Force of Absence

"I mean, you've got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."-- Joe Biden's sterling liberal? honesty, circa 2007

With her tinnitus in full force, the weary dowager should be rolling back to her sunken coil mattress which may be viewed as a reminiscent freedom in a few weeks, but has strolled back in to contemplate cessation of following SVU regularly with so much of the original ensemble gutted. Peter Gallagher's scar tissue as Deputy Chief Dodd doesn't fill the spaces left by Florek, who seemingly convinced us of world weary NYC skepticism, and as much as can be said for Hargitay's longevity, doing the expected positive spin being quoted "It's like a new show," in reality the remnants of Wolf's formula are more like a funeral dirge; Benson cannot carry the series to it's twilight with the implied intimacy between her and the IAB barker  who was her long time nemesis with Meloni always  burly. Ice -T seems to have nothing to do with himself except to back run Ghost Whisperer, which is referenced for a reason: namely, I am not positive I have a favorite SVU episode. I do savor some of the more acerbic Law and Orders, and when in the mood agree with standard critical sentiment that CI is the best of them, but SVU does have tendencies to make sexual victimization overwhelming, only rarely hitting the right keynotes in relation to the reverberating impact of sexual exploitation. The Hewitt rape stalker episode is one of them, mystified as anyone as to what drug they put Jennifer on to get that raw desperate helplessness seeking any outlet elicited from her sparse range, since she failed in Criminal Minds, a formula serial as nearly despised as the actress. Criminal Minds seeps  a bit of a Chicago mindset to it which I never enjoyed and shall elucidate, if I'm able to keep my online account afloat, at a later date. L&O is more forgiven because it is more New York, or was, with Beltzer and Florek. You do not have to fill the dowager in on what particular womb Noah was ejected from. She doesn't fucking care, but it looms ahead that a freaking curtain call is in order. The show lost its force with Pino's entry after Cold Case. Actors have contracts and it's a business, but milking an urban concept crime drama to the last wrecking ball never made much sense. SVU has little capital on which to retire and return as a special we might eagerly relish from hospice.    

Wary Paradigms

The dowager has written before about displeasure with the Criminal Minds format. "Suspect Behavior," was slightly more of a nonplus intrigue, due to the fact that Forest Whitaker knows how to make minority dysfunction palatable, even cuddly, as in his contingent opening of The Crying Game, but she doubts the original mother ship of predictability will survive the dismissal of Gibson. Shows like this, long running, bordering on nearly speculative absurdist theater, in weaker plots, depend on anchor portrayals along the lines of the Gibson Hotchner model. One suspects there are facts on the ground readers aren't being told: Consider how often a lead series star is fired due to a writer. The SWG is invisible, a running credit under the creator.

Double Entendre

Not that it matters, but things went rather smoothly today, my old self, with my old strength, for a few hours, though gall still worms its way through me when I exit through the vestibule, and my sorry past sits there before me, as if looking at it through plexiglass. Any normal woman would have left this environment after breaking a wedding engagement, burning so many bridges; my only consolation is apparently exhausting myself on Wagner, and this is just television. How does a live audience manage it, let alone the poor fellow doing Wotan? Wagner, like most everyone else who ascribes anything about it, Shakespeare, for instance, is seemingly a pessimist about power. The SWGs who script Criminal Minds were not up to it during Ms. Brewster's protracted departure in a series which is so schematic and out in left field that it more aptly fails as a black comedy rather than succeeds as a procedural drama. Yes, the team always cautions that *profiling* is a tool, but this is one crime drama that does its viewers a disservice. When this preposterous ring cycle reaches its scheduled conclusion tomorrow, perhaps I will undergo fresh brain growth. My equilibrium has recovered, but I shall have to be more cautious on my downturns. I have had attacks (menopause, stress driven, stages of emphysema) for years, but what hit me over the weekend struck for three days, and I thought a catastrophic medical incident was imminent.

Temporal Audience

I allude, and for those of you who may be able to follow my thought processes, I allude to the fact that I finished my task, and the red ball will begin shortly. I have learned, from previous experience, not to print anything until a few hours before I go to the mailbox, because Joey the Beloved Son will shred and puke and tree my precious printing paper, much more aggressively than Oliver Twist the First used to. But now my challenge will be not to allude to my ethical scar tissue until I see what plays; however, I have accomplished my task, and yes, know I took long enough, and had some twitter ribbing-- but there are consequences to whistle blowing, and I will only become more vulnerable with time, not less. Even if the PTB tell me politely to go kiss my ass, there are still consequences to doing this, just as my posts here have or may have consequences, at least until LJ or I poof these writings, or change, and try to be innocuous; I suspect I am somewhere in the middle between the suddenly late Andrew Breitbart and really a Heidi-softie at heart, but have to insist that I understand what creates people like Santorum and the deceased polemicist. What and who they are isn't bred in a bell jar.

Here is a contradiction in terms for you: I liked Dick Wolf's Law & Order formulas, not to deny flawed stories and weaknesses, but dislike the procedurals that followed as the result of his influence, and have increasingly soured on Criminal Minds. Their most recent episode "A Family Affair" illustrates the reason. Not that paraplegics cannot be dangerous. Barbara upstairs has cp much worse than I do, even more helpless, and her aggression is much much worse than the irritability you read from me here, and that Steve Tara chastised me over. I do not dislike loki, I merely wanted him to stop advising me about writing. I failed my own expectations, but that doesn't mean I need to be told what I already know, and loki does not know that I opened a Good Reads account years ago.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/criminal_minds/episodes/

My problem with the episode is not the expectations reversal, or Kathy Baker, a fine and seasoned actress given the right material; the construct, whoever in the SWG churned it out, has no real diegesis, which isn't always the case with this series, to be fair, but I increasingly dislike behavioral science as a secular religion. Maybe we are simply biological machines, and that's it, but I am a little defiant here, metaphysically. I eschew divinity, but cannot bring myself to forsake purpose, meaning, and the transcendent, not entirely, even if that is incongruent