Short form TV diary, part 3

I forgot to say I watched The Secret Circle for a while last year. I pretty much forgot everything about it. Was it that bad? Objectively, I'm sure it was better than Grimm.

*The girls on the show were good looking. They were playing teenagers so maybe I should feel bad but I'm sure they were all very old.

*There was this one girl Diana who was supposed to be sort of the nice responsible one but she was a lot more intimidating and interesting than you would expect from that character.

*One of the main characters died in the first few episodes.

*This guy came and tried to seduce all the girls on the show but secretly wanted to kill the main characters for being witches.

*The main plotline was about how all the kids were witches combined their powers to be more powerful and Diana kept saying that they shouldn't do it because it was bad but they did it anyway and pretty soon it didn't seem to matter very much and the plot was about something else.

*Some of their parents were evil and they were all witches. The most confusing thing about the show was that the 6 (?) main characters were all descended from 6 witches but it seemed like all the witches were married to each other or something, were they all related? It also seemed like this line of witches had existed for a long time and there had always been 6 witches and they usually all dated each other? I didn't understand.

*I also remember a part where this woman didn't move or talk for 15 years because of magic and the main girl used magic to try and save her, but it turned out that her parents had actually frozen her on purpose because she was possessed by a monster. The monster started taking over the main characters and it was okay.

From my description the show sounds watchable and maybe I'll try it again soon, but I can't help but think it means something that I can hardly remember anything about it.

True Blood. Clayton and I were watching the last season of True Blood but why. I just don't care anymore.

Mad Men. I tried to watch the last season of Mad Men but again I just didn't care anymore. I think it was mostly because of Pete, who I used to love. I liked how in the first season he was a jerk, in the second season he went through a lot, and by the third season he was still a jerk but sort of had a good relationship with his wife and was wanting to be a better person. I don't just mean I want everyone to become nice but I liked that his character was developing. This season I started to feel like Pete was just becoming a jerk again and all the characters were being put through the same arcs and loops and it didn't feel meaningful anymore. JUST LIKE LIFE. Is this what Matthew Weiner is trying to tell us? Probably and maybe I'll be interested again someday, but not soon.

Bedlam. I can't believe I forgot this! The second season of Bedlam was amazing. Jed, who you would expect to be alive, is dead. Molly, who you would expect to have been kidnapped and murdered, actually just went to another country to hang out. I forget what happened to Ryan and Kate briefly appears only to leave again. John Foster remains, and actually was a good character who I had feelings about. Some of the ghosts were actually scary. All the bad characters were replaced by good ones! SPOILERS (I decided it's worth warning for them because I respect the show now.)

*Ellie, the Jed replacement. Just better at everything.

*Max, a Nice Guy who is a bartender and is played by an actor who is really appealing. He Nice Guys all over Ellie, while writing a secret blog about her ghost hunting. She finds out and is mad.

*Keira, a young woman who is having an affair with John Foster and he is terrible to her.

*Dan, John Foster's secret son. For the first few episodes, Dan was just a guy who worked for John Foster and was hitting on girls. Then it turned out that he was John Foster's son and JF didn't even know.

Now, my feelings about this are that I like when actors of different races are cast as relatives. John Foster is white and Dan is brown. But the weird thing about this is that when Dan revealed that he was John Foster's son, Max actually YELLED at Dan and was like, "Dan that's not possible, you're not white," and Dan had to painstakingly explain that a person who's white can have a non-white child. Then when Dan told John Foster, John Foster ALSO yelled the same thing at him, even though he presumably remembered that he dated a brown woman. So we had a weird situation where the casting director knew that people can have a relative of a different race, but the characters didn't.

I would consider reviewing this season more in depth because I really enjoyed it. We'll see.

Dog With a Blog, Jessie, ANT Farm, Austin & Ally, Shake It Up, Wizards of Waverly Place, Good Luck Charlie. Not that there's anyone who reads this who doesn't know me, but for the past 8 months I've worked for a severely disabled girl who spends a lot of time resting in her bed and watching the Disney channel. I know all of these shows back to front and am planning on reviewing all of them, the short version is Austin & Ally is the best and Shake It Up is the worst.

