I Rue Detective

Why, oh why, do good shows go bad?  Is it peer group pressure?  Are the mediocre and truly lousy shows roughing up the good shows in the back of the studio lots, sticking fingers in their chests and growling, "Yer makin' us look bad, raising the curve. So here's what yer gonna do..." 

In this case, I'm not just talking about a good show, but a great show.  True Detective.  For seven episodes this was some of the best TV ever.   Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson  as the detectives. Michelle Monaghan. All incredible actors. Creepy, creepy murders.  Haunting scenes and cinematography.  Tension up the wazoo.  A plot that made sense and a trail to follow. 

And then, the finale.  Even that was going pretty well until the detectives pull up at the suspect's house.  When they have no cell phone reception to call for back up, do they turn around in the driveway and go get help?  Of course not. These two guys plow ahead on their own.  One goes through the house, the other heads out back and chases the evildoer though high reeds and weeds for a really long time and finally into an abandoned structure that looks like an enormous brick beehive.  The inevitable fight ensues and here's where it all goes south. (Spoiler alert: if you don't want to learn what happens, stop reading.)

McConaughey takes a knife to the gut.  Not just any knife but one that looks like it goes all the way through to his backside; one that creates an enormous, gaping wound that's pumping blood like nobody's business when he later pulls the knife out.  He loses blood at a rate that should kill him in minutes. He, of course, survives.

Harrelson evidently has a map, night vision goggles and word on a shortcut, so he shows up a moment later, just in time to get a hatchet to the chest.  Right through the sternum. Bad guy takes a bullet to the brain and keels over dead. Harrelson drags himself over to McConaughey's side and sits up, completely lucid and seemingly not in pain.  He, too, survives.  What's a little hatchet in the chest when you've got a friend to cheer on? The cavalry arrives a moment later, having received a phone call from Harrelson while he was searching the house.  They, too, seem to have taken a shortcut or mastered time travel.  And they've brought helicopters!

Is it too much to ask that writers follow a few basics?  For example, if a character receives a mortal wound, said character dies.  If the writer doesn't want said character to die, s/he should give them a much less dangerous wound or have the bad guy miss. If it takes one character x amount of time to cover some land, it should take y and z characters the same amount of time. These seem like simple rules to follow.  If these writers had, True Detective could have been truly great.

Life Lessons

As we move into the new year, I've gotten a bit philosophical and my mind has wandered to life lessons. What do we learn from our parents?  What do we teach our children?  Parents try to pass on certain values and ethics to their children, but often as not the kids have a very different take-away.

For example, my parents used to take my sister and me on Sunday afternoon rides in the country.  Cindy and I would lie upside down on the back seat and count the trees and telephone poles as we sped along. Our father would take the little hills too fast in order to give us all a roller-coaster-like thrill.  We would lift off the seat and plop back down, filled with the rush of excitement/daring. I remember once our father had to brake suddenly and my young body flipped over the front seat and landed near my mother's lap. Laughter ensued from the grownups and then I was folded back over the seat.  I think our father had several life lessons in mind on those rides: seize the day, have your fun when you can, be unconventional, don't follow the rules, getting out in the country is good, etc.  What lesson did I take?  Wear seat belts.  Always wear seat belts!  They weren't even invented yet, but I was looking ahead.

Our parents were working class people, hardworking, stressed, and they had expectations that we would learn how to do chores and help around the house.  They did not have high aspirations for us because they were realists and they only knew what they knew. There was no expectation that my sister or I would go to college, nor our younger brother.  We would get jobs, marry, settle down. My sister and I were taught the inside chores: laundry, dishes, dusting, etc.  Our brother was taught the one outdoor chore: cutting the grass. Despite the fact that our father helped with cooking and cleaning, and even enjoyed them, and would have made a damned good stay-at-home dad, gender roles were high on the list of lessons to be passed on to us.  What did I take from this? Sexism bad, feminism good.  Sexism bad, feminism good.  Also, I must go to college.  Not sure why, but I must go.  

