How Could "Hustle" Do This to Me?!

I started to watch Hustle in 2009 mostly, or at least regularly. I did see all of Series 4, two years before that, and even some of the third series which would have been 2006, I think, when the show in my opinion was at its best, but back then I was too young to understand some of it (Hustle is, after all, a lot about finance and the economy sometimes). By Series 5, I knew that I missed by old favourite characters and so I started to watch it online from the very first series, and I fell in love with it. Ash, Stacie, Danny, Albert and Mickey "Bricks" were characters who I looked up to or linked to situations I was in if I had problems. All five of them were so real and so alive to me. I don't know if it's normal to have the connection with a TV show that I did back then. I knew, and still do know, the names of not just actors but producers and writers like they were a big part of my life. They were people I admired, and I'd say that Hustle is a large part of what made me want to write.
It's understandable, then, when at twelve years old, I was angry that as I watched the original five main characters grow and develop and just be awesome online, it was irritating how every Friday I had to watch it and Danny and Stacie had not only been replaced, but replaced by characters who it was so obvious had been written to fill the purpose they bought to the group - Sean was boyish and immature and a bit of a womaniser, Emma sultry and sensible, sometimes a little feminist. I still always complained that it was never quite what it used to be, but I grew to like Emma and tolerate Sean. I didn't feel that angry at the show anymore, it was only Jaime Murray and Marc Warren who I could blame for the fact that their careers had simply taken them to different places, and I wasn't going to do that any time soon.
I still loved Hustle a lot and watched it faithfully, and had a lot of respect for anyone involved.
That is, up until tonight.
Tonight, within sixty minutes, one of my favourite fictional characters not only slipped much out of his usual self and also lost his voice, but was the central point of one of the dumbest, most unbelievable plots I think I've probably seen ever. It was stupid and not just on a Hustle scale, but compared to pretty much anything.
Let me explain. SPOILER ALERT.

The episode started off as a con the gang were playing on a football agent, to raise money to save Ash's hometown football team, who the recession had assumably hit. Already from the start I'd say I wasn't enjoying it as much as usual, only really because I don't know a lot about football, let alone the business behind it - occasionally there'll be an episode of Hustle which is almost a chore to keep up with intellectually, but most of the time it's worth it. I was already slightly annoyed about some things Ash had said in the episode, which were just so noticeably out of character.
Things were going pretty well, then halfway through, Ash was making a comment about how good everything seemed, when he walked into a glass door and fell over. Immediately, Albert panicked and called an ambulence. [Plot flaw number one - when a friend walks into a door and falls over, you laugh at them. Then if you see they're unconcious, shake them a little and start to get scared. Then maybe call an ambulence].
After this, all five of them headed to the hospital and we saw a montage of everyone sitting around worrying a little, fair enough, then Emma made a comment like, "It's been nine hours." And I'm starting to this that this is a little unbelievable...
The doctor came and said that they could see Ash now.
He was sat in bed looking fairly okay, and Emma hugged him and asked how he was feeling. Ash said something like "I'm feeling sexually aroused because your breasts are touching my chest." She pulled away and then he said, "Albert, ask me what I think of your cooking." And he did so and Ash said it tasted awful and Albert looked a little offended. Several more things like this happened.
The doctor came back in and explained that Ash's fall had given him a mental disorder type thing which I won't even bother to google and see if it's real or not, meaning he had the inability to tell lies. Then he said something like, "That's a bit of a problem, for a conman", just for the sake of signifying that Ash had told him."
Read that back and think about it.
He walked into a glass door and tripped.
He spend nine hours in A&E.
He is now unable to tell lies.
They carried on with the con realising the only problem with Ash was that he couldn't lie to direct questions people asked him, and so Emma pretended to be his lawyer and talk for him in front of the mark a lot of the time. There was a bit of a moment of fear in a bar with the mark, when he asked Ash directly if he should invest money in this, and Ash just said "Of course not, you'll never see it again, we're conmen!" which was quickly saved by them just laughing a little and pretending it was a joke.
Here's the very worst part.
At the end, having the usual celebratory drinks in Eddie's Bar, Ash walked into something, hit his head, and Sean asked him his name. He said "Bob".
He could lie again.