Bedlam 1x04, 1x05, 1x06

Heart is broken that even the ever-loyal Jim won't read my posts about this show. It is so funny you guys! Can't actually explain why.

Anyway, it is British and therefore short, so it wasn't too much trouble to finish. HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED.

Episode Four

"IS THIS SOME KIND OF EX-MENTAL PATIENT THING GETTING ALL MORALISTIC THE WAY PRISONERS GET RELIGION?"--one of Kate's awful comments when Jed criticized her for sleeping with a married man.

When I watched the teaser for episode three, I had dared to hope that Lily Loveless was going to be having power exchange sex with Jed! But in fact the clip that I thought (hoped/dreamed) was her was actually about Kate getting possessed by a creepy ghost while having sex with a married man, and slapping him and acting like she was going to kill him, and then seeing herself in a mirror with giant lopsided eyeballs.

Anyway, in this episode Kate tried to come back to the guy and get him to sleep with her again. FAIL. She did this by saying, "I was in bed and I lost control, how flattering is that?" and suggesting that this time, he can hit her during sex. It's only fair!

Not surprisingly the guy was not into it and told her to go away. I did think it was weird since she's his landlady that he didn't try to be more polite about it. But how could you be?

Molly got a job as a nanny/babysitter for a little girl named Ella who lives in the building. She wanted to sleep with Ella's dad and they had the most bizarre romantic dialogue as he told her he wished he could switch lives with her and she told him that, in fact, her life sucks.

Molly: You would get the worst deal, trust me.
Ella's dad: (looking lovingly at her) I don't believe that for a second.
Molly: (swoons)

If I told someone I thought I had a crappy life and they told me they DIDN'T BELIEVE ME...that probably wouldn't increase my attraction to them? Is Molly turned on by men thinking she's a liar/unable to judge the circumstances of her life?

Admittedly, as far as I can tell, Molly's life IS better than everyone else's life on the show. Kate is possessed and her dad is probs evil, Jed's life sucks for obvious reasons, Ryan is gay and his brother got murdered, and John Foster has to look in the mirror every day and see this:



But I guess no one on this show tells anyone their secrets (except Jed and Ryan, bros forever!) so Molly probably doesn't know how good she has it. Anyway, they slept together, but the guy started hating her because a ghost was after his daughter and Jed saved her. I know this doesn't make sense, but Ella's dad decided that because Jed was in a "loony bin," he clearly kidnapped Ella and then brought her back as a joke.

All of the sudden, Jed looked up and guess what was there:



This show is making me want to make little YouTube horror movies because it's SO EASY TO MAKE THINGS SCARY. This was the only semi-scary ghost and they didn't have to do anything expensive: they just made her a little kid who runs really fast, draws creepy pictures, has clown makeup on, and has her spooky face flashed on the screen at random moments. Finally. This isn't rocket science.

By the point she was randomly on the ceiling though the episode stopped being scary because I had seen her face enough to just go, "Oh, there's a little kid wearing clown makeup."

Oh well. Good try.

Episode Five

Can someone explain why Jed always looks so scared when he has a vision. He has them all the time! I get it when the vision is about someone drowning or cutting their wrists, but in this episode, he kept having a vision of a girl having sex with an ugly man, and every time he surfaced from the vision he would look really shaky and upset. Ugly people have sex too Jed!

Ryan and Molly researched Jed's biological mom who I may have mentioned was a patient at the hospital who died in childbirth. Some shady things were revealed. The best part was when Ryan told her that Jed was born in the asylum and Molly said, "What." As beautiful as Molly is, I have come to realize that the actress who plays her never attempts to come off like a person having emotional reactions, but just tries to seem more and more and more beautiful.

The ghost was okay.

At the end of the episode Kate realized that her dad John Foster is obvs a serial killer, so she was crying to Jed about how she wants to run away or something, and then they made out. I was SO surprised, not.

Episode Six

This episode started with Kate being the worst person in the world. Molly and Ryan were playing with Tarot cards and a ghost got mad and set Molly's arm on fire. Then Kate came home and yelled at Molly for burning "stupid hippie candles" and said, "I'll charge you for damages."

Later Kate apologized, which led me to believe she has been possessed by someone nicer.

