Bryce Moore's Blog, page 181

Sleep (or the Lack Thereof)

Sorry, folks. I’m operating on way too little sleep to make blogging worthwhile today. For some reason, I woke up in the middle of the night last night and couldn’t get back to sleep for three hours or so. A real throwback to ten years ago, when this was happening to me on a regular basis. (On the other hand, yay that it’s no longer on a regular basis!)

When it does happen to me, I typically do the same thing each time; get out my Kindle and read until I get sleepy. (Of course, this doesn’t always work perfectly, since if the book I’m reading is particularly good, then I end up wanting to keep reading. Such is life.) Nothing’s worse than just lying in bed for hours wishing you could be sleeping, but not being able to. I’d rather get something constructive done so that when the morning arrives, at least I feel like I accomplished something.

I suppose I can give a quick diet update. It continues to go well, though I did have a bit of a slow down last weekend while we had company visit. I ate out a couple of times, and it’s hard to figure out how many calories I’m consuming that way. I still lost weight, but this week has gone slower, and I think that’s the most likely culprit. (Well, either that, or the weight loss is just slowing down, which is also entirely plausible.)

Current stats? 204.6. That means I’ve lost 13.2 pounds since 1/19, or 6.5 weeks. About 2 pounds per week. It’s not the most fun, but once I’m in the groove, it really isn’t all that bad.

Have a great weekend, all. And may your sleep be long and restful.

MEMORY THIEF Cover Reveal!

Hello and good morning to you! I am beyond pleased to be able to announce that the official cover for THE MEMORY THIEF is now out in the wold and ready for you all to bask in its radiance! My editor had asked if I wanted to do the official reveal here on my blog or somewhere else on the interwebs, and as tempting as it was to hoard the good news all to myself, it didn’t make sense. You all already know about the book, so why not take the chance to have as many people as possible who don’t know about it find out about it?

So, I’m afraid I don’t have the actual cover right here for you to feast on. Instead, you’re going to have to click here to go and see it, (as well as read a few remarks by me, and a summary of the book) then come back to read a few more closing remarks by yours truly.

Go! Check it out!

Back already? Pretty cool, wasn’t it? Inside Out meets Something Wicked? This is literally the first time I’ve heard that comparison, and I really love it. (I do wonder who the quote is from.) Please feel free to share that cover reveal with everyone and his brother.

The book comes out in September. (The Amazon release date is September 20th at the moment, though I’m not sure how accurate that is. Ironic, isn’t it? That I really don’t know?) It’s been a bit of a crazy time getting this book to see the light of day, what with it being sold, then unsold, then sold again. But all of that is worth it, because it’s actually finally coming together.

The final version of the manuscript was accepted by my editor earlier this week, and it’s now with the copy editor. I should get that feedback within three weeks or so. How many revisions has it gone through so far?

Seven. And all but two of those were fairly extensive rewrites. Three to get in shape to submit to editors, then two as I bounced it back and forth with my editor, and then two minor ones at the end to put the finishing touches on.

What can you do to help me out? First, buy the book! Seriously, though. All preorders on Amazon count toward my first week sales, which often boils down to be the single most important number a book will have. It’s all about that splash. My birthday just happens to be the 21st, so if you were looking for the perfect present to get me, have I got news for you! You can get me an awesome present by getting yourself one. Think of it! You buy me something and keep it for yourself. That’s a pretty sweet deal, right? You can even buy it now so you won’t forget. Buy three! It’s like a permanent, buy one gift get one free deal.

Stunning.

But if you don’t want to buy it, that’s cool. We can still be friends. You can also help spread the word far and wide. Tell all your best librarian friends about it. Share the news of Facebook or Twitter. Sing it from the rooftops. (If any of you actually sing it from the rooftops, please video it. Because I would love to see that.) Put it on your “to be read” shelf on Goodreads.

I’ll be saying more about the book in the future (that’s a promise or a threat, depending on your feelings), but for now, gear up for some Middle Grade creepy goodness.

“Inside Out meets Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Wish I’d thought of that one when I was selling the book.

The Wire 3:12

I debated doing a post on both the finale of season three and the first episode of season 4, just because I’m running a bit behind (I think), but in the end, I thought this one deserved a post all on its lonesome. Why? Because when this season was filmed, the producers didn’t know if this was the series finale or not, so it was filmed as if it was.

