Top 5: Places I Would Rather Work

I'm stuck at work, after hours, unpaid, and man I'm pissed about it.

I'm in the midst of a (perpetual) career crisis.  For the stupidest reasons anyone has ever done anything I left grad school without finishing my degree, and since then I've either been unemployed or bouncing around from boring job to boring job.  People ask me all the time "what do you want to do with your life?"  Mostly I say normal things, but maybe I like my jobs like I like me men: fictional.  The jobs people have on TV, even if they are completely normal jobs, just look more fun.  The companies seem more chill, the co-worker interaction seems limited, and based on the living situations of most TV characters wages seem exponentially higher.  So, I will be sending my resume to:

Fringe Division, FBI (Fringe)
Yes, I might get shot.  Or killed so that a shape-shifter can impersonate me.  Or given a really bad haircut.  But between the hilarity of Walter's lack of social boundaries and Olivia's inability to overcome them, the office environment would be well worth the risk.  Plus, they never look bored.  And there is a lax drug policy.

Unnamed Law Firm (Suits)
There are a couple reasons I think I could jive with Harvey and Mike's Manhattan firm.  First, apparently, if you work here, you can be extremely rude to new hires.  As a receptionist, paralegal, or personal assistant, you can ignore, taunt, or lie to potential and new employees, all with the encouragement of your superiors.  Usually such behavior gets me in quite a bit of trouble (stupid woman who used to work at UD Advancement, I still hate you), but give me the blessing to be a bitch and I'll be the best damn employee you've ever seen.  Plus, if your smart and hardworking you can move from the mail room to the senior partnership.  Isn't everyone looking for a company that hires from within?

Seattle Police Department (The Killing)
This place might be my dream job.  I hate wearing makeup, so Linden and I would be total BFFs.  I look excellent in a hoodie, so if I needed a quick change during the day Holder would have my back.  I love the rain and am not afraid to be outside in it, so I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that it always begins raining whenever anyone walks outside.  I'm already an expert at mental/emotionally damaging people by not saying what I'm thinking, so no one would have to explain that procedure to me.  And, since it doesn't appear that the hiring process includes any screening for general competence or analytical aptitude, my complete lack of experience wouldn't hold me back.  I'll be a detective before you know it.

Hollis College (Pretty Little Liars)
All you need to land a teaching position in the English Department at Hollis is to ASK, so I think with my almost completed Master's degree in English Literature I could be the Chairwoman of the department, right off the bat.  Not only do you need no more formal education than a BA, you will be furnished with a HUGE corner office with plenty of sunlight, all to your self.  And since you won't be bothered with any of that pesky teaching business, you know like lesson planning, grading, or ever standing up in front of a room of students, you'll have all the time in the world to continue you illicit, and illegal, relationship.  Why exactly did my adviser spend all that time telling me how slim my chances of earning a tenure teaching position would be?  Academia is obviously where the plentiful and advantageous jobs are.

Unnamed Publishing Company (Castle)
I could totally dig being an editor.  Getting to read all day and then tell people how to make their writing better, I would want to work all the time.  And if I just happened to be at a publisher where I could marry, divorce, date, and then break up with my super hot star writer, that would be a vast improvement over my current employer, where I get fussed at if I don't cover my small and tasteful tattoos all day.  Books, brutal honesty and barely-there moral code, that's my kind of place.

The TV Girl

Top 5: (Current) Character Deaths I Would Like to Facilitate

And to conclude, for now, my rather morbid fascination this week: characters I would kill.

This is off course purely in the realm of speculation, I have no control over any of this, but as a discerning (or overly opinionated, however you choose to see that) TV viewer, I have felt from time to time that certain shows could do without some characters and their ensuing storylines.  Even on the best of shows, there can be a lemon: a character who detracts to an extreme degree from the general awesomeness, or a character that just happens to annoy the ever living crap out of me.

Castiel, Supernatural
Sorry fangirls, this isn't personal, but if there is any hope for Supernatural to recapture it's glory, Castiel needs to die, and quick.  Remember when Sam and Dean were remotely competent at their job?  When they would find a mystery, investigate, and try try again until they found a solution?  Now they are sent on a job, call Bobby first thing, and then ask Castiel to fix it.  The former was engaging TV, the later is dull and baffling (if I were evil I wouldn't be afraid of these two either).  As much as I find Castiel amusing (and he really is), he's hobbled both the familial relationship between, and the professional capabilities of, Sam and Dean.  Goodbye Castiel, hello better show.

Becky, Friday Night Lights

(Alright, so this is cheating, since this show is technically finished, but I haven't watched all of it yet, so...)  I unapologetically morally disagree with Becky's choice to abort her child; I'm pro-life and always will be.  And yes, I know that sounds ridiculous within a post about how there are characters I would like to see no more of, and no more possibility of, on my nightly TV line-up.  But, that isn't why I'm putting her on this list.  Becky commits the fundamental sin in my book: she is dumb as shit.  She's not just not very bright, there are plenty of TV characters that are kind of dim (but their usually funny, making them sometimes/somewhat redeemable/useful), Becky is unrepentantly stupid.  She actively pursues, and insists that she is in love with, a guy that had sex with her mother!  Really?  Really?  It's like she saw The Graduate and thought it had a happy ending.  

