What if No One's Watching?

So I haven't been here for a while, and in reality, I'm not going to be here for a while longer. I really love blogging, and I really miss blogging, but pregnancy has ended up far more difficult than I ever could have expected. I have hyperemesis gravidarum, which basically just means relentless nausea, and am having a really hard time doing anything beyond the most basic things necessary to keep myself together and employed.

I hope to get back to blogging before this pregnancy is over, but at this point I can give no guarantees. I'll miss you all. Be well.

So, clearly I am a very bad blogger lately. I even wrote half of my Sons of Anarchy post last week and then never finished or posted it. But there is a reason. For once, I have a pretty viable excuse.

I'm pregnant, ya'll. 8 weeks. Due June 26.

And it's bad. So sick, so exhausted, so unable to do anything beyond the bare minimum to keep life and limb together. I'll get back to blogging--I have tons of things I want to write about--but posts are probably going to continue to be sparse until I get a bit more energy.

And yeah, I'll totally post pictures of my enormous belly, as soon as I get one. Promise.

Sorry posts have been so sparse here lately, folks. I'll be explaining why shortly. In the meantime, our Lost Crates winner is:

Kristen | October 31, 2011 10:49 AM | Reply I'm addicted to moleskine and field notes books. And any fine tipped pen that doesn't bleed.

Congratulations, Kristen!

Forgive my lateness, I didn't end up watching this week's SoA when it aired live (first time for that this year!) and couldn't get to it until today.

To begin at the beginning, I didn't love this episode. It was, I thought, the most uneven episode of this season. And the preview for what is going to happen in then next episode has me scratching my head. Sons of Anarchy already had a mistaken-identity-wrong-place-wrong-time-too-late-to-call-off-the-hit story arc. That can't really be what is going to happen again, can it?

But there is no use guessing about that--we'll see next week. Let's focus on this week. My gripe with the episode was mostly about pacing. I just never felt like it hit its groove. Although some of the individual scenes were spectacular (which I'll say more about in a minute), the transitions didn't work very well for me. These are fairly minor complaints, and they're things I likely wouldn't have even noticed in a show that wasn't having such a completely phenomenal season.

So on to the good. And Theo Rossi's Juice is very, very good. He's been getting better and better all season, but this week's scene, in which he attacks Roosevelt after he gets a glimpse at the RICO war room and realizes just how deep in he, and the Club, are, was absolutely stellar. In the first three seasons, I underestimated both Juice as a character and Rossi as an actor. There is way more there than I thought. My fear, though, is now that I love them both, this his going to be Juice's last season.

This week's episode was also a really good one for Gemma. For me, Gemma was the initial draw of the show, and that hasn't changed, but she's played a bit of a secondary role to a lot of the other action this season. Not so this week. The early scene between her and Unser was so powerful--watching Gemma cycle through fear and sadness and resignation and manipulation so quickly, it would come off as cluttered or unrealistic if it weren't so damn well-written and well-acted. The kiss at the end of the scene, once Unser has agreed to do what Gemma asks, against his better judgement, yet again, was perfect. I may have been blind, but I didn't realize until this season what the nature of Unser's feelings for Gemma are, and his role makes so much sense now that it's clear that he's in love with her, and that she knows it, and uses it.

I also really dug the juxtaposition of Gemma's scene with Unser and Gemma's scene with Clay. I am not completely sure how much Gemma trusts Clay, or how much of what she says to him is true. At this point, of course, I want it to be lies--I want Gemma to be aware of what Clay is doing, and to stop him. But I don't think that's the course that is being laid out, and it makes the part of her feelings for him which appears to be real so much more heartbreaking (the thing about him being the only truth she can find made me want to cry). At any rate, the whole thing left me wondering how much it takes to turn Gemma against Clay. She seemed to shake Piney's murder off so easily, maybe she could live with Tara's as well?

But Jax couldn't. I started to like Jax again in this episode, just a little bit. He showed real backbone in the confrontation with Galindo's guys and LeRoy's crew, and for one of the first times this season he acted like he gave a damn about anybody but himself. The discussion between Jax and Bobby, wherein Bobby wisely points out that Jax is never going to be able to live outside the Club, was a great little scene. Later, though, Jax returned to completely irritating me. His "I'm out, babe," conversation with Tara was so completely transparent that Abel could have seen through it, and I just don't buy that level of self-deception from either of them, being as both characters are supposed to be bright. They make me anxious for them, even though I can't see a way they won't both survive.

I read something recently about how this season will basically burn the Club to the ground, and then in Season 5 it will have to begin to rebuild. I've been wondering what that means. Obviously, Sutter has decided to do a lot of things now that many show creators wouldn't dream of before their final year. This isn't his final year, though, so he must have a plan. I've tried to think of other shows that have done something similar, basically ending and re-starting midway through, but I'm coming up blank. Anybody have an example?

In the past, I've written about my feelings on the Duggar family. These posts have been some of the more heavily visited and contentious posts I've made on this blog--lots of people agreed with my Duggar critique, and lots of people were horrified by it. Though the posts are years old, I still get occasional Duggar defenders commenting.

Recently, I've lost my interest in peering in on the TLC-version of the life and times of the Duggar family. I can't exactly say why--my criticisms of them are only more true as another generation begins (Josh and Anna have two kids now!) and the girls get older and seem all the more controlled by their father and their faith. Maybe I've just given up? Maybe it's too sad for me these days? Either way, 101 Kids and Counting isn't on my DVR anymore.

