Christopher East

This year my M.O. for vacation time has consisted of scheduling it out piecemeal into various four-day “staycation” weekends that give me a chance to get away from the office and recharge my batteries — in the company of my favorite person and my two favorite cats, of course!  Since home is my favorite place to be, I’m perfectly happy to spend my vacations this way — and the fact that it’s both cheaper and lazier is a nice bonus!

This weekend held particular significance, though:  Thursday represented the four-year mark since Jenn and I met at Worldcon in Anaheim.  It’s been an exciting and wonderful four years so far, full of change and adventure for both of us.  We rang in the occasion with a spectacular dinner at our favorite restaurant here in the Valley, Café Carolina.  Jenn’s post describes the meal perfectly, so I won’t try to elaborate, except to show you the dessert:

We filled our Friday and Saturday with food and fun as well.  One highlight was an outing to Dark Delicacies in Burbank, a horror bookshop where Amelia Beamer was signing her new novel.  There we met up with friends and made some new ones, then stopped over at Porto’s for a pile of pastries.

It wouldn’t be a four-day weekend without TV, movies, and games, of course.  I’m catching up on season five of Rescue Me (about halfway through so far); I always seem to forget how good this show is when I’m not watching it.  I find elements of it problematic, but there’s something refreshing about how unapologetic and gutsy it is, and the ensemble cast is consistently amazing.  (I think Steven Pasquale in particular is a brilliant comic actor, and his story arc this year has been filled with entertaining surprises.)  We also instant-streamed the weird Belgian animated film A Town Called Panic, a wonderfully strange, frantic movie I found a little too stream of conscious for a full review — suffice it to say, it’s the best weird Belgian stop-motion animation you’ve ever seen.  And on Saturday night we enjoyed some World of Warcraft instancing with friends, where I got to heal my first heroics with my neglected resto druid.  (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it…)

The weekend wrapped up with Jenn’s birthday, and I made my first solo batch of chocolate chip cookies — a personal baking milestone.  Not only that, but they look and taste like cookies.  Holy shit!

It was nice to shut down and relax for a while, but it’s Monday again and time to resume some responsibility.  Back to work, to editing, to blogging and bill-paying…and soon, to writing, as I’ve decided September will ring in draft two of Subnetworks (or, more likely, draft 1.5, the last pre-critique version).

For now I’ll leave you with our anniversary photo — I do believe we are as happy as we look in this picture, so it’s a great way to remember a great weekend!

I watched Chuck with half an eye during its first season, liking it without quite loving it.  Its premise is ridiculous spy fantasy camp:  an immense database of intelligence data is downloaded into the mind of an aimless college dropout named Chuck Bartowksi (Zachary Levi).  Chuck, squandering his potential working at an electronics superstore, instantly becomes an intelligence asset, and to oversee his well being, he’s assigned two agents as handlers:  the CIA’s Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and the NSA’s John Casey (Adam Baldwin).  By day, Chuck is a mild-mannered “Nerd Herd” computer tech trying to hold together a semblance of a normal life, but at night, he’s off on top secret missions, his unique ability to instantly access information on objects and people he sees helping Sarah and John overcome the threat of the week.  The first season was silly fun, easily watched and forgotten, held together chiefly by the goofy Levi, who I think is an outstanding comic lead, with timely support from Baldwin, who serves as a perfect grumbly foil for Chuck’s bumbling charms.

Season two elevates the show to a new story-telling level, though, and particularly in its early stages it really hits its stride, providing engaging A-story plots intertwined with increasingly effective lore and a nicely developing ensemble feel.  Chuck’s puppy dog infatuation with Sarah matures into a credible will-they-or-won’t-they romance, and the often incongruous elements of Chuck’s personal life — sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), future brother-in-law Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin), best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) — finally start to feel more integral to the the events of Chuck’s secret life.

