I Have a Complaint

I am peeved, and because my complaint is focused on fictional people in a make believe setting who aren't real, I am at a loss where to aim my annoyance. So my outlet is this blog and you, my loyal reader, may read about it.

Long after most of the world had moved on to the latest streaming series on Netflix, I joined and started watching old shows. I'm watching all the seasons of Grace and Frankie, a comedy starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It's entertaining, although like any long running show it has its uneven episodes.

But the acting is great, the characters are lively, the ensemble cast of other actors and characters is engaging. And along with quirky and comic, they do some serious showcasing of the issues of aging. 

All good. Until season 3 when Frankie (the Lily Tomlin role) moves to Santa Fe for a few brief episodes and decides she doesn't like it and moves back to California. Okay.

She moves back because the plot won't work if she's not living with Grace, the Jane Fonda character. But the reasons she gives for not liking Santa Fe are spurious. They wrote the script as if she had moved to Tucson.

She says it's too hot, unbearably hot (the montane climate is cool in summer and much colder and snowier than Southern California in other seasons. It's 31 degrees this morning).

And she goes on about snakes over and over. (Lots of rattlers and other snakes in the Arizona desert, not so many here.) 

 

She's an artist, and is shown painting a desert saguaro cactus (they don't grow here). 

 

It's all funny in service of her character's grumpiness. But it makes the entire audience think Santa Fe is  a hot desert of cactus and snakes. It's dry in Santa Fe, but it's not any of the things the rest of America thinks it is.

And Jane Fonda should know better! She had a home here (a big ranch, actually).

It drives me crazy (and many others in our fine town too.) It's almost universally assumed that Santa Fe is located in southern Arizona. I don't know why. We are in northern New Mexico in the southern Rockies. Jane Fonda knows that. Her ranch was beautiful, by the river, below the mountains, snowy in winter, and not a saguaro cactus in sight.

Well, okay. I'm done. Thank you for listening to my gripe. I have more episodes to watch.