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chocolatepotShock and horror: I realized the other day that I somehow ended up scheduled for more shifts at the light show than nearly anyone else in our department ... I've had 5 shifts and a bunch of people have had 3-4, and also all but one of mine have been outdoors while nearly everyone else has been inside most of the time.
At first I was like, not cool, HR, but upon reflection I waited until the scheduling was done to take my vacation time around it while other, more selfish people may have simply taken the time they wanted and so if HR wasn't thinking long-term when scheduling each week individually she may have not taken that into account and given them more to do earlier. That being said, my two outdoors shifts this week were originally supposed to be indoors and I can't see any logical reason to have changed that.
I ordered the first Murderbot book from the library and liked it, but since it was so short I figured I should order all the rest at the same time so I don't have to keep up the executive function task of ordering them/wait so long between them. Of course, the fourth one's arrived first. Sigh.
Watched Lessons in Chemistry, and to my surprise, I liked it a lot! I'm always critical of historical pieces that center on sexist discrimination because it's typically dealt with badly on both historical and writing levels (IMO), but it was so much more nuanced and complex than I expected. Details under the cut.
So the basic plot, if you're not aware of it: A young female chemist in the 1950s, who is also hella autistic, works as a lab tech in a big company. Elizabeth's "discovered" by an autistic male chemist there who doesn't get along with anyone, and he brings her in to work with him on a project to understand DNA. They become friends and then lovers and move in together - and she realizes she's pregnant right after he dies in an accident. Then their research is stolen to give to other scientists there, and she gets fired for being unmarried and pregnant. She raises the kid while doing all kinds of work on the side, and after years of scraping by gets a cooking show on tv where she can teach chemistry and empower other women. The young daughter starts investigating her father and eventually connects Elizabeth with his mother, who'd gotten pregnant outside of wedlock in the 1920s and had to give him up, looked for him for years, and finally supported him secretly from afar with her fortune because he'd inadvertently rebuffed her without realizing she was his mother. In the end, Elizabeth gets to teach chemistry for real in a university.
There were a couple of things I didn't like. The mother reveal felt like a last-minute Dickensian twist to make everything perfect at the end; the only reason she didn't find him when he was still a kid was that a priest at the orphanage had lied about him being dead so he could keep making money off his chemistry prowess, which bugged me because surely you could get more money out of these rich people by doing them this service and periodically reminding them of it. I mean, they might make the donations to the orphanage, but you clearly have no morals so you could just skim off the top of that. The show also tried a misdirect where it looked like Liz's kid was a fat loner on the playground and I was like, wow! This is brave! But then actually this was the bully who stole her actual, thin, vivacious, autistic-in-a-cute-way daughter's lunches, and I was like. Come on, now. :|
But I did like how complex the story was, particularly the use of the flashbacks of Calvin at the orphanage and Liz with her tent revival preaching family. One thing that always bugs me in costume dramas is when the past feels like a static setting - like everyone grew up in the period, like it's permanently 1832 or whatever. Just including flashbacks is a good way around that, and making the flashbacks really feel like a) the periods they're set in and b) the characters we know in the present takes it another step further. We don't get the latter so much with Calvin but we really do with Liz, and she's the one who matters.
Loved the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was also a big part of the story. So much pop culture treats that as an artifact of the 1960s and it's not, lots of protest was happening in the 1950s. Calvin and Liz's house is in a predominantly Black neighborhood threatened with demolishing for a freeway, and so we get to follow the work of their neighbor as she campaigns against it to save the community, although it kind of sucks that she fails while Elizabeth's plotline is all about her own success. It's realistic - Robert Moses and his bullshit have been a hot topic online for several years now - but it would have been a nice ending for both of them to win rather than just the white woman.
And this is TINY but I loved that Elizabeth wears full skirts. I rewatched The Hour recently and it bugged me that Bel is always dressed in pencil skirts to show that she's sensible and forward-thinking etc etc while characters who wear full skirts are ... frothy, and I feel like this happens in a lot of 1950s/60s stuff. To me, it's like the way older women in Regency shows are always dressed like it's the 1780s (ever since P&P05) - sure, it's doing character work, but it's heavy-handed.
