I need to leave a proper comment, but Is It Yuletide Yet tells me comments would be a bad idea at this time. Eeep!

In any case, an anonymous lovely has written me The Promise, which is a wonderful Earth 2 post-series fic with all sorts of spectacular speculate-y bits in it, and I ♥ it so! There are women, and women talking to women, and families, and living away from the rest of the universe, and Danziger, and aliens, and ♥ ♥ ♥!

Thank you, mystery writer! You are amazing and wondrous!

The new season of Scrubs is not so bad, mostly because it is not the dialed-up CRAZY of the last couple of seasons of Scrubs, while still retaining that weird Scrubsiness that makes it different from other shows. Also, I continue to adore Denise and all Denise-related things.

As for new people:
Narrating Girl Whose Name I Never Remember: Very J.D.-like, but also not. Kind of Lexie from Grey's Anatomy, actually, but more naive and vulnerable.
Cole: So greasy it's almost ridiculous. He's like...Pip from The Middleman, Ryan from The Office, and every vampires-are-hipster-dicks joke that's been made in the last decade. It's totally intentional, and thus vaguely brilliant.
Drew: I think I might really like him, but his face is still very generic to my eyes.
Hot Australian Student: Hee. It is unfortunate everyone mocks how gorgeous she is, but it is kind of funny right now. I'm sure it will annoy me three episodes from now.

I don't know how Turk or J.D. ended up teaching, because WOW SERIOUSLY, but the new emphasis on med school rather than hospital interns is working pretty well so far, and the gap of...about a year? I think? That gap allows for some space from the finality of last season's finale.

Cox and Kelso are remarkably more like themselves than ever. I miss Carla and, to a far, FAR lesser extent, Elliott and Janitor. I cannot help but love that The Todd is still roaming about.

The following applies to both yuletide and 3_ships. And generally for anybody who wants to write fic for me. And anybody who would like to talk about SPN, nuTrek, SGA, Gossip Girl, Earth 2, the Courtney Cox show, NCIS: Los Angeles, or The Vampire Diaries! *g*

( Dear Authors... )

Due to various personal reasons, I've decided to make this journal friends-only. (Kevin, if you're reading, this isn't because of you. Or is it?)

All my fic can be found at moodfic. If you ventured over to my LJ via a fic rec or a ficathon link, I encourage you to click over there, as you can easily find the fic in question via tags or memories.

I have sporadically posted book quotations, BPAL stuff, recaps, recs, and icon updates, on calikali.

If you would like to be added, please leave a comment in this post.

Edited 01 December 2009.

Cougar Town: Three and a half times better than I expected, and three HUNDRED times better than the first two minutes of Accidentally on Purpose, as those two minutes culminated in Ashley Jensen's character teaching Jenna Elfman's character to "perk her nipples" and not in a good way.

A couple of years ago, when the Sex and the City movie first came out, one of Entertainment Weekly's columnists (I don't remember which, but I salute him) asked, "You know what they call men over 40 who are still interested in sex? Men." And I laughed and laughed, and then I hated society for the rest of the week.

I HATE THE TERM COUGAR, is what I'm saying. It's a derogatory term used by people who think LOL non-cheerleaders and non-sorority sisters like sex! HILARIOUS. Clearly these women are losing their humanity by giving into their baser instincts; let us label them something that is animalistic and also threatening to people who live in Colorado!

But. Cougar Town is a decent show so far. Courtney Cox still does that thing where her voice gets too high-pitched when she's supposed to be upset, but she portrays a good balance of goofiness, longing, and self-deprecation. She's a good mom, blessed with one of those awesome, wry television teenagers as a son, and she's a professional with responsibilities. She's torn between married friends and single friends, a kid of an ex-husband, and a frat-boy of a newly-divorced neighbor (who will, I expect, be a love interest by mid-season). She experiences wacky hijinks--and MAN, my friends never drop off surprise presents like the ones she gets--but it's tempered with a lot of awareness, which lowers the audience's cringe factor by a lot. She says ridiculous things, she has ridiculous friends, but she feels she has to do something, and sometimes that means being ridiculous.

