Haven’t written in a while here, so just to open the floodgates, here’s a quick review of two shows. One’s brand new, one’s half a season old; one’s a comedy, one’s a drama. But they’re both similar, in that they aspire to be nothing more than mash-ups of previous series, in terms of style and plot. (At least, I was going to review two shows – but I’m bailing early and just doing one.)

The Event

(NBC; returns March __)

The commercials gave the impression that this was a clever marriage of “24″ and “Lost”. After watching the first 4 episodes, I’ve realized: it’s a marriage of the worst elements of “24″ and “Lost”.

“24″ had a relentless beat, and, in its best moments, was an adrenaline-filled roller-coaster. It could get away with amazing action sequences that defied logic, and consequences, since the entire TV season took place during one day. “The Event” has bad guys killing a half-dozen agents in an FBI office, but (at least by episode 5), there are absolutely no repercussions of that act. A plane load of people go missing, but apparently there’s no outcry from the passengers’ relatives and friends when they don’t arrive at their destination. (Okay, they eventually touched on that in a later episode.) It’s hard to willingly suspend our disbelief for the sci-fi elements of this series when it can’t even properly react to ‘real-world’ events like shootings and kidnappings.

“Lost” started in a fairly grounded reality, if a spectacular one: a plane has crashed on an island. Some have survived, others haven’t. The producers wisely only introduced the mythological elements after establishing a reality for the characters. “The Event”, perhaps sensing that it won’t ever have the luxury of six seasons to build its mythology, is throwing everything it has against the wall: there are aliens,  disappearing airplanes, and mysterious diseases that can be fixed with simple injections. It’s Sci-Fi that looks more like CSI.

Another element borrowed from “Lost” is the jumps in the chronological narrative. Just when something interesting is about to happen, it seems, there’s a jump to another time frame for a mini flash back. I swear I even heard a similar rumble that accompanied the Flash forwards and backwards in “Lost”. While it worked in “Lost”, here it seems like a storytelling crutch.

All told, “The Event” is just grabbing some familiar elements of both “24″ and “Lost”, but without the dramatic rigeur both those shows were (usually) able to offer. As a result, the show feels like a repeat the first time you see it. (I can’t picture anyone willingly watching this a second time.)

The re-tread feel isn’t helped by the casting, which features well-known faces coming close to reprising their previous roles.  Blair Underwood, from  “L.A. Law”, is pitted against Laura Innes, formerly of “E.R.”  Often, when the two are on-screen,  I can’t help but feel I’m watching a special cross-over episode of the two shows, and Dr. Kerri Weaver is calmly discussing a case with her lawyer Jonathan Rollins. Or maybe it’s just me that thinks this is NBC’s way to desperately remind people, “Hey! We used to own Thursdays  at 10 PM!”

Other great  actors are on-board, like Bill Smitrovich,  Zeljko Ivanek, and Hal Holbrook. (Hal Holbrook!!) Unfortunately, not one of them has a real character to play – each only serves to advance the plot, and deliver expository dialogue between action sequences. Their roles are so similiar to what they’ve done before, in “24″, “Lost”, or “The West Wing”, that it seems the producers of “The Event” are just cutting and pasting situations from previous series, and bringing the same actors along for the ride. Or maybe hiring actors to recreate their similar roles is easier than hunting through a bunch of new headshots.

And speaking of characters – it’s hard to feel any affinity for any of the characters here. By the third episode, I didn’t really care if the main character was reunited with his missing finance or not.

“The Event”, like “”No Ordinary Family” and other sci-fi series, asks us to suspend our disbelief. Ironically, that’s sometimes harder to do when the setting is based on reality rather than a obvious ‘out-there’ sci-fi scenario. Yes, I’ll believe a starship the size of a small city can travel faster than light – but I can’t believe dozens of cops and FBI agents can be murdered and no one raises the alarm. (Nor can I believe the President would jet around the country to stare stoically at a secret plane crash site with 200 dead bodies.) That tightrope suspension of disbelief for the sci-fi elements of a series is undermined when it can’t get “real-world” things right.  (As an aside – that’s why I gave up on “No Ordinary Family” after three episodes. Drama is conflict, I know – but unmotivated conflict equals melodrama. On “Family”, the newly-genius son was still being accused of cheating in school long afterward he got his “powers”. It ain’t hard to tell the difference between a kid cheating, or a kid who really knows how to do advanced math.)

