Sumana

My spouse and I are watching season 6 of The Dragon Prince right now and I find it likely my frequent complaints are reducing his enjoyment so I will instead summarize them here

(we just watched episode 2)

Nearly none of these people are managing communication or projects or security appropriately

including those who are not actual children

recently my partner pointed out that Soren was the person making the most reasonable decisions

Ask clarifying questions! Take a second person with you to do a dangerous thing! Listen to what other people are trying to tell you! Consider that beyond "leave me entirely" and "stay at my side" may be a compromise alternative such as "be nearby"!

that sort of thing

genre expectations, yeah, it's a kids' show, yeah

so annoying

I've gotten into Taskmaster (UK) recently, subsequent to previous fannish dives into the Dropout game show Game Changer, Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal, and The Colbert Report.

I am extremely open to talking with y'all in a fan meta fashion about

The different Dominance/submission approaches within Game Changer and Taskmaster, and in particular, how they delicately balance how much/whether to humiliate contestants. Like, (spoiler for Series 13 of Taskmaster), ( Spoiler for Series 13 of Taskmaster ) And that made me think about how much the show's executives and staff have to juggle, to simultaneously trade off the 3 levels of (1) making an entertaining TV show, (2) running and maintaining a workable system of games, and (3) taking adequate care of each performer's ego. And my understanding is that Game Changer is much more Californian in culture about this, in either not doing or not showing us situations where the performers are just having an unalloyed bad time. In early Taskmaster seasons I think we see, for instance, vegans who have to eat eggs as part of a task, which is just not something I'd imagine Game Changer doing.

Alex Horne, Greg Davies, Stephen Colbert, and Nathan Fielder deliberately donning unflattering personas and maintaining them indefinitely during improv. If Colbert were willing to reprise a bit of his old Report character, I'd suggest him for a judge for a US outpost of the franchise.

I recently watched all the extant seasons (1-3) of "Home Economics", a sitcom currently airing on ABC in the US. It's reasonably funny, has some fun actors and writing, and sometimes gets at issues I haven't seen explored in other TV-type mass media (although I'm not thoroughly keeping up). The third season just finished and we don't know whether ABC will renew the show for a fourth.

As English Wikipedia summarizes:


In particular, this show is set in the modern-day San Francisco Bay Area. Connor's a private equity investor, living in a mansion I think in Sausalito or the Marina District; Sarah and Denise, who work in public schools, live in Oakland; novelist Tom and taking-a-break-from-corporate-law homemaker Marina live in a suburban house. (The geography does not really make sense to me when it comes to how quickly they jaunt from home to home, and also we glimpse a map onscreen saying that the suburban house is in Berkeley but I do not think there are any neighborhoods in Berkeley that look like that, but I have decided to not let that bother me.)

I've found it interesting to reflect on what the show does and doesn't address, given its premise.

( details )

I am extremely hesitant to recommend this show. It's a totally fine way to pass 22 minutes at a time, watching reasonably good-looking people banter and make references you'll probably get, laughing a bit. If you want to try a single episode, try S2E3, "Bottle Service, $800 Plus Tip (25% Suggested)". I needed a little brain vacation after a rough January so I gulped the show down and it served its purpose of immersing me in a different life for a bit. And at least it's trying to reflect some aspects of cross-class relationships in a way that's been a bit useful for my brain.

I saw Fire Island and enjoyed it -- it's been a while since I watched a Pride and Prejudice adaptation and this one was charming and cutting. Leonard has never seen nor read P&P, so I got to spot parallels and pause to tell him about them. Leonard once wrote of It Happened One Night that


and there's a similar balancing act to the role of Darcy, or the Darcy-alike in any P&P adaptation.

My household has now watched seasons 1 and 2 of Only Murders in the Building. A fun show! We are Steve Martin fans here and enjoy Columbo and Murder, She Wrote for popcorn-type everyday viewing, and the performances, characters, jokes, and twists keep us engaged. A big Manhattan apartment building sure gives you a lot of opportunities to bring in new characters whenever you like and tangle up the neighbor-web further. This is one of the few shows we like where Leonard is willing to watch, like, 3 episodes in a row instead of stopping after two, so I think it finds a rare mix of humor, suspense, and (usually) manageable intensity/violence.

