x_los | Entries tagged with television

It's weird that I've never read any Thackeray--but then people don't much, anymore, to the horror of some of the older Victorianists at conferences. He's ageing out of the canon, and Trollope is sliding off to the side as well. It's about teachability, adaptation, fitness to theses and post-doctoral research, heritage industry shenanigans and the alchemy of textual endurance. Canon is an evolving thing, shaped by a lot of competing imperatives. It's always funny when people talk about Dickens and Austen as highly canonical writers, because yes, I guess it does seem like that when you buy the sausage at the supermarket, but they're quite recent additions (both of which were highly and hotly contested). They're the first to get swiped at by the general public, but they are, not coincidentally, actually also the left 'diversity' picks (chav-populist and lady-populist--Austen wasn't that posh either, which people forget). Sometimes I think they're in the vanguard at the moment because that's also, of necessity, the line of fire. You do see that a lot--the highly-exposed token woman employee whose prominence means she takes the heat for others' poor decisions, etc. It's hard, almost, for a lot of people even to name other 'canon' English writers now, as if the actual, traditional canon has slipped behind a screen (even Shakespeare is kind of Mark 1 of the same phenomenon). I'm never sure what's happening, here. I've given it some thought, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It's not like the cognoscenti are off enjoying Spenser in the back--no one can stand Spenser anymore. C.S. Lewis was the last person to actually enjoy the poem, since then it's just been that one Japanese research team composed, one must presume, entirely of masochists.

Anyway, to the extent you can determine this via the translation of adaptation, this was sort of what I'd thought Thackeray was going to be--'the greatest Victorian novelist!1' because he's posh, cold/restrained (quite relatedly--'restraint' as a class affect, the inverse of 'gosh aren't black people so loud in movie theatres??' bullshit), not particularly political (very relatedly--and no, 'satires on high society' aren't political, it's an obvious Bakhtin carnival pressure valve that enables the untroubled survival of the system as a whole, court jester-ass behaviour), holding all the characters in a suspension of universal distaste. This wasn't bad, but I don't know that I enjoyed it. The adaptation wasn't very well paced, dragging hard from the middle and wrapping up nigh-instantaneously after speed-running an excellent Philip Glenister's disenchantment with courtly love in a way that made him seem to suddenly swerve from being the best guy in the book to something of a Nice Guy entitled asshole. The casting seemed good, though I'm unfamiliar with the originals. I don't really believe that randoms in small towns in Germany know the power of Lord Whateverthefuck in such a way that he could blacken Becky's name in Baden Badtimes or whatever, no matter the extent of his malice. Even now, with the internet and increased global trade, I do not think that even literal Jeff Bezos has the reach to cut off the resourceful Becky's avenues of escape to this degree. I know it's for the Vine/plot, but even so.

Katy liked the Becky's circular return to her first, low-ambition target. She also contends that Thackeray does have time for some people (including, notably, and surprisingly, Becky's fuckboi husband, and of course Becky herself). I do see it, but for me the overall atmosphere was kind of relentlessly lowering, like suffering through more of fucking 'Jin Ping Mei' (such a monotonous tale of iniquity that by the end of it the mere mention of sex will bore you). And I guess someone will claim that's Realism, baybee, but like, it's a realism, and it's also a stylistic choice in the way Grimdark is (and it's not like I have a problem with continental realist writers, for the most part). I guess there's a chance I'm just being partisan, but also I tend to know what I'm not going to like and why going in because of what it is. If something's been praised for its austere satirical cynicism, I'm not surprised when there's a classed 'pwease steppy' vibe to the reader response. Writer's gotta be clever, bloke knew Latin. The issue, then, isn't 'how well-realised will this shrimp cocktail be?', it's that I'm deathly allergic to shrimp, or that the shrimp's gone off. (I'm not. And the shrimp can't go off, it's a metaphor. And nothing's open on a Sunday anyway.)

Liked the credits-sequence pig. And of course a hearty hello to Margoyles, Auntie MM. British period dramas always feel like weird office parties--it's that guy again, from Accounts. Him with the chin. No, the OTHER chin--

Baby didn't seem to fancy it either. Pitched a fit during the finale. More like William Makewar--

EDIT: Also it's super weird in the adaptation for Becky to be sobbing and upset in the 'I am innocent' period, because in this context she definitively isn't, even if things got out of hand, and she's frankly too smart to be surprised that a messy situation came to a fairly inevitable conclusion. What did she think would happen?

Katy also wondered where all this money was going.

Some notes on this documentary on hot pot in various regions of China:

- They use the term ‘hot pot’ far more expansively than I thought was permissible, in a way that encompasses set, planned and pre-prepared dishes. superborb says she thinks “the only common factor is soup served over a heating element”.

- This guy in the middle of Macau goes five kilometres up a mountain every day with two Culligan jugs yolked on a stick to fetch extra-good spring water. That is so much fucking work.

- Apparently Macau’s cooked food stands can only be passed to lineal descendants, and new licences aren’t issued.

- I enjoyed the intense dramatic montage of men making a copper pot. Their pumpkin-shaped bronze tea pot was very cute, as well. Yunan copperware can get it.

- ‘A fierce dog guards the entrance to the shed where the secret blend is made.’ Cut to: the most innocuous dog you’ve ever seen, just pure O-O.

- This guy lighting his cigarette with a kitchen blowtorch while he works is a whole sexuality for someone, I am sure.

- This other restauranteur is a Taiwanese immigrant to Chongqing, which is interesting as that’s not a directional flow I’ve heard about before.

- ‘My son was tricked by duplicitous goat sellers.’ What a problem to have.

- This child’s shoes have small stuffed dumplings on the tips. Astounding.

- This next guy is having ginger milk curd for breakfast. superborb gave me this recipe for it, but I couldn’t get the microwave version to work at all. I might try the stove-top version later. I saved the leftover ginger pulp for cooking: inclusion in a stock might suit it best.

- WHY IS THERE A SNAKE? superborb says snake tastes fine, it just has too many bones. I say this is like “Condor Heroes” all over again. You can’t trust people. Suddenly, they’re eating a snake.

- Man, now they’re showing the live bamboo rats they’re going to cook? Sigh. I’m not about that Hot Life.

- This guy is like, “fuck work, it’s mushroom season and I’m driving home for special mushroom hot pot.“ Who among us?

- This chef is visiting his dad’s grave with hotpot sauce in fancy packages to tell him they introduced his sauce to the Belgian market and it won an award.

- Some of the show’s participants live in a Tulou village, which is very pretty.

- At one point someone in Chongqing with seemingly little money mentions that his wife is pregnant with his second child. I suppose this must have been filmed after 2015, so one-child policy is no longer an issue (the fine previously having been multiple times an average annual income, growing larger with each violation—I think it might have been income-linked, as well). Yet throughout the show, I kept catching strange details related to the topic. A ninety-year-old had multiple daughters: that made sense. But then the show focused on three forty-year-old brothers. The family originally hailed from a village, so perhaps they’d qualified for a relevant exception?

In general, one-child policy seems so much more situationally porous and time-bounded than I think of it as, in terms of a ‘rule’. There seem to have been many cases where it didn’t quite apply. I guess if your local ‘council’ makes a case for not enforcing this (or simply has other priorities), it’s like any other rule oversight. Croydon Council is 'supposed' to be doing regular rubbish collection, too: a lot of things are supposed to happen.

superborb found a reference stating that many “cadres were middle-aged women who went through the collective period when childbearing was encouraged. They experienced continuous childbearing, and so were strongly supportive of the one-child policy." She commented that she didn't “consciously realise the effect the sudden shift from 'have more kids!' to 'have [fewer] kids!' would have had. In the 90s rural areas also stop violating the one child policy as it becomes [normalised], and this is consistent with rising economic” conditions. She also pointed out that many families registered children under relatives’ names.

It feels like a situation where the original motivations on the ground aren’t immediately comprehensible in retrospect. My understanding of the topic has been shaped by a much later, contemporary reaction narrative that’s entirely external, and specifically Western. Western coverage focuses on this programme as an inconvenient limitation of rights, and is almost entirely disinterested in the policy’s stated goals and the realisation thereof. But from this earlier point of view, imagine the justification and support this must have afforded a fuckton of women who weren’t necessarily interested in being baby factories.

