Doogie Howser, M.D. - 1x01

[1x01 streamed on Hulu]

This is so...so...1989. Heehehee. And wow, NPH is young. He doesn't even look 16... he looks 14. Or maybe my perception is distorted; now that I'm an adult in my 20s, all teens look like little baby kids to me. It's a bit weird. And he's baby-faced anyway.

I can't stop giggling through this. ( Read more... )

Overall? Cute. A bit cheesy, but solid writing. Shorter than I expected at only half an hour. NPH was a good child actor, though it's weird to look at the kid here and imagine him growing up to be Barney Stinson or Dr. Horrible.

...actually, I take that back. It's not that big a stretch to imagine him growing up to be Dr. Horrible. This is, weirdly, like looking at Dr. Horrible's childhood or something.

I'm not totally "handy" yet, but I'm slowly working my way toward it.

About two weeks ago I fixed our toilet. It was leaking and I had to replace the valve. I was kind of excited to do it, actually, sort of to prove to myself I still could. I learned basic plumbing for six weeks in August 2007 while doing New Orleans reconstruction work with AmeriCorps and the St. Bernard Project; I was on their plumbing team. But I haven't really done anything with that since then... luckily because nothing until now has broken down and need fixing.

But this time the valve was shot in the downstairs bathroom, and someone had to fix it, so I had a little nostalgia doing that. The process was ridiculously easy (plumbing is not that complicated, when you understand the basic concept of pipes being under pressure), just within a small space and hard to reach or maneuver the tools.

I had to turn the water off first, of course. I said, "Well, it's probably this valve here that's the problem, but we can't know for sure until I take it apart. It could be the hose, or where the hose connects to the tank, or even the pip that's coming out of the wall. I'm pretty sure it's the valve, though. If it leaks, then we'll know. I'll be able to tell by where it leaks from. After I replace the valve, I'll leave a pan underneath to catch water if it does leak."

My mom asked "Why do assume it's going to leak? Or not work when you replace it?"

That was a difficult question to answer, since the answer basically amounts to "Because it's ALWAYS something else and it's NEVER just the valve," but explaining why I'm pessimistic from the start and also why I feel the need to detail my pessimistic theories of "all the ways it could go wrong" before even starting the fixing process... really only makes sense if you've ever done a major plumbing practice. Or, possibly, an electrician's job. Or something to the equivalent. It's hardly EVER the first thing, and there's always another problem, and at worst you might have to solder something behind a wall, or you might flood your house, and either way it's going to take two and a half times as long as you originally estimated.

Since I've had the memorable experience of being working on a copper pipe when the pressure sent a metal valve shooting past my ear at about 3 quadbillion miles an hour (and proceeded to flood the bathroom in a long-suffering client's house), explaining why plumbing is ABOUT being pessimistic, how it becomes second nature, is a bit weird. It just is. I had to memorize the four rules of the trade:

1. Cold on the right.
2. Hot on the left.
3. Shit goes down.
4. The boss is an asshole.

That's the rules of plumbing, verbatim. I was lucky because the guy supervising me wasn't an asshole...he was a Canadian whose RL job when not doing Katrina reconstruction was to be a professional golfer. I actually chose to be the plumbing team rather than to lead volunteers in things like drywall or paint, because I wanted a useful skill, and one that I didn't already know. I figure that it's got to be worth something to know that, should the need arise, I can fix my own shower. Even if I have to tear out my wall to get to the pipes do it, I can fix or replace my own shower until I get hot running water. I hope I never forget that, either.Now, a year later, it looks like most of it stuck with me.

Wizard's First Rule... as a tv show?

I feel kind of guilty about being excited for this promo for a new show.

I had some real dissatisfaction issues with the book Wizards First Rule, and I never ended up reading the sequels despite their enormous popularity as a fantasy series. Mostly my problems revolved around the fact that the protagonist, Richard, was about as exciting as a block of wood. He was so boring and lacking of any kind of personality, that...well, you know how a lot of fans like to read books where they can imagine themselves in the hero's place? We all do, right? But it should always be a flight of fancy, because the character ought to have a distinctive personality and presence of their own. Would I like to imagine myself kicking as as The Slayer? SURE! But I don't want to be Buffy herself. Because Buffy has a distinct "self" that I know is not like mine at all. Richard's character doesn't meet that requirement, at least not in the first book. He's about as developed as a paper doll. He walks, he talks, he supposedly falls in love, but he's like a Bot so none of it leaves a lasting impression. Luke Skywalker, fanboy manifest, had more personality than this farmboy does. Not to mention one of the major elements of the climax revolves specifically around this lack of personality...like it becomes a plot point that he's empty. But not in a cool or clever way, in a kind of "Uh...really?" way.

But aside from the lame protagonist, I did enjoy certain parts of the book. I thought the Confessor thing was very interesting because I had never seen a "power" like that before, though I had mixed and leery feelings about what it seemed to me to be saying about gender, sexuality, attraction, and power dynamics. I can easily see that being made better or being made more offensive by a tv-show...really depends on how you write it.

But back to the tv show's trailer! It looks cool. I'm geeking out a bit. I think a tv-show could take a flawed book and make it more interesting. Even though the quest story behind it is pretty generic (farmboy is given magic sword and goes out to find destiny and fight the dark lord Sauronwhoever), I did read a lot of generic fantasy in middle and high school so I can't exactly say that's a problem for me.

There are fantasy book series that I think would make more interesting tv shows, however... Wi'tchfire would be one. Or the story used in the movie Jumper, with the teleporters. And I would just about keel over from happiness if someone made Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrel into a miniseries. And, of course...Discworld. What I wouldn't give for a tv-show version of Terry Pratchett books. Especially since series like Lost and Heroes have laid the groundwork for ensemble shows with multiple storylines from different characters and paths.