On The Umbrella Academy

 

Finished watching the Umbrella Academy.

Very much enjoyed it and looking forward to Season Two. I enjoyed the way the familial  dysfunction of the Academy and individual issues really got in the way of them responding to the main threat. My guess is that they are going to have to loop around their family history a number of times in order to heal their family and therefore either solve or not trigger the main problem.

Well acted. Nicely character driven - every character in the story has their own  motivations and their own way of interpreting or mis-interpreting the information they have.

I wonder if Vanya is called Vanya as an allusion to Checkov and his gun.

I can't helping thinking that if Pogo had just sat everyone down in about episode 4 thigns would have turned out better.

It's very tropic, which I suppose gives the opportunity for genre savvy guessing but I think I'm content to watch it play out.

On Mrs Maisel and the Desperate Housewives Problem

 

When Desperate Housewives started it had a problem, Mary Alice Young had died in mysterious circumstances and her friends had to work out whether there had been foul play or not and, if so, by whom.

And that took a couple of seasons and created another problem, that there was a populat television programme that was too popular to allow to finish.

And so it became a soap opera of sorts. Which was fine, but not the same as a murder mystery, and it required changes to the various characters, the introduction of new characters and so on and so forth.

And I'm looking at Mrs Maisel wondering what happens when she solves her problem. At the moment her problem is that she is gifted comedian in a sexist industry and trying to reconcile her relationships with parents, (ex)-husband, and community and her desire for a success in her career. At some point she needs to solve those. Either she is as gifted as implied by her manager's faith in her and Lenny Bruce's interest in her, or she is not. If not, then she solves her problem by faililng. If she is, at some point she has an opportunity to be successful (which requires her to re-align expectations of her but gives her the resources to do so) or she is permanently thwarted and fails. She can loop around being thwarted a few times but eventually she has to succeed, or fail or decide she doesn't want to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.

At which point the problem is solved and Mrs Maisel is now a character in a soap opera.

On Summer Related Friday Fives

 

1. What made you smile this week?

How happy my son was at the arrival of his long, longed for guinea pigs. He was positely gyrating with joy.

2. What ingredients make a perfect Saturday?

At the moment a perfect Saturday would involve being left alone with nothing to do and the prospect of nothing to do on Sunday. That is mostly because I am tired, everyone in my family is sick and there is still too much to do.

3. What is the best thing you ever had for dessert? Share the memory or the recipe.

Food is so far from my mind at the moment that I'm struggling to fit this question in to a useful schema or taxonomy.

I like a sticky toffee pudding or a bannofee pie but my brain won't let me remember eating them.

4. What is your favorite memory of your mom, or your favorite thing about being a mom?

There are a few to go at.

I remember her taking us camping with some of her friends and her friend's kids when were were in our mid to late teens. The adults all got quite drunk one night and my mum became concerned that the moon (behind a cloud) had gone missing and set off to search for it before we put her to bed. It remains very, very funny.

My mum getting schooled by my daugher about 4th wave feminism and eventually conceeding that she had a point and then joining Tumblr to find out more about it.

5. What are your plans for the summer (or winter, for those in the southern hemisphere)

We have a family holiday planned for July in Northumbria. This will include my daughter's graduation ceremony in Newcastle. I'm planning some extensive birthday celebration around the middle of August. (Mind you, celebrating is currently low on my list of things I actually want to do.) I think we will go and see James and Madness in concert and Stephen Fry's book tour of Mythos and Heros.

Mostly I am looking forward to not having football on Saturday morning or rugby on Sunday afernoon for a few months.

On Friday Fives on Historical Periods of Interest

Is there a particular historical period or event, anywhere in the world, that fascinates you?

I am very taken with the Late Roman Republic as an historical time period. It's full of interesting characters an I think the general economic trends that led to the political trends are a warning for us today.

I also take a passing interest in Elizibethan espionage and drama, the Georgian navy,  the industrial revolution, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the US Civil War, 1940's naval conflict and fashion.

Also, any time period that Lucy Worsley is looking at.

Would you like to visit that time, or live in it permanently, or does the whole idea make you want to run screaming?

Good grief no. Especially the Late Roman Republic. It's probably one of the better time periods to live in before about 1600 but your chances of being either a slave or a slave owner are very, very high. Neither of those appeal. I could see myself making a lot of money in the industrial revolution but, given my family background, I'm more likely to have been a factory hand in the textile mills of Gloucestershire.

No, I will stick with the early 21st century. I think Stephen Fry had it right - I don't need to visit the past. I can find out about it and image it without actually leaving the comfort of the 21st Century.

Unless I was helping Dr Worsley with something.

What's the best piece of historical writing, nonfiction or fiction, you've ever read?

I very much enjoyed the series of books by Lindsay Davies about Falco, the early Roman Empire private detective. I thought there were a superb series of stories which got to the heart of the lived experience of being a middle-class Roman in the 1st and 2nd century AD.

For non-fiction, probably Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson which is an excellent one volume history of the US Civil War

What's the worst?

I don't recall actively disliking anything historical but I did bounce off a number of books about slavery quite hard.

 

Is there a historical site you would love to visit?

Depends a lot on what I'm there to do and how I'm travelling and what access I get to information. And also the nature of time.

Being in the crowd in Sarajevo in 1914 doesn't tell me anything I don't already know about the origins of the First World War but being in the audience for all of Shakespeare's plays would tell me a lot about the experience and a lot about the cannon.

There are lots of things one could find out from being in the general vicinity, but lots of things that would remain opaque unless one had privileged access.