While not quite reaching the heights of Andrew Davies’ “Pride and Prejudice” adaptation, this well-paced, enjoyable rendition of a later Gaskell novel worked, showing Davies’ capacity to deliver sound work when he feels like doing so. It’s a woman-centred story, as the title might suggest, and the characters are generally distinct and well-drawn. Lady Harriet only swoops in for an occasional cameo, but when she does she’s amazing—except for her weird pixie cut in the final episode, too late to be part of that Terror-inspired wave of them. This is set in the 1830s, so what was going on there?

The protagonist’s stepmother Hyacinth and Hyacinth’s daughter Cynthia sucked a little as people in ways that felt fresh and realistic. Hyacinth attempts to make people happy by giving them what she herself would want. She’s consistently incapable of listening to others’ opinions, which is why the care-labour of being a companion to rich people must have been so constantly vexing to her, relying as it does on listening skills which she otherwise refuses either to learn or to employ. Self-obsessed Hyacinth doesn’t quite understand people around her as fully real, with emotional lives disconnected from her own. She earnestly believes her remarriage will be a boon to her stepdaughter: why wouldn’t it be, when she’s soaked up all these posh airs and is thus god’s gift? She’s not intentionally cruel except in that she never seeks to do anything about this persistent character flaw, however serious its consequences are for other people and her relationships with them.

Cynthia is cleverer than her mother and significantly more self-aware, but she thinks about her rash flightiness like a congenital illness: she just can’t help being more fundamentally immature than her surface polish would suggest. It’s her nature! Cynthia is pleasant and funny, and infinitely more sinned against than sinning in the matter of her early engagement, but she’s prone to bad decisions that hurt even people she truly cares for like her long-suffering stepsister Molly, the heroine. Molly herself is under persistent narrative threat of retreating into the background on account of having fewer dramatic problems than those around her, but then that’s very true to life with Eldest Daughter Syndrome: the final scenes, as Katy reminded me, afford Molly no lines in her own happy ending.

I realise there’s a parallel structure with Molly briefly preferring the poetic Osborne to his steady brother Roger and Roger preferring Cynthia to Molly. Molly, however, was younger at the time, quickly amended her judgment based on learning more about the brothers and never embarrassed herself as Roger does with his engagement to Cynthia, who likes Roger about as much as she’d like a fairly comfortable chair, and for essentially the same reasons. (Osborne is another interesting, imperfect figure, though in another line, his flaws owing more to a failure to manage unfavourable circumstances outside of his control. His father, the Squire (aka Circumstances), lives long enough for a redemption arc, facilitated by Molly.) It’s hard to fully forgive Roger for sister-zoning the woman who learned botany for him, who follows his letters with compassion and avidity, who did all the familial heavy-lifting around his mother and brother’s deaths, and who is easily as hot as Cynthia. What is turning him off, here? Is it the fact that she’s hard-working rather than some ephemeral ideal of fuckable womanhood? At least he finally shapes up, but Jesus.

As Katy put it, if you have an 'only real P&P adaptation'-shaped place in your heart, this will slot in in a way few other period dramas will.

“Blue Period” was a nice, tight anime about a high school boy who decides to stop fucking around and actually become a person, via the medium of painting. He pursues admission to a competitive art school, as do several of his friends. It’s kind of light, in something like a slice of life register, but it never struck me as badly structured or patronising. At its best, it was truly emotionally engaging. I’m sick to death of high school settings, but I still have time for the questions this piece used this time in a young man’s life to raise.

Some notes:

- A teen in "Blue Period": I should draw my girl’s bewbs, really blow this old lady's mind, haha.
Ancient art teacher lesbian: I love breasts. Do you prefer pillowy or jiggly? There are certainly arguments for both!
Teen:
Art teacher: Make sure to convey their smoothness, virgin.

- I did not twig that the protagonist’s friend was trans until she was dumped over it. Maybe that's more strongly indicated in Not the Dub. She's sort of romantic-interest shaped, and I wasn’t sure whether they were going to go there. Ultimately, it’s not clear whether more will eventually come of their relationship and not terribly important: their development as people and their friendship matters, whether or not it ends up having a romantic component. They took the time to really see one another, literally and emotionally. (Something similar could be said of the upperclassman who first inspires the protagonist to paint: this show is unique in that it gives a young male protagonist really central connections with women.)

- When they said that the trans character was studying traditional Japanese painting, I assumed that was going to involve some kind of identifiable heritage approach. The work she produced for that class seemed to consist of standard still-lives: nothing separates the assignment we see for that course from a Western art seminar equivalent. In Japanese art education, this term must refer to material use or technique? Whatever craft difference occurs must happen at a technical level, to the degree that there's not really a perceptible effect for a casual observer.

- It’s interesting that they build the large canvas. Western art students would rarely be asked to do that, especially at a high school level. My sister went through all of MICA and was rarely if ever asked to stretch. They seem to be working with pre-set parts, combining them to shape it thus? Maybe Japanese art supplies are more modular.

- “Did you guys know that SHARKS have EYELIDS? Sea creatures are WONDERFUL.” Aha, the energy the prep school art teacher has.

- The pastry chef friend is so good. The way he reached out to the protagonist was touching. I also found the protagonist’s ‘seeing’ his mom via sketching her moving.

Katy and I watched the 1994 adaptation of “Middlemarch”, which Andrew Davies wrote right before doing the only good “Pride and Prejudice” adaptation to date. He’s an uneven writer, occasionally inspired and more frequently leaden. I was unimpressed with the carelessness he displayed when asked about his favourite Trollope novel in 2015: “While we were rehearsing my BBC adaptation of “The Way We Live Now”, I got talking to one of the actors, Oliver Ford Davies, a tremendously knowledgable Trollope enthusiast. I asked him if he knew of any other Trollope novels with a comparable edge and intensity, and he suggested I look at “He Knew He Was Right”, a book I’d never heard of.” By the time the BBC is producing the your adaptation of a man’s novel, you should probably have skimmed his “Who’s Who” entry. This level of thoroughness is probably only to be expected, given that Davies’ work is so often half-baked. It’s truly disappointing, however, because Davies’ best work shows how capable he can be if he does make an effort. As a mature artist, why waste both your rare chances to make art on this scale and everyone’s time on mediocrity? These are chances I’ll probably never have, so I’m not really inclined to be gracious about this man’s squandering his ample supply of them.

Anyway, not having read the book I can say that this largely works from my limited point of view. The beginning is awkward, though, and Ladislaw is badly handled all ‘round. The romance never quite coheres. Davies starts to talk about the estate Ladislaw’s actually entitled to, but never circles back to the topic. It’s left as an odd lingering question. Casaubon’s malignant influence is alluded to, but does not, I think, fully flower on the screen. The adaptation’s ending plops. Even an ambivalent novel ending could, I think, feel a bit more structurally unified in its dramatic presentation. The awkward resort to a voiceover from Judi Dench as Eliot, who we've never yet heard a word from, feels like the waving of a white flag.

It’s slightly unfortunate that Elliot makes a wrong guess about the future direction of scholarship on comparative religion. She seems to suggest that the topic’s been exhausted by recent contemporary German work when in fact it’s about to blow up in a big way, on the continent and in the UK. Max Weber, “Golden Bough”, “Totem and Taboo”—still all to play for. Writing back to your intellectual milieu and engaging in dialogue with it just carries this risk, I guess.

The most surprising element of the plot is that the crap brother who gets Fuckboi Fever pretty fully recovers. Astounding. Never seen a case like it.

"In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Eliot among the most important Western writers of all time." It’s tragic that after you die you can't stop Harold Bloom from liking you, at great detriment to your reputation.

