definitely, possibly, maybe

every time i see mr. phillips i think of him as dr. charles percy who so ignominiously died in the active shooter episode of grey's anatomy . i guess his thing is ignominiously dying, because the black hood gets to him too. as the sugarman, he was spreading sin in riverdale, so serial killer justice prevails. i'm about ready to learn the black hood's identity. allegedly it's someone we'll recognize. or at least it's someone who betty knows. i just worry that the reveal is going to be something of a letdown. especially given the mind games the black hood has been playing with betty. and let's talk about the breakup. betty and jughead start out the episode on the outs but are reunited by the end of the episode. the thing is we have jughead's makeout session with toni topaz as a looming secret between them. it better not become the "we were on a break" of riverdale  because i might lose it. jughead and betty are better characters than ross ...

so i actually stumbled on this series after i requested the galleys of the second book, no falling allowed , on netgalley. but even though the titles are meant to be standalone i just felt like it would be better to read the first book in the series in this instance. i've said before that it's not always necessary to read things in publication order. and that's true here, it's not necessary, but having read both books now, i can say that it was the right choice to read them in order. but i'm getting ahead of myself. right now i'm talking about no kissing allowed . here we are introduced to cameron, grace and lauren, three young women who have just graduated college and are embarking on their new careers. but before joining the land of responsibility that is adulthood, the women decide to live it up one last time. and of course for cameron, our main character in this novel, that means fulfilling a moment right out of grey's anatomy. because she totally pu...

so i can't explain what motivated me to start posting again. but i can tell you what derailed me before. i had three kids, that's what happened. now that the youngest is entering toddlerhood life is somewhat calmer. or maybe i've just gotten better about taking time for myself. who knows? i still watch loads of television, but we cut the cord on cable and have been functioning with a netflix , hulu , amazon prime combo that works for us. since we were never a family of channel surfers, it's actually worked out pretty well. and other than having to watch out for hulu expiration dates on some shows, for the most part i keep up okay. though i do have to admit that i've fallen inexcusably behind on greys . this was totally my show, but last season they introduced the other sister and then they killed mcdreamy and i was like, do i really want to watch this? the thing is, when i do make time to watch i enjoy it. so i haven't given up on the idea of catching up qu...

the start of the year is always so hectic, you both want to start things fresh, but you have so many things hanging over your head from the previous year. that's why it's always nice to reflect on things. 2009 was a strange year. a lot of celebrities died unexpectedly. life itself has been insanely busy. i traveled so much, that now as i face a year with less travel, i'm not exactly sure what i should do with myself. the nice thing about a new year is that you get to figure it all out. but before i get to that, here's the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2009: the good grey's anatomy's creative resurgence at the end of 2008, grey's had sunk pretty low. izzie was having sex with visions of denny. the show had ceased to be compelling. but then, a turn-around marked by the new year, izzie's cancer storyline went full steam ahead, the character's suddenly grew up, with meredith and derek finally committing to each other in a meaningful way, alex and izzie...

i feel like i've been working on this post for weeks (because i have been). anyway, i've had a lot of time to think about the season finales of my favorite shows, and a lot of thoughts to share. just not a lot of time to write them up. but i haven't abandoned this and since agreeing to edit a friend's ~600 page novel, i've been excited about writing again. sometimes it is so exhausting, and when i'm traveling, as much as i want to write out what i'm thinking...i find myself watching television in my hotel room instead (i have a whole blog post forthcoming on what i inexplicably end up watching when i am traveling for work). but to get to the point, here are my thoughts on the some of the game-changing season finales i watched last month: chuck this show couldn't have gone out with a better bang. and knowing that we'll get at least 13 more episodes to explore what happened makes the whole thing somewhat sweeter. in the final two episodes of the second...

i think it's funny that abc's hyping of the six-year-old shooter seemed to render that storyline the least interesting. i don't know if it was the little girl, who was very cute, but i didn't think she was very good actress. wouldn't you think there would be something more fundamentally broken about an abused child who shot her father 17 times? i don't know. and though i often get annoyed when the patients they are treating parallel the doctor's lives or emotions too neatly at least this case brought out some juicy stuff for meredith. that final scene between meredith and the chief had me in tears. and i think the storyline, meredith's plea that the battered mother do something, anything to change her daughter's story, so that she doesn't grow up to be the girl so broken by her father's abuse, really shed light into meredith's childhood. all of the adults in meredith's life abandoned her. and they all pretended that it was okay. it go...

finally, "grey's anatomy" has turned a corner. it's as if the whole "i see dead people" kick the show was on has been put out to the curb. my biggest problems with the ferry boat episodes and then the dead denny walking storylines have been with the fact that this show deals in realities of a type that don't translate well into the supernatural. grey's takes place in a world where life happens, so when it would leap to the other side it didn't feel true to the story and seemed to be a way to cheat and seek out some cheap emotional depth to the story. the last two episodes have been fantastic. the fallout of izzie's illness coming out has given us some bravura storylines for all of the cast members. finally this is a story that means something. it affects everyone, even if they aren't close to izzie. alex karev has always been my favorite grey's character. seeing him deal with the knowledge that izzie is sick, that she might be dying...