So, why am I still watching? Well, I was going to add this show, plus “Chase” and “No Ordinary Family” to my viewing this year. I’ve explained above why I’ve ditched “Family”, and “Chase” lost me in the first episode during a ridiculous shoot-out. So, since I’m not watching those two, I thought I’d at least watch “Event” limp to the finish line. And somehow, the advanced notice of its cancellation also helped me watch it: somehow, it seems easier to justify my time with “The Event” because I know it’s ending. Had it been renewed, I would have ditched this a long time ago. And now, I wish I had.

I love this time of night, when the relative silence of the streets is broken by the regular roar of dragsters ripping down Merivale Road. If I were to drive over to the Zellers’ parking lot, I’d see bikes and old cars, many with their hoods up, their owners chatting with each other about their passion. Some will race off; most will drive carefully, quietly, content in the knowledge that their machine can run circles around most other vehicles on the road.

For me, safe in my house, it’s an audible reminder that there’s another world just three blocks away. I wonder if the noise from their accelerations make it into my sons’ dreams.

The night is mine. My sons are sleeping, peacefully. My wife is out, enjoying a well-deserved celebratory dinner for students she has supervised in the past year. They graduate tomorrow, and I’m reminded of her own grad dinner, five years ago. Funny how it seems mountains have been raised and fallen in that time. We’ve lived through so much, suffered through so much. She has accomplished a lot; I don’t know if I have. And so I sit, wondering if tonight is a night where I’ll reach forward and grasp some accomplishment, some creative task, or if I’ll slip back and let procrastination and melancholy overwhelm.

Random thoughts during this year’s Oscars telecast – most taken using Dragon Dictation on the iPod: (If I had my Twitter account on the go, I’d use that…)

• The Kirk Douglas animatronic robot is amazingly lifelike.
• The sound of heckling – doesn’t happen often, but I’m hearing it on occasion – really comes through clearly on the surround sound speakers.
• It seems to me that the audience is very subdued. In many instances, it seems they’re not responding at all.
• It’s a little frightening that Randy Newman sounds so close to the parodies of always done on “Family Guy”and “The Simpsons.”
• Obama? On the Oscars? Really??
• James Franco looks as if he doesn’t know where he is.
• Zachary Levi is singing at the Oscars! Chuck  fans must be estastic.
• Is that Adrian Brody on that Stella Artois commercial?
• Who thought it was a good like to have the head of ABC actually on camera ? Who really cares where the Oscars are going to be broadcast for the next nine years?
• Hate to say it, but Anne Hathaway is winning me over with her enthusiasm.

 

Selected words of wisdom from my three year old:

 

I was trying to sneak out of bedtime story reading, to join an evening outing already in progress. I helped Joshua get ready for bed, doing the bathroom thing, but I said that Maman would read him a story tonight, not me.

“I want you to read it,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Daddy has to go out,” I said.

He fixed me with a cold stare. “Well, I guess you don’t want to be the best daddy in the whole wild world, then.”  Ouch!

The three weeks since our sons were born have gone by in a blur. But random moments keep coming to mind, burned into my memory like lightning flashes. So, some random and not-so-random thoughts, organized by week.

The Birth Day

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Exactly three weeks ago today – on June 28th, at 9:03 and 9:05 PM – our twin boys Jacob and Jeremy were born. Jacob, now just over three pounds, is doing exactly what he should be doing: lying in the special care ward of the hospital, getting bigger. (Yesterday he grew only 1 gram, but overall he’s doing great.)

Jeremy didn’t make it. We spent two wonderful hours with him, holding him and singing to him and hugging him, before he died in my arms at 11:05 PM. The doctor confirmed his death a few minutes later. We had him baptised; we took pictures; we heard him cry, ever so briefly, ever so softly. With us for minutes, then gone in minutes.

We made it by on auto-pilot that first week; my wife in extreme pain, but still up every three hours to pump milk for our surviving fighter. Somehow we organized Jeremy’s arrangements – his cremation, his funeral, his burial. In a flash, in a blur, in a split second we were at his funeral, then making smalltalk over egg salad sandwiches and beer.