I’m thinking about reading “Middlemarch”, but am slightly put off by how I took up "Silas Marner" and didn't finish it because Eliot got so weird about class so fast. ‘Now what you—I’m just going to go ahead and assume we’re all posh here—can't comprehend are the absolutely limited and tiny minds of poor people. And it's all situational, right, but poor people? Functionally dim children. This is SJ." I mean. Is it, girl? Is this the way? Iiiii am not so sure. Gaskill wouldn't have done me like that. Say what you will about Lizzie Hexam's inexplicably perfect diction, but at least she's allowed a functioning brain? That choice to assign agency to her, arguably 'at the expense of realism', has been made to give room to her personhood.

Initially, trying to watch “King’s Avatar” (it was on a list of recommended dramas, on Netflix, and I had a migraine) was a struggle. I could not get over how little I cared about watching someone play his level 40 paladin. By episode 3, however, the show serves up the inherent capitalist black comedy of every time someone who’s really good at a specific thing has to work a tangentially related day job because the economy sucks. (‘China’s not capitalist—‘ Xi Jinping, you have a Dreamwidth??) This aspect fades out as the team pivots to position the show as a straight up sports anime, but it does prove fairly good at being one. “King’s Avatar” becomes an exploration of the sheer power of the generic formula, even detached from anything I could ever care about. I ended up bopping along, only occasionally getting thrown out of the rhythm by something along the lines of “do you really think he can win Fake World of Warcraft?!?”
Me: Wait. Waaaaait. I don’t care at all?

It’s reminiscent of the anime that asks you to take volleyball seriously. Volleyball. Easily the least of the balls.

I found it formally interesting how much the gaming scene herein and the competition based around it borrowed from wuxia and/or xianxia. I’d never thought about this before, but the way these games discuss and conceptualise attacks probably entered global gaming via Asia, and specifically via wuxia, right? That sense of a move set, named moves, combos—it’s all fairly Jin Yong. In this show, there’s also a real push to sect style language and relationships between team members. There are disciple lineages, and a general sense of the emergent esports scene as a Jianghu. The esports television genre, then, enables you to stage identity porn and to interlace fantasy scenes with modern elements or characters, as with a transmigrator narrative. The price of access to these layers, however, is the loss of any narrative authentically anchored in or driven by the fantasy world, and with it a big source of potential plot weight. Nothing in the game world properly matters, except as an illustration of simultaneous RL choices. The other material thing this does, of course, is enable the production team to make extensive use of relatively cheap donghua-quality CGI for story relevant reasons. Mazels on the savings, lads.

Dealing with modern Chinese popular culture also involves us in shit like inspirational speeches about the meaning of idols. The show itself seems ambivalent on idol culture, in kind of an unproductive way. It both positions itself against the intense commodification of players and hesitantly acknowledges it as a personal boon for fans and a necessity for the field—which I’m really not sure it is, in either case. Idol culture in its current forms isn’t actually universal or historically inevitable. It’s a fairly new phenomenon, at least in terms of the degree to which it currently dominates art and sport economies.

The top esports guild has a female player, but the rest of the teams in the league seem far more Oktoberfest affairs, in that they are sausage-oriented. Given that the top team’s female uniform consists of a skirt that splits into booty shorts in the back for no reason, I can see why more girls don’t join up. Buzzfeed Solved. Remember the skort? Because evidently, China never forgot.

It’s nice to watch a show without an unappealing but over-determined romance arc. I suppose that eventually the aforementioned prisoner of the booty skort might hook up with the protagonist, but during the portion of their lives covered herein they’re busy with other concerns (and their relationship could be more of a sibling bond). This friendship is nice as it is. There’s a fun moment where the protagonist is bent out of shape and this female childhood bestie asks him what’s up. He grumbles that she knows him too well; if he shares his concerns they’ll only weigh on her, too. She draws a fake moustache on herself and is says ‘you seem troubled, young stranger—tell this old man your story!’ Cute.

In terms of female characters more generally, the new team’s manager does answer the question ‘where do aunties come from? What is an auntie like before she comes into full middle-aged Auntie Bloom?’ In this case, it goes something along the lines of: ‘I learned the words Team Building Exercise, and my Vision was that we’d all collectively go out to eat and ruin the life of a man who is rude to the waiter. And then you’d pay for everyone’s dinner, Protagonist.’ Fair.

In general, though, the characterisation of the team members could have been slightly stronger. Team Happy’s eleventh hour team ‘break up and make up’ also doesn’t entirely work, either. You can’t just have everyone say something in unison—which they all know to do even if it’s a complicated phrase because in a cdrama, this knowledge simply comes to you—and call it Unity and Arc-Closure. Also, in one of the final episodes, one team member has a big pimple on his upper lip. Make-up department, where are you? Please help this man!

I did like the designated hamster man/2IC from Blue Brook, though I have never heard a human speak that fast before.

Me: Is the captain of Blue Brook the actor for Feng Xu from the cdrama Hikaru no Go?
Katy: After a close examination, I can confirm that this is an attractive, youngish Chinese man in a blazer.
Me:
Katy:

So jury’s out on that one, I guess.

The show’s settings have a glossy, futuristic aesthetic throughout. “King’s Avatar” wants you to believe that all these esports teams have classy HQs they also live in. These have marked and distinct aesthetics, all thoroughly carried through. It’s a ‘different cultivation schools’ vibe, via Star Trek 2009. Now, you know for a fucking fact that these teams are run out of some office building, a Concrete Location that has a nice backdrop for some photos. It’s not the communal houses I question, it’s the fact that said houses have big collections of antique vases and rooms that open via huge pod bay doors. The real fantasy here is that all these straight men have managed to arrive at varying but solid forms of Taste.

Team aside, every domestic environment in this show looks a little ‘what year is this?’ It is, I suppose, roughly as unrealistic as the vast New York apartments in an American sitcom, but these interiors are generally richer, and cleaner and more styled. Almost every environment looks cutting-edge (with the exception of a ‘poor’ family apartment that looks older but still suspiciously nice, and a loft one character runs a business out of that is styled messy but is actually quite nice. Even the internet cafe the protagonist washes up at in his darkest hour is luxe. There’s so much space therein that later, the protagonist and the manager run an additional large-scale business out of the upper story.

The show’s more quotidian gestures at urbanism proved differently weird. Do Chinese people in big cities really have to book a basketball hoop? Are there truly none in parks? Booking a basketball hoop! The notion! Additionally, people seem to have done the local graffiti with really crisp, elaborate Chinese characters. I applaud their efforts, because that looks way harder to do than just ‘Dizzy wuz here’ in fat bubbles. …seriously though, are they selling super fine nozzle tips for the Chinese market to enable this shit? It’s just not the level of fine control I associate with a random tag.

It’s not a show I have a ton to say about, really. I had a pleasant time, but it’s not one I highly recommend if you haven’t already seen “NIF”, “Hikaru no Go”, “Untamed”, hell even the less solid, more vibes-based “Word of Honour”.

( Onegaishimasu )

This was a very light contemporary Japanese series about two best friends who move from a small town to Kyoto to pursue careers as geisha. One meets with considerable success and begins what promises to be an artistically successful career. The other falters, then pivots to a caretaking role as a chef that she finds personal validation in.

forestofglory watched it and seemed to have some fun with it, and so I thought it'd be okay sick-day stuff.

It's a pleasant show, though not one I necessarily recommend. The dialogue is often very naturalistic in a way that can be slightly annoying. The wider cast of characters could be more clearly established. How distinct are the personalities of the non-main maiko? When Glasses left the house in the final episode, it took me by surprise because I didn't feel we'd sufficiently built up to that. Where was her growing disquiet in earlier episodes?

The production team chose to reveal the central house-mother's daughter's issues slowly, but with access to only the subtitles it took me considerable time to figure out who this sourpuss even was and what she was doing here. The revelation of the source of her personality issues came a bit late for me. I've seen anime structurally play out character development in a similar way, but in a lot of cases I assume that comes from serial production and the various retcons it can entail. That's really not something one should actively build into a nine episode miniseries. It's not suspense, it's a sort of pointless 'hidden information' estrangement from the processes of characters' decision-making.