The season definitely has missteps, most notably a two-episode arc where Sarah alledgedly falls for a sleazy MI-6 agent — and everybody mysteriously decides to start acting out of character. Chuck’s occasional tendency to feel like it’s being written by giggling adolescent boys is at its worst here.  The season rescues Morgan from his irritating, show-stopping presence in season one, making him more sympathetic and noble — but does so at the expense of the rest of the Nerd Herd.  Lester (Vik Sahay) and Jeff (Scott Krinsky) merely turn up to exhibit repulsive male behavior, while Anna (Julia Ling) is just completely destroyed as a character — when she’s even given any material.  The Buy More sequences are still kind of an albatross around the show’s neck in season two, even with Tony Hale turning up to provide some quirky retail villainy.

That said, the major plotlines and season arcs of season two are much more impressive and engaging — watching Chuck come into his own as a reluctant spy, learning a bit more about Sarah and Casey, developing the family dynamic with Ellie and Awesome, some heroic moments and character growth for Morgan, and the overarching plot of Chuck’s attempts to get “the intersect” out of his head.  There are definitely moments of emotional connect here, not on a par with, say, Buffy at its finest, but moments where the terrorist threats (or vampires) stop mattering as much as the characters’ personal struggles and interactions within the tense framework of those situations.  I wasn’t expecting this much from Chuck when I started watching it, so it comes as a very pleasant surprise.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a Cairo-scratch on one arm and my mind roiling with a weird kind of negative writing energy — cool ideas gestating, but also a nagging dread about my ability to realize them.  When my mind starts churning like that, there’s no sense trying to go back to bed, so here I am composing a Saturday morning linkdump:

• I like this article by Christopher Cokinos about Mundane SF, although — like the very concept of Mundane SF — it’s likely to polarize and piss people off.  After all these years, it’s curious that this “movement” still has no members; it’s like a clandestine service of the subgenre, burbling along under the surface, surreptitiously wielding its indirect influence.  Stealth genre; no wonder it connected with me.   The genre everybody is too cool to join.  Or maybe it’s just a concept with a severe branding problem.  (I mean, Futurismic is pretty much 90% a Mundane market, but I’d be surprised if half our submitters knew that.)  Anyway, it’s an entertaining article and it points out some good near-future SF that’s been published lately.
• I haven’t had a chance to read much of Lightspeed Magazine yet, but boy do I envy the look and feel of the site.  (And their submission interface is pretty slick, too.)
• China Mieville puts his finger on something here in his comments about J.J. Abrams, particularly when drawing the comparison with Joss Whedon.  I have enjoyed some of Abrams’ shows, but he only seems to have one foot in the genre camp, and I get a sense of him being a cagey, hitmaking opportunist.  I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say he’s contemptuous of genre, but…I get the sense there’s something to the insight.
• I don’t expect everyone to share my love of the new spy series Rubicon, but this is the post where I beg you to give it a try, if only to keep it on the air for my benefit.     I don’t generally get hooked on shows this quickly, which of course makes me think its demise is imminent…

I was certain I had more to post about when I started this…maybe I shouldn’t write blogs before 7AM on a Saturday.  Oh, well — have a great weekend, folks!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a TV round-up post, so here’s a summer viewing report:

New seasons are underway for two shows I’ve been following casually for a while now, TNT’s Leverage and USA’s White Collar.  To me, the quality of Leverage has dropped a little this season, while White Collar has shown some improvement.  I wouldn’t consider myself a diehard fan of either series — taken as a whole, I still have more loyalty to Leverage –  but I’m still enjoying them both.

On the “catching up” front, Jenn and I are working our way through the second season of Chuck, a campy, funny contemporary spy series that has been steadily improving as it goes.  The early stages of season two feel like a show hitting its stride, to me.  Long way to go yet to catch up here, though — I don’t quite have the series marathoning chops that I used to!

