Last night I finished rewatching season 1 of Alias — my second rewatching of the season. Last winter while in Berlin I rewatched seasons 1-4 as well; it was the middle of season 5 at that point.
See, all the seasons are very good TV, better than most things you’ll find on network or cable, but only after watching all of them and going back to 1 and 2 do you realize how good those first two seasons really are/were.
There isn’t too much formal experimentation, although there’s a bit represented by the first (double-length) episode, in which what could be either flashbacks or dream sequences match up ‘semantically’ perfectly with the real-time plot; only later is it revealed that they are, in a way, flash-forwards, and in the second half of the episode we “catch up” with the action. Sure, if you already know that Sydney is a “secret agent” and that her employers aren’t really “good guys” and such, then those flashbacks are a bit obvious, but if one comes in blind, innocent if one will, then the contrast between domestic and professional life that is thematized throughout the first season is distilled in this one episode, and presented in a formally efficient and subtle way.
Today I went over Faust’s opening monolog from Goethe’s Faust — it was a difficult passage for most of my students, which tells me that I’ll have to be a bit more hands-on with grammar and text preparation with them. One or two of the students will be just fine, though.
Now for the links … all about art/graphics today:
Artists in Love, part 7 — Sarah Goodridge (1788-1853) and Daniel Webster (a Boston lawyer).
From deviantart we have: loish, artbytheo, cattish, gizmodus, and toounit. The last is a bit too manga-ish for me, but with the rest I am reminded of why I like to draw … now I just want to set up an easel in my apartment and pain, diss-be-damned.
I’ll conclude with Erica Henderson (ericahenderson-dot-50webs-dot-com), who is filling in over at Sluggy Freelance this week.