Jed got a text that said "kate dad danger" and showed it to Ryan and was asking what it meant. FFS. I WONDER WHAT IT MEANS.

Jed did explain thought that he hasn't always gotten supernatural texts. It turned out that he just started getting them at the beginning of the series and they're from this weird number, which turns out to be the number of a room in the asylum. I think it turns out his mom is actually texting him, which is solid.

Molly kept trying to hint to Ryan that they should get married. Kate kept telling Molly Ryan was gay and Molly basically said that she didn't care if he was gay because "love is more than sexuality." FFS Molly! Her greatest goal in life is to be the Linda Thomas to someone's Cole Porter?

John Foster was trying to be a good dad and take Kate out to lunch which was awkward since Kate knows he's evil now. Kate basically ended up admitting she knows he's a serial killer and he told her he's actually not and she believed him. I actually thought this was a pretty realistic turn of events because it would be hard to accept your dad is John Foster. But whatever.

Ryan and Jed were discussing the ghost who set his sister on fire and is now trying to set Molly on fire. Why did he do that?

Ryan: Maybe he was just a nutter.
Jed: No one's just a nutter, Ryan.

Come on Ryan, if someone appears in multiple scenes and we see their face they can never be "just a nutter." Actually this time I guess he was because the show kind of forgot about him in all the drama. Ryan slept with Molly like an asshole and when she realized he wasn't into her she angrily decided to leave and stay with friends. She was walking down the street trying really hard to look cute:



I think it took that moment for me to realize how much Molly's facial expressions are just NOT facial expressions. She just opens her eyes really wide and looks dazed and bites her mouth. Anyway, she got into a white van just as a helpful voiceover reminded us that Zoe (her friend who went missing) was last seen getting into a white van.

A bunch of stuff happened but none of it made sense. Kate went to the room she's been having scary dreams about. It turned out that when she was a little kid she saw her dad and another guy carrying a dead body out of that room. Jed and Kate went to smash the wall and get into the room and Kate's dad was running after them saying that he didn't kill Zoe but implying that he knows who did and Kate definitely shouldn't go into the room.

In the room there was an elevator and Jed went down on it. Kate went down too but her dad caught up to her and made her go back up while Jed was yelling at her from inside a room that she needed to leave because it wasn't safe. This was actually semi-scary because we didn't know why everyone was so upset about Kate in particular being there. Jed said something to his mom and there was a scary ghost.

THE END.

As someone said on the IMDB board:

"A cliffhanger is something that leaves you wondering what will happen next. By that definition, Bedlam did not end on a cliffhanger."

The unfunny Bedlam post

So here's what I have to say about the show Bedlam that isn't really about the show at all. It's about the way people think about disability and the way this is reflected in and reinforced by pop culture.

Any institution (school, hospital, or prison) is a great setting for horror fiction because a)you can use a huge creepy-looking building with winding halls, b)there are lots of people there hence the potential for lots of ghosts, and c)people are likely to have been abused there.

But mental institutions are such a good setting that they're almost cheating because, even more than abuse or winding halls, people with disabilities are one of the basic units of the horror genre. I'd argue that at least half of villainous humans and ghosts in horror movies could be considered disabled--in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of disabled movie characters appear in horror movies.

I come to praise horror not to bury it though. After all, I like it. I also think that physical and mental "weakness" may be themes that are inherently scary because they threaten our security. The idea of criticizing porn for being offensive always strikes me as really senseless because porn is created to push certain buttons so I don't see how it can be any more offensive than an icemaker can be offensive for making ice--and the same argument can be made about horror.

So I'm not talking about the fact that Bedlam a TV show set in a haunted institution for people with mental health disabilities. I do think it says something interesting, though, that while the idea of the institution (and therefore disability) is used to give the show its spookiness, there are very few disabled characters.

I first found out about Bedlam on the Skins LiveJournal community when someone posted some gifs of Lily Loveless's guest appearance on the show. From the gifs, I could tell that her character was supposed to be ill (she was taking medication) and that she had moved into a new place. The name of the show made me assume that it took place in a psychiatric hospital, so I imagined that she had just been admitted to a hospital for treatment, only to discover it was haunted.

