understand the medium like no one else.

Nothing lasts forever, but Community has not reached the end of its run, in my opinion. The structure Dan Harmon and the others have set up has at least a fourth season left in it, and I believe they should be allowed to see it through. It may not be the highest rated show in its time slot, but it lends NBC considerable prestige, something that will help attract more talent, which in turn will lead to an audience willing to stick it out for the long-haul, and the advertising dollars that come with it.

I was tremendously disappointed to hear that Community was to be taken off the mid-season schedule. I think it's a mistake, and undermines NBC's own interest in reclaiming its place as the top network.

I would like to join my voice with the other fans who are calling for Community's swift return to television, and for its subsequent renewal for another season.

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

August C. Bourré

A copy of this post was also emailed to the offices of NBC.

I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Six years of studying literature at the university level taught me many things, and perhaps the most important thing it taught me is something that seems obvious in retrospect, but that most people have difficulty applying in their daily lives: not everything you like is good, and not everything you dislike is bad. We don't need to feel guilty or ashamed because we like something we know is not necessarily of the highest quality. Still, most of us, myself included, fall into that trap from time to time.

For literary folks, especially here in Canada, guilty pleasures often come in the form of genre fiction, like romance, science fiction, or fantasy (though, strangely, mysteries tend to be pretty accepted). When our writers produce works that would fall into those categories, our inner snobs emerge to label them "dystopias" or "magic realist" or some other such bullshit. Code words for the literati, for the most part. We don't want to be mistaken for the kind of people who read books with airbrushed paintings of dragons on the covers, do we? Hell no. Some of my best friends read books with airbrushed dragons on their covers. I'm not sure how this plays out in other jurisdictions—perhaps its a matter of geek community politics; I'm okay with being a book geek, but I don't want to qualify for Beauty and the Geek—but I think here in Canada it has a lot to do with wanting to be taken seriously. Being taken seriously is a national obsession for us even outside the book world, and as Brian Busby has noted, we've been pretty good about deliberately marginalizing pulp and genre publishing in this country, Harlequin being among the few notable exceptions. Why we think this makes us look good is beyond me, but then so many things are.

I'm not falling into that trap anymore. Here it is, for all the world to see: I read books by David Eddings, China Miéville, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, R. Scott Bakker, Phyllis Gotlieb, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brian, Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, Alan Furst, Guy Gavriel Kay, H.P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Neal Stephenson, John MacLachlan Gray, Simon Scarrow, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack McKinney, Robert E. Howard, Robert A. Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, and I enjoy them, even with the odd airbrushed cover. But, you say, with newspapers now covering comic books (oops, sorry, graphic novels—can't actually call the damned things by their true name), an admission like this, that includes some pretty famous, respected names, isn't so big a deal. You're probably right. Let's talk TV.

I watch a lot of television, and if you're keeping track of folks in Canadian publishing via Twitter, you'll know that so do a lot of "book people". From what I can tell, the programmes they watch tend to come in two categories. They either watch the new breed of high-budget, critically acclaimed dramas like True Blood, Mad Men and Dexter, or trashy, low-budget reality television like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and Canada's Next Top Model. I suppose this is progress. A few years ago, before programmes like The Sopranos and The Wire brought television drama to a new level of quality (or, rather, got it more attention—there were a handful of shows before them that came very close to the same quality), I think you'd have been hard-pressed to get a lot of die-hard book people to talk TV around the water cooler. I can't imagine them being excited to talk about last night's episode of Fraiser, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or LA Law.

What I wonder about is why there's so little discussion of trashy television drama. There are a number of shows on right now (Legend of the Seeker, Spartacus: Blood & Sand, Burn Notice, Leverage, White Collar, Castle, Eureka) that may sometimes have decent budgets, but where the writing and acting aren't quite up to the level of something like Deadwood. (And then there's shows like Supernatural, which started out as a monster-of-the-week dramedy, but over the last four and a half years has morphed into one of the smartest, funniest, and best-executed things on TV, though nobody seems to be watching it.) There's still some folks who don't watch television at all (like Rebecca Rosenblum, who seems to be one of the few people who can say that without sounding like a hipster snob—which I can assure you she is not), but what really interests me is why there are so few people who watch—or will admit to watching—those trashier dramas. Is there a stigma attached to them? Does watching trashy reality TV seem so much like a guilty pleasure that it's excusable, while watching, say, Spartacus (like Legend of the Seeker, it's from Sam Raimi, the man behind Hercules and Xena) might be mistaken for something you would watch for genuine, non-ironic enjoyment?

I think that it's good people are more open about the television they watch these days, because the medium has come a very long way in the last decade, to the point where I think a lot of the lower-quality dramas are now as good or better than many of the higher-quality dramas from only fifteen or twenty years ago. So to give some love to the trashy dramas, I will admit: I watch Legend of the Seeker (and apparently so does Amy Jones; the leather, it creaks), Burn Notice, Eureka, Leverage, and pretty much every show I've mentioned in this post (except the reality TV; for some reason the closest I can come to watching reality television is Mythbusters and Top Gear, which don't really count).

