First and foremost in my thoughts: the thesis.* I’ve got 13 days left before it’s due, and I just finished the first draft. That’s kind of bad, because what I really need right now is a beta reader (someone to read it and give me feedback), and a) I don’t know anybody who really reads this kind of thing, and b) even if I did, there’s just not enough time. Thirteen days is not long enough for someone to read it, give me feedback, and have me make the changes, not when it’s 80-some pages long.

The advantage to beta readers –and workshopping in general – is simple: In order to write a story, I have to crawl up into my head. But in order to know what the world (or, in this case, my professors) will think about the story, I need someone to help me get up out of my head. Since I don’t have any beta readers, my only real alternative is to get distance from my story the old-fashioned way – by leaving it alone for awhile and then coming back to it with “fresh eyes” (a stupid expression if there ever was one). Which brings me back to the time problem. Sure, I’ve got time to leave it alone for a few days, come back to it, and take another pass. But generally when I edit, I need to do that a number of times. A large number. Which is fine when you’ve got all the time in the world, but not so good when there are only thirteen days.

But, while I’m worried, I’m not about-to-go-nuts worried, because I’ve just got too many other plates in the air. I’ve got a big Easter holiday coming up with the family, I’m having another knee surgery on April 26th, and defending my thesis on May 1. I also just got home from ICFA, the sci-fi/fantasy academic conference in Orlando. I had a great, great time: made a few new friends, got to introduce more people to the wonders of Gerard Butler’s version of Dracula, demonstrated my startling talent for chugging beer, lived in fear of a nearby alligator, paid a ridiculous amount of money for room service tea, and –perhaps the most surprising thing that’s ever happened to me – had a perfectly pleasant, problem-free experience flying United. Good times.

While I was there, I also got the word that I’m going to be a presenter next month at Madison’s own Odyssey Con, another sci-fi/fantasy conference that’s a little less scholars, a little more fans. Sample schedule: I’ll be moderating a panel on the Green Lantern movie (subtitle: “What Went Wrong?”). I’m beyond excited to go back to OddCon, and even more excited to be on some panels. For more information, or to figure how you can come see me get my panel on, check out the website at www.odysseycon.com. No, seriously. Do it.

*In my UW-Milwaukee creative writing program, for reasons that are indiscernible to me, the master’s thesis is simply called a “final project.” I find this unnecessarily confusing, so I call it what I want.

As you may know if you follow me on Facebook (and really, why wouldn’t you?), I don’t have much time for blogging over the next six weeks, because I’m trying to complete the my master’s degree while simultaneously working on about seven other things. But I did want to take a moment to weigh in on the Walking Dead, because…well, frankly, because I’m just in the mood to do so. I just watched tonight’s penultimate (I think that’s the word) episode, where Shane FINALLY bites the big one. Two things: Yes, it was a good episode. But for me, for season 2, it might be too little too late.

I’m not sure if it matters, because I’m planning to stop watching the show after Lori’s baby is born anyway,* but for me Season 2 has had kind of a snoozeville quality. You know how every once in awhile, NBC will stretch one of their sitcoms, like Friends, 30 Rock, the Office, etc, into an hour-long episode, and then it feels like they stretched 30 minutes of jokes into 60 minutes of programming? Yeah. Season 1 of the WD was only six episodes long, and each one of them was filled with plot, action, character. By stretching out this season, the show creators have just featured too much talking, too much loooooong drawn-out moral conflict that last four episodes on one friggin’ issue (kill the new guy, don’t kill the new guy, who the hell cares anymore?) and not nearly enough zombie mayhem. Seriously. It’s like when they made The Mummy 3 and there were no actual mummies in it. There’s a reason they never spent this much time at the farm in the comics - no zombies is kind of boring.