One week-long marathon completed, the next began. We then spent the second week re-learning what it took to be at a newborn’s hospital bedside as often as you can be. Only this time, we had our first preemie baby to look after as well: our son Joshua, almost three years and worlds away from his time as a four-pound kicker in the same hospital ward. That second week also flew by; little chance to breathe, let alone grieve. Life continued.

But on Friday of that week – 5 days after Jeremy’s funeral, two days before my scheduled return to work – I was sitting on our couch, resting. We were enjoying a 25 minute respite, between the running around just completed and that which was to come, desperately trying to find some strength. We were both exhausted, both several weeks removed from our last truly restful night’s sleep. I felt seven steps outside of my own body, as if watching a poor image of myself on a movie screen. I was realizing that this feeling of emptiness, of despair, of…. such sadness wasn’t going away. It wasn’t getting better with time. It had moved in, and seemed to be a physical presence next to me, seated on the couch like an interloper who had nowhere else to go. Move over, buddy… Make room, ’cause I’m not goin’ anywhere.

Every few hours since Jeremy’s death — sometimes twice an hour, sometimes just a few times a day – I  felt as if someone came up to me and pounded me in the gut. As if a horse was kicking me in the stomach, violently, suddenly. It would leave me, sometimes, literally gasping for breath – an actual physical pain. Like a sudden drop of a roller coaster, that keeps falling and falling until it reaches the bottom with a bone-jarring thud. I had made it through to that point, 12 days after Jeremy’s death, knowing that it would get better. Certain that each day would be, if nothing else, a little less worse than the one before it.

But that Friday, on that couch, I realized it wasn’t getting better. It wasn’t going away, not slowly, not at all. I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and hide, hide, hide away until the pain and the sadness disappeared.

I need to tell this story. I need to share that Jeremy meant something, that he was alive, that he existed.

I started this blog as a project to help me write, as often as I could. It’s fallen into limbo, as has my other blog, which was a more random and personal soapbox.

I’m compelled to write on a personal level right now, something beyond the Twitter-esque banalities of Facebook. I’m plopping it down here, instead of starting yet another page.

My wife and I are 24 weeks, 4 days into her second pregnancy. She’s carrying twins – a boy who is big and fond of karate kicks, and growing as he should. His wombmate is having a harder time, and may not make it. After 7 ultrasounds, this Baby “B” is still shy, and hasn’t revealed if it’s a boy or a girl.

I won’t dignify this emotional journey of highs and lows as a “roller-coaster” – that’s a cliché, and I avoid clichés like the plague. On a roller-coaster, you know where you’ll eventually end up. Not so for us: we don’t know how many kids we’ll have come Father’s Day. We avoid making plans for Friday nights because we don’t know if we’ll be celebrating or mourning. It’s a bizarre, draining experience, where hope is given and snatched away on a weekly basis. If I don’t express this stuff, I’ll explode.

I’m writing this for me, as an spigot for all this emotional energy. I’m writing for my friends, who want to know more than just the one line weekly medical updates. And I’m writing for our babies, the two lives that have been inside my wife for 6 months. We were told last week that Baby B only had a 50/50 chance of lasting the week, and a 25% chance of lasting the month; we were told 3 weeks ago that we might lose both kids. If they don’t make it through this journey, I need to have something that acknowledges they existed, that they were part of our lives: that they mattered.

I have a multitude of (almost) worthy excuses not to write tonight. But I’m here anyway. Realistically, I’m not going to be averaging an hour a day on this project anytime soon. I’ll aim for 30 minutes of good, clean, distraction-free writing a day – maybe 5 hours a week.

So I’m searching for something to write, and it feels like a blog day. My other blog has been in drydock for a least a year, so perhaps it’s time to work on my sitcom idea.

I realize that this project has barely advanced in the months I’ve been away from this blog. I’ve made some progress on my notes for the plots of the 13 episodes that would form the first season, and I’ve firmed up some dialogue, but other than those notes, this project is still at the same stage as what I wrote back last August:

I’ve been working on a TV show concept for a few years, and I think I’m quite happy with what I’ve come up with. It ain’t finished yet – in my dreams I had hoped to shoot it in July 2008 and edit it in August, but the whole fatherhood thing has interfered. I’m working on a pilot script (now 50% finished), a show bible, synopses of a first season of 13 episodes, and a rather extensive backstory for some of the characters. If I won the lottery, this is the project I’d put at the top of my list to work on.

