The best sentences I read this week: vol. 3

“The hike to get to Rockbound Lake was the first time that my family had hiked together since what my brother and I referred to as ‘forced marches’ we used to take part in on family vacations.”

–My Five Favourite Day Hikes in Banff National Park by Guest Blogger

“If you’re a dad, you can just show up at base camp, have a beer with a Sherpa, and throw a peace sign up at the mountain and society will generally hand you a cookie.”

–On Being a Great Dad vs a Great Mom by Isis the Scientist

“They killed off Marissa at the end of the third season, which is why, a few years later, we all totally accepted the idea that Don Draper could whip through 46 different relationships and three total reinventions of his company in the span of a few hundred cases of brown liquor.”

–Why ‘The O.C.’ was the definitive show about the 2000s economy

“She has her issues—over the course of Grey’s she has almost died in a plane crash and at the hands of a gun man, suffered debilitating PTSD, been stabbed by an icicle, left at the altar, not to mention a litany of other outrageous things that are inevitable for a character who has been on a soap opera for 10 years. But she is not fundamentally damaged.”

–How Cristina Yang Changed Television by Willa Paskin

“Everyone’s favorite lesbian drug dealer who isn’t k.d. lang (WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID).”

–Orange Is The New Black may have a lot less Laura Prepon next season by Sean O’Neal

Note: I have no idea what k.d. lang did.

Shades of Grey

It has been a long time since I watched Grey’s Anatomy. I watched the first two seasons, back in 2005 and 2006, but haven’t watched it since — it reached that Marissa point where the characters do really irrational things and you check out. I caught an older episode tonight, and I recognized about half of the characters, and it was pretty excellent. Everything I used to love was still there. And it’s not something specific to Grey’s Anatomy, it’s true of The OC and Gossip Girl and any other show like that. The drama is ridiculous. There are moments when you think hey maybe if everyone spent less time gossiping and eating pizza then you would be able to practice medicine a bit more.

At the core of these shows is the drama. Everything is a mess. It is always going to be a mess. When it stops being screwed up this way, it will be messed up in a different way. These shows would not work if everyone was happy, if all the relationships were going perfectly and no one was having a nervous breakdown. This is real life drama on steroids, a hyperbolized state of everyday life drama but with better comebacks. It reminds you that your problems are going to be fine, and that in comparison there is no way it will be this crazy. But you can also relate. Your friends do crazy stuff too. It helps that there are thoughtful voice overs — Grey’s and Scrubs have that down. Whatever happens it will be okay. You will live to fit another day, and the most important thing is to enjoy the ride.

And maybe just maybe if you are lucky you will be able to keep track of who is dating who.