Even knowing her whole deal doesn't quite explain her several low-key attempts to socially sabotage the other teen girls she lives with by giving them passive-aggressive, insidious bad advice. 'Wah, my parents are so divorced'--child, please. None of your peers had anything to do with that. A degree of acting-out makes sense for this misanthropic teen, but after that it just feels like she's the story's designated source of low-level conflict. I also felt like her mother's romance storyline could have been resolved a touch more thoroughly. (Unless 'the moon is beautiful' was supposed to have done that, but I thought their problem was Never Marrying, not a lack of comically oblique love-declarations so cliche that even I know them.)

I did like what the senior sister's storyline suggested about people you're with, but who you're not necessarily in love with. I'm kind of turning over the grandmother's statement about people who send others' off and people who are sent off, as whole personality types/life-paths.

It's not a gay narrative per se, but the relationship between the two main girls is the only one that matters. The bartender says something to the new-maiko girl about unrequited love, but I'm not sure what torch she's supposedly carrying. Is it for baseball boy, who has a thing for her cook best friend? That got hinted at a couple times, but I'm not sure why the bartender would know anything about it.

They made cream stew at one point, which looked interesting. Man this girl was big on fresh, in-season vegetables. Japanese cooking is so technically stripped-down, it can be intimidating on account of it. I wondered why she wanted some stupid bread machine until I remembered she probably didn't have an oven, just that convection microwave she uses for the bread pudding.

- I don’t hate this show, I’m just mad that it wasted so much of my time and its own by squandering a lot of good ideas and talent. For me, this show epitomises both the issues with web novel composition and the pitfalls of an overly-faithful adaptation of a story composed in that form.

( The Rest! Of The Story )

- Lockwood & Co. is good, I just wish it weren’t about teens. I’m so sick of teens. There truly is no reason this show has to be about teens? It’s just Sapphire and Steel, with babies.

- The slowed-tech worldbuilding and cultural accoutrements are cool, like how all the 2000 AD merchandise shows it’s still popular in this universe. George liking it makes sense for his character. The funniest thing that could happen as a result of this show is a bunch of zoomers learning what 2000 AD is and getting really into that shit.

- Imagine caring as much about what other people working in your field are up to as these teens. “OoOo I see you’ve left the accounts receivable team. You will regret that, Tammy!!”

- After episode two, I theorised that Lockwood had locked his ghost parents in the land of Spare Oom. I mean it could just be like, a bedroom filled with cherished memories or some bullshit, but 'Ghost Parents' is more fun than baby photos.

- There are parts of this that feel very written—perhaps even over-written. Theatrical, rather. But the bulk of the script just feels like fairly generic tv show writing, which gives me a strange and uneven idea of the native register of this fictional universe.

- What is this Havisham-ass room nobody’s cleaned in the iron-monger’s castle? You have twelve hours of daylight to go 'round, get a Merry Maid in here, Jesus.

- This show does not understand what a jewellery hallmark is. Later, they also have an auction that doesn’t really look like a UK auction. It’s interesting that they didn’t think it had to: oops all vibes.

- Lucy's comment that a ghost feels like she’s ‘still alive’ makes me think that the problem was initially caused by an attempt to access eternal life (but instead of fetch happening, fetches happened). Later, the Kensal Green cemetery director has the same lyre motif lapel badge as Penelopy Fitz did at the funeral of her mother's colleague (if that even was her mother, rather than her before a supernatural facelift). We also saw this motif on the boxes that were removed from the iron mogul’s castle, and on said mogul's goggles. ‘The lyre represents the peace of Elysium, the paradise where heroes were sent after they were appointed immortality by the gods’. So there you have it, in terms of the arc plot.

It’s nice of the baddies to wear a big ‘I LOVE CAUSING THE PROBLEM!’ badge on their chests every day. “Ope, can’t leave the house without my ‘I absolutely did it’ sign!”

- The whole problem of this episode at the start of the Biggerstaff (lol) arc is that they have to do this work at night, i.e. the most dangerous time, because otherwise the council won’t be able to claim ‘type 2 removal’ funding from another part of the government, because there won’t be any visual proof—

This is the realest shit I’ve ever heard. A spot-on depiction of the UK reaction to real shit going down.

- ‘The problem’ is worldwide, so how are other countries responding? In some ways this is a straight-forward ‘cultivators subdue yao’ story, but with white people.

- Book of Dust was also a low-tech Modern Britain--what is this small-c conservative fantasy/aesthetic doing? It's not an aesthetic they really carry through with either, the seventies were way, way uglier.

- “Trust me!” Head in a jar, you are not the one.

- “London would be a lot safer with three less amateurs around!”
Me: Shouldn’t that be—
Katy: Yeah.

- Katy observed that this cemetery director has been sent over from Dickensian central casting, home of yer shamblers.

- We’re doing a bit of a Great God Pan here with this Victorian occultist’s experiments, but unfortunately that mostly serves to remind me that Arthur Machen was somewhat better at vibes.

- For the party Lockwood combs his hair in the stupidest way imaginable, into a kind of celebratory widow’s peak (a widow’s mountain range, honestly).

- The show consistently makes an interesting use of parts of the city that very much still exist (but which don’t get a lot of filmic or general attention) to create an ‘alternative’ version of the city: industrial docks, Kensal Green, weird corners of the Barbican and the QE2. The technique feels inflected by "Life on Mars" use of Manchester.

- The design of the auction sequence is pure Harry Potter movie. Meh.

- We go big on Found Famiwies UwU very fast, but these people have known one another all of a fortnight.

- Lockwood straight up got an ally killed, but thankfully the narrative retroactively rescues him from culpability.

- The writing slips in the last few episodes. Everything with the mudlark being possibly untrustworthy is an exercise in generating a kind of purposeless tension.

- You can tell this antagonist is seriously evil because of all the guyliner.

- The end game MacGuffin is just like, a bi disc with a mirror stuck in the middle. In the end, said mirror cracks from side to side. Guess they won’t be returning the whole jade disc to Zhao. The Victorian decoupage is accurately shit for the 1870s: dem bones in clear resin could easily be the stuff of a table top in a middle class household in Basingstoke.

- Me: A really strong showing for 1970s British ceramics throughout.
Katy: They haven’t made any new ceramics since the trouble began.

- Someone has paired this Victorian tiled washstand in the attic with an Ikea-esque mid-century modern cupboard, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

- I think the chapel they’re saying is in Kensal Green is actually the one in Highgate East? I think Kensal Green doesn’t have this pneumatic catacomb lift system (Highgate’s was for underground transportation across the road, to Highgate West—their catacombs are above ground, and much further back). I hope they filmed the real lift in action. They don’t run that for the tours, so it may be your only chance to see it in motion.

- Lockwood finally, bravely reveals that the locked room contains his dead parents’ extensive fur suit collection. Everyone is uncomfortable. Season ends.

"Spy x Family":

- I rec this. Sometimes sweet, usually pretty funny. Well-made.
- I’m constantly going ‘what decade is this?!’ because it’s Every Decade, and also every country in Europe (flashbacks to the Russian Sherlock Holmes). That is a personal issue, though. It’s fine if Japan doesn’t give a shit about the London-Austria frankenstreet scenes they have wrought here.
- It is weird how even in Europe everyone’s still Japanese, tho. Like the fuck is this omelet rice breakfast? Y'ain't finding that on a random table in Graz.

"Uncorked":

- Excellent, precise evocation of family dynamics and romantic relationships throughout, with banter that felt engaging, real. Lively, charming character work.
- Relatedly, a great, subtle interplay between white and black space in the South and depiction of its impact on power even in private relationships.
- The switch to French rap in Paris was great, as was the in-passing but astute attention to France as itself a raced, classed environment.
- An excellently written movie--to be honest this probably did the bulk of the work for me that "Whiplash" did for other people and then extended out in other directions, without relying on all of "Whiplash"'s fucking tedious, overdone, only-semi-critical portraiture of toxic masculinity (which it also lavished attention on, thus undoing the work of the film's only ever vaguely critical treatment).
- I love the attention to the craft involved in running this family restaurant, on the cooking and administrative ends.

- "Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty" is fun and highly watchable. It's only sort of copaganda, and the ensemble cast works very well.

