11-2-00

Hail,

For the nonce I"m passing over "The Lost Girls" in my Ramblings. I have written one, but I made the mistake of trying to e-mail it home and it vanished into the void. Until I can get at the backup copy, I just don't feel like rewriting it, so it'll wait (mostly because I included several links in it).

As far as "Lane Miserables" go, it was a good episode. It almost made excellent, but lost that title in the last thirty seconds of the show, something I'll cover later. There was lots of great character exploration and advancement here. Anne is definitely one of the top writers for the show, and I wish we'd get more from her.

Jake's character was treated particularly well this episode, something we haven't seen before. Although everyone, including Jane, is treating him like a child, I have to wonder if he's really as out of touch as he seems. His scene with Helen early on hints that he isn't; he's trying to watch his game, Helen is bothering him, and he knows just what to say to get her to leave him alone. Just watch the way he acts after she leaves. There may be more to Jakey than we've seen so far. Even his scene with Monique points this way, as he doesn't totally fly off the handle when he thinks she's Quinn's date like we'd expect, but merely comments on how little he knows his kids.

Helen's reactions this episode were quite amusing, and we got to see just how much she wants to mother someone, anyone at all in fact, and is disappointed that her daughters aren't letting her do it for them.

We got to finally meet Jane's family (and no better writer could have been chosen for this, I think), and they do help explain Jane. The family dynamics were great, and I even enjoyed the Trent and Daria scenes where Trent reinforced my opinion that he's a few twinkles short of a glimmer. It was absolutely great that Daria finally started realizing what he's like, even if it was with Quinn's help and the use of dream sequences (the only time so far they've worked). A lot of little touches were well done in these, like Daria crossing her arms and tugging on her shirt. If not for the final dream sequence this show would definitely have met the standard for excellence. As it stands, this is my favorite episode of third season.

Wraith