Now of course, I wonder what my daughters have learned from my husband and me.  If we tried to teach them anything, it was to be left wing.  Politics were very one-sided in our home.  And we taught them that entertaining is a good thing to do; have parties, invite friends, cook good food.  But what else did they learn from us through all the day-to-day living?  All the times we weren't trying to pass along any nuggets of wisdom.  When I was driving, or reading, or going out with my friends...when their dad was working, or napping, or making enchilada sauce...what were they peeking under the table to see? What did they absorb and to what did they inwardly resolve to always do the opposite?  Too early to tell.    

As I look back at that list in the first paragraph, I see that some of my dad's lessons stuck after all: have your fun when you can: check.  Getting out in the country is good: check. Be unconventional: check. We've definitely passed that one on to our children, too, whether we were trying to or not. One example: when our younger daughter was in first grade, her teacher asked each of the students what his or her favorite movie was.  Around the room the little darlings declared "Little Mermaid” or similar kid stuff.  Our daughter? "Lethal Weapon Two," she announced to the stunned teacher.  Not just Lethal Weapon, no, she preferred the second in the series. Hmmmm, showing our first-grader R rated movies...maybe "Don't follow the rules" stuck, too.

Vote for Me

If I ever run for public office, it will be on a single issue: improvement and standardization of women's public restrooms.  I am sick and tired of waving my hands all around a faucet, waiting for water to emerge, only to see there is a knob that should be turned; banging on a soap dispenser that is waiting for me to hold my hand under the shoot; and feeling up the paper towel dispenser until I finally give up and dry my hands on my pants. Sometimes I start to look around for the hidden camera because I think I must be getting punked.

If I am elected, all women's restrooms will have a hook on the inside of each stall door. That hook will be large enough to hold a purse strap and a coat collar so I do not have to swing my purse onto my back, crunch my coat up around my boobs, and hold everything in place while I pull down my pants and lower precariously onto the toilet. Invariably, my purse succumbs to gravity and falls onto the floor, right between the toilet base and the receptacle for 'sanitary' products. When that happens, I just want to leave my purse where it landed and walk away.

All toilet stalls will have a fresh supply of seat covers, and manufacturers of said covers will figure out a new way to package them so the first few don't shred to pieces or come out in a clump that a woman before me has crammed back in the container.

Toilet paper.  It doesn't have to be two-ply.  I know that's expensive.  But the stuff they're using now doesn't even merit being called one-ply.  This stuff is more like half-ply or no-ply.  In fact, this is what takes us so long in the bathroom: extracting microscopic bits of toilet paper, one after the other, until we finally have a handful.  That process can take up to an hour and by then we have to pee again.

All toilets will be manual flush!  This is a nonnegotiable piece of my platform.  I am fed up with toilets that flush while I'm still unzipping my pants, flush again while I'm doing my business and a third time while I'm trying to get my clothes reassembled, still holding my purse and coat because there was no goddamn hook.

All public restrooms will have a well paid attendant who cleans and restocks about once an hour and isn't one of those who sit around next to a bowl of rosewater and a tip jar and thanks you for coming.

All women's bathrooms will have enough stalls to handle the traffic or else the men's bathrooms will be relabeled unisex for overflow.  If an establishment is small, like a restaurant, but large enough to have two little water closets, and chooses to label them both unisex, they will be severely reprimanded.  One will be for women only, the other unisex.  If I can hold it (which, I admit, is unlikely), I'll wait for the women's room because it will be cleaner and the seat will be down.

All women's rooms will have a mirror bright enough to check for spinach in my teeth.

And finally, all stalls will have functioning locks, because there is nothing worse than getting bonked in the head while you're sitting on the toilet, holding all your belongings off the floor, and leaning forward to press the door closed each time it swings open, when some other poor woman tries to enter your stall.

Thank you for your vote.