My completism for 24 took me through the two-hour, between-season movie 24: Redemption, which bridges the gap between seasons six and seven of the show.   On the run after the events of season six, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) has settled in Africa, helping an old Special Forces buddy named Benton (Robert Carlyle) run a school for boys.  But civil war in the fictional nation of Sangala jeopardizes the kids, who are being kidnapped and press-ganged into military service across the border.  Fortunately Bauer is on hand to protect them.  It’s definitely a step up from season six — which was, on the whole, pretty awful — but lacks the complexity of a full, multi-threaded season arc.  Its main mission seems to be laying the groundwork for season seven — introducing the new president, the new villain, and some other figures — meanwhile delivering its usual doses of intense action and taking advantage of some refreshing scenery from its South African locations.

The main reason for this post, though, is the new AMC series Rubicon, which looks very promising indeed.  I’ve only seen the first two episodes, but I haven’t been this excited about a new show for a long time.  This dark, intriguing spy mystery centers around a New York City think-tank full of intelligence analysts.  The central figure is Will Travers (James Badge Dale), a brilliant, introverted analyst with a tragic past, who starts piecing together a complicated conspiracy involving his father-in-law (and fellow spy) David (Peter Gerety).  Slow, subtle, and mysterious, Rubicon builds with a kind of quiet intensity, taking its time to lay out its clues and develop its storylines.  It’s populated by immediately likeable and interesting characters, an office drama in a truly unique office, where the stresses of the secret life play out in quirky, awkward, tense interactions between the officers.  It conjures both the fascinating personal politics of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and the premise and paranoia of Three Days of the Condor. I will be following this series — which feels like it was made just for me! — with considerable interest.

From the department of recently watched television: lately I’ve sampled a couple of pilot episodes that failed to impress, and finished up Lost, season four.

If you’re looking for a new show to watch, steer clear of The Good Guys. This buddy cop show starring Bradley Whitford and Colin Hanks attempts to combine Tarantino-esque structural flourishes with 1980s-style action-adventure.  Set in Dallas, it’s about two unlikeable cops — Dan Stark (Whitford), a boorish, old school asshole who holds onto his job because, years ago, he saved the mayor’s kid, and Jack Bailey (Hanks), who has simply irritated everyone else on the force.  Their punishment is that they’re stuck working together, looking into dead-end, routine crimes.  In the pilot, their investigation into a stolen humidifier puts them, miraculously, onto an international drug smuggling ring.  A tonal mess, The Good Guys looked vaguely interesting for a few minutes when I thought it was going to be about two cops on the department’s shitlist pursuing unglamorous cases, with some comedic alinear storytelling.  But it kind of mutates into a mundane rock-’n'-roll action-fest, like an old-fashioned Stephen J. Cannell TV adventure gone spectacularly wrong.  Maybe Whitford and Hanks are simply too effective here at making their characters annoying.   I liked a couple of the guest actors, but the regulars and the series framework left me cold.

You can probably also steer clear of The Gates, which showed a little more potential perhaps, but is also far less memorable.  I can say that with authority because we watched it a week ago, and I can hardly remember it — at least The Good Guys made an impression.  The basic set-up of The Gates is that there is a small, pristine little gated community where things are not as they seem.  Behind this community’s walls, vampires and werewolves and demons live normal lives, in human guise.  A new sheriff and his family move to town and it looks like they’ll be investigating new supernatural cases every week.  I found the pilot bland to the point of tastelessness, with generic Hollywood casting; most of the characters make no impression.  It seems like a supernatural genre show written by and for people who have only the remotest interest in the genre.  Far less accomplished than, say, Happy Town, which itself wasn’t all that great, but at least had some ambition and personality to it.  Maybe The Gates will develop into something interesting, but probably not while I’m watching.

