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Massive catchup, I suppose
This is going to be mostly impressionistic show-related stuff, because most of the stuff that has been fun in the last couple of weeks has been shows. Including a couple of semi-marathons, one of which is ongoing. Spoilers behind cuts where reasonable, I guess.
Grey's Anatomy - 17 Seconds Another impressive episode - I find it hard to understand why I resisted this show for so long: I suppose it is a general antipathy to medical shows that are not Nip/Tuck. Katie Heigl's big break-down scene was so intense that I had to put the DVD on hold and go and walk up and down stairs for five minutes - she has become an impressive actress since Roswell days. I am completely on board with the idea that McDreamy should be eaten by bears, preferably mashed, on toast; I found myself loving Meredith all over again when she said 'you don't get to call me a whore' and the way that she and Addison, the two women in love with this spoiled brat of a man, sometimes bond for seconds.
Talking of Addison, I was meh! about the material establishing the spinoff show in last week's US episodes. I shall certainly give the show a go, because Kate Walsh is a goddess, but I am not entirely convinced. As far as I am concerned, the whole point of the show is that, with her in LA,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennyo will be able to write her into Nip/Tuck fic as the Kimberspawn's obstetrician.
Ugly Betty Inevitably, I have some reservations about Alexis, not because she is a quasi-villainess, because hey! I know plenty of trans people who have done worst shit than that, but because they sometimes sentimentalize her pain a bit and indulge her sense of entitlement. On the other hand I absolutely loved and identified the vague awkwardness about having sex with new bits for the first time, and her intense vulnerability in the face of betrayal by the first person she sleeps with. I remember that gawky sense of oneself as suddenly plunged in one's thirties back into adolescence and the terrible fear that it was all going to go wrong, all over again. I now officially hate Wilhelmina for what she has done to Alexis and to Clare; there is a character I won't be cutting any slack for ever again.
Heroes I am still entirely impressed by this show and the way that it recycles old old superhero tropes and makes them new all over again. As for last night's US episode 'The Hard Way'I note with interest the way everyone is disagreeing as to whether the scene between Sylar and his mother, the snow globes and the big knife is reminiscent of 1. Edward Scissorhands 2. Citizen Kane or 3. Carrie. My guess is that the writers are smart enough that it is a complex quasi-punning reference to all three; this is what I mean by 'a thick text', children.
Rome is another show where everyone else was right, and I was wrong. Blame it on the BBC. It has some of the most shockingly violent scenes I have ever seen - the arena scene in Season One is staggering and yet hardly gratuitous as a reminder of how alien these people that seem like us some of the time are, and they managed to make the assassination of Caesar matter all over again even though one has known all the way through the show that it was coming. Season Two is patchier, perhaps, but I was amazingly impressed by one scene. Pulo, the working class legionary character, is sent by Octavian to kill Cicero - the old politician recognizes that he has played the game of betrayal one time too many and is perfectly polite to his executioner, who is deferential back. Cicero is flattered that Octavian has sent a famous stone killer to take care of him - he knows who Pulo is from the aforementioned arena scene - and Pulo asks permission before picking all of Cicero's peaches. Afterwards, Pulo says that Cicero was a pleasant enough man 'less stuck up than you'd think'; which is the epitaph we would all want from our assassins. I also loved the Lets Kill Cicero children's picnic, and the almost random mislaying of Cicero's letter to Brutus.
One thing which works surprisingly well, and which I am not convinced that Americans fully understood, is the way that the Roman criminal classes, while resembling the Corleones in all sorts of ways, are completely Sarf London and EastEnd crims; one of the ganglords entertainingly disapproves of Mark Antony's funeral oration in the following terms -'It's a fahkin Consular funeral, innit? Nah fahkin respect.' Totally incongruous and totally right.
Talk of mega-violence should bring me to Grindhouse but that, I think, is a post for another day.
Grey's Anatomy - 17 Seconds Another impressive episode - I find it hard to understand why I resisted this show for so long: I suppose it is a general antipathy to medical shows that are not Nip/Tuck. Katie Heigl's big break-down scene was so intense that I had to put the DVD on hold and go and walk up and down stairs for five minutes - she has become an impressive actress since Roswell days. I am completely on board with the idea that McDreamy should be eaten by bears, preferably mashed, on toast; I found myself loving Meredith all over again when she said 'you don't get to call me a whore' and the way that she and Addison, the two women in love with this spoiled brat of a man, sometimes bond for seconds.
Talking of Addison, I was meh! about the material establishing the spinoff show in last week's US episodes. I shall certainly give the show a go, because Kate Walsh is a goddess, but I am not entirely convinced. As far as I am concerned, the whole point of the show is that, with her in LA,
jennyo will be able to write her into Nip/Tuck fic as the Kimberspawn's obstetrician.Ugly Betty Inevitably, I have some reservations about Alexis, not because she is a quasi-villainess, because hey! I know plenty of trans people who have done worst shit than that, but because they sometimes sentimentalize her pain a bit and indulge her sense of entitlement. On the other hand I absolutely loved and identified the vague awkwardness about having sex with new bits for the first time, and her intense vulnerability in the face of betrayal by the first person she sleeps with. I remember that gawky sense of oneself as suddenly plunged in one's thirties back into adolescence and the terrible fear that it was all going to go wrong, all over again. I now officially hate Wilhelmina for what she has done to Alexis and to Clare; there is a character I won't be cutting any slack for ever again.
