Warm Glowing Warming Glow

3-2-1 Contact

Holy crap. I think I'm no longer allowed to make fun of As the World Turns. My expectations, based on the aftermath of last summer's Luke storyline, was that they would either drag the Luke-Noah flirtation out all summer, waiting to see if they were going to get into any trouble with focus groups, or else drop it entirely in favor of other storylines with the same characters who always tend to dominate the show. I could not have been more wrong.

Early in the week, there was some sort of minor misunderstanding among the three interns: Maddie had decided to defer enrollment at her dream school, Wesleyan, in order to attend Oakdale University with her band-new boyfriend, Noah. Luke, reasonably, albeit not very tactfully, told Maddie it was crazy of Noah even to ask her to do such a thing, crazier still for Maddie to agree to it. Noah, who seemd to be already itching for a fight after the après-swim near-clinch, got inordinately angry with Luke for meddling.

Meanwhile, Noah's father, Colonel Mayer, showed up to try again to cajole Noah into enlisting. He was basically offering the same deal as earlier -- if Noah joins the Army, his Dad will pay for Northwestern -- but the approach was somehow different. Colonel Mayer wanted to give the money as a reward because he was proud of Noah, but Noah could only take the money if he joined the Army. Then the topic of Maddie came up; Colonel Mayer was delighted to learn that Noah has a girlfriend and charmed by Maddie. He invited the pair of them to an impromptu lunch, which was awkward, because Noah was late for some reason, which led to Colonel Mayer accidentally almost questioning Maddie about her serial killer sister. Worse, he let slip that he had suspected Noah of inventing Maddie or else using her as a smokescreen. Perceptive, Colonel Mayer!

Meanwhile, a repentant Luke (although, come on, he had nothing to be sorry for) brought Noah and Maddie lunch at the station. Noah, freaking out, needed help with his necktie, which led to a surprisingly long, unobstructed kiss. Wow!

The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades

Last week, on As the World Turns, Luke and Noah got very close to a clinch. (I know!) It was after they went swimming at Snyder Pond. There was some horseplay, which anyone who has ever played high school sports (or seen Personal Best) can tell you (if they're honest), usually leads to sexual confusion, not infrequently to gay sex. It's very exciting. It's almost happening too soon. Then again . . . I wouldn't be surprised if Luke and Noah take a backseat for a few weeks, while prurient viewers enjoy an endless loop of flashbacks to the almost-kiss. (See also last season's porny backrub slo-mos.)

I Think I'm Going to Throw Up

The only reason to watch MTV (seriously, people) returns tonight.  Here's what Virginia Heffernan has to say about it. 

More and More and More

Dear Jenny,

Just when I was about to give up on Top Chef, we had our best episode all season and now I'm afraid I might have to stick it out. This sucks.

So why was this episode good? It was not because of the guest judge or the Quick Fire. Those were both kind of lame. Oh, the Quick Fire was funny, just because of the usual self-delusional contestant behavior from Hung. He created an ice cream topping of about 15 different wrong things, including cauliflower foam and then, after being told that it was too much and too disgusting, said something like, "Oh, they didn't get it."

The Elimination Challenge was good, though. Yeah, I don't usually go for those fake-out ones, but the late-night thing seemed like a legitimate test of something related to being a chef or owning a restaurant, including the having to cook in your sluttiest clothes.

The Judges' Table was excellent. Now it's been a couple days and I can't remember the exact turns of phrase used by everyone, but I think they went something like this, "You're an asshole." "You're an asshole." "You're an asshole." "More and more and more and more, you're an asshole." Sort of a foregone conclusion that Sara Nguyen was going home, and that's too bad because I like her. The attempts to build suspense about that were, as usual, lame.

What did you think? Do you want to talk at all about what the chefs wore to go clubbing? Are you as over jersey as I am?

Love,

-- Pete

Chamber of Secrets

For the past two weeks or so, since I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I've been meaning to write a longish, critical response either to the book itself or to the series as a whole, spurred mostly by a long, intellectually-irresponsible talk my sister and I had about subtext.  I'm too lazy to actually do the research required to develop or back up our claims about Hogwarts, though, so I'm just going to throw some down here:

1. For a children's book, there sure is a lot of sexual imagery -- wands, swords, snakes, cauldrons, chalices, lockets . . . Maybe at some point, everything is a cigar, I'm not sure. I do think that it's interesting that Chamber of Secrets is the first really scary book in the series (I remember talks, around when that came out, about people feeling like that one wouldn't be appropriate for their kids to read, because of the basilisk being upsetting.) and it's the one in which a giant snake is ravaging Hogwarts and it's also the one in which an attraction between Harry and Ginny is first introduced. Also, in Order of the Phoenix, Harry has all those violent dreams about Nagini that lead to him feeling irrational guilt.

