the story's the thing
I feel kind of sad for people who won't watch television, because for all the awful stuff, there is some wonderful storytelling. The Mathematician and I have a standing Friday night date for take-out Indian food and the Sci-Fi Channel, most particularly Battle Star Galactica. Which we discuss in detail. We watch House together and Lost. Recently we watched all of Firefly on DVD, and we have regular Farscape marathons, too. And out of simple solidarity, I have watched dozens and dozens of Simpsons episodes with him. I admit I laugh right along with him, though mostly I am uneasy about the Simpsons. I couldn't tell you why.
The Mathematician is fond of saying that if I fall for a show from the first episode, it's doomed. This has been the fact in the past. Homefront, Sports Night, My So Called Life -- I really adored these shows, and they were short lived. Farscape kind of fits into this pattern, as I didn't start watching until the third season.
All this lead up, and why? Because I'm watching Grey's Anatomy now, and somebody here recommended it. The Mathematician has resisted thus far. Apparently House is enough medical storytelling for him. But I love Grey's Anatomy. Or better said, I'm in the stage where I become completely enamored of the characters and want more more more. More background, more secrets, more conflict, more of everything. There are some wonderfully conflicted love stories embedded in the greater story about surgical interns, which of course is always going to make me happy.
The only fly in the ointment is the fact that ABC hasn't made the older episodes available through iTunes, as it has done for Lost. Which means I am reduced to begging friends and in some cases, friends of friends, to borrow recordings.
And here's the icing on the cake: the people who write Grey's Anatomy have a weblog called Grey Matter, and they really do let you in on the creative process. The idea for the show and the pilot were the work of Shonda Rhimes, who is now head writer and executive producer. She writes great weblog posts about what goes into her stories, which in the end is not all that different from other kinds of storytelling.