Ezra, Pretty Little Liars
It isn't just the fact that Ezra is the (legal) adult in the most annoying relationship on any show I watch at the moment, but honestly that would be enough.  They are a blight on an otherwise entertaining show.  Every time Ezra and Aria interact I want to turn off PLL and never watch again.  Their insipid and repetitive conversations, mostly revolving around their inability to face the icky reality of their situation, eat up time that could be used so well with other characters.  Add on to this that Ezra has apparently never heard the term "statutory rape," and his hipster vests, and I just get beyond livid that on a show with such violent tendencies Ezra hasn't yet met with an "unfortunate accident."  Make this happen A.

Britta, Community
Boring.  So boring.  I think of Britta much like Mark on Parks and Recreation: a supposed love-interest that didn't pan out and then no one knew what to do with him.  And no one can argue that P and R has benefited immensely for swapping the sad-sack Mark for the amazing Ben (played by the oh so adorable Adam Scott) and the male-Leslie-Knope, aka Chris.  I'm not actually proposing to swap Britta for anyone, just kill her off and let the rest of the funny, messed-up, way-too-meta, darling characters get up to their high-jinks. And what couldn't Abed do with a major character death?  Meta-tastic!

Ser Alliser Thorne, Game of Thrones
This is purely, spitefully, because he is mean to Jon.  Which is evidence that he is bad at his job, and were this Soviet Russia, maybe that would be all the justification I would need.  There is being tough on your pupils in order to prepare them for difficult or unpleasant tasks, and then there is torturing young people because you are bitter about the way your life turned out.  Ser Alliser falls into camp B.  Bad enough, but, singling out Jon as his favorite punching bag is unforgivable in my eyes.  Jon doesn't need another person telling him that he is worthless, predisposed towards malevolence because his daddy wasn't married to his mommy, and that he was undeserving of the company of his siblings and attention of his father; he had enough of that growing up.  (Catelyn, I hate!)  There's nothing instructive or corrective about Ser Alliser's taunts and accusations; it is the jealous lashing out of a wretched man.  I'd welcome a bad end for him.

The TV Girl

My Weekend Fling: Pretty Little Liars, Season 1

(I feel that I should preface what I'm about to say with: remember that I watched all 22 episodes of this show.)

I think my insomnia is starting to rot my brain, because Saturday night when I couldn't sleep I just kept watching episode after episode of Pretty Little Liars, and as the sun rose in the morning sky I realized that I didn't think the show had been utterly terrible.  How sad.

At a slumber party 15 year old Alison (Sasha Pieterse) goes missing, fracturing the bonds between longtime friends Spencer (Torian Bellisario), Hanna (Ashley Benson), Aria (Lucy Hale) and Emily (Shay Mitchell).  A year later, Alison's body is discovered, reuniting the girls, but the identity of her murderer is only one of the many secrets in Rosewood, PA. While Spencer tries to manage the expectations of her overly ambitious family, Aria tries to hid her sexual relationship with her English teacher from her parents that are splitting up because of her father's infidelity, Emily tries to come to terms with her sexual orientation, and Hanna tries to counterbalance her mother's indiscretions without sucuming to an eating disorder, all four girls are harassed by "A": a shadow deterimined to expose their flaws and wrongdoings at the same time as leading them to Alison's killer.

Honestly, for the most part PLL is over-the-top, verging on the completely ridiculous, but it's fairly enjoyable.  That is, if you can get over a few things.

First, there is the fact that, with notable exceptions, the vast majority of males in this fictional town are either dead-eyed sociopaths, dead-eyed sexual predators, or both.  (And the actors all seem to have trouble making facial expressions. It's very annoying for a while, then it just becomes funny.)  I'm not kidding, there is a serious problem with the men in this town understanding what is an acceptable age gap between partners, and since they are ALWAYS the older parties, that where I'm putting the emphasis: Ezra Fitz, a recent college graduate, pursues a relationship with Aria, his sixteen year old student; Spencer becomes the object of desire for her older sister Melissa's past/present/future boyfriends/fiancées; Alison was dating an older mystery guy; and Aria's father has had an affair with a woman at least 20 years his junior.  The actual teenage boys that are hanging around these girls aren't a great deal better: at worst leveraging either information for power (Noel) or useful skills for money (Caleb); at best greedily absorbing attention while repaying it with scorn (Sean).  There is the possibility that this show is a brilliant evisceration of female vulnerability, but...well maybe.  Probably not.

