Summer reruns

Anne and I are about to take off for a couple week adventure in Washington tomorrow, so this blog will be taking a brief nap while I'm away. I'm looking forward to the trip. Getting away from the computer and the lab, seeing old friends in their new house, taking a backpacking trip that Anne and I have been talking about doing since we left Washington, hanging out with more old friends at Anne's mom's place. It should be nice. Since about half of the people who read this blog will be residing at the Kurtz Ko-op while we're there, it probably won't be too missed. But while it and much of television is in reruns, I have a couple TV-related topics I want to write about.

Yesterday I was walking back to my office from Crepes-a-GoGo and I saw a bus with a big ad on the side the said "Free to Be Girlie" next to some doe-eyed young miss. I thought "Boy, that ad sure missed my demographic. What exactly are they advertising anyway?" Then I looked a little closer, and realized that the picture was of Alexis Bledel, and the ad was for the Gilmore Girls coming to the newly-birthed CW network this fall. We've got two appointment television shows in our home, and since Lost horribly lost the plot last season, it'll probably be down to one this fall. And that one is the Gilmore Girls. I guess I'll be "free to be girlie" on Tuesday nights at 8 this fall. How shameful.

In other TV news, we've been watching a lot of Deadwood lately. We're one disc shy of finishing the first season, and both of us are absolutely hooked. The writing and acting are fantastic, and it's a great reminder of how wonderful television can be. It's a bit violent, and the much-publicized, coarse language lives up to the hype, so I can't recommend it for everyone. But I think it's great. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the weekend we rented the Deadwood for the first time along with the first disc of the L Word. I'd have to say that the L Word lost its appeal nearly as quickly as Deadwood worked its charms on us. Don't get me wrong, it's good, trashy fun, but maybe renting it at the same time as Deadwood for two weeks in a row wasn't such a good idea because it really made the L Word's plot and acting flaws stand out. That and the token straight girl is incredibly annoying. But don't despair, because we found a good, trashy substitute recently in Footballer$ Wives. This is a British show about wives of players at a fictitious English Premier League football team. It has no real pretence of being anything but smutty. Although I never watched them, I think it's reminiscent of classic evening soaps like Dallas and Dynasty, only with nudity and swearing (and they say the British are prudes). And nearly every episode has a moment where you think, "Oh my god, I certainly wouldn't have guessed they were going to cross that line!" Highly recommended, especially on a brain-dead Friday evening after a long week of work.