Step out into the light, Book People. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure, no matter how many people deny that The Year of the Flood is science fiction. You don't need to hide anymore! Now that I've opened the floodgates, you can expect posts about television programmes in this blog's future.

Well. I'm almost speechless. Let's just start with the verdict and work from there. Ultraviolet is the second-worst film I have ever seen. The worst was Batman & Robin. The only reason I didn't walk out was because, let's face it, Milla Jovovich's rear-end displayed ten feet high in glorious digital is not something you get to see every day.

After this tragedy I am now confident that Kurt Wimmer is not a filmmaker, he is a fashion designer. The only compelling thing about this film was the costuming, which was astonishingly good. Equilibrium was alright, but certainly not the brilliant film that many college-aged viewers hail it as. But it was fairly well put together. Ultraviolet was not. The opening action sequence was so poorly animated that I kept expecting to actually be able to see wires or the green screen or something. Wimmer employed the soft-focus technique, although to a lesser degree, used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, not so much to create a sense of nostalgia as to disguise the fact that his CG team didn't know what the hell they were doing.

Continuity was a mess. Sets bore no obvious relation to each other and were often so outlandish that they could have appeared without shame as part of the 1960s Batman television series. Characters moved from one location to another in the course of what should have been a few seconds in the timeline of the film with enormous discrepancies even in terms of whether they were indoors or outdoors (jumping from outside in what could have been suburbia to what was obviously well underground, etc). Also, the headquarters of the Archministry (?) was for no reason at all changed from a fairly cool looking building shaped like the biohazard symbol in the beginning to a horrible parody of St. Peter's cathedral at the end.

And the dialogue poor Milla had to say! I was embarrassed for her and the other actors. Speaking of the other actors, was is just me or did they all seem to have stepped out of Dolce & Gabbana ads? Wimmer didn't cast actors, he cast models.

I know this is kind of a disjointed review, but it was a disjointed film. Nothing made sense! I'm all in favour of non-linear films (I've even made one), but only if it's done on purpose. This was not done on purpose, and it would have be hard to find a less non-sensical plot. Mr. Wimmer, please explain to me why, despite his vampire powers, a doctor has the martial arts skills to take on a woman who kills probably several hundred people over the two days (more or less) that the movie takes place in.

Milla's hotness aside, it's not even worth the rental.

Seriously. (via Nikki)

LINDSAY LOHAN: You're just...it's...um. I'm...nothing. I really should go say hello to Meryl --

SHARON STONE: FUCK MERYL STREEP I'M TELLING YOU THINGS.

In connection with my last post, I'd like to draw your attention to Joe Morgenstern's essay in the Wall Street Journal on how the critic's perspective differs from that of an ordinary viewer, not because of specialized training or a certain background (although those are factors as well), but rather because of the timing; critics see these movies before the hype machines have really started to roll. We see them after.

The Morning News has a great little entry on bad reviews of films that were otherwise much lauded. Read it, and read it now.

With Crash taking the Best Picture award this year I very nearly lost all faith in American cinema. This review says almost everything about the film that I could possibly want to say. ("Contrived, obvious and overstated, Crash is basically just one white man's righteous attempt to make other white people feel as if they've confronted the problem of racism head-on."). Crash was horribly obvious. In fact, I think the only way it could have been more obvious is if Paul Haggis had actually stood behind me in the cinema and screamed "I'm dealing with racism!" while striking me on the head with a book about racism. Not to mention that the cinematography and editing of this film made it very clear that Paul Haggis wants to be Steven Soderbergh when he grows up.

This entry is perhaps a bit late, but there was a major personal crisis in my life, and I was unable to work for a time.

I saw the recent adaptation of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on opening night, at one of the tremendously over-priced Silver City cinemas owned and operated by Famous Players. The critics had prepared me for the extra material, and Sam Rockwell had already leaked a tremendous amount about what he was "going for" in his portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox. Those things, coupled, of course, with my prior experiences as a fan of the radio show, novels, and BBC television series, obviously made it difficult for me to go into the cinema without any kind of expectations.

The opening sequence was stupid. The "So Long and Thanks For All the Fish" song was clever and funny, the cinematography and editing were both top notch, but it was just a tremendous waste of screen time for what would ultimately wind up being a not terribly important joke. Time, or rather timing, would ultimately turn out to be the only problem with this film that couldn't safely be ignored, and as all the world knows, in comedy, timing is everything.