- In terms of ongoing wacky mainland racism (or 'different industrial approaches to casting and representation', if we're being more diplomatic), are any of these Mongolian characters being played by Mongolians? (Or is it another case of paested on yey beards—)

- Ope, we got ourselves a legalist here in the prison arc.

- This is the second time Dong’er has been human trafficked this year!

- What did those guys want to steal all these kids for, anyway? Is it a dodgy sex thing and they just never actually said as much on screen? Are we supposed to infer this? Is it just servitude? You do have to say something textually about the MO, even just a couple sentences.

- There was also a 'drug-dealer baker' arc I don't think we ever came back to, did we? Did some material get cut, here?

- When did we actually learn about Duo'erla's boyfriend? I don't remember being properly told about A'lassi, it was suddenly just being discussed as a fait acompli. Sure, we all know about A'lassi, the most delicious mango beverage in the Northern Desert! My bezzie mate, A'lassi!

- That de-Sinicised general Tang Fan released only showed back up at the very, very last second, i.e. when it was most narratively convenient for him to do so. The delay was under-explained, and his arrival a bit too pat. I didn't feel it really worked.

- Wang Zhi's second betraying him (or rather, attempting to) also didn't really work. We've already had a fake-out on this exact same subject with the exact same dude. What meaningfully changed between the two situations? Wang Zhi always treated this guy quite well. He was short with him on a few occasions, but certainly not sufficiently cruel to make a loyal second in command change his mind and mutiny. If it was just that the wind really seemed against Wang Zhi, or that the 2IC regretted his earlier decision to stay true to Wang Zhi, we could have done with a word to clarify his change of position. This was silly suspense, unsatisfying because it was insufficiently grounded in a clear character journey.

- Speak of, we never truly learned the body guard's deal! After all that! Narrative justice for the body guard!

- Officer Sui is exactly as good at martial arts as a given episode needs him to be.

- The emperor's cousin's rebellion plan was conveyed to the audience in a bitty, slightly confusing way that seemed to alter her position from scene to scene (and not as a result of clean, meaningful narrative reversals, either). The means and stakes of her proposed crime and the timeline thereof weren't very clear.

- Similarly, while the core villain is quite engaging, his plan is something of a mess. Finish the bombs, but do you really have those bombs, steal some more bombs, over-run the city with armies, become a minister?, but maybe that's not real, but bomb the city, but don't bomb the city, but kill the emperor-- Walk me through this, champ. For what's sort of kind of a detective show, this muddiness was particularly egregious. The show as a whole was engaging enough that I didn't care much, but this is not the brain that brought you the Big Ben caper/the head that made headlines in every newspaper.

- Maybe don't fuck yourself "Zorro" style by adopting the kid of a guy you personally got killed. Simply find a talented kid of whom this is not true. There have to be so, so many such kids. Look at Wang Zhi's Irregulars! Also, it's not that clear how this girl's father's demotion resulted in her becoming the property of the state and an official prostitute. It seemed as though her father was just relegated to a shitty rural position? That shouldn't have involved the repossession of his kids. It's key to her change of heart and the whole ending that her father was resigned to his personal downfall. I doubt he would have been if he'd been aware that his daughter was going to be sold into sex slavery, ASAP. Maybe the family lost money after his early death? I'd have appreciated some clarity here. It would only have taken a few lines to solidify this sequence of events.

- One of the best things about "Sleuth" is that it answers the slightly tiresome ‘this canon if X had a gun’ meme. The character who most needs a gun has a gun; nothing is faster due to this.

- In terms of Helena’s ‘is it prestige?’ emperor hotness index, while this is a hot emperor, his hotness never matters to the text. A tricky one.

- If you are a citizen of Ming Dynasty China and encounter literally any problem, please consider not immediately killing yourself. There could be other solutions!

- At odd moments, this story chooses to be a little palace drama, a little wuxia and a little steampunk. Evidently the Ming had hand grenades/catapult stones, but it did not have the show's super-machined, 'cut the red wire' style bombs. The two things aren't really meaningfully comparable (especially given that the show's bombs are clearly part of the steampunk arc which culminates in the invention of a medieval helicopter).

- The show sets up an odd parallel between the productions of its genius weapons' designer and contemporary materiel, and with it a moral calculus wherein machine guns are perfectly cool, but small-scale nuclear weapons are inhuman. Though I suppose that's sort of where we are now, in the global conversation.

- Me: Say you’re getting made a eunuch, right, as you do. Is that a testicles dealio, or just castration in the circumcision-plus sense?
Jane: See, I think it varies. I'm pretty sure that in Byzantium eunuchs just had their testicles removed, while in the historical Chinese context more was removed.
Me: This character is saying, 'I’ve made a HUGE SACRIFICE to go undercover', and I’m like 'yeah, how huge, mate?'
Jane: It's not the size of the sacrifice, it's what you do with it. The intro of "The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty" (https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Eunuchs-in-the-Ming-Dynasty) just says "well, there were different methods of castration" and does not give specifics, but some of the potential medical issues imply that it's not just removing the testicles.

"China's last eunuch spills sex secrets"(https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-eunuch/chinas-last-eunuch-spills-sex-secrets-idUSTRE52E06H20090316) makes similar references.

Me: So it's also the resticles, as it were.

- Katy: Maybe this assistant is in fact the weapons' designer's wife in drag rather than the Mistress of Disguise character in a second costume?
Me: A THIRD, distinct hot lady dressed as a man in as many episodes? TRES leches? En este economia??

This is not even counting the imperial consort who wears armour, but not in a guy way (or her squadron of similarly-garbed battle-handmaids).

- The most unbelievable thing about this show continues to be that we are supposed to believe Wang Zhi is 17, and was 14 when he started running the Western Depot. This Pitt the Even Younger ho ain’t 17.

- Wang Zhi versus severe autism.

- Cons: Duo’erla is dead.
Pros: We got an interesting flashback episode!

- ‘Whatever you do, don’t let Officer Sui survive on depression meals’

- I haven't mentioned Dong'er, but she is always a treasure. She will be your Little Purple for this evening.

- Everyone is like, 'this courtesan is the hottest woman ever born, oh, ooooh!' Said courtesan is: a pretty normal lady. She's serving slight Angelina Jolie pony face? She's fine. She's attractive, but so is every woman in this universe, because that is what casting means: the good-looking end happily, and the bad unhappily.

- Villain: the scenes today remind me of New Year's!
Me, glancing at calendar: Coincidentally, the scenes today remind me pretty strongly of New Year’s as well.

- Can swords just slice through metal chains like this? Hmm.

- Pros: You invented aircraft flight!
Cons: Not for long, you didn’t.

- The visuals of this scene where a ransomed general in the Oriat clothing of his captors publicly gets re-dressed as a Ming, Han authority figure are really successful. It’s a cool piece of public theatre.

- Katy: Why didn't he just want to stay on the plains?
Me: You ever read "Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute"? Mutton sucks, apparently. You can have a lot of kids up there, but not even love for her own children can overcome a true Han aristocrat's deep hatred of mutton.

- Me, before episode started: He’s going to be an imposter.
His wife: My husband died in Mongolian jail, this ain’t him.
Me: Seeeeee.

Though perhaps she is the liar, because she doesn’t want him?

Oh it was double lying, nice, nice.

- Katy: They should just cancel the banquet.
Me: And disrupt the Rites of Zhou, leaving us with only the bits of the Book of Odes that don't suck?? THE DYNASTY WILL FALL, DO YOU WANT THAT?!

- The Chinese drama plot power up arc is so anime, like:

Episode 17: Who’s got the chicken cup?! An embarrassing situation! 🙈
Episode 40: Will the world perish in fire and this used car salesman become king of a realm of ashes?

- If you watch this on Rakuten Viki on your laptop, either turn on an ad blocker or get ready to hear about mattresses five thousand times. We only have one traditional Western style bed in this house; I can only need so many mattresses?

- It's not really clear why Doctor Pei and the protagonist's sister hook up. He's a goodish character, and She's nice in a slightly flat 'woman character' way. By the time they get together, they have indeed have known one another for some time. Doctor Pei has saved her son's life and been kind to her. But what about her makes her It for this reformed womaniser? It's a bit comp-het. Just find something to say, don't Sk8terboi relationships!

