That Old Drippy Feeling

At some point, I want to respond to Matt Zoller Seitz’s statement about Quentin Tarantino, “What I want from Tarantino is a palpable, identifiable sense of what he believes, about life on this earth, about how people interact with one another, that is identifiable apart from the quotations from film history.” There's a real answer to that. But the point at which that answer comes is not going to be today. No, it won’t be today nor any other day in which I feel certain that some malevolent force snuck into my house, filled my brain with oatmeal and maple syrup and sealed my ears. Yes, I’ve got a severe case of the drips and the sniffles, the kind where one’s only choice—or at least my only choice—for the day way has been to spend it wrapped up in blankets on my couch watching bad television and trying to remember what it feels like to think thoughts unimpeded by a giant cloud of brain-crushing, thought-killing mush.

So I caught up on Lost and was pleasantly surprised by how interesting the last few episodes were. I caught up on 24 and was disappointed by how listless the last few weeks have been, and now I’m watching the new Tim Minear show, Drive. The concept is sort of Death Race 2000 meets Battle Royale meets Lost, but so far, not as good, or even as awesomely bad, as any of them. The main problem is that every character aside from Nathan Fillon and the crazy mom is irritating and unappealing. If the show were mainly about Fillon, I’d be in, but his performance just isn’t good enough to make the half dozen other painfully bad subplots worth watching.