When hanging out with a group of friends this weekend, most of them were thrilled it was Sunday for the same reasons: “Mad Men” and “Game of Thrones”.  Some threw the new HBO show “Silicon Valley” in there too.

Now I have mentioned before that I enjoy “Game of Thrones” just fine, and “Silicon Valley” has me very intrigued and entertained so far.  Now “Mad Men” is a show I tried very hard to like, but eventually gave up on.  But when I started thinking about which show I got most excited for on Sundays, I realized it wasn’t any of these.  It isn’t “Downton Abbey” when it is on, though I am usually pretty excited for it. It definitely isn’t “The Walking Dead”, which frequently piles up on my DVR.  I can’t even tell you why I bother to keep watching “Once Upon a Time”, as I genuinely have no idea what is happening anymore.

The show that never sits on the DVR for more than 24 hours though, that show is “Call the Midwife”.  This is a British import that airs on PBS. I probably wouldn’t have ever heard of this quiet little show were it not for a co-worker who seems to always know which British shows are on the air.  This show doesn’t aspire to transcend genres or tell some massively complicated story over the course of eight years.  this is a show whose greatest strength is its cast of characters.

I’d actually contend that, player for player, this show has the best written female characters on television. Old, young, midwife, nun, this show offers up almost a dozen regular female characters covering a huge range of life experiences.  The show, which is set in England post-WW2, centers on Nonnatus House, the home for nuns and midwives servicing the working class neighborhood.  The expecting mothers provide new storylines and drama, but the interpersonal relationships of the characters at Nonnatus as well as the men in their lives comprise a good percentage of each episode.  

The lead character is Jenny, but, to be honest, she is probably the weakest of the bunch.  It is the same problem of “Orange Is the New Black” in that the lead character has to stay grounded since she is the heart of the show, while the other characters get some of the juicier storylines, while Jenny doesn’t get much to do except fall in love with guy after guy only to decide she isn’t sure if she really loves them after all.

Even though Jenny’s romantic storylines kinda suck, her interactions with her peers are really why this show keeps me hooked.  Be it the lovably awkward Chummy, the nun with doubts, Sister Bernadette, or my vote for the unsung hero of this program, the quiet and caring Cynthia, I will watch, fully invested in what happens to them in a given week.

A while back, I lamented that there aren’t enough shows out there that I can watch and enjoy without having to do an extraordinarily close reading of every episode, watched in order.  This show answers the call.  Well-written, compelling, and digestable in just about whatever order you want, Call the Midwife is my Sunday show, as well as a show you should pay a house call to if you have the time.

The problem with my Netflix queue these days is that it is populated with movies I only kind of have some interest in watching. I am well aware I am likely not going to like most of them, but they don’t seem wholly unappealing, so I add them to my list. Problem is, I can rarely work up the energy to watch them.

Instead, I rely on my friend Eric to pick a number 1-end of my queue in an attempt to get me to clear out some of the dreck.  Problem is, Eric is really bad at picking numbers, so most of the time I return 20 minutes later asking him to pick another movie because his first selection is unwatchable.

We decided to take another tact the other day similar to when I used to get my toddler nephew to pick a Derby winner.  I provided him the titles of all these movies he hasn’t heard of and he picked from them.

And that, kids, is the story of how Eric inadvertently recommended a really good movie.  I think he may have thought he was picking “Crazy, Stupid Love” with Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, but in actuality, he picked “Like Crazy” a 2011 flick of the mumblecore variety staring Anton Yelchin (of “Star Trek” reboot fame), Felicity Jones, and the coolest girl in all the world, Jennifer Lawrence.

When you saw the word mumblecore, you probably had one of two reactions. Many of you probably went, “Zuh?”  What is this strange thing?  It sounds kind of porny…

Mumblecore is a genre of contemporary independent film.  Markers of these movies are largely improvised dialogues, super low budgets, and an emphasis on the naturalistic.  Think of it as a much more accessible version of Dogme 95 with more mainstream filmmaking and more accessible storylines rooted in the real and small scale.

Those of you familiar with the term might be doing what I typically do when I see it, which is roll my eyes and mutter something along the lines of, “Damned hipster Millenials.”  By and large, I don’t really dig mumblecore because I dig plot and relatively clipped pacing–things these movies are frequently missing.  Unsurprisingly, I found Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” pretty meaningless, boring, and stupid. And, as it involves Lena Dunham, I found it obnoxiously self-important to boot.

