The Jezebel Inside

VINAY MENON got me thinking this morning.

That's not an unusual circumstance, by any means. Menon, who writes on TV for the Toronto Star, usually sports a pleasing populist sensibility in his reviews. He's the kind of reviewer where, often, a pan makes for funnier and better reading than a rave.

This morning he takes on Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Gilmore Girls, who's back tomorrow with a new show, The Return of Jezebel James.

Uh, he didn't like it much:

You better alert your agent, manager, publicist and legal team because Fox has clearly hatched a diabolical scheme, one that involves attaching your good name to their very bad show.

Did the scoundrels really think they could get away with this brazen deception? Did they think fans would believe you created a show so stupendously awful it makes Full House seem like Seinfeld?

I don't know who actually wrote this pilot. But the person was surely forced to do so while strapped into a jury-rigged electric chair, one that emitted an excruciating jolt whenever a scene threatened to be funny or logical.

Then there's Parker Posey, or a life form cloned from Parker Posey's DNA. After watching the pilot, I'm convinced this creature was either: a) secretly given amphetamines and forced to do strenuous calisthenics before each scene or, b) blindfolded, spun around a few dozen times and hastily thrown toward her mark so character Sarah Tompkins would always seem looped, out of breath and dizzy.

Though I'm not sure why Posey was advised to whisper occasionally, ambulate exclusively in tiny stutter-steps or deliver her lines as if she doesn't actually comprehend the English language.

Sarah, in her mid-30s, is a children's book editor. She has decided, out of the blue, to have a baby. The hitch: she's infertile.

So Sarah asks younger sister Coco (Ambrose) to be a surrogate because, let's face it, when you make a snap decision about motherhood but are diagnosed with Asherman's syndrome in about 2 1/2 minutes, you might as well rent the uterus of an estranged sibling who is technically homeless, unemployed and recently out of rehab.

Honestly, Amy, between the utter lack of comedic timing and the utter surplus of lame dialogue, even the voices on the laugh track sounded like they were faking it at gunpoint.

I was never a fan of Gilmore Girls, but I understand the passionate devotion of those who were.

I've also, in the last few years, grown amused and heartened by the way that the internet has created a sort-of brand of "writer fandom." This used to be well nigh impossible, because it's so hit and miss to know whether this show or that show was created by who or what. But ah, internet, you vixen like series of tubes, you make all that easy -- just one "Google Alert" and you're off. So you get JMS from B5, and Whedon, and Tim Minnear and Darin Morgan, and Winnie Holzman, and people who keep their eyes on Bryan Fuller, Greg Berlanti and Shawn Ryan, or Jenji Kohan, David Shore, or Shonda Rimes. These days, there are TV writer fans. It's bizarre.

And it's a tough gig to take too, being a writer's fan. it's not like being a fan of an actor. An actor makes a horrific misstep with a role and you blame the directing, or the writing, or you just say they tried something different but failed.

But it's harder to understand how somebody you've been following, somebody whose work you've admired and loved, can create something that sucks so very, very hard. I mean, they created this whole world you loved -- the characters, the dialogue, the whole shebang. How can the next thing they do suck? I mean, it's not like it's any less work to make something that sucks. I guarantee you that Amy Sherman-Palladino (just typing her name is exhausting) worked every bit as hard on Jezebel James as she slaved over Gilmore Girls.

I've been disappointed by authors and by artists, by musicians and movie makers -- people whose brilliance in one project did nothing to protect them from the great suck that followed. Anne Rice gave me vampires and witches and now she's all about the Jesus? Wha? What do you MEAN that group's new CD sucks? They're awesome! I can't believe that the same guys who made The Matrix, made the next two movies. It's almost unfathomable.

Yup. It's hard being a fan of a writer. Maybe almost as hard as it is being a writer. I wonder, though, if you ever get the terrified realization we do, the thing that you just have to push past and forget to keep going:

We have no idea where it comes from. And we know that one day it might go away and not come back.

