Remington Steele - 3x06 - "Steele Your Heart Away"

I always wonder how aware writers are of the tropes they're using, particularly the narrative/emotional/sympathy/etc aspect. Like, do you write that long coat wearing hero because that's how that gestated in your head and it just happens to fall on the cool square that a lot of us share? (Besides, if what was in your head wasn't shared by others in the same way, well, you might still be a writer but you probably won't have much of audience. Or you could be Terry Goodkind. Nevermind.) Or are you actively aware of it - yes, long coats are cool, this is a cultural norm, let me write a long coat here where I need the story to evoke coolness?

I kind of assume it's a mix of both, to some extent, but the one thing I don't expect is for someone - a character - to just come out and admit to what's going on, having a character identify with the audience this way. Whedon has quite a bit of this ("Do you always open both doors when you come into a room?") but it's usually more light hearted, with character insight on the side. Laura just goes, well, yes, of course I want to see you vulnerable. It's weirdly exhilarating, almost transgressive. Good god, are you allowed to just say that? On television?

( Read more... )

It's Raining

It's all proper rain and everything, likely to last all day making rain-noise and rain-smell throughout. We don't get very many of these a year, and this one was nice enough to fall on a weekend. 

What I should be doing includes overdue schoolwork, schoolwork that will soon be overdue, urgent work stuff that needs to happen now, (now now now!) and a lot of sensible writing projects that I could be making some headway on and many books that I might read that might teach me new things and expand my horizon and so on. 

What I want to do is marathon Season 1 of Community and keep reading about the 1900 World's Fair for the now ludicurously over-researched and yet still very vague short story idea. Seriously, I don't have a plot, but if I were to put in citations this thing would have a better bibliography than any paper i've ever handed in. 

Reminton Steele 3x07 - A Pocketfull of Steele

Almost a totally sappy episode, but not quite.  Steele does all the driving in this episode, in both cars. Whoever has the stronger personal motivation in a given episode gets to drive?
( Includes gratuitous Leonard Cohen quoting )