First off, a bit of an aside I’ve been sitting on until the season was over:

In many ways, season three was a commentary on the Iraq War. It’s not necessarily as easy to see that now, watching it years later, but the connections are clear once you know it, and nowhere as obvious as in the title of this episode: “Mission Accomplished.” Viewing the episode (and series) in that light bring whole new meaning to scenes. Think about Avon talking to Slim Charles about war, and Slim says it doesn’t matter if the war was based on a lie or not. They’re still in war, and they need to fight on that lie.

Did I just blow your mind?

I know it surprised me when I first found out about it. But it really is true, The season even starts with its own 9/11: when “the towers” come down. Think back on that scene, and then realize it aired September 19, 2004, 3 years after 9/11. The imagery is unmistakable.

But this blog isn’t the place where I’ll get into all of that. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it before we left season three behind us. Because the season stands well on its own, no matter what. That’s a testament to the strength of the show. But there are elements now and then that feel out of place, perhaps, and I can’t help but wonder if those elements make more sense when seen through a different lens.

But really, what was accomplished in this season? Failed hopes and dreams. Stringer dead. Avon in prison. Hamsterdam dismantled. Bunny in disgrace. The unit got some good things done for the police, but McNulty left it, Prez is totally off the force, Kima’s relationship is in ruins . . . and Marlo is back on the streets, selling drugs and more vicious than ever. Sure, the “bad guys” from the first season are done, but there are now “worse guys” in their place. (I loved the scene with Avon seeing Marlo in the courtroom, which felt like a callback to the first episode, where McNulty and Stringer meet in a different courtroom.)

Lots has happened, but nothing has changed. And that’s kind of the point.

The only people who seem to really be happy are the people who have decided to get out of the game. McNulty goes to the beat. Cutty just keeps on boxing. Prez is sad, but realizes maybe he never wanted to be in this at all. It’s kind of a depressing look on everything, but pretty realistic too. The Game chews you up and spits you out, regardless of which side you’re playing.

But it’s nice to see McNulty figure things out, at least for this season. And good to have pockets of hope here and there, peppered throughout the overarching “nothing will save us” mantra of the show. (Actually, that’s not quite true. What could save everyone would be effective communication across the board. For people to stop putting themselves first all the time. But enough people need to do that at the same time that it seems doubtful they ever will . . .)

It’s a great final episode of the season. I love that the show takes its time to give us little pieces like Cutty boxing, or Prez talking to Lester. Ways to tie things up without actually tying anything up. McNulty turning down a drink, for example, but wanting to meet Beadie’s kids. That says volumes, and in such a subtle way, because we know the character so well.

But the show is by no means finished with its critique of our country and way of doing things. It’s time to head to school.

But that’s for next season. See you next week!

Movie Review: The Good Dinosaur

We watched The Good Dinosaur with the fam last week. Pixar. Dinosaurs! What could go wrong?

Quite a bit, actually.

It’s not that it’s a bad movie. It just isn’t particularly original. It’s a Frankenstein monster of different movies, stitched carefully together so you can’t see the seams at first glance.

Part of this might be expectations. When I sit down to watch a Pixar movie, I’ve been trained to know what to expect. Intriguing, involving characters. Original story. Compelling message. A tad preachy, perhaps, but certainly well intended. Fantastic visuals.

This one had the visuals in spades. The animation on the scenery was jaw dropping. The water was incredible. But everything else? Just not there, alas.

It started with the characters. The story’s about a young dinosaur who wants to prove himself to his father, and ends up going on an (inadvertent) adventure to do so. Which I suppose works as far as generic plots go, but there’s nothing in it to distinguish this character from others. He’s not unique, other than being a dinosaur. Which of course leads me to wonder what it is that makes other characters unique. What is it that made us root for Simba in the Lion King, for example? We see him go through a tough time, but we also see him have dreams. He’s cocky. Entitled. But good hearted. He’s got interactions with friends and family to show us that.

Good Dinosaur has all of that, but it feels like someone ticking off boxes. Simba had a dad talk? Check. Struggled with a few things? Check. It’s like every piece is in there to ape something a different movie already did, and none of it fits into a cohesive whole.

