Hey Harry/Draco Types

[jlh]

Harry/Draco Types: If I had an H/D story, where should I post it? It isn't a first time story, but a them-as-adults story. (emmagrant01, don't you have some sort of comm or something? I think legomymalfoy's is a first time one isn't it?) Why I have this story will become clear later. Thanks!

Meanwhile, some entirely premature eulogies. There are six episodes of Studio 60 and four episodes of Veronica Mars left of their seasons, and then, I think, those shows are over. Why I don't mind:

I really loved the first season of Veronica Mars. It is still, beginning to end, one of the best seasons of television, ever, and eventually the DVDs will be purchased. The second season wasn't as good as I might have liked, and I know some of you really didn't care for it at all. This year, though, has had as many disappointments as successes. Josh noted recently that one problem that television has with portraying college is that people really don't hang out in cliques or conform to types; your friend groups are weird interconnecting masses that films can allude to and books actually portray but television, with its ongoing stories yet conservation of characters, is stymied by. That definitely affected VM this year, but the other problem I think is that the creator and writers don't actually understand that we were in it for the characters and the season-long arc, not the MotW and the drama. Cassie noted that we never got the good fun romance part of the relationships, only the fighting, especially with Veronica. And this year there simply wasn't enough for Logan to do. So I'm going to watch the last four eps of this season, which won't be united by a mystery mini-arc but will be just stand-alones, and then be unsurprised if the CW decides to drop the show. And really, I'm not sure if that show has really come to its natural end, anyway.

Studio 60 just never really worked for many, many reasons, but I cared about it because I cared about the characters. I'm sorry to see them go, and sorry to see this really superb group of actors not appearing on my television every week even though so many of them were so badly miscast that it may be better for them to do other things. Watching the show was an incredibly frustrating experience, with characters that you cared about doing stupid, reckless, even offensive things nearly every week. It was a hot mess of pontification and petty revenge on the part of Sorkin, easily his worst qualities. Work out your issues about your ex-girlfriend and reality television on your own time, Aaron, and leave my television alone. One hopes that the end of this season leaves these characters in a relatively good space—I think we all know that the season (series) finale will be Jordan having her baby—so we can all move on with our lives. But Christ Jesus, what a waste: of good will from viewers and advertisers, of time and energy, and most importantly, of talent.

Meanwhile, another waste is the ever-enlarging empire of the production company Magical Elves, who brought us Project Runway (love!), Top Chef (1: brilliant, 2: ugly), Top Design (yawn) and now some hair styling show. Hair styling? Seriously? I suggest forgoing this in favor of the superlative Blow Dry, starring Alan Rickman and Bill Nighy as old rivals in competitive hair styling, with Josh Hartnett and Rachel Leigh Cook as their star-crossed-lover children. As for this week's Top Design, I found I couldn't bring myself to care, though I'm not sad at all to see the end of Ryan, but in the previews Goil is crying and that is NOT on.

Comments

[scrabble.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's just me, but it was only after last week's episode that I really felt the sting of VM's decrease in quality. I think I've been one of the few clingers-on, trying to convince myself that it was just as good. It wasn't that last week was bad, it was just a completely unsatisfying end to a mystery in my mind, and that's something that VM has never really done poorly before. I mean, with Beaver, people figured it out but they did so because there were clues and ways to figure it out. With this, the people who guessed the killer (do I really need to hide this spoiler? I shall just in case) for the most part seem to have just picked the killer out of a hat because there wasn't anyone else to pick.

I feel sad and angry about the loss of VM. As you know, I watch very little television, and now I feel I have no show. :( I do watch Heroes, but my love for it is not quite on the level as my love for VM was, or my love for Buffy or SFU. I need another show like that, but will one come along? Probably not.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

There are usually about four reasons a TV show goes downhill:
1. The network fucks with it, either by forcing the producers to make a change or moving it around the schedule so it never gains an audience.
2. The creator starts a new show and stops paying attention to the first one.
3. Classic jumping the shark moves like a new small child or a move to a new locale or similar.
4. A sophomore slump shows that the creators weren't really sure what they had done well in their first awesome season, and then doesn't recover in the third season. In going-to-be-great shows, the second year is often better than the first as the show finds its legs and the third season is often, looking back, the best of all. (See especially Seinfeld.)

I would feel so much better about VM if they had done a big stupid thing, or if the network dicked it around, or whatever. But no, it just sort of doesn't know where to go and Rob Thomas so clearly has no idea what made it awesome (I know, I've said that so many times).

I agree with you about the solution to the Dean mystery; I feel we had very few actual clues pointing to Lucky Tim before this episode, which is lame. I wasn't all that satisfied with the solution to the rape mystery either—I still have no clear idea about whether that summer rape was supposed to be fake, or Mercer was supposed to have snuck up to Hearst when he was in Mexico with Logan. Using the feminists as a red herring was vaguely interesting at first but soon became somewhat shrill. Also, if you think about it, the rape case was somewhat similar to Lilly's murder in that the reason that it was so hard to work out who did it was that key clues had been purposely fucked with by a mistaken third party—in the case of Lilly, the Kane parents to throw suspicion away from Duncan; in the case of the Hearst Rapist, the feminists who faked rapes to throw suspicion on the frat boys. While it's a good device to make VM and KM's inability to solve the case more believable, it means that everything is at an impasse for a while, which fucks with the pacing of the mystery.

Emily got really angry with the political tone of some of the eps and was very close to not watching when we got to those last three eps, the two about the coach and the dean solution. Me, you know, once I'm in I'm mostly in, so I'll be in through the end of this season, but if it's on next year, I dunno. It would be heartbreaking to have it be on and not watch it, but I don't know that it isn't time to get off the train.

Shows come along. You'd be surprised. I remember that after I saw the very first episode of VM I called Cassie immediately and said, "I have your new show." I don't think she really thought she'd have a "new Buffy," so there you go. I don't get pilots anymore so I'm not sure what's in development but I'm cautiously optimistic that there will be something worth your while in the future, particularly with the success of both Heroes and Ugly Betty. It leads one to think that there will be more girl-positive and also fun genre shows coming in the next season.

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

I loved Blow Dry but thought Rachael Leigh Cook and Josh Hartnett were extremely poor additions to the cast. I mean seriously, if there were children of those families, raised in the UK with their families all their lives... shouldn't they fucking sound like them?