I thought this show was going to be about people with psychiatric disabilities in a haunted hospital. Like, there would be a few main ghost hunters who were either long-term patients or staff, and the guest stars would be various short-term patients who would be menaced by a ghost. After actually looking up the show, I realized that the hospital was no longer a hospital, but I figured the ghosts were going to have psychiatric disabilities since they were the ghosts of patients.

In fact, every single ghost of a patient has been casually mentioned to not actually have been mentally ill--even when this doesn't have anything important to do with the ghost's motivations. I want to make it clear I am not criticizing this particular show for this! But I went through every character in the first five episodes (living or dead) who has been a patient in a psychiatric hospital or is thought to have mental health problems.

There were ten characters like this--four were main character ghosts, three were living characters, and three were part of a ghost or living character's backstory. Only half of the characters who have been institutionalized or said to have MH problems actually have MH problems. Of these five, three are part of someone's backstory--they only appear very briefly and exist to drive the motivation of another character.

Of the four ghosts of patients, not one of them actually has MH problems. They were all institutionalized "wrongly."

The show portrays a lot of abuse against people labeled with psychiatric disabilities. Jed is constantly made fun of, insulted, or feared because of his label. All of the patients, especially the female ones, were treated unfairly or even killed by staff. This abuse is portrayed as wrong, but all the abuse we see against people with disabilities is experienced by characters who don't actually have disabilities.

It would be kind of a heavy accusation (especially against such an awesomely stupid show) if I tried to argue that the writers of the show are trying to say that abuse of people with disabilities is okay, and is only wrong when it happens to people without disabilities who are mistakenly perceived as disabled. I also think it would be wrong to try to read something into the fact that most of the actually-disabled characters are only notable for having killed themselves and/or someone else. That comes with them being backstory characters in a show where every character has a tragic past.

What I'm trying to say is more simple. Definitely a lot of people are institutionalized when they don't actually have a disability, and in the 19th century (which most of the ghosts are from) this was much more true than it is now. But there must have been some patients in the institution who actually had disabilities. Most of them, even.

So, where are the ghosts with disabilities? I think we are probably supposed to imagine they are among the many ghosts in Bedlam Heights. Like the ghosts without disabilities, they probably were abused and had tragic lives. But for some reason, none of the disabled ghosts get to be the ghost of the week, who Jed sees visions of and whose terrible experiences he clucks over with Ryan.

I think this isn't through anyone's decision to ignore the experience of actually crazy people in an institution for crazy people. I think when the writers were coming up with the concept for the ghost of the week, every week they just happened to come up with a ghost who was non-disabled, because main characters--characters whose point of view is show--are almost always non-disabled. Given the premise of this show, it makes absolutely no sense! But I think it's totally, completely ordinary and frankly I would have been surprised if it was any other way.

Bedlam 1x01, 1x02, 1x03

So I started watching Bedlam. First it was just the worst ever, not like, "This should be good but I don't like it," like I originally felt about The Fades, but just, like, this is a disaster. But I was really enjoying it from my awkward position as someone who loves horror as a genre while being so easily scared that watching the most average horror movie in the world, or even being exposed to pictures or descriptions of some horror movies, can debilitate me for a week.

Because like...let me tell you. The main character Kate, who is an asshole, was working in the office of the ridiculous apartment building she and her dad own. Then in the background, behind these glass doors, was a ghost! Kate didn't notice and just walked by the doors. Cut back to the ghost.



I couldn't even deal with how hard I was laughing as blood (or possibly black water?) started dripping down the glass. This continued happening for practically the whole episode. Kate was making out with a gay dude in the bathroom, and blood started dripping down over the bathroom walls, including the weird sexy picture of herself that Kate has in her own bathroom because she's CRAZY. (Not really crazy, of course. More on that later.) Later, Kate was lying in a bathtub with her eyes closed and the blood started dripping down the walls again. Also, the ghost started telekinetically writing the word "DROWN" on the bathroom mirror.

Then it started trying to pull Kate underwater and drown her. Her adopted cousin Jed runs in and saves her by giving a ring she was wearing to the ghost, because the ghost was the original owner of the ring. Jed pulls Kate out of the water and as she sits all upset in a towel trying to recover from almost dying, Jed comforts her by saying:

"YOU MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP IN THE WATER."

