The home stretch
Notice how all my posts lately revolve around critiquing Britannia High (not very well, but I have to get my practice in somewhere). Sorry about that.
Today's episode started well enough ('well' in this instance meaning badly; for those who read the last post, I'm hoping the show gets worse rather than better, so as I don't remember it as something that might have been) with a whole load of wasted time involving Claudine and Danny throwing a dinner party and the most inappropriate dance yet (not helped by the fact that, contrary to popular belief, there is never a time for leather pants). Then things started to take a turn for the good, as remarkably both plots managed to work more or less this time around. Curses!
The episode plot revolved around bonus cast member Ronnie's attempts to make it into the end of year show and asking one of our plucky gang for help; in this instance, Jez. She's devoid of any singing talent but he can't bring himself to tell her she's crap. Predictable moral dilemmas ensue, and she winds up humiliating herself. It all works out in the end, as ever.
The love triangle between Claudine, Lauren and the charisma-black-hole meanwhile returns to easy femslash territory again (yay!) as Lauren maybe has MS and neglected to tell anyone. As a result, all three of them get closer, but either because the show is aimed at teenagers or because it's on ITV1 and they can't offend any pensioners, polyamory is out of the question, so he must choose... sadly, I doubt it'll end up going the Claudine/Lauren route, despite the fact that even if the actresses didn't have such chemistry together, they'd be hard pushed to have as little as they do with Mitch Hewer.
So why did it work? I'm saying: A) Little in the way of Lola and her WACKY ANTICS, and: B) greater focus on the members of the cast who can act.
So... yes, this episode gets a silver star (hey, it wasn't THAT good) and a passing grade, after all the good effort stickers the past couple of weeks. The show has finally shown that, yes, it can be genuinely good. (How irritating :-P)
The tragedy of Britannia High comes to a close next week with the partly live finale (Except maybe not, as the finale was supposed to be 90 minutes, but ITV have cut it down 65, making me assume they've excised the live bit (which'd be a shame really, I was hoping they'd cock it up really badly)). Then I can finally stop talking about it... unless it comes back next year... which it almost certainly won't.
Today's episode started well enough ('well' in this instance meaning badly; for those who read the last post, I'm hoping the show gets worse rather than better, so as I don't remember it as something that might have been) with a whole load of wasted time involving Claudine and Danny throwing a dinner party and the most inappropriate dance yet (not helped by the fact that, contrary to popular belief, there is never a time for leather pants). Then things started to take a turn for the good, as remarkably both plots managed to work more or less this time around. Curses!
The episode plot revolved around bonus cast member Ronnie's attempts to make it into the end of year show and asking one of our plucky gang for help; in this instance, Jez. She's devoid of any singing talent but he can't bring himself to tell her she's crap. Predictable moral dilemmas ensue, and she winds up humiliating herself. It all works out in the end, as ever.
The love triangle between Claudine, Lauren and the charisma-black-hole meanwhile returns to easy femslash territory again (yay!) as Lauren maybe has MS and neglected to tell anyone. As a result, all three of them get closer, but either because the show is aimed at teenagers or because it's on ITV1 and they can't offend any pensioners, polyamory is out of the question, so he must choose... sadly, I doubt it'll end up going the Claudine/Lauren route, despite the fact that even if the actresses didn't have such chemistry together, they'd be hard pushed to have as little as they do with Mitch Hewer.
So why did it work? I'm saying: A) Little in the way of Lola and her WACKY ANTICS, and: B) greater focus on the members of the cast who can act.
So... yes, this episode gets a silver star (hey, it wasn't THAT good) and a passing grade, after all the good effort stickers the past couple of weeks. The show has finally shown that, yes, it can be genuinely good. (How irritating :-P)
The tragedy of Britannia High comes to a close next week with the partly live finale (Except maybe not, as the finale was supposed to be 90 minutes, but ITV have cut it down 65, making me assume they've excised the live bit (which'd be a shame really, I was hoping they'd cock it up really badly)). Then I can finally stop talking about it... unless it comes back next year... which it almost certainly won't.