I'm not obsessed. I'm focused.

[ealgylden]

The mailman still seems to be holding my Jake 2.0 DVD hostage, but at least he finally decided to set a few captives free, including some muy fun RotK and Kim Possible Valentines from castalianspring and kathlaw. I have very cool friends. Seriously, you guys are fabulous. I also got a surprise check for thirteen bucks and change, part of that settlement from those price-fixing jerks in the music industry. I'd totally forgotten about the whole thing. Yay, surprise money! Pity that it's not quite enough to buy a CD. Heh. The other thing that arrived today was a copy of gwyn_r's new Keen Eddie vid (which premiered at Escapades and is now online, thanks to morgandawn). Funny, funny vid, and quite stylish and clever, as one would expect based on her other work. Great song, too. I really need to send feedback [note to self- do that], assuming I can tear myself away from Miracles long enough to do so.



Yes, I'm still staring at the "new" shiny object. At this point it's slightly ridiculous. There are only thirteen episodes, after all, and I've watched all of them over and over and over. Well, that's not strictly true. I've only watched "Mother's Daughter" and "The Letter" once each so far. Must remedy that. But I practically have "Paul Is Dead" memorized, despite the abundance of Evelyn the Dull. Alva, with his big, sad eyes, and his "I love you, Paul!" banners a-waving, more than balances her out in that ep. I'd love to know where they were planning on taking Evelyn, had the show continued. Would she eventually have gotten a personality beyond, "I'm pretty!" or the structurally important, "I'm the Girl!" (as in "How does the girl fit in this picture?" "There's always a Girl in the picture. Haven't you ever been to the movies?")? I don't really get her place on the team, beyond the fact that she's the one with the social skills. Actually, come to think of it, that's probably it. Someone has to be in charge of boring, Planet Earth-type things like answering the phone and paying the rent while the boys are off being obsessive and freaky. Poor Evelyn, though. She got ripped off, personality-wise.

So yeah, Miracles has utterly seduced me, leaving my other fannish loves out in the cold. I don't particularly regret not being able to focus on CSI or Without a Trace at the moment, since nearly every post I've made on either of them this season could be boiled down to either "what happened to this show? Why is it so disappointing these days?" or "hey, this episode wasn't lame! I'm surprised!", but I do feel bad that I can't pin my brain back on Joan (or LotR or anything else) for more than a minute or two. I've watched the last three eps of Joan a couple of times each (something of an effort in the case of "Night Without Stars," as much as it pain me to say it), and I have notes and comments and comments about other people's comments... and when I sit down to type, I start thinking, "The DVD player is right over there. It won't take very long to watch Alva's dream in 'Saint Debbie,' and then you can turn it right off. Or you could just watch the whole thing. Or how about 'The Bone Scatterer'- Chris Marquette looks adorable enough to balance out the gaping plotholes. C'mon, you know you want to." So Joan gets put on hold again, and the Oscars are mere days away and I've barely thought about them, and this show, this show that's cancelled and dead and gone, this show that I never saw when it was actually on the air, this show which is good, yeah, and full of lost potential, but which isn't the greatest thing I've ever seen or ever will see, this evil, evil show has eaten my brain. Completely. Gorram zombie show. And on the one hand, I'm a little frustrated, because I have only so many hours and so many brain cells to spend on fandom, and Miracles is using more than its fair share. But on the other hand, I know I'll miss this first rush of infatuation when it's gone. There are only a handful of episodes, no forthcoming DVDs with lots of extras, no movie rumors. There's next to no fic, and I won't be the one to change that. Soon enough this mad crush will settle, and Miracles will go on the shelf next to Brimstone, Invisible Man, X-Files and the others I loved madly and miss terribly and don't actually think about very often in a year. So I suppose I should enjoy this madness while it lasts, because it won't. I do feel guilty about neglecting Joan, though, especially when I've written my notes and only haven't posted out of laziness and distraction. sigh

Speaking of X-Files (kinda), I dug out my copy of Ty Miller's episode ("Shapes," or "We can't afford good werewolf makeup") to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Yep. Definitely not a high point, or even a medium point, though it wasn't wholly without merit. Ty was very sweet and cute, despite some truly unfortunate hair (and I do think he's improving with age; the grey in his hair on WaT is rather distinguished). And the supporting cast was fun, with Donnelly Rhodes as Ty's dad and Michael Horse, Renae Morriseau and Jimmy Herman playing more or less the same types they'd played on Twin Peaks and North of 60. If only the budget had been high enough back then to spare the poor, hapless effects team such embarrassment. Ah well.

Tomorrow is catch-up day for comments and email (again, still, as usual), but for now I'll post a couple of links I've had lying around waiting to be tagged onto a Joan post. Maybe posting the darn things will jolt me out of this inertia. The less interesting of the two, I think, is this one, since 90% of it is a rehash of other articles. Barbara Hall does end by hinting vaguely at some plans for the season finale, though, so there's that. And here's a comics blogger's interesting and slightly unusual take on Joan and Joan: Joan of Arcadia, Alternative Superhero. Like I said, it's not a new link, so the post doesn't take the most recent episodes into account, but it is an interesting approach.

And so to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be a day full of accomplishments! Or maybe it'll be a Tuesday.