Author / Nerdy Spice

Unknown's avatar

Posts by Nerdy Spice

http://advers.io Formerly "kht" I grew up playing Disney-movie-based games with my baby sister. I majored in English in college, got a graduate degree in creative writing, and then found myself earning a living as a software engineer. I'm working on my second novel and querying agents for my first. I eats home-cooked meals only when my husband Keets makes them for me, and he is still trying to teach me how to turn on the oven. Interests: Victorian novels, modern MFA novels and I'm not ashamed of it, super-long novels that aren’t by David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Claire Messud, Henry James, feminism, movies with Robert Downey Jr. in them, TV shows with Connie Britton in them, Pacey Witter, 90s teenybopper movies with training montages, The Good Wife, Homeland, Tina Fey’s entire oeuvre, Mindy Kaling’s entire oeuvre, shows from the WB/CW circa 2004, and JJ Abrams.
by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×21 “Maybe You’ll Appreciate Me Someday”

­­­­­

Previously on Nashville: EVERYTHING. Gunnar made out with Autumn and Autumn tried to convince Gunnar that Scarlett was holding him back, but Scarlett was in love; Juliette was nominated for an Oscar; Juliette told Layla that Jeff died saving her life—but Colt already had; Cynthia “Fake Ann Coulter” Davis told Will to disappear, so Will decided to speak up for gay rights (finally); Rayna met a girl who sang a couple songs and disappeared, then decided to throw a charity benefit for troubled youth or something, and then didn’t mention it for like five episodes; Maddie got emancipated and signed with a label in New York.

In Hollywood, Juliette’s schmoozing at some sort of Oscar event in a turtleneck-dress-and-giant-gold-jewelry getup that would look perfectly at home on, say, Lucille Bluth; but as soon as Glenn rescues her from her conversation she complains, “Why can’t they just give out the damn award already, why do they have to have so many parties?” She’s tired of pretending to be friends with people and wishes Cadence were here. Glenn suggests, “You do have a jet.” Juliette is thrilled by the idea, but seems nervous it’s too much to ask.

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 6/3/16

The New York Times writes a great article about the dystopian fiction of Middle Eastern writers.

The Millions has an essay on Ladislaw versus Lydgate, and Middlemarch‘s resistance to “good-on-paper” marriages.

Aww, Homeland’s not coming back till 2017.

(Spoilers for Me Before You below the cut…)

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 5/27/16

At We Minored in Film, Kelly Konda writes about the women involved in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising who made it surprisingly feminist — including Chloe Grace Moretz herself.

Mario Vargas Llosa published an excellent essay on the value of literature at the New Republic. Yes, a million essays have been published on this topic. But few of them were by Nobel prize winners who have written so generously and expansively about the human condition as Vargas Llosa, who writes:

Literature says nothing to those human beings who are satisfied with their lot, who are content with life as they now live it. Literature is the food of the rebellious spirit, the promulgator of non-conformities, the refuge for those who have too much or too little in life.

Vulture writes about how The Mindy Project responded to critiques of its representation with the “Coconut” episode — and how Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt didn’t quite respond as well.

Nashville ended this week, presumably, though the #bringbackNashville campaign is still going strong on Twitter. (It also ended on a cliffhanger, with an alternate happy ending filmed just in case, and Lionsgate sounds very confident it will come back on another platform.) The Internet bid it a contingent goodbye with some fun thought pieces:

by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×20 “It’s Sure Gonna Hurt”

 Previously on Nashville: Maddie emancipated from her parents; Deacon accused Frankie of its being Cash’s fault, and they got in a giant fight; Rayna was mad; Scarlett got a commercial without Gunnar and Gunnar got onstage on Autumn’s tour without Scarlett; Juliette hooked up with a former costar whose name I’ve forgotten, so I’m just going to call him Eyebrows; Will’s mom died; Luke fired Kenneth (yay!).

I’m very sad this show has been cancelled. It’s had moments of sheer brilliance recently, and the return of Juliette brought life back into an originally shaky season. Too bad this may be the second-to-last episode we recap!

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

The Good Spinoff: Who CBS Should REALLY Have Paired Off With Christine Baranski

It’s official: The Good Wife’s Diane and Lucca will be appearing in their own spinoff, which will pick up a year after the date of the show’s polarizing finale.