AAAAAH KSHGPOIESHG0PSIENGO. HOW COULD MY FAVOURITE TV SHOW HAVE SO LITTLE RESPECT OR EXPECTATIONS OF ITS AUDIENCE'S INTELLIGENCE BY ASKING US TO BELIEVE AND ACCEPT A PLOT LIKE THIS?

I'm angry at Tony Jordan (I'm sure it wasn't him that wrote that, but he let it happen!) and I'm angry at Robert Glenister, although it wasn't his fault at all, and producers and whoever wrote that. I miss the way this show used to be, and I would say something like, "That's it, I'm not watching it anymore!" but I know I will. Still, it's gone way down the drain. Now I'm going to go read some stories from "Fragile Things" to make me feel better.

Have a good weekend.

Why Eleven Year Old Lizzie Modelled Herself on Sarah Parish

There used to be this TV show on the BBC called Mistresses. It was a drama about four thirty-something women, who were best friends, and the various hiccups in their love lives. It was first on three or four years ago, as I was starting high school.
This was also the time I was swiftly turning into the complete BBC nerd which I am today, and Mistresses was one of the first TV shows which I felt that connection to where the characters became real to me, long before Hustle and even before Britannia High (I'll get on to that).
The four main characters were Trudi, (Sharon Small) a cheerful, housewife and 9-11 widow with annoyingly low self-esteem, Siobhan, (Orla Brady) a lawyer whose marriage is unstable due to her husband's apparent infertility and ends up pregnant, the father being another guy she works with, unsure whether to keep lying for the first five or so episodes. Jessica, (Shelly Conn) was a bubbly, promiscuous events planner, who fell in love unexpectedly with a lesbian whose civil ceremony she was playing and Katie, (Sarah Parish) a GP who had an affair with a terminally ill patient and helped in giving him an overdose, and now his son is on the case.
Watch it. It's so good.
The point is, the way that it inspired me. I was desperate to live this glamorously, and also to find a solid and tight group of friends, so I tried hard to match my friends to each of the characters, and so I did so, with a small, fairly tight-knitted group of friends I had through guides (I wasn't too popular at school in those days), which was obviously hard with eleven-thirteen year olds. My friend Beth (but not you, Beth ;) ) assigned me Katie and I was pretty pleased that my friends seemed to think I was mature, but I didn't start wearing tailored suits.

Sometimes with blogging, something seems interesting and like you can talk about it for a long time... and then you can't. It's sad.

Other stuff:
I've had a really awesome day today. I went out for breakfast. I moved a couple of steps towards living on the edge. I pulled a muscle in my stomach and learnt that I can't say "Ibuprofen" (sp?).

Ten Guilty Pleasures

Omgaaahflteihnhisgen.

So I saw Black Swan today.
I'd expected it to be a little dark, it was much, much gorrier (sp?) than I thought. I don't know if that was because it was the first real scary movie I've seen in a cinema or not. My friend who I was with kept laughing at me because of how squeamish I get. (we got in, they believed I was 15 this time. Ironic, I must have aged a lot in the last week)
In some ways I think it could have been gorrier than the Saw movies, because it was on a small scale. It was the slow, detailed, stinging process of ripping off of bits of skin from around the nail, not intestines dropping out everywhere. Ballet dancers feet, blisters, twisted muscles and much too easily, the mechanical clicking into place of joints and bones.
You know when you're watching a movie, and you know it's a psychological mindfiretruck movie, you're expecting a big twist. It's like that. I didn't know which characters were "goodies" and "baddies", I didn't know who we trusted and when I felt like it was safe. Natalie Portman was excellent. Like Shutter Island, I didn't even know if I trusted the character whose eyes we were seeing through and the ending had me stunned.
I know I keep trying to get you to do stuff, buy books I like and such, but srsly, go see Black Swan.