2. In terms of gender, the wizard world is pretty conservative. In fact, I think that you can argue that J.K. Rowling is in a lot of ways a pretty conservative author. The Harry Potter books tend to promote tolerance, but they also tend to extol boys and athletics over girls and intellectual pursuits. Harry, while introduced as an outsider and freak, quickly emerges as a popular kid and a great Quidditch player. Snape, meanwhile, the perennial outsider, is vilified, pretty much throughout. One can argue that Hermione, Luna and Neville are non-conforming kids, and each does get at least a moment or two of glory, but each is secondary if not tertiary to Harry. Traditional families are a big part of the wizarding world and non-traditional families -- let alone single people -- tend to lead to trouble. Also, back to gender: girls tend to be girly. Female characters are subordinate to the male; even the Hogwarts houses founded by women (Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw) are pretty minor -- and pretty girly.  Both are associated with stereotypically female virtues. 

3. I was working up something about  each of the houses of Hogwarts representing something important about Great Britain, but I don't think there's anything there. I do think that something's going on with Gryffindor and Imperialism, but I'm getting tired just thinking about trying to develop it.

4. The series takes place between the years 1991 and 1997, yet it was written during the late 1990s to about 2006, and is clearly informed by early 2000s mores -- the middle books seem to be obviously influence by the invasion of Iraq and by heightened paranoia, post-9/11. Yet it's weird to think of the world of wizards existing anywhere around the same era as ours. It feels like the books should be set in about 1938 to 1944, with the return of Voldemort mirrored by the Blitz.

Dead Like Me

Here's some good news: a Dead Like Me movie (albeit straight-to-DVD) is coming sometime next year.  Even if you don't care about Dead Like Me, you should probably read the article: it's spectacularly petty. 

Probably you should also rent the entire series on DVD; I think it's widely available and it's very funny.  This was Bryan Fuller's first series as executive producer (before the infamously screwed-over Wonderfalls, my personal favorite The Amazing Screw-On Head, Heroes and the upcoming, much-anticipated Pushing Daisies).  It's the story of a young, recently-deceased girl, George Last (Ellen Muth), chosen to be a "reaper," shepherding other recently-departed people to the next world.  In addition to reaping, George has to keep her day job, as an office temp.

Watch What Happens

Here's a pretty good, pretty long piece about what has happened to Bravo reality stars, after their show airs.  I was worried it was going to ruin Project Runway for me -- like Bravo = DeBeers, or something -- but actually, it's a pretty balanced piece.

He Likes Him Likes Him

Some more movement on the Luke-Noah storyline on As the World Turns.  They actually got two days in a row, which is unusual -- except during the big Branson location shoot/Cleo debacle, we've been seeing Luke, Noah and Maddie at best about once a week.  This week, Noah confronted Luke, who's been avoiding him; Luke admitted that he likes Noah, that way.  Noah handled that well, except that he went through a suspicious amount of "I'm not gay."  But he was nice to Luke; I think we ended with the two of them agreeing to be good friends, because they're both very lonely.  But then -- suspicious! -- Noah told his "girlfriend" (an appellation Maddie seems uncomfortable with, considering that they haven't actually really done much together, aside from work and of course that one-night stand in Branson) he's taking her on some big trip to the beach or something. 

The Luke-Noah scenes continue to be well-written.  It's weird, because overall, As the World Turns seems like a pretty dumb show: it's not funny or witty like it was when Hogan Sheffer was the head writer, or intricate and suspenseful, the way it was during the Doug Marland era.  The non-Luke stuff is mostly a wasteland of people doing stupid things for stupid reasons.

Little Hailey Nichol, All Grownsed Up

Amanda Righetti (Kirsten's sister Hailey on The O.C., a bunch of other shows I never watched) has joined the cast of K-Ville, Fox's New Orleans cop show, starring Anthony Anderson and Cole Hauser. I'm looking forward to this pilot; I've heard good things, particularly about Anderson. Righetti was really good on The O.C. -- and got better all the time. I couldn't bring myself to watch either the Hawaii show she was on, with either Brooke Burke or Brooke Burns, or the one about the high school reunion, with Chyler Leigh and the drug addict-y youngest brother from Brothers & Sisters.

Charisma Carpenter (Kendall Casablancas on Veronica Mars, Cordelia Chase on something called Buffy the Vampire-Slayer) will be appearing on the season finale of ABC Family's Greek. I've been watching Greek and meaning to post about it. Short version: it's oddly winning. No, it's not anything like my college experience, but it's not quite science fiction, either, and the cast is appealing.