There are some shining moments in there. T-Rexes that act like cowboys. An insane Triceratops. The relation the dinosaur develops with the human. But all of those are peripheral. The engine driving the movie is the dinosaur’s drive to prove himself, and that’s where things fall flat. Look at me–it’s a few days later, and I can’t even remember the dinosaur’s name. That’s a bad sign right there.

Looking over the trivia section of IMDB, it seems like this was a story that just never got off the ground. They kept trying to retool it to make it work, and in the end . . . it went nowhere. A classic example of why sometimes it’s best to just step away from a project instead of insisting on finishing it. You want to be thorough and do a good job, but that’s not always possible. I have finished writing 14 different novels. Of those 14, I’ve only submitted four to editors so far. And that doesn’t even include the 7 novels I started and made significant progress on before setting them aside.

Not saying Pixar doesn’t know this, of course. It’s more an observation that it happens to the best of us: not being able to see and recognize when something just isn’t working.

In the end, this was just s 2/5 movie for me. And for a Pixar film, that’s about as low as it gets . . .

Oscar Thoughts

First, let’s get the painful bit out of the way: I didn’t win my Oscar pool, meaning that yet again, I am without the Hat. Who did win? Betsey Hyde for the SECOND YEAR IN A ROW. (Well, her son Nick tied for first as well, but we gave the tie breaker to Betsey, since Nick was attending remotely.) (And while I took a picture of the winner in the hat, it was a particularly late night, and I’ve decided to spare her the picture this year. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.) I tried really hard this year. And I did okay for the first bit. If George Miller had pulled off the upset, I still would have been able to come from behind, but no. They had to go and give it to the guy who won last year. Grumble grumble.

Anyway.

As for the event itself, I thought it had some issues here and there, but I was really surprised by how well Chris Rock did hosting. With all the controversy over the nominations and race, I wasn’t really sure they’d be able to handle that well. Rock’s opening monologue was about as perfect as you could get, in my opinion. Really uncomfortable jokes about a very real subject that matters a great deal. He managed to use humor to make us look at ourselves and our history, even getting in a few jabs at sexism while he was at it.

Then again, I also felt like the Oscars themselves didn’t handle the racism issue all that well. It became too much of a focus, where the event seemed to be trying to say it was moving past it, even as it was stuck right in the middle. The problem isn’t surface level, and a bandaid isn’t going to fix it.

Other notes on the evening:

Lady Gaga’s performance was pretty dang impressive, and it was quite disappointing to see Bond Theme 83 win after that. I can’t help but wonder if people hadn’t really listened or paid attention to all the songs. Call my cynical. 
There were quite a few pre-canned routines that just felt lame. The Star Wars schtick. Minions and Toy Story. (Though Toy Story was much worse.) Made me wonder if some of these ever actually seemed like good ideas at all.
The running “Thank Yous” at the bottom of the screen were a concept that might have seemed good at first, but ended up feeling like a move that put the credits in fast forward, and even then, people just talked through them. Not a fan of it, and hope it doesn’t return.
I was watching in Standard Definition, and man, it would be nice if they didn’t design the show to specifically exclude a significant portion of their audience. The factoids were all cut off, the names of the In Memoriam were cut off, faces were cut off. Really distracting and poorly done. Though come to think of it, can’t we just send out the standard definition signal in 16:9 ratio instead of 4:3? Maybe I don’t understand the technical limitations.
I was really rooting for George Miller to get Best Director, just because I think it would have been epic. Mad Max was so out there. So unique. Glad it got a ton of technical awards, but it would have been nice to have it get one or two biggies.
Loved seeing Ennio Morricone pick up a win. Very well deserved, and a shame that he didn’t get one long ago. The Mission is an incredible score, and got a nomination, but then lost to Herbie Hancock’s ‘Round Midnight. I haven’t seen it, but that score better be jaw droppingly awesome . . . I could do this with a ton of movies. How about The Good the Bad and the Ugly? Not even nominated! I’m not sure if the film would have been in the 39th or 40th Academy Awards slate (the movie itself didn’t garner any nominations at all), but in the 39th, Born Free won, and in the 40th, it went to Thoroughly Modern Millie. Keep that in mind when you consider how important (or out of touch) the Oscars really can be . . .
What was up with the Android ads? Bizarre.
As always, I enjoyed reading my agent’s liveblog of the event. He sees so many more of the films than I do. (He wrote two other excellent pieces on this year’s Oscars. Read them here and here.) I dream one day of being able to match him, but I don’t know if that will ever happen. It would be so nice to be able to have my own opinions of each film, instead of gleaning things from reviews and the like.

