Friday Recommendations: The Seventh

I missed the Friday recommendations on Friday, but I still have to post one for the week or I may genuinely go insane.

Let me ask you all a question. I asked this on Notes as well, but may as well put it here, too. Is there space on Substack for a Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City style newsletter? Because I kind of desperately want to do one.

There are two problems I see:

1. Do I make a separate letter for this? I’d rather not, but this one is also too . . . searchable, y’know? A separate letter gives me some distance — plausible deniability.

2. If I do make it separate, then the chances of me keeping up with two newsletters is slim to none. I have enough trouble with keeping one on track.

I guess if I go for it, it’ll have to be based here, and I’ll just have to suck it up. I’ll put it under a different section or something, obscure the byline as well.

Anyway, y’all think there’s any sort of market for this? Not to sound like a YouTuber circa 2010, but let me know in the comments below! Now for the recs.

I had a busy week so I wasn’t very online. I’m only catching up on all the reading now.

• Here’s a great piece from Nina Schuyler about breathless sentences and Joan Didion. Learn! Love!

• I’m kind of in my Lorde Solar Power/ Swift Folklore era. I’m sure this is meaningless to most of you. I’ve been reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I hate bugs, but I’m on that nature shit at the moment. So this piece from Joyce Reynolds-Ward hit the spot.

• “Chief Rocka” by Lords of the Underground. A bartender just recommended this song to me the other day. If this song is well known, then I somehow missed it. If you like 90’s hiphop you’re going to love it.

• “Juno” by Spud Cannon. Another banger discovered thanks to Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. They describe their sound as, “music you could dance to at a dormitory basement party.”

• “Vacation” by Florist. I’m a big fan of Florist. Very chill acoustic stuff. Great for lazy Sunday mornings.

Okay, I am a connoisseur of schlocky crime procedurals. I love them. I have developed a spectrum for this type of show. On the X axis, you have light-hearted at one end, and bleak at the other. On the Y axis you have what I call the “personal/professional” spectrum. This defines how much the show lets us see the characters outside of their job. For example, Criminal Minds and Law and Order exist in the professional/bleak quadrant. I do not like these ones. They’re too depressing and no fun. Something like Castle or Monk exists in the light-hearted/personal quadrant. I prefer these.

In my relentless search for the best crime procedural, I’m happy to tell you all that the answer is The Mentalist. There are a few reasons for this. The show starts on the bleaker side, but gets brighter as the main character deals with his issues and lets his friends get closer. By the end, the show is a complete joy. The Mentalist also balances the personal and professional perfectly. While almost all run-time takes place “on the job,” there is a high level of personal talk about the character’s interior lives.

It also perfects one of my favourite crime procedural tropes — brilliant, weird consultant paired with by-the-book detective. Can’t lose.

A lot of these shows struggle with keeping up a central narrative arc for the entire series’ run-time. They can do good season-by-season arcs, but they usually start struggling after season five with the main plot (see Castle’s abysmal final season).

The Mentalist had none of these issues. Without getting into spoilers, they managed to keep the narrative momentum up for five whole seasons and then did the impossible by attempting a major shakeup early in the sixth season and landed it almost perfectly.

Simon Baker is impossibly charming in this role, and his Patrick Jane character gets to fundamentally change and grow as the series progresses.

I have some minor qualms with certain story beats/character choices, but overall I am comfortable calling this the best police procedural. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

And that’s all I’ve got! Please let me know about my Carrie Bradshaw dreams. For the record, I’m more of a Samantha/Miranda.