“Frances Ha” is another one I just can’t get behind, as twentysomethings who can’t get their shit together is something I got enough of when I was a twentysomething.  I find “Drinking Buddies” starts strong, but peters off around Act 3 and loses my interest.

So, if you are someone who feels like you should like mumblecore, but can’t seem to find one that rivals the almighty “Before Sunrise” trilogy, I offer you “Like Crazy”.  

This is a small scale love story that touches on several topics people can relate to in their own lives.  That all-consuming feeling of your first true love, the frustrations of wanting a relationship to work, but timing not being on your side, the time you stupidly try to see other people and still make it work.  Yet, while manyt other mumblecore movies find me rolling my eyes in annoyance at the obnoxious behavior of the twentysomething set, this movie manages to make the two leads fallible and remain endearing.

I will also say that the Jennifer Lawrence fans out there have to give this flick a watch just to be a completist.  She is only in about 20% of this movie, but every minute she is on screen, she completely steals the show.  Her performance as Yelchin’s other girlfriend adds a enitrely new complicated layer to this film that wouldn’t exist fi she wasn’t so appealing and believable.  In most romantic movies, the new girl is fine, but no comparison to the old girl. In this film though, you raise an eyebrow and wonder who he should be with, you wonder if this this is a tragic love story and not a happy ending.

The murkiness of this movie is what makes it stand out to me compared to other teenage love stories.  In this respect, the tendency of mumblecore flicks deal in the finer details works to film’s advantage tremendously.  This exploration of emotions, circumstance, and young love is enhanced by some great performances, as the entire cast is committed to making this movie and its core relationship work.

Yesterday, I mentioned my adoration of and fan letter to Johnny Rivers in passing.  I know it seems strange that a seven year old in the early 90s would be preoccupied with a singer who peaked in 1966, but trust me, I loved him. I had a cassette tape of his greatest hits. While “Secret Agent Man” was my favorite, “Slow Dancing”, “Memphis”, “Poor Side of Town”, and “Summer Rain” were all ingrained in my brain long before I entered the third grade.

I wanted Mr. Rivers to know how great I thought he was, so, over the course of a couple of days, I sat in our formal dining room where the electric typewriter was located and I carefully pecked out numerous drafts of a fan letter.  Once I was satisfied with a final draft, I handed it off to my mother to drop in the mail for the man, the myth, the legend.

Today I was recalling this story with my mom, who got a good laugh remembering me and my laser-like focus at the typewriter trying to come up with the perfect thing to say.  We got a good laugh out of the memory, then this happened:

Mom: “And to think we never even mailed it.”

Me: “What?”

Mom: “We never mailed the thing.”

Me: “What do you mean we never mailed the thing?”

Mom: “Where would we have sent it? Where did you expect me to find Johnny Rivers’ address?”

Me: “I can’t believe you didn’t mail it. You just took it and claimed to send it? I thought he actually got it all these years!”

Mom: “Well Jessica, didn’t you suspect something when he never wrote back?”

Me: “No! He’s Johnny Rivers! I assumed he was too busy touring the world singing "Secret Agent Man” to possibly answer all his fan mail!“

As a kid, I didn’t really know that contemporary music was a thing.  I only ever listened to oldies, as that was the only music my parents ever listened to.  I knew vaguely of Debbie Gibson, but she wasn’t the person I idolized.  Actually, my first fan letter I ever sent was to Johnny Rivers.  Who the heck is that you ask?  He is the guy who sang “Secret Agent Man” amongst other things.  And six-year-old me wanted Mr. Rivers to know I thought he was amazing.

My first concert? The Beach Boys, which is not embarrassing, but actually kind of awesome.  I mean, they are the Beach Boys and this was when Full House was at its peak of popularity, so there was even some contemporary street cred to my choice.  John Stamos didn’t show up and sing “Forever”, but it was still a great show.

Considering most of you understand I am 100 years old on the inside, this obsession with oldies music shouldn’t surprise you.  I am going to be more excited to see Mickey Dolenz than I would seeing Mumford and Son not only because I enjoy the music more, but because there is a scarcity to seeing these folks now.  Anyone with the funds and proximity to a big city can see major music acts these days.

I had to travel to Australia to see Angela Lansbury on the stage in “Driving Miss Daisy”, but it was worth the journey.  In college, I met all sorts of contemporary film geniuses like Jon Favreau, Billy Bob Thornton, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Alexander Payne, but the best celebrity encounter I had?  Serving meals at the Midnight Mission in Downtown LA and meeting the one and only Dick Van Dyke.  Because these other people, being contemporary pop culture icons are present.  You don’t see Dick Van Dyke places unless you seek him out.  He’s not on Twitter, he is not on tour.  So, in addition to being a great talent who has already stood the test of time and proven to be canonical, he is a scarce resource.