From two ineffective pilots, to a show with one of the best pilots ever:  we finally finished up season four of Lost, which I thought was its best season since the first.  Shaking up its storytelling formula at the end of season three worked wonders, and I also suspect that the writer’s strike helped focus this season — at only fourteen episodes, there are much fewer franchise-padding filler episodes.  A major problem of Lost is that the writers don’t always seem to know the answers to the show’s questions, but I think they mapped out this season pretty well; the central mystery is compelling, and well executed, and the individual stories within it are generally well told.

I also think this is one of the best cast shows in TV history, and for whatever else it does, I think it has a very impressive track record for introducing interesting, distinctive characters.  It doesn’t always handle those characters adroitly, particularly women; and it also has a tendency to overplay great characters, thereby removing their mystique.  But character interactions and relationships are always a big part of what makes this show fun to watch, and the actors generally do a great job of making me care about what happens to them — even the actors whose characters I don’t particularly like.  Looking forward to continuing with this series.

A couple of TV mini-marathons this holiday weekend, courtesy of instant-streaming:

The tragically canceled Party Down’s 10-episode second season started a little slowly, but hit its stride midway through (“Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday” and “Not On Your Wife’s Opening Night” are two highlights), mostly living up to the promise of its first year.  As usual, low-key chemistry from leads Adam Scott and Lizzy Caplan anchors the series, while the antics of the rest of the crew color the proceedings.  Attempting to replace the irreplaceable Jane Lynch is Megan Mullally, and she does an admirable job, bringing a little something different to the mix.  Often crass, occasionally sweet, and usually very funny, Party Down was clearly too smart, witty, and fun to live — I guess the ratings were pretty dismal.  Fortunately the final episode brings some rather satisfying, understated closure to the series.  Sadly, I expect this one will develop its cult after the fact.

We also caught up on season three of The Guild, Felicia Day’s gamer-oriented, short web series featuring a sextet of misfits playing a World of Warcraft-style mmorpg.  Codex (Day) assumes guildmaster duties in this season, which pits them against a rival, evil guild, run by (who else?) Wil Wheaton.  The comedy is pretty uneven and the budget is shoestring, but it’s cute and charming for those steeped in the source material (non-WoW players really need not apply).  Slight, but fun, and I thought this season was a step up from the previous one.

While Jenn was off in Flagstaff at a novel workshop last week, I was home working, minding the cats, and, uh, watching a boatload of television.

I started off with season three of Friday Night Lights, which I burned through in a weekend.  I thought it was a major improvement over season two (which was still pretty good).  Season three smartly completed the storylines of characters whose presence on the show was played out — namely Smash (Gaius Charles) and Jason (Scott Porter) — and I really liked the “stage dad” throughline involving freshman QB phenom J.D. McCoy (Jeremy Sumpter), which leads to some great dramatic fireworks and some nice moments between Zach Gilford and Kyle Chandler.  The senior year arc for Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) was also inspiring, and the third season finale may be my favorite episode of the series so far.  I’m eagerly looking forward to season four.

During the week I caught up with season five of Weeds.  I thought it was pretty meh.  Weeds is definitely a show that could learn a thing or two from FNL when it comes to knowing when to phase out a character — I mean, why are Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth McGovern still hanging around, anyway?  I’m hanging in there basically because I really like Mary Louise Parker in this, and Justin Kirk is fun.  But this season the show, which often makes a habit of  substituting shock value for pure funny, didn’t produce as many laughs as usual, and it’s become more of a “background TV” show for me since it left the suburbs.

Finally, I finished off Extras recently with the “Extra Special Series Finale.”  Ricky Gervais is a master of “feel-bad comedy,” and in some ways I think Extras was stronger thematically and more laugh-out-loud funny than its quirky predecessor The Office, thanks largely to its brilliant celebrity cameos and great work from Ashley Jensen and Stephen Merchant as Andy’s daffy sidekicks.   Gervais knows not just how to end a show, but when, and while this finale lurches a bit into pathos from time to time, in the end it sends off the series nicely.