Also, and this is admittedly not as sweeping of a complaint, but what the hell is up with T-Dog? I didn’t mind that the show added new characters of color to round out the all-white cast from the comics (the series is set outside Atlanta, so it definitely makes sense), but why create a perfectly fine character like T-Dog and then give him three lines for the whole season? When Dale dies, we care. Oh, do we care. When Shane dies…well, it definitely changes things. But if T-Dog dies next week on the season finale, I guarantee half of the viewers are going to be saying, “Wait, who’s that?"**

Okay, one more word, on Shane’s death: to anyone who has read the comics, or any press material since the show began, or seen AMC’s unfortunate little marketing snafu, this was not a surprise. Wah, Shane. I find it irritating that Shane’s death was blown into this big thing. When a death is this easy to see coming, there’s just no way to make it live up to expectation. I say, good riddance. Maybe now the characters can get back to having just a teeny bit of post-apocalyptic moral fiber, which is what made them interesting to watch in the first place..

*Wanna know why? Okay, I’ll tell you, but this is a MAJOR FRIGGIN’ SPOILER from the comic book. Seriously, if you haven’t read the comics and you don’t want to know what happens, stop here. I AM NOT KIDDING. YOU CAN TELL BY THE CAPITAL LETTERS.
Those of you still with me, here’s the deal: in the comic books, Laurie’s baby is born and everything is cool for like, a week. Then enters one of the most truly heinous villains I’ve ever encountered on page or screen: the Governor. He raids the prison where Rick & the Gang are holed up, and in the ensuing shootout, Laurie takes one in the chest with a shotgun.

While she’s holding the baby. To her chest.

Ask anybody; I’m not one to shy away from blood and guts. (I’m reading the second volume of Kick-Ass comics, for crying out loud, though at the moment I couldn’t tell you why.) And I was fine with all the many, many many, scenes of horrific gore that decorate the pages of The Walking Dead up until that point. But I don’t do murdered babies, especially after we’ve spent SO much time invested in these characters. This isn’t one of those brief flashes of dead kids or infants that you occasionally see in this kind of show (Anybody remember That Scene in True Blood?). This is a baby we’ve been invested in since conception, not to mention that the Laurie-Rick love story was the spine of the whole series. I did read on a bit after the baby’s death, in hopes that there might be some redeeming factor in the story that made this make sense (aside from writer Robert Kirkman’s obsession with the “when the world ends, anyone can die” theme, yawn) and shortly after that, the Governor spends a number of very graphic pages beating, torturing, and raping a young woman he keeps tied up for this very purpose. A number of pages. Melissa out.

** I actually suspect this may happen next week on the season finale, mostly because T-Dog got like three thowaway mini-lines tonight, which had nothing to do with the rest of the show. The only reason I can think of for having him pop up for ten seconds of meaningless muttering is to remind us of who he is right before they off him next week.

Yes, as I’m looking back over my list of busyness, it amuses me that I’ve been working on so much, yet managed to consume many, many TV shows. This is the problem with Tivo: after awhile, you start to feel like watching all those stored shows is just one more thing on your to-do list. Under normal circumstances TV is my go-to relaxation technique, but when that Saved list gets really long, I begin to feel the same edge of anxious panic that accompanies every other deadline in my life. Look at how many shows have stacked up, I think. How am I ever going to get through all of these? How am I going to keep from having all these shows ruined for me? Is it just me or did Jason Lee get super un-hot and then come all the way back around as a hottie? Who says ‘hottie’ anymore?

I know, talk about your first-world problems, right? My Tivo list intimidates me? I know that the right thing to do is to quit cold-turkey – abandon all my shows and stop reading entertainment sites and focus on my family and my work. Maybe subscribe to a newspaper, for once. Get the cobwebs off my bike. Keep my house clean for more than a day. This is definitely the best option for me, and Mattie. I know that. But…I just don’t have it in me.

I’m addicted, I get that. I have the same problem with diet Coke. (First world problems AGAIN. I have so much shame right now.) But here’s the thing. TV makes me happy. I love the stories, I love the performances, I love the settings and plot complications and unpredictability just when I think everything is completely predictable. (Hello, The River. Welcome to my Tivo playlist.) I love letting go of the twenty-seven lists that are scrolling through my head like the Matrix at any given moment. I love getting excited about something that ultimately, doesn’t matter that much. Let’s say I plan a trip to Chicago to go to the Field Museum. There’s plenty to get excited about, but there’s also details to work out, money to spend, things that could go wrong. Maybe the best thing about TV is that it’s easy.

