Tabula rasa

I've figured out one of the reasons I like Weeds so much - I have a bit of a jones for the actor who plays Nancy's dead husband. Possibly because his more extended appearances on the series to date are two emotionally affecting nooky scenes. Emotionally affecting nooky rocks.

Massively disliking medical drama for reasons I've never fully analyzed, Grey's Anatomy seems like everything I hate about television, but I have seen that actor appear on that show. Absolutely fucked if I can remember where or when. Possibly at the house of a friend who liked Grey's Anatomy, possibly just when flipping channels during a television binge whilst housesitting or visiting North Bay . . . who knows . . . but I remember seeing him, realizing from the Sandra Oh (who is Canadian and respectable because of that movie she did ages ago with Callum Keith Rennie that I liked) that I was watching Grey's Anatomy, and nonetheless forebearing to look away from the television because of how compelling this man was.

I didn't know his character's background, but it got clear fast that he was dying whilst striking up a love connection with the skinny blonde doctor. Puke. And yet I couldn't look away; I believe I watched until the end of the episode. This man is perfect for a certain kind of romantic pathos, which came home to me when I realized he also plays Nancy's dead husband. I think it's because he looks really good, but doesn't look so remarkable that you, or rather me, or rather one, can't transpose one's own emotional sympathies onto him by wondering exactly how shitty it would be if one fell in love with someone who was going to die in a few weeks, or what one would do if your hot husband suddenly expired whilst jogging, leaving you with a huge mortgage, no insurance, not enough batteries for the vibrator, and neighbours who liked weed.

And this sets me to wondering: is this the formula for Hollywood hotness? Looking really good, but not so remarkable, so that they can serve as a blank slate, in a sense, for all the ladies' fantasies and fears and whatnot, so that they can suspend their disbelief as you tell an emotionally devastating tale? Because if I think of the most remarkably gorgeous men who have ever seared my corneas, they have usually been men who I've seen in the flesh or else whose show business careers never quite translate from their stardom in their own country to stardom in the Anglophone world. Easily the most beautiful man I've ever borne witness to was Reinaldo de Souza, a Brazilian dancer I used to teach, who I've struggled to describe here. I haven't been to Brazil but in my dreams it's a place where one in fifty men looks almost that good - I mean, all indications do point to it being a country bursting at the seams with remarkable hotness. And I suppose the most remarkably beautiful man who I've ever seen on film that I can think of this morning is Olivier Martinez, who is only famous for Anglophones now because Kylie Minogue had the aesthetic good sense to date him.

But you take Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Fucking Damon, for heaven's sake . . . if you saw them walking down the street and there were clothes covering those expensive, gym-sculpted bodies, would you look twice? Honestly? Unless you were ovulating and looking at everything twice? Or . . . unless they were 'acting' in a movie with a storyline that played to your most sensitive, archetypes, let's call them? Is this why I'm so into Nancy's dead husband? Or is it his laughing yet sad spaniel eyes? Don't know. Either way:

Puke. Internet television has drawn me in again.