Books:
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Well when I started this book, a piece of contemporary fiction about a mentally-illish/depressed woman and her relationships with her family by both birth and marriage, I was fairly certain I'd be DNF'ing because it reminded me of a book I was meh on which became a series I hated (that would be Sally Rooney's Normal People) in terms of a simple story which was heavily dependent on your response to its tone and the overall writing. So not only did I not DNF but I ended up actively loving this book. It definitely took a while though and the reason I stuck it out is that the writing is very very sharp. There's no question the author can write and much of what she writes is really casually funny in that way a good author can convey character and relationship through dialogue alone and this author certainly does that. I think the reason I was resistant was honestly I wasn't all that into a story about mental illness and I think the reason I got into the story was because while it is that, mental illness aside, it's really the story of someone with a combo lovable-hideous personality whose self-belief about her own issues in many ways really is the issue which is I'd say a universal story regardless of diagnosis. In fact, for much of the book there is no diagnosis (and when one comes very very very late in the book it's just a --- meaning the author was making a point that the diagnosis isn't the person and that the story is about a person), but rather just a somewhat moody somewhat depressed extremely funny person going through her life and groping for more. In a pre-DSM world, the lead would've simply been moody and snappish and incisively funny and her husband, family, and friends would've been exasperated and annoyed and amused by turns and that's the book the author wrote but with the added layer of how we characterize all that now and our modern expectations of how that's supposed to be dealt with (or not). The center of the book is the relationship between the lead - Martha - and her husband, Patrick, though really Martha's relationships with her sister and parents also feature pretty prominently. The book, told first-person, is structured around the end of the relationship (no spoiler it's basically how the book starts) and then goes back to fill in how they met, fell in love, and fell apart. The story, as noted, is slight but what drives it and keeps it all very engaging is that the reader is in Martha's head the entire time and, aside from being amusing, she's a ruthless recounter (recounting-er?) of her own bad behavior and its consequences which gives narrative drive since she as protagonist is, in some ways, her own antagonist and watching a character undermine herself then try to undo what she did is something I found to be interesting. As you can see there's not much plot to discuss so your engagement with this book will be solely based on the writing. I found it to be pretty great and once I got over myself thinking I was reading a book about someone going downhill with depression and instead reading a book about a funny character crafting a life for herself, I totally ended up loving it.
TV/Streaming:
Seaside Hotel (Season 3):
Yes, I am well aware that this Danish series which I’ve previously reviewed set at a, you'll never guess, seaside hotel in the '20s is a ridiculous, cliche, often draggy, French farce-y, upstairs/downstairs absurd drama but I don't care. Each season is 7ish often very sluggish and repetitive episodes in which characters from prior seasons come back to the hotel with their same idiotic problems and small dramas, with different doors slamming in different rooms as different people have affairs with each other, with the enraged but polite drama that emerges in the face of said affairs, with this maid in love with that farmer, with this businessman scheming for that noble's money, with this factory owner trying to get in the pants of that ingenue who's also in the pants of that other actor, with bathing costumes, with nonstop Marceled hair and flapper gowns, with spinsters, with spiritualists, with overcoming anti-Semitism, anti-gayism, anti-socialistism, anti-capitalistism, with people being venal and self-serving and later apologizing for all of it and with me just totally not caring! It's such a strange experience to watch this show because I know the production values are terrible, the writing ridiculous, the pace slow, the situations absurd, the characters cliche, and the jokes completely unfunny but none of it matters. I like the basic vibe and the gentleness and the silliness and, no, I could not imagine binging season after season of this show (there are 9 I think at this point) but 7ish episodes maybe sometimes taking a break to watch something else before coming back to it, absolutely. Sometimes something period and slow and silly and plotty and easy hits the spot and if that's the mood you're in, you might possibly maybe enjoy this.
