iamsab is going to hate me, as I watched Recovery. In which David Tennant gives a great and very moving performance as a brain-damaged (via an accident) man, and Sarah Parish is fabulous as his wife. I'm impressed by the script, too, because it doesn't prettify the subject by making Alan, D.T.'s character, into a lovable wise fool a la Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, or a paragorn of wit as the main character in Whose Life is it Anyway. Similarly, Tricia, his wife, is brave and loving, but she's not a überhuman saint, and you can see how the whole situation is eating at her, bringing her to a breakdown point. The note of hope on which the film ends feels earned, and it makes the point of what it is like to live with someone who can never be the same person as before and yet is of course that very man, a familiar stranger.

Aside from his brief role as Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I hadn't seen David Tennant in anything but Dr. Who before, so of course I was impressed that he used none of his Doctorly physical and voice mannerisms. No fast-speed talking, glasses, or oral fixation; it's not just the beard that makes you not think "Doctor" when watching him for a minute. It's a performance utterly lacking in vanity, too; like I said, the script doesn't prettify the brain-damaged condition.

***

I've got a few plot bunnies whom I don't have the time to groom and feed right now, but who knows, they might just gestate over the next months and turn out as stories later anyway. One's a post-NFA road trip featuring Connor and Angel. (I know the road trip thing has been done, for Angel and Spike, and for Connor and Spike, and various other combinations, but I think I haven't come across Connor and Angel before.) This would be a scenario in which Connor, who is famously bad in doing what Angel tells him, shows up somewhat belated at the NFA showdown anyway, which is about the only thing that could Angel do the utterly unheroic and unsuicidal thing of calling it quits and running (because he doesn't want to get Connor killed). One or the other might use a taser to knock someone out and drag him away. Also, the Senior Partners, being the SPs, would indulge in a little tit for tat and Angel tormenting by killing the Rileys while this all happens. All of which is just the backstory for the road trip, which carries new resentment as a baggage (Connor cost Angel his heroic last stand, and Angel is responsible for another set of dead parents), but also, as road trip stories are wont to do, the possibility to heal.

And you know there is going to be karaoke at some point.


The other plot bunny is an Astonishing X-Men one, but I won't be able to write it before the current arc is finished anyway, as I need to know how it turns out first. Let's just say the last issue, which offered several instances of Hank McCoy/Agent Brand bickering, somehow gave me the wish to write them as a messed-up pairing. (Do I write any other kind?) ("He is a genius mutant who looks like a giant cat and isn't in his usual genial state due to recent experiences, but has always been a person with strong ethics. She's a smart and really ruthless goverment agent who has no problem using mutants as lab rats if she thinks it'll save the earth and might just like girls better anyway. Theirloveismeanttobe!")