by Janes

Henry James’ Rebel Without a Cause

“Her life should always be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.”

Henry James, born on this day in 1843, created the indomitably original female character of Isabel Archer, who, like many of the greatest Victorian heroines, was idealistic to the extent that it was her defining quality, and yet did not have particularly defined ideals. Just as Middlemarch‘s Dorothea was a revolutionary without a revolution, a Theresa who never had the opportunity to manifest her lofty ambitions into independent action, Isabel Archer was a highly moral woman who was never expected to develop any specific morals, an idealist without any ideals.

by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×14 “What I Cannot Change”

Previously on Nashville: Will was gay, and Luke dropped him; Will met a girl who released her album independently; Deacon turned the Bluebird into the Deacon and Rayna and Beverly Show, so Frankie relapsed; Avery agreed to let Juliette have supervised visits with Cadence; and Vita stole from Deacon and Frankie, and Rayna found her car all burned up in the parking lot of a motel.

We open on Juliette. Juliette’s back, guys! YAY. Juliette (sporting a new tousled bob, and a soft pink sweater that I think represents her newly warm and fuzzy spirit), is changing Cadence in a pink-wall-papered, golden-lit room. It’s all one big Hallmark card to motherhood for a moment.

Nashville 414 Juliette and baby

She kisses and sweet-talks the baby until the therapist, with Emily looking on smiling, tells her it’s time to go. Juliette gives her to Emily with a little bit of sadness but no fireworks and then tells her therapist, “I’m sad to see her go. But other than that I feel good.” They agree she’s ready to go home.

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by Nerdy Spice

The Good Wife Recap: 7×18 “Unmanned”

Max Medina Versus the Drone

Alicia is called to court one morning by Diane for another Dipple case. (For the uninitiated, Dipple is the Republican that has manipulated Diane into tying herself in knots playing “devil’s advocate” for various conservative causes.) In court, Diane’s on her own till Alicia shows up (late from a rendezvous with Jason and grinning to herself like a college kid who missed the first five minutes of a lecture because she was getting laid).

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by Janes

The 100 Recap: 3×09 “Stealing Fire”

Another day, another controversial death on The 100. Regardless of your opinions on the two major character deaths that have occurred in the last three episodes, there’s no denying that The 100 has inspired a ton of constructive discourse (as well as some counterproductive ad hominem attacks) about social issues, the responsibility of media creators to their fans, and the role of violence on television. Even when it makes mistakes, The 100 is thoughtful enough to stimulate important conversations, which I would say is commendable in itself.

All right. Let’s do this. Continue reading →

by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×13 “If I Could Do It All Again”

 

Previously on Nashville: Maddie told Frankie’s daughter Cash that she and Colt went all the way, and Cash told her to write it in a song; Avery and Juliette got divorced and went public, while Layla gloated in the background; Luke invited an old friend back on tour with him; Will got harassed and attacked when he first tried to perform in Nashville; a girl named Vita showed up and Rayna thought her voice was amazing, but it turned out she slept in a car in a parking lot and Frankie thinks she made off with $500 from the bar.

Morning at the James mansion, and Rayna’s staring into the distance over coffee. She says she wants to get to the bottom of the issue, and asks if Frankie could’ve miscounted. Deacon says Frankie’s sure the money’s gone. Both Deacon and Rayna have tried to call Vita, and she hasn’t answered. Not a good sign! But being the irrepressibly optimistic judges of human nature that they are, they agree to see if Vita shows up for her scheduled meeting with Rayna, or her scheduled shift at the Dead Sister Bar. (I refuse to call it the Beverly and have rechristened it to a more fittingly rock’n’roll title.)

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by Janes

The advent of Spring, according to Emily Brontë

Why did the morning rise to break
So great, so pure a spell,
And scorch with fire the tranquil cheek

Where your cool radiance fell?

Poetry so often conflates springtime with rebirth, renaissance, hope, and the like, but Emily Brontë’s work begs to differ. The narrator of “Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun” spends the poem shutting her eyes tightly (and vainly) against the “blood-red” light that “throbs with her heart” and destroys her peace. And as she says in “Fall, leaves, fall”:

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Brontë’s poetry seems keenly aware of the Icarus myth: her relationship to daylight and springtime springs from an understanding that sunlight is not the product of a benign reflection, a consumptive fire.

From “Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun” again:

O Stars and Dreams and Gentle Night;
O Night and Stars return!
And hide me from the hostile light
That does not warm, but burn—
by Nerdy Spice

Nashville Recap: 4×12 “How Does It Feel to Be Free”

Previously on Nashville: Erin and Gunnar were casual and announced this fact ad nauseam. Rayna signed Maddie and Daphne to Highway 65. Luke owed the government forty million dollars, which was secretly a positive development for him because it caused Gabriella to dump him and stop sucking away all of his moral and spiritual life force. Colt saw Jeff saving Juliette and told Layla that was what killed him. Layla got the Crazy Eyes and asked Glenn to be her manager and made him ask Avery to produce for her. And Avery didn’t want to lie for Juliette anymore.

Oh, and Rayna and Deacon got married after what looked like it might be a serious problem (both Maddie and Tandy’s legitimate concerns about Deacon’s demons, and Daphne’s even more legitimate concern that no one actually cares about her) but ended with the cheapest, fastest resolution ever, in which Rayna sat her kids down for about four seconds, promised them there was nothing to worry about, and convinced them, presumably with the power of her hair, to shut up. We’ll be recapping that one, but we fell behind, so just trust us if you haven’t seen it… it was absurd, and the previouslys wisely don’t bother going into it.

Avery busts into the treatment center and asks for Juliette with a look of barely controlled passion. Any relation? asks the receptionist. “I’m her husband,” he announces dramatically.

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by Nerdy Spice

The Good Wife Recap: 7×17 “Shoot”

 

Guns

The episode opens with a shamelessly sentimental montage of a father and daughter as the daughter, Yesha, grows up: playing on the rug, going to her first day of school, planning on her education, going to prom. The father is played by Blair Underwood, who is not going to get a whole lot to do in the rest of this episode. After the prom, the little girl, now almost grown, shares a glass of chocolate milk with her father in the kitchen.

A car screeches outside, and the father leaps to the ground—but Yesha is shot in the neck. He yells to his wife to call 911 as he gathers her in his arms, both crying.

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by Nerdy Spice

Hilary Mantel’s Characters

A commotion at the door. It is Christophe. He cannot enter in the ordinary way; he treats doors as his foe.

When it became de rigueur a few years back for every book club to sweat over the first two installments of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy and its dense prose about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, I had no interest in joining the crowd. (This was mostly due to a general lack of interest in history about which I should probably feel more guilty than I, in fact, do.) But an article in the NYRB excerpting Hilary Mantel’s directions to the actors in the stage adaptation changed my mind.

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