Okay, right. On with the thing that's special and thought provoking I promised.

So I'll admit, I couldn't think of anything, or find anything on my emergency blog list I wanted to write today, so I googled "good blog post ideas" and found some. One thing it told me to write about was simply the title "Ten Guilty Pleasures". And I was actually thinking about writing something to do with that anyway, because they mentioned it on the TV show Take Me Out before and I was feeling uninspired.

And I really like lists. That's a secret.

___________________________________________________________________

LIZZIE'S EIGHT GUILTY PLEASURES (I could only think of eight. I'm such a failure at blogging.)

Pop music from the nineties - The other day someone was talking about S Club 7, my favourite "band" as a child (closely followed by Steps) and I got reminiscent and nostalgic and watched a whole concert of theirs on Youtube. Twas fun.

Take Me Out - For those unfamiliar, Take Me Out is a dating show presented by a talentless, annoying Yorkshireman named Paddy McGuinness, where thirty single women "turn their lights off" and judge men presented to them who talk about themselves and then sometimes have to dance and things. It's stupid and crap, I love it and watch it most Saturdays.

Reading fanfiction - Ahh. One day soon, I'll write about all the fanfic writing I did a year or two ago. It was what got me into writing, and someone I was talking today told me that they did exactly the same, which made me feel better: I always thought it was sort of stupid. Anyways, I don't write fanfiction so much anymore, but I sometimes like reading others' on the internet.

My hair - I wouldn't say I'm super vain, but sometimes late at night, if I can't get to sleep and I've been staring at a computer screen too long, I turn my swivelly chair around and tuck my knees into my chest and take my hair down and just brush my hair for a really long time, because sometimes it's about as soothing as stroking a cat or picking lazily at guitar strings.

Facebook - I was going to just say "social media" but that's not true, I don't feel at all guilty about how much I love Twitter. One day I'll go into more depth about the Facebook thing, but I use it more than I'd like to - it's also become a responsibility, I have to check on it constantly because admitedly, it's a main thing people use to contact me, and also I get worried about stupid photos ending up on there. And I like it, also.

Computer games - I never talk about this very much, mainly just because it isn't that interesting, but my favourite way ever to kill time is playing The Sims 2. When I was 11/12, I think there were days when I'd spend around 5 hours on my computer. I don't quite do that anymore, but I still play it sometimes. I also love random things on the internet which occupy 5 minutes, like Solitaire or White Dwarf.

Bread - I haven't seen the Scott Pilgrim movie, but I remember in the advert when he says he eats bread all of the time and a girl tells him bread is really fattening and he just sort of slowly spits it out. I had an experience like that recently. I eat bread, all of the time, and I don't think I care how fattening it is. Sometimes, eating bread, I'm not even hungry, it's just for something to do with my mouth when there's nobody to talk to. Bread is good.

Nibbling my hand - ... although after seeing Black Swan, I won't be doing any of the teeniest, lamest kind of self-harm any time soon. This is only something I started about a week ago, but something was happening and I was really, really stressed and sick and happy at the same time and I was on the phone and I just started biting my hand. I sort of lay in bed nibbling my thumb as I was falling asleep, and when I woke up that morning, I got to school and quickly put some gloves on in the cloakroom (yay, well stocked locker) because I realised my hands were covered in weird little canine marks. But honest, I'm not emotionally unstable. It didn't even hurt that much, it's just like biting your nails or your lip.

That's all for today. G'night.

- lizzie

"Hustle", "The Walk" and a Target Audience?