These are things I just can’t let go of. And, if I’m being honest, I love holding on to Melissa version 2.0,** the one who worked in LA and spent over a year at NBC-Universal developing shows. There are still a couple of shows that I worked on that are still on the air, and that makes me happy. Melissa 2.0 would never have been able to give up TV, and she’s still in here somewhere.

So, I stay up late. Really late. On a regular basis. I watch TV when I should be doing between ten and twenty other things that are much more important. And I get stressed when my to-be-watched list gets too long, because it makes me feel like I’m neglecting a pet who’s always there for me. I know it’s stupid, I know it’s unimportant, and I know it makes me not as good of a person. But I think I can accept that.

*A couple of weeks ago I had to write a fifteen-page research paper for a compendium on vampires in like three days. With our internet down. And insufficient childcare. I just barely survived to tell the tale.
**For those of you keeping track at home, there have been at least four different versions of Melissa: Childhood/high school Melissa, College/Hollywood Melissa, Madison Single Melissa, and Married Mother Melissa.

To my surprise, there were a number of good things about the fourth Underworld movie. They did a really nice job of integrating 3D without letting it run the show, and it was nice seeing Selene, who’s emoted maybe twice in the series, find herself suddenly a facing down motherhood. But despite these good qualities, I’m afraid I do need to administer some chastisements.

Most importantly: Scott Speedman, what the hell? Where were you on this movie? Did you have something better to do? My best guess is that shooting his role as the romantic foil in The Vow conflicted with the Underworld schedule, to which I say: Scott Speedman’s agent, what the hell? The second lead in a surprisingly successful action franchise, or the douche who DOESN’T get Rachel McAdams in a romantic comedy we’ve all seen eight times already? My three-year-old could figure that one out, and she thinks panda bears are called “candy bears.”

Also, the studio/producers: I commend you for not brushing over the whole Michael thing and focusing only on Selene, but if you wanted to include Michael in some scenes, did you have to use the world’s least believable body double? You may not have noticed this (because faces obviously aren’t in your wheelhouse), but amazing things are actually being done with CGI faces right now. Natalie Portman’s face was digitally added to a dancer in Black Swan, young Jeff Bridges was added to Tron: Legacy, and JFK was put in Forrest Gump. Oh, wait, that last one was EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO. What would it cost to create two minutes of Scott Speedman? Maybe having ONE less Lycan in the movie? God forbid.

Also – and this actively baffles me – what was the deal with all the wasted opportunities? Why get Wes Bentley and then do nothing with him? Why not give Charles Dance (One of my favorite villains ever, courtesy of Last Action Hero) a little more room to stretch and chew some scenery, a la Bill Nighy? The reason that the first Underworld movie is the best one is the charisma of the two vampire and Lycan leaders: Michael Sheen’s (who has got to be the most diverse actor on the planet - sorry, Gary Oldman) vicious and heartbreaking Lucian and Bill Nighy’s “Yeah it’s a paycheck but I’m still having a great time” vampire leader Viktor. And it’s not like you cast a bland actor to be the new leader of the vampires – have you not seen Last Action Hero? Or Game of Thrones? Guy got to have more fun in Alien 3 than you let him have here. Apparently you either couldn’t get the talent, or had the talent but ignored it so you could have more shots of Kate Beckinsale’s dead-eyed rampaging.

Okay. Whew. Sorry, guys, had to get that off my chest. The fact of the matter is that Underworld is one of the ‘meh’ series that just keeps churning out sequels, never reaching the insanely high franchise numbers of a Michael Bay or Harry Potter mega-series, but never dipping so low that a sequel wouldn’t be economically reasonable. Other entries in this strange category include the Resident Evil movies, the Step Up movies, and the Harold and Kumar movies. Every time I’ve heard about a new sequel in one of these, I’m surprised, because in this day and age, movie series live and then die on extreme numbers. A studio puts a large amount of cash into the budget, and then expects a much larger number back. We often see movies that appear to have made a ton of money right up until you look at the budget, and it turns out the profit isn’t all that great. Domestically, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was a failure: although it wound up with a $241 million gross, the budget was $250 million. I don’t see Johnny Depp putting on the black eyeliner again, and not just because that movie sucked so bad.

