Yeah, exactly, what AM I doing up at 1:38am,
especially since I woke up at 5:30, and will do it
again tomorrow (oh, today, as in in a few hours). But
I have an answer for you in three short words: I. Am.
An. Idiot. Oh sorry, four. My composition teacher
Daron Hagen once told me that sometimes, even when
you're dead in the middle of the most pressing,
horrendous deadline and you're working round the
clock at it, sometimes, all the same, you just need
to watch television. So after a long, long day of
finalizing the score for Act II Scene I of the Summer
King and dispatching the product of my labors to
singers and copyists, and then after a band practice
and a return home, I settled in front of the old
Inty-net and zoomed over to ABC.com. Because they've
undisappeared Day Break (remember
the show whose cancellation I was so
upset about?) Yes. It's back - streaming
only, at ABC.com. And ABC really and truly hates
this show - they waste no opportunity to treat
it like poo. They announced all big and glorious
that starting Monday, January 29, they're going
to premiere one episode a week, each Monday,
until the series runs its course (it was
originally supposed to fill the gap between the
first and second half of Lost - a vastly
inferior but much more popular effort). So here
we are, on the 29th, and what does ABC do? Just
dump the whole series on line, no pomp, no
circumstance. No dragging it out week by week,
just here - have em all, we really don't think
they're worth anything. And I really wouldn't
waste this cyberspace with my rant if the show
weren't deeply, deeply good. It's a scandal that
this show was canceled, and an even bigger
scandal (or wait, something really cool!) that
you can now watch the whole season for free on
the web, with only limited commercials. To do
so, go
here and navigate to Day
Break. Hopper is a cop played by former Rent
star Taye Diggs. He's living the same day over
and over again, just like Bill Murray in
Groundhog Day, only in this instance each day he
wakes up he's framed for the murder of an
assistant district attorney. Sure the show's
overwrought, melodramatic, and what have you,
but it's also thoughtful, complex, moving, and
seriously imaginative television. The acting is
top notch, and everyone in it's a hottie, so I
really don't see how the American public missed
the boat on this one. But at least morons like
me can now deprive themselves of intensely
needed shut-eye, staring into the same computer
screen that's held my gaze since the sun was on
its way up this very...I mean yester...day.