In the end, I enjoyed the evening of course. (Even if I lost the hat again.) It was a late night for the kids, but hey. It’s the Oscars.

Baptism Time!

I’d meant to blog about this earlier, but the week just sort of got away with me. DC turned 8 earlier this month, and tomorrow she’s going to be baptized. She’s been looking forward to this for months, counting it down practically every week when we talk about what’s coming up in the family.

It’s hard to believe she’s 8 already. I was looking at pictures of TRC at that age, and it feels like just yesterday. I know it’s a pretty hackneyed observation, but where did the time go?

What does DC like to do as an 8 year old? She’s a huge fan of art. For the past few Christmases that’s been the main thing she’s asked for: art supplies. I try and take some time with her every week or so to draw together, and I think she enjoys that. Of course, she also values watching TV pretty highly. She’s a big My Little Pony fan, though she’ll take pretty much whatever she can get. (We limit individual TV watching to an hour a day on the weekdays, and it’s always one of the high points of her day. Go figure.)

For a long time, she struggled with reading. (Much in the same way she was slow to pick up speaking back in the day, come to think of it.) Just at the beginning of this year, she was having a hard time getting through any book on her own. Now she’s in the middle of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and really enjoying it. So it might have taken her a bit to get the hang of it, but she seems to be catching the bug now.

She’s incredibly helpful around the house, always looking for something to do and wanting and willing to contribute. Doing the dishes, feeding the degus, setting the table. You name it. (Unless, of course, she’d rather be watching something at the moment . . .)

In any case, feel free to come on out tomorrow at 10am to attend the baptismal service. It’ll be here at the local LDS meetinghouse. You can message me for directions if you need them. Shouldn’t be a long service. Just an hour or so.

Congratulations, DC!!

America is Not Turning Socialist

I get it. Socialism is a curse word in America. Something used to refer to the opposite of “America.” Call a politician or person a Socialist, and you’re pretty much ending any rational debate right there. On the news the other day, I heard a person dismissing Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton as Socialists, with the clear expectation that by doing so, he was proving why they shouldn’t be viable candidates for president.

Today’s post isn’t here to discuss that. For the purposes of this piece, I don’t care if Hilary or Bernie are as red as they get. What I do care about is people using a term and not really understanding what it is they’re saying.

Maybe some of this is on my part. I come at this whole “Socialism” thing from a slightly different angle. (Looking over my past blog posts, I see I’ve really only discussed this in passing twice: in a discussion about health care, and one critiquing conservative politics. So I guess it’s high time I dealt with it head on, especially in light of all this name calling happening on the political stage at the moment.) For one thing, I lived in former East Germany for two years. For another, Denisa was raised in Socialist Czechoslovakia.* So we’ve had plenty of occasions to talk about politics and how things were run under that former regime.

*Sidenote. Let’s get the Socialist vs. Communist word choice debate out of the way right off. In my experience, “Communist” is what Americans called places that lined up with the Soviet Union. Those countries called themselves “Socialist.” They’re both different ways of referring to the same thing, for the most part, though some people like to split hairs over it. In today’s American politics, calling someone a Communist seems like too much, so they call people Socialist instead. It’s semantics. Socialist is a codeword for Communist. I’m going to use them fairly interchangeably.

What I mean to say is, while I personally never lived under a Socialist/Communist government, I’ve probably got a fair bit more experience with it than most people in America. Not everyone, by any means, but most? Sure.

And one of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve ever had in my life happened to me in my first month or so of living in East Germany. This was in 1997, so Communism had been gone for about seven years. Long enough for people to start to get used to the new way of running things, but not long enough that it was a distant memory for anyone.