Heroes I am still entirely impressed by this show and the way that it recycles old old superhero tropes and makes them new all over again. As for last night's US episode 'The Hard Way'I note with interest the way everyone is disagreeing as to whether the scene between Sylar and his mother, the snow globes and the big knife is reminiscent of 1. Edward Scissorhands 2. Citizen Kane or 3. Carrie. My guess is that the writers are smart enough that it is a complex quasi-punning reference to all three; this is what I mean by 'a thick text', children.
Rome is another show where everyone else was right, and I was wrong. Blame it on the BBC. It has some of the most shockingly violent scenes I have ever seen - the arena scene in Season One is staggering and yet hardly gratuitous as a reminder of how alien these people that seem like us some of the time are, and they managed to make the assassination of Caesar matter all over again even though one has known all the way through the show that it was coming. Season Two is patchier, perhaps, but I was amazingly impressed by one scene. Pulo, the working class legionary character, is sent by Octavian to kill Cicero - the old politician recognizes that he has played the game of betrayal one time too many and is perfectly polite to his executioner, who is deferential back. Cicero is flattered that Octavian has sent a famous stone killer to take care of him - he knows who Pulo is from the aforementioned arena scene - and Pulo asks permission before picking all of Cicero's peaches. Afterwards, Pulo says that Cicero was a pleasant enough man 'less stuck up than you'd think'; which is the epitaph we would all want from our assassins. I also loved the Lets Kill Cicero children's picnic, and the almost random mislaying of Cicero's letter to Brutus.
One thing which works surprisingly well, and which I am not convinced that Americans fully understood, is the way that the Roman criminal classes, while resembling the Corleones in all sorts of ways, are completely Sarf London and EastEnd crims; one of the ganglords entertainingly disapproves of Mark Antony's funeral oration in the following terms -'It's a fahkin Consular funeral, innit? Nah fahkin respect.' Totally incongruous and totally right.
Talk of mega-violence should bring me to Grindhouse but that, I think, is a post for another day.
no subject
Bradford meade murdered his henchman.
Claire Meade killed Faye and feels zero remorse for it.
Alexis faked her own death and doesn't seem sorry for the agony she caused her mother and brother, and she's played some pretty cruel games since she returned.
Daniel is a sometimes-kind, womanizing moron.
From Wil's perspective, why should she show any of them any mercy?
So far, Wil has only put a confessed murderer in the slammer, played games with a game-player (Alexis), and put herself at the top of the heap in the only way that seems acceptable (sexing the awful Bradford Meade).
no subject
Claire's killing of Faye was provoked by years of public humiliation -if Faye is in fact dead, of which I am not entirely convinced given the unresolved stuff about the theft of her body. Alexis was desperate at the time of her faked death; she is full of self pity, which is a flaw, but it is perfectly understandable. She also has a streak of competitiveness which Wilhelmina has set out to exploit, and a low opinion of Daniel, which is not entirely undeserved. The stuff Daniel says in the editorial that goes unused is stuff he should have said, to her, weeks earlier. Daniel is not nearly as much of a moron as he sometimes acts - if the job of an editor is to get talented people to rub along together amicably, he clearly manages that rather well.
Wilhelmina treats junior staff badly, tortured a recovering alcoholic with vodka and set up the whole Rodrigo business - she also gave the biographer the embarassing photos she had because Alexis thinks she is her friend. She is far worse than you think with far less excuse.
no subject
Yes, Wil is a horrifying bitch, and what she did to Alexis was terribly cruel, but if Alexis can dish it, she can take it. Alexis was an insensitive bully as a boy, and is still a bully as a girl. She's vulnerable in this time of awkwardness and self-discovery, but she has never been helpless, and she is certainly not *nice.* And she had to know what kind of woman Wil was when they first began to plot. You don't get away with betraying Wilhelmina Slater.
I also understand that Alex was desperate and Alexis is *still* desperate to defeat her father and, thereby, prove her existence is worth something, that she's not a freak or worse as her father sees her. But I also saw Daniel's attempts to reach out to her as a *sister.* She doesn't show any compassion for anyone, yet she expects compassion in return. Alexis can't see past her own needs, and and until she does that, I have very limited sympathy for her.
Obviously, you like what you like, but I think the Meades, particularly Alexis, are *worse* than you think, and Wilhelmina is simply playing their game better than they do. Don't hate the player; hate the game.
Rome
Re: Rome
Re: Rome
Still, I have season one of Carnivale and the first three seasons of The Wire to watch so Rome would have to wait.
no subject
See, I always think the brilliant thing about Rome is how like us they were, but without the Judeo-Christian sense of guilt and inherent badness and with the gloves off. You can recognize a lot of current rhetoric in Cicero's speeches against Catiline (I always have creeping sympathy with Catiline, though that may be merely because Cicero hated him), and in Octavian's propaganda machine against Antony and Cleopatra. It's just that a lot of the stuff that goes on sub rosa today (torturing one's political enemies and/or captives) was officially sanctioned then.
And, you know, women have it better. Also plebians. And we finally did away with slavery, though what I do appreciate about ancient slavery as opposed to the US version was that there was none of this nonsense about justifying it because slaves were somehow supposed to be subhuman, or animal-like, and therefore it was right that they be owned and abused. It was very clearly a matter of we won, you lost, and this is why you don't want to lose a war.
no subject
no subject
wg