MY open letter to NBC regarding Chuck

Alan Sepinwall, Star-Ledger TV critic and blogger extraordinaire has written an open letter to NBC in support of Chuck. And he wrote it before last night’s episode, which he thought was awesome enough to give a Dayenu filled review. So awesome! Anyway, thanks to Sepinwall, I was inspired to write my own letter to NBC.

Dear smart people at NBC who were open-minded enough to air this show originally:

I used to merely like this show, but over the course of this season it has become my favorite program on tv! It’s funny, smart, full of things I inevitably want to buy (Awesome could have bought ME that television), and the characters exhibit genuine growth as a direct result of their experiences. I love that Chuck has these networks of peers, friends, and family who care about him, even if they don’t necessarily understand him, and who try to help him out, even if their idea of help doesn’t actually aid Chuck. I recommend this program to any friend of mine who is looking for a new program, and have successfully hooked at least 5 people that I know of this season. I could probably get more if Chuck wasn’t in such a competitive time slot. I know many people who would never dare cheat on Dr. House, Blair Waldorf, or Neil Patrick Harris, but would consider watching Chuck consistently if it was on at a different time. If Chuck was canceled, I would be more devastated than I was when Dead Like Me, Veronica Mars, and Joan of Arcadia were canceled. Combined.

Please don’t let Chuck be an addition to my “Gone too soon” dvd collection of shows that were taken off the air after their second or third season, before the writers had told all the stories they had to tell. This show gets better every episode and has a loyal fandom, bringing together sci-fi nerds, ‘shippers, young men, tech heads, espionage fans, and people who just plain like great programming. You’ve basically won demographic bingo here!

Please don’t break my heart,
Nicole

Sydney Tamiia Poitier: I love you, but I hate your…

In this, the first ever edition of “I love you, but I hate your…”, I will tackle the conundrum of people I like doing or participating in things I hate. Our inaugural subject is Sydney Tamiia Poitier.

Sydney Tamiia Poitier, I love you, but I hate your show.

There are a lot of things to love about this actress:

• She basically has the easiest job ever of mooching off her father’s fame, due to having his name and all.
• She’s gorgeous, successful, and has boobs and hips!
• She was on two of the best shows ever to appear on television: Veronica Mars and Joan of Arcadia!!
• Her initials are the same as the Stone Temple Pilots, a fabulously awesome band.

There are at least as many things to hate about her show:

• She’s appearing in a remake of Knight Rider. My childhood weeps.
• Life is up against this show, and is not necessarily expected to emerge the victor.
• I’m scared of a world where the 2008 version of Knight Rider is a ratings juggernaut.
• Why are people still interested in a program about a talking, crime-fighting car? This show makes me think less of people.
• Thinking about her means that I think about Knight Rider, which means I think about David Hasselhoff. Please, don’t make me think about the Hoff.

Where I’ve been

I disappeared for a bit, mostly due to the fact that I wanted to finish up the pair of socks I was knitting (for me!). I realized that I’ve really been knitting a lot in September. I’ve only read four books this whole month, and usually I read that many books in a week. So yeah, I’ve been knitting a lot, which means that I’ve also been watching a lot of tv on dvd. I still can’t believe how much I’d forgotten about Veronica Mars and Grey’s Anatomy. I’m not just talking about specific events in individual episodes. I’d forgotten love interests, major plot points, and really important instances of character development. If you’d given me a pop quiz on Veronica Mars two weeks ago, I would have failed miserably. Troy? Forgot him. Piz? How could I have forgotten Piz? Plus, I’d actually forgotten who had planted the bomb on the bus, although I did remember that that character was a bad guy.

So far, I’m not finding that I forgot the same amount of stuff in relation to Grey’s Anatomy. I wonder why this is. Perhaps it’s because Grey’s is much more present in general pop culture, so I had a better chance of being reminded of things that might otherwise be forgotten. I started with season two, since that’s what I had, and am now going back through season one. I liked Meredith better when she had some bite, and I think that the return of her spark is what made me enjoy the second half of season four as much as I did.

I went to the Andiamo Motorcycle Run this past Sunday, September 14, and I will be posting pictures of that tomorrow.

Dream on, Jumpstreet!

Yay! Veronica Mars is getting way better. I’m more than halfway through season 1 now, and we’ve gotten to the point where Logan is a much friendlier psychopath. He’s still nuts, but now he uses all those psychoses for the good of the people he likes. It’s pretty great. I really always loved the Veronica-Logan pairing, and it’s great that they spent so much time subtly altering his character so that, by the time the two of them got together, it wasn’t jarring and unexpected. I contrast this with the way that the Chuck Bass character was rehabbed rather quickly by the Gossip Girl writers. I actually adore Chuck now, but it’s not believable how the guy who tried to rape two girls in the first episode is somehow now this hardened, but secretly sweet, sorta-hero. Also, the VM production values have increased appreciably (now, when characters travel by car, the scenery they pass is real), which is definitely adding to my enjoyment.

Dated!

I started watching my Grey’s Anatomy season 2 dvds and was really struck by a lot of things. The first was that the show used to be really good. Even in the midst of that goodness, I noticed that watching episodes one after the other revealed patterns that were not obvious when the shows were spread out over a whole season. The writers seemed to like some lines a lot, and used them in various episodes, giving them to different characters. The Izzy/Denny story line seemed even less probable this time around; what would make them fall in love so quickly, and why weren’t stronger measures used when Izzy’s actions were revealed? Why weren’t the police called? Something that big couldn’t stay a hospital matter.

Derek was really indecisive, and his wishy-washiness really angered me a lot. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, and now I see why other characters considered him so insufferable. I still feel for poor Mer, though, and don’t think that she was as annoying as other viewers find her. A lot of crappy stuff happens to her, and it’s not usually her fault.
So that show has held up reasonably well. But then I finished with Grey’s and decided to watch Veronica Mars. I got hooked on that show after having heard so many of my friends rave about it. I’d spent 24 snowy hours of a blizzard watching all of those episodes, and then the first half of the second seaon. So when I popped in the first dvd of season 1, I was prepared to be bowled over all over again. While the funny lines are there, the acting is off and the really low production values are kind of glaring. There are green screens for everything, including every car scenes. The supporting actors are often pretty terrible. The videography is cheap-looking. So I don’t know if I wasn’t into noticing things like that back then, or if I just didn’t care. I sort of think I didn’t notice.

With both shows, it’s fun to watch characters evolve, and to see little things that I forgot happened. I had remembered that Veronica and Logan hadn’t gotten along in the beginning, but I hadn’t remembered that she and Weevil hadn’t been pals to begin with, either. It seems to me that Grey’s has aged better, but that probably has to do with a more polished cast and way higher production values. Also, VM is so steeped in teen culture, which changes so quickly that even things from last year can sometimes seem dated. Paris Hilton guest-starred in one of these episodes, and now she’s not even relevant as a punch line.