While I couldn’t be happier at the idea of getting an hour-long dose of Christine Baranski’s steely, nuanced acting, I have to wonder: why Lucca? She was a character shoehorned in at the end of the show’s seven-year run to provide Alicia with someone to team up with, to bounce ideas off of. She had no significant arc of her own–when Alicia wanted to rejoin her old firm, Lucca capitulated after about five minutes’ protest, and when Lucca was unhappy at the firm, her unhappiness functioned as the spur for one of Alicia’s plotlines instead of one that truly revolved around Lucca. And most of her conversation, especially in the last few episodes, revolved around her mistaken notion that Alicia and Jason were true loves pining over each other.

While Cush Jumbo did her best to inject some form of personality into Lucca, the truth is, we haven’t even seen a Lucca-centric episode on the original show and yet I’m already desperately bored by the thought of watching her in her own spinoff. Here are some spinoffs CBS should have considered.

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Feed the Beast a Strong Addition for AMC

The pilot of AMC’s new show Feed The Beast screened today at the Vulture festival, followed by a conversation with David Schwimmer. Despite some potential political issues, it looks like an excellent addition to AMC’s lineup.

Tommy Moran, played by a ferociously (dare I say, determinedly) dark David Schwimmer, is a former sommelier drinking away his sorrows over the hit-and-run that killed his wife Rie and left his son TJ, who witnessed the death, completely silent. Dion is a talented cook whose coke problem has left him in jail for eight months, and he’s being followed around by a wrench-wielding bad guy in a black van named The Tooth Fairy.

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 5/20/16

Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love, died last week, so this is a bit late, but Vogue reprinted a magnificent essay by Dunn on the bad girl. “Women who pay their own rent don’t have to be nice,” Dunn wrote. “They can afford to be real.”

The Belle Jar has A List Of Things In Literature, Music and Art That Are Actually Metaphors For Women, including “The sea is a good metaphor for women because it’s always wrecking shit that men love” and “Look, I don’t know who decided that cats are feminine and dogs are masculine, but someone did and that idea has stuck and now we all just have to live with it.”

At LA Review of Books, Graham Daseler writes about whether there has ever been a truly great Hollywood Novel.

The Times Literary Supplement writes about the benefits of pretentiousness: “cultural eclecticism, and an attendant willingness to take risks even if it makes one look foolish or over the top, has always been an essential driving mechanism in the arts.”

 

by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×19 “After You’ve Gone”

Previously on Nashville: Scarlett and Gunnar gave an awkward interview to Rolling Stone about how they’re exes; Juliette got nominated for an Oscar, but was sad that Avery chose Layla; Maddie got emancipated; and Deacon punched Frankie in his obnoxious face and got himself hit with a restraining order.

Rayna’s on tour in Atlanta, according to the title cards, singing a song about being strong. What do you think that’s about? I hate when they make you work to figure out the song’s relevance!

Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Links We Loved This Week — 5/13/16

Last week we rounded up some of the pre-finale coverage of the end of the The Good Wife, one of the shows we’ve been recapping since we started this blog in September. Here are some of our favorite reactions to the finale:

  • Emily Nussbaum at The New Yorker, like us, thought it was a flawed episode but liked the“rich, dizzy darkness of the last few minutes.”
  • The NYT wrote that Julianna Margulies’ acting saved any flaws in the finale.
  • The Fug Girls hated the ending: “Instead, I wondered, both of this hour and of the last seven years, ‘Is that all there is?’”
  • The Atlantic analyzed all the ways in which the show came full circle at its ending–not just The Slap, but that too.
  • At EW, Melissa Maerz asks, “Does wanting closure from The Good Wife make you dumb?” (I’d say no, maybe not, but I do still disagree with the dismissal of the ending.)

Someone has been telling a surprisingly well-written cosmic horror story (more like SCP than anything else) in comments to mostly-unrelated reddit threads. This is a page that collects and organizes the story so far.

Huffpo summarizes the legacy of Jane Jacobs, who would have turned 100 this week.

The Emily Dickinson Museum is resurrecting the poet’s infamous orchard and gardens, via the NYT.

by Nerdy Spice

Nashville 4×18: “The Trouble with the Truth”

­­­­­­Previously on Nashville: People didn’t want to play Will on the radio because he was gay; Maddie filed for emancipation; Rayna threatened Cash; Scarlett and Gunnar got stuck in an elevator and then made out; Juliette asked for another chance with Avery, but he made out with Layla instead.

Rayna is getting ready for court. It’s an intense process, involving brow pencil and everything. “You are a good mother,” Deacon tells her as he puts on his suit. He says that Cash is pulling the wool over Maddie’s eyes, but that “no judge is going to rule in favor of a sixteen-year-old runaway.” For the sake of sixteen-year-olds who have actual abusive parents, I hope that dismissive statement is not true. Both parents look sad and worried.

Continue reading →