- In the flashback, someone named Yu Liang gets selected as a palace eunuch. Yu Liang's already been through so much, getting curb stomped at weiqi over in cdrama "Hikaru no Go". Must he lose his dick, too?

- Save the capitol for the Ming! Or for the safety of the general public! Or for a caravan-inspection fast pass! Or for a life time VIP discount card at Joyous Brothel, the city’s premier establishment for—

- Apparently the source text for this show was a danmei webnovel. Fanlore, at least, claims that the “drama was based on the novel of the same name by Meng Xi Shi. The novel was originally a BL novel. However, the main theme revolves around the crime-solving and not the romance. The published version features bromance between the characters instead of romance.” That’s quite confusing, even having followed up the link fanlore cites as a source (which is random, fannish promotional material which offers no attribution and has no evident authorship in and of itself). Do they mean the published print version? The current online version? The only extant, fully realised online version, because changes were made to the planned story during the publication of the novel itself? Any of these could be true. Besides, who is giving me this information, and how reliable are they?

- Presumably on the basis of this, people straight up told me this show was a danmei. It's--just not? That might be true of the source text, or it might be the ‘in the know’ genre-driven reading. For a random viewer, however, this is certainly no "Word of Honour". For the best part of the text, sure, you can ship the male leads if you want. Contra-indications are thin on the ground. But so too are indications? Textually, the show's not really serving tons beyond 'friendship, the stoic one cooks'. In seeing this as queer, you wouldn't quite be performing a reading of the text, you'd be bringing a project to it and doing transformative work. That's cool by me, but "this is a danmei" is pretty different than "this isn’t exactly a danmei in its present form, but it’s legible on those terms". There's on-purpose, textually romantic, there's classic K/S 'I can easily interpret this as romantic', and there's 'I am watching "Teen Wolf" and am BYOB".

Maybe you don't want to admit that this element was lost in the transition, but that's where we are. I think it's worth being pretty clear on what you're dealing with. I came to this show for an ensemble mystery programme, and it was fairly successful as such. If I'd come to it looking for a romance, I'd be pretty disappointed and would have enjoyed it much less. It's like if you went about telling people that "Due South" is a romance rather than just saying something along the lines of, "I get something out of reading in a romance", or "I find a romance reading possible/compelling". What's the actual value in being overly-assertive?

I wouldn’t even come to "Sleuth" for bromance, honestly. At almost all points, this reads as cop drama. Sometime they save each other and there’s some found family shit, but that’s true of literally half of the cop shows going. I’ve seen heavier smarm on a kaiser, and/or on shows that thought they were ABSOLUTELY het. There's little if any flirting here, and there's no structural emphasis on the romance. Jackie Chan produced this? "Rush Hour" was only barely less romantic than "Sleuth".

The points where this is less true:

- The show doesn't emphasise or care about comphet that much. Douqi points out that this is fairly unusual for programmes of this type. I do see her point, but that's also true of half the period western shows going. I’m just not prepared to view an absence of aggressive comphet as in and of itself the stuff of successful queer romance. I would need more.

- In the final 15% of the show, some things happen that I could interpret as potentially textually queer. They're arguable, but these events are open to a fairly straight-up queer reading that is not particularly wilful. The very negative way Officer Sui reacts to the death of an acquaintance and a subsequent fight with Tang Fan could just be down to PTSD and grief, but Officer Sui's reaction might also have been greatly worsened by Tang Fan's being angry with and leaving him. The way Officer Sui then reacts when Tang Fan returns after an abduction is suggestive, albeit brief. There is a 'bro hand clasp' at a moment of tension that suggests they are important to one another: this is, of course, far more key to a successful romantic reading than any actual sexual realisation of the relationship in question.

That's about it.

One thing that makes "Sleuth" an especially weird potential romance is the way the final climax arc relies not at all on the pairing characters’ feelings for one another. In fact, the climax separates them for all of the key events. The ending also allows them little to no direct dialogue, either alone or in company. The scale of the climax and the characters' roles therein would make it difficult for the final conflict be about them, but you could easily have staged events such that the romantic leads' teamwork or knowledge of one another was uniquely important to the plot resolution, or even so that the denoumont wrap up was about them rather than an almost universal return to status quo antebellum for the goodies.

Also, while I didn't find this element compelling or successful, for most of Duo'erla's tenure in the story the show does stage everything from her entrance to their boat language learning conversation as though Duo'erla is Tang Fan's love interest. It's all pretty plausibly deniable, even when it comes to her final sacrifice. That does, however, blur the viewer's focus. She gets the visual cues and stand-by scenarios that should be aligned with romance.

- Emperor ‘I’ve forgotten how to hold a sword even though you saw me doing it quite well earlier; also, I’ve forgotten how to be a character and not a McGuffin even though I’ve had a personality right up until the climax’ and his wife even got the story's romantic flashback sequence. That could have been played off as a Broment! I'd have counted that!

- Bringing back characters from several previous cases for the finale worked well.

- It’s kind of odd that Wang Zhi, who is not one of the romantic leads, has the show's clearest arc. His position at the story's end is materially different from his starting point, and we can easily describe the change in his personal life as well. He basically sums it up for the audience. I sort of feel the story de-facto excludes him from the 'potential main love interest' category by virtue of his being a eunuch, which I have some qualms with.

- Wang Zhi also has a strange triangulation going on. Throughout the story, he's driven by his desire to serve the realm and the emperor, but this stems from his desire to serve his mother figure. This woman is, with Wang Zhi's knowledge, using Wang Zhi for her own husband’s interests.

- At the end of the story Tang Fan, a notorious blunderer in court situations, is suddenly the Royalty Explainer, explicating the emperor's decision to Wang Zhi. For some reason, Wang Zhi doesn't tell him where to get off. This is like CMOT Dibbler telling Vetinari a thing or two. I do not believe there is anything Tang Fan can tell Wang Zhi about the emperor that Wang Zhi didn't tell him first.

While sick on various occasions, I made it through all five seasons of "Food Wars".

- While needlessly and boringly porny (as in, that's a huge component of this show), the program is surprisingly detailed in its description of culinary techniques. It introduced me to a lot of new-to-me foods, not all of which were Japanese.

- The end central couple (Erina/Soma) comes rather out of nowhere, given that all along, we've had a lesbian thing going on with Erina and her assistant. Soma, meanwhile, has largely been supported and accompanied throughout the narrative by Megumi. I guess the match-up makes sense, especially in light of the show's propensity towards gothic family saga shenanigans. Yet it does feel, in the way of much anime, rather arbitrarily picked out of a hat. Throughout the show, the interpersonal energy and point of view have been situated elsewhere.

- Soma veers between involving himself in everyone's problems and brushing them off callously, seemingly at random. The later is really unappealing, and it's especially strange that he acts that way towards the woman who we are given to understand he will eventually marry and 'devote his cooking to'. Is this inconsistency a translation nuance that escaped the dub team, or is it down to weak writing in the original?

- The show's funniest exchange (this is re: the Nakiri family's Hereditary and Traditional Power to Burst Bystanders' Clothes) is the very late 'what is going ON with the Nakiri family?!' 'Well, you know, these things happen--' 'NO!!' between Akira Hayama and Ryō Kurokiba. So earned.

- An improbable number of people in anime are half-Japanese.

- Japan is evidently obsessed with 'meat smell' and preventing it, a consideration never explicitly addressed in Western cuisine.

- The awful pedagogy of this school haunts me. Evil Dad is right that this fixation on elimination is pointless, even if his own scheme to destroy non-gourmet eateries sounds financially ludicrous.

- The show's 'constant battle' conceit wears you out a bit--"Dragon Ball Z" with mother sauces.

- With most shonen, it's fine that you can't do whatever the overpowered protagonists are doing. You don't expect yourself to get the best grades in the Hero Course at UA, because that is not a thing. With a cooking shonen, however, I get annoyed at my relative lack of ability (i.e., at my realistic human ability because I am not a shonen character).

