A Certain Slant of Light

Various pieces of television news:

1. Veronica Mars is getting a fourth season!!!!!! ON HULU, which I don’t have, and none of my friends have it either, a disaster, I really don’t like the way that streaming services are splintering even though it’s probably inevitable. I kind of want to see the Winter Soldier and Falcon show too, but it’s on yet ANOTHER streaming service and at some point enough is enough.

2. We watched season 2 of She-Ra, which I really enjoyed - except that it was so short! It really felt like they cut it off midseason: even the dual cliffhangers feel like midseason-size cliffhangers, not season-ending cliffhangers. Obviously this won’t stop me from watching once we get the next season (or the second half of this season, as the case may be) but it’s kind of annoying.

( Spoilery prediction )

3. I also finished the final season of New Girl, which despite a somewhat rocky first episode turned out to be a good (short!) season and a fitting end for the show. New Girl is one of those rare shows - like Parks and Rec or Brooklyn Nine-Nine - that actually gets better as the seasons go by; I was really against the main pairings at the beginning of the show, and it totally won me over by the end.

A few days ago I found the movie Admission reposing on a cart in the library. "A Tina Fey comedy that nobody told me about!" thought I. "I wonder why that is?"

Reader, it is because Admission is terrible. It is so terrible I couldn't get through to the end, so I suppose it's possible that it gets better later on, but it was awkward and not-funny and featured Tina Fey's character trying to find meaning in her imploding life by reconnecting with the son she gave up for adoption nearly two decades ago.

Maybe he is happy without you and you'll only mess up his life by seeking him out, forgettable character played by Tina Fey! Maybe you should leave him alone instead of awkwardly following him around on his Princeton visit and awkwardly buying him a toothbrush!

There must be people who find awkward humor funny, but it always makes me feel terribly embarrassed for the characters. Like, just stop, you're only hurting yourself.

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On the other hand, maybe it's just awkward humor awkwardly done that I don't like - awkward humor that isn't actually funny? Then I feel bad for the actors as well as the characters, especially when they're actors who I know can do excellent comedy, because I know that the actors must have realized at some point that it just wasn't working, but they were nonetheless stuck in this train wreck.

Because I love New Girl (and season 3 is finally on Netflix! HOORAY), and the fact that these characters are the most awkward people alive is pretty central to the show. But they are hilarious with it, and I always have the impression that the actors are having an amazing time.

I've been waiting for season 3 to get on Netflix with some trepidation because I bailed on the season back when it was airing because I found Schmidt's cheating schmuckiness in those episodes so aggravating. (Also, I still don't know what they were thinking with that plotline where Winston schemes about killing a cat. Just. What? He doesn't actually do it. BUT STILL. WHAT?)

But it turns out that all this is way less annoying when you can watch the episodes back to back, and therefore see Schmidt get his comeuppance in a matter of hours, rather than having to wait weeks, weeks to see someone smash a pie in his face.

This thought has me waffling about whether or not to watch season 4 as it airs. On the one hand, I totally can! Because my parents have a TV, with cable! One the other hand, possibly New Girl is a pleasure better enjoyed in large doses? Maybe watching it as it airs will just fill me with frustration with all the characters.

But then again, I could discuss it with people! As it airs! And read their fic! This would be so novel and exciting!

Sadly I don't think I'll be able to write New Girl fic: I've never successfully written sitcom fic. I've seen a lot of theories over the years as to why sitcoms produce so much less fic than dramas, but I think a big reason is that it's just so darn hard to produce anything that sounds recognizably like the show. You can't just get by on one or two good lines in the fic. It needs to be all great lines.

You guys you guys, New Girl season 2 is on Netflix instant! I am so excited about this, I want to have a giant New Girl marathon, or possibly just watch the show on loop forever and ever.

I was going to write a whole big post about why New Girl is awesome, but then I realized that innie_darling had the perfect fandom pimp post already written so I figured I would link it instead.

In a nutshell, innie_darling says: The show is about relationships - it's basically got drama-level character development in service to a very funny comedy.

I’ve been trying to set up a New Girl marathon with my friends, but as often happens they are distractible and nothing has come of it so far, so I’ve just gone ahead and watched it myself. I will willingly rewatch it if the marathon goes through - and I never rewatch shows; Downton Abbey’s first season is the only one. That's how much I love New Girl.

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I will say, I do not love Schmidt as much as the other characters. He frequently makes me cringe, because he’s so oblivious to how other people react to him and so obnoxious - so obnoxious that his roommates have a “douchebag jar” in which they make him put money when he’s particularly awful. On the one hand, I guess putting money in the jar shows an admirable desire to atone, but on the other hand, if he just paid attention he could just not be a jerk.

But a lot of people love Schmidt, so this is clearly a case of YMMV. I love Zooey Deschanel's character Jess, but I know Deschanel is a bit like coconut: some people just don't like her. I think the fact that she's not cast as a love interest but as a protagonist in her own right mitigates the fact that she gets typecast as a manic pixie dreamgirl - she develops feelings and goals and relationships with other people, and doesn't seem to exist to give meaning to her love interest's life.

(It's also pretty clear that the guy I'm pretty sure is going to be her love interest, Nick, has problems that aren't going to be solved by getting a girl. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and he feels like a failure for not doing much of anything.)

But there are enough characters, and they all get enough screen time, that if you don’t really like one of them it’s all right, there’s plenty of other stuff going on.