Don't Like Chips

[delga]

Note to self - you don't like chips. Stop telling The Mother that you do. *headdesk*

Aside from that, this week seems like it should go well, what with it being midterm and all. I have ample time to devote to the fannish, the fictional and the... f-educational? Yeh, maybe not but still, I'm strangely content. (Well, ok, apart from the letter I got from school yesterday basically doubling the number of hours I have to spend there. My work is AT HOME, imbeciles). Also? I don't like chips.

Last night's ER was, well, bizarre, to say the least. I mean, yeh, ok, very emotional and Ray Liotta was Ray Liotta (undecided as to whether or not that's a good thing) but the camera was disorienting. It was swinging at double the pace it usually does and the lack of the usual banter etc. (not to mention that lack of background music/ambient noice) and the full attention on this one apparently special case (oh god, let's not even go there) made it very intense. So intense that I nearly finished reading Empress Orchid whilst watching. (That's not to say that it was boring - well, ok, bits were - but more that I had to distract myself. I do it whilst watching 24; stop the DVD like fity billion times to go and do something else because the going is tough). It was tiring to watch and I don't think TV should ask you to invest that much in it. Which may or may not be contradictory to what I've said before but Time of Death wasn't telling teh story it was supposed to be telling, effectively resulting in a miscommunication. It was well done, fairly dramatic, somewhat screwy in between but mostly I don't think that ER viewers tune in every week to see something like that. The show produces quality episodes in the same league without having to resort to desperate measures. Yeh, ER is losing viewers but that's precisely because the storylines are failing. If you want a good example of a good, strong plotline, just look at the episode with the depressed woman who threw her kids out of her apartment window because she was hallucinating. That was amazing, so sad, so powerful. And it didn't need blatant manipulation. It was an intrinsically powerful story. That's what ER needs more of. I'm not a long time fan; I joined when the show started getting crappy. I loved the Africa episodes (another brilliant example of good storytelling - my only qualm with that is that once again, the writers had to change tack completely. I mean, it's set in the Emergency Room -- guys, please) which I found gruelling but satisfying but mostly I was converted because I watched lunchtime S3 reruns. Love.

Which gets me thinking - should shows really bother after the third season?? Are many shows really that good? I don't know. I used to think that with most shows, anything after the third season blew. But L&O just keeps getting better. CSI? Well, again, I don't know. The episodes aren't brilliant but they're certainly watchable. S3 was never ever going to live up to the phenomenon that was S2. Buffy - dude, I wish they HAD qwuit at the 3rd season. I loved S3 Buffy, it was the best. Truly amazing; the strongest it ever was.

But shows benefit, too, from being long-timers. SG-1, for example. Season 3 was the beginning of the best. SVU (yeh, I haven't seen S3+ yet - so what? :p) looks to be buliding up to quite a crescendo. There are others but not only can I not be bothered to recount them right now but I also don't want to show the extent of my geekiness/sadness.

The plan today is to finish a batch of Spooks icons, read some more of Big Fish, sort out my Psy. notes and watch last night's Alias (yay!) Then...I dunno. Whatever.

Don't like chips.