This series verges on ‘too Japanese’. Like, we've reached the Japan threshold, here. The layer of unreality animation offers would at least provide me with some buffer against the hallucinatory food-themed dance sequences, but no: live-action it is. Every sixth word of dialogue is a random English loan word, used in the Japanese rather than the English sense. There’s a really elaborate parody of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. We go places in terms of sexual content that no Anglophone program would ever, ever go. “Kantaro” is asking a lot of my sensibilities.

You think you’re sitting down to a slice-of-life, semi-documentary, food-tv styled introduction to Japanese sweets, both home-grown and European. (But very localised European sweets, and often not forms of patisserie you see much in the Anglosphere today: more classic Viennoiserie, with the chestnut episode—I know a Mont Blanc doesn’t have a yeast dough, but it inarguably falls under the ‘things of Vienna’ definitional umbrella). And you are! Kind of. The over-arching frame narrative, though, is way less relegated to the background than it might be (and is, in an anime like “Thermae Romae”). Essentially the titular main character eats sweets while out on sales visits. He simultaneously completes his work in a timely manner. Sometimes other workers wish to stop him, for some reason. They are not his boss. Why do they care?

One thing that really pissed Katy off was Kantato’s whole job. He goes to book stores, gives them a business card and hands them a sample book. Why? He doesn't use his charm, if indeed he has any, to sell goods. He doesn’t just email the bookstores. I tried to suggest that maybe somehow this was a cultural thing in Japan. We did also used to have travelling salesmen!

This only made Katy angrier. All this work, just so that book shops can feel Courted? I guess I can't bitch, because economically Asian publishing sectors seem more robust than their Anglophone equivalents. Maybe you truly have to have a business card, and then to go give it to random bookstores, for the magic to happen! The only thing that almost makes this Bullshit Job economically make sense is that there are 40 million people in Tokyo. Possibly there really are enough shops in the city to give such a guy something to do year ‘round!

…even so, Christ’s sake, just email.

I do wonder if the sweet shops (and book shops) that Kantaro visits are real? They almost must be. The production team wouldn’t have made up twenty purveyors of sweets and their premises just for Kantaro to orgasm over. And my god, does he. This is the joke, every time. Imagine a man comes into your shop, orders bingsoo, has a spoonful and enters a hallucination sequence while trembling and groaning like a pig being fucked to death. You’d be like, ‘get out of my shop, take that shit elsewhere.’ He's always coming all over the pudding. This has to be uncomfortable for other pudding-eaters present.

And one knows this about wagashi going in, to an extent, but none of the first five deserts was actually desert-level sweet? Okay, the shaved ice, yeah—but the parfait was just some fruit. These hot cakes were just plain mini pancakes. Sir, that is breakfast. You have just shown me two breakfasts.

The real kickers have to be the dentist mommy issues incest episode and the ‘sexual awakening’ special grooming episode, with some seven year old eating rice balls. This is some cancellable shit. Cannot see this type of thing coming out of like, Canada: simply cannot see it.

- I chose to watch “Ghost Bride” because it was all of 6 episodes and seemed like a reasonably-sized investment.

- Apparently, per Yinharn, the Malaysian blogosphere had issues with this show due to the period-inappropriate Mandarin and general disinterest in its setting as such. Yinharn directed me to this piece on these limitations: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3047751/dont-be-fooled-netflix-theres-more-chinese-diaspora . I do see the point that “Ghost Bride” is not interested in its setting’s fullness/diversity; this is functionally indistinguishable from a mainland-set show.

- It's 1890 and this lead girl’s friend has a bob haircut? Okay, I guess! I mean, I don't know what's happening in not-yet-officially-Malaysia.

- Gosh, a dress with a thigh-high slit? Seems unusual, but okay.

- It's interesting that the family's housekeeper is coming to this party with her employers.

- I thought it was odd that everyone at a big party was doing embroidery in a circle and wondered if etiquette was quite different, if it was a game pertaining to the occasion (Qixi), or if it was just an odd filmic choice. Helena thinks it’s probably a game.

- The characters are really keen on this peach dress for the female lead, but I don’t find it very flattering.

- Everyone pronounces the name “Isabel” in the most English fashion possible. It feels a little like the cast switches languages just to say this name? Rather odd.

- They do the paper-doll beating thing I’ve edited Yinharn’s translation of in “Purely By Accident”! I was happy to see it. ‘I understood that reference!’

- It’s not really successful as a murder mystery. The culprit felt rather random and plucked out of a hat.

- And why did the despised half-sister tolerate her half-brother on one of the nights leading up to his death during their joint trip to the casino? I don’t think we ever heard more about that.

- And will someone make provision for the surviving illegitimate son? If anyone is a good Ghost Bride candidate, surely it’s the servant the dead man already seduced and spurned, whose prospects may have been materially damaged and who must now provide for the rich family’s only surviving next-generation heir.

- The Ghost Husband is a bit hot, and eats the scenery in a satisfying way. A key reason I watched this was the thirsty premise! The set-up was more compelling than the delivery, here: this is not quite one for the Monsterfuckers, in that classic “Phantom of the Opera”, “Labyrinth” vein.

- The romance triangle (quadrangle?) is decent, and I did enjoy the fuckboi love interest even as I found the bevvy of sustained, narratively plausible choices a little odd, with two of the potential male leads making it through to the last 10 minutes of the series. It did feel slightly like the successful candidate was plucked out of a hat. The resultant ending was well-executed, but felt somewhat arbitrary.

- I was confused as to where the last half hour of this series was going in a way that I don't know I would have been with a medium I knew better. I think I might not have found the romance red herring successfully misleading if I were more familiar with the patterns of this type of drama.

- Mari says this is based on a book, and suggested that the climax is better handled therein.

- From the pilot to the main show, it’s notable that we swap out an Asian second in command for a white one and a very dark, accented black doctor for a much paler, American-accented one.

- I found the first doctor’s accent quite interesting to listen to, but Katy observed—think rightly—that a US tv exec would say, ‘axe that, if it takes people a bit to understand him they'll lose interest.’ Everyone human is thus mid-Atlantic, even Russians. Only Delenn is allowed a fruity accent.

- The technical staff for the pilot don’t seem to know what to do with the very dark black man playing the doctor. Due to a combination of make up and lighting issues, his face is often shadowed or shiny-shiny. A quite nice-looking actor thus ends up looking indifferent in this pilot because the team is inexperienced with the different approaches required to appropriately support him.

- Delenn’s design was initially quite, quite different. Abigail Nussbaum said that “apparently the original plan was for her to be male and then change gender. Which... yeah, I do not trust a mid-90s science fiction show to handle that concept at all well.” Interesting, though. (Wild that in-universe, apparently Delenn got that chin surgery incels love just for this special and then evidently regretted it. But who am I to judge?)

- Katy observed that the pilot lacked the ‘A plot, B plot’ structure from TNG that most of B5 employs (though I suspect that’s probably mostly due to its being a pilot).

- It’s surprising that only a year elapsed between this and the first series, when so much seems to have altered between the two productions in terms of actor availability (or casting choices) and sets. For the series proper, they lose the very annoying pinwheel loading screen embedded in the floor (as well as the attractive but otherwise unimpressive playing their proto-Ivannova, who seems to like to stand on it).

- So many technical changes were made between the two stages of production. The series proper has fewer puppets: the world apparently was not yet ready for 1999’s Farscape. The station employs less safety protocol in terms of securing mechanisms in their internal transportation and breathing masks. The captain’s girlfriend changes actors, and the vibes of both Mollari and the Narn ambassador also shift.

- I explained to Katy that this was basically the sort of thing I thought “The Beginning” was going to be. Katy opted for us to delay watching it, chronological order be damned. She was a bit hardline in her conviction that the pilot was unnecessary. Ultimately I also don't think the pilot needs to be included in the S1 box (as indeed it isn’t). But it's very unusual to see a show just not use its pilot like this? They're very expensive! Production teams routinely hobble shows with the weakest possible beginning, just so as not to waste the money involved in shooting them.

