Big Love Finale--Eh.

If you haven't read the Big Love Finale, STOP READING NOW! Major spoiler alert!!!!




I can't begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to the Big Love finale. As the last season progressed I began to suspect that wives, Margie and Barbara, were about to leave the polygamist marriage.  How would Barbara reconcile the fact that she and her husband had grown in different directions and now were attached to different values.  Obviously Barbara and Bill still loved each other but their marriage was no longer a good fit for either of them.  I knew that it would take an enormous amount of personal strength and emotional turmoil to face the music and do what was right for both of them.  As for Margie, well she clearly got married for the wrong reasons.  She spent much of the last two seasons talking about how she got married to get out of her current living situation with her mother.  She wanted to be "saved." And she was but she married too young and now she was finally beginning to understand that she needed to step away from the restrictions of this particular group in order to define herself based on her own passions and personality rather than Bill's.  Ironically, Nikki, the only one of the three women who grew up with the assumption that she would be in a plural marriage, would end up being a marriage built for two and in some ways that would be perfect because despite all her craziness she seemed to have more respect for Bill's ideas about religion, relationships and marriage than any of the rest of them.  Again, the decision to leave wouldn't be, couldn't be black and white. It would be complicated with lots of pluses and minuses, excitement and heartbreak.  And I figured that was perfect. Perfect that we would have such an emotionally complex and layered finale to what has been an emotionally complex and layered show.

Or what if Bill actually got twenty years in jail?  Would the women continue to allow him to set the rules from jail and if not how would they be able to sooth their conscience knowing that the man they'd abandoned or demoralized went to jail because of a marriage that they all were a part of?  That would have been a fascinating issue to explore during the finale (they might have been forced to make the finale 2 hours long but I doubt fans would have complained).

It honestly didn't occur to me that they'd take the easy way out.  Clearly if Bill died then Barbara would no longer have to worry about reconciling her new ideals and values with the conflicting ideals of her marriage.  Bill could give her his approval without ever having to live with the consequences.  Margie wouldn't have to worry about deciding between a path that works for her and her loyalty and love for the husband she once needed. If Bill dies everybody can say they stuck by their man until death and deferred to his authority until he was no longer available to offer it.  Yes, it was a twist to have Bill die at the hands of such an unlikely enemy but the while the actions and motivations of the murderer were surprising the results of that action were mundane.

I may be the only one who feels this way.  I've read other reviews of the finale and they're all pretty positive, applauding the way it all wrapped up perfectly.  In fact you could say they're applauding the perfection that I found so grating.

But that's finales for you.  They are rarely as satisfying as you'd like them to be and very rarely live up to the overall show the viewers had grown to love.  With the Lost season finale there were those who loved, loved, loved it and others who hated, hated, hated it. In this case I may be the lone dissenter in which case they did a bang up job in pleasing the vast majority of their audience.  I'll try not to complain...too much.

--Kyra Davis

Japan Needs Us.

When the news of the Japanese earthquake was broadcasted across the stratosphere, one number kept banging around in my mind, 8.9.

I was near the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake of 89'.  It was a 6.9 earthquake, the largest the continental United States had seen in over fifty years.  It destroyed the downtown area my hometown of Santa Cruz.  That's not hyperbole.  There is not a single building along the main strip of Downtown Santa Cruz today that was there before 89'. All those pre-89 buildings just collapsed.  People died. The merchants were literally operating out of tents for years. But of course what I remember most is that moment when a typical California earthquake become more serious. A friend of mine had come over to my family's home after school. My mom was busy with something in the kitchen, my stepfather was up in Oakland with a friend for the third game in the world series and my older brother was ignoring all of us as he watched TV.  

And then things started to move. 

Downtown Santa Cruz after 89' quake

My friend rolled her eyes and muttered, "I hate these things," as my mom ushered us under the doorframe.  My brother was a little slower to comply and then...everything just changed. The house was shaking too much and it immediately became clear that this wasn't a "typical" anything.  Finally grasping the danger, my brother grabbed the dog and held him still.  My mother gasped and yelled, "Oh my God, this is the big one!" And as we all watched the ceiling, waiting for the chimney to come crashing through, I wondered, "The big one?  What does that really mean? Are we all going to die? Will it be painful? Will California go into the ocean just like in the movies?"  I didn't get it.  Not just because I was a kid but because it was impossible to "get."

That was 6.9.  This is 8.9.  That is beyond my comprehension.  At least one of their aftershocks was bigger than anything California has experienced in three hundred years. And while we ALL are praying and hoping for the Japanese people I think it's fair to say that everyone in California is taking a moment to ask themselves, are we prepared?  And being prepared is so much more than storing extra water, a flashlight and a first aid kit.  Even before 89' my mother had drilled it into my head that nothing heavy or breakable should ever be hung over the bed, not even a framed picture and ideally your bed shouldn't be near a window.  Food is hard to get after a disaster so, in addition to water, I always keep a Costco box of protein bars on hand.  And then there's the issue of gas. After the 89' quake we all learned the dangers of allowing your tank to get too low.  If you need to go on a search for your loved ones or, God forbid, evacuate an area quickly, you don't want to run out of gas because the gas stations might not be open for days.    