And the above is a huge part of the second serious detraction in PLL.  The giant gaping black hole of suck in this show is Aria and everything having to do with her: her icktastic boyfriend, her oblivious parents, her wardrobe.  Of the four girls, Aria is simply the least interesting.  Obviously intended to be the most "free-spirited" and "artistic" of the group, Aria doesn't seem to have any particular skills, talents, or activities.  It's offhandedly mentioned once that she reads books aside for the ones she's assigned and she's "really excited about fiction" but that's about it.  While Spencer, Hanna and Emily all participate in at least one sport or club activity (and are seen at some point or another doing homework), Aria pretty much goes to school for the sole purpose of flirting with her teacher, goes home to lecture her younger brother, and goes then goes to Ezra's apartment to cook.  From what what we see, she doesn't do, create, or think much of anything.  Her utter lack of personality, or basic connection to reality, is perfectly matched in her equally vacuous "boyfriend."  Mr. Fitz, who never seems to grade homework or need to make lesson plans despite being a first year teacher, is supposedly a talented writer but since we only hear snippets of what he's written we have to take that on the authority of Aria or her father (because they have such trustworthy judgement).  And that is the extent of his character: likes underage girls and writes.  I know I sound like I'm harping on the Aria/Ezra relationship, but it takes up a significant portion of every episode, so I am only bitching in proportion to how much they subjected me to it.  These two literally have the exact same conversation at least 22 times (once an episode) if not more. Here it is:

One: I hate that sneaking around is so difficult because you are the most amazing person I've ever met.
The Other: I agree.  But this is very difficult.
One: I don't want to give up on us.
The Other: Me either, but what about the necessity of having coffee in public with your significant other?
One: I don't need coffee in public, as long as I have dinner in secret with you.
The Other: You're the best.

If it weren't bad enough to watch two boring people, having to listen to them say the same thing over and over and over again is like Chinese water torture.  If you are going to assert the normalcy of a legally and ethically inappropriate relationship, it helps if the viewer  doesn't want to slip into a coma every time either character is on screen.  (PLL show runners, please see Chris and Angie from Skins UK Series 1 for a student/teacher relationship that was equally as inappropriate but was dramatically and emotionally engrossing TV.)

How lame Aria is stands out because the other girls are appealing and entertaining characters.

Star scholar and well-rounded college applicant Spencer is ambitious, competitive, suspicious, prickly, and combative.  But she is also funny, loyal, and she is the driving force behind trying to discover Alison's killer.  She's unofficially the leader, but she doesn't manipulate the other girls, as numerous flashbacks clearly demonstrate that Alison did when she was queen.  She doesn't want to live resentfully in the shadow of her older sister's achievements, and she does the best she can in the face of Melissa's staggering megalomania.  Spencer's eventual relationship with stoic neighbor, and initial suspect in Alison's murder, Toby has a faint similarity to the greatness that was Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls, at least in part because their first kiss is also in a motel parking lot.  (Although, in comparison, Toby's familial circumstances makes the Echolls family look well-adjusted and functional.)

Swimming phenomenon Emily struggles to be honest with herself and eventually everyone else about being gay without a great deal of angst or self-loathing.  She is fearful of the changes her honesty could mean for her life, but when the time comes to tell her father she does so in a brave and straightforward manner.  Emily is unfailingly forgiving, determined to give everyone a second chance.  Emily is shy, and therefore not often the instigator of events and sometimes needs a nudge to move out of her comfort zone, but she isn't a doormat either.  She stands up for herself and her opinions patiently and respectfully.  Emily is a great example of treat-people-how-you-want-to-be-treated.

Recently minted It-Girl Hanna is the opposite of your typical bitchy popular girl.  Hanna fluctuates between rebellious outburst, like high-end shoplifting, and having to provide stability and support to her mother, who makes really really poor life choices.  Hanna was previously the chubby girl of the group and often on the receiving end of Alison's venom, but instead of becoming the likeness of her antagonizer, Hanna is kind and generous to a fault: she befriends outcasts, attends abstinence-group meetings with her boyfriend to understand his viewpoint even though she wants to have sex, and lends a  couch to the teen homeless.  Granted, these things usually don't work out in her favor, but when Hanna finally looses her cool with people abusing her amity it is one of the best moments all season.

The real strength of this show is the pacing.  Much like The Vampire Diaries, they pack a lot into each hour of  PLL.  A doesn't really take a day off, relentlessly airing secrets, divulging tidbits of evidence and setting traps for the girls.  We move along for shocking-reveal to unforeseen-plot-development at a fairly brisk pace, thereby minimizing emoting time and avoiding beating every storyline (completely) to death.  The viewer is encouraged in watching the next episode, because we know that something will happen even if it won't necessarily be the answer to our questions.  Now, the season finale revealed Alison's murderer, but the case is far from closed, we still don't know who A is, and they have opened the door for the whole situation being much bigger than we thought, so you could say that we ended up with more questions than answers, but if next season continues in the same vein, we should know something more pretty quickly.

Wait, did I just admit that I intend to watch the next season?

Well, I do kind of want to know what Jenna, the blind girl with an ax to grind, is up to.

The TV Girl