Big Bang Theory - Season 4

I tend to watch tv shows in binges. I also don't tend to watch anything on a regular schedule. For a while, I was in grad school and my shifting class schedule made it difficult. Now I'm just too out of the habit. I explain all this so that you know why I'm only just now getting around to finishing up the fourth season of Big Bang Theory. We caught up to the show while this season was airing, and had to wait for it to come out on DVD. Then we had to wait until we remembered. Anyway. I admit I was pretty worried about this season in general. One thing that I hate on sitcoms is the on-again off-again couple. I used to be obsessed with Friends in high school, and halfway through the show Ross and Rachel drove me so insane I stopped watching and never looked back. I also was wary of how Amy Farrah-Fowler was going to change things.

I have to say I've been pretty happy overall. I'm still two episodes from the end of the season, so I expect certain things will happen. But the off-again version of Penny and Leonard hasn't been annoying. It's been a pretty proper source of comedy, and it's actually helped give Penny a bit more dimension and character.

I go back and forth on Amy. In the most recent episode we were watching, I commented that I wasn't sure how I felt about where her arc was going and my husband responded, "at least she has another character trait." He's not wrong, she was one note at the beginning but has slowly started to become more interesting. I'm still not entirely sure where I stand with her, I definitely enjoy her more when she's with Sheldon than with Penny.

But I have to admit that having three regular female characters has meant that the show has started to feature them a lot more. This is especially nice because despite being comedic characters with their own strange traits (like Bernadette's clumsiness) both Amy and Bernadette are intellectuals who rival the male characters.

One of my favorite things about the show which has become even more evident this season is that the characters on this show, despite their faults, are all good friends to each other. Penny is given a lot of grief by Sheldon, but she shows over and over again that she will stand up for her friends, and do whatever they need just because they need it. The guys are a little less so, but you get the sense that when it's important the pranks and the jokes go away and they rally.

A lot of people like to disparage Big Bang Theory, and I've heard it called "nerdsploitation" and that it's actually insulting to geeks. People say that it is what normal people think nerds and geeks are like.

Personally, I think those people are being as narrow minded as they're accusing the creators of being. There is much about the show that reflects people that I know and love. Yes, they're caricatures and they're amped up because they're in a sitcom. But the show has always come across to me as a loving laugh WITH a subculture, not at it's expense. Since I'm a member of that subculture, I've not really seen the levels of offense other people have.

I'm fine if you think the show isn't funny. I disagree, but that's all a matter of taste. But references are usually pretty darn accurate (they were much closer to reality with their WoW references than South Park was, that's for sure) and they represent a large number of geeky interests. They aren't just scientists, or comic book fans, or sci-fi tv addicts. Now if Sheldon would stop hating on Babylon 5 and realize it's the best show of the 90s, we'll all be good.

I Am Not A Cook

Despite several attempts to learn, I've never really managed to become much of a chef. I like baking, and I'm actually pretty good at several more advanced things when it comes to desserts. I can make a pie crust from scratch so well that I actually prefer doing it that way to buying one at the store. Store bought doesn't taste as good.

But I'm just not good at cooking. For one thing, I'm impatient. Anything that requires constant monitoring is right out. I tried making a roux for a soup once, and it was a disaster because "stir constantly" is not in my repertoire.

I also am really terrible about anything that is supposed to simmer or cook slowly. Which is part of the reason I'm no longer allowed to make pancakes. For the record, I used to be good at pancakes in middle school. My impatience must have gotten worse as I got older. But suffice it to say after a few disasters that only got worse with each run, I said I'm just not allowed. Luckily I found a recipe for mini-pancake muffins. Yay, baking!

Anyway, over the last few weeks I've had a craving for egg salad and deviled eggs. Since I lost the blade to my food processor, I can't really do deviled eggs. But egg salad? I should be able to handle that right?

It took me two days of research and reading to figure out boiling eggs properly. Sure, I could boil an egg, and it would come out OKAY. But a few pages of tips and tricks later and I no longer have that gray outside to the yolk, and they're always perfectly cooked through.

