THE CLOSER, TRUST ME, AND AN EARTHQUAKE!
At 9 PM, after having expelled most of the migraine into the ether, I turned on the television and watched The Closer-- perhaps the most original detective series created since Prime Suspect. I must say that Chief Brenda Johnson's (Kyra Sedgwick/The Closer) obsession with eating food on the job is quite reminiscent of Superintendent Jane Tennison's (Helen Mirren/Prime Suspect) obsession with eating food on the job. Mirren and Sedgwick worked together on Losing Chase (directed by Sedgwick's husband, Kevin Bacon) back in the early 1990's. Is the food obsession a coincidence? I certainly hope not. This wonderful episode of the Closer ended, as usual, with Brenda breaking the case by relating the circumstances of the case to the goings on around her household--namely by listening to her fiance talk about this or that.
After The Closer, I began watching Trust Me, a modern day version of Madmen. I have been a lover of all things Madmen since the first episode, drawn to the show because of its truthfulness to the era it portrays: the language, dress code, blatant sexual discrimination, and sexual infidelities. Madmen portrays an America on the cusp of exchanging sexual repression for a sexual revolution. As I watched Trust Me I was waiting for a clincher--something that would pique my interest and make me want to watch the show for an entire hour. Minutes passed and no clincher: just another show about dysfunctional relationships and coworkers. Anyone interested in watching that treatment done to its fullest potential, go rent all six seasons of THE WIRE; the best cop show no one was watching until the sixth season and everyone should have been watching since McNulty uttered his first drunken word.
At around 10:30 PM my world was (literally) rocked. My bed began to rock from side to side. The stained glass angel hanging from my window-lock began banging against the window. Kitty Von Kitty awoke from a purring slumber. I muted the TV just as my Mom yelled upstairs, "Did you feel that? What was that?"
"It felt like an earthquake to me!" I yelled downstairs.
"I'm turning on the news," Mom yelled back.
The tremor only lasted 2-4 seconds. Thoughts raced in my mind, "Did a large truck just fly over the speed bump in front of our house? No...that would have caused the bed to shake up and down. What about an explosion far away? No...again, the bed was shaking back and forth, as if the floor was sliding back and forth beneath it." My mind was still contemplating the movement of the house as I turned the volume back on the TV. I watched the last half hour of Trust Me both in awe of how interesting the experience of the earthquake had been and how far off the mark Trust Me came from rocking my world. Two great actors a great show does not make.
The local papers confirmed that a .03 earthquake had occurred in Rockaway, a town twenty minutes from my house. I live 45 minutes west of New York City; a city that literally sits on hollow ground (the subway system) which itself is seated upon a fault line. Could the scientists predictions of an earthquake hitting New York City be correct? Anything can happen in a world where flowers bloom.
Labels: Bhakti Brophy, earthquake, Helen Mirren, jaibhakti, Kevin Bacon, Kitty Von Kitty, Kyra Sedgwick, losing chase, New York City Earthquake, The Closer, Trust Me