Is this supposed to make anyone feel good? Now Kate has to be concerned that not only is she an asshole, she's apparently so incompetent that she can accidentally drown herself while taking a bath?

Maybe it's just me, but this show makes me LOL and LOL, and I felt relieved that there was a horror show I could watch without being at all scared.

THE BASICS.

This show is terrible. Look:



TERRIBLE.

The major characters are, from left to right:

1. Jed, the ~adopted cousin of Kate. I use an ironic squiggle for the reason that apparently, this is a really big deal? I don't usually think about whether people are adopted, but the fact that Jed both was adopted and has been labeled with mental health problems (don't worry, he's not actually crazy, he's just a ghost hunter!) has caused him to be some sort of family outcast, e.g.:

Ryan: Who is this, Kate?
Jed: I'm her cousin.
Kate: You're not my cousin. We're not even related.

What the fuck? He's just adopted.

I have a really bad feeling that Kate and Jed might have sex at some point and this is the reason for the constant reiteration that they aren't related. Jed comes to the apartment building because his phone was sending him texts telling him to save Kate, because yeah, in addition to seeing ghosts he somehow receives texts and big popup windows on his computer giving him supernatural advice on what to do? (Originally I thought he was using a dayplanner to remind him of his various ghosthunting tasks.) Then after he saves Kate from that particular hilarious ghost, he realizes how many ghosts are in the apartment building, so he decides to stay and put them all to rest.

2. John Foster. I don't know this guy's real name. All I know is that on Skins he played a character so annoying that a person of my acquaintance uses his name as a safeword when engaging in BDSM. John Foster is the perfect safeword because the mere mention of his name destroys all happiness/boners.

In Bedlam, John Foster is Kate's dad who does nothing but act sort of evil and nasty. At one point, Jed tries to pretend it's a joke (I don't remember the context but we're probs better off without it):

Jed: Ha ha, are you trying to electrocute me?
John Foster: It's a pity they didn't give you some of that at the hospital, might be less bother.

What the hell, John Foster? Let me be clear, I really don't like Jed very much, but it seems like he can't do anything without his terrible uncle and cousin yelling at him that he's adopted and making fun of him for having been institutionalized. I get the impression that John Foster is going to be revealed to be a serial murderer or something, so the fact that he's an asshole is a little less annoying than the fact that Kate is an asshole.

3. Kate. The biggest asshole in the entire world. Sorry I keep quoting, but let me tell you what she said in the third episode (spoiler alert, like you care).

Jed: Did you know that my mother was a patient here? Did you know that she died in childbirth?
Kate: I didn't know that. Sorry.

I guess it's not possible to capture in writing the way that Kate says the word "Sorry." But it's like she bumped into him on the train and she doesn't even want to say it. Kate spends most of her time doing awful and/or inexplicable things (like having a sexy picture of herself on her own bathroom wall).

In the first episode, Molly tells Kate that she is interested in Ryan. Kate seduces Ryan. Soon after, she starts having sex with a married guy. When Molly's friend goes missing, Kate makes an effort whenever she mentions the missing girl to say, "She's not my friend. I thought she was annoying." When Jed's girlfriend comes over for dinner and mentions she was in a psychiatric hospital, Kate says, "Oh, so you and Jed have something in common!" and starts making fun of Jed's supposed mental health problems.

I assume she's written this way on purpose, but I don't think she's going to turn out to be evil so my question is, why?

4/5. Molly and Ryan. I don't exactly get the background with Molly and Ryan which may be my own laziness. I think Molly is Kate's old friend and knew her and Jed when they were kids. Ryan is a newer friend of Molly and Kate? And when Kate and her dad decided to turn this building into apartments, Kate, Molly, and Ryan moved into a big apartment together (where I think Jed also lives).

I have a feeling Kate doesn't make Molly and Ryan pay rent because they are much cooler than her. In the third episode, the two of them just start bitching about Kate at one point and I was really into it! I'd love to think that they both really hate Kate and are just using her for a free apartment.