I was raised about as American as you can get. Upper middle class lifestyle. Mormon. Yay Capitalism! And I had lived my whole life using Rocky IV as my main way of thinking about Communism or Socialism. Whatever the political question might be, the answer was easy: USSR bad. America good. End of debate.

So when I got over to East Germany and started talking to people on the street who had lived in Communism for decades, imagine my shock when some of them told me that they missed it.

They missed it!?!

How insane were these people? They missed not having televisions or cars? They missed being told what to do all the time? They missed living with crummy electronics? They missed living under an oppressive regime?

No. They didn’t miss those things, but those things were the only things I’d ever been taught about what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. As far as I knew, every single person who lived like that had only one real dream: to be free. To live like we lived in America. Because America was good and the USSR was bad. Everybody knew that!

But the fact is, life wasn’t nonstop hell under Communism. There were many things to like about it. Job security was a big one. Controlled prices of food. Less active crime. Better housing for the poor. Think about this one for a moment: I was talking to Denisa the other night about this, and she said that growing up, she never once saw anyone living in some of the conditions the poor in Maine live in. Houses with holes in the roof and terrible insulation and danger of freezing? Just didn’t happen. Unthinkable.

Again, I’m not saying everyone loved everything back then. But it wasn’t 100% bad. Not even close. Anyone who claims differently is using propaganda to promote their own world view.

In my discussions with Denisa and her family and my experiences in East Germany, what was the root of the problem behind the Iron Curtain? The same root that we have in our Capitalist society: people and power. The more power some people get, the more they try to abuse that power for personal gain. If someone can get away with something, they’ll often try to do just that, and who cares about the other consequences, as long as they aren’t ones they have to deal with.

Capitalism has plenty of problems, folks. Oodles. Some of them are different than the ones Socialism caused. Some of them are the same. But people are people, regardless of their politics. People learn the system, and then they game the system for their own personal benefit.

But I digress. These days, Republicans like to brand Democrats as “Socialist.” And when they do it, it’s clear what they’re trying to do: to tie those people back to that “America good. USSR bad” mentality. To label these people as unAmerican. To suggest they’re trying to undermine the very nature of our society. To say that if those people are elected, the next thing you know, we’ll all be living under a totalitarian regime, hating our lives. That’s the message.

The reality is anything but. America is miles away from the sort of system East Germany or Czechoslovakia had. You’d have to rewrite the Constitution itself and change a million details from the top to the bottom of government. This name calling doesn’t get anything accomplished. It’s political games, and it’s more than petty. It’s dishonest. (Ironically, the person whose politics I see matches up with the political goals and rhetoric of Socialist/Communist regimes is none other than Donald Trump. Sometimes the person calling names the loudest is the person you should be most worried about . . .)

I realize this post isn’t going to change any minds. But I didn’t feel like I could stay mute on the matter anymore, either. Instead of trying to label people with broad strokes, I wish we could look at what people are actually espousing. Democrats definitely have stark differences compared to Republicans. But “Socialist” in the old Soviet-style?

Give me a break.

The Wire 3:10 and 3:11

Some great stuff in these episodes, as the whole season once more comes together from all sides. Once again, it seems like the cops just can’t catch a single break . . .

Episode 3:10

Almost everything in this episode feels like it’s falling apart. Not in a bad TV show way. Rather, we look at all the characters, and they’re all just lost in the woods. McNulty can’t figure out who he really is and why he’s a valuable person. Stringer is drowning in the white collar world and becoming an outcast with Avon. Avon is trying to go back to his glory days and maybe not having quite so easy of a time of it. Bunny is now cut loose and at the whims of the fates.

It’s rough times in these characters’ lives.

The fallout of Hamsterdam is especially intriguing to me. You’ve got this situation where the show explored what it would be like to legalize drugs. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, I will say that Hamsterdam changed my outlook on it. Sure, there was the scene in hell when Bubbs goes there at night, but it appears that the social workers are beginning to combat that. When it all moves up to Royce and he has to decide what to do about it, you can see some genuine conflicts there. (I loved those letters from the citizens, which Bunny offers as a sop to Cerberus (for which he’s ridiculed by Burrell) and then Burrell does the same thing to Royce.)

