The Good Wife Review: Stripped

E:I didn’t sleep with everyone, he says.

I don’t understand why you can’t just forgive me and get it over with.

Perhaps it’s just to soon for Alicia Florrick to forgive her husband.  Perhaps it’s because when she steels herself to ask just what it was he did, he won’t tell her.  Perhaps it’s because – in flagrant disregard of the Alexis Castle rule of apologies – nothing about Peter Florrick looks or sounds truly apologetic. He just wants to get on with his life and pretend it never happened. Even in prison, the man is loose and relaxed and in control, while Alicia coils inward with rage and tension.  Isn’t that part of an old Howard Jones song – you can feel the punishment but you can’t commit the sin?  Alicia looks like the one with the guilty conscience.  Call me old fashioned, call me Victorian, call me Catholic; you’d be (mostly) right.  I believe marriage ought to be forever.  I feel like I ought to admire her more for staying.  But I also don’t know how you get past this one.

And perhaps that’s because where ever she goes, there are the photos and the videos she can’t bring herself to watch; the hands that touched her, that held their children, now touching those other women, reaching back and poisoning her past.  The images haunt her dreams. They’re sent to her by nasty little coworkers.  They’re slipped under her door by oily power brokers eager to prove that she owes them something for their kind forbearance.

The Ground Floor Effect

M: The other day I was watching the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory, and the theme song came on.  I was watching it live, which I rarely do now that I have DVR, so I couldn’t fast forward through it.  Of course, I quickly remembered that one of my favorite bands, Barenaked Ladies, does the theme song for that show.  Every time I hear them I smile a bit more than I do with other bands, even bands that I like as much or more than BNL.  Why, you might ask?  Because I was a fan before they made it.  I was in on the ground floor.  That little extra bounce that I get when hearing them, I’m dubbing it The Ground Floor Effect.

For some history, back around ’94, several years before BNL made it big in the US, and even a year or two before they became local favorites in Boston, I heard the song Jane, and loved it, so I decided to try to find out more about them.  With the help of my friend Miller (whose name isn’t actually Miller), I found their first studio album, Gordon, and I was hooked.  (C: You could have asked me.  I had discovered them by then too, and saw them perform a total of 5 times in high school! It helped that most of the shows were free. E: Oh, right, because that had nothing to do with us liking them.  Uhuhn.)  Goofy, irreverent, musically interesting, hilarious and just downright fun.  Crazy lyrics, rants in the middle of songs about things like macaroni and cheese, sound effects like the ones Ferris Bueller’s keyboard made, and some really good ballads and surprisingly good musical ability.  What wasn’t to like?  But at the time, it seemed like no one knew of them.  I, however, was all in.

E TV: Project Runway, Models of the Runway, and the premiere of Grey’s Anatomy

E: In other words, welcome to the girly shows that only I go for. 🙂  Rife with Spoilers, so please, make the jump at your own risk.

Castle Review: “The Double Down”

C: The episode 2 of the second season of Castle aired tonight, and a good time was had by all.  Well, except the show’s hairdressers, who have probably already begun receiving threatening mail.  Seriously: it isn’t bad enough that Beckett’s hair looks as much like a mullet as a hairdo that is not a mullet could – they have to give Castle’s mom an atrocious new ‘do as well? (E: It was heinous, wasn’t it?  Way worse than Beckett’s hair, even.)

Now on to some non-coiffure-related commentary on the episode…

Fringe Primer

M: One of our good friends submitted a formal request for us to review Fringe, and since we here at Relatively Entertaining are nothing if not accommodating, we will oblige. However, since season two is just starting up, we figured we do it as a review, but also as a primer for those who may have missed all or parts of season one.

WARNING! If you haven’t watched and don’t want spoilers, DO NOT READ THIS POST! However, I recommend that you read E’s Harry Potter fan fic post, since we don’t want you to leave without being entertained.  As another warning, this will be long!