Manchester, Parents, Token Friends, and Reviving TV Shows

1. Saw that the top Twitter trends for Australia involve some kind of sports thing.

I just looked and saw that it's a football game involving a team from Manchester, UK.

Manchester is where Coronation Street takes place. 

I think it's also where JK Rowling was headed when Harry Potter popped into her brain.  

2. Consulted Lord Wiki and learned Rowling was traveling FROM Manchester not to Manchester.

3. Saw that Australians are also Tweeting about Watford, the opposing team. 

They're also still talking about Mali.

4. Wanted to mention that Australians are probably talking about a zillion different things on Twitter. The trending topics are just the most common ones.  

5. Saw that The United States is also talking about the game. That kind of surprises me. I don't think of Americans as being into that type of football.

It's ignorant of me to think that, though, because while we were in NYC, we saw people very excited about international football games.  

6. Saw that even MY city is talking about the game.

Wow.  I guess it's a huge deal.

7.  Decided that sports, music, movies, and politics are the most common trending topics on Twitter.

8. Started watching an episode of The Secret Life of Us.

It might be interesting.  Based on Kelly's (Deborah Mailman) voice-over, it seems to be about judging people. 

My opinion about judging people: I think it's normal and fine to form opinions about people. What's not okay is to come down with an absolute verdict.

Because we can end up being very wrong.

9. Thought about how we can live out our whole lives and never learn that we were wrong.

10. Disagreed with Justin's (Sullivan Stapleton) sentiments against the term "the right people". 

Well, I understand why he doesn't like it. In this context, it's his dad (Barry Quinn) trying to push him into a certain lifestyle. 

It can definitely be a snobby term.

But it can also be simply practical.

There are people who are right and wrong for certain situations.  

If you want a job in the film industry, the guy working at the dry cleaner, who has no ties to the industry, is not likely to be the right person to help you find that job.  

If someone is looking for a drinking partner who likes to go clubbing, I am not the right person for them.  At least not for that situation.  

11. Saw that Justin has a horrible father. He actually called up the places where Justin interviewed for a job—places where Justin wanted to work. I'm not sure if his father sought information about Justin's chances of getting the job...or if he actually pressured the places not to hire Justin.

Either way, it's extremely controlling.

12. Didn't blame Nikki (Anna Torv) for being upset about her new man, Rob (Ben Mendelsohn), and Lucy (Alexandra Schepisi) spending the whole day together and majorly bonding. 

No, nothing sexual happened.

But if two people seem to be getting along so incredibly well; there's a question of why aren't they the ones together romantically? If it's not happening today, might it happen tomorrow or next week?

I think sometimes the two just-friends are meant to be together; and that's fine. I wouldn't think they're awful people if they got together. What bothers me is the expectation that we shouldn't be jealous or feel threatened.  Or the idea that, it's okay if they go on walks together; share a hobby, have long texting conversations, cook together, go see movies together, tell each other almost everything, etc...AS LONG as they don't have sex.  

13. Saw a conflict between Kelly and Justin and felt Kelly was in the wrong.

Justin has been invited to see his dad speak at some snooty event. Kelly knows Justin doesn't like his dad. She offers to come with him for moral support.

At the event, Kelly is charmed by Justin's father, and questions Justin's dislike of his father.  I thought that was unsupportive of her. If someone doesn't like a relative; who are we to judge their judgement—especially if we just met the disliked relative five minutes ago.

After the dad does his speech, Justin attacks his father about moral issues. That was rude and unfair of him. So I'm not on his side there. But then he lashes out at his father about his father's stance on Aboriginal issues. He wanted Kelly to know that although his father is charming to her, in reality he's a racist.

Kelly then gets angry with Justin and storms out. When he catches up to her, she tells him she's not going to be his token Aboriginal friend just so he can piss off his father.

That would be a fair argument if Justin had invited Kelly to go with him. But she's the one who suggested that she go to this event.

If Justin really was friends with Kelly just so he could piss off his father; wouldn't he have introduced them to each other a long time ago?

14. Concluded that Justin treated his father unfairly, but he didn't do anything wrong in terms of Kelly.

As for his father, he shouldn't have publicly embarrassed him at the event. He could have shared his grievances with Kelly, about his dad being a racist, privately.  If he really wanted to confront his father, that should have been done privately as well.

