tripping the light fantastic

What if your life was a TV show? Would you be the star or a background character?

Willis Wu lives and works in Chinatown and dreams of being Kung Fu Guy, just like his father before him, but Will's role in life—or in the script—is more Generic Asian Man Number Three. Then he falls for Attractive Lady Cop and has to make a choice between a family life in the suburbs or the job he's always wanted.

This is one of those stories that's more about an idea than a character, and more a thesis than a story. The idea is interesting and the thesis is credible—and completely spelled out for you in a courtroom scene at the end in case you somehow missed it—but the characters have the stock feel of a parable and gave me little reason to care about their struggles as they toil in a system that's been stacked against them for centuries.

The system is racist as shit and Yu supports this with real world examples but doesn't do much to personalize it for his characters. He does dramatize it, literally, as parts are in script format, but even much of that is intentionally clichéd, and despite some early ??? as I wondered what the fuck was going on, I didn't find this challenging or exciting, but I think it did what it meant to.

Contains: cops; racism (including stereotypes and slurs); elder care; poverty; generational trauma; pomo; second person perspective.

I started watching Avenue Department Q and it took me like four days to get through the first episode because it took FOREVER to get where it was going. I'd watch fifteen minutes, decide I didn't want to spend any more time with these assholes, and go do something else. Then the next day I'd watch fifteen more minutes. But once I finally got to the end of the first episode, I was like, "Ohhhh, I see."

And then I stayed up past my bedtime to watch the next three episodes. It's still fully populated with assholes, and not the charming kind, and you can't see Matthew Goode's handsome face because he's all worn out and beardy and also an asshole who parks his car like it's a bike and he's a twelve-year-old boy. Just, wherever it lands when he hops out of it. I didn't find Goode entirely convincing as either worn out or beardy an asshole, though, as there's just something too impish about him to pull either of those things off. Like that was really a job for David Tennant. Which the show kept reminding me of by naming Goode's partner "Hardy." Have none of these people seen Broadchurch? Goode was rather good at the out-of-control violence though, which made that extra uncomfortable. (It's a very violent show. Shootings, stabbings, bludgeonings complete with flying bits. Police personnel are responsible for about half of it. There's also references to mental illness (OCD, PTSD, panic attacks, arachnophobia, psychopathy), life-changing injuries, some self-inflicted dentistry, enclosed spaces, and the threat of sexual violence toward a teenager.)

I got drawn into the investigation and finished the show in less time than it took me to watch the first episode, but it leans a little too heavily on "unpopular asshole (believes he) is the only one who can solve crimes!!!" Goode's boss makes him head of an entirely new cold case department just so she doesn't have to deal with him, and in case you're wondering how seriously this new department is being taken, it's run out of the basement. (Other notable departments operating out of the basement: The X-Files, Fringe, and—also starring Anna Torv—Mindhunter.)

It would have worked better for me if Goode had been able to carry the show, since he is the center of it, but, in this form, he just doesn't have the charisma of famous assholes like our modern Sherlock Holmeses (Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Downey, Jr., Hugh Laurie, and, lord help me, even Benedict Cumberbatch) or even a less famous Alec Hardy. I think the show's at its best when it takes advantage of the whole cast. Goode's eager underlings Rose and Akram were a lot more interesting to me, but since Goode's deeply incurious about both of them, they're built in the little moments. And, although I've only seen her in two things (this and Giri/Haji), I always enjoy Kelly Macdonald. At one point Goode says something gross to Macdonald, his department-mandated therapist, and I made a face and when the camera switched over to her she was making the exact same face.

The aforementioned Hardy's entire personality is "shot in the line of duty, now partially paralyzed, unable to walk, and recovering." I wanted to like him, but I was suspicious of the disability narrative they were feeding me, which was also pretty one note.

We just don't know enough about the character to judge whether his suicide attempt made sense or was just lazy, ableist writing. I suspect the latter.

Content note that is also a spoiler.

But, eventually, there is teamwork! And Goode's Morck maybe even trying to be slightly less of an asshole, or at least a better father. His lodger Martin adds in some, like, nonconsensual found family vibes that I dug, as Morck doesn't want Martin's opinion, but he's getting it anyway because Martin's part of their family unit whether Morck wants him to be or not.

Watch Department Q if you like: investigations, gritty procedurals, Scottish accents, Matthew Goode, hyperbaric chambers.

Dr. Sapphire "Saffy" Walden is the head of the magical department in an exclusive—and very old—English boarding school. She's a powerful magician, a dedicated teacher, and a middle-aged white bisexual woman. She lives on campus, eats all her meals in the cafeteria, and doesn't have much of a life outside the school, which has a bit of a demon problem.

The pace of this book is banananas. There's a big fight a third of the way in that, in any other book, would be the final conflict, but here it's just part of the background. The central question doesn't even solidify until halfway through the book, and the main problem doesn't come into focus until much, much later. Every conflict but the last comes on suddenly and is dealt with immediately and in between is the normal grinding minutiae of being a teacher and school administrator. This isn't a complaint. Emily Tesh knows what she's doing, and that is building a rich and layered world for her story to live in, a world so deep and detailed that the clues she sprinkles in don't stand out as anything but more of the same.

Every time I read a children's fantasy book where the kids confront the enormous problem all by themselves and I was crying, weeping, begging, Please find a trusted adult, this book heard me and answered. But, as we learn, even that can have its pitfalls.

Contains: children in peril, past child death; demonic possession; life-changing injury; and while there is f/f romance, it's not in any way the focus of the book.