I'm now caught up on Welcome to Wrexham, perhaps otherwise known as the "waiting for the next season of Ted Lasso" placeholder. I wrote a bit about my mixed reaction on MetaFilter's FanFare, about how I sort of wish it were more of a Ken Burns-style or Jon Bois-style documentary instead of the specific kind of sports documentary/reality TV it is. One thing I didn't mention there but will add here: would the supporters' trust have been nearly as welcoming to these complete outsiders if they had the exact same plans yet were not white? Probably not. (I'm guessing this from the reactions I think I've heard about when rich Chinese or Middle Eastern people buy interests in European sports concerns. But maybe I'm wrong.)

Last year, with a friend, I saw the first few episodes of the old BBC TV version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This past weekend I finished that up. I think when I was a kid, reading the books, I found the idea of the restaurant at the end of the universe elegant and silly, but -- as an adult, and watching the TV version -- I grasp better the emotional tone, the desire for a really decadent oblivion. The emcee looks like he's taking a break from Cabaret.

I tried the 2016 Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency adaptation but stopped halfway through the first episode. Gently is so obnoxious and boundary-trampling, and I just have such a low tolerance for bullying that the narrative seems to be fine with. He's way more out-of-line in the show than I remember him being in the book (at least the first time/s we meet him). However, there is a cop played by Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler from The West Wing) -- he and his partner are fun to watch.

I've also now seen the first episode of Avenue Q, Armando Iannucci's space fiasco comedy. I liked The Thick of It and The Death of Stalin and I think Avenue Q is along the same lines plus gets us new worldbuilding (e.g., the moon is now a giant jail??) so I'm curious to watch more.

I am watching and really enjoying Motherland: Fort Salem, which is currently in its third and final season. I saw the first 5 episodes maybe last year, then started watching the rest, and am already on season 3, episode 4. I didn't time it perfectly, and will thus be waiting for the last few episodes over the next few weeks, but if you are already all caught up then please say so in the comments and maybe we can talk about this show which I have heard very few people talk about! (Thank you, ads in the NYC subway system, and Marina Berlin, for bringing the show to my attention.)

It's a soapy, plotty, pulpy show about military witches, with tantalizing worldbuilding and lots of character moments where people sacrifice or take risks to Make A Stand or Have Each Other's Backs and so on. We follow three new cadets as they form a unit, deal with intrigue and relationships, fight various enemies, etc. I am a sucker for the super idealistic one who Wants To Serve And Protect The Innocent. There's substantial violence and goriness in this show, including the graphic deaths of innocent people, so watch out for that if that'll bother you.

Most of the characters are women; in season 2 we meet a nonbinary character. A queer romantic relationship is one of the most important ones in the show. Several major characters are Black. Most of our main characters are from the US, but we also get some globetrotting and some characters from elsewhere since events quickly take on a global scope -- and one main character is from a sovereign indigenous nation in the North American Midwest.

Now, my nitpicking questions/notes:

( Question for people who have already seen all of season 1 )

( Note for people who have watched through season 2 )
( Question for people who have watched at least up through season 3, episode 3 )

And: has the show, so far, discussed gender transition or shown us any binary trans witches?

A few weeks ago I read this thread by twwings about Brooklyn Nine-Nine and about what it would take to take the existing show and change what ideologies it carries and feeds regarding the criminal justice/law enforcement system. "it is copaganda, has been copaganda from the start, and it looks like the new season is going to be copaganda as well," writes twwings.