One of the tremendous things about Douglas Adams' humour is that he was never frantic. He always took his time with a joke, letting it age, settle, and ultimately become all it could be before releasing it into the world. His humour is in that respect far, far different, from, say, your average American sitcom or slapstick Wayans Brothers farce, which generally launch so many jokes at the audience so rapidly that even the twenty or thirty percent that are genuinely funny rarely have enough time to sink in properly. This film was quite simply too fast. It never quite reached the rarefied levels of the average American sitcom, but it also never allowed the truly clever jokes to sink in.

Sam Rockwell was another problem, although if the film's timing had been better I probably wouldn't have noticed. Rockwell's intent was to portray Zaphod as a kind of interstellar Elvis figure, full of gusto and a kind of absent-minded, innate coolness. What he actually achieved, however, was Sean Penn circa Fast Times at Ridgemont High; a moronic, unlikeable jerk who wasn't so much absent-minded as genuinely stupid. Given how Zaphod developed in Adams' work, a genuinely stupd Zaphod is far, far less effective than an absent-minded one.

Mos Def's Ford Prefect was another story entirely. I don't generally approve of musicians moving into acting, mostly because they tend to not be able to play anyone but themselves. Mos Def, however, did an excellent job as Ford. He wasn't exactly how I had pictured the character in my head, and he was a tad bit too soft-spoken and timid, but he filled the role so well that I can't really think of anyone I would have preferred for the part.

About Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent) and Zooey Deschanel's (Trillian) performances I can say absolutely nothing bad. They both nailed their characters with impeccable and humane talent, and both were exactly on rhythm for the entire film.

I could go on and on about the special effects, the absolute mangling of the plot (much of the original material wouldn't have worked on screen, so I can see changing it, but not in the ridiculously commercial ways the filmmakers chose), and so on, but by this time you've probably had your fill of such things in the commercial press.

Thing the first:

I just returned from my first screening of The Two Towers, and while reactions to this film have been overwhelmingly positive, I have mixed feelings. One of the strengths of the first film was how closely it followed the book(s), with the possible exception of Tom Bombodil, who is a delightful character, but ultimately serves a function unnecessary to the film. At the same time, the actors were allowed to do their jobs, which is to create believable characters through, well, acting. The Two Towers does not follow the book quite so closely, particularly with the addition of the scenes with Liv Tyler. I think this is a good thing, because it humanizes the relationship (and its potential problems) between Aragorn and the Horse-Princess, and makes Aragorn's moral dilemma quite sharp in our minds. We feel for these characters in ways the book does not allow us.

Sadly, the rest of the film distances us in ways the first did not. The first film was very human, very real, very much alive. This film is not. It seeks to be grandiose and full of fear and glory, and while it succeeds, it does so only to a point. Just like much of the book(s), it became simply an exercise in deus ex machina, which always struck me as rather sloppy on Tolkien's part. I have always felt that deus ex machina is a tool for the weak writer, unless said writer happens to be penning an ancient Greek play. By the end I was sick of watching characters in hopeless situations being saved by extremely powerful coincidences (involving, for the most part, very powerful beings or many armed men).

I was extremely impressed by Peter Jackson's sense for space and texture. I could see pores, dirty cuticles, dust, dirt, sweat, hair, grass, chips, scratches, tears; I could see everything, and it looked real. These didn't look like actors in costume, they looked like people in the world. Likewise with distances: I didn't once get the impression that there was a camera in the room with the actors. It seemed like the characters could touch all four walls, pick up all the props, touch all the statues... It was a real, three-dimensional world.

Thing the second:

Jim recently accepted a challenge to post 100 times in a single twenty-four hour period. He did it, and many parts of it were extremely amusing. But I think it's a bad idea, and here's why.

When I looked back at my daily blog before revamping it, at first all I thought of was how ugly it looked, and how inefficient it was. I was also ashamed at how infrequently I updated it. But the more I examined it, the more I realized that it wasn't the number of times I updated that I was ashamed of, it was the quality of those updates. I had not taken the time to think about why I was posting, and I posted more about myself than about my interests, but worst of all, those posts about myself were not amusing, and did not speak to my audience.

How does this relate to Jim? Well, Jim is a great writer (he lacks self-confidence, but he has a clear voice and a clear mind, both of which make up for his lack of faith in his own abilities). But he's a great writer because he takes the time to think about what he's writing, and why he's writing it (he often claims he doesn't, but I think he's lying). With his one-hundred posts in twenty-four hours project, he had to post an average of 4.16667 time per hour, which I don't think gives him a lot of time to think about what he's posting, or why he's posting it. In other words, he can't play to his strengths. It was an admirable experiment that had some interesting results, but ultimately I would rather wait a week for a new, well-thought out entry than have him post twice as often but with lesser quality (potentially: like I said, the experiment did yield some good things).

Of course I'd like to remind folks that experiment or no, Jim is one hell of a guy.

Thing the third:

Laura Trippi has moved to a new location. She bought a domain! You should go read her work at http://www.netvironments.org. She has also undertaken the monumental task of teaching me something about zWikis, but seeing as how she does that sort of thing for a living, I have high hopes.