Watched all of 1000 Autumns during the last flare up of my exciting new chronic illness thing (haven't gotten into it here, it's a long story and not one I find interesting).

As a season, I found this weirdly balanced. A new magic ring McGuffin was introduced and then destroyed almost before we knew what it did.

The male lead Sect Leader Yan's whole Deal, in his present actions and backstory, is still fairly unclear. That probably aims at building suspense, but with only a 3D model of a book character and SQQ's voice actor to go on, I do need more. A full reveal is unnecessary at this juncture, but I'd like and expect, by the end of a whole series, to know more than I do about who this character is for the purposes of the present story. Without a firm working idea of that the plot, let alone the romance, isn't going to emotionally interest me sufficiently.

The stakes on political and personal levels are kind of muddy. The story feels like a Vibes affair, but I'm not getting VIBES a la WoH (perhaps in part because it's harder to generate chemistry with 3-d models). 1000 Autumns is perhaps at its most interesting when we're dealing with side character plots, like the cultivator killing himself because his vengeance is pointless now that the person he's spent 20 years furious with died young out of guilt.

Earlier today, based off a conversation Katy and I had had which kicked it off, Jon and I were trying to think of touchstone British comedy shows. I was trying wondering if there were any big ones I hadn't seen. We expanded the list to 'key UK television programs (with some important radio stuff thrown in)'. There's a danger, in making these, of overly favoring 'shit what you personally like', which we've tried to minimize, but can't really avoid. There's likewise an 'is it too old to be relevant anymore/is it too new to be relevant yet?' element. Sherlock is off for now, but in a hideous future, might have to give it its 'due'. Also, perhaps this should include more of a 'quality' metric? It does a *bit*, but then we moved away from that to a Cultural Relevance focus. PLEASE weigh in. What does this list need/have that it shouldn't?

Keep in mind these are the muddled musings of an immigrant and a man who goes on about not liking television, so v. probably, they're not the whole of it.

I've seen all of
I've seen part of
*comedy* ...I think, this one might be off
Not sure about including this one?

*Only Fools and Horses (apparently only necessary to watch 2 or 3 eps)*
*Dad's Army (at least series 1)*
*'Allo 'Allo*
*Ab Fab*: Only a TOUCH though. (Robin has embarrassment squick here)
*Keeping Up Appearances* (Jon has embarrassment squick here)
*Fast Show*
*Chuckle Brothers*
Corrie
*Last of the Summer Wine*
Crystal Maze (an episode or two)
Robin of Sherwood?
Avengers
Morse
Poirot
I, Claudius
East Enders Christmas Special
*Two Ronnies*
Jonathan Creek?
*Open All Hours*
Morkham and Wise
*Hitchikers Guide* (Jon maintains only the original cast radio play should count for this--I've seen it, read it, listened to the audio book, but not done the radio series)
Life on Mars
Dixon of Dock Green
*Black Books*
*Fawlty Towers*
*Father Ted
*Spaced*
*Black Adder*
Doctor Who: well, pretty much
Blakes 7?
quatermass experiment
*Red Dwarf*: well, pretty much
All Creatures: well, pretty much
*Fry and Laurie*
*Jeeves and Wooster*
*Flying Circus*
*Goon Show*
*Not the 9 O'Clock News*
*Navy Lark*
Archers
Room 401
Million Pound Radio Show
*Miranda*
Cranford
Lark Rise to Candleford
adaptation of period English novel--P&P?
Forsythe Saga?
Hornblower?
Sharpe?
*French & Saunders Christmas Special*
Sherlock Holmes--version?
*The Young Ones*
University Challenge
Just a Minute
QI
*Upstairs Downstairs*
*Yes, Minister*: well, one ep
*Are you Being Served?*

*

We were supposed to see Matilda in Seven-Dails-But-Not-The-Donmar-So-God-Knows-Where-This-Venue-Is tomorrow night, but they canceled it without warning us. They let us reschedule, but didn't email, apologize, or *offer* to reschedule us. Katy had to call them up to arrange things; she only knew something was amiss by looking at her credit card receipt. I am 80% sure that was an appropriate semi-colon use...

Last night in fit of madness asked Miles Richardson whether he was in an Innocent orange juice commercial that sounded suspiciously familiar. We'll see how *that* goes. Said something like 'Orange you in this? *link*' Love and hate self in equal measure. Not sorry.

An recommended these: http://thestonesoup.com/blog/2010/04/when-irish-eyes-are-smiling-little-baileys-cheesecakes-5-ingredients-10-minutes/ , and they sound v. nice. So did her other rec: http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/32364/Old-Fashioned-Soft-Pumpkin-Cookies/detail.aspx , but getting tinned pumpkin in the UK can be an annoyance.

I'm really enjoying this EP right now:

Recently just in the course of doing chores, and in an attempt on Sunday to have an actual 'day off' with Katy (didn't *really* work), I've been watching a lot of television.

Stuff I am into at the moment:

- Rewatching the old Our Mutual Friend with Paul McGann's Ridiculous Mustache. I mustache you not to laugh at it, it is a very serious facial hair statement. I love a good Dickensy funtime.
- Downton Abbey, which I recently found myself defending vociferously against charges that it was the opiate of the masses right before going 'wait WHAT, self?' I did not know I cared!
- Merlin, which has stolen Who's goodness with MAGIC!! or something in order to produce shockingly competent television, after having been in a slump for a good portion of last year. I'm pretty suspicious about last ep and don't know whether to take its Big Event as permanent, given the forces in play this series.
- Star Trek: Next Generation: Katy and I's rewatch has cleared mid Season Six, after stalling for like a week due to my unwillingness to watch horrible horrible shit happen to Picard. The ep wasn't quite as AWFUL as my childhood had painted it, and I think I built it up enough for Katy consequently to deaden the blow for her, which is for the best as Benny has, as Katy pointed out, filled our Reptile Empire Gratuitously Torturing Our Hero quota for all time. Chain of Command Part II is a successful and not, I think, unnecessary story about torture, in an Orwellian/1984 kind of way, but I sort of feel its messages lodged in me the first time I saw it and now its content seems a bit 'oh', not through any fault of its own.
- Sarah Jane Adventures: This series strong as usual. Quite sad I'll never learn more about The Captain, the best parrot!regeneration of a TL that ever there was. Also I want Luke and his new sister to bond properly, but I guess there's not any time.
- Top Hat: it's an old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie that was on iplayer while I was making my marinade and doing dishes last night, and I don't know that I'd ever even him in anything before. Not quite finished, but so far rather clever and funny at points. Good random Gertrude Stein joke. Hate her writing. Three Lives destroyed my own will to liiiive. Is her Italian fashion designer friend supposed to be gay? If so, surprised they went there. If not, some of the jokes make less sense.

( how to make vats of barbacoa pork, and other adventures )

Still nothing re: visa.

Meanwhile, SO TELEVISION, Y'ALL.

I've tried asking a few likely people privately, but no one seems in today, with the exception of Very Useful An. I am trying to get a feel from people of what to try next. Do you lot have any recommendations of shows that are good because they have great characters/characterization? Where this is a primary virtue of the show? For example, I enjoy Star Trek and Star Gate, but I would not call them character-driven or good for the same reasons Avatar is. Katy LOVED the show Avatar (not either of the movies), but we've polished it off and need new bloooood.

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More Life

Entries tagged with television

Vanity Fair (1998 adaptation)

Review of "Hot Life" documentary on Netflix

Review: Andrew Davies' adaptation of Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters"

Review: "Blue Period"

Review: "Middlemarch" (1994 adaptation)

Review: "King's Avatar"

Review: "Hikaru no Go" (anime)

Review: "The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House"

Review: "Who Rules the World?"

Review: "Lockwood & Co."

Notes on "Spy x Family" and "Uncorked"

Notes on "Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty"

Notes on "Food Wars"

Review: "Kantaro: the Sweet Tooth Salary Man"

Review: "Ghost Bride"

Some notes on “The Gathering”, the “Babylon 5” Pilot

1000 Autumns

Great British Television Citizenship Test: Mark 1

And And And

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