Molly is pretty attractive, which is good, and is supposed to be the nice/caring character, but I think without the contrast of Kate she would probably seem like a bitch. Ryan's brother was brutally murdered a year ago and Jed tells him all the details of how his brother was feeling when being murdered? Asshole!

Ryan is also played by a guy who apparently is a famous pop star. My major concern with Ryan was that he was the gayest person I had ever seen, and when I found out he was played by a gay dude whose primary job is not acting, I was like...why did they try to make the character straight. But in this aspect, the show really surprised me, because they revealed that Ryan is gay but maybe hasn't dealt with it or doesn't want to tell Molly and Kate. I'm pretty into the fact that Ryan's character isn't defined by being gay and isn't even revealed to be until a few episodes in.

I'm really fond of Ryan. But his likability and Molly's attractiveness/lack of utter evil aren't enough to make up for Jed being pretty boring and Kate being the most awful person in the world.

So why did I imply this show is less of a disaster after the first episode? Guest characters obviously! In episodes two and three, a new person moves into the apartment building who is better-looking and more charismatic than the major characters. But they have a secret and a ghost starts torturing them. At the end of the episode the guest character goes away, which is awful.

The first guest character was Leah, a cool lady who stole money and flirted with all the guys. Eventually it turned out that while drunk-driving away from her abusive husband, she ran over two kids, so this ghost wants to kill her because his wife committed suicide with their kids in the car? I don't get it. Cars! Kids! Women! Awesomely, Leah is haunted by SKID MARKS (the kind on the road not the kind in your underwear). They keep appearing on her floor, and one day, her cat is lying dead on the floor in a skid mark as if it was run over by a car.

Soon after, the ghost is terrorizing Leah and she runs into the bathroom. BUT THEN THE LIGHT COMES ON IN THE BATHROOM AND GUESS WHAT!



Ahhh! Are you serious. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

I actually enjoyed this episode since Leah was pretty cool but it still made no sense. The most annoying thing was how all the main characters hated Leah after finding out what she had done. Maybe I'm being too easy on her since she was awesome, but accidentally killing people would be a pretty awful experience and they acted like she did it on purpose. Jed was trying to convince Ryan that they should let the ghost kill her by comparing Leah to the guy who murdered Ryan's brother.

Fortunately Ryan was slightly more forgiving and convinced Leah to turn herself into the police, after which the ghost decided not to kill her. Which made no sense. Except for the skid mark bathroom, the best part of the episode was when Kate told Molly that Leah wasn't using her legal first name (because if you were trying to hide from your abusive husband you would obvs change your first name and not your last name). Molly proceeded to look up Leah on Facebook and discovered that, in fact, Leah was on Facebook under HER OLD NAME!

Because if you were going by a different name, you wouldn't change your name on Facebook even if you started renting an apartment under your new name, which is way more likely to cause problems when it's not the name on your credit card. Changing your name on Facebook is super difficult!

The third episode was legitimately not bad. It had Lily Loveless and she looked GOOD. She played a girl named Sadie who moved into the apartment building after being in a psych ward for several years. She started dating Jed, but unfortunately a ghost wanted to fuck with her in a way that was finally actually logical and semi-scary! Great job everyone!

It was also pretty cool that because Sadie has mental illness, she didn't react in the conventional way when she was being tormented by a ghost. For most of the episode, something scary would happen to her and she'd look kind of sad/spaced out, and then tell Jed that maybe moving to an apartment by herself is too much of a change and she should be living with her parents. We have all seen characters who think they are haunted but are actually mentally ill, but I'd never seen a mentally ill character who thought she wasn't being haunted because she ascribed all the supernatural phenomena to her mental illness.

(I have seen this with characters who have been tricked into thinking they're ill, but that's different. Sadie obviously had/has real problems, but the ghost is real too.)

This brings me to the one gripe I have with the show that is not related to its quality--and maybe it's more accurate to say it's a gripe with pop culture in general that Bedlam happens to be a great example of. As you may have guessed from the name of the show, the apartment building in Bedlam used to be a mental institution. But so far, there are no ghosts with mental disabilities. I am going to write a separate post on this instead of sticking it at the end of my post about how funny the show is--and seriously, watch it, I hope you enjoy the ghostly skid marks as much as I do.