Who is this "Tim" person? Is he on a soap?

Sure - he was a doll some of the time, and he went down a well once.

t hearts sumi and Frank with a Passion.

Heh. Granted, everything I know about Passions, I know from BtVS. You know - that show that Tom Miner wrote for....

Nothing like a shameless plea for ponies to kill a thread.

I will bury it further by announcing that the dental work on my lower jaw is complete! Four more visits and I will be completely done!

does the dance of dental joy

Kristen, yay for soon no-more-dental-work!

From the interview Allyson posted (thanks, Allyson!):

And “Point of Origin,” a guy sets himself on fire. It’s really nothing you’ve seen at the Universal stunt show. We did it on ANGEL and BUFFY all the time, but apparently, we can’t show that on TV.

For me, I guess the fantasy and the "can't really happen in our everyday world" elements do play a role in what I'm able to watch without gasping and hiding my eyes from the screen. In "Buffy" or "Angel", I could watch the fights, for example, pretty easily, because they were "cartoon" fights, in the lack of a better word. Not to say that they were ridiculous or silly - some of them were absolutely dance-like beautiful and just as painful - but in the sense that I knew they couldn't take place "in the real world".

Nobody could be hit like that and still get up for some more, nobody could jump like that, respond like that to a gun shot, and so forth. So even when a character was screaming with the pain and the agony, it was still a "less real" pain and agony for me. Not like the anvil that keeps falling on the cartoon character, or the bomb that keeps exploding in its face, only to emerge seconds later, all worn out and black-faced, and continue going on to the next plot. But nearer that than, say, an image of something a 'real' person around me can do, a slap in the face, for example.

Obviously, I haven't watched "The Inside" (though, thanks to the lovely Tamara, I may soon will). But I guess that telling a story without the fantasy element to cushion the rough parts would involve, for me, more "covering my eyes with my hands" in front of the tv, even though the exact same man-on-fire would affect me less on a less "it happens in a worls whose rules are like the real one" sort of story. Not that it has anything to do with the quality of the story or the characters or my overall possible connection to them. It's just the way I look and respond to violent fictional images.

From all I've read about "The Inside" it seems like it doesn't really take place in a world that plays according to the same rules as the "real" world. FBI agents who fight serial killers on a daily basis is just a different sort of fantasy than vampires, IMHO. At least, that's how it looks to me, in the sense that both are very different from my everyday life. But I guess that having something on screen that even theoretically could take place in the 'real' world, that no physical or biological rules of the real world were broken in creating it, may make it more, well, real, in the lack of a better word, and therefore treated differently than a vampire being crushed on the ground or whatever.

Or maybe I'm just stating-the-obvious again. We have computer network problems so I don't have access to my data, and therefore can't do the work I need to do. And it's even sillier that I throw large paragraphs at something without ever watching it. Sigh.

Nothing like a shameless plea for ponies to kill a thread.

I will bury it further by announcing that the dental work on my lower jaw is complete! Four more visits and I will be completely done!

Wow, you really did kill it--for more than six hours. *checks thread title* Of course, when I thought I was reading Natter, I was a little more in awe of that tidbit.

I'm glad you're nearing the end of the dental ordeal.

For me, I guess the fantasy and the "can't really happen in our everyday world" elements do play a role in what I'm able to watch without gasping and hiding my eyes from the screen.

I know exactly what you mean, Nilly.

We have computer network problems so I don't have access to my data, and therefore can't do the work I need to do.

Oh, I hope they clear up, soon.

My slacker "TV Week" guide from the newspaper has The Inside still listed for tonight. For a brief, horrible moment, I thought that my Tivo had betrayed me. Then I realized that the TV Week is _often_ wrong, and I should trust the Tivo. But part of me wanted to do a manual record just in case

I dreamt an Inside episode last night where Mel was describing how Webb & Rebecca's hearts were both all spiky but that they fit together perfectly because of that. And Mel was Webb's long-lost daughter and they sang some light opera together at the end. The perp of whatever the crime of the week was the accompanist.

It was MUCH less disturbing then the last Inside dream I had that had to do with the fingernail biting thing. shuddering still.

Heh. My Google Quote of the day is from RAH.

Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

- Robert Heinlein

It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.

Awright! There's hope for me yet!

Wow, you really did kill it--for more than six hours.

30k in dental work has a way of stunning people into silence, I suppose.