Of course, the show doesn’t look at the drug use rates. It doesn’t examine what sort of an effect Hamsterdam has on that. But then again, it appears that drugs are fairly freely available no matter what. Which way would make things easier to get drugs? When they’re available on every corner, or when they’re only in the free zones? Before The Wire, I would have really been against any legalization efforts. After? I can see a fair number of advantages to them, though I’m still not firmly in favor of the idea. Then again, I also don’t really think the current approach is doing the country any favors.

Cutty continues to explore what it means to be a good guy and try to do good things. I continue to really like him and admire his efforts. It takes work to make good decisions in this world, and he’s one of the few characters who keeps going back, trying to make those decisions no matter how hard it might be for him.

Carcetti, on the other hand, keeps seeing the opportunity to choose between his self interests and the greater good, and he just can’t seem to avoid going for his self interests (in a way that makes him appear as good as possible to the public. There’s a distinct difference.) He’s a weasel who wants power, and he’ll do what he needs to get it. Sometimes that means doing the right thing. Sometimes it means something very different. (How fitting that the same actor ends up playing Littlefinger in Game of Thrones . . .)

And I can’t miss a quick comment on Rawls in the gay bar. How awesome is that? It’s a quick couple of seconds shot that adds to a character in huge ways, and it’s never addressed again. We don’t know for sure why he was there, but we’re left to make our own conclusions. Just a general reminder that no one is always as they seem, and that we should never judge people by appearances alone.

Some great television here, though it all feels like it’s not at quite the same level of focus as the endings of previous seasons. Maybe a bit too much sprawl for a single season? I’m not sure. I loved lots of it, but there’s a haphazard, everything but the kitchen sink feeling to it that keeps it from perfection. 4/5 for me on this one.

Episode 3:11

Okay. Everything I said about lacking focus from last episode? Throw that out the window for this one. It’s one of the best of the series. The scene with Avon and Stringer toward the end? Perfection. It’s taken a long while to set it up, and we know that Avon has betrayed Stringer and Stringer has betrayed Avon, but neither suspects the other. It’s like a bizarro Gift of the Magi retelling. I love it. And the actors do a stupendous job of pulling the scene off. I particularly liked where they go in for the one armed bro-hug, and each of them pounds the other on the back. I couldn’t help but picture daggers in those fists, as each of them was stabbing the other in the back.

Stringer’s downfall has been epic and almost inevitable. There’s a real Greek tragedy feel to it, and this episode is all about that, from start to finish. Sure, you’ve got the police tagging along, thinking they’re making progress on Stringer, but in the end, it all comes down to Stringer. He turns coat on Avon. He ends up getting shot, not cuffed. Great stuff.

Omar and Brother Mouzone at the beginning are straight out of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and that has to be on purpose. Those two characters are larger than life in the show. They’re the ones who are allowed to be. And it’s fun watching them meet under these circumstances. It’s like they’re the only ones capable of really bringing down Stringer.

In other parts of the episode, Cutty’s scene with his acolytes going up against the better trained boxers is also a favorite of mine. It’s much more subdued than the rest of the episode, but the look in Cutty’s eyes as he sees Justin not give up on himself . . . I love it. It’s such a small victory, but it’s a huge one for the boy and for Cutty. It’s one that doesn’t rely on anyone else. Just one person deciding to help another person, and that person accepting that help.

Speaking of Cutty, I always get a kick out of him going to Avon and doing this huge song and dance number to try and persuade him to help fund the gym, only to have Avon laugh him off for such a low request. Kind of a stark contrast. Think of how much good all that drug money could be doing if it weren’t tied up in the hands of people like Avon and Stringer. Then again, who *would* spend it well? Carcetti? I think not.

And how could I not give props to McNulty, who is able to turn down a sure thing out of loyalty to his old boss? He knows when he’s just being used for information, and he actually sets his own self interests aside for something else. It’s scenes like that which help us keep rooting for McNulty, no matter how much of a jerk he can be at times. Give your audience a reason to root for a character, and they’ll stick in there.

Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough at this point. Loved this episode. 5/5

What are your thoughts?