I looked up a few recipes for egg salad when I went to make it, because I was suddenly hit with a panic: does it have more than just egg and mayonnaise? What's the ratio I should use? You see, I like baking because it's the right mix of exact and forgiving ("accidentally" dump in too many chocolate chips? Oh well, bake it anyway!). But as soon as you put "to taste" on a recipe for actual food? I'm sunk.

I don't have a sophisticated palate (I'm not even sure how to spell it). I like plain foods and not a lot of spices. I've never developed that ability to just taste something and say "Hm, it needs some basil" or anything like that. People have tried to teach me, it doesn't stick.

So after I realized that no two egg salad recipes were going to agree on anything, you can see why it's a little crazy that I decided to just wing it. I smashed up a random number of eggs (I had boiled a whole dozen, just in case) and then added mayo and a touch of pickle juice. I don't keep mustard around, or lemon juice, and I needed something, right? It's what my mom always used in deviled eggs, I figured it would work.

You would expect, given my history, that this story would end with me having somehow created something poisonous. But it actually turned out GREAT. I had egg salad sandwiches every day for a week until I ran out. It was better tasting than the store bought stuff, and a heck of a lot cheaper.

So long story short, I'm unreasonably proud that I managed to make egg salad properly without a recipe or measuring anything. Next step - figuring out how to bake french fries instead of frying them. And buying a new blade for my food processor.

Classic Movie: Frenzy

So I somehow have not watched any even slightly new movies in the last week, though I'm going to see two new releases this weekend. Which means this week's review will be about what I did watch, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy. To be honest with you, I only ended up getting the film from Netflix because I had forgot to reorganize my queue and it made it randomly to the top. I had added it years ago when we first studied it in a film class during my time in grad school. It was a film that came up three or four times, so I had actually seen several of the pivotal moments already. Frenzy is famous for a very long tracking shot mid-way through the film, which is both technologically brilliant but also was very symbolic. I'm actually not going to tell you much about the scene, because I first saw it when I knew nothing about the film or the scene and I thought it was probably better that way. But suffice it to say that even in the full context of the film, that scene works.

I have a weird sort of relationship with Hitchcock, which probably comes as a surprise to any film students or film enthusiasts reading this. He's one of those directors that it's sacrilegious to speak against and that everyone seems to think is an infallible genius.

Sometimes, I agree with that stance. I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents on late night tv and I loved it. I love Psycho as much as everybody else and I think Rear Window is probably one of my favorite films of all time. I have a soft spot for The Birds even though I think it seems like the early equivalent of a SyFy Pictures monster movie of the week. For a movie about birds that randomly attack people for no reason, it's really well done.

But there are a few of his classics that I didn't enjoy, and I was a little worried that Frenzy would be one of them. It seems like the more filmmakers and film professors rave about a Hitchcock film, the less I actually enjoy it personally. Frenzy was definitely one that had been praised repeatedly.

Which is a lot of build up for me to explain that my personal reaction to the film was basically, "Huh, that wasn't bad." It was a very well done murder "mystery"/thriller. It's a "mystery" with quote marks because you know from very early in the film who the killer is and what's going on, which actually makes it that much better. It's a story about mistaken identity where an innocent man is being framed, and it works very well on that level.

The film shines the most with the characters, especially the supporting cast. There isn't a single forgettable person in the film, from the detective and his wife to the main suspect's boss (played by a personal favorite actor, Wilfred Mott). In fact the suspect, Richard Blaney, is probably the least interesting character in the film. It's much more fun to track the coincidences that start building a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him.

The film is a bit dated, unfortunately. I don't know that the average modern American would enjoy it. But if you enjoy classic movies at all, it's absolutely worth a rent.

I will warn that it contains a rape/murder scene that some people would find troubling. It's meant to make you uncomfortable, and it's intentionally disturbing. But not because it's overly graphic or stylized like similar scenes in modern films. I think it's possibly because it's not slick and stylized, it has a sense of realism that makes it very difficult to watch.