The Sopranos (Season 1):
Yeah so I finally started watching this show like 20 years after it came it out and the tl;dr is if you have fond/amazing memories of it, great but as a first-timer to it it's just a'right. For those who have had no contact with the outside viewing universe for the past several decades yet are for some reason (its awesomeness!) obsessively reading Media Report anyway: this is a New Jersey Mafia show about a family both in the mob and actual senses, the head capo of which is seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety issues. Truth be told even when it came out I thought that conceit was dumb primarily because it seemed like a (in the creator's mind) clever/out-there overlay on standard mob fare - mafioso seeks counseling HILARIOUS or something. I wouldn't say my opinion has changed much now that I've seen season 1 and while we typically think of the phrase "the years have not been kind" as referring to someone aging, I'm going to say that the years - or at least the year this series was shot - was not particularly kind to Lorraine Bracco's bowl cut with bangs and like was that an actual style anywhere in the late '90s? No really was it? As many have noted through the years, the real breakout character is Tony Soprano's mother - hideous and emotionally manipulative and often hilarious as a result - and honestly if all the characters had been that specific and well-honed I'd probably be much more into this show. Look I'm aware that perhaps this show was groundbreaking in its day in ways that read generic today since so many shows might've copied it but what was generic then and now are the characters. They're all kind of the same-y Goodfellas-y Long Island-y (fine, New Jersey-y) Italian mooks (am I allowed to say that anymore btw?) and other than the actors they cast, there's little to distinguish them. In fact, a plot point later in the season revolves a little bit around the gang itself unsure which and I quote (well close enough) "fat dark-haired Italian" may be talking to the Feds and in ways their inability to tell themselves apart mirrored my own. Like there's Tony Soprano, his wife, his kids, his mom, and then a bunch of mobsters who, were it not for the fact that they cast actors who look very different from each other, could more or less be interchangeable in terms of their basic characters - mobby - and roles - criminals who, ya know, commit crimes. I wouldn't say the family members are much more textured either which is evidenced by their draggy plots; I mean there are numerous hours spent with a subplot involving the wife flirting with a priest and, well, that's neither character nor plot is it? It's a thing that happens and then gets dragged out and then really goes nowhere. It felt like something that a writers found out was true - platonic flirting with trapped Mafia housewives and local priests, neat! - and then they stuck it in the show but it doesn't actually tell us anything about anyone nor does it create any drama. It's just there taking up time across several episodes. The show is also really bad at plotting the basic Mafia stuff, as in there's a double-cross which, instead of being played out in a compelling way, is more or less resolved in an episode or two with not much fuss which begs the question of why the plot was there at all. They're all kind of like that, almost as if this show were originally written for network TV where the network asked for Not-Law and Not-Order and wanted a show with sustaining characters but new situations every week and then the writers kind of tried to change it up once it went to HBO but didn't really succeed. BTW I have no idea if that's the case, just that it felt that way. Look, it's not like this is the worst show ever or anything - it's fine enough that I'll watch another season - but it's draggy, as in it got downgraded from undivided attention to background viewing because I found myself drifting when I was watching it without playing on my tablet. Again, I'm watching it now so maybe I'm not experiencing the water-cooler (remember water coolers?) experience of getting absorbed in a new (I think it was new?) type of drama and talking about it with everyone. And, who knows, maybe future seasons will improve but at this point, other than the mother, there's really nothing in the show you haven't seen 5 billion times already and thus if you haven't seen it and are thinking of giving this a shot, I'd say don't bother. Maybe that will change down the road but right now, it's just meh.
Movies:
King Richard - This is the biopic of Serena & Venus Williams' dad which (I think - too lazy to Google) was what won Slappy the Oscar. To tell you up front, I'm not the hugest fan of biopics - or documentaries or docudramas - in general as the story arcs in them are often pretty similar to one another for the obvious reason of why would you fork over a chunk of change to produce a movie or series about the life of someone who hadn't done all that much? I mean other than Netflix of course which seems obsessed with dragging out to docuseries length a go-nowhere curiosity-rather-than-story that might barely be a segment on 60 Minutes (I'm looking at you, Tiger King). In any event, while this movie is somewhat paint-by-numbers, it didn't really matter. I mean I knew nothing about the rise of the Williams sisters and thought it was interesting to watch how their father built them from zero to what they are today out of sheer force of will and a somewhat desperate belief that if he just powered through doing everything his way it would all work out, which clearly it did. To note, though: it's hard to tell when watching something like this how much of the script is 20/20 hindsight/foreshadowing and how much is an accurate representation of events. Also, given that the credits show home movies that Richard Williams took of the sisters as they were growing up, I'm guessing he must have had some approval over everything and thus I don't really know how much of the character was real vs rose-colored. I mean, much of the movie focuses on his need to self-promote as well as promote his daughters so in some ways this film feels like a marketing tool for him. To be clear: these aren't critiques of the movie itself but rather that weird merger of fact and fiction and wishful thinking that happens in films such as these. The movie itself was, despite being close to 2.5 hours long, pretty entertaining. As presented by the film, the Williams family really came from nothing and it's an interesting story to watch people from economic and, specifically in very White tennis, racial disadvantage powering through to become what they became (though really that part of it is more touched on than a focal point of the film). The movie more tracks Venus' rise than Serena's and shows how physical talent alone, especially in a game like tennis, really isn't enough and that the mental game, which was the game their father was really preparing them for, was the one that mattered most. I mean the movie doesn't hit that point super hard, but much of it is about Slappy's efforts to train the kids while also ensuring their grades were good and they had a childhood, though again it's hard to know if that's actually true or not since as noted I think the real Richard Williams was involved in the production. To me, the film glossed past a lot of the racial issues, perhaps because they weren't particularly relevant to the girls' rise, though I don't know - there was a pointed sequence about Rodney King which was then never touched on again and most of the adversity seemed to be from their neighbors rather than from outsiders. So hmmm; given their race and economic background and the cost of becoming a tennis pro, it made me wonder why that part of the story got a bare nod but not much else. Regardless, I enjoyed it; you know where it's going to end because you know what happened in real life so essentially it's a story of athletes with a determined father pushing through making his kids into a success in a way that works for all of them and that effort and the obstacles made for a pleasurable drama to watch.