CARRIE. I don’t understand why they are giving away all the new plot points in both the “This season on Carrie…” trailer, as well as in the story telling itself. I mean they basically just let you know in the very first scene that not only the gymnasium, but the entire school, the entire town, and they even describe a giant crack in the ground that goes directly from the school auditorium to Carrie White’s house. So… what is the purpose of watching this? I do think the girl that’s playing Carrie is perfect. I don’t think lessening the monster aspect of the mother will help the story. Carrie is a perfect tragedy in a sense. She brings about her own demise through her hubris and pride. I don’t agree with it, but it’s the definition of tragedy, and I think the original is moving in a way that only tragedies can be. A good, well written, genuine tragedy, is not tear jerker, but something that chills you. Brokeback Mountain, in spite of how “tragic” it seems, is not in fact, a tragedy. Ennis Del Mar is the main character of Brokeback Mountain, even though both characters seem to be on equal footing for most of the story and movie (and, apparently, play as well). But Ennis actually gets what he wants. He wants a relationship with Jack Twist but on his terms — in the mountains away from prying eyes. He gets it. And even though it may be terribly sad because of our own feelings about a man, living alone in a trailer on the distant edge of some awful town in Wyoming, Jack’s shirt that he stole enclosed by his own, and without a friend to name — he lived the life he wanted. He never expressed a desire to live with Jack (unlike Jack, who did). In the story, he is mystified by his wanting to have sex with a man, which is one of the many reasons why people thought the character was bi-sexual. Technically, he is bi-sexual in that he has sex with Alma, his wife and later Cassie, his girlfriend. But emotionally, he does not connect with them, or express very much love to them. In the movie, (and I’m not sure she’s in the story), the Cassie girlfriend is pretty clear that she has Ennis’s number.
Anyway — Carrie is a good tragedy. They weaken it by making the mother understandable and somewhat sympathetic.
THE SOPRANOS. I never watched the first episodes of the Sopranos and didn’t come into the show until about the 4th or 5th season. I can say, easily, after watching the first two episodes, that it is vastly inferior to Breaking Bad — and I don’t know if I would even put it in my top ten. I can’t remember what I put in my top ten for the Times contest, but Breaking Bad was my number 1 show and it still is. I haven’t see the Wire which was everyone’s number 2. I had thought that Sopranos might be in there if it hadn’t started in 1999, which made it ineligible. But even if was eligible, I know I wouldn’t vote for it. It doesn’t hold up. James Gandolfini, who used to use the same video rental store as I did, is lost in the part in those early episodes. Lorraine Bracco is a horrible actress and I’ve always thought so. Stiff, wooden. She can barely say hello believably. I think her best acting is done in those scenes she has later with her own therapist — Peter Bogdanovich. Edie Falco is probably the best actor in the show, at least at the start.
THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW. This is called something else in England. However, this season I find almost all of the contest utterly horrible and uninteresting. The guy with the fucking pig nose ring should just go drown himself somewhere — I hate those piercings and I don’t care if he or anyone else thinks they’re beautiful. Tattoos as well. Also, throuples don’t work. I once knew 3 guys that claimed to be in a relationship but you could tell that it was 2 of them in a relationship with the 3rd hanging on because he didn’t want to lose out. (Eventually they threw him out.) It is imbalanced. It doesn’t work. It’s the equivalent of the three body problem in science. Another 3 person couple I knew was actually 2 slaves and a master. So that’s an entirely different thing.
And the accents. Oh God these lower class British accents are getting harder and harder to take. They’re so screechy and it sounds like their vocals cords are being twisted. I’d much rather listen to an Irish or Scottish accent than lower class British. I guess I’m Catherine Tate in those sketches where she has to break the bad news to her children that daddy wasn’t able to buy any brie during his trip to France.