i don't know. i mean...i had been enjoying the "grey's anatomy"/"private practice" crossover event, but...meh. i think that they could have done way more interesting things with it than they did. the heart of the crossover had a pretty great mix of the grey's cast interacting with the pp cast. but as it wound down, it didn't really deliver any real goods. here are a few thoughts on what grey's should do to improve things: 1. spend less time in surgery i know they are surgical residents, but the surgery scenes are challenging to watch because the actors all have their surgical masks in place and are stuck emoting with their eyes. it gets boring to see meaningful glances exchanged over the body being cut open. 2. when focusing on patients don't line up each patient so perfectly with the doctor's own story line every single time having the events in patients lives echo what is going on for our main doctors is okay sometimes, but it's g...

i've been focusing a lot on "general hospital" and "lost" lately, so here are my thoughts on some of the other shows i watch. chuck so last week's 3-D episode was good, but also a bit of a let down. i thought that the tension between chuck and sarah after he witnessed her shoot a fulcrum agent in cold blood would hold over a few episodes. instead they address it after a few scenes of chuck behaving oddly in sarah's presence. while chuck is still uncomfortable in his spy role, he's been playing a larger part in the missions and as the end of the episode shows us, is clearly committed to the work that they do. how i met your mother this show is so brilliant. i'm really loving the robin-barney love connection. i think they've been able to mine a lot of great comedic material for barney, and it's been fun watching the other characters realize that barney has the hots for robin. right now lily and ted are the only other people aware of his fe...

somehow i always feel like i'm running behind. oh well. i've been more or less keeping up with the dvr and figured it was about time to publish my thoughts. because i can. so "the incident" that gh is counting down to is driving me insane. not because it isn't well-executed, because if there is one thing that gh does well it is sweeps events. i just hate the drawn out anticipation, why won't things just happen already!! hopefully the rumored deaths won't involve characters i like or legacy characters that form the show's core. here's a list of people i think can go: 1. kate howard -- what is the point of her character now? her fabulous bob is returning but will be forever sullied by the insane mob apologist she became. megan ward has zero chemistry with maurice bernard, kate and sonny were a snooze-a-thon. lately kate wanders around town throwing hissy fits at olivia, claudia or carly, and threatening to fire maxie and lulu at every turn. 2. nadi...

i meant to do this earlier, but circumstances beyond my control prevented my posting this any sooner. without more ado, the 2008 year in review... the good true blood and all that is sookie stackhouse i fell in love with the television series and then with the books. i can't believe that i have to wait until summer for the second season and until may for the next book to be released. i fell in love with vampires again, who knew that after "buffy the vampire slayer" and "angel" ended that i would one day be anticipating a show about vampires every week. "true blood" is a lavish production with amazing visuals and a lush sense of ambience. it's a pleasure watching not only for the story, but also for the amazing sense of place that the show gives you. it's like bon temps is real and all the crazy vampire stuff a possibility. gossip girl i can't say enough about "gossip girl" other than it is the best show on television. again a show...

so i've been annoyed with "grey's anatomy" and this izzie sees denny's ghost storyline, i think it's a cheap knock-off of a bad "general hospital" plot twist, and i think it's really sad that this once enjoyable show has gone so far off the rails. but anyway, now that i know i was right --and don't click on the links if you don't like spoilers--i find myself much more willing to go along for the ride. it's funny how that works. i'm the kind of girl that looks at the end of the books she is still in the middle of reading. why do i do it? i often have guesses as to where the story is going and i like to check to see that i'm right. and i have to say i usually am. and i so still enjoy reading the book through to the end. of course, when i'm wrong, sometimes i feel like my enjoyment of the book is lessened, because what is happening isn't what i want to happen, and somehow it feels wrong to me. (for example, i worry about...

i watch a lot of television, and i love it. i generally prefer tv over movies. i like the ongoing story of television, when i love a character, i love them. i want to know them. and you can do that with a tv show, you can get to know the characters in depth. i get overly involved with tv shows, in fact i've divorced shows when i've felt that they were being untrue to their characters and sacrificing character development over plot [ "dawson's creek" i'm looking at you!]. i'll explain the mechanics of divorcing a show in another post. anyway, the point of this ramble is that lately i've not been interested in keeping up with my television shows. it seems like there is a dearth of creativity on network tv these days. the shows i genuinely look forward to, those are few and far between, and because they tend to not be mainstream there is the constant threat of cancellation that looms. so it's hard to get invested. i watch a lot of crap half-heartedl...

i've always been able to forgive "grey's anatomy " 's more self-indulgent transgressions, i.e. meredith dying and having visions of kyle chandler and denny while in a coma, the improbable sexual hijinks between a small sampling of characters, etc. however, this thursday's episode, where denny once again paid izzie stevens a ghostly visit, was even a bit much for me. as a device i don't generally appreciate ghosts, in this particular case it seems more that the writers were looking for a way to recapture the chemistry of seasons past. to be honest, i never really loved the denny storyline when it was somewhat plausible. so this latest appearance is most unwelcome. and i can't help but think that this is going in the izzie steven's has a brain tumor direction. here's what troubles me, usually it is "general hospital " stealing storylines from " grey's anatomy ", but this time around it seems that grey's is doing the...