I started to write a blog. Then I realised that I have absolutley nothing to say today - nothing of value, no gossip my friends (who let;s face it, it looks like are my only readers) can laugh at.
This is a good thing. D'you want to know why?
Because I got STANDARDS. :o .
One of my friends at school today said something nice about my blog, and it made me remember she, too, reads it. A few of them do. And that made me feel nice and also pretty strange, because now I almost feel under pressure not to disappoint. But it's also confusing.
I'm aware that most of the people who visit here at Eff-Paf are my friends from school (and there's only about three of them at that) and from what I can tell I think that they mostly like it because in a way, it's gossip and it's a strange sort of "secret diary" blah blah blah. I can tell from conversations like this...
"So I read your blog last night, lol."
"Oh. So did you like the Dresden Dolls?"
"What?"
But then there's some other people, who Google "Mikael Erika fanfiktion" (yes, I do check my stats occasionally. Yes, I know it's pretty sad) and find me here, and maybe just read one post. And that's why I started this I think, not for people who go to my school but ones that share my interests. And I don't know if I'd prefer people to do that - to just skim by and read something that'll actually mean something to them, because it's a band that they like or their favourite movie or something interessting and discussable or just because they're actually interested in what goes on in my mind. What I'd really like are people who want both, and who'll read this because I wrote it but maybe try and experience whatever I recommend, and maybe they'll love it and take something from it and all three parties will be happy. Does that make sense, a bit?
And if you're one of my friends, that wasn't a jab at you reading my blog. I understand I can't post stuff on the internet under my full name and expect to hide it forever. I just wasn't ready for something like this to happen for a while, and I've only just thought about it.

Because I've wasted some time talking about myself today, here is the magical wonderful Imogen Heap performing a brilliant song, called "The Walk". It also showcases why her live setup is so special and amazing.
04:10
"There's no way out!
We are surrounded so give in, give in,
and relish every minute of it!"
and then that note. Aah.
There's a link to another performance, an incredible song called "Goodnight and Go" in the same session afterwards. Maybe you'll listen to it. Trust me, you'll want to. I think.

Also this week, something possibly very, very exciting and amazing happened. Or kind of enlightened that it could happen. But I pinky swore to somebody that I wouldn't talk about it, because I get excitable and this could be a disappointment. Internally I'm quite cynical and I'm fairly sure it will be a disappointment.
But you never know...

Hustle's back on TV again, and if I'd written here a year or two ago I would have talked about it here all the time. This sounds dorky, but I was a lonely thirteen year old, and I felt so connected to this show that it probed me to write fanfiction. The characters were so real to me. In some ways, I think it's the fanfic I wrote when I was younger that made me a better writer. I realised that what I had to write about was the people who acted out their stories in my head when I was lying in bed waiting to go to sleep. I idolised Stacie Monroe for about a year. I loved all of the main 5 characters equally, and I think being unable to have a favourite shows writers have created a brilliant chemistry between a group of friends on television. I feel the same about Friends and How I Met Your Mother (but if you haven't seen Hustle, know that it's completley different to both of those shows. It's actually a crime-drama about con-artists in London and I love it lots).
Then a new series was made and the actors Jaime Murray and Marc Warren were replaced by Matt di Angelo and Kelly Adams, who don't get me wrong are both brilliant, but I hated with a childlike passion for about three months. Once I realised Stacie's absense was not Emma Kennedy's fault, I wrote an unsent apology letter for hating her so much, just because it made me feel better. I was a weird kid.
I still watch Hustle with a love and devotion I don't have with very many other shows but it isn't quite the same without the original five. It'd be like replaying Phoebe and Chandler with.... think of some awesome other actors... I don't know, characters who were witty and adorable and genius, played by Zach Braff and Meryl Streep. Tony Jordan's plots are epic and mind boggling, all of the acting is great. It just isn't quite the same anymore.

I'm blogging a lot recently - I'd gotten into the routine of blog day being Monday, but this week I seem to want to talk about myself a lot.
that's all, folks.

- Lizzie