Feeding the Muse One Show at a Time

One of the things about being a writer is I’m constantly trying to fill my well with new experiences. Not saying I don’t love the familiar because you’ve never met a girl who hates change more than this one! But I like to dip my toe into the new as well.

Recently I’ve been binge-watching television…I was between books. My muse needed to be fed and there was a lot on offer. In no particular order, here are some shows and movies I’ve watched and loved. Maybe something will trickle into my characters and writing or maybe not. Sometimes feeding the muse is just about keeping her on my side!

The Madison on Paramount+

I LOVED this show so much. I have to admit I’m not a fan of Yellowstone so it wasn’t Taylor Sheridan who drew me to it. It was the premise. A woman deeply in love with her husband loses him unexpectedly—not at the end of a long life together, but while he’s away in Montana on his annual remote fishing trip with his brother. The one trip she always refused to go on with him. When he dies and she has to go out there to identify him, she finds a closeness to him that she clings to in her grief.

What I loved about it: It’s really about the complex relationships women have. It’s not just the marriage, which was a loving one, but also her relationships with her two grown daughters, a son-in-law, two granddaughters and an ex-son-in-law. Those relationships are complicated and felt very real to me. I just consumed this show, watching all the episodes in two nights.

I also realized while watching all of this that I’m apparently a huge Bill Lawrence fan.

He has this way of creating characters and situations that speak to me. Inevitably I’m going to cry, laugh harder than I expect to, and leave his shows feeling better about myself and about humanity.

Shrinking on Apple

This is the third season of the show and it ends an arc beautifully. The main character recently lost his wife in a drunk driving accident (another driver hit her) and spiraled out of control despite having a teenager to raise. He’s doing drugs, sleeping with sex workers, and generally falling apart. Their neighbor and his wife’s best friend have picked up the slack with his daughter. The show opens when he’s getting a wake-up call. He’s a therapist and I think the show is a bit of a riff on “doctor, heal thyself.”

If you haven’t checked the series out…it’s so good. I highly recommend it. It has a lot of complex relationships that mirror real life. Also lots of laughs, some tears and feel-good energy.

Scrubs on Disney+

How excited was I to see JD, Eliot and Turk back on TV??? Last year I watched the reboot of Frasier and truly loved it. So I went into this cautiously optimistic that Scrubs could still capture the magic of the original. And it did. It’s nice to see JD, Eliot and Turk grown up and dealing with problems as experienced doctors at the hospital, but still quintessentially themselves. If you loved Scrubs before, don’t miss this new series.

Rooster on HBO/SkyMax

My daughter swears I am Steve Carell’s character Greg, the author of the Rooster series. Honestly, I can kind of see it. He’s a bit awkward, a loving parent who just wants to fix his adult kid’s problems and, of course, writes genre fiction.

The show is set on a university campus, which really fed my light academia vibes. Greg’s daughter is a professor at her mom’s alma mater and her husband is as well, but he’s had an affair with a graduate student. It’s the talk of the campus and Greg arrives to do a guest lecture and ends up staying as an adjunct professor for the semester.

One thing I loved about this particular show was the complex way it deals with love. The marriage that is breaking down is messy and felt real. They still love each other but love sometimes isn’t enough. Then there’s Greg, who’s divorced, but his feelings for his ex are still there like a bruise he can’t help pressing once in a while.

The show doesn’t focus on this directly, but it’s there in the subtext and I ate it up.

I also watched a show on Disney+ that fed my inner geek: Maul: Shadow Lord, which was so good. Honestly, Lucasfilm animated shows are almost always excellent so I wasn’t surprised. Maul is one of my favorite characters in the Star Wars universe—ill-used by Darth Sidious and always looking for revenge, but it’s more than that. He’s looking for someone—an apprentice. I think he’s lonely.

That being said, he’s still a gray character. He has no problem killing or manipulating people to get what he wants. But still…I love him!

So that’s what I’ve been watching lately while refilling the creative well. Some of it made me laugh, some of it made me cry, and all of it reminded me why I love storytelling so much.

If you’ve watched any of these, let me know what you thought—or tell me what I should binge-watch next!