It's just ok. That's what's so great about it.

In defense of mediocre content and average house plants

Summer is already upon us — at least those of us who live at the sweltering apex of the Sacramento Valley. Time to swim in creeks, stagger your dog walks to avoid the afternoon heat, and water your plants anxiously and often.

Time, too, to spend the warm evenings in the A/C reading Book Club mysteries and watching bad television. But can we please pop some quotes around that “bad”?

I love “great” stuff as much as the next person: prestige TV, literary fiction, organic fruits and veggies, fair trade cotton tees, music on vinyl, vintage furniture, Spindrift bubbly water, esoteric backpacking routes, the most expensive belly oil that U.S. dollars can buy (I swear, it’s so nice, it smells like the peony gardens of old monied women)—and, of course, fancy PLANTS. I’ve logged plenty of nights watching The Bear and spent many a morning spritzing a fiddle-leaf fig with water while fretting over a string of pearls succulent. Are those spider mites??

But you know what else I love? Plain old, regular, mediocre, run of the mill stuff. Raisin Bran cereal, a juicy fantasy novel, an orange from a roadside stand of dubious provenance. A hot dog from the 7-11 (or - upgrade pick - a Costco hot dog). Sundresses from Target. Generic bubbly water. Dull flat walking trails near home. And the workhorse of house plants, the tolerant and can’t-be-killed pothos.

I even love “bad,” predictable tv. Like the regular network kind.

As a method of—I don’t know, coping?—or buffering or distracting from a life moment of trying to finish a book while being pregnant, I fell into a habit of watching Elementary, a Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective procedural starring Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller, whose claim to fame beyond this show was being married to Angelina Jolie for half a hot second in 1996. I can see it: Miller has the whip-smart, unhinged, possibly vampiric vibes that were Jolie’s kryptonite in the 90’s.

Miller is consistently standoffish and charming as Holmes, and former surgeon Watson makes a reasoned, compassionate foil. By the later seasons, however, I noticed the writers had Liu’s Joan Watson basically repeating what a male character had concluded, only with different and simpler words. So you’re saying if we pretend to be selling the artifact, the killer won’t be able to resist making a bid! They were about to lose my loyalty for flattening a smart female character, so I was glad the seventh and final season wrapped up in just 13 episodes.

When I finished Elementary and cast about for a new habit, I settled on Bones—partly because it fits the mold (murder-of-the-week procedural with a bantering dual-gender duo), partly because there are a whopping 12 seasons available to binge, and partly because I’m nostalgic for the wooden swaggering charm of David Boreanaz, a lingering affection from my days as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer aficionado. Okay, you’re right: I watched all of spin-off series Angel, too. I miiiiiight have been a super fan of those anything-but-mediocre brainchildren of the now-disgraced Joss Whedon.

I’ll never forget reading that Boreanaz was discovered walking a dog in Los Angeles—chosen for looks alone—and that tracks with his style of performance. He’s like, “Hey, I’m just here, being this guy! You like the look of me, right?” And you do. He looks pleasing and square, a likable, cross-eyed puppy of a man.

Emily Deschanel, on the other hand, is great. She’s brilliant. She often elevates Bones beyond its formula and time constraints, and I love seeing a prickly, antisocial, bossy woman in the lead.

When Ed noted my new choice of series, he groaned. “Really? Why can’t you pick a good show?”

“This is a good show!” I protested. “It’s fun. It’s predictable. It doesn’t ask too much of me.”

Ah! And therein lies the key to my affection for mediocrity. It’s easy.

Like so many (most?) of us, I spend my whole day thinking—about the book, about the baby-to-be, about how to get to the gym on time, about money, about how to be healthy and what to eat and when to sleep and whether I remembered to meditate, about whether I could convince our 80-year-old landlord that watering a lawn through the Redding summer makes no sense and will destroy the fucking planet…by the time 7:00 or 8:00 pm rolls around, my brain is toast.

I want a dumb show. I want to zone out. I want the heroes to solve a murder in 45 minutes while looking good and sustaining snappy dialogue. I want a bowl of ice cream or a handful of lemon Starburst (yeah, weird pregnancy craving). I want some part of my day—namely, the night part—to feel indulgent, effortless. Easy.

And - AND - why do we always need the best of everything, the premiere, the purest, the greatest stuff ever made? Why can’t I buy cloth diapers without an extensive multi-week search to find the most highly reviewed, finest organic cloth diapers? What happened to the fluffy summer blockbuster, the cotton candy at the county fair?

Sometimes you want to mist a finicky plant three days a week. Sometimes you just want a pothos. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving them both.

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This week, beyond watching Bones, I peeped at the first few pages of A Walk in the Park, Kevin Fedarko’s forthcoming book about an end-to-end hike of the Grand Canyon (epic! insane! there are literally NO TRAILS to go that way). Fedarko and I share an editor and publisher, so this is my first advance copy of a book (!!!). Insert fancy nail polish hand emojis—but also, I can tell the book is going to be good. Excited to dig in.

We went to the coast last weekend, so I haven’t done much else except catch up on sleep and revisions, make sun tea, and obsess over lemon-flavored beverages.

Be well, stay cool, and love your ugly plants just as much as your showstoppers. Go ahead, eat a Twinkie or read some cheap smut—I permit and salute you!

Happy weekend, friends.

Love,

Kelly