Downton Abbey 6:8 Review

Hard to believe that this was the last regular season Downton left. (There’s just the traditional Christmas episode to go, and that comes for us next week.) Downton certainly seemed ready to go out with a bang, however. A Lady Mary-infused she-harpy bang. There was a lot to like about this episode (as well as some stuff to strongly dislike), so let’s dive right in:

First up, I have to talk about Lady Mary, because it was the piece of the episode that was both the most compelling and the least well handled. My big problem with it is that it felt to me like the show suddenly decided to have her shift gears and go into full beast mode in this episode. True, she’s been catty to Edith all along, but this was above and beyond that. This was much more like the Mary from the first season, even while she’s being her new self with everyone *but* Edith. All in all, it didn’t feel true to the character for me. It was like the writers were forcing her to do and say things that the character now simply wouldn’t do. That said, I get that she was upset, and so maybe she wasn’t acting rationally. Still . . .
The marriage. In a hurry much? All it was missing was Elvis and a Las Vegas setting, and you’d be good to go.
Car Boy. As I said last week, I haven’t been a big fan of Car Boy. (Henry? Is that his name?) But the episode made me actually root for him a little. He showed some spine and stood up for himself against Mary in her angry mode, and that says something. I just wish that the show had spent the time on his character that we got with Matthew. It’s hard to care about a character you barely know, and yet the show has treated all her suitors that way. They come in, hang around for a bit, and then exit stage left. The focus has all been on Mary, and who cared what face was behind each suit? This approach really cheapened the plot for me.
Edith. I don’t for a moment seriously believe Edith and Bertie Bott aren’t getting together in the Christmas episode. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before. But this all felt so contrived, and so final. Or did the upper class really make their mind up so quickly and permanently?
Thomas. All of the sad Thomas scenes finally culminated in this one. Kind of interesting to see the parallel between him and Mary, but overall, this felt like a bit of a cop out to me. Carson and Lord Grantham both decide to let him stay because of it. Problem solved! Not that they shouldn’t have been understanding and all that. It’s just that it felt to me like a vast oversimplification of a complex problem. But again, perhaps that’s just how they approached suicide attempts back in the day.
Mrs. Patmore’s House of Ill Repute wins the award for best potential novel title. I felt bad for her, but it was a fun subplot that didn’t really endanger anyone or anything. Amusing.
Carson showed that he’s still capable of being a big fat jerk, even after he did all the cooking. He’s very much a part of the old school, and he wants nothing to do with the new school at all, thank you kindly. He managed to be mean to just about everyone downstairs this week, which about wraps it up for him. Sad that one of my favorite characters gets such a lousy exit. “And he was a grouch for the rest of his days” just seems pretty lame.
I was pleasantly surprised with Molesley’s teach experience. I was worried they were gearing it up for him to be a colossal failure after last week’s high point, but they didn’t go there. Huzzah! Still good to see him get his moment in the sun.
Spratt is the advice columnist? This was funny, but I wish they’d set us up for it a bit better. Maybe dropped some hints here and there throughout the season that alluded to it. As it was, it felt like they decided at the last minute to pick the most unlikeliest character to be found in that chair, and then stuck him in it. The only way it could have been more bizarre is if it had been Carson.

I’m nitpicking in a lot of these examples. I did enjoy the episode (minus the out of character Mary stuff). I’ll say that the show’s final season has been a solid one. Lots of great stuff, and so much better than some of the previous seasons. I’ve been looking forward to the episodes, which wasn’t always the case.

Next week we finish it off!

On Making a New Family Music Video

It’s that time of year again. The time when I scramble to think of something to get my mom for her birthday, and end up making a music video for her instead, roping the rest of my family into the project. If you’ll recall, a few years ago we did Copacabana, and then last year it was The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Don’t remember them? Well, here you go:

This year, I was initially planning on doing a version of Stayin’ Alive. It was going to be pretty epic, with dance offs and more. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided that was just going to be too difficult to pull off. So instead, I decided to go with something easier. More straightforward. And when my mom posted a link to a Carpenter’s concert on her Facebook page, things really came together.

I plotted out the story, worked out the shots, went over all of it with the family, and then shot it last night. I edited the whole thing on my iPad this time, and I was amazed at how easy it was. It helps that I’ve had some experience doing it by now. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. A little less comic than the previous ones, but you have to mix things up from time to time, right?

Right.

Anyway–here it is, in case you haven’t seen it already. Happy birthday, Mom!