Hibernating

I've been having a problem with Dollhouse lately.

It's not that I don't like it, or don't think it's good. The first few episodes were rather bleah, but once it hit its stride, it showed all the Whedon brilliance you would expect. And let's face it, the first few episodes of Buffy showed a lot more potential than quality (life-sized Xander-molesting insect teacher, anyone?).

It's that it's a show about rape. I don't feel like some do that it glamorizes rape, or does anything but condemn it, but that's what the show is about. And that's just too heavy a topic for me right now. These days, I'm just not finding myself wanting to watch things that are grim and morally complex. The economy is the pits, the environment is circling the drain, I'm 11 million months pregnant and a walking petri dish of disease. In true introvert fashion, my reaction to this sort of stress is to retreat to my cave and think about butterflies and flowers. None of this adds up to wanting to pull out old episodes of Battlestar Galactica to rewatch.

Instead, I'm really enjoying Castle, watching old episodes of Psych and Monk and really hoping that Chuck gets renewed. The common thread here is that these are all shows that have enough mystery and intrigue to be interesting, but are funny and make virtually no emotional demands on the viewer. I can watch them, enjoy them and then leave them entirely behind without a thought. Food Network gets pretty heavy rotation for these reasons as well. Dollhouse, on the other hand, I watch every Friday but never bother to rewatch episodes. A couple times, it's even taken us a couple days to get around to watching the week's episode. I find myself hoping in a vague way that it will get renewed, but I suspect I won't be hugely upset if it isn't. Because emotionally, it's like swallowing a gigantic lead weight at the end of the week.

So one more episode and then I'll crawl back in my cave for a while to indulge in utterly mindless entertainment. I'm starting to remember why it was so nice to stop working at the end of April last time. It was largely the physical exhaustion, but I don't have much mental function left these days either. I'm planning to work at the library until the beginning of June and, well, I still need to e-mail my supervisor at the online job and tell her I'm pregnant. Sigh. It's just so easy to let that slide, and I keep hoping I'll be able to find out if I'm going to be offered a contract for next year soon so I know if I even need to worry about whether I should quit or not.