I love the cast. In addition to Courtney Cox, we've got Busy Philipps, Christa Miller, Ian Gomez, and Josh Hopkins. Aside from Hopkins, these are all actors who tend to veer into caricature, but I think it makes for an interesting contrast. Instead of situating the show in the heightened reality of a sitcom, we have the heightened-reality characters (and hijink situations) in what feels like, to me, is supposed to be a plausible reality. (I have no idea how to explain that. I'll get back to you.) We veer between crazy sitcom antics and realistic reactions to crazy sitcom antics. Even though it seems ridiculous, you see where most of the characters are coming from, and it's real.

"You know how scary it is to be a single forty-year-old woman? Whatever you do, you feel judged by the world. You feel judged by yourself! And if you ever think, deep down, you might get married again, you're not going to--not when you're fifty and you can't make babies anymore and your looks have faded! So you put on a brave face and you try really hard not to think about the fact that maybe, maybe this all your life is ever going to be!"

This show could go horribly wrong, but it could be really interesting, too. So far, it's funny without being horrible, and that's a good start for a sitcom nowadays.

We'll see.

If only Goodman appeared from time to time, or if they even mentioned him once in a while, I would be completely satisfied with this show. I mainlined most of the season in the past three days, and I just have a few things to get off my chest, in no particular order.

( Spoilers, and super-vague spoilers for the last seasons of Grey's Anatomy and House. )

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had a March Madness kind of competition, and I picked up a few books based on their high rankings. Be With Me, by Maya Banks, was one of them.

( Spoilery, and not squeeful. )

Before I get to the spoilery notes, I do want to say one thing: I've read a lot of criticism of Eliza Dushku's performance on the show and it is...valid, I admit. She's not as versatile as the role demands. HOWEVER, I also think the show was first an Eliza Dushku vehicle, rather than a Joss Whedon vehicle, and perhaps the showrunners who knew Dushku's range could have planned accordingly.

I am always of two minds regarding the responsibilities of writers vs. actors when it comes to the success or failure of a text. I don't think writers should rely on the actors, but they could also capitalize on the strengths when possible.

I guess. Anyway, I would continue to watch the show if it was renewed, but I would only be the teensiest bit sad if it was cancelled. Not so much for the story, but for the cast. They grew on me!

( The episode itself. )

Better Off Ted feels like a mix of Mad Men's aesthetic and The Tick's absurdity and Saved By The Bell's magic realism, except it has scientists as office workers. (With very little social maladjustment! That is, when they are socially maladjusted, it's because people are sometimes socially maladjusted, not because scientists are socially maladjusted. If that makes sense.) I have watched two episodes of the show and I've really enjoyed it. Take, for example, this bit of monologue:

Do you know that they send us the phone bills for our non-work-related calls? They don't charge us for them--they just want us to know that they know we're making them. Can a company be bitchy?

It's like The Office, except people are ironic instead of having their souls destroyed! Actually, I imagine the pitch for this was, "Imagine if Mad Men was funny! Like The Office!" Also, I think they're using the actual set from Mad Men. I also spotted some hallways from Alias. Hee!

Also, while it hasn't passed the Bechdel test yet (and I kind of doubt it will in the near future, given the interactions of the two main female characters), I was heartened by a scene with a group of scientists that featured an even mix of genders and a wide variety of shapes and ethnicities. ANYWAY. Anything that keeps Portia de Rossi on my television is A-OK by me!

In other news, I watched the first episode of Party Down, and I'm upset I'll never get that twenty-eight minutes of my life back.

In OTHER other news, as a follow-up to this post (f-locked) about authors and fannish entitlement, I think Patrick Rothfuss responded much more gracefully than either GRRM or Scalzi did. With bonus cartoons, even!

( Life 2.18 )

In other news, I have finished Red Seas Under Red Skies, book two of Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard series, and The Name of the Wind, book one of Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicles. First of all, OMFG THANK YOU to everybody who recommended these. They are awesome, all cleverness and competence and comeuppance. Second of all, AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH why aren't there more RIGHT NOW? Neither book ended on a cliffhanger; I just want more now because I am greedy and enthralled. I suddenly understand all those people who said they never pick up a series until they know it's complete.