14. Looked at the episodes I have left of The Secret Life of Us and saw the last two seem to be tribute/clip show episodes.

I wonder if they're worth watching, or not.

Maybe I'll try watching one, and if I like it, I'll continue with it. 

15. Learned from Lord Wiki that the last season of The Secret Life of Us not only got a new cast but also a new writing team and new producer.

He says the season got bad ratings; and that the show was discontinued for awhile.  Then they came back a few months later.

I just looked at the airdates; and now I can see it for myself.  

The twelfth episode aired in March 2005.  Then there's a hiatus until November 2005. I think that's when they suddenly brought in the roommate for Stu (Stephen Curry).  

16. Wanted to say that I actually don't think the fourth season is bad at all. I think the writing and acting are fine.  The characters are interesting to me; and I like the storylines.

However, I think it's ridiculous that they tried to continue the show when almost everyone in the cast had left.

Why not just create a whole new show?

Or since they were still blessed to have Deborah Mailman, how about present it as a spin-off? They could have had her move somewhere new. How about instead of having Justin move into her old apartment, have her move into Justin's apartment building?  Then all the new people could have been living there.

I think it was a big mistake to try to continue the show in the same building, in the same neighbourhood, with the same bar.  Seeing all that just reminds the viewer of all the people they've lost.  

17. Felt guilty, because my plan didn't include (Simon) David Tredinnick.  He's the other one, besides Mailman, that stuck around.

Maybe he could have moved in with Kelly and Justin.

Or he could be a recurring guest star.  He and Kelly would still be friends; so he could come to visit.  

18. Thought another good idea would be to do a spin-off about Simon. He's kind of a background character on the show; so it might be fun to see him as a central character.  

19. Thought that now since time has passed; it would be cool to have a revival of The Secret Life of Us.

With the passage of time (ten years) I think it would be fun to have a whole new cast in the same building in St. Kilda.

I wouldn't have any of the old characters, EXCEPT maybe Simon. He could still work at the bar.

Some of the actors could maybe do brief cameo, but nothing corny like Alex (Claudia Karvan) returning to the building to visit her past.  

It could be fun stuff like someone getting injured; they go to the emergency room, and Alex is their doctor.

Or someone could read a book, and then we see it's written by Evan Wylde.   

Maybe Richie (Spencer McLaren) would become a movie star; and one of the new cast members would have a movie poster, featuring him, hanging on the wall.

20. Thought having a revival of a show a decade later is much different than trying to rescue a show that's in the process of dying.  

21. Disturbed by something I read on Boundless, an educational website we've been using.  

In their section on Art of the Middle Kingdom, they say,  Chinese art has arguably the oldest continuous tradition in the world, and is marked by an unusual degree of continuity within, and consciousness of, that tradition, lacking an equivalent to the Western collapse and gradual recovery of classical styles.  

Wouldn't Aboriginal Australians have the oldest continuous tradition? Or is the website talking about art only? In that case, maybe Aboriginal Australians are no longer painting on walls; so it wouldn't count.

Have they stopped all the wall painting art?  I'm not sure?

Even if they now mostly paint on paper and canvas; if they paint similar type paintings; wouldn't it still count as continuous?

22. Saw that the website also has a section on Australian art; and here they say, 

Aboriginal rock art can be traced back at least 30,000 years, and is one of the longest continuously practiced artistic traditions in the world.  

Either they contradicted themselves; or I'm missing something.

23. Started watching an episode of Farscape.

24. Saw that this is another split-cast episode.

It's like the prison-Woodbury season of The Walking Dead but with Rick Grimes being cloned, so he could be with both casts.

25.  Thought of that other season of The Walking Dead—where the cast was split into five or so different groups.  It would have been funny if each group had a Rick Grimes clone.

26. Saw that both The Secret Life of Us episode and Farscape episode have very dramatic parent-offspring fights.

In The Secret Life of Us, it was a battle of words. On Farscape, it's physical...violent.

27. Saw that the director of this episode is Peter Andrikidis. He's Australian; and he also directed the miniseries Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms.

Well, really, that's one of many things he's directed. He's had a pretty prolific career.

28. Finished watching the episode.

It was pretty sad.


Read my novel: The Dead are Online