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Television
Feb. 1st, 2016 10:13 pmMy fannish energy has been diverted into keeping up at work, which has involved all but literal running between work stations. Instead of making fannish things, I've been sucking down a steady diet of Star Wars fic, Hamilton, and TV, and occasionally reviewing professional and technical basics.
I skipped Sherlock for five years, but this week I broke down and watched "A Study in Pink". There's the occasional clever bit, but wow. Sherlock the TV show exists in an uneasy tension between yearning for Victorian!Sherlock verging on fetish and the awareness the show is set in a modern London. If not quite our London. There's some awkwardness about Teh Gay that... explains a bit about some of the more extreme fan theories. The mystery didn't grab me, and as an origin story, well, I can see what the writers tried to do with Sherlock deducing Watson shot the perp, but by that point I didn't care.
Apparently it gets a little better in other episodes, but then it gets worse, and then there's the holiday special or something. Drugs and Victorian London are involved? Anyway, this isn't high on my to-watch list.
Fannish bestie E. has made the point more than once that Joan sets boundaries and models responsible behavior with her Sherlock, where John and Sherlock enable each other. Now I see it myself.
Desire to cross Sherlock with anything: zilch.
I have also mainlined the first season of Jane the Virgin. It's dancing on the edge of self-aware silliness and just plain silly in a fun brightly colored palette. Some of the romantic plots I could take or leave, and the mystery plot running alongside the Jane plot is Byzantine and so improbable it borders on parody. But I sort of adore Xiomara and Rogelio as the Papagena and Papageno of the show. It's also fun to see the show's dips into seriousness, like the drama around Alba's immigration status.
Jane the Virgin is geographically incompatible with most of my go-to fandoms, but several of those fandoms also have travel options. There's probably a ridiculous Fringe crossover if you hit the comedic element just right. Okay, I just want the look on Olivia's face when Jane tries to explain her life in a nutshell, as related to whatever handwavey case of the week brings Team Fringe into Jane's orbit.
I've also mainlined Steven Universe, which is an adorable kid's short series with occasional narrowly averted destruction of the Earth. Watching SU is like eating potato chips: you say, "oh, one episode is ten minutes, I will watch an ep and then do the thing," and five episodes later the thing is still not done, though the bag of potato chips is definitively finished.
In a tone shift, I salted the SU marathon with the second season of Orange is the New Black.
What should I watch next?
Also, what books are people looking forward to in 2016?
I skipped Sherlock for five years, but this week I broke down and watched "A Study in Pink". There's the occasional clever bit, but wow. Sherlock the TV show exists in an uneasy tension between yearning for Victorian!Sherlock verging on fetish and the awareness the show is set in a modern London. If not quite our London. There's some awkwardness about Teh Gay that... explains a bit about some of the more extreme fan theories. The mystery didn't grab me, and as an origin story, well, I can see what the writers tried to do with Sherlock deducing Watson shot the perp, but by that point I didn't care.
Apparently it gets a little better in other episodes, but then it gets worse, and then there's the holiday special or something. Drugs and Victorian London are involved? Anyway, this isn't high on my to-watch list.
Fannish bestie E. has made the point more than once that Joan sets boundaries and models responsible behavior with her Sherlock, where John and Sherlock enable each other. Now I see it myself.
Desire to cross Sherlock with anything: zilch.
I have also mainlined the first season of Jane the Virgin. It's dancing on the edge of self-aware silliness and just plain silly in a fun brightly colored palette. Some of the romantic plots I could take or leave, and the mystery plot running alongside the Jane plot is Byzantine and so improbable it borders on parody. But I sort of adore Xiomara and Rogelio as the Papagena and Papageno of the show. It's also fun to see the show's dips into seriousness, like the drama around Alba's immigration status.
Jane the Virgin is geographically incompatible with most of my go-to fandoms, but several of those fandoms also have travel options. There's probably a ridiculous Fringe crossover if you hit the comedic element just right. Okay, I just want the look on Olivia's face when Jane tries to explain her life in a nutshell, as related to whatever handwavey case of the week brings Team Fringe into Jane's orbit.
I've also mainlined Steven Universe, which is an adorable kid's short series with occasional narrowly averted destruction of the Earth. Watching SU is like eating potato chips: you say, "oh, one episode is ten minutes, I will watch an ep and then do the thing," and five episodes later the thing is still not done, though the bag of potato chips is definitively finished.
In a tone shift, I salted the SU marathon with the second season of Orange is the New Black.
What should I watch next?
Also, what books are people looking forward to in 2016?