But I haven't completely reformed. There is a new "family of faith" I can't pull myself away from, again courtesy of an attention-seeking man and TLC. The Browns, of Sister Wives. Like the Duggars, the Browns have a ton of kids (17, I believe). But the kids are spread between Cody Brown's four wives. The Browns are fundamentalist Mormons, the polygamist kind. They are, more or less, the real-life equivalent of the HBO's polygamist cash cow, Big Love's Hendricksons. With more kids and slightly less drama. And I sort of adore them.

Well, let's back up on that. As was the case, oddly, with Big Love, I sort of adore the women. The dude in the middle? Him I could live without. I have no idea how much of it is reality and how of it is the spin TLC chooses for the show, but the more watch, the more I don't understand how Cody Brown could attract and keep even one of these women, much less all four. Obviously, their lives and views and priorities are worlds away from mine, but I find it hard not to get a kick out of the four Brown women. As I think I said at one point about their fictionalized counterparts on Big Love, there seems to be a real female friendship between them, a strong bond that their obvious issues with jealousy and competitiveness can't break. I like watching that. And, mostly, I like how they treat each other.

Meri, Cody's first wife, is my favorite. She strikes me as someone with a backbone, a soul, and a good sense of ridiculous humor. The whole lifestyle seems to be the hardest on her, not least because she has only been able to have one child. More so than the others, Meri is honest with the camera about her jealousy and other issues. That strikes me as exceptionally brave, in her situation. I can't really guess why these folks have agreed to have their lives put under the nationally televised microscope, but of all of them, Meri strikes me as the most real about what she is saying while she's on the big stage. I like that.

Cody's second wife, Janelle, I love for her pragmatism. Cody is basically a huge, overgrown child, and though I believe his wives are technically all supposed to defer to him, Janelle seems to be the most apt at keeping him in line. Janelle worries about money (which is an odd issue in the show, as the Browns seem to both have plenty of it and never enough, and there isn't a good indication of where it's coming from). She is concerned about logistics. She doesn't suffer fools lightly. Janelle also seems to be the least jealous or competitive of the four women--she has her own thing to do and she mostly just does it. For Janelle, more than the others, I see the benefit of this lifestyle--it seems almost like a (stunted, but still) attempt at cooperative living, more than a multi-marriage. I can kind of see the appeal to that, especially for a woman who very much wants to work and have a lot of kids.

It took me a while to warm up to Christine, Cody's third wife. At first, she seemed to be the most like what you'd think of as a stereotypical polygamist wife. She's very traditionally feminine, her focus almost completely Cody and the kids, and seemed to defer to everyone else way too much. As time has progressed, though, Christine has grown on me. For one thing, it seems that she, more than the others, has a good grasp of the actual biblical basis for the lifestyle she's chosen. While I'm not particularly interested in it myself, I have to respect her for making the connection, especially when it seems largely lost on everybody else (including and especially Cody). Christine is also blessed with the gift of enthusiasm--whenever there is an event or occasion on the show, all the way down to going to Meri's gym for a weigh-in and personal trainer session (the last episode I saw), Christine is raring to go. I kind of like that.

Finally, there's Robyn. Robyn is Cody's most recent wife. They've been married...a couple of years, maybe? She just had their first child, though she brought three with her, from her first marriage. At first, I very much disliked Robyn. She seemed like the hot new home wrecker, messing up a system between Meri, Janelle, and Christine that seemed to be working just fine. She's grown on me, too, though. I have realized that most of the issues I had with Robyn are issues with Cody--the way he handled their "courtship" was infantile. Robyn herself, though, seems more and more to be sensitive to the feelings of her sister wives, and to really care about the family she's joined. A few episodes ago, she told Meri about her pregnancy before she told anybody else, hurting for Meri's hurt even while experiencing her own joy and excitement. I thought that was really nice.

So why am I telling you all this? Because I want to be clear that I actually like these women before I criticize their show. My critique of their way of life is only half-hearted: I don't really give a damn about plural marriage one way or the other, and they seem to be doing OK by their kids (at least for the most part). All of them have said that they don't expect their kids to necessarily choose their faith or lifestyle, and if that's true, then I'm OK with that. What bugs is agreeing to do the show, which pries into them and has to be really tough on the collective offspring. I wonder if they were consulted, you know? When Dad decided to turn their alternative family arrangement into a publicity stunt, did they get a vote? That critique is not Brown-specific, obviously--I wonder it about all of these types of shows. The difference with the Browns is that they already had teenage children when they started out on TV. Their younger kids may grown up reality stars, like Kate Gosselin's offspring and the Duggars, but the elder ones? They got shoved into this at a pretty darn sensitive point. And they don't seem to be dealing with it all that well. The kids aren't interviewed all that much on the show, but when they are, my heart always goes out to the older ones, who seem to be surviving, but not at all happy with what their lives have become.

Of course, I realize my criticism is ill-founded, given that I continue to watch these people's lives like some kind of peeping Tom. I can justify it by saying that they choose to be on TV and that they want this attention, but really, it's still pretty crappy. Were I a better person, I'd shake the habit of reality shows entirely and devote myself full-time to fiction, where there is no question about whether or not my watching is what they people on the screen are hoping for. Until I reach that level of enlightenment, though, it's nice to be watching something with so many women I actually like.