The crazy thing, though, is that there are these little junior varsity series that just chug along, doing their thing, making their modest profits, which range between $40 and $65 million. (The first Harold and Kumar is a statistical outlier, having made only $18 million. It still more than doubled its budget, though.)

Personally, I don’t think most of these JV movies are all that great – it’s not so much that they suck (okay, maybe Underworld Evolution), as that they’re lazy: a repeat of the same general plot and idea over and over…and over. Resident Evil, in particular, hasn’t demonstrated a plot since 2002. But I can’t help it, I just kind of root for them, anyway. When you think of filmmaking, you pretty much think of either Big Studio Flicks, or little-little independent movies. I dig that these series just keep their heads down and keep going. I just wish that the people who made them would have enough respect for filmmaking to also make good movies.

Although in this case I’d settle for just including Scott Speedman.

Anyway. I’ve been busy. I did finally make time, however, to check out the new, David Fincher-directed Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie. The other night at dinner a friend asked me if I liked it, and I hesitated. This isn’t a movie that one really likes or does not like. It’s too dark, too violent, too, frankly, perverse. You’re not supposed to like it, you’re supposed to be uncomfortable, dismayed, yet also invested. It’s a movie that one enjoys or does not enjoy, appreciates or does not appreciate, but it’s not the kind of thing you buy on blu-ray just to memorize nerdy quotes to toss about with your friends. I happened to enjoy and appreciate the film, but I do understand why it’s polarizing, especially from a feminist perspective.

It got me thinking about the whole Millennium Trilogy phenomenon in general (annoyance sidebar: why is it commonly known as that when all three book titles are about Lisbeth Salander? Why isn’t it the Salandar trilogy?). These three novels really have become a worldwide runaway sensation, complete with an insanely successful Swedish movie franchise and now US remake. Of course, part of the interest in this whole story is with the author’s unique position: Stig Larssen completed and sold the three Millennium novels, but died before the first book came out. Back when the novel version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo hit big here in the US, I thought that Larsson’s history was a tragically interesting little backstory that was relevant to the books only in terms of the writing being a little rough: they feel as though the author’s involvement was disconnected before real editing began. But this week, for the first time, I made the connection between his death and the novels’ success.

No, I’m not suggesting that the dramatic tale of the author’s death is the only reason these books made oceans of money. They’re certainly better than that. But I think the biggest reason these books were successful is all the discussion that they provoked – about feminism, violence, violence toward women, the nature of journalism, personal security, privacy, and so on. And the fact that the author can’t comment, defend, argue, or relent in this worldwide discussion only fuels the flames of the books’ popularity.

The term paper that I worked on before Christmas was all about the idea of authorship: after we studied the women’s detective fiction genre, I wrote about the Nikki Heat books, which are based on the television show Castle, and how the really scary thing about them is that there’s no actual author behind them. Oh, someone wrote the books, of course, but they’re simply published as the work of “Richard Castle.” Who is fictional. Fictional. It’s a cute ploy, but the problem is that when issues of feminism arise –and they do – there’s no one to take responsibility. No one is accountable.

For obviously different and sad reasons, the Millennium trilogy has that in common with the Nikki Heat books. In this modern, internet-savvy world, the publishing industry has made authors more accessible than they’ve ever been: we can read their blogs, tweets, Facebook pages, websites, and so on. We know what they had for breakfast and what TV show their kids are into. Screw the literary theorists who argued for the autonomy of the work in the 1970’s: these days we like having our artists available. And that puts Stig Larssen’s books in a pretty unique situation. Controversial subject + absentee author + international appeal = the literary version of the perfect storm.

I’ve often wondered, since the brouhaha* over Lisbeth Salandar first began, how things might have gone differently if those books had been written by a female author, or published anonymously, so we’d be left to wonder. One thing I know for sure, though: feminist and literary theorists are going to continue to have a field day with Lisbeth, and for a long time coming.

After all…there’s no one to stop them.

*This is an excellent word. Let’s all try to use it in a sentence today, shall we?

Here’s the thing: Mattie is two, and therefore it is her God-given responsibility to be really naughty. A lot. At the store, the library, the pool, our house; at mealtimes, in front of family, in front of strangers, when I needed to be out the door five minutes ago, etc. And almost every time this happens, I find myself thinking, Yeah, but some people have three* of these. And then I feel guilty.