At first I was like, not cool, HR, but upon reflection I waited until the scheduling was done to take my vacation time around it while other, more selfish people may have simply taken the time they wanted and so if HR wasn't thinking long-term when scheduling each week individually she may have not taken that into account and given them more to do earlier. That being said, my two outdoors shifts this week were originally supposed to be indoors and I can't see any logical reason to have changed that.
I ordered the first Murderbot book from the library and liked it, but since it was so short I figured I should order all the rest at the same time so I don't have to keep up the executive function task of ordering them/wait so long between them. Of course, the fourth one's arrived first. Sigh.
Watched Lessons in Chemistry, and to my surprise, I liked it a lot! I'm always critical of historical pieces that center on sexist discrimination because it's typically dealt with badly on both historical and writing levels (IMO), but it was so much more nuanced and complex than I expected. Details under the cut.
So the basic plot, if you're not aware of it: A young female chemist in the 1950s, who is also hella autistic, works as a lab tech in a big company. Elizabeth's "discovered" by an autistic male chemist there who doesn't get along with anyone, and he brings her in to work with him on a project to understand DNA. They become friends and then lovers and move in together - and she realizes she's pregnant right after he dies in an accident. Then their research is stolen to give to other scientists there, and she gets fired for being unmarried and pregnant. She raises the kid while doing all kinds of work on the side, and after years of scraping by gets a cooking show on tv where she can teach chemistry and empower other women. The young daughter starts investigating her father and eventually connects Elizabeth with his mother, who'd gotten pregnant outside of wedlock in the 1920s and had to give him up, looked for him for years, and finally supported him secretly from afar with her fortune because he'd inadvertently rebuffed her without realizing she was his mother. In the end, Elizabeth gets to teach chemistry for real in a university.
There were a couple of things I didn't like. The mother reveal felt like a last-minute Dickensian twist to make everything perfect at the end; the only reason she didn't find him when he was still a kid was that a priest at the orphanage had lied about him being dead so he could keep making money off his chemistry prowess, which bugged me because surely you could get more money out of these rich people by doing them this service and periodically reminding them of it. I mean, they might make the donations to the orphanage, but you clearly have no morals so you could just skim off the top of that. The show also tried a misdirect where it looked like Liz's kid was a fat loner on the playground and I was like, wow! This is brave! But then actually this was the bully who stole her actual, thin, vivacious, autistic-in-a-cute-way daughter's lunches, and I was like. Come on, now. :|
But I did like how complex the story was, particularly the use of the flashbacks of Calvin at the orphanage and Liz with her tent revival preaching family. One thing that always bugs me in costume dramas is when the past feels like a static setting - like everyone grew up in the period, like it's permanently 1832 or whatever. Just including flashbacks is a good way around that, and making the flashbacks really feel like a) the periods they're set in and b) the characters we know in the present takes it another step further. We don't get the latter so much with Calvin but we really do with Liz, and she's the one who matters.
Loved the fact that the Civil Rights Movement was also a big part of the story. So much pop culture treats that as an artifact of the 1960s and it's not, lots of protest was happening in the 1950s. Calvin and Liz's house is in a predominantly Black neighborhood threatened with demolishing for a freeway, and so we get to follow the work of their neighbor as she campaigns against it to save the community, although it kind of sucks that she fails while Elizabeth's plotline is all about her own success. It's realistic - Robert Moses and his bullshit have been a hot topic online for several years now - but it would have been a nice ending for both of them to win rather than just the white woman.
And this is TINY but I loved that Elizabeth wears full skirts. I rewatched The Hour recently and it bugged me that Bel is always dressed in pencil skirts to show that she's sensible and forward-thinking etc etc while characters who wear full skirts are ... frothy, and I feel like this happens in a lot of 1950s/60s stuff. To me, it's like the way older women in Regency shows are always dressed like it's the 1780s (ever since P&P05) - sure, it's doing character work, but it's heavy-handed.
