1. God, I just can't stand medialogging. I don't mind keeping track for myself so much, but formatting it and posting it somehow sucks out my soul. Which is too bad because I like HAVING medialogged. December, which I could never bring myself to bother with:


MOVIES
The Secret World of Arrietty
Bachelorette
The Queen of Versailles
Only Yesterday

BOOKS
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut (reread)
Gay Pride & Prejudice - Kate Christie & Jane Austen
The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

TV
Survivor
Gravity Falls - Inconveniencing & Irrational Treasure
Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23
Bob's Burgers
Go On
New Girl
The Mindy Project
Adventure Time - Thank You
Parks and Recreation
Bravest Warriors

In January the important thing is, I watched two more Ghiblis (Whisper of the Heart and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). And racked up several dollars in library fines. These two items are related. Anyway, why make a medialog when I can make a babblelog, like so--

2. I subjected myself, for reasons of science and/or boredom, to ye olde Girls (season one). Meta dickishness aside (and meta dickishness is something I am trying to keep from entering my discussion of anything new I walked uphill both ways on that road when I was a BSG child and I am tired), it is just your average show about obnoxious straight white ppl, of which there are thousands. It could even be something insightful about sheltered straight white ppl learning what a world they actually live in and grappling with what that means, like a continuation of Lindsay's story on Freaks and Geeks (another show about straight white ppl, also produced by Judd Apatow, with the same mom-actress in fact) but then it's like lol nm bye

3. this was secretly a segue so I could announce that I loved Allison Williams on The Mindy Project. I have really enjoyed the past three episodes of The Mindy Project. I love TR Knight on The Good Wife too! i'm really glad he didn't cease to exist or collapse into a puddle of ex-george o'malley mush. TGW: getting good again?? maybe?? someday??? KALINDA????? please

5. I enjoyed the last two PNRs more than I have enjoyed PNR in a while. I enjoy next week's episode title, "Ann's Decision" ... that she is gay!!!

6. BomB GIrls: I can't type I'm sick. I tried "Bomg" like five times right there. Betty McRae though!!, Kate your storyline will never make sense this show is better than last year but it's still basically kinda bad, all Corbetts and Gladii are assholes but I like Vera's storyline.

7. Elementary is back!!!!!
8. NEW GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9. Concerning The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, many problems - meta dickishness most firmly aside.

- First there was the vilification of Caroline: making her a master manipulator when in the book she has very little influence over anything, having her cozy up to Lizzie only to betray her which she never did in the book, having her never say goodbye which she in fact DID do in the book, and generally substituting her actual onscreen villainy for a great deal of offscreen Darcy pride so that he is more likable and she is less.

- Then there were the many ramifications of every "economical" decision that abbreviates the Bennet family presence, all of them diluting the story. Losing two sisters eventually comes to mean that Lydia's spoiled queen bee characterization and motivations are utterly lost from the original, making her the lonely outsider from her elder sisters' tight friendship. Introducing Mary only to also introduce Mary's boyfriend flips that character around from being the geekiest, most hopeless of the lot to actually being cooler than Lydia, for the sole purpose of making Lydia feel uncool. Losing her parents and aunts all of whom indulge her at every moment make her appear to be acting out of youthful rebellion rather than inoculated vapidity. AND since there's no eyerolly Mary, no painful mother, no shitty father, no headbobbing Kitty, the only onscreen "strike against" Lizzie and Jane in Darcy's eyes is Lydia whereas the book is basically Regency Arrested Development and every single Bluth Bennet other than Jane is a huge embarrassment to Michael Lizzie and hideously unattractive to Jim Cramer Darcy and the Bingleys.

- But the one that is currently galling me most is that in the original story Lydia, while not understanding or caring about the full ramifications of what she did, leapt in to her fall headfirst, loved every second of it, and not only consented to it but flaunted it at every possible opportunity. Here not only is she clearly not doing it for her own pleasure but for weird revenge, not only trapped in an abusive relationship which clearly does not suit her, but the sex tape has every marker of something George did TO her for the express purpose of humiliating her (and Lizzie). P&P Lydia made her choices, LBD Lydia is victimized. Which is to say: 200 years after the original, this adaptation has stripped away Lydia's agency in her own life. (As well as her individual merits since it would all appear to be revenge against Lizzie on Wickham's part as well.)

Now, I sort of re-read P&P in December. It was Gay P&P where Lizzy got together with Caroline instead of Darcy because HOBVIOUSLY, but the Lydia-related text was 99% unchanged. And the crux of the situation is "Lydia probably had sex before marriage THE FAMILY IS RUINED FOREVER!!!!!!" That situation is pretty impossible to replicate in modern liberal US American society. And don't forget that the happy ending is "bribe Wickham into shotgun marriage which Lydia is now stuck in for the rest of her life and is too stupid to realize how shitty she has it." That... is also pretty damn hard to update.

Picking apart what makes adaptations work and not work is one of my favorite things. (In which I ponder Emma vs. Clueless) And with an update like this, the biggest challenge is knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em -- sometimes things have to change, or at least they fucking well should. Unavailable Frank Churchill became Christian, friend of Dorothy. ShakespeaRetold Much Ado About Nothing's Hero declines to marry Claudio at the end (and I personally think the "o that I were a man" should have been ditched as well although Lizzen fought me on this). Charlotte is a modern woman and doesn't have to enter a loveless marriage when a boring job is a perfect replacement. And Lydia's storyline clearly needed changing too.

It still does, now, more than ever.