Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Short Week

Today is my kids' last day of school until next Tuesday. So today is my last day of true NaNoWriMo progress. As you can see, I did meet the NaNo goal of 50,000 words. I have about 32,000 to go. Right now, this second, I'm slightly ahead of goal. But six days with the kids home, plus Thanksgiving, plus the husband home for six days, plus painting the dining room, all add up to very little writing time.

So, yes, I should be writing right now, thank you.

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The writers strike will soon be affecting our television watching (the shows that have stopped production aren't shows I'm watching, so far). I'm slowly catching up. My thoughts:

Supernatural
I talk about this every week, so I'll just say I'm very, very sad that we have at least two weeks of reruns.

Scrubs
Not as funny as past seasons, but the only funny show we watch, so we'll keep watching.

Heroes
I looooooove David Anders (Kensei/Adam). Kristen Bell can really act. Milo Ventimiglia really worked out hard over the hiatus. I still don't care for the twins plot, the Nikki plot, or the whiny cheerleader elements (not enough to call it a plot), but the rest is getting much better. They really shouldn't have moved so slowly to introduce the virus plot.

Reaper
So far, no advancement as far as story goes. It's the same basic show every week. But, also so far, that's not a bad thing. The acting is good, the characterization well done, the dialogue and some of the situations very funny. Ray Wise as the devil is some of the best casting evar.

Chuck
After Supernatural, this is my go-to show. I don't like Morgan all that much, and Ellie could use some depth, but I loooove Adam Baldwin, the episode plots are pretty decent, and the cool factor makes it easy to suspend disbelief of some of the stretchier points (like the coincidence of Ellie treating the poisoned guy last week). I do wish they'd do some training so Chuck wouldn't be so stupid sometimes, and had a little ability in a pinch. I also wish they'd pay him, or at least that the subject would come up. I mean, he IS working for the government.

Numb3rs
Still one of my favorites, though a couple of recent episodes have been less well plotted than I'm used to. I liked that Charlie had almost no one show up to his booksigning. That made me feel better. :) We're a couple of episodes behind on this one.

Still haven't tried Private Practice or Bionic Woman, but with repeats and blackouts coming up, I will.

I've also been watching the final season of Gilmore Girls on DVD. I knew this was the bad season, so my expectations weren't high, but I'm disappointed anyway. It makes me think of That Guy, you know, the one who tries to make jokes like everyone else does, but they're off, so they end up sounding mean-spirited and not at all funny? The episode where Kirk drove the car into the diner was a good example. The traffic light and the flash and the crash and Taylor were all spot-on. And then Kirk does the diner thing? There's a hardness to everyone that wasn't there before, like they've all been possessed by demons trying hard to be like the original person but with a core of pain or hatred that leaks out. Everything is forced, with the superb exception of Logan, who has been excellent and consistent and makes me want to be called "Ace." :)

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The holidays are all messed up this year. Everyone seems to be all panicked that Thanksgiving is early and they haven't done Christmas shopping and preparation yet, but in reality, it means there's almost a full week longer than usual in between T-giving and Christmas. So everyone should be more relaxed, right?

I have no idea what we're doing for the holidays. I can't think of what gifts to give anyone except Number One, and I have enough ideas for her to spread around to everyone, so she'll be set. Number Two is so much harder for some reason. And other family? Fuhgeddaboutit. Even worse, I have no idea what to do for my husband. So, of course, I said we're not doing each other this year. I think we'll be doing a lot of gift cards.

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Okay, back to the writing. The writing of the derivative (from my own work), slow (there's no action in this action-adventure), currently stalled (I know where I'm going, not how to get there) NaNo book. Wish me luck.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Natalie,

I wanted to wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving.TV watching is going to be awful after a couple of weeks.

The last episode of Heroes will air on December 3. I read that they re-wrote the episode so if the writers strike continues it will serve as a season finale.The writers said that if the strike goes beyong the new year they won't be able to complete the whole season. Hopefully they will hammer up a deal when they start negociating next Monday. Most shows only filmed 11-13 shows and will run out in mid-december unless they stretch out the winter hiatus and start airing the remaining episodes in January.

I absolutely loved GG. I watched the show since the first episode and the last season(actually the last 5 episodes of the 6th season and most if not all of the 7th were just painful to watch)was just painful. I'm not sure if you know the backstory of what happened. But during the last few episodes of season 6 the creator Amy Sherman Palladino was negociating a new contract to continue writing/directing and running the show for the 7th season. Warner Brothers refused to give her a new contract to by the time that she wrote the season finale(where Luke/Lorelei split up and Lorelie sleeps with Chris)She knew that she was not coming back to run the show in the 7th season. Fans of the show were livid and so upset that when the show came back and after seeing the first episode(and it was not dream)the ratings went south. After the wedding it was short of a riot on the GG message boards. It turned very ugly around those places during most of the season and it didn't help when even the Logan and Rory story got messed up. There were always rumors that Lauren Graham/Scott Patterson never got along in real life and it didn't help when they asked Lauren who she thought Lorelei supposed to be with, she always said that she belonged with Chris. My friend Amanda worked on GG for a few episodes and she hated working on that show,she said it was so not how it was portrayed on tv. She said no one talked to each other and the actors never had fun filming and it was such a serious show to film not at all how it seem on the show.


Hope you have a great holiday.

Rose

Natalie J. Damschroder said...

I did know most of that, Rose, though not the stuff about how awful it was on the GG film set. I read a lot about TV, even the stuff I don't watch.

To be perfectly honest, the only reason I ever started GG was because I couldn't get enough Supernatural and I needed more Padackles. :) I watched Dark Angel this summer, too.

Michael Ausiello is supposed to eventually get from A S-P how she intended to end the series, and I'm curious about that. I hated every minute of the decline of Luke and Lorelei. Not happy to hear Logan and Rory get screwed up, too. :(