I decided to take the weekend off from movie reviewing, partly because I’d been setting a pretty brisk pace for myself in that regard, but mostly because I’ve been marathoning TV shows lately, courtesy of Netflix instant streaming (which, by the way, ROCKS).

Hot on the heels of the first season, I leaped into season two of Friday Night Lights.  While it wasn’t quite as strong as the first season, I still found it highly addictive and engaging TV.  In other words, if you enjoyed the first season you probably won’t be too let down by the second.  Definitely looking forward to more.

I’ve sinced moved on to season four of Lost.  This is the strike-shortened season and so far it’s served to remind me of the things I loved about it in the early days, and the things in later seasons that caused me to lose interest and fall behind.  At its best, Lost’s genre-bending mysteries are compellingly executed, and the overhaul of the repetitive flashback formula here in season four is a substantial improvement.  At the same time, the season is still full of problematic and irritating elements:  icky gender politics, contrived factions and petty conflicts based on vague belief systems, tired love triangles and relationship issues.  As in earlier seasons, the new characters bring some life (I especially like Jeremy Davies as Daniel), while the “stars” — particularly Jack and Kate — are just dull as rocks.   I found “The Constant” (the episode where Dez goes all Slaughterhouse-Five-ish) a standout episode, and there’s more story-telling surprise here than in seasons two and three, but in generall the thrill’s worn off for me.  I do expect I’ll finish it off eventually (so please, no spoilers!).

I went into The Prisoner (1967-1968) with the understanding that it’s  one of those TV shows anyone interested in the medium and its history should know about.  It certainly lived up to that expectation, but not at all in the way I expected.  It’s much, much weirder!

The show stars Patrick McGoohan as “Number Six,” and it’s considered an unofficial sequel to his conventional spy series Danger Man. Number Six resigns from the intelligence world, only to be abducted and imprisoned in The Village, an odd seaside town filled with political prisoners, each represented only by a number.  It quickly becomes clear that escape is impossible, and The Village’s leadership — represented by Number Two, who changes each episode — is determined to wring every last ounce of useful information out of its citizens.  Compliance and conformity are rewarded, and resistance is punished.  Nobody resists quite like Number Six, who engages in battles of wits with his captors on a weekly basis, sometimes losing, sometimes emerging victorious.

The series lasted just seventeen episodes, and it’s easy to see why it wasn’t extended further:  the premise is somewhat limiting, at least on the surface level.  Episodes tend to follow two tracks:  Six attempting to escape, or The Village attempting a new interrogation method on him.   The escape episodes quickly grow repetitive, in rather a Gilligan’s Island manner, while the interrogation episodes — generally more interesting — are just as destined to return the story to its comfortable, episodic starting point.  So the overall shape of each episode is generally predictable, but even so, The Prisoner manages to be wildly inventive within its format, combining spy tropes with outrageous science fiction concepts, political metaphor, and disturbingly weird humor.  It quickly becomes clear that the journey is the destination, here, and looking at the show as a broad, experimental allegory is the way to go — with the major theme being its examination of the individual’s struggle to maintain identity in a cruelly homogenizing state.  This lends the show a kind of creepy power, even in weaker episodes that lack satisfying plot structure.  Intriguing turns of phrase and thought-provoking exchanges of dialogue are common throughout the run.

The Prisoner also has the odd distinction of managing to be dated and ahead of its time simultaneously.  In many ways an obviously time-stamped product of the sixties, the show is also groundbreaking in its techniques, the scope of its ambition, and in its “anything goes” approach to executing wild ideas.  The insane fashions of The Village give the show an unmistakeable, colorful look, as does the unique architecture of the town (which apparently inspired the series).  And the filmmaking, while sometimes budget-conscious, is often quite visually striking.  (Take, for example, “Many Happy Returns,” a frustrating episode structurally that contains some really impressive visual story-telling, particularly in its first half.)  The music is alternately playful and creepy.  And some of the ideas…I mean,  escaping prisoners are chased down by bouncing, sentient balloons…and in one episode I swear I saw a drumset being played by a statue of a sheep!  Television shows this bizarre simply didn’t exist back then; even today it seems decades ahead of its time in terms of genre content, a mindset that would lead ultimately to shows like The X-Files and Twin Peaks.