Guilt: the real Mother’s Little Helper. As a parent I feel guilty almost constantly, both for what I do and what I just think quietly to myself. Guilt that I’m not spending enough time with her, that I don’t want to play on the floor anymore that day, that I should be feeding her organic, that I don’t teach her manners well enough, that I lose my temper…this list is even longer than the list of bad behavior. I can usually handle it okay, by either not thinking about it, or by considering the most perfect mother I can think of (this vacillates between one of my friends, my own mother, an aunt, etc). Is there any chance that she didn’t spend an unreasonable amount of time feeling guilty that she wasn’t doing something correctly?

Nah.

This there’s-just-the-one guilt, however, is a whole other thing. It’s like breaking your leg, being miserable, and then thinking, “But there are some people with two broken legs.” Is this true? Yes. Does it make your damn leg hurt any less? Nope. (That’s where the drugs come in.) I can’t shake the guilty feeling, though, and I find myself editing my day when talking to my friends or sisters with multiple kids: “Oh, Mattie was a perfect monster bit of a challenge when we were at the grocery store, and then I got frustrated to the point of crying had kind of a hard time getting her to eat her dinner.” Stuff like that.

With the temporary addition of a one-year-old to my household, however, I figured I’d finally be able to drop the guilt. I was, after all, going to be In Charge of Multiple Children, just like the mothers I most pity in the checkout line at Walmart. Except…well, hopefully having a second kid wouldn’t go this badly.

It’s not the new kid, mind you. For a one-year-old, she’s a delight. The problem has been Mattie’s reaction to the new kid: she alternates between clinging to me like a crazy-eyed parasite, running around snatching her toys out of the baby’s hands, pulling out more toys to show off so she can take them away when the baby gets interested, and just generally sabotaging anything that I need to do to take care of the other child – preparing separate food, changing diapers, washing one of Mattie’s sippie cups, etc. I feel a little bad for Mattie, I do: I’m the one that changed the rules on her. But, oddly enough, this little experiment has made me both dread having another kid someday and realize that it’s pretty important to Mattie’s development. I’m picturing her as an 18-year-old college freshman, running around snatching her magazines and water glasses away from her new roommate, and, I don’t know, bursting into tears if I compliment the roommate’s sweater.

So, yes. Despite my newfound exhaustion (how do people have three?)*, Operation Second Baby is proceeding as planned. Although I still have one more week of babysitting, so don’t hold me to it.

*Yes, yes. I know some brave parents have more than three children. I just can’t even imagine it, so I’m pretending it doesn’t happen, shh.

I love fictional TV.* And I’d like to think that my tastes are pretty diverse: I watch sitcoms, horror dramas, single-camera comedies, nighttime soaps, quirky cable dramedies, British sci-fi, even a few procedurals, though I mostly find them distasteful. One thing I do not watch, however, is gritty, violent cable or pay cable dramas. I’m talking about shows like The Wire, Oz, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, The Tudors, etc. Now, I know that these shows, particularly Breaking Bad and The Wire, are often listed at or near the top of lists of the best television shows ever. And I recognize their quality, I do. It’s just that I have a hard time watching them because – well, not to put it in too technical of terms, but they bum me out.

Seriously. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a reason to avoid the best shows on television, but like many others, I watch TV to escape from my own worries. There is nothing more relaxing to me than sitting down with a diet Coke and a full TiVo. When the show I’m watching is bleak, gritty, and depressing, however, it kind of kills my buzz. (Not to mention that most of those shows are not very kind to their female characters, if they have any. But that’s a whole other blog.) Whenever I try to get into these shows I have a hard time sitting through a second episode, which is what happened with Breaking Bad: I watched the pilot, was thoroughly impressed, and thoroughly depressed. I had three more episode recorded, but after avoiding them for months I finally just deleted them. Maybe it would have helped if I was fascinated by meth and the meth-making process; that could have saved it. Sadly, though, I am not.