I know there is something to say for seeing people in their prime.  I would much rather have seen The Monkees perform in 1967, but I had to settle for 2000.  Sure, it will be nice to tell people that I saw Tim McGraw and Faith Hill perform together in their last show at the Venetian this past weekend, but the performance that will stand out to me is the show we saw before that.

Thanks to my awesome friend Elaine, I got to go see Tim and Faith, but we also got to see the 1000th Vegas performance of Human Nature, the Australian Motown tribute group that performs at The Venetian.  The show was a lot of fun, as these very polished performers belted out some of my favorite oldies I grew up on.

Then they sang what might be one of my top three favorite songs of all times: The Tracks of My Tears.  Smokey Robinson wrote this tune, then made it famous performing it with The Miracles.  

What is remarkable about this song is that it sounds happy, but the visuals invoked by the lyrics are incredibly depressing.  As Robinson explained to Adam Lambert on American Idol a few seasons back, the song came from an idea Robinson had one day: what if someone cried so much that, if you looked closely at their face, you could see where the tears had run down, over and over again.

This song about a guy faking it until he can make it after a rough break up is beautiful, heartbreaking, and makes me want to belt it in my car all at the same time.  As someone whose job frequently requires them to put on a happy face even when I am not particularly happy, the imagery has always stuck with me.  I don’t know about other people, but while I smile and nod, my mind is almost always racing about something, or several things really.  There is usually some nagging negativity in there that tries to break through the facade.  

Nowadays, with social media and this constant ability to put on a face, this song only strikes me as even more poignant, as people try to present some idealized version of themselves to cover up that they may be struggling on the inside. The fact Robinson belts it always gets me thinking that his lovesick musical protagonist simply couldn’t take bottling it up anymore and he burst, in this case into song.

As you can tell from the rant, this song just means a lot to me, so when the group began to sing, I smiled.  When the second verse began and none other than Smokey himself strolled on to the stage to sing it, I gasped. Then I clapped.  Then I cheered.  Then I rushed to take pictures.  Because there he was, 25 feet from me, singing a song that I have listened to thousands of times over the years.

Smokey Robinson doesn’t tour.  He pops up on shows like Idol during Motown Week, then returns to semi-obscurity.  But on this night, in this theater, he was there and I was present to witness it–like seeing a yeti or the Loch Ness monster.  It may not be the spectacle of Tim and Faith, but it is, in 2014, a once in a lifetime type of opportunity that I rank among my favorite celebrity brush ins ever.  So, while this is a song I typically find very sad, I will forever beam when I hear it thinking about the time I got to hear the man himself sing his masterpiece even if it was in 2014 and not 1966.

And now this song, which already meant so much, will mean even more. I can’t stop listening to it, be it originals or covers like this Adam Lambert version, which I consider to be the best performance in Americal Idol history:

It is haunting, this version.  That is what all this old culture I love so much does to me though.  It haunts me, leaving me craving those moments like last weekend where I get to see in person the artist I wanted to write a fan letter to because he came on the radio in my mom’s car on the way home from elementary school.  They may be ghosts or past their prime, but these brushes with people like Smokey Robinson and Dick Van Dyke make me more grateful for my life and my experiences than a lot of other things these days.

The college basketball team I root for lost a pretty important game last night.  But you know what else happened? This:

I won’t forget that the University of Connecticut straight up outplayed us yesterday, nor will I forget what could have been had my team remembered how to make free throws.  What will stand out in my mind though is the moment James Young apparently decided, “eff all these people in my way, I am putting this ball in that basket.”

Two days before that, my Wildcats managed to beat Wisconsin, win me a couple hundred bucks in bracket pools, and advance to the championship game of the Big Dance, which is great. The moment we won was incredible, but it won’t compare to this moment right here:

For the third game in a row, Aaron Harrison literally made my heart jump out of my chest.  After a season of hoping that these guys might wow me, they actually did.  For two weeks, they wowed me several times over, exceeding my expectations game after game.  Not only did they win game after game that they were supposed to lose, they did so in the most dramatic fashion imaginable.  Each game, a new young stud would emerge as the superstar of the half, pulling off plays I didn’t think imaginable.

