Sunday, June 16, 2013

tv: Dawson's Creek

Been watching Dawson's Creek.  I watched some of the show Don't Trust the B.. whatever it's called, and I decided that James Van Der Beak is the only funny part of that show.  They're always talking about Dawson's Creek on that show.  I also remember, the day after Dawson's Creek premiered, in my high school Chemestery class a bunch of my classmates were excitedly discussed it.  My parents didn't get the tv channel for it so I've never watched an episode until now.  Here's what a 30 year old thinks...

Honestly, the show is pretty mediocre.  The soundtrack is like a pop radio station of every single from the 90s.  Somehow they managed to pick the most annoying song for the opening credits.  Mostly the music annoys me.  It's a lot of girly emo songs.

The characters tend to speak in uncomfortably long sentences.  The producers emphasize expressive dialogue over expressive acting.  Though the acting isn't bad.  But the dialogue can feel stretched and forced.  And it sounds nothing like the way high schoolers speak, but maybe that's intentional.

Dawson's blond neighbor/girlfriend can be cute, but she's always on the verge of crying.  She reminds me of Meredith from Grey's Anatomy.  So I don't like her.  Every time Katie Holmes is on the screen I try to watch for her smiling or talking out of the left side of her mouth.  What was a slight quirk at this stage in her career would eventually blossom into a facial tick that ruined scenes of the Dark Knight.  Dawson himself is a bit annoying.  He spends more of his awake time talking than anyone I've known.  Constantly explaining things: how he feels, why movies are great, more of how he feels.  He never shuts up.  And his endless narration of nice-guy self reflection makes me want to punch him.  Pacy Pacie, whatever, is the most entertaining character.  Maybe the only believable one so far.  After lying to his lady-teacher about his brother being gay, and then sitting jealously at the same table while the brother asks the teacher on a date, his malicious smirk when he realized that his teacher was about to tell his brother "I know you're gay" was very well done.  Though that student/teacher romance plot was stupid.

How did the boyfriend manage to drive from New York City down to the bottom of North Carolina in 3.5 hours?  Maybe they had more relaxed speed limits and less traffic back then.

The show is easy to watch while doing something else and it's occasionally interesting.  For a show to watch while reading I'd give it a 8/10.  If you had to just sit and watch it with a child though, uh, 4/10.  (You could do worse for forced viewing.  You might be forced to watch a bunch of Dora the Explorer.  That would be downright painful.)

Friday, June 14, 2013

On rewatching Seinfeld

Often I rewatch episodes of Seinfeld.  It's a very rewatchable show.  The only problem with rewatching it is that many times just reading the episode title alone is enough to evoke the entire storyline in your memory.  For example: the episode "The Chinese Restaurant."  Just from the title you remember "Oh, that was the time everyone got stuck in a Chinese restaurant waiting for a table before a movie, and George is trying to call some girl but gets in a conflict with other people using the pay phone, and Elaine gets really hungry so Jerry bets her she won't take food off someone else's table."  I don't recall Kramar playing much of a role in that one.  It's not a bad episode, but it's so distinctly memorable.  No point in rewatching that one.

On the other hand, today I have a great moment when I watched the episode "the Robbery" and discovered that it's the one when Jerry and George argue about who should get a fancy new apartment.  I had naturally thought that this plot line was from the episode "The Apartment."  So if not that, then what really happens in the episode "the Apartment"?  A new adventure awaits!