CURRENT STATUS: Since I have a detailed Story Treatment for the pilot, I think I could likely complete that with 25 hours of work or less. The synopses of the remaining 12 episodes of the season would likely take much more time, even though they’re in decent shape.

PROSPECTS: My back-of-mind plan was to shoot the pilot and use it to sell the concept to the Comedy Network. I think they’d love it.

I did talk to the guy who I’d like to direct the pilot episode, and I did attend a 5 day course on Series Writings at last year’s Summer Institute of Film & Television. This sitcom was the project I brought to the table. I thought that folks would be so impressed that they’d try to steal the idea. Instead, the instructor was, shall we say, lukewarm to the concept. The other students were supportive — but I don’t think the story lit their fires.

Truth be told, part of this Blogus Ressurectus is due to those students: now at the 6-month mark from our course, some of them have written with updates on where their projects stand. Great progress from them; for me, not so much.

I think I’ll get some collaborative writing in this weekend, when My Friend the Comic (MFTC) comes to visit. She has an upcoming spot on a radio show, and we’ve often worked on her material together. If I get a joke or two into her appearance, I’m happy. Other than that – I think I’m going to plunge into my sitcom work again.

Small note of pride: I was looking for excuses on how to ‘re-purpose’ some of my other things I had to do tonight into fitting into the ‘writing’ category, to give myself a free pass today. But I resisted the urge. Momentum maintained.

Okay, I’m in.

“Writing 365 Days a Year – Take Two.”

I’ve realized that I need this project to keep my writing streak and creativity alive. What better day to have this Epiphany than January 6th?

But I’ll make a minor change to my Declaration of Principles: While the focus will be on writing – either in this blog, another blog, or advancing my other writing projects – I’ll also accept “performing” as a daily activity, since it’s another creative outlet.

Why is it important to declare your principles on Day One?

Mr. Kane is advised not to make promises he can’t keep — but sometimes, ya need to bite off more than you can chew.

Merry Christmas!

September 10, 2008. That was my previous entry here.

Wow.

For a site with a self-imposed expiry date of a year, that’s a pretty significant gap.

I can blame a multitude of factors, for my failure to write as committed “every day for a year”: computer troubles; fatherhood;  a very demanding work schedule; buying and renovating a house; and more recently, a 6-week bout with H1N1, followed by a fall that cracked two ribs and “slightly lacerated” my spleen. But really, I’ve dropped the ball, and only the act of reconsidering past New Years’ Resolutions has made me pick it up.

I started this blog, partly to experiment with WordPress (it’s great), but mostly to motivate myself to create the habit of writing every day. My son was approaching his first birthday, I was about to return to work after 5 months of parental leave, and I wanted to ensure I’d be still be challenged creatively when I returned to my job. My work ended up being much more challenging than anticipated, and on my list of growing priorities, “writing” drifted downwards and downwards, into near oblivion.

I’ve just re-read the 14 previous posts on this blog,  describing my 33-out-of-35 day stretch of writing success. I feel simultaneously inspired, and disappointed, for obvious reasons.

I don’t know if I can resurrect my commitment to write every day for a year, but I’m considering it.

UPDATE:

I was looking for a YouTube clip from The West Wing. In a first season episode, President Bartlett talks about kids coming to a wall none of them could conceivably climb. They throw their hats over, and have no choice but to follow. Couldn’t find that clip — but I did find this glorious moment from the late John Spencer, as he accepted his Emmy for his role of Leo McGarry:

He’s talking about Acting – but the same can be said for some people for Writing:

“I’ve never wanted to do anything other than acting.
It saved my life. It’s the reason I get up in the morning. It’s my opiate….
This (Emmy), my friends,  is deliciously redundant.”

Time for me, I think, to stick my hands in my pockets, look away, and smile.

Because if I’ve found what I love to do — writing, creating, inspiring, contributing in some way — but I don’t follow through? Then God, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.