Pour that over your cereal in the morning, kids!

When we engage in low level neurotic games, or drink, or self-medicate, or do whatever it is to unwind, or snap back, or forget, that's the thing that we're trying to get past. We have no idea where it comes from.

One of the most pathetic things troll-y people do (and these trolls can be people in the industry, or they can be internet commenters, or whoever) is throw early credits at you. It's a particularly clam-y kind of halfass critique, and it goes like this, "Oh yes, I suppose I should listen to the guy who wrote X..."

What writers know is that the guy who wrote X might, right now, even as we speak, be writing the thing that will be a hit and run for nineteen years. Or it might suck. And hey, it got made. There's not a successful writer I know who won't roll the eyes and say, "ooh, don't," when you bring up the sucky early credit. But I guarantee you that there's affection for that thing deep down there. And those credits always come with great stories attached to them. Often, the best stories. You can't choose your break. And you can't judge it down the line...because it's the thing that set you on the path...

And, because, you just don't know.

David Chase toiled for how many years before creating Sopranos? Tom Fontana has had TWO brilliant series, and keeps trying for a third. Larry David managed to slice his pimento of an idea twice and cash in.

And the rest of us pound the keyboard, hoping that we're writing Gilmore Girls and not Jezebel James.

I think that most professions probably have the thing you make peace with. They say that Doctors have to establish a distance, because they kill people. Who knew what demons drove New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, but you do have to wonder at the law and order crusader who lost it all, because he couldn't make peace with his public and private selves, and understand or overcome his desires.

The other night, in the midst of a Florida night, crisp and dark, I stood in the middle of a parking lot at 2:30 in the morning to watch the sky turn from night to day and back to night again. Even from far away, the sight at the horizon of the Space Shuttle Endeavor blasting off is simply a sight that is hard to process. My mother shook her head, the next day, watching the coverage and said, "who would do that?"

"Strap yourself in on top of a huge bomb, you mean?" I said. She nodded.

I shrugged. "I guess maybe they don't think about it."

But now I think that's a load of hooey. I bet they do. I bet they think about it all the time. But the horrible, crazy thing is that if you ask them where that comes from -- the courage to be able to think about it, and understand what it is they're doing, and still to get up there and do it, to strap yourself into that little capsule on top of a bomb...I bet you they don't know.

When I worked at the Canadian Sci-Fi channel, we'd sometimes have a parade of astronauts come through, as they were promoting this project or that one. I met Eugene Cernan, the last man on the moon. I met Buzz Aldrin, Roberta Bondar, Marc Garneau, and a few others. The ones who walked on the moon, especially, were frustrating. Because you'd try to get them to describe the experience, to give thoughtful answers to the big, sweeping, important feel of it all -- and they'd always come up empty.

Buzz Aldrin was the second guy to step on the moon, for Godsake. He was a perfectly nice man, but you think he could string together a sentence about it that had any poetry whatsoever? Nope. Neil Armstrong doesn't give interviews anymore. I wonder if it's because he just has no idea what to say, and he's tired of seeing the look of disappointment on the faces of people when he answers with something that's somehow ... less than what they hoped for.

"Leave me alone. I'm a pilot, for god's sake. Yes, I know it was profound. Or important. But you think I spent any time up there worrying abou that? I had a million things to do. I just had to keep going. I have no idea where it comes from."

I'm not really comparing myself to Neil Armstrong. Or Buzz, or a surgeon that saves lives and occasionally ends them. Or even to Amy Sherman-Palladino. No sir. All I'm saying is that there's an essential mystery to the things we do, and the great human defence mechanism against that uncertainty is to push past it, and try not to think about it too hard.

I have no idea where it comes from.

And the flipside of that? I have no idea where it's going.

I guess, in the end, that's not the worst way to live your life.

I just hope there's more Girls out there than Jezebels, is all.