Why am I explaining all of this? I want to give you some background in order to emphasize how truly extraordinary I find my own new obsession with Sons of Anarchy. On paper, this is exactly the kind of show I stay away from: it’s a gritty, violent, somewhat bleak show about the relationships between gritty, violent, somewhat bleak men. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s basically the chronicles of a Hell’s Angels-esque “motorcycle club” (aka biker gang) in Northern California. I’m not sure why I started watching – probably the same general curiosity that got me through the first episode of Breaking Bad – but I was immediately intrigued, and around episode four or five, I got hooked. Big time. I watched the whole 13-episode first season in two days, which can really only be accomplished by not sleeping much. Netflix Instant Watch only has seasons one and two, so last night I convinced Tyler (“Honey, I need this”) to let me subscribe to Netflix DVD’s for a month so I can watch season 3. I haven’t told him yet, but after that we’ll be buying season 4 on Amazon Instant Watch. Oh yeah. I’ve got this all worked out.

Anyway, I’ve been giving this some thought, and, inspired by a fun article about The Vampire Diaries, I want to explain some reasons why I love this show – and you should, too.

1.) Things happen.
This isn’t the slow, deliberate pacing of Mad Men, or even the drama-of-the-week procedural format. In every episode there’s a beat-down, or a fire, or someone’s killed, and so on. It could have been really over-the-top and obnoxious, a deliberate “Kick-Ass” orgy of violence, but instead-

2.) Tough subjects are well-handled.
I’m not sure I can say that the plot of this show is realistic (my knowledge of NorCal biker gangs is surprisingly limited), but it doesn’t have to be. What matters is that the emotion feels real, and that’s where Sons of Anarchy nails it. One of the main arcs in season 2 involves the brutal rape of a main character. On another show this could easily turn me away from watching further, but the act and its aftermath aren’t played for cheap violence or horror, and it’s not something that happens in one episode and is forgotten two episodes later. The woman in question spends all season dealing with her own reaction to the rape, and we see how that reaction ripples throughout the rest of the characters, even (maybe especially) the ones who don’t know. Despite the brutality, she is determined not to become a victim, and struggles with that, too. It’s relatable, sympathetic, and completely engrossing.

3.) The good guys are bad guys, and vice versa.
One of the big themes that the show deals with is moral ambiguity: the Sons are actually seen as protectors of their hometown, the fictional Charming, CA. Yes, they run illegal weapons, but they also keep gangs and drugs out of the town, and to that end they have the police chief in their pocket. Rather than a cartoonish villain, though, even the police chief is nuanced and complicated, convinced that the Sons are the lesser evil. The depth of these characters is magnetic.

4.) Brilliant endings.
Most successful shows have ended at least one of their seasons with a cliffhanger. Ever Alias, however, lots of these serialized shows have been ending every episode with a kind of mini-cliffhanger: someone gets stabbed, and…credits! The cool thing about Sons of Anarchy is that most of the episodes I’ve seen don’t end in a big obvious cliffhanger, but with a strong, thoughtful plot point that still makes you wave your arms and say, “What?! Where are they gonna go from there?!"**

5.) The romance.
I know, I know, romance in a F/X show? Makes no sense. But Sons of Anarchy is dominated by two major relationships: new father Jax (Charlie Hunnan)*** and the high school sweetheart he tries to avoid falling back in love with, and the Sons leader Clay and his “old lady,” Jax’s mom Gemma. Much has been said about Clay and Gemma, played to rough perfection by Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal, but I love the younger couple. With very few words, they communicate the desperate, undeniable love that draws them together while everyone knows they belong apart.

Honestly, it’s almost enough to make a girl give Breaking Bad another shot.

* I don’t watch reality TV of any kind – not because I think I’m above it (okay, I’m above some of it, but so is everybody), but because I know how easy it is to manipulate with editing. Producers film someone for two days, and then they can cut the footage to make that person out to be any one of a number of pre-existing stereotypes. The same person. From the same footage. It annoys me.

**I usually say this to my dog, who’s the only one stupid enough to stay up that late with me.

***I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Mr. Hunnan, who I may have slammed quite a bit a few years back for his interpretation of Nicolas Nickleby. My basic thesis was that his “butter-yellow” hair was livelier than his acting. My bad. Guy deserves him some Emmys.