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Props to JennB, QASteph, Rob-Bob, and Jason, who all responded over the summer to my request for someone to compile a list or spreadsheet of all the first season Gods. Thanks, guys! Now I just have to work at keeping it up over Season Two�
And the season starts with�an aneurysm. Mine, not Joan's. We have two TV sets: a bigger one in the living room (first floor), with the comfortable couch and everything, but where the relatively new VCR hasn't worked since we got digital cable in January; and a small TV/VCR combo in my office (second floor), which I use for recapping. I tape shows in the office since that's the only VCR that works. Unfortunately, because of some stupid broadcasting boojum I don't understand, any given channel is broadcasting one network at one moment, and at the next hour it's some other network. Channel 9 is sometimes CTV, which shows Joan of Arcadia, but then suddenly at the turn of the hour it's not, and CTV's over on Channel 5 or something. But not always. It makes it very difficult to ensure you're taping or watching the right channel. Anyway, after four months away from recapping, during which time I watched maybe five hours of television altogether, I forgot about this idiocy, so when the show started Friday night, or more to the point, didn't start, but some dumbass sitcom featuring people I'm sure I've seen on the Fug Blog came on, I bolted up the stairs like a squirrel on PCP to try to stop the tape in my office while Professor Frink worked the remote control and yelled channel instructions up the stairs. I was freaking not just because the beginning of my tape would be screwed up but because I was missing the show, after all these months of waiting. While I cursed like a Marine and struggled with the tape, Frink was telling me what was going on show-wise. The tape straightened out, I flew back downstairs only to find that the channel broadcasting the show had picked this moment to start having transmission problems: picture blanking out every few seconds, static and lines and I don't know what. Not happening on any other channel. I really thought my head was going to explode. Luckily, during the first commercial we found another station way up the dial showing the episode without all the interference. All this is to explain why I don't have the first ninety seconds of the show, and why I have a crappy version of the opening, and why I missed seeing Christopher Marquette's and Becky Wahlstrom's names in the list of regular cast members on first viewing.
Anyway. Joan's sitting on a park bench, indifferently staring ahead. Some guys are tossing a football back and forth. Her hair is dyed a darker colour, about which I'm fairly undecided -- I think it makes her look too pale, which may be an effect they're going for -- but she's cut heavy, thick bangs into her hair, and the overall effect is pretty Emily the Strange mixed with some Winnie Cooper. It also looks to me like she's had her hair thinned all over to take the bulk out of it. It's weird, because at the beginning of last season, I had a strong preference for the shorter, lighter fringe she'd had when they did the publicity photos for Joan of Arcadia, and was disappointed when the show started because I wasn't sure I liked the bangless look, but it grew on me pretty quickly. I think Amber Tamblyn is very pretty no matter what, so this will probably grow on me. I don't think it's going to grow on Frink, though. He couldn't stop commenting on it throughout the show. It does make her look younger, less angelic, less approachable, and less sure of herself, so that may be what they're going for. As for the dress she's wearing, well�it's dreadful -- I hope deliberately so. I loved most of Joan's wardrobe last year. This is a droopy dress with a tiny black polka-dot pattern on an off-white background, with gathered cap sleeves and a gathered, almost smocked collar with thin floppy black ribbon trim around it. It's a noncommittal mid-calf length with a deep, limp ruffle around the bottom. It's got self-ties in the back and more thin black ribbon detail around the waist near the bottom of the ribs and the top of the hips, sectioning off one tight area around the middle that is in painful contrast to the Mary Ingalls-ness of the rest. It's awful. If Joan's trying to do "normal," she's got to try harder, because I'm pretty sure that Sylvia Plath wouldn't have worn that dress to clean the oven, never mind stick her head in it. Joan's still got deep red nails and her thick watchband, though. Okay, we've got most of the hair and wardrobe stuff out of the way. (Note to those dolts who write to me without Clue #1 of what the site is about and tell me to just recount every last thing that happens in the episode and keep my comments about hair, clothes and sets to myself: just stow it, because all that does is to incite me to make even more such comments.)