In fact, the only reason I won any of my bracket pools is because this year I made two brackets. One, I labeled “Head” and had UK losing to Wichita State in Round Two.  The “Heart” bracket had decidedly more upsets, including UK ousting the 1 seed.  Once I had them beating Wichita State, I felt like we weren’t going to lose to Louisville if we beat them early in the season when we were decidedly worse.  It seemed like we wouldn’t lose the round after that either, so I had the team advancing to the Final Four, assuming it was wishful thinking.

I guess that is why I am not so sad we lost.  Six weeks ago, I would’ve questioned us even making it out of the first round.  During the SEC tournament, I got my hopes up that this really might be the corner we’d been waiting for the team to turn.  They were so young though.  I don’t love the one-and-done approach to college hoops, but I don’t fault Coach Calipari for gaming the system.  I do get sad to not have that wise senior leading the way.  When Jarrod Polson, the lone senior on the squad, got some minutes, I was elated, even though he is far from our best player.  I had to resort to naming Willie Cauley-Stein as my favorite player on the team as the sage old–sophomore.

I doubt we’ll see Stein stick around for a junior season, but I certainly wish he would.  Judging by the impact this kid was able to have even when cheering on the sidelines in his paisley shirt (which is awesome, DeMarcus Cousins, so stop your hating), I think he is just the leader I would like to see stay to lead the team to another stellar season.  

But if he leaves along with all our other playmakers, I won’t be too sad.  Much like the result of the game, any extra time we get from these guys feels like a freeroll, the proverbial icing on the cake.  But a girl can hope Marcus Lee might be that little dollop of frosting in the bottom of the container that sticks around, right?

Who knows who stays and who goes? Who knows if next year we’ll lose to Robert Morris in the NIT or make another run like this?  That is the risk you take with Cal’s approach, so I am okay to live with the consequences that some season, these kids just won’t figure it out in time.  Rather than expect a lot, I am going to sit back and appreciate what I got, which was my favorite tournament run I’ve ever seen Kentucky put together.  Sure, watching Anthony Davis and crew decimate the field two years ago was fun, but to get to be a UK fan and experience the thrill of being a Cinderella story is probably not gonna happen again for a while. We didn’t end up with the slipper, but we had a hell of a time before things went back to pumpkin status.

So guys, I know you are super excited that Game of Thrones is coming back tonight. I don’t blame you. It is a fun, entertaining, well-made show that is always full of surprises and keeps the audience guessing. I am looking forward to watching myself.

What I have to say next though, is probably going to upset some of you, so brace yourselves.

This show you love so much? It is a soap opera.  It is “The Young and the Restless” with scraggly dudes and dragons.  I know you don’t like hearing that you favorite show bears more of a resemblance to “Scandal” than “The Sopranos”, but that is God’s honest truth.

Before you completely write me off, let’s just walk through this together for a minute.  What are the generic conventions of soap operas?

-A serial narrative structure with numerous storylines that don’t always intersect –I still haven’t seen Khaleesi interact with anyone else from the cast, have you?  This narrative complexity you love, with seven or eight separate storylines isn’t new–Luke, Laura, and the gang at “General Hospital” perfected it half a century ago.

-Long scenes of dialogue—While there are action set pieces, pay attention to how often this show just features two people talking at one another.

-A penchant for the melodramatic with focus on interpersonal relationships—This entire show is basically about how people maneuver around one another in an attempt to gain power. While they aren’t exactly boyfriends arguing with girlfriends, think about how much of this show takes place within people’s homes or personal spaces.  This is actually a characteristic of women’s dramas—scenes that take place in domestic spaces like bedrooms or at home as opposed to in the work place or in public locations.  This show may as well be a Douglas Sirk movie given how all of the key power plays tend to take place in these intimate conversations, not on the battlefield.

-The characters tend to be glamorous and attractive—I’m not talking Hodor here or anything, but look at how sexualized the two most powerful women on this show are.  Bleached blondes who are clearly natural brunettes, Cersi and Daenaris are powerful women who are generally depicted as very sexualized beings (brief aside: I am shocked an academic hasn’t written a book about the absurdity of a tiny white girl liberating an entire slave population who, God forbid, seek freedom without her help, but I am sure that dissertation is somewhere in the peer review process).  In a world that exists without deodorant, the guys always manage to look pretty sexy too.  Even when Jamie is wandering around covered in shit without a hand, he still looks like he wandered in from his Vanity Fair cover shoot.