But then again, a lot of this stuff won't make a difference if the building your in collapses.  I dearly hope that if I have to live through a quake bigger than the Loma Prieta quake I will conduct myself with the dignity, courage and calm that the Japanese people are exhibiting now.  Their strength is awe inspiring.  And I think it's worth noting that while we've heard of food shortages and the like we have not heard a single report of looting or price gouging.  In the last decade or so lots of disasters that have occurred in third world countries have been reported by the media but to see one of the wealthiest nations in the world suffer this, a country that boasts the world's third largest economy...well it's much easier for us to make comparisons between how things are being handled there and how they would be handled here.  One thing is clear, regardless of how wealthy your country or state is, when you suffer a disaster of this proportion you need the compassion and assistance of the international community.  I honestly believe that when the time comes (and we all know it's coming) Japan will be there for us.  Now we need to be there for them.

Here are links to organizations that can facilitate your support:

American Humane Association 

AmeriCares

Doctors Without Borders

International Medical Corp

Save The Children

Shelterbox

World Vision

--Kyra Davis

I'll Support Him In Whatever He Does...But Does It Have To Be That?

The other day I went snooping through my son's Google account (this should be a requirement for ALL parents of adolescents).  And I did find something shocking. Stories that he's been writing. Lots, and lots, and lots of stories. A few of them were clearly meant to be the beginning of a book. 

Throughout my son's 11 years of life I have tried to facilitate his interests. When he was two he became interested in Ancient Egypt and so we went to the library and found countless books on the subject.  By three and a half I was reading him Egyptian mythology as bedtime stories.  I took him to see artifacts and taught him how to spell his name in hieroglyphics. But it was also around the height of his fascination with Egypt that he expanded his interests to include dinosaurs and paleontology.  So again, we got books, we went to museums, we collected fossils, we even checked out fossil replicas from the Los Angeles Natural History Museum's educational department so we could study them in our home for a week. And when he told me he wanted to be a paleontologist I thought of the tedious work of cleaning fossils with a toothbrush, the grueling hours of digging in the hot sun and the mediocre to low pay and I said, "If that's what you want to do, I'll support you all the way." 

After all, it's his choice, his life. I'm not going to judge or tell him what his priorities should be.  I continued to support him when he updated his goal from paleontologist to paleo-geneticist.  I'm not even sure there IS such a thing as a paleo-geneticist but if he wants to pioneer a new field, more power to him.

But a writer? That one's a little harder for me to get behind. In the last eight years I've written and published 6 books, a short story and a few articles and essays.  The ups and downs of this profession are intense.  The rejection gut wrenching.  The wins fleeting. It's a hard life. I've chosen it for myself and while I don't regret it I do occasionally wonder what it must be like for those who have a passion for other things like, oh, I don't know, accounting. If there's a kid out there who is lying in bed, dreaming of becoming a CPA, well I think that's a kid who's going to be okay. His path has been tried, tested and is ready to go.  And until the government comes up with a tax structure that is easier to understand (yeah, right) there will always be a demand for those who have a love of adding, subtracting and turning family vacations into deductible expenses.

And yet my whole philosophy as a parent is to support my son in any and all educational extracurricular endeavors he chooses to pursue. I'm not the Tiger mom. I'm not going to force my kid to play the piano if he hates the piano and I'm not going to force him to practice tennis for four hours a day thereby turning something that was once enjoyable into a chore. But I will help him to understand that pursuing his passions, be they in science, history or some kind of creative expression, can be an exciting and invigorating thing to do and more than worthy of his focus and dedication. So who am I to advise him against harboring dreams of becoming a writer if that's what he wants?  Who cares if it's a tough profession?  It's not like there's a huge job market for paleo-genetists either. 

Of course the difference is that I have no idea what it's like to try to break into and sustain yourself within the field of paleo-anything. I DO know what it's like to be a professional writer. I have the burden of too much information.

So I asked him. In the most neutral voice I could conjure up, I asked if he was interested in becoming a professional writer.  He paused, thought about it, and then said, "I think it's better as a hobby." I suppressed a squeal of joy and settled for a nonchalant nod of agreement.  

And yet when he created a storyboard to help him put together a play and recruited another friend to write the score, I began to wonder if "hobby" had been a euphemism for "serious career possibility." Ah well. I'm getting my seatbelt on and my pom-poms out. This could be a bumpy ride and I intend to suck it up and cheer him on all the way.

Kyra Davis

Bestselling Author of:

The Sophie Katz Mystery Series

and

So Much For My Happy Ending

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