Bones

It seems that there IS a sports channel here - which we don't subscribe to and which doesn't manage to keep all the sport to itself either, still, it's a start. And yes, I totally get that all is certainly NOT right with the world, it's just .... well it's difficult enough trying to get TV fixed, reality seems almost impossible.

I need a way of differentiating between Karens. My bestest and most long-standing friend in England is called Karen and when I wanted to refer to her in a previous blog I couldn't bring myself to refer to her as 'British Karen' so I ended up lamely using her initials. Yesterday I was talking to my friend Karen here, and although I have referred to her as Canadian Karen, that's a bit long-winded. Also there's Karen out of Will and Grace who is frankly, a bit of a role-model for me. If ever my daughter Alex wants to excuse something she's done she just says, 'I'm Grace, you're Karen,' yeah, I know, but it works for us. There's also Steddy's Karen and Dean's Karen. So many Karens I can almost feel a sitcom coming on.

So Karen (Canadian, Karen S) and I were discussing the L-Word's Bette and Tina yesterday on the phone. These characters are just used outrageously by the writers. A character needs to maintain some stability, or be allowed to grow. But Bette and Tina keep doing things completely OUT of character. Kevin suggested that it's because there is an implied time-gap between series and we just have to accept that things have happened that are outside of the part of the story that we are shown. Ok, I can kinda go with that.

Last night, I watched several episodes of the TV series 'Bones'. Kevin had recorded them for me while I was away, and with the magic of mythbox we were able to watch back episodes whilst recording last night's. It reminded me just how good the characters are in this programme. I know a number of people groaned at the thought of David Boreanaz, Angel from Buffy, being an FBI agent, and I took it under advisement myself. But David has raised his game. Instead of brooding, he is now semi-brooding. I love that his character is so focussed on the job. In last night's episode he had to work with a local cop from LA who was interested in writing screenplay. David's character delivered a meaningful but in no way cheesy speech on how he couldn't respect that because she, he felt, was using policework to lead to something finer. In doing his job he did it for its own sake because there was nothing finer. And David made me feel that his character meant what he said, absolutely.

The character of Bones is a great one too. The character is, we are told, based on a real person who incidentally is one of the producers of the show. She is a strong woman, the best in her field and who doesn't have to dress as though she were taking time out from her day job as a hooker. Perhaps that should be night job. She isn't full of herself, she just knows what she can do. When pushed, and only when pushed, she can also defend herself physically. She speaks other languages because she is an anthropologist and has had to deal with people of other cultures, so that it isn't something extraordinary, it just is a skill that she has.

The best thing about the relationship between the two main characters is that it is a respectful one and a protective one, but there appears to be no sexual tension. I hope it stays that way, I don't trust that it will, but for now, it works.

I don't like reality TV, oh, my nose just grew longer then because I do watch British self-improvement shows in the morning whilst doing my hexercises and household tasks and those certainly are about real people. I do watch documentaries too, at the moment I am hooked on 'The Deadliest Catch' about crab fishing in the Bering Sea and also the series about Auschwitz. But in the main I look to TV for fiction, ways of exploring possibilities, other realities, pushing the boundaries to test out what could be possible before tampering with the real world.
On that note, I really, really like 'Commander in Chief', a woman in the White House, na na na na na, I'm loving it.