The one thing I will give GoT is that they are willing to kill off characters and, unlike “Days of Our Lives”, they don’t come back from the dead.  In fact, I think in twenty years, this will be the one thing this show gets remembered for.  Sorry y’all, this show is good, but it is not going to end up on any best of all time lists.  It will however, be credited as the show that sparked the trend of offing seemingly key characters at surprising points within the series.  I ought to mention though that other shows have done this. I recently started watching “Deadwood”, which pulled a similar trick almost a decade ago.  "Game of Thrones" seems to be the show that pulled it off to the greatest dramatic effect though, so much so that it now seems to be a signature of the show to have a stunning and startling offing of at least one major character every season.

I know I sound like I am not on board with this show, but that isn’t the case.  I enjoy it for the exact same reasons I enjoy “Scandal”.  These shows pack a whole lot of plot into each episode, keeping me engaged and wondering what diabolical chess move awaits in the next episode.  I enjoy seeing who will randomly join forces for a partnership of convenience to get what they want.  I enjoy seeing what glamorous outfits they will show up in, though there is not a female on this show who comes anywhere close to matching Kerry Washington’s style as Olivia Pope.

But that is really where my admiration for this much-lauded show ends.  It is a remarkably well-made soap opera with incredible production value and some great source material, but this isn’t Shakespeare.  They aren’t redefining any genres, they aren’t blowing me away with their execution, they are just consistently hitting solid line drives that keep the game going and keep me roped in the action.  Just because this doesn’t seem as geared for female audiences as “Scandal” doesn’t mean these shows aren’t completely comparable.  Sure, “Scandal” has been off since returning for its back nine episodes, but at its best, it is just as good as “Game of Thrones” for many of the very same reasons.  Both are shows about the quest for power and the compromises you make to obtain it.  Both shows interweave a number of complicated narratives and expect the audiences to keep up.  And both are able to absolutely make your jaw drop with a well-executed plot twist.  Yet, so many people speak of GoT as art and Scandal as a guilty pleasure.  So, I speak out not against “Game of Thrones”, but in favor of appreciating this show for what it is, not pretending it is something it isn’t.  Suds on up, watch those dragons, but just accept that you like a soap opera and there is nothing wrong with that.

To name this Canadian sci-fi drama as something to watch on streaming this week feels kind of like a copout.  It is a show that many of my friends already discovered, one that I feel like I am late to the bandwagon on.

However, for every one person I find who has watched the ten-episode first season of this Canadian production, I find two who still haven’t heard of it, that I decided it was worth the post to try and raise awareness to those who don’t know it exists. More importantly, I want to convince others unsure of whether or not this show is their bag that it is, in fact, worth their time.

I knew of this show for the past year or so, mostly because of how much people raved about Tatiana Maslany, who plays seven or eight different characters over the course of the first season.  I wasn’t really won over by that as a selling point at first.  When people complain that parts like these get overlooked by the Emmys and the like, I tend to think this stuff feels like a gimmick more than a genuine performance.

I will say that in this instance I was completely wrong.  This girl is insanely talented and it is genuinely remarkable how much each of her characters feels like completely different people.  You might be wondering why she is playing eight different characters, which brings me to my next deterrent.

I am not normally much of a sci-fi person. While I have long been a fan of fantasy, if it is not Star Trek or The Twilight Zone, I tend to not be all that into the genre.  This was another reason I avoided this show, which is billed as a sci-fi program dealing with cloning.  While the cloning obviously plays a big role in the plot, I would say that, at least so far, this show is more of a thriller in the vein of “The Fugitive” than it bears a resemblance to “Blade Runner”.  Maslany is constantly on the hunt for information, trying to solve the mystery of her existence, so if you like mysteries and thrillers, but aren’t a sci-fi person, this show is actually right up your alley.

Finally, the name.  I have to be honest, I hate the show’s title and it is probably one of the reasons I avoided it for so long.  It sounded so serious and dour and sci-fi-ish that it really put me off.  I still don’t understand the name, I assume its deeper meaning will be revealed as the show progresses?  In other words, don’t let the dumb name deter you. This is not a weird hard to comprehend sci-fi series that is dark and depressing.  In fact, there are moments, particularly when Maslany is playing soccer mom Allison, that the show is really rather funny.

So, if you don’t like sci-fi, the name turns you off, and the thought of one girl playing a million characters sounds like something for fitting for SNL than serious drama, think again.  This is a one-of-a-kind type of show that will surprise you, keep you guessing, and, most importantly, keep you entertained.