The enigmatic McGoohan carries the proceedings with equal parts smug charm and righteous fury, all with an inscrutable expression on his face, and his struggles are fascinating to watch.  And the series grows increasingly more experimental and fearless as it goes along.  The early, conventional spy “false journey” strategy of “The Chimes of Big Ben” leads next to a show where The Village masters leverage dream-controlling technology in their interrogation of Six.  Then there’s “The Schizoid Man,” wherein Six is programmed to think he is actually someone else entirely, whose job it is to break Number Six — one of the highlights of the series for me.  But things really get odd in the later stages.  The bizarre western-themed “Living in Harmony,” a somewhat tedious episode, nearly redeems itself with an odd PKD-like resolution.  The gem of the series is probably “The Girl Who Was Death,” a surprisingly playful interpretation of the series premise, while the final two episodes of the series, “Once Upon a Time” and “Fallout,” provide a mind-blowingly strange wrap-up to the series.

All this said, The Prisoner might not resonate much with modern viewers — certainly it needs to be examined in historical context (both world history and TV history) to be fully appreciated.  I think I may have liked the idea of it more than the reality.  But I’m definitely glad I watched it; I really don’t think there’s anything else quite like it, which is an accomplishment in itself.

Based on its subject matter, Friday Night Lights sure doesn’t feel like a perfect fit for me:  surely I couldn’t possibly like a show about football in a small, religious community in Texas, could I?  Well here’s more proof that sometimes it’s worth it to fight through your predispositions.  I just finished the first season and it’s one of the best single seasons of television I’ve ever watched.

Friday Night Lights follows the efforts of Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), a first-year high school coach in football-crazed Dillon, Texas, to lead his team to a state championship.  Taylor’s early work with a highly touted quarterback, Jason Street (Scott Porter), helped get him the job, but from the word go he finds himself questioned from all sides in his running of the team — by his own coaches, his own players, the media, and meddling community leaders, most notably sleazy car dealer Buddy Garrity (Brad Leland), whose daughter Lyla (Minka Kelly) is a popular cheerleader.  While Taylor’s running of the team and mentoring of its young players — chiefly star running back “Smash” Williams (Gaius Charles), troublemaking fullback Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), and promising backup QB Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) — is central to the series, there’s more to the story than the team’s efforts on the field.  Taylor’s sensible wife Tami (Connie Britton) is a guidance counselor at the high school, which enables her to see — in a way that her monofocused husband can’t — what’s going on in the town beyond the game.  Tami becomes a community leader in her own right, helping the troubled students, and giving her husband much needed perspective, as they raise their daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden).

It’s a heartfelt show that deftly juggles multiple storylines in each episode, and there’s a realistic feel to it — dialogue often feels spontaneous, and the small-town community interactions ring with authenticity.  And really the show is about community, and the struggles of its people — whether involved with the football team or not — to make lives for themselves and realize their dreams.  That said, the football sequences are compellingly executed, and the team’s journey gives the season a strong overall shape.  But there are plenty of dramatic fireworks off the field as well, and characters like Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki), a football-hating party girl, and Landry Clark (Jesse Plemons), Matt’s quirky, intelligent friend, serve up reminders of how the  sports-related class structure of a town can impact those outside the inner circle.

Although the show often leans toward issue-driven melodrama, it never quite overdoes it, thanks to strong writing and superb performances from the entire cast, with Britton and Porter really standing out for me.  There are more inspiring moments in this season than most shows manage in their entire run.  I found it surprisingly addictive stuff, and I’m looking forward to catching up with the later seasons.