I'll go where you want me to go

What follows is an entry that doesn't mention Jacob (except for right here, of course).

Good news on the television front: Amy Sherman-Palladino, the guru behind the brilliance that was the Gilmore Girls, is returning to network TV this week, with a new show, The Return of Jezebel James, on Fox. The show's development has gotten off to what industry insiders are calling a rocky start but one that bodes well for viewers like me (and my friends): there have been complaints about 60 page scripts for 22 minute episodes (the norm is one page per minute). Long live the fast-talking, jam-packed, witty-beyond-reason dialogue and the heavy emphasis on narrative! In addition, this shows holds some other gems as well, not the least of which being that it stars Parker Posey...! And it's on regular cable, a bonus for me.

Admittedly, the plot of this new offering strains belief. To quote the NY Times, it's "about a motivated career woman who learns that she is unable to have a child, and turns to her estranged younger sister to carry a baby for her." (We'll forgive them their misplaced comma.) But then, GG was about an unwed former teenage mother and didn't sound too promising on paper, either. Regardless, I am, of course, giving it a shot. Though I worry: it's been relegated to Friday nights. The original order for 13 episodes was reduced to 7. It's on Fox. Problems abound, in short. So we shall see.

Also, is anyone watching NBC's Quarterlife, the former set of webisodes that have been recycled to air as full-length network TV episodes, one of the network's responses to the writers' strike? The husband saw a promo and was turned off because "it seemed too much like Thirtysomething." In other words, the husband is brilliant, since it was, in fact, created and written by the guy behind Thirtysomething, along with the guy behind My So-Called life. And the first episode really is a marriage of the two, combining Angela's angsty voiceovers (now restyled as video blog entries) and so "real" it hurts to watch vibe with Thirtysomething's camerawork and plethora of meaning-laden glances. Of course, all the female characters are too skinny by half, and everyone goes around making unrealistic comments like "are you saying I have no sexuality?" that grate on the nerves. But the narrator is somewhat compelling in that "I'm pretty sure you were my college roommate" kind of way. I'm watching it on the NBC website, turning the episodes back into webisodes...ohmigosh, it's a Web 2.0 melee! The universe is collapsing in on itself!