Over the past several years -- usually on airplanes -- I had seen maybe 6 episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. But I've been thinking about related stuff for a while -- see this thread from early 2019 as folks discussed a potential wiscon program item originally called "disaggregating & reconstituting the pleasure of military/spy/police stories", and this musing:

in trying to figure out how one constructs a story that hits a bunch of the same buttons that spy/military/police fiction hits, yet avoids the ideological squick that the genre inherently pokes, I am a bit like someone trying to hack together a gluten-free or vegan equivalent of a favorite wheaty/dairy/meaty food

(Did that WisCon session actually happen? I forget...)

Just around the time that I saw that Twitter thread, I entered a particularly stressful few weeks and sought out comedic entertainment. So, right now I am watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine in its entirety -- I'm currently partway through season 4 -- and so that twwings thread was fresh in my mind when I started.

Which of this show's pleasures depend on it being a cop show?

I think there are a few categories here, getting progressively more specific.

People in relationships with each other and humor arising from situations they are in - this is the basic situation comedy format. This particular version of the sitcom has snappy writing, a balance between drop-in accessibility for new viewers of individual episodes and engagement/depth for longtime viewers, a shakycam/mockumentary-influenced filming style at least for some scenes, etc. None of this is dependent on the police setting, although I assume there is some genre connection where shakycam subconsciously influences how the viewer settles into a crime- or police-related narrative.

Workplace: There are many workplace sitcoms, and many Brooklyn Nine-Nine stories could take place in any workplace sitcom, e.g., "an energy-saving drive means [person] needs to give up their space heater," "boss sends staff to team-building activity they aren't enthused about," "the janitors don't like this team," "the higher-ups are corrupt," "management incentives backfire," etc. The corruption-type stories are a little more specific because the stakes can be lower in some workplaces, but you can still tell that story outside a cop/military/spy setting.

High stakes/arduous work/suspense: Some Nine-Nine plots or moments depend on this stuff -- stakeouts, for instance -- but, as I've seen other folks point out, you can tell these stories in settings like the ever-present medical procedural, or in firefighting, wilderness search and rescue, and maybe some other kinds of public service agencies. The high stakes help with stories about camaraderie, loyalty, leadership, tradecraft, competence, etc.

People improving the world in some way: Nearly exclusively, the way characters in Brooklyn Nine-Nine improve the world is by arresting criminals; we see/hear a little about community outreach but it's treated as laughable and pretty much an afterthought. There are shows about teachers, lawyers, social workers, supernatural entities, etc. that are more directly about community service.

This brings me to a point laurashapiro made in the WisCon session idea thread:

I feel like the cop show is essentially scratching multiple itches for fans: character depth, buddy dynamics (which could occur in any line of work), action (which is almost always violence, hence problematic), and a desire to see evildoers brought to justice (always problematic within a law enforcement milieu). So while the other professions you mention might address some of these needs, the only show I've ever seen that does all of them successfully without feeling icky on a social justice level is Leverage.

So let's come to the hardest-to-substitute pleasures in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which have to do with violence and justice. And not just ad hoc defensive violence, but deliberate and prepared use of violence or threats of violence, or preparations for being attacked by malicious people, and organized violence as a means towards justice.

I think that maybe 15% of Brooklyn Nine-Nine plots and whatnot have a hard dependency on the violence and violence-adjacent stuff. There are very few substitutes for this particular story component outside cop/spy/military stories, I think -- we have gang/organized crime/vigilante stories such as Leverage, and some private investigator-type mystery/noir stories.

And then there's the desire to see evildoers brought to justice, which may undergird a bunch of Nine-Nine in nonobvious ways; I will keep looking for that (and violence and threats of/preparations for violence) as I keep watching, and I'll keep looking to get a greater understanding of which of this show's pleasures are not fungible, and what that means regarding what the show is uniquely doing. I also want to understand what the show's trying to do regarding concepts of strength and power, and if you know of interesting writing on that topic, please share a link!

Spouse and I just saw Season 3, Episode 1.

I LOVED THIS STAR TREK: DISCOVERY EPISODE. IT'S LIKE THEY LOOKED UP THE BOOK OF "SUMANA'S BUTTONS" SO THEY COULD PUSH THEM ALL.

