Getting Something for Nothing

We don’t have cable. We’ve never had cable. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those I-don’t-believe-in-television-we-only-read-Shakespeare kind of people. I love Shakespeare and could talk about the plays and the sonnets for hours. But I also love Leverage, Castle, and the Yankees (I don’t really love baseball, but I love my husband and sons. And they love baseball, so...I know that Nick Swisher is called “Swish,” Robinson Cano is called “Robby,” and Curtis Granderson is called “The Grandy Man.”) Anyway, I enjoy popular culture. But without cable, it’s kind of hard. And cable is just too expensive. (Do you know how much beef/chicken/beans I can buy with that kind of money?)

But I worked out the popular cultural connection. For years we streamed from the computer onto the television. Everything was great. Until last week.

Last week, we tried to stream the final episode of Leverage. And it was locked!?! And you had to type in some stupid cable code to unlock the episode. How could they do this to me? I realize that I’m not actually paying for the content, but I watch their uber-stupid commercials. (Actually, I like the one with the fake raccoon-man who destroys the attic.) But most of the commercials assume that the viewers are stoned/drunk/brain-dead—I mean who wants to listen to commercials that scream at them. Or watch over and over again, the lame eyelash commercial (Latisse) that warns you the product may permanently “darken” your irises and eyelids. Why would anyone buy that crap?

Sorry, I don’t mean to diss the pharmaceutical companies. At least, not much.  But why lock the final episode of Leverage? It’s not like that’s going to make me buy cable. And Netflix isn’t much help; their streamable content is mostly junk that no one wants to watch. Though Downton Abbey and the new Sherlock series were notable exceptions.

I fear this is the beginning of the end of the something-for-nothing glory of the internet. Even Amazon is going to start charging sales tax in some states. What is the world coming to? I want my something for nothing.

BTW, here’s a link to my book blog post “Moaning Monks.” Enjoy.

Senseless Screaming

Is it me or have commercials gotten inane?  We don’t have cable and living on the back of a ridge means an antenna does nothing. (Yes, the children are deprived, but in a good way.) So when we watch a TV program it’s usually streaming with either no commercials or very few.

Last night, we visited my parents and watched Leverage. (BTW, why are they focusing on Sophie and Nate? I’m glad they found each other, but Parker and Hardison are much more interesting. And it’s clear that Eliot is on the show as eye candy since they still haven’t given him an interesting back story. All he gets is tender-hearted tough guy—can you say “cliché?”) Anyway, back to commercials.

So a commercial comes on. Some guy comes on the screen and screams for the entire commercial. And then the name of an insurance company comes up. The problem is that it is unclear why he is screaming. As far I could tell a tornado has not destroyed his house and car. No one has been carried off to Oz. A contractor hasn’t told him that his whole house needs to be rewired/re-plumbed. And he hasn’t had eight major appliances die in a two month period. (Insurance doesn’t cover that anyway—believe me, I know.)

I could only surmise that the guy was sitting in the agent’s office filling out paperwork to get his teenage son added to the family’s insurance policy and had just been given the final bill. And he couldn’t stop screaming because the good student discount barely made a dent in the bill.

When I shared my discovery with Calvin, he said, “That’s our insurance company.” That left me a bit nonplused. All that money and this tripe was the best commercial they could come up with. Maybe I should learn to write advertising script.

N.B. I’m excited to let you all know that this Friday I’ll be participating in an Author Spotlight. I’ll include a link to the site on my Friday post.


ACK. I went to my blogger dashboard and found that all the blogs that I follow have disappeared. I've refreshed and reloaded. They're still gone. Anyone know how to fix this?

Not the Usual Reasons

I’m not much of a television person. And it’s not because the tv shows are puerile, offensive, or boring—though sometimes they are. I get frustrated even with tv shows that aren’t. My biggest beef with tv shows is the characters. The characters almost never grow. That’s what I love about books and movies. By the end, a resolution has occurred and a character grows. But tv series by their continuing nature can’t do that.

For example, I enjoy the show Castle (it’s about a mystery writer who falls in love with a NYC detective). The show is mostly about solving the murders. But the background is Rick Castle’s love for Kate Beckett and hers for him. Except that they never get beyond their own foibles that keep them apart. Despite the fact that Rick realizes that Kate is his soul mate, he can’t get beyond his philandering ways, which turns off Kate who wants a real lifetime relationship. Now, of course, this may be real life, but in a story I want to see the characters redeemed or, at least, resolved to be separate. But in the constant back-and-forth of their relationship I feel like I’m being “led down the garden path.” I’m not sure there’s any way around it; after all, when the tension between Kate and Rick is gone, where does it leave the story? Though I have some ideas on how to advance the characters and still maintain the tension (call me ABC), but that’s another story.

Maintaining the tension and advancing the characters’ growth is the double edged sword for tv shows. Some shows try to get around it by having their characters do exciting/growing things, but then those choices never change the relationships around them. Their actions have no consequences, either good or bad. And I hate that even more.

There have been notable exceptions like the show Kidnapped in which a child is kidnapped in the first episode and the rest of the season is devoted to finding the child and discovering why he was kidnapped. Of course, the characters who search for the child don’t do much growing, but then the writers had expected the show to continue beyond one season, which didn’t happen (BTW, Netflix carries the show.)

I think part of the reason for the success of detective series beyond the “idea of justice” and “the modern realization of the quest genre,” is that most episodes have closure with a denouement and resolution.

Or am I overthinking it? Or maybe I just haven’t seen any good shows. Any thoughts or shows that you’d like to share, readers?