tied up endings

So, I’m sitting here, waiting for something encode and wondering why it is that I end up past midnight when staying up past midnight kills me every single time when it occurs to me that – instead of running yet another thing that’ll just slow down my computer more – I have a blog and I had some stuff I wanted to write here at some point. I just don’t have any idea for a title, or of how I want to say it, and so forth. But it’s enough to keep me conscious for a while longer.

The season finale of Psych seriously is going to be one of the most underrated episodes of the year. Just a total inverse from the the usual fun formula (remember when I strongly disliked this show? it got better or I got better, one of the two), playing it serious for once and doing it perfect.  Gus and Shawn flipping roles (or trying to) worked, the whole some-what over the top serial killer worked, the rapid fire flashback realizations at the end hauntingly worked. They gave out nice bits of foreshadowing/mood setting (Shawn proving to Gus he could be serious by asking out Abigail, just before a whole day of being serious) and subtle misdirection (Abigail’s not answering her phone…) You know, if this whole Star Of Cable Television Show thing doesn’t work out for James Roday, he might be able to move into writing full time okay.

(Here’s where I embed the show from Hulu…except Hulu doesn’t have it up. I think Hulu might have peaked with the Super Bowl commercial, because it feels like networks might have just been alerted it exists and started pulling things back, putting fewer things up or putting them up slower…)

As good as the first 50 some minutes of the show were, the last five made it. See, I’ve seen TV shows before, and I’ve seen TV shows with unspoken feelings between main characters that take X many seasons to finally get around to (which is usually X/2 too many.) Please don’t mistake me for the type of person who smashes together two names to nickname fictional relationships, but Juliet and Shawn together would be nice. Juliet’s pretty much great*, but so is Abigail and that’s the person Shawn was actually on the date with and a normal human being would finish a date with one unrequited love at least before moving onto #2.

But again, I’ve seen TV, so the bit is here is the boy irrationally dumps the second girl for the first girl because that’s the relationship we’ve been trained to root for since day 1. (or day 2, whatever.) Which leaves me yelling “NO, NO, DON’T DO IT” at the TV like it’s the previous week horror movie spoof.

As it turned out, yelling was pretty pointless. They can’t hear me on the other side of the TV, the TV show was taped months ago anyway, plus – strangely enough! – Shawn acted like an adult and explained the situation and his regrets, Juliet responded in kind and wished Shawn luck, and Shawn and Abigail had their date. Everyone acted like a real person with a post-high school level maturity would act (minus Gus in the car), and you kinda felt like you were being treated the same way watching it.

Maybe next season will be all love triangles and catty looks and whatever, though I really hope not. Still doesn’t change how excellent this all was.

On the other hand, others shows that I’m watching which make me feel dumber for watching include Monk – which annoyed me last week by teasing actual progress in the main storyline (except they long forgot it was a main storyline) with the teaser, and then doing an uninteresting episode. Between that one, and the Reoccurring Annoying Character Dies Because Magician Can’t Spend Five Seconds Thinking Of A Lie one, I’d be okay with the show ending right now.

House is also in the dumb pile. Again, don’t normally care about relationships but when they’re the most spark free on television, they’re pretty hard to ignore. I really wish the character of 13 was as interesting to me on the television set as she apparently is to the writers of the show, because they’re quite in mad love with her and I have no idea why. She was dying, she was really self destructive about dying, then she was okay about dying, but she hasn’t had time to pick up an interesting personality in the meantime. It isn’t for a lack of a screen time, since she’s given a B or A plot in pretty much every episode. All the 2nd gen characters haven’t been as interesting as the first group – well, except for the one that they killed off. I mean, that’s why I still watch, because the Amber two parter was as great as TV is usually going to get and they can still crank out those random great episodes from time to time, but there’s a lot of not so interesting in.

The supporting characters make all the difference in these mostly-one off shows. Like, I can’t imagine how Psych would’ve worked if they stuck with the original female detective instead of Juliet.  She was such a non-factor in my mind, I was looking around imdb after the previous episode, where Lassitter met his wife to unexpectedly receive divorce papers, trying to remember if the other detective was supposed to be his wife or his secret affair. It was the later, but more amazingly – the female detectice in the pilot was Amber. Small world.

* – note to self: BUY A THESAURUS. I used to be literate, I swear.

25 Man Roster Guess

I spent much time debating the Heilman trade – just not here, but enough to get out of my system. I have an actual non-Cubs post floating around in my head, just not yet the interest to write it out yet. Maybe later.

This is more a guess at what will end up happening rather than a reflection of what’s going on now.

01 LF Soriano
02 SS Theriot
03 1B D Lee
04 RF Bradley
05 3B A Ram
06 CF Kosuke
07 CA Soto
08 2B Fontenot

I don’t think anyone’s realized A-Ram’s batting fifth now. I sure didn’t until I just wrote that. In a different world, Theriot leads off, D-Lee hits second (he’s a 2 based on last season), Milton is 3, Soriano is 4, Ram is 5. Soto should be the 6th hitter, but there’s no way Lou is going three straight righties and then two straight lefties.

09 CA Bako
10 IF Miles
11 OF Johnson
12 OF Gathright
13 PH Hoffpauir

Miles starts vs lefties, Bako only starts versus righties (and even then, probably only 30-40 games.) I don’t think they’re actually planing on bringing Hoffpauir right now, but they kinda haven’t signed a veteran back to replace him. As always, I wish they were bringing 14 hitters, but they’re not. Hitter #14 isn’t so apparent at the moment anyway; I guess either Jack Fox, Sam Fuld or NRI So Taguchi, not the best of ideas. 40 man roster is a little bit unbalanced at the moment; I’ve got ever IF on the ML roster (so a move has to be made if someone gets hurt in the middle infield.)

14 SP Z!
15 SP Harden
16 SP Dempster
17 SP Lilly
18 SP Marshall
19 SP Heilman

Actually, a virtual six man rotation (they all won’t be there at the same time, but at least 6 guys will get at 15 starts) is probably more believable than Heilman (who I defended early but now am shady after reading so much about him being The Worst Pitcher In The Major Leagues last year) starting, but if not him, who? (Oh, him.)

20 CL Marmol
21 R1 Gregg
22 R2 Gaudin
23 L1 Cotts
24 R3 Viscano
25 R4 Guzman

26 SP Samardzija – for whenever Harden gets hurt

I may look a fool later on, but I strongly feel Samardzija starts the year in AAA as a starter. Not only because of how overmatched he looked by the end of last season, but because everyone’s betting on him getting 5-7 big summer starts when Harden needs time off and he’ll be more effective after learning more Iowa than pitching out of the bullpen.

I like Gaudin more than the team does. And I’m just blind guessing on Angel Guzman; I don’t know what to expect from him, but I’d bet the hope is he can eventually take Marmol’s spot as Marmol takes Wood’s spot. It’s not going to be that easy, but it’s a decent dream.

Another oddity – there’s more guys in camp, but right now only Cotts, Lilly, and Marshall are left handed pitchers on the 40 man. If one of the bullpen lefties go down, that’s another move that’ll have to be made.