( spoilers )

Listening: Listened to the Film Reroll three-parter on Jurassic Park. Listened (and am listening now) to my friend's freeform local radio show. Had never heard of Pynch before, and had never listened to anything off the Beatles' Revolver ("Tomorrow Never Knows" - what a weird song!).

Watching: Leonard and I finished Avatar: The Last Airbender. What a fun show! Engaging, though uneven. I could really see how its level of seriousness paved the way for other stuff I've enjoyed, like Steven Universe. One thing I like in entertainment is when I can't predict precisely what will happen next, perhaps because the characters move faster than I'd assumed or bypass obvious prevarications. I saw this several times, as when one character explicitly says "This is the part where I double-cross you." And -- sometimes with just a few words -- the show gives real personality to characters, not just secondary or tertiary characters, but characters who only show up in a single scene in a single episode.

Leonard and I have just started rewatching Legend of Korra to get the additional layer of resonances (this is amazingly rare -- Leonard is extremely unlikely to rewatch or reread things).

And it's useful for me to have a thing to watch that Leonard doesn't particularly want to, so I can look at moving pictures without feeling like I'm leaving him out, so I am in bits and bobs watching the 1993 Tales of the City series which I don't know whether I ever watched entire. There's something like a fourth series out now, including a tense scene about generational conflict that I saw via social media several months ago. But I don't know whether I'll get all the way there ... I like seeing San Francisco, which I miss, but I'll have to see whether I like the soapiness and the Issue plots.

Playing: I heard good things about Spiritfarer, and we picked it up, but GOSH there's a lot of crafting and dependency management and stuff in the first hour+ rather than the bit where you counsel dying people and help them get to the gate. Leonard explained that this is basically a tutorial stage. I imagine we'll play it some more and see what happens when this tutorial stuff is over. My feelings here are kind of like how I prefer "Once Upon A Time" and "Snake Oil" to board/card games with a bunch of points and numbers mechanics. More making stories up with my friends, less secretarial/project management work.

Reading: some comfort rereading (many bits of China Mountain Zhang, all of Ancillary Justice, some of The Dispossessed), a bunch of short fiction from past and current sf/f magazines (see my Pinboard tags for recommendations, plus recent MetaFilter posts), and I've started Philip K. Dick's Gather Yourselves Together which is a little unpleasant so far because one of the three main characters is a somewhat unpleasant dude.

I realized that I have NOT completed all of Zen Cho's fiction, because she has a short story ("Hikayat Sri Bujang, or, The Tale of the Naga Sage") in The Book of Dragons which came out last month. Waiting now for the ebook to become available from my local library, because $17 for an ebook or $30+ for a paper book when I am only keen on a few of the authors featured is more than I want to spend right now. Although I may change my mind if I'm like "but I want it nooooooow".

I've now finished The Baby-Sitters Club 10-episode first season.

As I was talking with a friend about it -- she, like me, read way more BSC than Sweet Valley while growing up -- I ended up declaiming:

Sweet Valley is about identity (this tight, exclusive unit of two twins) and Babysitters Club is about labor and an ever-expanding coalition (not to mention a worker-owned co-op) that expands across race, age, and gender. SV is to BSC as Star Wars is to Star Trek.

On what helps some people decide to attend social gatherings.

On the Short Trek The Escape Artist.

On noticing that I'm trying to read inaccessible fiction.

"Random" (as in the modern slangy sense, e.g., "the Mountain Goats are making an album about D&D? That's random") means: unexpected in a way that I disapprove of, unjustified, and I resent having to make room for this unexpected thing; where do I even file this?!.

The coverage of celebrities (especially actors) and sports that I run into is usually a way into telling stories about labor and power.

Arrested Development loved showing us how its characters clung to the perceived power of names/categories, to make other people see things their way. "It's a satire!" "Illusions, dad!" "Mr. Manager." And, relatedly, mistook fake things for real -- living in the model house, George treating all dolls as though they were people.