Who is Will Traveler?

Again, I must apologize for the deafening silence around here.  Summer has robbed me of my creative energy in terms of anything craft or kitchen related.  I'll be a better blogger/dabbler in September, I promise!  That said, I'm excited to introduce you to Whitney of Anything Lime who's my partner in crime for my first ever blog swap.  We were asked to post something related to summer, so without further ado here's Whitney's take on the tragic tv line up of summertime. Take it away Whitney! 


It started as most summer TV show season openers do - with the suspense slightly more intriguing than the acting is awful. It was my first summer living in FL, and as I was unemployed and living with a pro-golfer, Patrick, (who would later become my husband) who traveled all the time, I sought companionship from my dog and my television. And there's something so deliciously wrong about being sucked into the dreadful plotlines and horrible scripting that are the building blocks of summer TV. That particular summer, it was a show called "Traveler" that had me leaping balletically in anticipation. The trailers had me counting down the days, I was playing into their game like a cobra to the music of a snake charmer. Patrick assumed I'd gone mad, talking back to the commercials that bellowed "Who is Will Traveler?" into my living room. And of course I'd reply. "A CIA agent, duh.... or maybe, MAYBE a non-CIA agent pretending to be a CIA agent. A non-spy you're supposed to think is a spy. Or a spy you're supposed to think is a non-spy pretending to be a spy! OR a non-spy you're supposed to think is a spy when he's really a backup dancer on tour with Beyonce!"

I'll save you an entire summer of sitting on your couch heaving wooden spoonfuls of chicken tortellini alfredo straight out of the pot and into your mouth and tell you right now how it always goes. Because having the seamstress bark at you that you've gained "too many pounds" as she's sewing your cellulite ass into the dress you'll have to wear at your sister's wedding in three weeks is a fate worse than death in some cultures. 

"Who is Will Traveler?" The show opens up. There are three friends, one's named Will, (Is HE Will Traveler? Gosh, THAT was easy!") They plan a trip, making references to wilderness and Jack Kerouac and brotherhood and camping and manly things. They bring a video camera, rollerblades and backpacks. They're in a museum; Will instructs his friends to put on their rollerblades while he records video of them causing a commotion. As they speed away, there's an explosion behind them, and in the place where Will stood is now an unidentifiable charred body. And this is the point where, beaming, I announce. "Got it. A spy pretending to be a non-spy pretending to be a spy pretending to be a dead guy, who, because he used an actual body as a decoy, is actually a murderer or maybe he was framed."

I didn't know whether he was a masseur-turned-unicorn tamer who spent his days reading romance novels and braiding women's hair. What I DID know was that he wasn't actually dead, and it wasn't a mystery at all because seriously, that was in the pilot episode and how much worse could it get than, "Who is Will Traveler, ya say? Well, dead now."

So then, back to the enthralling suspense of this show. Because the friends are seen speeding away from the scene of a horrific disaster, they're immediately pegged as the culprits and labeled terrorists and flagged as fugitives of the United States. They draw this out for oh, eight episodes. Meanwhile, guys in suits storm into the house where Will Traveler (alive and well) is staying with a girl he loves named Maya - which, ooooh, is also the name of his boat (eery, right? I know! Coincidences!) and then you KNOW the show has to be legit because, people, they're wearing suits.

"Will Traveler," they say to him in the most intimidating voices the actors can manage to muster, and by this point you're all, "TELL ME ALREADY! TELL ME WHO HE IS!" But they don't tell you, they never tell you. Instead they start throwing out words like "package" and "device" and "targets" and "mission" and "intel" and "transmission" and "extraction" and "acronym" and "vagina monologues" and "soliloquy."

I'm sure the way they prep the actors for this show is like this, "If you forget your lines, just start reciting this list of spy-like buzzwords." And there you have it: crappy writing at it's finest; available on network stations all summer long (and catch reruns of NCIS for poor scripting year round!).

And then the next part is inevitable.

The show gets canceled.

So who is Will Traveler?

I'll never know.

*****

Well Whitney, I can't say I'm sad I missed that one! I agree summer tv is horrible, even though I'm really amused by those crazy kids on Bachelor Pad 2.  Thanks for sharing Whitney!  I'm over on Whitney's blog sharing a few more of my summer reading picks. Wednesday's Wardrobe returns Thursday! 

Ban on re-runs

You might say I'm a marathon junkie, not in the 26.2 sense (yet) but in the countless-hours-in-front-of-the-TV watching shows I've seen many, many times before. It's hard for me to move before 1pm on Saturday or Sunday, as I'm glued to the television watching episode after episode of 90210. If I start watching at 10am, by 10:05am my husband has made his first "Donna looks like an alien" comment to me in hopes that I'll change the channel.  Almost anything Bravo can hold me equally captive, particularly those trainwreckable Housewives of fill-in-the-blank city.  Fortunately for me, this a two-way affliction as my husband is a sucker for Role Models, Family Guy, and Tabitha's Salon Takeover (the one Bravo show I don't love coincidentally). 

Thus, for the month of May we are not watching reruns of any kind and yes that includes movies.  Almost halfway through the month and neither of us have cheated on this challenge.  While this has cut down on our overall TV watching, it has also forced us to be more creative in what we can watch.  While we've added basics like The Voice (love), Modern Family and lots of sports to our TV line-up, I've also attempted to add more documentaries to our list. Here's a few I have found and loved in the past two weeks:  

Saving Pelican 895 on HBO was one of the first we watched.  It's a short film, only 45 minutes in length but gripping right from the start.  I literally had tears in my eyes within 2 minutes.  If you are unfamiliar with the film, its about cleaning birds, specifically pelicans in the wake of the BP Oilspill last spring.  I have a very soft spot for pelicans and following Pelican 895 through the cleaning process was very interesting and educational.  The cleaning process is very complex, multi-week in length and a truly intense experience for the birds.  If you have access to HBO, this film is on-demand.  If not, the trailer is available at the link above.

I read about the organization Every Mother Counts in a magazine recently and was interested in learning more about their cause, so I DVRed their film No Woman, No Cry originally shown on Oprah's new network.   The film is directed and narrated by supermodel Christy Turlington Burns, who suffered from post-natal hemorrhaging after the birth of her daughter Grace.  This film goes around the world discussing the difficulties surrounding pregnancy, delivery, abortion and other womens' sexual health issues here in the U.S., Guatemala, Bangladesh and Tanzania.  Christy Turlington Burns is an empathetic filmmaker and narrator, capturing the fear, frustration and worry in each of the women while tying it back to her own difficult delivery.  As a woman, I found this film emotional;  at times I felt fear, awe, fascination and a great sense of sympathy and pride to be a woman.

Last but certainly not least, GasLand.  Truth be told, I have wanted to see this since last fall, and it finally arrived on Netflix this month (its also supposed to be available on HBO).  This documentary is both amazing and totally terrifying. For us East Coast dwellers, this is a fairly new issue, but is absolutely something we must be educated on.  Josh Fox, the film's creator/director/narrator travels America trying to understand the natural gas industry, specifically Halliburton's latest-creation, fracking.  What he finds is disturbing and persuasive.  Small towns overtaken by enormous natural gas companies who enter in a hurry, set up shop, destroy the local environment, cause widespread health problems and are then not held accountable due to a loophole (read: purposeful canyon) in the Clean Water Act.   If you've seen Erin Brockovich, this has a similar but much rawer feel, as it is mainly composed of interviews with impacted communities.  This was an impressive film, its easy to see why it won awards at the Sundance Film Festival last year.

Here's hoping the second half of May proves as fruitful in the documentary film findings.  Do you have a favorite documentary that you'd recommend?